Religion Dispatches
…Catholic believers who put “holy water” from a city water supply in their car radiators before going on long trips, or the Catholic hierarchy that claims the right to say what is “really Catholic?” But of course, the important part of the Brennan Center report was not this complicated question of what counts as “authentic” religion but the fact that the current model for monitoring radicalization is overly simplified, too linear, and based on str…
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…ations on life and the world were moving past measure. In a time when one scarcely dares to turn on the television if one is not already prepared for catastrophic news, this interview offered more than a beacon of hope; it was a quiet call to moral arms, a reminder of the ways in which the character of the citizenry contributes directly to the ethical health of the republic. The cumulative weight of Mr. Breuning’s simple answers spoke to the impor…
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…rs—since 2009, states have reduced non-Medicaid spending for mental health care by more than $1.8 billion. The National Alliance on Mental Health reported in 2011 that there were wide-sweeping cuts across the nation to mental health services. Just recently, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) announced that New York governor Andrew Cuomo planned to close psychiatric services, including the planned 2017 closure of the Mid-Hudson Forensic…
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…redulous looks I received when people heard Dio blasting out of my beat-up car in the late ’80s, only to see a black woman bobbing her head. But Dio and other metal bands hold an important place in forming my intellectual interest in religion. The imagery their album covers drew upon was more interesting than the mundane depictions of evil employed by the Church harkening back to a Hieronymus Bosch sensibility. Staring at the covers and listening…
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…o join him in conversation.’ Where Francis demanded a a swift reduction in carbon emissions, Wuerl talked about the beginning of a long process of absorbing what he had to say. ‘He is not saying to individuals, you must do this,’ said the cardinal. ‘That doesn’t appear in the document. He is saying, here is the moral frame of reference.’ The bishops’ lack of enthusiasm for the encyclical isn’t surprising given that the topic of the environment was…
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…ntly oppressive army, and outsiders to boot—power-hungry and disrespectful carpetbaggers. The comparison is also, of course, hyperbolic, as the use of an actual ISIS tactic of turning cars into weapons, at the “Unite the Right” rally, starkly reveals, just as the optics of the “Unite the Right” rally—and it was nothing if not full of photo-opportunities—reveal the bedfellows sharing a platform in relation to such statues, some with swastika armban…
Read More…s playing a child’s game, how many of us have to endure what amounts to 70 car accidents each Sunday? Not that I am trying to defend the exorbitant salaries of professional sports (how about we sign some preschool teachers to million dollar contracts!). But as long as this is the going rate of the profession, Michael Vick should be allowed the opportunity to earn it. Second, nothing about this career choice would contribute to Vick’s recidivism or…
Read More…ago, the same prelate declared homosexuality to be a threat to the family. Cardinal Tumi [Cardinal Christian Tumi, the retired archbishop of Douala] even declared that homosexuality was a “threat to the human race.” Catholic lawyers depicted homosexuality to be a clinical pathology that should attract the attention of different hospitals…. This Church wants more than ever to set Cameroonians against each other, ignoring its mission to promote love…
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…mber of US soldiers killed in Vietnam. After a while we became numb to the numbers. We bantered during the reportage, or got up to get a drink, either because we couldn’t bear to hear it, or because it became meaningless. Numbers are the entry point to the banality of death. An American Pickle is a film about two people, who are really one person (Seth Rogen plays both roles), the hapless Herschel Greenbaum and his great-grandson Ben Greenbaum, a…
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…ke City, Utah, in October 1985. After the third explosion, this one in the car of Mark Hofmann, which followed two explosions the day before, the community was left terrified over whom the killer would target next. The juxtaposition between a song that celebrates the certainty of having God’s spokesperson on earth, and the anxiety over an at-large serial killer, is not only an effective cinematic maneuver, but it also highlights a central paradox…
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