Search

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, while he was a senior official for Pope John Paul II, envisioned a leaner, meaner church, one with conservative doctrine and compliant faithful. Now that he is Pope Benedict XVI, his dream is coming true.

On November 2, 2009, five Catholic activists — one nun, two priests, and two laypeople, all age sixty or above — cut through a series of chain link and barbed wire fences surrounding Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor, Washington. The five unfurled a banner reading “Trident: Illegal + Immoral,” poured their own blood over the site, and beat on the ground and the fences with household hammers before being apprehended and arrested. The five, who call themselves the Disarm Now Plowshares, were found guilty in December on four felony counts: trespass, damage to federal property, injury to federal property, and conspiracy to damage federal property. A week and a half ago in Tacoma’s federal court they received prison sentences of six to fifteen months.

In a video released on her Facebook page, Sarah Palin insists that violent rhetoric plays no role in influencing actions while claiming that those condemning the use of angry rhetoric and images are themselves manufacturing a “blood libel” that may well “incite…violence.” So which is it?

The wolves outside threaten the life of the city, but the wolves hidden among us may threaten the city even more. Red Riding Hood utilizes powerful mythic tropes in retelling the classic tale.

At a moment when the pope is cracking down on apparitions and limiting Marian devotion why this apparition, and not other literally countless reports that pop up in the news every year?

Beyond a growing distaste for the rancor around hot-button issues like human sexuality, gender equity, and reproductive choice, people seem to be put off church because they are able to do the kind of work—tending the sick, advocating for the oppressed, caring for the earth, comforting those in trouble or need—that was long the stock in trade of local churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, but which, through the modern corporatizing of mainstream religions, was largely outsourced to separate agencies. This is why you’ll probably find more people volunteering in any given week at Martha’s Kitchen food pantry in downtown San Jose, California than at Sunday services at the church across the street. If Facebook is killing the church, that is, it’s probably more accurate to call it an assisted suicide.

About twenty miles outside of Green Bay and over a mile from even the smallest town, a tiny sign at a remote intersection points visitors toward Chapel Drive, site of the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, site of the only approved site of a Marian apparition in the U.S.

Scenes of destruction and human suffering in Japan have elicited worldwide support, both material and spiritual. But amid global calls for prayer and other religious responses, the most widely publicized example of a religious response to Japan’s worst disaster since the Second World War is…

An afternoon with credential-free expert William Federer and his fact-challenged “What Every American Needs to Know About the Koran.”

At this moment the embattled US labor movement urgently needs strong community-based allies and much greater moral legitimation, yet broad-based strategic and moral support from the religious side has been slow to materialize.