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Conservative Points in Pope’s Speech Include Liberal “Chasers”

By Patricia Miller

…of the traditional, all-American meaning in terms of the right to worship freely. In fact, Francis’ unannounced visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor at their home across the street from Catholic University, which wasn’t reported until after the fact, could be seen as an effort to rebalance the ledger for conservatives who are closely following the issue but didn’t get a shout-out during the address, with the Vatican confirming that the visit w…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Jihadis?

By Haroon Moghul

…d and sclerotic autocrats out of the way. There can be no progress without freedom. And there can be no freedom if we are stuck believing in people, like Hirsi Ali and her ilk, who don’t believe in the kinds of analysis that leave room for debate, discussion, and growth. I know from personal experience how hard it is to fight the mentality that produces and sustains extremism. Case in point: I don’t think Hirsi Ali is deliberately misrepresenting…

Pope Francis Brokers End to Cuba Embargo, Despite Opposition of Catholic Pols

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…ile, I think, an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.” Today, Cuba is more in our reach. As a Cuban-American from Miami I have been raised amidst the existential crisis of the Cuban exile community, a community with a rabid anger towards the Castro regime and simultaneous love and compassion for their fellow Cubans on the island. I, like many children of exiles, was raised holding…

God May Weep For Church Sexual Abuse, But Bishop Chaput Prefers to Bark

By Anthea Butler

…gned amidst the allegations, along with Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché. On the flight back to Rome, Pope Francis was asked why he felt the need to offer consolation to the Bishops over the sexual abuse scandal in America. Clarifying his comments, he said that his words of comfort were not meant to downplay the situation but that “It was so bad I imagine you cried hard.” He also reiterated “those who covered this up are guilty. Even bishops who covered…

Pope Francis Walks With LGBTQ People, One Step Forward, Big Steps Back

By Kaya Oakes

…oft-quoted statement about gay priests—“Who am I to judge?”—occurred on a flight back to Italy from Brazil. Most recently in Tblisi, Georgia, the pope referred to the “theory of gender” as a “great enemy to marriage today.” He added that “there is a global war to destroy marriage,” and that the weapons being used are a form of “idealogical colonization.” In the past, Francis has used that phrase to describe Western ideas being forced onto develop…

From Organized Religion to Organizing Religion: Brian D. McLaren Wants Christians to Be Better

By Peter Laarman

…a new love-centered Christian orientation (note the silhouette of birds in flight on the book jacket), McLaren also speaks of conversion, and I read the book more through the conversion lens (I’m not sure that the migration metaphor works as well as the author hoped it might). The tone throughout is warm and engaging, and the book is filled with telling anecdotes. But McLaren is never less than a master teacher with a solid lesson plan. He moves,…

Hey Hey, Ho Ho White Jesus Has to Go… But The Issue is More Complicated Than You Think

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…white as far back as Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister who stated in the sermon “God is a Negro,” that: We have as much right biblically and otherwise to believe that God is a Negroe, as you buckra, or white people have to believe that God is a fine looking, symmetrical and ornamented white man. For the bulk of you, and all the fool Negroes of the country believe that God is white-skinned, blue eyed, straig…

Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…a bat?, we immediately come upon the problem of differences— —right, a bat flight simulator! But one of the things that we need to recognize is that . . . human beings experience their worlds very differently. I’m very interested in the phenomenon of disagreement. What does it mean when two people look at the same information and they come to different conclusions? To me, that is in some way indexing how deeply ingrained our affective experiential…

Mitt Romney At Value Voters Summit

By Joanna Brooks

…ire-in-the-belly of a Donnie Osmond. His greatest hits? “Nancy Pelosi’s numbers have being going down a chute faster than a Jet Blue flight attendant” and “President Obama’s idea of a rogue state is Arizona.” As for the substance of Romney’s speech, what was most notable was the absence of talk about values, let alone religion. Instead, Romney sounded every bit the corporate buyout and turnaround specialist, criticizing the “anti-growth,” “…

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Blames Gays For ISIS; ‘Christian Nationalist’ Sworn In As Guatemala’s President; Vatican Resists Civil Unions in Italy; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…heir gender on official ID. Bishop Aurelio Pesoa, head of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference, held a press conference just before Christmas, in which he denounced the legislation as an example of “gender ideology.” “That bill is inspired by a gender ideology that has been pushed by an international lobby and aims to subvert one of the foundations of our human lifestyle by denying the fundamental truth of masculine and feminine genders. Living as ma…