Religion Dispatches
…1591 – 1643), the feminist Puritan who led study groups in her own home in Boston and weighed in on thorny theological questions—works versus grace—that divided leaders of church and colony. For the record, Anne Hutchinson stood on the side of grace, communicated immediately to believers by the Holy Spirit, no need for Church leaders. For her outspokenness, Anne Hutchinson was put on trial by clergy and colonial leaders for dishonoring the “father…
Read More…crime.” Even Vatican watcher John Allen, writing from his new perch at the Boston Globe, said the report could create a backlash in favor of the Vatican by “blurring the cause of child protection with the culture wars over sexual mores.” But the Vatican’s response to the abuse scandal was precisely to claim that sex abuse was a culture war issue. Its own report sought to blame the sexual revolution, chalking it up to sexual licentiousness run amok…
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…agna). We endured stories of a sumptuous 80th birthday party for disgraced Boston Cardinal Bernard Law at one of Rome’s four-star restaurants. We know that Benedict and his colleagues were harsh on nuns whose lifestyles they would do well to emulate. I expect a good deal more from Francis than the friendly but still largely cosmetic changes he has instituted. Gradualists will disagree with me, but I think it is time for Catholics to grow up and re…
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…second break with Catholic institutional action is found in the increasing number of Catholics living their faith according to their consciences, ignoring the Vatican entirely. At the recent memorial mass for William R. Callahan, one of the founding directors of the DC-area social justice-oriented Quixote Center, such new practices were in evidence. Bill Callahan was a Jesuit priest. A feminist before most men could even spell the word, he was dis…
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…ey’re out, they get pulled back in. First, it was Spotlight’s focus on the Boston-area abuse scandal that proved to be the tipping point for public awareness of widespread abusive priest-shuffling. It also reminded people of just how hard senior Vatican officials like Cardinal Bernard Law worked to keep the church’s complicity covered up. And just when the publicity over Spotlight’s Academy Award dies down, now comes a hard-hitting report chronicl…
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…spell conjuring the sensation of what a “miracle” it truly was: “This microphone is not an ordinary instrument / For it looks out on vistas wide indeed,” he wrote. “My voice commingles now with northern lights and asteroids and Alexander’s skeleton / With dead volcanoes and with donkey’s ears… / It drifts among whatever spirits pass across the night.” Corwin was the first radio scribe who wrote with full awareness of what this new medium meant and…
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…ve. Neurotribes documents how selective, “pyramid” thinking has fostered a number of dangerous theories about autism. It tells the story of Bernard Rimland, a widely-read author who took up a comprehensive review of autism research in 1958 when his son was diagnosed with the syndrome. He was so committed to the hope of a simple cure, however, that he latched onto the theory that autism was the result of a simple glitch in a single metabolic pathwa…
Read More…h Traffic newsletter reports that he and his wife recently returned from a Boston to Montreal cruise with “about 350 Precept Ministries leaders and donors, teaching the Bible prophecies of Ezekiel 36 and 37 (the rebirth of Israel and the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land in the last days) and Ezekiel 38 and 39 (the rise of a Russian dictator who will form an alliance with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to attack and try to dest…
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…ot running from the Red Scare. In fact, the mayor of a major American city—Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino—issued a proclamation in honor of Thanksgivukkah. I have deeply ambivalent, uncomfortable feelings about state displays of religion, but you have to feel a bit of awe: the city that won the World Series this year (fear the beard!) is also acknowledging our minor festival. Combining traditions is not a new thing in any religious tradition or cult…
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…orates in English and theology from the Catholic University of America and Boston College respectively, and whose cause for canonization, i.e. “sainthood,” is making its way through Vatican channels, could be reduced to the morally ambiguous character of Delores Van Cartier in the hands of white Hollywood producers is a tragedy. That Sister Act remains the chief reference point for the vast majority of conversations about black Catholic nuns and t…
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