Religion Dispatches
…soul) damned.” To be lost is not merely a geographic problem for marooned airline passengers, or for men unwilling to stop and ask for directions—it’s a spiritual and moral condition. These days a google search turns up over 500,000,000 hits (that’s half a billion); not too surprising for a basic and often-used term. Similar numerical results come from google searches on terms like “run” and “hide.” Meanwhile, “found” yields over 1.3 trillion hit…
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…ance-enhancing drugs. The sense of freedom and fun (and free food, even if airline food) was exhilarating. The airport has now become a place of horror. Do they have full-body scanners? I wonder as I’m herded into a long, bovine line. Abattoir or boudoir? Why is this bothering me so much? Don’t Touch Me There Even cursory reflection reveals my embodiment issues are buried deep in my religious upbringing. I was a teenage fundamentalist. That remark…
Read More…an ad in a local shop or community center. Last minute emergency? Call the airline right away to see about possibilities for accommodating your needs. Likewise, if one is ardently anti-abortion for moral reasons, rather than only focus on making it illegal, prevent it by limiting unwanted pregnancies: help ensure adequate, healthy sex education and contraception are available to those who need or want them. Work to make affordable, quality prenata…
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…s are necessary to prove we live in a democracy? How many must die before we recognize collective life requires constraint, a humility and discipline that our pleas to a special relationship with God often damage. We have lost too many, whether in places like Connecticut, or Oakland, or Newark. The pain cuts to the core. In this, God is not present instead these tragedies speak of God’s absence; they write God’s obituary. We—fragile, uncertain, a…
Read More…re were other notable theologians who held the same view and allowed for a number of other exceptions. Nor did the hierarchy object. Rather, the humble and very gifted Antoninus was appointed Archbishop of Florence in 1446 before being canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 1523. There are Catholic parishes named for this pro-choice saint in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Newark, New Jersey. St. Antoninus was not a pro-choice loner in the Roman…
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…lan-Kudlow faction of the church’s leadership to oppose tax cuts for the wealthy, even if it comes at the expense of health care for the poor. And in an implicit rebuke of the political priorities signaled by a freestanding Religious Liberty Committee, Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin questioned why the work of the committee couldn’t be folded into the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. But in the end, he was voted down 132 to 53, wh…
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…o immigration status.” Cardinal Joseph Tobin, who leads the archdiocese of Newark, stated that mass deportations are an “inhuman policy” that “destroys families and communities.” Tobin also accompanied an immigrant threatened with deportation by I.C.E. to a court date, and stated that “we are here today to bear witness and to appeal to the conscience of our nation to spare this man, and countless others like him, whose only offense was to seek a b…
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…broad rubric of religious liberty. And for every Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark who called Trump’s order the “opposite of what it means to be an American,” there was an Archbishop Charles Chaput, who on the day Trump’s order was made public chastised his opponents for having “marched, rioted, verbally abused and in some cases viciously assaulted their opponents on a scale previously unseen.” Chaput suggested that the University of Notre Dame sho…
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…sation for this visit, aside from an omelette at an I-Hop on the road from Newark airport). Three other scholars were also invited to the meeting; we were a group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. When we were introduced Gulen attempted to rise from his chair. He swayed and tottered a bit, and I was afraid that he would fall. His aides quickly were at his side, steadying him, and he shook my hand firmly. Though he was frail, I found him to be aler…
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…nger, compassion and relief of the poor, and a commitment to non-violence. Newark Bishop Mark Beckwith gave perhaps the firmest Episcopal note of dissent, articulating a calling to be prophetic in the face of “Othering.” Episcopalians and Methodist have a strong tradition of the via media and church unity in the midst of controversy. Congregational polities allow for opinions to be expressed more strongly, shall we say. Some of them let it rip. Ca…
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