Garry Wills on How Celibacy Is Not the Cause of the Sex-Abuse Crisis — The Priesthood Is: "The Priesthood Is Itself an Affront to the Gospel"

Responding to a prediction by Father Tom Reese that the Catholic church will begin relaxing its celibacy requirement for priests this year,  I wrote, 

Catholics Talking, Walking: "It Is Time to Stop Waiting for More Reports to Accumulate, Hoping That Something Will Finally Be Done about This"

Colm O'Gorman to Shelagh Fogarty, "Leading Britain's Conversation" Interview, by way of Sandra Glab

Amanda Auchter, "I’m A Lifelong Catholic. Here’s Why I’ve Finally Decided To Leave The Church":

Here Be Dragons: Tribalistic Patrolling of Catholic-Identity Boundaries and Pushback Against Garry Wills

Over the lunch hour and after we had met friends for lunch, Steve had a bit of business to conduct. As I often do while I wait in the car for him, I turned on a "Christian" radio program to catch up on what the "Christians" (the folks who hold forth on this channel are very much what Andrew Sullivan would call Christianists) are saying these days.

Michael Sean Winters Orders Garry Wills to Go Away, and I Order Wills's Book Why Priests? in Response

Michael Sean Winters tells Garry Wills "please go away" and "stop posing as a Christian commentator," and my immediate response is to check the online catalogue of my local library and see if it has Wills's new book Why Priests? It does--three copies. I've added my name to the list of those waiting to read the book.

Frank Bruni Talks Hubris and Cosseted Clerical Castes, Michael Sean Winters Talks Tortellini

In a pull-no-punches statement yesterday entitled "Catholicism's Curse," New York Times columnist Frank Bruni brings the devastating critique of Catholic clericalism that has been growing by leaps and bounds since the abuse crisis broke wide open a decade ago into the mainstream of American public discourse. And National Catholic Reporter columnist Michael Sean Winters is furious as a result: he's furious about what Bruni may well accomplish via his mainstreaming of the intra-Catholic critique of clericalism.

News Tidbits: Gun Sales Going Great Guns, Adam Lanza's Mother a Gun Enthusiast, Garry Wills on Gun Idolatry, Jerry Slevin on Petition to Protect Children

Ed Kennedy reports at AfterElton today that, according to buzz on social media, "gun shops are doing record business this [past] weekend in the wake of the massacre, though some say it's just normal Christmas business." Kennedy also notes that the National Rifle Association website has gone silent since the Sandy Hook atrocity, as it did for ten days following the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting--but, according to Kennedy, the NRA website is usually silent only a day following a mass shooting.

Frank Cocozzelli on Bill Keller's "Shut Up and Go" Invitation to Catholic Dissenters: Stay and Fight

Not to be missed: Frank Cocozzelli's recent assessment of Bill Keller's invitation (à la Bill Donohue) to dissident progressive Catholics to exit the Catholic church.  Keller issued the invitation in an op-ed piece in the New York Times last month, noting as he did so that he was surprised to find himself agreeing with Donohue.  He notes that he agrees with Donohue that the Catholic church "is not about to change direction.  Not in this century."

Holy Things for the Holy: Debate about the Sacrament of Marriage among Catholics Today

Garry Wills writes in the New York Review of Books that marriage is a "natural" institution and a natural union that was sacramentalized only late in the history of the Christian churches, when the secular state, which had previously regulated this natural institution, began to fall apart (as the Roman Empire fell apart, that is), and the church began picking up the pieces.

Gerald T. Slevin: Philly Predator Priests & Papal Politics

As this work week ends, another outstanding piece from Jerry Slevin, commenting on the ongoing trial in the archdiocese of Philadelphia, the current political strategy of the Vatican and U.S. Catholic bishops, and the mandate to "reform" American religious women--and how these pieces fit together.  This is a rich and detailed posting, and I'm grateful to Jerry for providing this information to all of us who are trying to understand how these various pieces interlock.  What follows is Jerry's posting:

Catholic Bishops, Religious Women, Politics: Recent Commentary

In an essay just published in NY Review of Books entitled "Bullying the Nuns," Garry Wills argues that the following is happening as the princes of the church attack religious women: "The real Gospel must be quashed in the name of the pseudo-Gospel of papal monarchs."  As Wills notes, the priorities of the two groups have always been different: "The bishops are interested in power. The nuns are interested in the powerless. Nuns have preserved Gospel values while bishops have been perverting them."

Contraception Battles: More Commentary Hot off the Presses

I'm immersed in mounds of footnotes for my book right now, and working in a chair beside a long table stacked high with books, which Steve has helpfully set up for me so that I don't have to run from bookcases in one room to bookcases in another as I write.  I can glean all the books I think I'll need for a day's work early in the morning, stack them on the long table, and then have at the niggling footnote work.

Mary Lee Settle, John Henry Newman, and Roger Williams: Musings on Authentic Catholicity

Becky Garrison's interview today at Religion Dispatches with Wake Forest's Bill Leonard about Roger Williams catches my eye for a very particular reason.  Yes, I've always been interested in Roger Williams and his contribution to American religious (and political) thought, because that contribution was drummed into me as a child in Sunday School.  As I was growing up, many evangelical churches had not yet abandoned their longstanding commitment to separation of church and state (they've done so now with a vengeance), and still held up for veneration figures like Roger Williams, with his courageous defiance of the attempt of the Puritan majority in New England to suppress freedom of conscience via state control of religion.

Mid-Week News Update: Stories from Marquette, Boston, Vatican, Portugal, and Malawi

A mid-week news update: articles that have either caught my attention because they seem to me to deserve careful reading, or because they update stories about which I’ve blogged previously here . . . .

Mary Hunt’s recent Religion Dispatch article about Marquette University’s rescinding of an offer of a position to lesbian scholar Jodi O’Brien fits both categories: it makes for fine reading, as with everything Mary Hunt writes; and it provides new information to update the story I told about this situation earlier in the week.