Recommended Commentary: "There Will Be Lots of Singing, Preaching, Praying, and Hand Holding. Meanwhile, Victims of Sacralized Bigotry and Discrimination Will Be Ignored"

Nine people of faith sit in jail tonight for praying on the steps of the #SupremeCourt. This from the same court that ruled in favor of the religious beliefs of a Colorado baker who refused to serve a gay couple. We must not let this hypocrisy stand! pic.twitter.com/n9qoqYNesQ

— Rev. Dr. Barber (@RevDrBarber) June 12, 2018

Some valuable commentary I've read in the past several days about matters of religion, culture, and politics that I'd like to pass on to you — ranging from commentary about the current meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to the sexual abuse problems facing the SBC; right-wing Catholic lobbying against contraceptive availability for women in developing nations; new indicators of how deeply racism is entrenched in Mormon culture; and the role that conservative white Christians are playing in blocking ecological initiatives in the U.S. government:

Quote for Day: Why Scott Pruitt Kept Opulent Dinner with Cimate Change Denying Cardinal Pell a Secret — "It Was a No-Brainer"

Rachel Olding in an article entitled "Why George Pell dined with under-fire EPA's Scott Pruitt in secret," on Cardinal Pell's secret opulent dinner with climate change denier and Trump's EPA head Scott Pruitt — and why Pruitt sought to keep the dinner secret:

Cardinal Accused of Sex Crimes Has Secret Dinner with U.S. Official Attacking Climate Change Findings and Federalist Society Members: Where's the Punchline?

Think about this - a leading curial cardinal, George Pell, is meeting secretly with those in the Trump administration whose main goal in life is to undermine climate action, which Pope Francis sees as one of the leading moral issues in the world today. https://t.co/TIwfxaooQf

— Massimo Faggioli (@MassimoFaggioli) May 11, 2018

"The Fish Rots from the Head" and American Catholic Reasons for Choosing Trump: My Take

It’s all-out war on the poor at this point. https://t.co/v89ZgmRQCd

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 17, 2017

In an article yesterday at Vox entitled "'The fish rots from the head': a historian on the unique corruption of Trump's White House," U.S. presidential historian Robert Dallek tells Sean Illing that "the Trump administration easily ranks among the most corrupt in American history." Dallek states,

Michael Arceneaux on Why He Won't Return to Church, Even with Francis: "If You’re Not a Straight, White, Cisgender Man, Catholic Culture and Theology Isn’t Speaking to You"

In The Guardian today, Michael Arceneaux, a black, gay man who has left the Catholic church, explains why Pope Francis hasn't convinced him to return:

Katha Pollitt on Laudato Si': "If Pope Francis Really Wanted to Fight Climate Change, He'd Be a Feminist"

And more outstanding commentary today — this by Katha Pollitt at The Nation noting that Pope Francis's considerable blind spot regarding women's rights significantly diminishes the power of his encyclical Laudato Si' to address the world's ecological crisis effectively:

Jacob J. Erickson on Killing of Cecil the Lion As Part of "Larger Theological History of Environmental, Gendered, and Colonial Injustice"

In several comments yesterday, I recommended Jacob J. Erickson's recent essay at Religion Dispatches entitled "The Martyrdom of Cecil the Lion." What I like about Erickson's approach to this story is that he frames it as a story about "a larger theological history of environmental, gendered, and colonial injustice." I think he's right to see the story in this way.

Naomi Klein on a Radical Vatican Under Pope Francis?

Some excerpts for you from Naomi Klein's recent New Yorker essay entitled "A Radical Vatican?": Klein notes that she was asked to speak at a Vatican press conference about Laudato Si' in early July, and attended the event with some trepidation. The torrid heat in Rome in July, the requirement that women visiting the Vatican be enswathed in clothes that cover their limbs, the fact that she was the only non-Catholic invited to be part of this panel, worry about whether the Vatican would turn off the air-conditioning at the event, since Laudato Si' states that the growth of an air-conditioning culture points to "harmful habits of consumption" now affecting the entire planet . . . . 

On Laudato Si' and Its "Integral Ecology" and Themes of Relatioality: Helpful Commentary

When I first responded to Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', I promised to provide you with some more reflections on the encyclical. These are not my own, but are from pieces I've read that strike me as valuable, since they zero in on the theme I wanted to point to in my own reflection — the theme of relationality. As I noted, the encyclical's stress on relationality, as it discusses the human connection to the environment and the need of human beings to acknowledge their own interconnection to address environmental crisis, is both its strength and its weakness.

Jamie Manson on Laudato Si': "How Has the Church's Paternalistic Need for Power Over the Sexualities of Its Flock Exacerbated the Conditions of the Poor?"

