Blog Archives

Bishop Spong: Towards an Educated Laity

Reprinted here, with permission from Bishop John Shelby Spong, is a Q & A from a recent edition of his newsletter in which he discusses the healthcare debate and calls for more honesty. His response to a reader’s question urges

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Posted in Bible, I BLOG, Lay Catholics, Politicians and their Lies, Politics and Religion, Progressive Christianity, Readers of the Book, Uncategorized

Raising the Minimum Wage is Pro-Life. So why aren’t all Pro-lifers for it?

Speaker of the House, John Boehner,  a Catholic pro-lifer who has previously said he would rather commit suicide than raise the minimum wage, offered the logic that a raise would adversely affect minorities who hold low-wage jobs and would be

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Posted in Business and Justice, Equality and Faith, I BLOG, Justice, Politics and Religion, Uncategorized, US Bishops

From Solomon Northup to Pope Francis’ Abolitionist Movement

It feels like a minor, incidental scene. A slave wanders into a store where the free-born Solomon Northup is shopping with his wife. The slave is quickly followed in by his owner who apologizes for the intrusion and hurries him

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Posted in Catholics and Culture, Equality and Faith, I BLOG, Justice, Uncategorized

On the Road to Lujan

As we head towards the farmhouse in Carlos Keen, the sky is ablaze with the splendor of an Argentine sunset. But all at once, as we pass the poor neighborhoods along the highway to Lujan, it seems as if dusk

Posted in Argentina, I BLOG, Politics and Religion, Uncategorized

Women: Instruments of a Franciscan World

More than once in Paul Vallely’s excellent book, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, the writer quotes a former long-time aide who describes Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s irritation with the high-handed advice of Rome. He had no patience, we are told, for

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Posted in Environment, I BLOG, Uncategorized, Women in the Church

Exorcism and the Church as “the totality of God’s people.”

We may have just crossed some lunatic fringe. But as when a fever breaks, perhaps this may help to move us towards sanity and real healing. The lunacy was the “minor exorcism” conducted by Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Illinois to

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Posted in Child sex abuse, I BLOG, Lay Catholics, Uncategorized, US Bishops

Marriage Equality: Maria Ahern will someday wonder what the fuss was all about.

Four month old Maria Ahern, in the arms of her mother Chelsea Ahern,  was at the Hawaii State Capitol on November 12, 2013 as the same-sex marriage bill advanced to passage. Dressed in rainbow colors to proclaim solidarity with LGBT

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Posted in I BLOG, LGBT Catholics, LGBT Catholics Hawaii, LGBT Families, LGBT Homeless Youth, Uncategorized