Search for "cheap airline tickets from lincoln nebraska to portland or phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Vatican Instruction on Cremation Rankles Many, But Give it a Second Look

By Karen E. Park

…night dancing with, someone who I had spoken to just a week before on the phone, her laughter weakened but still familiar. When I thought about her ashes being scattered around Boston I felt a momentary panic. Where could I ever go to find her again? Last week, just in time for the Feast of All Soul’s Day, celebrated each year on November 2, the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a new Instruction regarding the…

High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…illing to talk about science as a human endeavor. I spoke to Montgomery by phone to find out more about these surprising aspects of his story. ______________ BWL: You write in your introduction that you started out to write a more traditional debunking of creationism’s flood geology, from your perspective as a geologist. And you ended up with something different. What happened? DM: I learned a lot writing this book. And I like it much better than…

When Mormons Mobilize: Anti-Gay Marriage Prop. 8 Effort ‘Outed’?

By Joanna Brooks

…upport for Proposition 8 and commit four hours each week to the ground and phone campaign. A primary source of Mormon messaging during the Proposition 8 campaign was the anonymously-authored “Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails” document, which went viral across Mormon social networks after its introduction by email in mid-August and was utilized as a training document and handout in the Mormon-coordinated ground campaign. The document alleged that t…

Obama to Cave on Bush Tax Cuts: Letter to the Washingtonians, Chapter 1

By Daniel Schultz

…ould soon be at war. Traffic stopped, there were no planes in the sky, the phone didn’t ring. I supported the war to come, with only the reservation of who held the keys of command. Still, the enemies of the good must be punished, must be denied the safety of even a parched rocky hillside in a poor land. In 2002 and 2003, the grim infection of another war became more and more certain. I did not support this war. It was wrong, and I said so from my…

Much-Married Newt Gingrich Converts to Catholicism

By Bill Berkowitz

…ical strategies failed dismally, he broke up with his second wife over the phone (just as he’d done with his first) as she lay immobilized in a hospital bed. Blumenthal devotes a good bit of his article on Newt’s conversion to an interview with Deal Hudson, a key Catholic advisor to Team Bush. “From a Catholic point of view,” Hudson told Blumenthal. “Newt’s sins no longer exist–they’ve been absolved. He’s made a fresh start in life. So Newt will c…

Conservative Christian Teenagers Prepare for Politics

By Robert Kunzman

…0 volunteers who walked precincts in a driving rain, and made thousands of phone calls throughout the weekend to every targeted voter in the district,” McClintock remarked. “I can confidently say that those 2,000 votes were Generation Joshua votes.” Such praise is heady stuff for teenagers who want to feel they can make a difference in their world, who yearn for a sense of efficacy and belonging. More specifically, it assures them that the world o…

Sometimes You Can’t Say a Word

By Jonathan L. Walton

…t of Martin Luther King’s assassination fielded celebratory calls as a telephone operator in Memphis, Tennessee, telephoned us to awake my four-year-old twins from their sleep. Through her sniffles and giggles, this loving grandmother and now proud American citizen, kept repeating, “you tell those babies Obama did it! Obama did it! Wake them up and let them know that “O’RockoBama” [my son’s pronunciation] really did win tonight!” And I also receiv…

Republicans in Favor of Reproductive Rights

By Katie Toth

…l was conducted by TNS, an independent research firm which conducts weekly phone polls, according to a Republicans for Choice press release. The poll asked, regardless of respondents’ personal feelings about abortion, whether “the woman, family, and her doctor [should] make the decision or the government [should] make the decision.” Seventy-one percent of self-identified Republicans said they “strongly” felt that the woman, her family, and her doc…

Good Mourning Modeled by Chaplains and Clergy at the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire

By Kaya Oakes

…as drunk, which was the only way she could handle getting up behind a microphone. God was barely mentioned. When asked about the secular nature of the vigil and why he agreed to participate, Rios responded that “it is always the responsibility of clergy to act in moments of disaster, regardless of the secular tone and style.” Throughout the vigil, he said, “[I] kept thinking of Jesus and where this radical Rabbi was in moments of disaster. I kept…

The Wounded People of God

By Anthea Butler

…holic Church, I’ve been having some interesting conversations by email and phone with Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Some people have emailed me to say “right on.” Others, like some of my relatives, are just hurt, scared, and wondering if they can trust anything about their local priest, diocese, or bishop. I’ve received invitations to come and join the Episcopal Church (are you listening, Father Balmer?) but I am not quite “there” yet. Yet th…