Religion Dispatches
…e think it’s a good standard.” The Personhood pledge, which Romney did not sign, commits candidates to supporting legislation and judges who would declare fertilized eggs human beings with “unalienable rights.” The anti-Romney ad the group is running has been called misleading by FactCheck.org: An anti-abortion group is making the shocking claim that Mitt Romney “enforced a law which required Catholic hospitals to provide abortions.” To call this…
Read More…purely sectarian goals to offer comprehensive preventive health care. But from MSNBC to FOXNews, there has been little or no mention of this religious support for the new policy on television. I have seen a Cardinal on Morning Joe, but no sign of ministers or rabbis who don’t agree with the Cardinal. That tends to render the other religious viewpoints invisible. This is a matter of justice. To block access to birth control under the guise of relig…
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…every person can make the right choice, the only choice, life.” Perry has signaled his desire not just to ban abortion, but to restrict access to contraceptives as well. This year he signed a law effectively cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood’s family planning services, and another that may prevent family planning funding through the Texas Women’s Health Program from being disbursed to any organizations that either provide abortions or are…
Read More…showing that most Catholics agree with the Obama administration rule, and signals from David Axelrod and Obama spiritual advisor Joel Hunter that perhaps there was a compromise in the offing. But the primary compromise proposed, known as the Hawaii compromise, has been declared unacceptable by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The National Catholic Register reports: [A] key official in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the Hawai…
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…im to reconsider parties, Hassan said he wouldn’t “turncoat” at the first “sign of adversity.” Good for him. Refusing to go away is the best way to fight bigotry. It would be easier to disappear, and a lot more troublesome to demand that the GOP consider that it could have a bigger tent if it stopped playing to such a narrow base. One day, sooner or later, I’m sure they’ll see the benefit in that. For now, both Romney and Gingrich, and the Republi…
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…s increasing amounts of real money to go against those values—or rather to sign a document that said they would go against it. The scientists couldn’t ethically challenge the actual sacred value, but they could challenge the participants’ integrity in relation to that value. Then Berns used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see what parts of the brain were active during these transactions. The Sacred is Not About Utility For the rese…
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…ences, I think, for American civil religion, where there has always been a significant undercurrent of religiously-informed modesty vis-à-vis our national destiny. Perhaps that undercurrent can begin to replace the blustering grandiosity that has occupied the main channel for far too long. The experience of accelerating national decline cries out for a much better civil religion than the cockamamie one we inherited. 8. The Council of Elders and Oc…
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…hases so they really had it out for the Vatican). The Papacy was forced to sign the Treaty of Tolentino in 1796, the first modern treaty in which 100 works of art were explicitly listed for expropriation to Paris. By the end of their 20-year sojourn in Paris, the Laocoön Group and Apollo Belvedere had inspired an explosion of new museum construction throughout Europe. As I’ve said before, new ways of seeing emerge with surprising suddenness in t…
Read More…ication from Apple’s iTunes store earlier this year drew more than 150,000 signatures. Apple dropped the Exodus app, saying it offended large groups of people. Oh, my—those vicious lions! Trying keep homophobia off their iPhones! Here’s a thought: Perhaps the lions wouldn’t be so testy if they didn’t have to justify their very existence. Perhaps the lions would be more willing to lie down with the lamb (or the “Daniel”) if the lions weren’t being…
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…, reinforce the shared values and morals that animate the social body. One sign of success is leaving your mark on society, making an impact; being famous brings you out of the anonymous masses and bestows celebrity, a status that affords you to an afterlife that most will never achieve; individual biographies of lives lived are more compelling than questions of postmortem judgment or the possibility of reincarnation—these lists of the dead convey…
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