Charles Marsh's Biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory, on Bonhoeffer's (Highly Contested) Homosexuality

Here's another set of excerpts I'd like to share with you from Charles Marsh's excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (NY: Knopf, 2014). Marsh ruffled feathers of conservative Christians (and the ruffling goes on and has become even more agitated with Diane Reynolds' 2016 Bonhoeffer biography The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Women, Sexuality, and Nazi Germany) by concluding that Bonhoeffer was a gay man deeply in love with fellow Lutheran pastor Eberhard Bethge.

Note of Apology That I Am Not Finding Time to Take Part in Conversations Here of Late

I am very much enjoying the discussions in threads here, and want you to know that. I also apologize that I have not been able to find time to participate in them very much in the past several days. Important news seems to be breaking right and left, and the time I take to try to read it and think about it is taking time away from my time to comment here. Please know that I value the thought-provoking conversation very much, even when I'm not taking part in it.

Right-Wing Christian Support for Kavanaugh & Dismissal of Male Violence Towards Women: Fight to Keep Patria Potestas as Foundation of "Christian" Culture

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

David Badash, "'Not Relevant': Franklin Graham Says Alleged Kavanaugh Assault Just Something 'He Did as a Teenager'":

What Do Discussions of the Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church Have to Do with the Kavanaugh Hearing? A Lot

Ellen interviews Shelly Fitzgerald, who is threatened with firing by Roncalli Catholic High in Indianapolis for her same-sex marriage.

As I said yesterday, how the abuse situation in the Catholic church is discussed — with an obsessive focus on homosexuality, with little attention at all to the overwhelmingly dominant social (and ecclesial) problem of male abuse of vulnerable women — is not in the least disconnected from the conversations now going on about Brett Kavanaugh as a potential Supreme. Here are some statements that, to my mind, need to be read side by side, if we're going to gain a glimpse of the bigger picture facing us in these discussions:

Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on the Sordid History of German Church's Response to Hitler: We Forget at Our Peril

I've just finished reading Charles Marsh's Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (NY: Knopf, 2014), and would like to share some passages with you. These all have to do with the ease with which the Lutheran church in Germany capitulated to Hitler and his propagandists' claim that he was reviving a manly-man Christianity that would rehabilitate Germany's tarnished reputation. Marsh focuses on the Evangelical (i.e., Lutheran) (and Confessing) church and not the Catholic church because Bonhoeffer was situated within the Lutheran world. 

Questions to Be Asked About Discussion of Sexual Abuse: Why Is Abuse of Vulnerable Females by Adult Males Shrugged Off So Easily?

Speaking from the vantage point of a "but half-woke" straight male, David Roberts writes, 

Once Again: Catholic Journalists Pushing Back Vs. Viganò's False Claims Are Not Pushing Back Vs. His Homophobia — See Austen Ivereigh's Recent Tweet re: Mary Hunt

In my last posting, I shared a Twitter conversation I had several days ago with Catholic Democrats. It was about his claim that there had been "tremendous push back" against the ugly homophobia now surfacing all through Catholic conversation circles following the McCarrick revelations and Viganò's accusations about a "homosexual network" in the church that is responsible for the abuse crisis.