Vincent Panettiere's These Thy Gifts: A Snapshot of Lay Catholic Rage About the Abuse Crisis, and the Corruption Evoking That Rage

As with any text, there are a number of different ways one might approach Vincent Panettiere's new novel These Thy Gifts (Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2016). The plot certainly deserves attention. It's frankly engrossing, spanning the history of American Catholicism from the post-World War II period to the present in a way that mimics the action of a camera scanning back and forth from period to period. The camera metaphor is not beside the point, since the novel itself makes frequent references to classic films and is self-consciously aware of the way in which it mimics theater and probes the thin (perhaps nonexistent) line between fact and fiction.

"Catholic Schools in Arkansas Are Attempting to Erase the Identities of LGBT Students by Threatening Them": P.S. Still Not Getting Better Under Pope Francis

The new policy regarding gay* (in summation, they don't exist and can't exist in Catholic schools) students in Arkansas Catholic schools is getting more media attention. For New Civil Rights Movement, John Wright writes,

It's Not Getting Better Under Pope Francis: Report from My Own Back Yard, Where Catholic Schools Are Ordered Never to Say Gay

You know how I keep saying it's not getting better under Pope Francis — not for gay* Catholics? This is from my own diocese. This is the story we returned home to Arkansas yesterday to read when we clicked on the news this morning.

Yesterday, Kate Drumgoole and Father Warren Hall; Today, Father José García: Why I Keep Concluding That Under Pope Francis, It's Not Getting Better

Yesterday, I wrote, 

As a Week of Travel Ends, Update on My Whereabouts: Pope Francis, Donald Trump, and the Lack of Viable Alternatives to Male-Entitled Heterosexist Misogyny

I have to be honest: I don't see things getting better for gay* Catholics in the Catholic institution as it's currently configured. Not under Pope Francis, despite media spin suggesting that he has opened doors to greater inclusion of gay folks in the Catholic community . . . .

Readers Write: Pope Francis, Fox News, and Image Management; Humanae Vitae and Catholic Left's Sell-Out; Following Christ as Screaming the Catechism

Here are four valuable comments from conversations on Bilgrimage in the past week or so (conversations about different topics) — comments that continue to ring in my head after I've read them, so that I want to lift them into a posting where more readers can discover them and benefit from them:

Note to Readers: Hoping to Catch Up Soon, Enjoying Your Lively Conversation About Online Trolling — And About Our Obligation to Push Back Against Hate Speech

I'm away on a short jaunt, dear readers, and may not catch up with my task of acknowledging your welcome comments (or with my blogging task) for a day or so. I do want to tell you all how much I've enjoyed — and learned from — the lively conversation about handling trolls at various Catholic blog sites.