Bilgrimage: National Catholic Reporter

Showing posts with label National Catholic Reporter. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Robert P. Jones's Commentary on the "Historical Record of Lived Christianity in America," White Supremacy, and the Recent Sojourners Débacle

An important contribution (and subtext) of Robert P. Jones's new book White Too Long is its focus on how white Christianity is lived in the US — as opposed to what churches say about themselves or profess in their official statements. As Jones states,

The historical record of lived Christianity in America reveals that Christian theology and institutions have been the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy (p. 6).

Kentucky Catholic Students at Pro-Life March Mock Native Americans; Michael Sean Winters Chides Catholics Lukewarm to Pro-Life Movement — Side-by-Side Stories

After Michael Sean Winters shook his finger at liberal Catholics for being insufficiently pro-life as the March for Life was staged, will he now address the "pro-life" behavior of the group of students from a Catholic school in Covington, KY, who came to D.C. for that march? /1
— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 19, 2019

Front Page News Today in Charlotte, North Carolina: "PRIESTS ACCUSED OF SEX ABUSE — The Charlotte Diocese Has Not Released Lists"

On the front page of today's Charlotte Observer: a headline reading, "PRIESTS ACCUSED OF SEX ABUSE," with a notice that the Catholic diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, still has not released names of priests credibly accused of child sex abuse. The headline points readers to an article inside the front section of the paper that appeared several days ago in the online copy of the paper, but is being published in the print-media copy for the first time for today's Sunday edition.

Michael Sean Winters Asks, "Can the Church Round the Corner in 2019?": My Response

"Can the church round the corner in 2019?" Michael Sean Winters asks in an end-of-year reflection published today. I consider that question, and have to admit: I find my imagination faltering.

"People Who Are Most Likely to Appear in These Kinds of Stories Are the Least Likely to Have a Say in How Those Stories Are Told": Lessons for Catholic Media Reporting on LGBTQ Community

A diptych for you today — news commentary dancing two-by-two which, in my view deserves to be highlighted, and which illuminates, I think, themes I've discussed here in the recent past:

National Catholic Reporter Addresses Wave of Catholic Hate Against Queer Community: My Response — Listening Means Listening

The hatred is breathtaking. Online and in person. I've been a Jesuit 30 years and it was only this year that I've had people (literally) screaming at me, poking their fingers into my chest, and calling me "heretic," "apostate," "false priest," "pansy" "faggot" and "sodomite." https://t.co/SAZzc9kuXM
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) November 2, 2018

For my starting point today, as I direct you to two statements at National Catholic Reporter yesterday decrying the wave of homophobic hate raging through sectors of the U.S. Catholic church now, I want to talk about the media and listening. To be specific: I want to talk about the mainstream media (including the Catholic mainstream media) and listening — or not — to members of marginalized minority communities.

Me, Talking Back to National Catholic Reporter and Michael Sean Winters re: Resignation of Donald Wuerl

Wuerl hounded from office for becoming face of abuse crisis https://t.co/N2pHeSpgcP via @ncronline

"He has been for 30 years a force of nature in the Catholic Church in this country, a workhorse for the conference and for the Vatican and for the dioceses he served." /1
— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) October 12, 2018

More on Catholic Schools and National Walkout: "Unfortunately, Some of the Sponsors of the National School Walkout Advocate for Positions That Are Contrary to the Church’s Teachings"

Two PA Catholic Schools to Pray Instead of Protest in Walkout Over Gun Violence https://t.co/wNaYKEaXgh
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 14, 2018

I'm grateful to Betty and Sarasi for pointing me to additional news coverage of how Catholic schools responded to the National School Walkout protesting gun violence and advocating for gun control as a solution to gun violence. Betty points us to an article in National Catholic Reporter which suggests that there was wide buy-in among Catholic schools nationwide supporting the walkout.

No Cake for the Gays and the Libertarian + White Catholic + White Evangelical Erosion of Civil Rights for All Minorities: Truth-Telling about Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too

All these pieces fit together:

Jeffrey S. Trachtman, "Preserving LGBTQ Equality In The Supreme Court: No Piece of Cake":

Not Even Close: Knowing Exactly Who Roy Moore Is, Majority of White Alabamians — and White Evangelicals Overwhelmingly — Tried to Put Him in Senate

8 in 10 white evangelicals & 6 in 10 white Catholics & Mormons elected Donald Trump, claiming "pro-life" motivation.

I will not forget.
— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) November 6, 2017

Charlene White, "In Alabama, black women saved America from itself – as they've always tried to do":

Hot Takes on Moore Defeat: White Evangelicals Did It! It's All About Abortion! (And Why Masterpiece Cake Will Likely Prevail)

Some takes on the Alabama election I should have anticipated, but did not:

1. Though 80 percent of white evangelicals in Alabama cast their votes for Roy Moore, Doug Jones won because — are you ready for this spin? — white evangelicals abandoned Moore!

Why Do Many of Us Feel "Impotent Helplessness" in Face of Cultural Violence? A Reflection (Implicating the Churches)

In both of the postings I've made this morning in response to the Texas mass shooting yesterday (God, how glibly that ugly phrase begins to flow from our mouths now, week after endless week), I've spoken about the feeling of helplessness many of us bring to this situation. To be specific, in my first posting this morning, I wrote very specifically about my own feeling of helplessness, my own feeling that my voice simply does not count: I stated,

Las Vegas Story: Google Finds Itself Gamed Again by Organized Hate Groups (Back to the Case of Father Martin and Church Militant)

On 21 September, I presented you with a series of screenshots showing you that on that day at about 2 P.M. CST (in the U.S.), the three "top news" stories that Google was returning to those who googled the name "James Martin" were all personal attacks on Father Martin from the Church Militant website, which is not a bona fide news site at all.

