Religion Dispatches
…ners both progressive and anti-Modern Catholics carry into cultural battle today. It is scarcely imaginable how, given the current impasse, North American Catholics will not re-define their relationship to Roman authority in the relatively near future. So, if Euro-America is a lost Vatican cause, then where is the Church growing? Where is its future? The answer seems relatively clear. The Church is growing in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa,…
Read More…eved to warrant our admiration: legal and political reform (the Napoleonic Code), emphasis on good governance, egalitarian virtue, human rights, and the like. If Napoleon was an emperor, then he was an emperor unlike any other before him. In short, he was a revolutionary, intent on exporting his version of revolution and disrupting the old order of elite European privilege. Those most opposed to him were the most entrenched political powers of the…
Read More
…al same-sex relations, forces women to adhere to a strict and modest dress code in public, and has zero-tolerance for dissident’s freedom of expression – presents a surprisingly lenient attitude on trans issues. On the surface, the Iranian government seems supportive of the trans community. Official reports reveal that gender confirmation surgery for trans individuals is subsidized by the state. Trans activists are also legally allowed to organize…
Read More…lues in the Orthodox Christian countries.” “This is particularly important today, as Christian values are undergoing an amassed devaluation,” he said. “I stressed Moldova’s role of a stronghold of the Orthodox Christian world and an advance guard in struggle for Christian values,” Dodon indicated. “The Orthodox Church is a most authoritative institute of Moldovan society today.” Australia: debates shift to religious rights and next priorities for…
Read More
…Liberal Western values may be on the declineelsewhere in Europe. But Malta today is proving that a country can adhere to key traditional values, promote its own religious heritage, and recognize the dignity of every citizen—all at the same time. Suriname: Country makes progress at home but votes against LGBT human rights at UN Human Rights Watch LGBT Program Advocacy Director Boris Dittrich writes: Suriname’s government is on the right track at ho…
Read More
…leased in mid-May. Angels & Demons is the successor to 2006’s The Da Vinci Code, which its star Tom Hanks called “just a good story loaded with hooey and nonsense.” Of course, he only has to say that because it’s not true. Everybody knows that despite getting most of his facts wrong, Dan Brown is American culture’s preeminent religious thinker and, in particular, our most trusted interpreter of Catholicism. Even though the Vatican decided to play…
Read More…Religious Studies major before law school, and now an advocate engaged in promoting an accurate understanding of Hinduism and countering misrepresentations on a near daily basis, four words in the AAR statement—to offer any interpretation—leap out at me. To a lay person who deeply respects my religious tradition, it is this unconditional and self-proclaimed right ‘to offer any interpretation’ which lies at the root of what is wrong with religious…
Read More
…orities.” Again, Dreher is firmly rooted in the conservative mainstream of today, as is The American Conservative. Citing right-wing authoritarian Orban and Italian neo-fascist Meloni as paragons for the future of conservatism, while reveling in the idea of using state power to suppress one’s political opponents is an open threat. But we need not read into Davidson’s words to deduce this, because he’s done us the favor of formulating his totalitar…
Read More…ting a committee of four theology teachers to review the proposed morality code, which created in uproar in the local community by declaring that teachers should “conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior” to orthodox Catholic teaching. Among the rules that teachers are to “affirm and believe” are the “sinfulness of contraception,” that “all extra-marital sexual relationships are gravely evil and tha…
Read More
…f which do happen to wear (typically small) crucifixes—and thus the visual code aimed its sights more narrowly on undesirable religious minorities, while at the same time allowing the government to proclaim the even-handedness of its approach. But whatever the actual intentions of the government, the deployment of this category of the ‘permitted sign’ wonderfully epitomized a much larger and more longstanding liberal project to (re)construct mode…
Read More