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Congressional Gridlock is Good

The complaints and worry and agonizing anxiousness about the fiscal cliff and Washington gridlock have an alarming air of coming apocalypse. Phrases wafting around include but are not limited to “divided dysfunctional government,” “the worst Congress ever,” and “the grip of partisan gridlock.” The mixed election results”call them a political mulligan”have, many argue, set us up for more of the same horrible things we have endured since the 2010 congressional elections … Continue Reading »

The Abuse Plague Is Universal

A startling sexual abuse scandal recently broke out in Great Britain. The villain was the late Sir Jimmy Savile, a celebrated (if talent-free) BBC disc jockey and children’s TV-show host who, it turns out, serially abused young women for four decades”perhaps as many as a thousand girls, according to investigators from Scotland Yard, one of the fourteen police jurisdictions digging into his crimes. … Continue Reading »

Is the Church Suppressing God’s Will?

The editorial board of the National Catholic Reporter this week endorsed the ordination of women. Basing its position on a 1976 vote by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, on “countless conversations in parish halls, lecture halls and family gatherings,” and on the supposed support of myriad unnamed bishops, the Reporter calls “for the Catholic church to correct this unjust teaching.” … Continue Reading »

Doing the Math on Religious Affiliation

In the forthcoming issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, sociologist Philip Schwadel reports that between 1974 and 2010, the “probability of reporting a strong religious affiliation declined considerably among Catholics” in the U.S. and “increased among evangelical Protestants.” The thing is, this is not necessarily quite the bad news it might sound to be for Catholics, and not quite the good news it might sound to be for Evangelicals… . Continue Reading »

Rupert Shortt and a Church Besieged

As anxious as many Christians are about religious freedom in America, nothing we’ve experienced”and God willing, never will”comes close to the brutal persecution of Christians abroad. The stunning extent of this persecution is documented in Times Literary Supplement religion editor Rupert Shortt’s evenhanded and unsettling new book, Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack… . Continue Reading »

Faith with Benefits

“His recently published last testament has stunned the Vatican” and “rocked the ecclesiastical establishment,” declares the English writer Jonathan Aitken, writing of Cardinal Carlo Martini’s last interview. It’s the standard line in secular reporting, when a liberal Catholic has said something the secular reporter wants him to have said… . Continue Reading »

Holy Impatience

Some years before he was elected pope, Joseph Ratzinger was asked what he thought about the health of the Church. He answered that she was doing very well; she was just a lot smaller than most people thought. He was exactly right. We need to think of the Church in our age as a seed of life embedded in layers of dead tissue. We also need to distinguish the Church in the emerging world from the Church in developed nations… . Continue Reading »

The High Price of Establishment

I happened to be in London when the Church of England voted to reject female bishops. The verdict came as quite a surprise. Women have been ordained as priests in the Church for twenty years, and allowing them to become bishops would certainly seem to be the next logical step. Twelve years of negotiations between “reformers” and “traditionalists””apparently a way of life in the C of E”had culminated in a compromise under which dissenting parishes not wanting to be under the authority of a female primate could request hierarchal supervision by a male… . Continue Reading »

What the Pope Really Said About Christmas

The Pope’s new book, Infancy Narratives, was released on November 21. The day’s headline of the Daily Mail? “Killjoy Pope crushes Christmas nativity traditions: New Jesus book reveals there were no donkeys beside crib, no lowing oxen and definitely no carols.” CNN’s online story followed suit. The New York Daily News repeated the claim about the animals, adding not that the pope agreed with some historians on an earlier dating of the birth of Christ but that “the Christian calendar has Jesus’ birth year wrong, Pope Benedict XVI claims in a new book.” … Continue Reading »

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