Religion Dispatches
…long been interested in the myth of the loyal canine who knows his master better than any human can. This notion of devotion and intuition is built into the sentimental process which transformed dogs from work animals into family pets. (For more on this, see my essay on Lassie in The Wow Climax) Of course, my ever practical wife suggests another explanation—that Zoe has been playing with the dog in her search for human contact and so he turns to…
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…oncluded that there is more than one “intrinsic evil” in the world, a safe bet given the myriad challenges to human life abroad among us. He has said that Barack Obama will do a better job of operationalizing Catholic values than his opponent. Hardly defections from the anti-abortion camp, these respected scholars are simply broadening their definition of “pro-life” and moving toward a “seamless garment” view which allows for more than one issue t…
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…ns. We don’t want to think about how beaten down we are in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave; we don’t want to think about the extent of human degradation associated with making it (or failing to make it) in America. This widespread denial is what I mean by not taking the ethics of work seriously. And I admit that this subject is sufficiently terrifying to warrant some degree of caution. Open it up too quickly and people’s heads will just…
Read More…nt of the total number of the members mentioned in articles V and VIII. Despite this, Douthat assures us that “as a Catholic,” he expects “the plot to ultimately fail; where the pope and the historic faith seem to be in tension, my bet is on the faith.” It’s a measure of how deeply conservative Catholics identify the “faith” with the doctrinal orthodoxy of JP II and Benedict that Douthat actually believes he speaks for Catholics more authentically…
Read More…) to potentially controversial (adoption and LGBT issues). But it’s a safe bet this community didn’t expect a “best blog” competition to devolve into a witch hunt—literally. The “Faith Blog” category seemed dominated by homeschooling, “Biblical Womanhood,” “Biblical Patriarchy,” and so-called family values moms, and who apparently thought they own the category of faith (though Circle of Moms doesn’t exhibit any signs of being explicitly religious)…
Read More…he fate of the nation’s first major party presidential candidate. But I’ll bet you a twelve pack of caffeine-free Diet Coke and a dozen pink-frosted sugar cookies that there is no anti-Mormon phonebanking script in use by Catholics for Obama. Anywhere. Is anti-Mormonism real? Yes. But even if one poorly-trained rogue phonebanker veered off script into an anti-Mormon ad lib, it does not make for a concerted anti-Mormon effort. (Leave that to ortho…
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…u say, ‘Well, that’s not so!’ You try to be polite, but people should know better,” he told me once as we discussed what he called “wrong ideas about God.” “Christ is not an idea. Christ is a person. But ideas about him are very important. If you have a wrong idea, that stops your growth in God,” he said. “People within the church should know better and just are ignorant of the facts, no matter what you think about them. That puzzles me.” We had o…
Read More…the country and have decided to remain, or return after a few years away. Between the two groups, the self-understanding of the community becomes defined over and against urban life, for good reasons (wanting a small, caring community) and bad (wanting not to live next to black people). All of this can be dealt with, but change comes slow in rural areas. Think generations, rather than years, much less the lightning pace expected by the wired worl…
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…olic terms, are not. Imagine a similar discussion of the masculine body. I bet the mere suggestion of penis enlargements as a moral issue for men would stop more conversations than it would start. Try a simple substitute of ‘masculine’ for ‘feminine’ in this section of the document: Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the masculine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the ‘sea…
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…this more dangerous than amusing. Sounds like we’re both walking the line between investing these quirky theologies with the humor that they seem to call for, and the sympathy and seriousness that endears them to us in the first place. So long as we upset everyone equally, we should be fine. Something has recently been irking me about the Eden narrative in the Bible that I want to run by you; Adam and Eve don’t actually seem all that upset about…
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