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Global LGBT Recap: Promise and Peril in the New Year

By Peter Montgomery

…indicators from the Vatican are mixed: As the year drew to a close, Bishop Charles Scicluna of Malta invoked the Pope in opposition to a proposed law that would allow civil unions and adoption by same-sex couples; the bishop said the pope was “shocked” by the law and encouraged him to speak out against it. More promising was New Ways Ministry’s report last month that Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai did not, like many other religious leaders in t…

In Defense of Richard Dawkins, Awe-Full Scientist

By Alana Massey

…r, when he recalls “…I noticed even more forcibly than before the enormous numbers of people who come into the book-signing queue, and they nearly always say something like, ‘I became a scientist because of you, you’ve changed my life.’” To know that more people are lining up to thank Richard Dawkins for his contributions to science is something to be glad about for those of us who feel that what we actually do with our lives is more important tha…

The Pope, the GOP, and the March for Life

By Sarah Posner

…like New York) has caused a frenzy against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Charles Pierce: The other day, Cuomo gave a radio interview in which he made the unremarkable point that the kind of Republican who wins elections in, say, Alabama, likely would have something of a tough row to hoe in New York. “If they are extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York,” Cuomo said in a radio interview Friday. Cuomo defined “extreme con…

In Sexual Abuse Hearing UN Calls Holy See on Girls’ Reproductive Rights

By Angela Bonavoglia

In addition to calling Archbishop Silvano Tomasi and Bishop Charles J. Scicluna to account for a decades-long, worldwide epidemic of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee conducting this historic proceeding in Geneva last week also demanded responses to questions concerning the church’s trampling on girls’ reproductive health and rights. Chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg an…

Can We Say ‘Christian’ When We Mean ‘Christian Conservative’?

By Eric C. Miller

…aring the term drip contemptuously from the lips of a Michelle Malkin or a Charles Krauthammer, and I’m able to recognize that Bill O’Reilly doesn’t have a strong sense of what “the left” looks like in the United States. So I can fully sympathize with someone who dislikes being labelled inaccurately. Still, the current union of conservatism and Christianity has a long and storied tradition, built upon decades of identity formation and political e…

What Robot Theology Can Tell Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…ompared the living body to an automaton, while nineteenth century polymath Charles Babbage, a father of modern computing, was so fascinated by automata as a boy that he wrote a treatise in which he compared the outcomes of God’s natural laws to “the results afforded by the Calculating Engine.” Babbage, in other words, conceived of God as a kind of computer programmer. Is it ethical for people to have sex with robots? How should we treat anthropomo…

Trans Protections in India and Malta; Death-by-Stoning Law in Brunei; Church-State Divides on Marriage

By Peter Montgomery

…e Catholic Church, which is the state church of Malta: in December, Bishop Charles Sciciuna said that Pope Francis was “shocked” by plans; the bishop used his Christmas sermon to say God’s son was raised by a man and a woman, not two men or women. Malta was the last country in Europe to make divorce legal, which it did by referendum in 2011. Brunei: New Law Allows Death by Stoning for Homosexuality, Other Offenses Next week a new law goes into eff…

The Secret History of Easter

By Joseph Laycock

…ed from sun worship and that “Christ” is cognate with the Hindu “Krishna.” Charles Francois-Dupuis built on this idea in The Origins of All Religions (1795) and introduced discussion of Babylonian religion, including the resurrected god Tammuz. Since the eighteenth century, mythicists have gotten even lazier about their use of similar-sounding words as arguments. Contemporary mythicist Archarya S. claims that the theological position that Jesus i…

Honey, I Shrunk the Church: The Vatican Manages Sexual Abuse, Canonization and the Nuns

By Mary E. Hunt

…y church officials. Former sex crimes prosecutor for the Church, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, in watershed testimony, admitted that the Vatican bore some responsibility but insisted that steps were being taken to prevent the obstruction of justice and—hopefully—future abuses. By way of defense, the Holy See claimed that its responsibility in terms of the treaty literally extended to its gates, inside of which few (probably fewer than a dozen) child…

Seventh-Day Adventists & Gay ‘Cures’; Legal Victory for Kenyan LGBTs; Political, Religious Leaders Spar on LGBT Issues in UK; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…m,” secretly videotaped his journey to Mecca on his iPhone and other small phones. “I was terrified because they reserve the death penalty for people like me,” Sharma said. Several times he had his equipment seized and video files deleted by authorities. But he persevered with both his spiritual journey and his film. “I was there making this pilgrimage for the thousands of gay Muslims who were too scared to go to Saudi Arabia, who would feel they…