bishops

(A)theologies

Rome vs. the Sisters

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Throughout the history of the Church, bishops and popes have struggled mightily to keep committed celibate Catholic women under control. Already in the early Christian centuries male Church leaders forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come to use during the Roman persecutions. The early equality between male and female desert monastics was likewise undercut when eighth century bishops began taking control of women’s monasteries and ordained monks to the priesthood for the first time (but not nuns, of course). And as, throughout the following centuries, groups of dedicated Christian women came together—canonesses, Beguines, beatas, recluses—popes, bishops, and male theologians went to great lengths to rein them in.

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Sexuality/Gender

As Culture War Rages, What’s the Status of LGBT Rights on Catholic Campuses?

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Campuses are pluralistic places with students and faculty who represent a diversity of religious traditions, races, ethnicities, and sexual expressions. “So, in regard to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, the Catholic university should be a natural place to ask, ‘what are the lived implications of the Church’s teachings? How do you, in a reality-based way, negotiate the Church’s teachings with human lives?’”

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(A)theologies

Not All Choice is Free

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Why are the US Catholic Bishops exerting so much energy and money and time on the matter of contraception, with no similarly public cries of outrage against the death penalty, state-sponsored torture, or the two preemptive wars in which the US has involved itself for fully a decade?

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