Religion
As much as it’s disappointing to see division among Catholic organizations, unity can’t be the core principle of any group that actually believes in anything. That is to say that I think Bishop Thomas Tobin got this one right: Following a statement issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops expressing regret that health care…
In a recent iteration of his editor’s column for First Things, Joseph Bottum takes up the topic of the branches of religious organizations that reside at the edges of the organized church, itself, what he calls “limicole institutions”: As [Archbishop] Chaput notes, the first leverage typically used is financial. Public bureaucrats and lawmakers pressure Catholic…
Robert Chase restates a recurrent theme in a recent consideration of science fiction and religion: … Starting with Fred Hoyle, himself the author of such science-fiction novels as The Black Cloud, scientists have realized the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to produce life. If protons were just 0.2 percent more massive, they would be unstable and…
Think what you will of the outcome, it’s astonishing — and not a little unsettling — that there are people who think it the most important use of their time and resources to battle the benign and vapid symbolism of a particular “national day of”: A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled the National Day of…
There are two factors — arguably in opposing ideological directions — in which this news should raise concerns: A plan to create what could be the first U.S. public charter schools run by a Roman Catholic archdiocese is meeting resistance from those who worry about whether religious messages and icons will really stay out of…
The following passage, from an autobiographical essay by Fr. Richard Neuhaus, from 2002, caught my eye, because it strikes me as a generally applicable principle for organizational growth, as opposed to continual redefinition: The Church’s teaching lives forward; it is not reconstructed backward—whether from the fifth century or the sixteenth or the nineteenth or the…
Last year, Notre Dame University was the center of national attention, because it had asked abortion-supporting President Obama to give the commencement address and was planning to give him an honorary degree. The problem was, of course, that Notre Dame is explicitly a Catholic organization, and while nobody objected to pro-choice speakers, in general, many…
Given the day, and the surprising amount of interest displayed, ’round here, in conversation of religion’s clash with modernity and postmodernity, current editor Joseph Bottum’s first publication in First Things, back in 1994, merits some consideration: We were all of us raised as moderns, however, and even as I write these words, my own modernness…
Nothing symbolizes the supposed arbitrariness of religion to those predisposed towards skepticism towards religious belief more than does the Catholic practice of eating fish on Fridays during the season of Lent. I’ll admit to having asked myself, especially on Good Friday, what connection there is between fish and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And then…
Given comment section conversation, and the fact that it’s Good Friday, a Robert Jensen piece from 1993 seems an appropriate item for contemplation: … modernity has supposed we inhabit what I will call a “narratable world.” Modernity has supposed that the world “out there” is such that stories can be told that are true to…
