Religion Dispatches
…s, with a seat on the House Intelligence Committee, Mrs. Bachmann you know better. Shame on you, Michele! You should stand on the floor of the House and apologize to Huma Abedin and to Secretary Clinton and to the millions of hardworking, loyal, Muslim Americans for your wild and unsubstantiated charges. As a devoted Christian, you need to ask forgiveness for this grievous lack of judgment and reckless behavior. (emphasis mine) House Speaker John…
Read More…hist Nuns On Sunday, Christian churches held a “Happy Family” rally by “to promote the idea of a family as consisting of one father, one mother and their children.” One participant held a homemade sign praising anti-gay laws in Uganda and urging the government to “be courageous” and follow Kampala’s example. The event was crashed by about 100 pro-marriage-equality activists shouting, “Let us in, we also support faily values, we also want to have a…
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…alize that substantial doctrinal and pastoral changes are impossible,” the better for the church. Burke also conducted a teleconference with reporters last week to further argue that any change in doctrine is impossible and to cast doubt on assertions by Kasper that he was speaking for the pope when he said the church should find a way to extend mercy to divorced and remarried Catholics. Kasper fired back with an interview in America magazine in w…
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…a part in their lives that I’ve seen,” Foley said. “I think they are, for better or for worse, bracingly in the secular present without regard to any kind of moral code, which doesn’t mean that, certainly in Claire’s situation, there haven’t been moments when she has faced up against.” As Season 3 wore on, even tiny glimmers of moral misgivings in Claire’s mind appeared to be driving a wedge in the Underwood’s strange union. “She definitely has a…
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…legislation also proposed to amend the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms in order to enshrine the “equality of men and women” as the highest human right to which other rights (such as freedom of religious expression) would be subordinated. From the initial indications from the government concerning this legislative initiative, in May 2013, through a noisy publicity campaign launched in September, to televised public hearings over the w…
Read More…uired to solemnise same sex marriages, and continues to regard marriage as between one man and one woman, the advent of same sex marriage, widely supported across the political spectrum, creates an acute divergence between the church’s teaching on marriage and the civil law of the land. “It is likely that the ease with which same sex marriage was accepted in Parliament reflects a more general social move away from the church’s traditional understa…
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…imed part of the prison as its own. But most importantly, the relationship between the gang and the church mirrored the relationship between churches and people in favelas. There was mutual respect, which was essential to preserving the peace. Gang members could leave the gang and join the church as long as their participation was deemed genuine. It would be very difficult to fake a conversion in prison because someone’s observing your actions 24…
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…es. And for anyone who thinks that it’s a big breakthrough for the pope to promote “responsible parenthood,” here’s Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae: Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the l…
Read More…d year went into effect on January 1. The country’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, is openly gay. Gambia: Anti-Gay President Survives Coup Attempt The anti-gay dictator-president of Gambia, Yayha Jammeh, survived a clumsy coup attempt last week, which seems likely to lead to even more brutal political repression. Vietnam: New Law Drops Ban on Same-Sex Couples Marrying “Vietnam’s new marriage law, which went into effect New Year’s Day, abolished re…
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…e the Vatican’s careful effort to claim an “essential difference” (par. 3) between vowed religious and their associates or co-members. This is purposely divisive as women’s religious communities are finding creative and life-giving ways to share their ministries and goods broadly. Just as I hope LCWR will not fall into the trap of being compared to CMSWR, neither should the rest of us take the bait nor allow ourselves to be divided over different…
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