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Catholic women priests are an oxymoron for the Vatican. It considers them automatically excommunicated before the holy oil is dry on their hands. Other Catholics accept them as sacramental ministers and are delighted with the innovation. Still, others, myself included, want far deeper structural changes in the Catholic Church such that priesthood loses its baked-on charm and ministry becomes the expected task of adult members. This is an important theological conversation that the Vatican wishes would go away. Memo to them: it is just starting.

Bakker on LGBT inclusion: “My goal is pure acceptance, not just tolerance. I think we’re on the verge of that. People are having conversations. I had someone ask me to listen to this sermon that was a thirty-minute apology, and then a ten-minute why it’s wrong to be gay. So, I’m starting to see these pastors apologizing for what they’re about to say. They seem to know, instinctively, that what they’re doing is wrong.”

The gracious, affirmative, and arguably universalist tone of Pope Benedict’s encyclical (in marked contrast to his 2010 letter, with its emphasis on the authority of the priest as this fed upward through the hierarchy of the Roman Church) is more than a nod to the new digital social reality. Sure, it’s perhaps a little silly for the Pope to be “inviting” Christians into locales through which most have been travelling regularly for several years by now. But it is nonetheless important that he has offered his spiritual and ethical leadership into the increasingly digitally integrated world.

Blessing the tools of the Digital Reformation, or playing with its toys, without acknowledging the spiritual authority of believers as they use them in the world misunderstands the radically participatory, dialogical, and collaborative nature of the culture and inadvertently reinforces a line between “faith” and “life” that believers no longer accept.

A new work advancing a radical theory of the motivation behind suicide bombers is almost bizarrely off the mark. Stitching together thought and observation from disparate and often dissonant sources, Georgetown theology professor Ariel Glucklich’s book would be laughable were he not a consultant to the defense community.

This year is one of the deadliest on record in the Sonoran desert, as 214 people have perished trying to make the journey across the border. I rode with Brother David Buer, a Franciscan friar, and a volunteer named David Millsap, as we traversed the desert, loaded down with water, Gatorade, crackers, socks, and medical supplies…

When people discuss the rights of lesbians and gays in contemporary U.S. culture, and across religious denominations, the abbreviation “LGBT” is used as a shorthand: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender. But are transgender people really being taken into account? What’s the state of the struggle, where…

The political types, both right and left, have managed to create the idea that the sixties were a time of leftist, collectivist politics. But this was actually an era of mad individualism, not collectivism, of romantic essentialism, not social construction. The old lefties failed in their every effort to organize… and a lot of old hippies are Ron Paul types today.

“The preschool teacher used to say to the kids, ‘Close your eyes, and ask God to give you a piece of candy,’[…] When the children opened their eyes, and saw there was nothing there, the teacher said, ‘See? God doesn’t exist.’”

From his jaw-dropping 88-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson in the first few minutes of the game to what would be a record-breaking performance overall—333 yards thrown, four touchdowns, and a 59-28 blowout against the Washington Redskins—it was Vick’s name that the sportscasters kept coming back to, with awe in their voices. But without the chance to play pro football again and to fill a stadium with wonder, Vick would have been just another celebrity ex-con, not the miracle he’s now judged to be.