Religion Dispatches
…the internet and smart phones, we can shop anywhere at anytime and have no contact with another human being. We can shop alone, in secret. I remember growing up going to my local drugstore with my mother. It had a lunch counter, the owner’s son was my soccer coach, purchases were written up on slips of paper and individuals paid at the end of each month. This was not small town America in the ’50s, this was Miami in the ’80s. Today I shop at drugs…
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…prevail, even when institutions fail us. Writing this book brought me into contact with dozens of other Catholic women who face similar struggles, but keep their qualms to themselves. It made me realize that I was not alone. Is there anything you had to leave out? After writing the stories of the nine exceptional women in my book, I’ve met so many more women with equally fascinating stories. I wish all of these women could have been part of the bo…
Read More…“shares the parents’ religious beliefs and moral convictions.” To date, a number of Catholic Charity adoption agencies, including those in Illinois, Boston, San Francisco, and most recently Buffalo, New York, have shut down rather than offer adoption services to same-sex couples. They’ve then turned around and accused civil authorities of putting them out of business because of anti-Catholic animus. Catholic Social Services (CSS) of Philadelphia…
Read More…ed was that someone from the archdiocese that encompasses this area was in contact with the hospital administration and, basically, said, ‘I think we have a problem, and this needs to stop.’ And so, what was a very easy sort of step, being able to just go forward and do the tubal ligation at the time of the c-section, changed gradually. Catholic hospitals’ ability to refuse sterilizations is generally considered “ironclad” reports the Washington P…
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…nt issue, especially in the wake of continued violence against women in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. However, I think there is a structural flaw at the core of your argument that I would like you to address. It is, of course, easy to come out against the ultra-Orthodox in Beit Shemesh whose behavior crosses all lines of civility. The problem, however, does not lie solely in their egregious behavior or even with their rigid interpretat…
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…ia (which has been translated variously as adultery, or same-gender sexual contact). But reading in light of John’s other purity concerns, it makes sense to translate it that way even if that is not how it is normally understood. Yes. It simply means sexual immorality. Paul warns against porneia too, but his questions indicate that he has different attitudes about sexuality because he’s talking to Gentiles—and I think he thinks it doesn’t really m…
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…campaigns often win, and where the sports we like best involve hard brutal contact. All of this is to say that there will be no saving turn toward a culture of nonviolence without also acknowledging and changing the violence we carry within. Then comes yet another step. Even when we stop ourselves from openly demonizing, we are still a long way from any kind of productive exchange. And that’s partly because it is still so very hard to acknowledge…
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…immolated in eastern Tibet. India has responded to the unrest by placing a number of Tibetan refugees under what they term “house arrest.” Below, Megan Sweas reports from India on the latest wave of protests. –Eds.] DELHI—Shibayan Raha had worried that this would happen. At a protest against the upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, a 27-year-old Tibetan exile lit himself on fire and ran past the podium before police and other activists c…
Read More…ams at Pink News: The reporter – who has not been named – said he gave his number to Mr Mburu after the pair met at a road show. However, he later contacted police claiming that Mr Mburu had sent him a series of messages telling him he that he loved his voice and asking him for sex. “Please, let us be lovers and let me show how sweet it is just like a woman. Why don’t you give it a try,” one message read. The journalist said he decided to report M…
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…torturer, her tormentor; yet in the process, she has been discovering her contact with the machine, relying on what the machine knows (such as the weight of the gun with a blank vs. with a bullet) to survive the way her father deploys what he knows about her. It feels like we are witnessing the personal trauma which might ultimately set the cylons against the humans: originating not in the inhumanity of the machine, as we were first presented wit…
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