U.S. Catholic Church in Snapshots from Twitter, as Georgetown Prep Grad Kavanaugh Is Seated as a Supreme

.@newtgingrich and I congratulate our new Supreme Court Justice. pic.twitter.com/LDlDsUhL4k

— Callista Gingrich (@CallyGingrich) October 6, 2018

Things I've Read Recently About Religion and America Under Trump: "Dear White Christian Trump Supporters: We Need to Talk"

This is perfect. pic.twitter.com/IdUvMS5Fzc

— Jessi (@lovelyjessij) February 14, 2017

Things I've read in the past day or so, commenting on the dangerous political situation we're now living through in the U.S. and the world at large, and the role of religion and religious groups in this situation — statements I'd like to recommend to you:

Can Someone PLEASE Get Word to Archbishop Chaput That Banning Refugees and Ripping Away Healthcare Coverage Are Not "Pro-Life"?

P.S. Can someone please get a few of the tweets (with shocking photos attached) featured in my last posting to His Excellency Archbishop Charles Chaput, as he praises the current president as a champion of life and castigates the president's critics? The disconnect between . . . oh, let's be daring and call it reality (the real world and unvarnished truth about it) . . . and what His Excellency wants to sound forth in the name of a "pro-life" ethic is, well, downright embarrassing.

Archbishop Charles Chaput Attacks Joe Biden and Tim Kaine, Shills for GOP with Call for "Silent Apostates" to Leave Catholic Church

David Gibson writes, 

What Earthly Good Do Churches Do? On Christian Support for Donald Trump, and Whether It's Possible to Remain Christian

Michael Boyle describes, and brilliantly so, the turning that happened inside him after he entered the Dominicans and began preparing for ordination — and then realized that what the Catholic party line was telling him about celibacy, clerical life, and health was not quite cogent:

Questions from a Ewe Responds to Archbishop Chaput About Excluding the "Irregular" from the Sacraments: "Here's What I Suggest. Walk Up to Your Local Priest and Ask about His Sex Life"

In recently published commentary on Archbishop Chaput's newly released guidelines to deal with "irregularities" in dispensation of the sacraments in his archdiocese, the blogger writing at Questions from a Ewe notes with her usual panache and verve that it's exceedingly odd that Chaput is concerned with "irregularity" of a sexual sort — well, with some folks' "irregularity — when it's well known that 50% of U.S. Catholic priests and an even higher percentage than this in other parts of the world are sexually active. All those priests are, in other words, leading the kind of "irregular" lives for which Archbishop Chaput wants to bar only openly LGBTQ Catholics and divorced and remarried Catholics not living together as brother and sister from the sacraments.

"This Is Actually Happening, and It's Real, and It's Right Now": Christian Churches Responding (or Refusing to Respond) to Pastoral Needs of LGBTQ Human Beings

Gay (former) Mormon Tyler Glenn in a video he posted to Facebook on 5 July (the video above), about the suicide of LGBTQ Mormon youth after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints enacted its policy punishing same-sex couples and their children and excluding them from church participation:

This is actually happening, and it's real, and it's right now.

Quote for Day: Archbishop Chaput, Either Join Us As We Seek to Protect Our Children, or Get Out of the Way and Stop Attacks on Our Representative Democracy

I really like Captain Michael Skiendzielewski's comment in response to the article by Kieran Tapsell on the strange disconnect between Pope Francis's words and actions re: sex abuse that I discussed in a previous posting today. I like it so much that I'm going to share it with you in its entirety:

Remembering John McNeill, As Doors Slam Shut on Thousands at World Meeting of Families

As several of you have noted in comments here in the past few days, on the day on which Pope Francis arrived in the U.S., noted theologian and former Jesuit priest John McNeill died at the age of 90, with his partner of 46 years, Charles Chiarelli, at his side. Many of you will know quite a bit about John McNeill, so I don't think it's necessary for me to say more about his life than to remind readers that he was expelled from the Jesuits in 1987 when he refused to stop his ministry to LGBT people, and to cease his theological work in the area of sexual ethics. He attracted the animosity of Pope John Paul II and that pope's theological watchdog Cardinal Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, and was ordered by Ratzinger to choose between his ministry to LGBT persons and his Jesuit vocation.

