Religion Dispatches
…y. Anyway, this Bloomberg piece on power players eschewing the use of cell phones strikes me as of a piece with my executive’s perspective. Technology is for the people who work for you. The article literally discusses someone getting Third-World peasants to loan her a cell in a pinch. You don’t get much more entitled than that. Still, there is something to be said for the virtues of unhooking from technology. I sometimes wonder if the convenience…
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…aul II, Pope Benedict XVI arranged for SMS messages to be sent to the cell phones of youth attending World Youth Day, a practice that has since become standard. This year Pope Benedict text-messaged a reminder about evangelism to all subscribers to the SMS service: “The Holy Spirit gave the Apostles and gives u the power boldly 2 proclaim that Christ is risen!—BXVI.” Recently Bishop Anthony Fisher announced the development of an associated online…
Read More…ol uniforms held their parents’ hands. A host of chatty young nuns tucked iPhones into the pockets of their steely gray habits. Absolutely no protest signs were allowed, yet church groups with people who spoke Spanish sported bright T-shirts with slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were perm…
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…is swept aside whenever it proves inconvenient or tiresome. The fear of loneliness and the desire for stability and fidelity exist side by side with a growing fear of entrapment in a relationship that could hamper the achievement of one’s personal goals. Pope Francis is right to wring his hands about the disposability to marriage these days. But then in Section 52 and onward, Francis makes it clear that same-sex unions are excluded from this “ide…
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…ars.” Guam: Catholic Governor stalls on marriage equality in spite of Attorney General opinion In Guam on Monday, Loretta M. Pangelinan and Kathleen M. Aguero, having been denied a marriage license, sued the government, which falls under the legal jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On Wednesday, Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson ordered the department of public health to issue licenses based on 9th Circuit rulings, but G…
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…kely suspects like established scientists Richard Dawkins and William Provine (who come across a bit like babbling hellfire and brimstone preachers of science), the film manages to build a case that: 1) it is un-American to omit discussion of intelligent design from Science and the science classroom and 2) ‘belief’ in evolution logically leads to atheism and even the Holocaust. Yes, you read that correctly, the Holocaust. The movie gets so much wr…
Read More…hat one of ECI’s board members, Rachel Abrams posted inflammatory, borderline-insane rants about Palestinians being “devil spawn” on her blog. Unsurprisingly, the center-left Jewish organization J Street has called on the saner folk at ECI to cut dies, disavow, etc, and if they don’t, for other Jewish organizations like AIPAC and the ADL to distance themselves from ECI. This last step should have been taken long ago. ECI, as critics point out, is…
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…time that he was having the better evening because of his way with a microphone and his remarkable capacity to modulate his voice (not to mention outing himself as LDS pastor and bishop). But it was Billy Graham’s endorsement, splashed into our faces via an expensive full-page Sunday New York Times ad, that triggered my flat-out recognition: the 94-year-old daddy of all televangelists is laying his bony patriarchal hands upon a fellow preacher wh…
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…topped the Billboard charts, Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and cell phones were the size of a brick. But those aren’t the only differences between Pope John Paul II’s historic 1979 visit and Pope Francis’ virgin trip to the US this week. Pope Francis will find a church that is markedly different in a number of significant ways; so different, in fact, that it calls into question whether we can still refer to the Catholic Church in the US. Wh…
Read More…ho wants to welcome everyone,” said [Sister Jeannine] Gramick, speaking by phone from Assisi, the pilgrims’ last stop before heading to Rome. “It’s very heartening to people who have felt alienated and rejected for so long, so we are feeling very hopeful.” “While LGBT Catholics hope for changes, they are realistic enough to know that Francis may not make those changes,” said [Francis] DeBernardo. “But he is doing things that will help their spirit…
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