Search for "cheap airline ticket to boston phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Vatican, ‘Cool Pope’ Blast UN Link Between Sexual Abuse Scandal and Church Attitudes on Gays, Contraception, Abortion

By Patricia Miller

…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…

Francis and the Nuns: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Patricia Miller

…get from the right. You see this all the time with Catholic colleges like Boston College. Wealthy alumna will make a fuss about something they don’t like and they will pull back. As you note, there are limits on what Francis can do, and animosity between nuns and the hierarchy over questions of authority has a long history in the church. What is the one thing you think Francis could do to show that he is serious about reform and a new attitude wh…

Cardinal Dolan Softens Pope’s Anti-Capitalism Rhetoric

By Patricia Miller

…war issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.” Francis’ closest advisor is Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, “a Franciscan in robes and sandals who speaks fluent Spanish and champions the poor.” But like any political faction temporarily out of power, the right wing of the bishops conference continues to advocate for its constituents, specifically the pro-business, anti-gay and –reproductive rights interest of the Republican Party. Dolan penned an op…

Ex-Gay Leader Defends Program Used to Support Uganda’s Anti-Gay Law

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…time, Mr. Cohen. One commenter on the Advocate.com’s Web site, Edward from Boston, makes a good point – Cohen had the opportunity, not just to disavow this legislation, but to do more to stop it: … the obvious question was: would he file a complaint with the Ugandan government for misusing his work to justify the potential killing of gays? Would he make a public statement decrying the proposed law? Would he stand with Gay Activists in protesting b…

US Bishops Defund Immigrant Rights Group Over LGBT Equality

By Patricia Miller

At the same time that Catholic prelates like Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley make high-profile trips to the US-Mexican boarder and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops urges a more humane immigration policy, a grassroots Catholic group providing support to immigrants and day labors has lost its funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development because of its tangential support for same-sex marriage. The Voz Workers’ Rights Education Proje…

Soy Story: Atrocious ‘Reporting’ on Insular Religious Groups

By Eli Federman and James Moxness

…insular religious societies like the Amish or Hasidic Jews may be due to a number of issues, from the difficulty of contacting individuals for interviews to the fact that insular communities are less likely to challenge a story. Or, just as likely, it may be due to biases about obscure religious customs and practices that predispose outsiders—which journalists and TV producers almost always are—to be less critical about the information they receiv…

Arrest the Pope: New Atheist Effort to Seek Justice in Sexual Abuse Crisis Should Be Applauded

By Frances Kissling

…clean-up was, of course, promised. Those charges were followed by the 2002 Boston Globe exposé; clean up was again promised, but the bishops and cardinals responsible are, in one way or another, still in charge and few priests have actually been defrocked. The European crisis is perhaps the most threatening to the political Church—the Church that claims statehood. Benedict is well aware that Europe is secular and far less deferential to the claims…

UPDATED: Warren is… Heterogeneous on Gay Marriage; In Hot Water for Equivocation

By Bill Berkowitz

…mega-best-selling book, ”The Purpose Driven Life,” said that “There were a number of things that were put out. I wrote to all my gay friends—the leaders that I knew—and actually apologized to them. That never got out.” When King asked Warren about the Iowa court decision allowing gay marriage, he maintained that the Iowa decision was totally off his radar screen: “I’m—I’m totally oblivious to—to what—that’s not even my agenda.” According to OneNew…

Why the Hell Does Hell Still Matter?

By Kathryn Gin

…1860s. Or it could be the story of Charles Chauncy, an eighteenth-century Boston Congregationalist who was so concerned about the potential reaction to his increasingly universalist beliefs that he first published them anonymously under the title Salvation for All Men in 1782. Clearly Bell’s universalist-leaning view isn’t new. What’s surprising isn’t his posture, it’s the recurrence of controversies over hell, century after century, in such simi…

Evangelical PR Guru Signs Up for Romney Campaign Again

By Sarah Posner

…served on Romney’s Faith and Values Steering Committee in 2008, tells the Boston Globe he’s going to perform the same evangelical outreach he did for Romney again. In other Romney-evangelical news, the website Evangelicals for Mitt is up and running again, maintained by conservative Christian lawyer David French (who recently joined the American Center for Law and Justice, which is run by Jay Sekulow, who also supported Romney in 2008), his wife…