Indianapolis Archbishop Claims Firing of Gay Employees Necessary to Address "Public Situations": My Response

Masha Gessen, "Coming Out, and Rising Up, in the Fifty Years After Stonewall," on the Supreme Court ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)

Associated Press, "Indiana archbishop defends firing of teacher in gay marriage": 

Archbishop Charles Thompson said during a news conference that he didn't seek out information about the marriages involving the teachers but had to respond to what he called a "public situation" of Catholic school employees not following church doctrine.

My Thoughts on Sharing the Photo of the Drowned Bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and His Daughter Valeria

We must force ourselves to keep seeing.

Yesterday, on social media, I shared a photo of the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria who drowned recently trying to cross the Rio Grande and enter the U.S. after weeks of waiting to enter. As I shared the photo, I stated that, though some media outlets had chosen to hide it behind a click-screen, in my view, we must not let ourselves look away: we are doing this to fellow human beings, and we need to see what we are doing.

"If Evangelical Christians Stood Up for These Children…"

If evangelical Christians stood up for these children, things could change in the camps very quickly. 

~ Caitlin Flanagan, "Christ in the Camps"

Caleb Crain: Gay-Panic Defense Began to Be Challenged When Gay People Were Permitted to Write about Anti-Gay Crimes — Implications for the Catholic Media

A seed of change, however, was finally planted in the late nineteen-fifties, when the gay community began to write about such crimes themselves, making visible the complicity of the judicial system and the press in entrenching homophobia.

~ Caleb Crain, "The Theory That Justified Anti-Gay Crime"  

John Gehring on Why Catholic Bishops Need a Year of Abstinence on Preaching about Sexuality

John Gehring, "Why Catholic bishops need a year of abstinence on preaching about sexuality":

"Indescribable Cruelty": Commentators on the Concentration Camps Now Being Operated by the United States Under Donald Trump

7/ For 10 years, not one migrant child died in U.S. government custody.

Since September, at least 6 kids have died in the custody of DHS or HHS.

How many more kids must die before we end this madness?

— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) June 21, 2019

The firing of gay employees of Catholic institutions is hardly the most horrific thing happening in the world today. There's also this:

WaPo: Indianapolis Diocese Threatens "To Strip Away Catholic Identity" from Schools "That Employ People Who Are Not Heterosexual"

The statement I've underlined from this Washington Post article will be challenged. People will say this is not about punishing schools that hire employees who are not heterosexual. It's about going after gays who don't behave themselves and who publicly dissent from Catholic teaching, they'll maintain.

Ruth Krall, Religious Leader Sexual Abuse — What Language Shall We Use?

Citrus Trees Ready for Harvest (1)

This essay is the third in a series Ruth Krall has written with the title "Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice." The first essay in the series was published in two parts (here and here), and was followed by another two-part essay (here and here). As Ruth notes below, "In the first two essays, I utilized the language of public health to explore issues of prevention, containment and treatment. In this essay I have raised questions about how we begin to study these issues. I have raised the question of our research language as essential."

As she further states, "Vis-à-vis the current clergy sexual abuse issue in multiple world religions, we need, I believe, an enhanced vocabulary. We need this enhanced and more precise vocabulary in order to comprehend the complex institutional forces at work in today's religious communities as they experience and/or demonstrate the affinity sexual violence phenomena." Here's Ruth's valuable essay:

"The Saint of Dry Creek": Story Corps Remembers Stonewall Uprising

Watch “The Saint of Dry Creek,” as part of our #StonewallOutLoud initiative to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Learn more at https://t.co/b57SPaI7GY pic.twitter.com/qaGJVe3dBQ

— StoryCorps (@StoryCorps) June 15, 2019

I shared this "Saint of Dry Creek" video back in October 2015. I'm very happy to see Story Corps circulating it again on social media this week as part of its #StonewallOutLoud initiative.

It's a keeper, in my view.

Ruth Krall, Religious Leader Sexual Abuse: A Pan-Denominational Approach (Part 2)

Transferring an Ebola Patient for Transport to a Care Facility 

Religious Leader Sexual Abuse: A Pan-Denominational Approach

Ruth Elizabeth Krall, MSN, PhD

This is a continuation of an essay by Ruth Krall, the first half of which was posted a few days ago.  As that previous posting noted, this essay, entitled "Religious Leader Sexual Abuse: A Pan-Denominational Approach," continues Ruth's analysis of religious leader sexual abuse of vulnerable individuals from the standpoint of public health. It proposes that "any effort to eliminate sexual abuse as a public health problem must, therefore, be both a national and an international effort. It must also be pan-denominational — reaching into multiple religious communities." Here's the second half of Ruth's outstanding essay — note that footnote numbers begin in medias res because this part of Ruth's essay links to the part previously posted: 

