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Pope Francis v. Kim Davis: A Vatican Game of Thrones

By Anthea Butler

…ing, which is naïve at best. Staver lying at the Values Voters Summit about 100,000 people in Peru praying for Kim Davis proves that he’s willing to stretch a story to fit the narrative of Kim Davis as a Martyr and “conscientious objector.” No matter how much he may continue to assert that “Vatican officials approved the visit,” I would suspect the only Vatican official he most likely spoke with was Archbishop Vigano, who let Kim Davis and Staver…

What the Latest ‘God’s Not Dead’ Gets Egregiously Wrong — and Right — About Homeschooling

By R.L. Stollar

…que to the United States, has allowed abuse and neglect to thrive. At least 172 homeschooled children have been killed by their parents since 1986, indicating homeschooled children face a greater risk of dying from child abuse than other children. Additionally, a recent survey of 3,702 homeschool alumni found over half (51%) experienced abuse during childhood. A further 26% reported knowing an abused homeschooled peer. Given the almost total absen…

Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

By Gary Dorrien

…compromised his campaign promise to withdraw most or all U.S. troops within 16 months of taking office. His current position is that 65 percent of our force structure in Iraq will be removed by August 2010, and all our combat troops, leaving up to 50,000 troops there in non-combat roles until December 2011. He stresses that the combat mission will end at the end of next summer, more or less as he promised, and that we need to keep a heavy force in…

“Who Was Muhammad, Was He Violent?”: Teaching Islam Ten Years
after 9/11

By Abbas Barzegar

…our empire. Our generation must be poised for a stout pragmatism that can manage gay marriage and Muslim face-veils in the same breath. As an educator I am 100% certain that within six months 80% of my students will forget 90% of what they learn this semester. As a citizen I am sure that our society’s questions about Islam will not look much differently ten years from now than they did ten years ago. I am quite confident, though, that neither Dan…

Hope Once Again In Wisconsin

By Daniel Schultz

…ve-aways to well-heeled interests being technical adjustments necessary to manage a desperate fiscal situation. To my mind, this fresh sense of possibility and the new participation of average citizens in determining their own future offers a tantalizing glimpse of the work of the God of Exodus. Creation, nothing. The Lord—the wily desert trickster—can and does upset political apple carts by calling people to the sort of hope outlined above. I hav…

Krapp’s Last Tweet: The Rise (and Fall?) of Privilege in the Digital Economy

By Kevin Healey

…rs tuned in. Stratos symbolizes a broader trend, also traceable to the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which the twin themes of commercialism and technical bravado combine. Early Internet proponents explicitly rejected online commercialism, as evidenced by the backlash against the first commercial advertisement sent via e-mail in 1994. The tide of commercialism had been quietly rising since the 1980s, however, ushered in by corporate CEOs who imagi…

Keep it Catholic, Catholics: A Response to Michael Sean Winters’ Attack on Frances Kissling in America

By Mary E. Hunt

…think of Catholics as being as diverse as Jews, though I observe that Jews manage their diversity with a great deal more grace. Then we can lift the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that constrains many professional Catholics from saying what they believe on issues like contraception. There are solid Catholic arguments for the many approaches, not all of which I like, but all of which I have to be honest enough to admit are Catholic. Just as I would…

The Best and the Brightest of the Catholic Bad Girls

By Frances Kissling

…igned. Sr. Elizabeth Candon was president of Trinity College in Vermont. In 1972, she let women meet on campus and plan Vermont’s first abortion clinic. In 1976 she defended the state’s policy of paying for poor women’s abortions, and a few years later simply said that it was women who should make the decision about whether or not abortion was moral. But BBBGs were not only open on the question of abortion, they challenged just about everything el…

RD News Round-Up: October 27, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…… From 2000 to 2007, the number of children living in poverty increased by 15 percent… In 2007, the richest 20 percent of Americans had over 50 percent of the nation’s income, while the poorest 20 percent had only 3.4 percent.” In a piece titled “Fighting Poverty With Faith,” Steeland and Nordengren recently reported that “the ‘Fighting Poverty with Faith’ action campaign [in September] brought together a coalition of nearly 100 religious communi…

A Superhuman Spirituality: Ang Lee’s Life of Pi

By Beatrice Marovich

…ed odd to the notorious scholar of myth and religion, Mircea Eliade. In his 1957 book Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, he argued that there is something about the human connection with non-human animals that reveals a kind of nostalgia for Eden before the fall, a paradise. Eliade believed that human individuals who were able to “befriend” animals, to speak what he called the “language of the animals,” might be capable of accessing an almost superhuma…