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Hold Your Applause: Potential Changes to Roles of Catholic Women and LGBTQ+ People May Just Be Vatican Breadcrumbing

By Mary E. Hunt

…of power derived from the models offered by the world, or is it rooted in service?” (par. 57). It’s as if the Church were without power struggles and as if no social models were rooted in service. Wrong on both counts. A path to women deacons is hinted at here but not women priests. I’m reminded that Hansel left a few breadcrumbs but that he and Gretel were foiled by hungry birds. So it goes. Breadcrumbing works like other forms of intermittent r…

Discrimination on the Taxpayer’s Dime? The Fight To Curtail the Overreach of RFRA

By Sarah Posner

…y if the USCCB will not refer its clients for required reproductive health services, or if it arranged for access to these services through other means. About the ACLU’s FOIA suit, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families said the agency “is gathering documents to complete the requests in an expeditious manner that aligns with FOIA procedures.” The USCCB did not respond to requests for comment on the FOIA suit. For advocates of…

How (Not) to Understand Romney’s Time as an LDS Bishop

By Joanna Brooks

…athy for women’s issues. But Romney’s outlook did mature over his years of service, according to the Post, and he may have assisted Boston-area Mormon feminists by deflecting Church headquarters’ inquiries into their activities. On Tuesday, Salon.com’s Justin Elliot selected the most unflattering elements of Romney’s career as bishop to depict the GOP presidential candidate as “an enforcer of the most socially conservative policies of the LDS chur…

A Method to Obama’s Madness?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ng the wheels for the project in motion with calls and e-mails to national service organizations. The committee is reaching out to organizations of all sizes and ideologies, including faith-based groups, unions and businesses as well as political groups—from Moveon.org on the left to Focus on the Family on the right—to motivate their members to participate. I understand now. What Obama is doing is exactly what George W. Bush and others like him wo…

Yes, Virginia: There IS a War on Christmas: Its Revolutionary Meaning is Inverted in the Winner-Take-All Era

By Peter Laarman

…annot bear to hear the “Magnificat” read—or sung—in a rich people’s Advent service. It’s just too painful to heard Mary’s exultant words, “[God] has brought down the powerful from their throne and lifted up the lowly; [God] has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty,” in the midst of ecclesiastical opulence, in places where mere lip service is paid to the cause of the lowly. It is painful to hear these words, especially in…

“I Died Inside.”

By Joanna Brooks

…pe. I wanted to stay in and help. So you prepared for a lifetime of Church service, starting as most young men do with two years of missionary service. You had a plan to work and pay for your mission. You started your paperwork. You met with your bishop. And when you did, you brought up gay marriage. Why? I brought it up because I was afraid of being sent out on a mission and the issue of gay marriage coming up and not being able to preach that it…

The Journalist and the Bishops: CNS Editor Fired For Tweeting Opposition to LGBT Discrimination

By Patricia Miller

…talking points, fooling no one.” The USCCB owns and runs the Catholic News Service, but officially CNS is editorially independent from the bishops’ conference and provides news to both secular and religious outlets. In reality, however, it’s always existed in a somewhat liminal space journalistically speaking, combining fundamentally solid reporting with a pro-hierarchy tilt in story selection, heavy on stories that feature official Catholic voice…

The “Religious Freedom” Issue That May Cost the Accused Boston Bomber His Life

By Anthony Santoro

…ty. This tends to exclude members of particular faith traditions from jury service, as the Death Penalty Information center noted in 2005: “Catholics who have heeded their Church’s call to end the death penalty” are among those “believers of all stripes who… will not be able to serve even in the guilt-innocence phase of the trial.” (DPIC, “Blind Justice,” 6,) On January 8, the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty echoed…

California Inmates Protest the Abuse of Long-Term Solitary Confinement

By Sarah Sentilles

…during sexual intimidation and violence, according to the American Friends Service Committee. They are cut off from communication with family and loved ones. And solitary confinement is not limited to adults. Juveniles in the criminal justice system are subjected to it. As are those with mental illness. As are prisoners suspected of gang affiliation—or of having information about other people who might be in gangs. Though solitary confinement is o…

Is New Pope’s Take on the Poor All That New?

By Silvia Alves Fernandes and Manuel A. Vásquez

…t, Francis seems to think of poverty primarily as a virtue, as a marker of service, frugality, honesty, purifying suffering, and loyalty at a time of general indignation toward the excesses and wastefulness of contemporary capitalism. Poverty above all implies a call for moral and spiritual conversion in the midst of a Church that has lost a great deal of its moral standing. This view is clear in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei, co-authored with…