Religion Dispatches
…s dedicated to serving the needs of the sick and the poor, the new Vatican Code of Canon Law cloistered them all, imposing rigid rules that undercut their ministries. As the century moved on, however, relations between the Vatican and the sisters seemed to improve. In its effort to respond to the horrors of the twentieth century, the Vatican ordered the sisters to become better educated, to update their rules and habits, and to begin meeting toget…
Read More
…forthcoming probes about whether or not the clinic can be cited for minor code violations. With an air of boredom, Newman ran through the list of tactics he’d turn to if he couldn’t prevent the clinic from opening. They’ll run their “Truth Truck”—a large vehicle with side panels covered with images of late-term aborted fetuses—and plant 200 crosses outside the clinic every day. They’ll limit the number of clients willing to enter by making women…
Read More
…litical zone larger now than ever before. The Modern West’s allegedly life-promoting institutions, precisely because of their excessive materialism, actually foster death. This is not a superficial analysis or critique, and there is much in it that a progressive secularist could agree with. Feminism and sexual ethics frame the issues where the two sides necessarily part company. It is important to recall that Catholic anti-Modernism is not new; it…
Read More
…aren’t so much sober accusations of individuals’ crimes than an insiders’ code for ‘elite liberals.’ The Satanic abuse panic of the 1980s and 90s led to the persecution and false convictions of many innocent people and caused traumatic rifts in communities. The panic involved gothic stories of bloody ceremonies conducted by community-members in black robes, including graphic claims of child and adult sexual abuse and rumors of specific “cult” loc…
Read More
…nt as ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43QTjFCPLtI Nike has failed to promote justice for workers for decades. In 1997 filmmaker Michael Moore lambasted Nike CEO Phil Knight in “The Big One” for allowing young teenage girls to produce Nike sneakers in Indonesian sweatshops. About a decade later social justice educators Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu travelled to Indonesia to live on Nike’s starvation wages for a month. Their documentary “Behind…
Read More…ffers high family entertainment value, therefore we will be continuing our promotion. “We regularly offer promotions to our IKEA FAMILY members across a variety of entertainment options, and in this case, our IKEA FAMILY members were being offered a discount on tickets to the show. “As a company, IKEA Singapore respects the diversity and equality of all people living in our community. We also respect that all individuals have a right to their opin…
Read More…er judged a vehicle for courting the religious right in psalmic and hymnic code, Palin is delivering a very clear message to religion-savvy listeners, who hear in her call for “servant’s hearts” the message of twenty years’ worth of “complementarian” sermons, exhorting Christians to be “servant-leaders” and, among women, to view their highest calling in service to male leadership: willing helpmeets to their husbands’, fathers’ and pastors’ authori…
Read More
…f SB 522 becomes law. The bill also highlights the fact that Texas marital code still only identifies “a man and a woman” as the two parties who may apply for a marriage license. Even for Texas Republicans, this bill is a mean-spirited (though not at all unprecedented) attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality in pursuit of accommodating a vocal minority who claim their faith trumps their neighbors’ pursuit of life, lib…
Read More
…Corinthians”) as ordinary Americans are with the loopholes of the IRS tax code…‘The Art of the Deal,’ his campaign biography by default, is a human billboard for pride and lust…‘I’m a greedy person,’ he told an Iowa audience, ‘I’ve always been greedy.’ Prothero’s explanation is structured around the notion of evangelicals’ loss of their fundamental religious identity through politicization. In supporting Trump, Prothero insists, evangelicals “are…
Read More
…ed to show more intellectual modesty and to acknowledge, with the previous code of Canon Law, that “the bishops, whether teaching individually or gathered in particular councils, are not endowed with infallibility” (Canon 1326). Cardinal Dulles made a crucial theological point in his Presidential address to The Catholic Theological Society of America. He said that the Second Vatican Council “implicitly taught the legitimacy and even the value of d…
Read More