Religion Dispatches
…known for attacks on Scientology, decided to send a message to the Catholic Church by shutting down the official Vatican website (still not responding as of this posting). What are the Church’s misdeeds, according to these code crusaders? They go back to the selling of indulgences in the 16th century. And more recently, of course, there’s the Church’s interference in Italy’s domestic politics. (Not just Italy, we’d have to say.) – The Eds. …
Read More…there is broad agreement on what is called “delayed ensoulment.” That was code for saying that the fetus does not attain to personal status until it is well formed. Early miscarriages could not be named or given religious funerals. Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas held that the early fetus had the moral status of a plant, and that not even God could infuse a spiritual, person-making soul until the fetus was developed; some put this today at si…
Read More
…deed leads to serious consideration for the legitimization of parties that promote the propaganda of paedophilia. Putin also send US President-elect Donald Trump a “very nice” Christmas letter. Taiwan: Marriage equality moves forward in parliament The day after Christmas, amid raucous protests, a parliamentary committee passed the first draft of a marriage equality bill, which is supported by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and President T…
Read More
…one has parents worth invoking. And every little step and turn of the talk promotes an etiquette that values open doors and natural achievement. The bride’s genealogy, for example, always precedes the groom’s. The undergraduate degree is one you “graduated from” whereas the graduate degree is one you “received.” Flourishes of detail are unnecessary (the names speak for themselves) unless they don’t. Thus, the employer of one subject is “CytImmune…
Read More…hy of international coverage because the Palestinian women had broken “the code of silence” by resorting to Israeli courts. The implications of this juxtaposition of two unrelated events are that Palestinians belong to a backward, patriarchal culture that, rightly or wrongly, is under attack by a modern, “democratic” state with a legal apparatus that supports women’s rights. Others have shown that the New York Times gave disproportionate attention…
Read More
…ht I’d feel better once the debates were over. I’d been looking forward to today as the beginning of the end of this interminable campaign—the moment when the light at the end of the tunnel came into view. In an election that’s seen sexual assault allegations, endorsements from white supremacists, and infiltration by Russian hackers take center stage, it’s no wonder that the most common comments I hear are variations on the same theme: are we ther…
Read More…?) And who were similarly silent when the party tried to capitalize on the coded racism of the anti-Obama forces in 2012 or upend the Affordable Care Act, even though the Catholic Church has been advocating for universal health care since Model Ts were on the road. And it’s even funnier that those who helped put Bush and Cheney in office and watched as they led the nation into endless, unwinnable wars, and justified torture to prevent an ever-pres…
Read More
…First, Douthat warns of encroaching “scientism” which, in this context, is code for failing to believe the supernatural truth claims of Christianity. Second, paradoxically, Douthat perceives a tendency among non-religious people to embrace the mystical belief systems that he himself rejects, like astrology or wellness. (So much for scientism!) Yet we don’t see any actual evidence that these trends are as widespread among the deconverted as he sugg…
Read More
…rends continue, perhaps we can look forward to the day when the word “values” is no longer used in political campaigns as a code word for bigotry….
Read More…icrobe cells, mutated cells. We are built, too, of our parents, of genetic code and flesh and blood and bones that grow inside of flesh and blood and bones. So we come again to the parents: “There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer,” Hazel tells us. Green, who is now the parent of two children, told The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot, that his own…
Read More