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Abuse of Power is at the Heart of Catholic Church Scandal

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…o his own character or persona. Weber also suggested that human beings are most often locked in “iron cages” of their own devising. It is a damning and fairly tragic picture of the fate of most moral communities, including the a Church, today. As the thick web of lying cover-ups, and allegations of abuse intensify, and as the swirl of intrigue expands to new states in the US, edging ever closer to the inner circle of the current Pope, the central…

UPDATED: The Coup That Never Ends: ‘Whitemanism’ and the Perils of a Flimsy Liberalism

By Peter Laarman

…l usage. To me it is creepily fascinating to observe how whitemanism’s own most effective promoters—the down-and-dirty, get-it-done operations like Heritage Action—don’t even bother to disown the racist core of the heritage they purport to defend. These well-funded and well-staffed groups are unabashed fans of white supremacy, and they consider it their sacred duty to perpetuate the idea of the United States as a white man’s paradise. As Jelani Co…

Terror is as Terror Does

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ey refuse to make that distinction which lies at the very heart of the Christian inspired Just War tradition, as well as more recent canons of international law. And now the plot thickens, as terrorists appear in the unlikeliest of places. Nuclear weapons refuse to make this distinction. Pretty much all weapons of mass destruction are terroristic in this precise sense. And it is the linkage of terrorists with weaponry we have not yet recognized as…

Refugee Crisis in the Age of Trump: Getting Holocaust Analogies Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…i and Holocaust analogies is not limited to one political party, these two most recent and most widely reviled instances were uttered by Republicans running for president who claim that their Christian faith deeply informs their politics and values. Now the Syrian refugee crisis is creating a new set of Holocaust analogies—or, rather, criticism of perceived analogies gone awry. Washington Examiner columnist Philip Klein complains that the “left” i…

As Funny as the Times Will Allow: Obama on Late Night TV

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…his same culture. Once you think about it, even briefly, you can see how almo*]}*st everything we think we know about tragedy and comedy is upside down. First and foremo*]}*st, the distinction has nothing to do with how a play ends. All Shakespeare’s tragedies do not end in a bloodbath, nor do all his comedies end in a wedding. Most of what scholars call “the problem plays” end in ways that are hard to assess. Most ancient Greek tragedies were resolved in…

Postcard from the Vatican

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…out it. Still more recently, there has been some admission by the Church’s most vocal critics that they are no longer sure what “doing enough” in the face of this massive structural calamity would even look like. Well now we know what the Catholic Church intends to do, or least we have been privileged to a much clearer picture of Benedict XVI’s own view of the matter. Summer is normally a slower time in the Mediterranean Church’s calendar. In fact…

Police in Ferguson Keep Praying and Preying

By Anthea Butler

…idate and arrest protestors follow this historical trajectory. Perhaps the most galling figure is Captain Johnson, appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to oversee the Ferguson Police and the National Guard. Johnson appeared at a local church to apologize to Michael Brown’s parents, garnering much praise from the crowd for his respectability and Christian piety. Yet while Johnson placates the public with appeals to Christianity he simultaneously sanctions v…

McCain’s Failed Final Gambit

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…even if the script isn’t winning for you. Which brings me to the third and most distressing point. Tom Brokaw played a videotape of Rush Limbaugh’s semi-tirade about the Powell nomination last week. With hands cupping his mouth, Limbaugh actually shouted several times into the microphone: “It’s all about race, all about race!” McCain, asked to respond to that, said that he was disappointed by General Powell’s statement, but then repeated his packa…

A Scholar Responds: Scripture as a Weapon

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tween the way religions function and the way our gun culture does. Perhaps most striking was NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s explicit connection of guns with “our way of life,” and implicitly, its defense. It is that implicit appeal to guns as a tradition that struck a real chord with this scholar of religion, and it warrants further analysis. In order to do so, I would like to add one further category to the analysis of the complex of cultural iss…

Was George W. Bush the Last Hippie?

By David R. Williams

…k to that itch. This is what I had to say, and I had to say it. What’s the most important message for readers? Too many messages clamor for attention: 1. Neither the head nor the heart can be trusted, neither logical planning and control on the left or libertarian laissez-faire romanticism on the right. Too much control is fascistic totalitarian arminianism—too much liberty is anarchy and antinomian madness—and there is no safe place in the middl…