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How an Ancient Story of Renegade Rabbis Caught With Black Market Technology Can Help Us Navigate ChatGPT’s Apocalyptic Aura

By Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld

…to the Talmud, the Divine Being itself worries about the danger of estrangement inherent in over-reliance on written text. “Should I write the greater part of my Torah? In that case the Jewish people would be considered like strangers.” Quoting the Deity is the strongest possible way for the Talmud to state its concern about what happens when new technologies develop for disseminating knowledge. We need not quote a deity, but as we head toward ne…

Fear, Guns, and the (Unwinnable) War Against Death: A Letter to My Fellow Americans

By Beatrice Marovich

…ulture as well. Think about American pop culture where almost every blockbuster storyline repeats this defeat of death: The Matrix, Game of Thrones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars (the list is probably endless.) But what if this view of life as a war against death can do nothing in the present but feed the fire of fear that’s burning so many of us? What if that old Christian belief that death is the greatest enemy of God has made people so af…

As a Queer Catholic Woman I Had High Hopes Before the 2023 Catholic Synod on Synodality

By Emma Cieslik

…as I read the summit’s 41-page report. This past Friday I saw New Ways Ministry’s statement, “Synod Report Greatly Disappoints, But We Must Have Hope,” while walking down a busy DC thoroughfare. In it Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ+-affirming Catholic organization, points out how, despite previous documents discussing the welcoming and inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics, there were no positive statements on LGBTQ issues—not even one…

The ‘Unified Reich’ Scandal is a Feature Not a Bug of Trump’s Brand of American Fascism

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ltiple times in the video, text appears below a headline, which reads: Industrial strength significantly increased … driven by the creation of a unified Reich. The German word for “empire,” Reich can refer to a number of entities, the most common association today being Nazi Germany, which referred to itself as the “Third Reich”—following the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and Imperial Germany. The video’s reference to the Reich, as the As…

First it Was an Insurrection Flag, Now Supreme Court Justice Alito is Caught Flying Another Far-Right Flag — An ‘Emblem for an Extensive Spiritual Warfare Campaign’

By Annika Brockschmidt

…n? In case you missed it, Alito’s flag-gate is a two-part story. In the first installment, news broke that, in the days after January 6th 2021, neighbors reported that an upside down American flag had been flown at Sam Alito’s house. The New York Times writes: While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision. The upside down US flag has been used…

‘The Quiet Damage’ Details the Heartbreaking Effect of QAnon on Five American Families — But Critical Questions Linger

By Susannah Crockford

…from Covid-19 and start to change—but others will not. What comes across most strongly is how difficult it is to help; how even trying can pull you down instead. The moments where family members lose friends or fail exams because of their QAnon-afflicted spouse or parent are some of the most affecting. Getting out is a matter of the person wanting to change. They have to be ready to accept that they might be wrong and to take real accountability a…

Why Notre Dame’s Contraception Flip-Flop Undercuts Bishops’ Religious Freedom Claims

By Patricia Miller

…declares Notre Dame’s authorized refusal to pay for contraceptives for its students or staff, and mailing the authorization document to those companies, which under federal law are obligated to pick up the tab, could be thought to ‘trigger’ the provision of female contraceptives. But then this week, in one of the more head-spinning moves of the entire convoluted contraception debate, Notre Dame announced that it was restoring contraception coverag…

Why Are We Drawn to Horror?

By Mathias Clasen

…t I had to leave out some of my favorite authors and works—for example, Ghost Story by Peter Straub. It’s a wonderful, clever monster of a genre-savvy Gothic horror novel. Or [the Joss Whedon-produced] The Cabin in the Woods, one of my favorite horror films. Or It Follows. Or The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, one of the most disturbing haunted house stories of all time. Or one of Robert McCammon’s horror novels from the 1980s, maybe T…

Under Water: Waiting for the Flood (of Awareness) in Louisiana

By Drew Konow

…d that don’t compound its histories of racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism; stories of people joining together to address systemic injustice; stories of a recovery where no one is left behind….

Good Mourning Modeled by Chaplains and Clergy at the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire

By Kaya Oakes

…the victims of the Ghost Ship fire were in their 20s and 30s, making them statistically more likely to be agnostic, atheist, or another of the identities often collected under the category of Nones. The fact that most of the people on site were artists, and many of them also LGBTQ, meant that any chaplains present needed to be sensitive to the possibility that their friends and family waiting outside for news might also be religiously unaffiliate…