Religion Dispatches
…lity for abortion on one of the few grounds allowed in Poland, sought to remind the public of her status as a rape victim by naming her after St. Agatha, the Catholic saint of survivors of sexual assault, indignity and women in danger. But in either case, an Agata condemned in contrast to the martyr-mother, or an Agata eligible for a reprieve only due to her sexual victimhood, what’s missing from the story, and from Poland in general, is an icon o…
Read More…ave a good chance at winning, given the state’s Democratic leanings and promising polling numbers. O’Malley said that expansive religious freedom language in the law was important to its passage and in keeping with the traditions of the state of Maryland. The referendum language makes clear that the law protects clergy from having to perform any ceremony that violates their beliefs, guarantees each faith control over its marriage doctrine, and “pr…
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…onservative supporters. Last September she was a featured speaker at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, where she told the audience: When I walk into Planned Parenthoods across the country, I am flattered to see my picture on the wall. It is because to Planned Parenthood, I am—quote—a ‘known anti-choice extremist.’ This is one of the better compliments I have received. The Times also reported that David French, an attorney with the…
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…s on the ordination of women and LGBTQ persons” was incongruous with the seminary’s values. In a phone interview, Calvo, who sits on the board of PTS’s Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Supporters, said that “there was a lot of anger, a lot of disappointment among women and LGBT students and faculty.” “I’m training in ministry because I believe that regardless of your theological position you are worthy of dignity. However, that doesn’t mean yo…
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…who had served on the Papal Commission on Birth Control and chaired the committee’s majority report; Richard McCormick, who is recognized as one of the founders of modern bioethics; then-Catholic University star Charles Curran; Albert Jonsen, a Jesuit bioethicist; and Father Drinan, Dean of Boston College Law School, rounded out the team. According to Giles, the moral theologians and priests met together for a while before being joined by the Kenn…
Read More…earn to get along with black soldiers following military desegregation, heterosexuals are going to have to learn to get along with gay men and women in the military, who, they shouldn’t need to be reminded, are already serving alongside them….
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…not healthy—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. What do you miss? I miss my church. I miss my friends, but I know this was the right decision. I think most of all, I miss taking communion. I wept quite a bit during communion at the conference hosted by The Reformation Project conference (a group advocating for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church). I’m in the wilderness. I’m spiritually homeless, and I think I’m embracing tha…
Read More…rn between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When Christ did not appear, Miller and uncovered a mistake in his reasoning and offered a revised date: October 22, 1844. It became known as The Great Disappointment. Such are the risks of prophesying a specific date. Since their emergence in the 1950s, UFO-religions have also shown an apocalyptic bent, a tendency fueled by the threat of nuclear annihilation, social unrest, environmental collapse and…
Read More…C Street and bringing the Catholic bishops calling to the House leadership might cause Democrats to push him to the sidelines. He’s only voting his conscience, after all! Stupak wields his mighty threat like a kid who knows that his parents aren’t going to let him hold his breath until he turns blue. And like those parents, the Democratic Party knows at some level it will have to give into him because, despite the bishops and the Stop the Abortion…
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…eared in The New Republic in 1950, describing Hubbard’s new science of the mind as a remarkably “bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology.” Equally severe criticisms followed throughout the 1950s as his newly-founded Church of Scientology grew in numbers and also attracted increasing scrutiny from th…
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