From My Garden for You: LGBT Catholics Excluded from World Conference on Families; Kentucky Clerk Defying Supreme Court (the Money Trail); "Republican Religion" and Betrayal of Core Christian Values

As I gather blooms and tend to weeds, a posey (perhaps intermixed with some weeds?) for you from my garden today:

People Talking: About Matt Shepard, White Male Privilege, Women's Health, Guns and Bombs, and LGBT Rights and Catholic Schools

"He was always struggling to find that place where he belonged," a friend of Matthew Shepard says in Michele Josue's wonderful documentary "Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine." That line makes my ears perk up (and my heart feel heavy). So many people who feel different and are treated as different spend their lives trying to find a place, any place at all, to belong.

"You Can't Say You Love Someone . . . and Then Disagree with a Positive Movement for Their Civil Rights": Continued Discrimination Against LGBT People in Catholic Institutions and the False 'Love the Sinner' Meme

Colin Israel writes an open letter to an uncle who informs Colin that he loves him, but cannot accept the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision due to church teachings. Colin's response zeroes in on the falsity, the self-delusion, of claiming that you love someone when you oppose the extension of rights to them:

Jamie Manson on Pope Francis's Warm, Deep Ties to Evangelicals: Predictions for World Meeting on Families in Philadelphia

Jamie Manson on Pope Francie's deep ties to evangelicals (in Latin American, as well as to influential American ones), and how those ties will undoubtedly strongly affect what happens at the World Meeting on Families in Philadelphia this September:

New Ways Ministry on Catholics Responding to Anti-Gay "Religious Freedom" Laws: Bishops Continue Advocating for "Right to Discriminate" Laws

At the New Ways Ministry blog, Bondings 2.0, today, Bob Shine summarizes various Catholic responses to the anti-gay "religious freedom" laws in Indiana and Arkansas:

Easter Monday Collage: "They Wanted to Silence the Voices of Love, but the Words of the Resurrected . . . Hammered Upon Their Minute Brain"

An Easter Monday collage for you: articles I've read and shared this morning with friends on Facebook, all of which seem to me to have Easter pertinence, since, as Julia Esquivel writes in her magnificent Easter poem Threatened with Resurrection, 

And This Year's Coughie for Best Exemplifying an Exclusionary, Strident Interpretation of the Catholic Faith Goes To . . . .

As the year turns, I now look forward every year to Frank Cocozzelli's annual Coughie award. As Frank explains, 

Archbishop Chaput's Forecast for the 2015 Synod on the Family: Gays Out of Sight, Out of Mind

For Religion News Service, Josephine McKenna reports that Archbishop Charles Chaput told the Vatican colloquium on gender issues this week that, at its final meeting next year, the synod on the family will not focus on "neuralgic sexual issues." As David Gibson reported recently, at their meeting in mid-November, the U.S. Catholic bishops elected Chaput a member of the delegation of bishops they'll send to the synod on the family, though — or because? (as Gibson also notes) — his record as a "culture warrior" is well-known.

Peter Montgomery on Upcoming Vatican Conference on Family: Participants Include Anglican Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, Who Links Gays to Devil

As Peter Montgomery has pointed out in a comment about my comparison today between the recent Southern Baptist Convention meeting at which gay participants claimed a voice in discussions and the impending Vatican conference on the family, among those who will be included in the Vatican conference is Nigerian Anglican archbishop Nicholas Okoh, who has linked gays to the devil and praised Nigerian president Goodluck Johnson's decision to sign into law a draconian anti-gay bill. Peter has published commentary about the upcoming Vatican conference today at Right-Wing Watch.

Archbishop Chaput in 2014 Re: Violence and Catholic Schools vs. Archbishop Chaput in 2010 re: Violence and Catholic Schools

Dan Savage, discussing the recent gay-bashing incident in which a group of classmates from Archbishop Wood Catholic high school attacked two men in Philadelphia on 11 September:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Bishops Continue Talking Contraception, Lay Catholics Respond, "So Many Ortho-Bots. So Many Rapes"

The U.S. Catholic bishops have not spoken as a body about the concessions the Obama administration has just offered them regarding the HHS guidelines for coverage of contraception in healthcare plans in Catholic institutions. The archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, has, however, now spoken out. At America magazine's "In All Things" blog, Tim Reidy offers the text of Chaput's response.