Abuse Whistleblower Rachael Denhollander on Why Survivors Know How Extensive Abuse Is in Southern Baptist Churches

With nearly 15 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Now it's facing a reckoning over sexual abuse. @R_Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, joins @JudyWoodruff in studio. pic.twitter.com/uKPPRhbZ9O

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) June 12, 2019

Rachael Denhollander was a courageous whistleblower in the case of Larry Nassar, who sexually assaulted her at age 15. When she came forward with her claims about Nassar, Immanuel Baptist, the church to which she and her husband Jacob Denhollander (a Southern Baptist seminary student)  belonged, refused to support her. They then left that church and joined another.

Ruth Krall, Religious Leader Sexual Abuse: A Pan-Denominational Approach

Transferring an Ebola Patient for Transport to a Care Facility  

I recently had the privilege of publishing an essay by Ruth Krall entitled "Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking" (here and here). That essay challenged readers to re-think how we've come to view the phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people in religious contexts, and to consider applying terms and concepts from the realm of public health (e.g., epidemic, endemic, or pandemic) to this phenomenon.

"Prolegomena" is the first in a multi-part set of essasys on which Ruth has been working, with the title (for the entire series), "Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice." In her manuscript gathering essays together under that title, Ruth includes a dedicatory note acknowleding the influence of her father Carl S. Krall on her life, work, and thought. It reads,

Southern Baptist and U.S. Catholic Leaders Meet in Same Week, Both Confronting Serious Sexual Abuse Problems: A "Gender Hurricane" Results

It's a gender hurricane out there this week. Come Holy Spirit. https://t.co/ebDdAKIsEc

— Natalia Imperatori (@nimperatori) June 11, 2019

At the same time, the Southern Baptist Convention is holding its annual meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, and the Catholic bishops are meeting in Baltimore. High on the agenda of both sets of gentlemen: what to do about sexual abuse of minors and other vulnerable church members? What to do about the fact that the public knows and will not now unknow? 

Ruth Krall, Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking (Part 2)

This posting is a continuation of an essay by Ruth Krall, the first part of which I posted several days ago. As that previous posting notes, Ruth's essay, entitled "Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking," invites readers to re-think how we've come to view the phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people in religious contexts. Ruth urges us to consider applying terms and concepts from the realm of public health to this phenomenon. Is this abuse an epidemic in religious contexts today? Is it endemic in religious structures? Is it pandemic?

Because the essay belows continues (and links to) the first part published previously, the endnotes begin at xvi rather than 1. Here's the second part of Ruth's valuable essay:

Bishop Bransfield Authors "One of the Finest Pastoral Letters on Poverty" Michael Sean Winters Has Read: My Response

In an essay about the scandal that is Bishop "$182,000 for Cut Flowers" Bransfield, entitled "Lavish living by Catholic hierarchy is moral corruption," Michael Sean Winters says that Bransfield has published "one of the finest pastoral letters on poverty I have read."

Ruth Krall, Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking

Ebola Virus Isolation Unit — A Visual Metaphor to Ponder (i)

I'm very pleased to be able to share once again an outstanding essay by Ruth Krall. In this essay about re-thinking how we've come to view the phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people in religious contexts, Ruth urges us to consider applying terms and concepts from the realm of public health. Is this abuse an epidemic in religious contexts today? Is it endemic in religious structures? Is it pandemic? Because Ruth's essay is dense and long, I've broken the essay into two parts. The second part will follow in a day or so, and will link to this first half. Here's Ruth's essay:

Owen Jones on Obligation to Confront Trumpism, "A Resurgent Global Far Right" That Is Racist, Xenophobic, Misogynistic, and Homophobic

Holy hell did he snappic.twitter.com/TVWM9ONKGq

— Na'ama 🌈 (@iknowplacesmp6) May 24, 2019

Owen Jones is rapidly becoming a journalistic hero of mine. In the clip above a few days back, after Theresa May shed tears on announcing her intent to step down and the media found those tears the most important thing in the world to talk about for a time, he stated,

Adriano Oliva's Amours: L'Église, les divorcés remariés, les couples homosexuels — On the Pastoral Implications of Aquinas' Recognition That Homosexuality Is Natural

In my last posting some days ago about Adriano Oliva's Amours: L'Église, les divorcés remariés, les couples homosexuels (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2015), I noted that Oliva finds Thomas Aquinas teaching that sexual attraction to members of one's own sex is natural for those who are homosexual. As part of the natural order, the homosexual inclination some people have is to be treated with every bit as much respect as is reserved for the sexual attraction that the majority of people display towards members of the opposite sex.