Jamie Manson notes that Laudato Si' does not acknowledge that having access to contraception has alleviated both poverty and ecological stress for poor women in some developing nations. Instead, Pope Francis suggests that the greed of the developed nations manifests itself in policies designed to curb population growth in the global South by pushing "reproductive health." This in a world in which, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, more than 220 million women in developing countries do not have access to contraception and family planning  services . . . . 

Rabbi Menachem Creditor on Charleston Church Hate Crime: "This Broken World Demands Upon Us All That We Cry Again to 'Mother Emanuel,' to Mother-God-Who-is-with-Us"

Rabbi Menachem Creditor on yesterday's racist hate crime in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina: 

Pope Francis's Encyclical on the Environment, and the Impossibility of Discussing Violence Against the Environment Without Discussing Gender Issues

Call me crazy, but if I were a world religious leader writing a major document about ecology today — one which stresses that it is addressing every member of the human community — and if I chose to use the word "sister" fourteen times in that major document, I'd find some way, I think, to include the voices of the sisters of my own faith community in what I had to say. Say, Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich, who have a wealth of significant things to tell us about our relationship to the cosmos and the spiritual implications of that relationship . . . . 

As Pope Francis's Encyclical on Environment Nears, Attempts by Big Oil to Subvert It: Recent Commentary

As various news sources are reporting that Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment will be published next month, there's interesting reporting and commentary about the attempt of right-wing groups funded by big oil interests in the U.S. to subvert the encyclical — even before it has been published and before anyone really knows what it's going to say. Here's Garry Wills' take on this situation in New York Review of Books recently:

In News: Calls for Removal of Archbishop Cordileone, Vatican Ends Investigation of Nuns, Pope and Environment, Roe v. Wade and Marriage Equality, Hot Mess with Chilean Bishop

Here's a hodgepodge of news stories (and commentary) about Catholic-themed issues previously discussed on this blog:

Quote for Day: Naomi Klein on Why We're Stuck with Climate Change — It's about the Economic Elite, Stranglehold, and the Fetish of Centrism

Naomi Klein is incisive — and powerful — as she explains why the human community is unable to address climate crisis that is now threatening the whole planet and therefore all of our existences:

Maureen Mullarkey Strikes Again (and a Reminder About Commonweal Catholic Centrism)

Remember Maureen Mullarkey? Sure you do! Back in 2009, when it became public that she had contributed to the prop 8 campaign to strip gay citizens of California of the right to civil marriage, though she had made a name for herself as an artist painting drag queens, I posted commentary about her. And then I noted her cozy connections to, well, see my conclusion below.*

Kali Holloway on 2014's Best Documentaries: From Colonialism to War to Ecology to Misogony, Homophobia, and Heterosexism

In this lull time between the various winter-solstice holidays and the celebration of a new year, when we have time on our hands, Kali Holloway's recent "Documentaries Extraordinaire" posting at Alternet is a real gift. I recommend it to you. 

In the News: Sixth Mass Extinction of Species Now Underway

In her review of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction (NY: Henry Holt, 2014), Louise Rubacky notes that Kolbert's thesis — that humankind has precipitated the sixth planet-wide mass extinction of species, and this has already begun — warns of dire consequences when we "break evolutionary chains." Every species now disappearing had its niche in the complex, interwoven, delicate ecology that sustains the whole planet. And the loss of even a single species threatens to unbalance a web of relationships necessary to sustain life as we have come to know it on this planet.

Cooking to Save the Planet: Lentil Soup

Lentils first came to my attention when I went to college in New Orleans and stayed to work there a number of years, returning after I finished graduate studies to take a teaching job. My family ate (and relished) many pulses as I was growing up, including pinto or navy beans, which were both cooked with chunks of ham and then served (with their delicious, rich pot liquor) over cornbread — a recurring meal that my parents associated with their Depression-era childhoods, but which we all liked very much, especially when the beans appeared on the table with a bowl of my mother's tart-sweet, hot (from chopped jalapeños) chow-chow, redolent of the mixture of spices used to produce this end-of-garden pickled relish.

Seeing Visions and Dreaming Dreams: Impending Socioeconomic and Ecological Crisis and Religious Theories of Change

In a two-part interview with Xavier Casanovas, Oscar Mateos, Santi Torres, and Nani Vall-llossera in Cristianisme i Justícia (via Iglesia Descalza, here and here), Benedictine Sister Teresa Forcades continues to insist that all viable, effective change in both church and society happens from the bottom to the top, not vice-versa: when the interviewers ask her about the euphoria surrounding Pope Francis and his papacy, she replies,