Search for "cheap airline tickets philadelphia to raleigh nc phone number 1-800-299-7264"

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

By Anthea Butler

…ilies will be held in Dublin, Ireland. If Pope Benedict XVI wanted to save Philadelphia, Pope Francis heading for Dublin to talk about family after the sexual abuse scandals they’ve suffered will surely be an exercise in raising a Catholic country from the dead. While the biannual World Meeting of Families is intended to sustain and promote the Church’s ideal of the family, until the Church can fully understand that its failure to reckon with its…

May We All Be More Like Dick Molpus

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…better and braver person.) For this, according to Molpus, he received “a number of death threats and a host of bitter and sick correspondence.” Six years later, in Molpus’ unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, his opponent Kirk Fordice belittled him for having given the speech. Yet those who care about racial reconciliation in Mississippi called his speech a “watershed in Missippi civil rights history.” It led directly to the formation of the Philadel…

Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

By Matt Hamilton

…I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unanswered in my inbox? Was my updated resumé sent to that recru…

Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

By Ed Simon

…ssly shifting malleability of the angel as a signifier. Furious angel Francis Lawrence’s 2005 Constantine, a film adaptation of Alan Moore’s DC graphic novel Hellblazer, details the work of its titular character, a metaphysical noir detective who lives in a Los Angeles that exists in a space equally with the dimensions of Heaven and Hell. As with Dogma and Good Omens, Constantine engages a certain “bureaucratizing of the sacred,” an understandin…

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

…that seat I knew I would soon be airborne, soaring like a bird on performance-enhancing drugs. The sense of freedom and fun (and free food, even if airline food) was exhilarating. The airport has now become a place of horror. Do they have full-body scanners? I wonder as I’m herded into a long, bovine line. Abattoir or boudoir? Why is this bothering me so much? Don’t Touch Me There Even cursory reflection reveals my embodiment issues are buried de…

Marriage Vote ‘Transforms’ Not-So-Catholic Ireland; Activist to Malaysian PM – ‘Love Is Not Terrorism’; LGBTs Find Growing Acceptance in Colombia, Not At World Meeting of Families; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ombia has permitted civil unions for heterosexual and homosexual couples since 2007. Since 2013, some municipal judges have granted civil marriages to about 100 same-sex couples.” Herlinger tells the story of a devout Catholic transgender woman who worried about the afterlife, and was told by her priest, “We are all equal in heaven. There is no gender in heaven. It’s all souls.” Recent polls estimate that two-thirds of Colombians oppose same-sex m…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…of land on the eastern outskirts of the city, which he named Hermosa Provincia—beautiful province. Ten years later, Aarón died, and Samuel took over as the church’s president, father in faith, and living apostle. At the time, the church was mostly a local affair, with its tight-knit membership clustered in the enclave of Hermosa Provincia, and the stated goal (which remains to this day) of restoring la iglesia primitiva. Over the next fifty years…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…ave left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two important ways. One is the unprecedented ideological polarization of the church. There are today two distinct Catholic populations: one progressive-leaning population that supports the church’s social justice mission and the pope’s call for environmental stewardship, but largely…

How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

By Peter Laarman

…goes. Religious progressives have done a lot of serious work on the importance of fidelity in all relationships and the difference between fully-realized relationships that participate in the sacred vs. liaisons that fall short of that mark. Religious progressives, after all, are the ones who have tried to enrich, not degrade, the marriage sacrament by arguing that God blesses all deeply committed marriage bonds, not just marriages made by heteros…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…as a Master’s student at Fuller working the switchboard part-time, and the number one phone call that came through went something like this: “Can you connect me to C. Peter Wagner’s Church Growth Institute? I’d like to buy some materials.” No one was happier than I was when he retired from Fuller and moved to Colorado Springs! I felt like I worked at a catalog call-in center. Seriously. I would never have expected to be talking about Wagner in con…