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Teen Births Rise; Can Faith-Based Leaders Help?

By Frances Kissling

…0 had ever seen a health care provider about their sexual health. I cannot help but wonder how many had seen a religious counselor about their sexual health, although I suspect the percentage is much lower. This brings me back to my concern about how the White House office on FBNP is going to approach this issue and whether or not they will be helpful. The natural inclination of religious leaders to avoid asking hard questions about what God wants…

Barbara Ehrenreich’s ‘Wild God’ is Not Here to Help

By Angela Bonavoglia

…he Catholic Church, for example) but otherwise so often ridiculed or dismissed out of hand? I also found myself wishing that Ehrenreich’s “wild God” had made a more positive impression on her so that she might help the rest of us come to terms with the paradoxes of the divine. But that’s an unfair burden to put on any mystic—especially an avowed atheist. For me, as for many of us, the search goes on….

Church’s Lawyers Have SNAP in Their Sights

By Kathryn Joyce

…and switch, in that bishops say publicly to victims, come forward and get help, yet when victims do get help, by emailing us or calling the police or meeting with a DA, now Church officials say give us every shred of paper. Is that why SNAP sought rape crisis center designation? I would say we’re not seeking it but simply saying that Missouri law on sex crimes is clear. It says “any agency, public or private” that offers help to rape victims must…

Is Tarot Just a Cool Self-Help Deck of Cards?

By Daniel Wise

…of its Life Kit podcast titled “Tarot can’t predict the future, but it can help you make that big decision,” presenting and endorsing the viewpoint of their guest: “As tarot reader and writer Michelle Tea puts it, some people mistakenly come to tarot for a prediction of the future, when it’s really about self-reflection. ‘If you’re a person that wants to integrate more spirituality into your life or to look at life a bit more philosophically.’” As…

The Surprisingly Short History of Popular Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain and Michelle Goldberg

…eachers say that, through our practice, we’re improving the world, I can’t help but roll my eyes. There seems to be this vaguely occult idea that through yoga we can generate positive energy that will then ripple out into our surroundings. I think it comes from the mystification of yoga, the way contemporary teachers try to imbue the poses with religious magic. True, if you take care of yourself, you’re more able to take care of others, but that’s…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…udied, and at least 12 were formally approved as of 2008—according to most numbers (although even a simple count of “official” sites is hard to obtain), Our Lady of Good Help is the 13th. Pope Benedict XVI recently called for more moderation in approving such sites, but any new regulations did not fall into place in time to stop Bishop Ricken from pushing Adele Brise into the international spotlight. Benedict probably doesn’t have to worry about A…

Meet The Liberal Tea Partiers

By Abby Scher

…tells you to do, but it doesn’t tell you to turn to the tax collectors to help the poor. It’s more to turn to yourselves to help the poor… We don’t believe it’s the role of the federal government to find an answer, a one-size fits all answer.” The Reagan Revolution thirty years ago made tax cuts for the wealthy mainstream, and “starving the state” has been part of the conservative strategy for cutting government programs ever since. Economic cons…

How the COVID-19 Pandemic May Permanently Change Our ‘Good Death’ Narrative

By Cody J. Sanders

…vive. How might our reassessment of the Good Death in the wake of COVID-19 help us to see our human lives more intimately bound up in every way with the larger web of life―a web of which we are a part and that is, even in the case of a virus, always becoming a part of us? Can this lead us to reconceive how we place our dead into the earth, no longer separated by chemicals and metal and cement that further concretizes our exceptionalism, but breach…

RDPulpit: Israel in Gaza: Right but not Smart

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

…der and deeper set of issues. The basic condition for creating peace is to help each side feel “safe” enough to ignore those within their own community who claim that peace is impossible and that no one cares about the safety of “the Jews,” or “the Palestinians.” A first and critical step is to speak in a language that is empathic toward the suffering of each people. Rather than try to prove that the Palestinians are “nothing but” terrorists or th…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nt Families, Same Love” have been sent to every school in Ireland, show “a number of families from different backgrounds – from same-sex parents to single parents, from grandparents raising a child to a childless couple with a dog.” The poster is meant to help teachers create inclusive classrooms and deter bullying. But the conservative Catholic Iona Institute, which led opposition to the marriage equality referendum, is arguing that religious sch…