Religion Dispatches
…ound the planet. However, without exception, these are persons whose moral codes and personal dignity mean so much to me that I cannot imagine the world without them or without their advice. They are the ones who remind me about beauty and majesty of the creation. This will be an intense week and I don’t know how much will be worth public consideration. But here I am Oh Lord, Labayk Allahuma Labayk, towards Your house I put my intentions. Take me…
Read More
…he elected readers for their generation, offered a way to crack the hidden codes of divine scripture. In most cases, the very belief that a given reader of the Apocalypse had been divinely appointed carried with it the clear implication that those times must be very close. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need such a close and spiritually esoteric reading at all. If that is, roughly speaking, how such apocalyptic calculations have looked and behaved in the…
Read More
…a Chance on God.” John found his priestly vocation as a prisoner of war in Germany when a Polish man tossed him something to eat while making the sign of the cross. John joined the Jesuits, engaged in study and formation, doing it all right until he fell in love. The rest is an important chapter in church history. Starting with his hallmark book, The Church and the Homosexual (1976), John was a public advocate in print and on the airwaves for open…
Read More
…His suggestions that Americans should arm themselves (or that Jews in Nazi Germany could have saved themselves from the Holocaust by being armed with guns) conflict with Adventism’s non-violence. And his opposition to a Muslim becoming president, while in agreement with almost two-thirds of Iowa Republicans, is at odds with the Adventist dedication to religious freedom (not to mention the Constitution). It would seem that evangelicals might be sur…
Read More
…ble. For example, CWC allows for anti-Semitic commentary to be withheld in Germany while still available in the United States, where it may not specifically violate any laws (other than the laws of decency). To ensure this policy is applied diligently, only authorized actors like law enforcement or government agencies are allowed to submit CWC requests. You can imagine the potential difficulty of maneuvering within this system when dealing with a…
Read More
…ost of the people on the ground fighting ISIS are Muslim. This is not Nazi Germany, where a state was co-opted by an extremist fascist movement, and willingly followed along. ISIS only has a state because Iraq’s and Syria’s governments lost control of their territory. In no place have Muslims voted for ISIS. In no places would they. While some have joined them—and this is a serious problem, of course—let us not forget that these criminals are grea…
Read More
…e Sigmund Freud and René Girard.” Newspaper obituaries in France, Britain, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain acknowledged as much; and, in the country of Girard’s birth, French president François Hollande eulogized Girard as a “passionate intellectual” whose ideas now “mark the history of thought.” Girard’s profound impact on multiple fields is such that, upon his election to the Académie Française in 2005, he was hailed as “The Darwin of the Hum…
Read More
…orm? In the first half of the twentieth century, countries like Russia and Germany, and the lands in between them, initiated or suffered extremes of war that few countries have thankfully ever experienced, or could conceive of. Iraq might be able to. Just review the last one hundred years of Mesopotamian history. France and Britain had long desired to control the Ottoman Empire’s Levantine territories, Zionists aimed to colonize Palestine, and the…
Read More
…roblems is not new: one finds parallels in the appeal of fascism in Weimar Germany, crippled by war reparations, sky-rocketing inflation, and an economy in free-fall. Or in the appeal of ISIS: people suffering economic free-fall and dictatorial suppression or, in the developed world, inadequate education and prejudice. Alienation is the equal opportunity killer, reaching even those who have productive futures, especially when they see prejudice or…
Read More…s being made by the former head of the lay diocesan council in Regensburg, Germany, who said that Müller and a deputy “systematically” covered up the abuse, disbanded the diocesan council to thwart outside investigation, and installed at least one known abuser priest in a parish who then committed more acts of abuse. Müller has served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the second most powerful position in the Vatican, since…
Read More