Julie Wolfe
Julie Wolfe is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Julie Wolfe
Kelly Gissendaner executed despite papal appeal, 11th-hour clemency bid
By Julie Wolfe — September 30, 2015
ATLANTA — The pope called for commuting to better reflect "justice and mercy." The clemency board disagreed and Gissendaner, who had studied theology during her prison years, was executed by lethal injection.
150 Years Later, Pastoral Counselors Give Freud a Second Look
By Julie Wolfe — June 7, 2006
c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For years, Wally Fletcher, a Presbyterian minister and pastoral counselor, had a professional secret dark enough to merit a session on the couch: He believed in Freud. “I felt I needed to keep my openness toward psychoanalysis in the closet,” said Fletcher, who is in training at the Philadelphia […]
NEWS FEATURE: ‘Tis the Season _ for the Holiday Blues
By Julie Wolfe — December 13, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Do you greet the holiday season with “Bah humbug!” rather than “Ho! Ho! Ho!?” Would you be thrilled if the Grinch did steal Christmas? If you answered yes to either of these questions, don’t worry. You’re not deranged, malevolent or uncaring. You have the “Christmas blues.” Every year, between […]
NEWS STORY: Report Warns on Ethical Dangers of Gene Modification
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Like the residents of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, many parents want their children to be “above average.” If they could, they’d design their offspring to be healthy, good-looking and intelligent. Such hopes were once relegated to science fiction. But advances in genetic technology have brought these fantasies closer […]
NEWS FEATURE: Ethicist Peter Singer Provokes Strong Reactions From Nearly Everyone
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service PRINCETON, N.J. _ Ethicists aren’t rock stars or politicians. Outside academia, they rarely arouse much passion. This decidedly isn’t the case, however, with Peter Singer, the 53-year-old DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. Singer, best known as an animal rights advocate, questions […]
NEWS FEATURE: Faith Informs Bioethicist’s Pondering of Life and Death
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Many bioethicists work in academia, removed from daily life and media buzz. But Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is not a typical bioethicist. A columnist for MSNBC’s Web site, Caplan writes for popular media on topics ranging from […]
NEWS FEATURE: Retiring `Peanuts’ Captured a Cultural, Spiritual Era
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Rats! Charlie Brown and his pals are leaving us! As everyone knows, the final”Peanuts”strip appears on Sunday, Feb. 13. Saying goodbye to Snoopy and the gang is breaking the hearts of millions. It’s a painful cultural milestone for everyone from cartoonists to theologians, say cultural historians. Why are we […]
NEWS FEATURE: Religions Changing Attitudes on suicide
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Recently, The Rev. Charles Rubey, a priest with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, talked with a mother whose son had committed suicide. The woman poured out her grief to him. But what made her anguish even more excruciating, Rubey said, was the insensitive way in which people […]
NEWS FEATURE: Public TV Takes on `Taboo’ Issue of Death and Dying
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 2000
c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Social issues, from childbirth to sexuality, are “out of the closet.” Yet, talking about death is still taboo, say experts on death and dying. But two upcoming public television shows, “On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying” and “Final Blessing,” aim to break through the taboo by starting a […]
NEWS FEATURE: Have `sexual McCarthyism,’ Monicagate soured America on sex and love?
By Julie Wolfe — February 12, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Have Monicagate and”sexual McCarthyism”soured America’s love affair with Valentine’s Day? Unfortunately, no, say religious leaders and thinkers. Ethicists and theologians say they are all for flowers, candy, candlelight dinners _ even sex. But, they add, sexual standards must be reassessed in an era when sexuality has been debased […]
NEWS FEATURE: Ethicists struggle with issues raised by stem cell research
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Stem cell research, a new biotechnology that potentially could cure Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative illnesses, is posing a Pandora’s box of ethical dilemmas for scientists, ethicists and theologians. That box was opened at a recent meeting here on issues raised by the research. The meeting was sponsored […]
NEWS FEATURE: Assisted suicide debate raises care-of-dying visibility
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Many ethicists and clergy feel about assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian as the Internal Revenue Service does about tax evaders. They believe his involvement in assisted suicide is illegal, unethical or, at best, misguided. At the same time, however, they grudgingly acknowledge that Kevorkian, sentenced last month […]
NEWS FEATURE: Churches providing support for caregivers
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service BOWIE, Md. _ On a recent Friday evening, E. Nancy O’Liddy, a member of St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Bowie, Md., rushed from her job near Capitol Hill back out to this suburb to give her 71-year-old mother a bath.”Mom’s had eight strokes. Caring for Mom has taken over the […]
NEWS STORY: Ethicists, scientists probe bioethics dilemmas
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Bald guys, joked Dr. Nelson A. Wivel, are rooting for that new baldness gene, adding, with a reference to his diminished hairline,”I’d love to have a better rug for my scalp.” Wivel, deputy director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Human Gene Therapy, invoked the humor during […]
NEWS STORY: Religious leaders urge perspective in Clinton controversy
By Julie Wolfe — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ A new puritanism is abroad in the land according to some religious leaders but rather than coming from the pulpits it is coming from the press as the media reports the allegations of sexual misconduct and lying that have mired President Clinton in controversy. But clergy and ethicists […]
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