More Things I'm Reading at Week's End: Baltimore, Racism, White Privilege, Recognizing African-American Contributions to American Culture

More stuff I'm reading as this week ends — these resources are about what's happening right now in Baltimore, about the need of white Americans to understand and address racism, about the manifold (and often unacknowledged) contributions of African Americans (including LGBTQ ones) to every facet of American life, etc.

Faith Seeking Understanding: Catholic Commentary on the State of the Church, Advent 2012

A Monday-morning smorgasbord of smart, thoughtful statements I've read in recent days about matters Catholic:

Turning Corner with Marriage Equality (and Catholic Contributions)

And, of course, one of the biggest news stories of this election cycle, which still has not received as much attention as it deserves in the national media, is the story of the unprecedented victory of marriage equality in not one but four states.  As Ashley Fetters notes in The Atlantic, the election marks the first time in American history that marriage equality was passed by a popular vote, breaking the streak of unbroken ballot-box defeats on which the religious right, with its attendant Catholic organizations like the Knights of Columbus and the National Organization for Marriage, has long counted to establish precedents for denying rights to LGBT citizens.