Pontifications

These and other questions will press in on the true believer as Apple releases its new and improved version of the iPhone. Or perhaps this “Second Coming,” as the NYTimes’ tech writer David Pogue puts it in his column, isn’t the rapture many expect. Part of the problem may be the very religious sentiments that…

OMG! Damon Linker was right! First Things is the center of a vast theocon conspiracy! And RJN is its leader! Check out the news story clip here… (H/T: First Things blog.)

Following up on earlier posts here and here about the canonical penalties against Sister of Charity Louis Lears, formerly of St. Cronan’s parish in St. Louis: National Catholic Reporter just broke a story that the archdiocese authorized someone to videotape a Catholic women’s ordination ceremony that took place in a synagogue last November that Lears…

This morning’s update on the widening Aussie sex abuse scandal, also via dotCommonweal: Australia’s ABC News has obtained police wiretaps of a conversation between Fr. Terence Goodall and Anthony Jones, the man Goodall allegedly raped in 1982. Cardinal Pell had dismissed Jones’ complaint of abuse because he said Goodall told the cardinal the sex was…

The archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, often fills the role for the Catholic Church “Down Under” that Cardinal Bernard Law once did in Boston for the U.S. church: that is, a trenchant voice for “orthodoxy” and the commanding face of the hierarchical church, a man who could alienate many inside the church and out,…

The popular St. Louis parish of St. Cronan’s, which last week suffered the loss of pastoral associate Sister Louis Lears (read the post here) after she was put under interdict by the departing archbishop, Raymond Leo Burke, for actively supporting women’s ordination, has taken another hit. National Catholic Reporter has a breaking story that Lear’s…

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, whose lecture tour of the United States last month brought him critcism as well as praise thanks to his provocative book, “Confronting Sex and Power in the Catholic Church,” has returned home and has written up his impressions of the U.S. church. My Q&A with Robinson is here, and in his column…

Fascinating story just moved by The New York Times on a stone tablet which apparently came from the Dead Sea area and speaks of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days…and it is dated to decades before the time of Jesus. Many questions to be sure, but this doesn’t sound like…

If nothing else, the recently promoted (some would say “kicked upstairs) former archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond Leo Burke, at least has a sense of timing. Just before he was named to St. Louis in late 2003, then-Bishop Burke of LaCrosse, WI, barred popular Democratic congressman David Obey and another pro-choice Catholic legislator from receiving…

Via the valuable resources of Christian History, a remarkable story that seemed remarkably apropos not only because of the holiday, but because “Mulan” has recently become the flavor of the day DVD in our house… The Revolutionary War was supported by most Baptist men and at least one Baptist woman! In 1782 Massachusetts Baptist Deborah…

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