Glitch with Disqus Today

Readers of Bilgrimage: there appears to be some glitch with the Disqus commenting system today, and I wanted to alert you to it. When I go to the blog page and try to reply to comments, Disqus tells me I need to check my internet connection. But when I click one more time immediately after that to post my reply, it goes through.

If you are encountering a message that you are not online as you try to leave a comment here, or are not signed in, clicking your reply a second time may well send it through. I do not know why the glitch is occurring and will try to get a solution to it, but in the meantime, I did not want you all to think you cannot comment here due to this technical problem.

Dominican Priest-Theologian James Alison Receives Affirming Phone Call from Pope: When Will the Call Come for the Rest of Us?

Pope Francis’ call and respect for Alison’s path rights a major injustice inflicted by the Vatican. It should give all Catholics encouragement to follow their consciences and do the work to which God calls them, even if church leaders condemn or exclude. https://t.co/RAMkMOmZiD

— New Ways Ministry (@NewWaysMinistry) September 29, 2019

I am delighted for James Alison's sake. He's a first-rate theologian.

It's Still Going on — Cover-Up of Abuse Is Still Going on — and Catholics Know This, Do not Trust Their Bishops, and Are Withholding Money

Since some of us recently had a discussion here about Catholics withholding donations to parishes and Catholic institutions because many Catholics see their money put to uses that disgust them, including covering up clerical abuse of minors, I thought I'd draw your attention to this recent article by Brian Fraga. As he reports, Catholic donations to parishes and Catholic institutions in the U.S. are dropping because many Catholics believe their donations have been abused, in particular, to cover up clerical sexual abuse of minors. Fraga writes,

Catholic Bishop of Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, First to Be Investigated Under New Church Guidelines: A Selection of My Commentary on Crookston Diocese Over the Years

This could get interesting. https://t.co/zKizQX0SbR

— Jennifer Haselberger (@jmhaselberger) September 11, 2019

The bishop of the Catholic diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, Michael Hoeppner, is now under canonical investigation for allegedly interfering with civil or canonical investigations of clerical sexual abuse of minors. As Jean Hopfensperger states in the report I have just linked, Hoeppner is the first sitting bishop to be investigated under new Vatican protocols for reviewing and disciplining bishops in such matters.

Wendell Griffen, "Standing with Elaine"

With the permission of my friend Judge (and Reverend) Wendell Griffen, I'd like to share with you a statement he has made recently on his blog The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope. A bit of background: as Wendell's posting notes, in October 1919, hundreds of black men, women, and children were murdered in an event in eastern Arkansas now known as the Elaine Massacre. There are some outstanding historical accounts of what occurred in this massacre — one of the largest race-based massacres in American history. These accounts provide a narrative of what happened to the extent to which historians can piece together what occurred, when so much evidence has been lost or suppressed.

Two Mass Shootings in Texas in One Month: Who Owns Guns in the U.S? (Answer: White Republican Evangelical Men Above All)

Latest mass shooter in Texas from Odessa American

1/ Texas has just had two mass shootings in one month. In both, aggrieved white males who had easy access to guns went on rampages and killed multiple people. In light of this, we need to review — all over again — who owns guns in the U.S., where they're far too easy to access.

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) September 2, 2019