With Knights of Columbus Funding and Strong Connections to Well-Heeled Right-Wing Catholic Elite Groups, Crux Promises No Good New for LGBTQ Catholics

Last week, I commented on a recent statement by Kaya Oakes at Religion Dispatches raising critical questions about the choice of John Allen to fund his Catholic news journal Crux with Knights of Columbus funds, now that Boston Globe has announced it will no longer fund Crux. As I noted, Kaya Oakes points out that the Knights of Columbus have established quite a reputation for themselves by sending over a million dollars to California to help snatch the right of marriage from gay citizens of that state with proposition 8, and by making million-dollar-plus contributions to campaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington to combat gay rights. 

Robert Blair Kaiser's Inside the Jesuits: How Pope Francis Is Changing the Church and the World — Jesuit DNA and the Papacy

Some weeks back, Rowman & Littlefield kindly sent me for review a copy of Robert Blair Kaiser's book Inside the Jesuits: How Pope Francis Is Changing the Church and the World (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2014). The book has now, I believe, appeared in print, but the copy I received was an advance reading copy, a point I mention as I start this brief review because the page numbers I'm citing are from the page proofs, and both they and the text itself may have altered somewhat when the book was published.

The "Religious Liberty" Crusade Against Gay Rights: Making the Connections, Identifying the Main Players

For those seeking information about which particular groups have been pushing the "religious liberty" legislation targeting gay folks in various states in the U.S. at present, Dylan Scott has published a helpful article at Talking Points Memo today. Scott notes that major players in the movement to push anti-gay "religious liberty" legislation are the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the American Religious Freedom Program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), and Focus on the Family.

Quote for Day: "Congratulations to the Arizona Legislature for Doing Such an Excellent Job at De-Evangelization"

E.J. Dionne on the Arizona legislature's excellent "de-evangelization" program:

Former Irish President Mary McAleese on Attack by Cardinal Law and Mary Ann Glendon

Just think for a moment about what this report means: a former president of a sovereign nation reveals that when she is on an official political visit to another nation, a prince of the Roman Catholic church feels perfectly free to upbraid her for theological views she has every right to hold, and then to usher her and her visiting political team into a room "where a well-known American conservative Catholic, Mary Ann Glendon, is waiting to lecture the President on her views on women priests."