Mid-Week News Items: Marriage Equality and Religious Groups

More mid-week news tidbits, these focusing on religion and gay issues (the Cincinnati story discussed below does focus on gay issues, since it's about the attempt of Catholic institutions to weed out and control employees who show any support at all for gay people or gay rights):

Anne M. Burke to Voice of the Faithful: Envisaging a World-Wide Council of the Laity

The following is Anne M. Burke's speech to Voice of the Faithful, 14 September 2012.  This comes to us courtesy of a request by Jerry Slevin to Anne Burke to permit it to be posted here.*  I appreciate Jerry for bringing this to us, and Anne Burke for her graciousness in allowing Bilgrimage to post her speech, which follows:

Catholic Bishops Meet: "800-Pound Gorilla" Gathers with Them, According to David Gibson

At the end of last week, I linked to a powerful statement of journalist Susan Hogan reminding us that, ten years ago this month--a month in which the U.S. Catholic bishops are now staging shock-and-awe "religious freedom" demonstrations around the nation--the bishops were gathered in Dallas to deal with the explosive situation that had developed as Boston court actions blew the lid off the cover-up of childhood clerical abuse in the Catholic church.  Hogan notes that the bishops now want to flex their muscle and appear powerful as they try to topple a sitting Democratic president (the bit about toppling the president is me speaking, not Hogan), but ten years ago the situation was very different.  

Anne Burke Continues to Speak Out: Laity Have Right to Expect Truth from Catholic Leaders

And, as a counterpoint to the commentary on the John Paul II beatification to which I've just pointed, I'd like to take note as well of a valuable statement Anne Burke published this week about the ongoing abuse crisis in the Catholic church.  This op-ed piece is in U.S. Catholic.

Anne Burke's Advice for Catholic Laity as New Year Begins: Keep Faith in Truth

 

Given our short attention span and truncated memories, I'm not sure many of us in the U.S. recall some of the most significant revelations of the past decade, when it comes to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church.  Do many of us remember, I wonder, the shock of learning, as the U.S. Catholic bishops met in Dallas in 2002 when the abuse cases in Boston were breaking wide open, that two-thirds of sitting bishops had knowingly shielded a credibly accused priest who had molested minors?