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Kinkade challenged the high-brow haughtiness of the art world, grew rich in the process, and seemed to fumble around, rock-star like, with drinking and bad behavior. Liberals scoffed at the hypocrisy of yet another social-religious conservative who can’t live up to a decent set of moral standards, while his mass-produced images were hugely loved, especially by evangelical Christians who felt that here, finally, was an artist for them. He called himself the “Painter of Light” and then trademarked the phrase. He includes a Christian fish (icthus) above his signature—but he’s also alleged to have urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure at Disneyland, among other socially unacceptable activities.

We humans are, today, animals like any other. We always have been. Our culture, however, appears designed to culminate in a magnificently human apex. This has long been a problem when it comes to legal rights. I know I don’t have to explain that the fight for animal rights has fanned the flame of much heated political controversy. And I won’t take an ethical position on that now. Because I’m pointing to something else that, I think, is increasingly under fire: the powerful, dreamlike, quasi-trance state driven by that powerful myth of being human.

Mexico may have experienced its own “Manson moment” last month when eight devotees of “ Santa Muerte” were arrested for the murder of three people, allegedly as human sacrifices. While the media has been fairly restrained in covering this event, these murders will likely have lasting consequences for alternative religion in North America. Like the Manson murders, the Santa Muerte murders present a concrete instance of violence that can be used to support much broader claims about the dangers of the religious and cultural Other.

A heated summer of “resistance to totalitarian incursions against religious liberty.”

“That man molested me. He knows it. He knows it. He knows it.” So was the testimony of “Mark” on April 5, Holy Thursday, in the case of Monsignor William Lynn and the Rev. James Brennan, currently on trial in Philadelphia. Lynn is accused of attempting to hide evidence of abuse by clergy, moving pedophile priests among parishes, and of endangering the welfare of two children. Brennan is accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, “Mark,” whose abuse is described in court documents.

Once a major factor in shaping the modern calendar, Easter has fallen in significance, to put it mildly, which is another reason I think it’s tops. I tend to like underdogs and faded glory. I live in Baltimore.

Would that it were true that, as Ryan said, “Catholic social teaching is indispensable for officeholders”; Mitt Romney’s description of Ryan’s budget as “marvelous” would no longer be ludicrous.

Kudos to you, sir.

Rich’s approach to her religious identity was of a piece with her approach to every aspect of her identity. For Rich, any identity worth achieving involved struggle and resistance—be it national identity (“a patriot is one who wrestles for the / soul of her country / as she wrestles for her own being”), gender identity (“A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. / The beak that grips her, she becomes.”), or the committed poet’s identity (“She cannot teach the end of bonds; but she can refuse to justify, accord with, ignore their existence”).

The latest anti-abortion film.