Columns
Religious Liberty in Tennessee
By Mark Silk — July 29, 2010
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who happens to be running for governor of the Volunteer State, has caught a bunch of flak for his recent comments on the stump suggesting that Muslims might not merit First Amendment protection. Asked to comment on the proposed construction of an Islamic community center in Murfreesboro, he said, “You […]
Jeffs got what he deserved from Utah Supremes
By Mark Silk — July 28, 2010
The prosecutors overreached…sez I.
Getting the Vatican story straight
By Mark Silk — July 27, 2010
In the indispensable Commonweal, Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus of Duquesne Law School and eminent canon lawyer, does a yeoman’s job of trying to sort out the Vatican’s sexual abuse story. The basic problem is this: In his 2001 letter clarifying John Paul II’s motu proprio establishing the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of […]
Constitution Party’s anti-Constitutional Attitude
By Mark Silk — July 27, 2010
On the country’s religious founding.
Latino Catholics v. political meddling
By Mark Silk — July 26, 2010
Making his own effort to explain Latino Catholic support for same-sex marriage in California, Joseph M. Palacios offers the following: It is important to note that modern Latin Catholicism has a dual nature: it is “conservative” in the sense of family communalism and tradition that the church offers, yet it is classically “liberal” in the […]
Why Latino Catholics support marriage
By Mark Silk — July 23, 2010
The most notable result of the new Public Religion Research Institute survey of attitudes toward Proposition 8 is the divide between Latino Catholics and Latino Protestants. The former are more in favor of same-sex marriage than any other ethno-religious group in the survey; the former are more opposed. (That’s Catholics 57-38 in favor versus Protestants […]
Help! The President’s Faith-Based Initiative is Missing!
By Mark Silk — July 23, 2010
A few days ago, WaPo’s Michelle Boorstein put up a plaintive post on the newspaper’s Under God blog asking for help in finding out what’s up with the faith-based initiative out in the dozen federal departments that have dedicated officials embedded in them. I’ve been requesting access to even a few of these offices for […]
Shirley Sherrod, an old source of mine
By Mark Silk — July 22, 2010
For the story I wrote back in 1993.
Angle glosses Jefferson
By Mark Silk — July 22, 2010
Tea Party paladina and Southern Baptist Sharron Angle, the Republican running to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada, recently offered the following interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he interpreted the religion clauses of the First Amendment as erecting a “wall of separation” between church and state. “Thomas Jefferson […]
The Shirley Sherrod story
By Mark Silk — July 21, 2010
My take, from my turn in Georgia, over at Beliefnet.
Evangelicals Heart Immigration Reform
By Mark Silk — July 20, 2010
How to explain the willingness of some conservative evangelicals to join forces with President Obama to support comprehensive immigration, as the NYT reported yesterday? Well it could be that it’s the Judeo-Christian thing to do. (Or maybe not, if you’re Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association.) But for sure there’s a political calculus, as […]
Apples and Oranges at the Vatican
By Mark Silk — July 19, 2010
The widespread astonishment, contempt, and anger that has greeted the Vatican’s decision to include the “attempted ordination of women” among the “graver crimes” falling under the juridical purview of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has forced apologists for the new norms to issue explanations for how it’s really not the case […]
Huckabee over Palin et al.
By Mark Silk — July 18, 2010
If I were Mike Huckabee (and planning to run for president in 2012), I’d be happy with the latest Gallup poll. Among the leading GOP contenders, he’s got by far the best ratios of approval to disapproval with both Republican voters and the public at large. With Republicans, it’s better than 6-1 favorable, compared to […]
Vatican Norms: Cherchez la femme
By Mark Silk — July 16, 2010
The new set of canon law norms issued by the Vatican yesterday was intended to win some PR points on the sexual abuse front, but its substantive goal is to ensure that no Roman Catholic bishop starts ordaining women. Far from being a maladroit add-on to the list of “graver crimes” (graviora delicta) subject to […]
