Religion Dispatches
…at cross purposes. My first thought was to kick myself for leaving my cell phone behind. This would have made a terrific picture. My second thought was to find a less obtrusive spot where I could watch to see how this excruciatingly slow drama would play out. But before I could move, my husband drifted up behind me in his kayak, took one look at the frog and snake and muttered, “I can’t take this.” Over my objections (“But it’s nature!”) Jeff stre…
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…ement with new media. But even given difficulties defining necessary and appropriate boundaries of personal, professional, and institutional transparency, we can see the virtue of transparency overall as having a stabilizing ethical function that invites openness and honesty while discouraging secretiveness and duplicity. When Lennon Cihak felt moved to share his opposition to the proposed Minnesota marriage inequality amendment, he may have been…
Read More…these areas and activists are attempting to set up a safe house network to provide protection for targeted individuals forced to evacuate these areas. Dédé notes “The need is urgent in these areas, but funds for the program are very limited.” Wales: Archbishop Says Church Not Ready for Same-Sex Marriage, Offers ‘Informal’ Prayers Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan told the Church in Wales governing body that the church is not ready to authorize marr…
Read More…raphed a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder kille…
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…. A vice president for the parts suppliers, James Settles Jr., asked those present “to continue your prayers, so we can see a miracle next week.” I’m certainly not one to discount the possibility of miracles. I’ve seen many in my own life—but what I find disturbing about all these instances of invoking God to protect us and save us from situations of our own making is that no one is preparing people for disappointment. God’s “saving” and “miracle”…
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…Christian, I struggled with depression and panic attacks. I often received prayer and anointing of oil for my depression and panic. I found myself crying at church, not because I was feeling the ecstasy of God, but because I was overwhelmed with the fact that God would not heal me. I tried everything, including paying hundreds of dollars to have one-on-one healing sessions to expel demons and cut demonic ties from and my family’s past sins. These…
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…ist’s child, that if you actually think that’s both your business and an appropriate use of the law, you had better be falling over yourself to end sexual violence and rape culture? That you’d best be trying to figure out how everyone can access contraception, including emergency contraception, and including contraception that their abusers can’t sabotage in order to perpetuate the abuse? And that you naturally want to make it safer, easier, and l…
Read More…emark came from a “script” and that “Catholics across the nation should be prepared to receive these deceitful and dissembling phone calls.” Catholic Democrats immediately responded with a statement that the report was “unequivocally false” and that if there were in fact “Catholic-to-Catholic phonebanking questioning Mitt Romney’s faith,” “our organization had no part in them.” Catholics for Obama also pointed to a statement released last fall by…
Read More…tack by a foreign power. Maybe when he sat down and thought, “What’s the appropriate image to show how irate I am about the contraception coverage mandate?” the first things that popped into his mind were bodies, death, fire, and smoking twists of metal. Maybe he thinks that the only people who have ever experienced a truly grievous affront to their agency and well-being are these three groups: 1) victims of the Pearl Harbor attack; 2) victims of…
Read More…could also be called the change prayer. It could also be called the wisdom prayer. The Pope has prevailed, in the way Occupy did, in naming the agenda as moral. No one can speak without using the word moral. Al Gore asks the moral questions this way: What must we do? What can we do? What will we do? His triplet joins the triplet of the prayer. Of course we will have to accept some things that won’t budge. Of course we have to change what we can. A…
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