Religion Dispatches
…ening in America today that has ever taken place is that which occurred in Germany in the 1920s through the 1940s.” White’s a hero on the religious right speaking circuit, for, as the Iowa Christian Alliance put it in 2007, his advocacy for “the importance of being unwavering in our commitment to stand for Biblical values and defend truth in an increasingly postmodern society.” The Restoration/Renewal Projects are based on a model developed in Cal…
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…a Chance on God.” John found his priestly vocation as a prisoner of war in Germany when a Polish man tossed him something to eat while making the sign of the cross. John joined the Jesuits, engaged in study and formation, doing it all right until he fell in love. The rest is an important chapter in church history. Starting with his hallmark book, The Church and the Homosexual (1976), John was a public advocate in print and on the airwaves for open…
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…inues to value freedom of enquiry, the discovery of new materials, and the promotion of novel points of view. What you sense most clearly at the Vatican Library is that popes come and go, as professors do, but books and the society of learning remain. We are all links in a chain, not just the men who claim an apostolic succession going back to Peter. The fact that this book is on display in that Library now is something for which I’m profoundly gr…
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…l faithful countrymen ‘to remember that when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, his first move toward world conquest was the expulsion of religion from the schools.” Becker’s machinations have been largely lost to history, since historians of the period, to Sasse’s dismay, have focused more on the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement than on religion. But as Sasse’s narrative proceeds, it becomes clear that despite failing to amend the Consti…
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…arl Schmitt, who, idolizing the role Hitler was carving out for himself in Germany, wrote of the sovereign as a leader whose ability to inflict his will on society was unchecked. Such a concept was essentially theological, Schmitt wrote, not only because the term carried traces of its historical use in discussions of God but, importantly, because the “systematic structure” of the term was theological, evoking a metaphysics of the state that functi…
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…entitarian” movement Martin Sellner (who’s called for mass deportations in Germany), right-wing UK politician Nigel Farage, former Brazilian Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro, and Matteo Salvini, Vice Prime Minister to Italy’s fascist Giorgia Meloni, who called Trump a “victim of judicial harassment and a process of political nature.” Former conservative UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demonstrated his knowledge of 20th century organized crime in the…
Read More…final vote tally showed India breaking away from countries such as France, Germany, United Kingdom and many Latin American nations, exposing the fact that New Delhi’s loud proclamations about being an international player didn’t extend to the human rights arena. But India voted in favour of at least two amendments that restricted the scope of the watchdog, betraying what the country’s intention was. Devirupa Mitra at the Wire has more on India bac…
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… in these pages about the Catholic Church and the sex scandal unfolding in Germany, Belgium, and other European countries. At the time, I surmised that the story would end much like it has here in the U.S., with rules, regulations and recriminations—but with abuses still occurring. What I didn’t anticipate was that the story would unfold steps away from my home and office in 2011. Philadelphia’s Avenging Altar Boy The Archdiocese of Philadelphia…
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…nt and sad passions.” Candidate pledges and victimhood appeals are tactics promoted by the U.S.-based anti-LGBT, Catholic-minded National Organization for Marriage, which wants to play its hand in the French elections, too. Socialist President Francois Hollande signed marriage legislation on May 18, 2013 amid violent clashes and thousands of protesters decrying the scuttling of traditional family values as the fall of Western civilization. In the…
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…y enough to Krampus, Santa’s ill-tempered companion throughout Austria and Germany, who goes far beyond coal in the stocking when reminding children that he knows who’s been naughty or nice. For Krampus fans—who are becoming legion—this Yuletide boogeyman comes and goes much too quickly. And it turns out Bourdain thought so, too. What he’d hoped to air is a bit of mischief that would have elevated the No Reservations holiday special from simply ve…
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