Back from Trip, Thinking About American Catholicism, the "Both-Sides" False Equivalency Argument, and Ethics of Survival

I'm sorry to have been silent for a week. Steve and I spent last week in New Orleans visiting friends and family, and as we did so, I couldn't keep up with blogging — even, to any great degree, with following the news. I'm back now, and among all that I might talk about (the dire situation in Puerto Rico and the morally bankrupt response of the Trump administration to it; the event of mass murder in Las Vegas last evening), what is foremost in my mind today, for the purpose of this blog, is a discussion I read in the past day or so at the National Catholic Reporter site.

National Catholic Reporter Calls for Dialogue on Sexual Ethics: My Response

My new denomination hosted the counter protest in C'ville; my old one is still complaining about women getting to use birth control.
— Michael Boyle (@mboyle78) August 12, 2017

Meanwhile, in the strange, hermetically sealed, intensely self-gazing and obdurately parochial world of white Catholicism in the U.S., folks are still talking about what the magisterium has to say about human sexuality — as if this is a live issue a full half-century after the papacy commissioned a study of birth control because it knew even then that a large percentage of married Catholic couples were contracepting. And then the papacy chose to ignore the sound, theologically well-grounded recommendations of that commission and reasserted its teachings about birth control knowing full well that those teachings flew in the face of the sensus fidelium.

National Catholic Reporter: "Describing the Trump Administration as "Pro-Life" Drains the Expression of Any Meaning" (But Wait: NCR Is Saying This?)

Describing the Trump administration as "pro-life" drains the expression of any meaning.

This is a very fine line in the National Catholic Reporter editorial about the baleful influence of the Knights of Columbus' money in American Catholicism that I shared earlier today.

Moira Weigel on How the Right Invented Phantom Enemy of Political Correctness and Gave Us Trump (with Complicity of "Liberal" Elites)

Moira Weigel in The Guardian on how the right invented the phantom enemy of "political correctness," how leading U.S. intellectuals representing "liberal" elites have colluded with this project, and how it has given us Trump:

As Trump Presidency Is Normalized in Mainstream and Religious Media, Attempts Underway to Sanitize White Evangelical, White Catholic, Mormon Vote for Trump

The attempt to normalize Donald Trump and his presidency is well underway, and anyone following the trajectory of the mainstream (and religious) media in this country from the Reagan period forward could have foreseen this. To its great shame, National Catholic Reporter published an article last week by one of its leading "pro-life" writers attacking those protesting Trump's election, noting that the Dow is up, and claiming that we're seeing a "peaceful transition of power" with Trump — even as incidents of violent speech or acts directed against members of minority communities proliferate all over the nation. To my knowledge, NCR has yet to publish any statement at all about those incidents of violence. It's as if, for "pro-life" Catholics applauding the "peaceful transition of power," those being targeted simply do not exist — not as fellow human beings whose human lives must count in any credible rendition of a pro-life ethic.

No, Trevin Wax, Genesis Creation Accounts Aren't About "Family Structure" — And, Yes, Polygamy (with Concubinage and Slavery) Is the Default Notion of Marriage for Eons in the Old Testament

As I've mentioned to you previously, I find myself in this pre-election season spending more and more of my online time sharing information in my Facebook and Twitter circles. And that accounts, in part, for my relative silence on this blog, where I have long tried to write something more substantive than people normally share on social media — and where I continuously fall behind with thanking you for your outstanding comments here. I really am grateful for them and apologize that I haven't been taking time to acknowledge them.

National Catholic Reporter Announces It Will Restrict Its Commenting Services, Due to "Dramatic Increase in Trolls and Disruptive Comments"

Last week, I pointed you to some valuable (and worrisome) commentary about how trolls are trashing open discussion spaces online and causing some news sites to shut down their commentary threads.

Selected Publications

Religion and Public Life in the Southern Crossroads Region: The Showdown States. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 2004. Ed. by William D. Lindsey and Mark Silk.

Shailer Mathews’ Lives of Jesus: The Search for a Theological Foundation for the Social Gospel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Singing in a Strange Land: Praying and Acting with the Poor. Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1991.

“On Being Church in the New Millennium: The Challenge and Gift of Gay Believers,” Theology and Sexuality 16 (2002), 96-104.

“AIDS, Homosexuality, and the Churches in America Today,” Bulletin for Contextual Theology in Southern Africa and Africa 7,1 (2000), 45-48.

“The AIDS Crisis and the Church: A Time to Heal.” In Christian Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender, ed. Adrian Thatcher and Elizabeth Stuart. London: Eerdmans and Gracewing, 1996. Pp. 347-66.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Monday, December 31, 2018

Monday, November 5, 2018

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Friday, October 12, 2018

Friday, March 16, 2018

Monday, January 8, 2018

Friday, December 15, 2017

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Monday, November 6, 2017

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Monday, October 2, 2017

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Monday, November 21, 2016

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Tuesday, August 30, 2016