Because of a rash of suicides, Apple’s giant Chinese manufacturer Foxconn has hired 30 Buddhist monks to free the souls of those who killed themselves from Purgatory. As for working hours, they’re staying the same.

Daniel Schultz, Streetprophets’ quondam Pastordan now blogging under his own name at Religion Dispatches, makes a strong if slightly musty case against the “common ground” initiatives embraced by a number of centrist religious operations to garner support for Obamaite domestic policy over the past year. It’s slightly musty because, in the current Tea Party moment, […]

Seeking to calm the waters roiled by the decision of the pastor of St. Paul’s in Hingham to bar the son of a lesbian couple from the parish school, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has spread his unction in all directions: on Fr. James Rafferty (“one of our finest pastors”); on archdiocesan education secreatry Mary Grassa O’Neill, […]

…was the muon.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} “The Church is like a snapping turtle. It’s long-lived, slow to change, […]

Not only is Rand Paul’s victory a wake-up call for the national GOP establishment but it should also be one for those who imagine that the Tea Party movement is somehow unfriendly territory for the religious right. Other than Paul himself, the big winner was Dr. James Dobson, who weighed in with a video endorsement […]

Diane Ravitch on why she flipped and started loving public schools again: Was there a moment where you first thought: “Uh-oh”? There were a number of moments, really, scenes of doubt. But one of them came about because of research I’d been asked to do about higher-education standards in Pakistan. What I discovered was that […]

Yesterday, Fr. James Martin, S.J. reviewed the situation at St. Paul’s parish in Hingham, and what he had to say will only confirm the views of my conservative commentators that it’s the Jesuits who are leading the church down the primrose path to progressive perdition. Martin not only takes the part of Cardinal O’Malley and […]

In its latest poll on abortion, Gallup headlines its conclusion that the “new normal” is that more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice. This is the second poll that confirms the reversal of pro-life and pro-choice positions that Gallup first revealed a year ago. In fact, the current preference, by two percentage points, is not statistically […]

What a difference a diocese makes! Two months ago, two girls were booted out of a Catholic school in Boulder, Co. because their parents are lesbian partners. There hadn’t been any problem, it seemed, until that fact came to the attention of headquarters–the Denver archdiocese over which Charles Chaput presides. Two days ago, the AP […]

Finally it is becoming clear that the big stumbling block to dealing with the abuse crisis is the Roman Curia itself. In America, the way forward is being led by America, which in an editorial this week identifies the curia as “at the center of the present crisis” and calls for a renewal of the […]

…of using abortion to oppose health care reform. There’s really no other way to read his essay in the new Newsweek. The relevant paragraphs pick up the story on the eve of passage of the Senate bill: On that Sunday, seven or eight of us pro-lifers sat with silver urns of coffee, yellow legal pads, […]

During her confirmation hearings to be solicitor general last year, Elena Kagan was asked by Arlen Specter to discuss a memo she wrote while clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1988.  Senator, thank you for raising that memo. I first looked at that memo, thought about that memo, for the first time in 20 years, […]

Winging his way to Portugal, the pope showed his Augustinian colors and embraced a view of the church as beset with sin and a penitential approach to the abuse crisis: In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the pope or the church don’t come just from outside the church. […]

It is a rare thing when one Catholic cardinal publicly attacks another. The most famous example occurred in the middle of the 11th century, when Humbert of Silva Candida bitterly criticized Peter Damian for claiming that bishops who had purchased their offices were still valid bishops. The saintly (later sainted) Damian was one of the […]