As Cardinal Pell Is Buried, He's Acclaimed a "Saint for Our Times," While Abuse Survivors and LGBTQ People Protest

As Rod McGuirk reports, as Cardinal Pell's funeral is held today, police have refused to permit LGBTQ-rights protesters outside the Catholic cathedral in Sydney, and have sought a court injunction against them.

Abusive Anti-Gay French Priest Tony Anatrella Sanctioned by Vatican; Survivors Say They Expected More

"Catholic Church Tells Bishops They Are Not Obliged to Disclose Child Sex Abuse: Report," 
Time (11/2/2016)

Earlier this week, the Catholic archdiocese of Paris announced that after investigation of charges made against influential French priest Tony Anatrella, a previous sanction of Anatrella remains in place and and he continues to be banned from celebrating Mass publicly or hearing confessions. He is also forbidden from continuing his work as a psychotherapist.

As a former U.S. president and now candidate for re-election dines with a white supremacist anti-Semite Holocaust denier: commentary

Right Wing Watch, 25 November 2022

As a former president and now candidate for re-election dines with a white supremacist anti-Semite Holocaust denier, enlightening commentary:

Lula's win in Brazil, reported on here by Tom Phillips and Constance Malleret, seems to me a good thing for the whole global community — though what Bolsonaro, who said he would not concede defeat if he lost the election, intends to do now, we have to wait and see.

"Pope John Paul II Was Warned about Allegations of Sexual Impropriety by Theodore McCarrick, but Chose to Promote Him": My Response

Joshua McElwee on Twitter

Some headlines today:

George Floyd Killed by Police, Catholic Bishops' President Takes Six Days to Speak; Supreme Court Forbids Workplace Discrimination Vs. LGBTQ People, USCCB Instantly Finds Its Voice

Police kill George Floyd, Archbishop Gomez responds six days later; SCOTUS files a ruling about LGBT people, Gomez responds six hours later. https://t.co/LHMFVHp1Wo

— Dan Cosacchi (@dcosacchi) June 15, 2020

New York Times, "Gay Rights Are Civil Rights":

The vote was 6 to 3. It should have been unanimous.

Footnote to My Eulogy of Carmel McEnroy: "As so Many Others Have Experienced in This Life, Her Complete Redemption Had to Wait Till the Next Life"

Mercy Sister, Carmel McEnroy, author who captured women's role in #VaticanII, dies https://t.co/UxKj64GdVU via @ncronline @SistersofMercy @GerardRMoloney @FlanneryTony @MiriamTDuignan @vofwomen

— Sarah R Mac Donald (@SarahRMacDonald) December 3, 2019

A response David Jackson made to my remembrance of my graduate school colleague Sister Carmel McEnroy, RSM, prompts me to add a footnote to that posting. David writes,

What We Are Now Living Through Creates a Serious Crisis of Religious Faith

In the video above, discussing the death of 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez in a detention center for immigrants this past May, Mika Brzezinski states that Nancy Pelosi is filling a leadership void and a moral void in this country. Joe Scarborough then states that evangelicals used to fill this moral void and no longer do so:

If I Were a Young Person Seeking a Church Home for Myself, Why Would I EVER Want to Consider a Church in Which….

If I were a young person seeking a church home for myself, why would I EVER want to consider a church in which

Newman Canonized, and Talk of His Love for Ambrose St. John Rocks the World of Macho-Heterosexist Clerics: My Thoughts

1/ It has long been a tactic of homophobes to claim that one cannot identify people in the past as gay when they did not identify themselves that way, even when they spoke or wrote about same-sex relationships in their own lives. This tactic wants to invisibilize gay people.

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) October 14, 2019

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.

"We Must Call the El Paso Shooting What It Is: Trump-Inspired Terrorism" — Commentary on White Supremacist Roots of Recent Mass Shootings

El Paso Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Parkland Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Tree Of Life Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Las Vegas Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Borderline Bar Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Sandy Hook Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

Charleston Shooter:
Not an immigrant.

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) August 4, 2019

Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, "El Paso Shooting Suspect's Manifesto Echoes Trump's Language":

Ruth Krall, Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion (2)

Vasily Polenov, Le droit du Seigneur (1874), in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow

The essay below is the second part of Ruth Krall's essay entitled "Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion." The first part was published on Bilgrimage several days ago. As the introduction to the essay at the link I have just provided explains, the essay is one of a series of essays Ruth has published on Bilgrimage, under the series title "Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice." Links to the previous essays in this series appear at the link I've just given you above. The common theme binding these essays together is the endemic natural of religious and spiritual leader sexual abuse of followers. The current essay explores this theme by arguing that clergy sexual abuse is a global public health issue whose noxious presence can be found inside multiple language groups and national identities. The secong part of Ruth's essay, "Historical Meandering," follows (note that footnotes begin with xiii because this essay is a continuation of the first part published previously):

Margaret Renkl on Obligation of Catholics to Defend Their LGBTQ Brothers and Sisters — Even Against Archbishops

Margaret Renkl, "How to Defy the Catholic Church: Believers have a spiritual obligation to defend their L.G.B.T.Q. brothers and sisters, even against archbishops":

Despite the archbishop's words [i.e., Archbishop Charles Thompson of Indianapolis addressing his orders to two Catholic schools to fire gay employees], his behavior does look very much like a witch hunt. He has apparently not directed Catholic school officials to fire teachers who practice birth control or divorced teachers who remarry without benefit of a church annulment. In calling for the dismissal of all teachers who fail to exemplify every teaching of the Catholic church, the "categories of people you would need to fire'"would amount to "a huge list," the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at America Magazine, told The Times. Persecuting teachers in same-sex marriages is Archbishop Thompson's specific focus. … 

Catholics today don't hear much about the primacy of an informed conscience because many priests take the position that a conscience at odds with the church is by definition insufficiently informed. But the primacy of an informed conscience belongs as deeply to church tradition as the current brand of pastoral authoritarianism does. It is time for Catholics to remember it again and stand up for their brothers and sisters in same-sex marriages, as Brebeuf Jesuit has done, even if it means defying the teaching of their own imperfect church.

Indianapolis Archbishop Claims Firing of Gay Employees Necessary to Address "Public Situations": My Response

Masha Gessen, "Coming Out, and Rising Up, in the Fifty Years After Stonewall," on the Supreme Court ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)

Associated Press, "Indiana archbishop defends firing of teacher in gay marriage": 

Archbishop Charles Thompson said during a news conference that he didn't seek out information about the marriages involving the teachers but had to respond to what he called a "public situation" of Catholic school employees not following church doctrine.

Caleb Crain: Gay-Panic Defense Began to Be Challenged When Gay People Were Permitted to Write about Anti-Gay Crimes — Implications for the Catholic Media

A seed of change, however, was finally planted in the late nineteen-fifties, when the gay community began to write about such crimes themselves, making visible the complicity of the judicial system and the press in entrenching homophobia.

~ Caleb Crain, "The Theory That Justified Anti-Gay Crime"  

John Gehring on Why Catholic Bishops Need a Year of Abstinence on Preaching about Sexuality

John Gehring, "Why Catholic bishops need a year of abstinence on preaching about sexuality":

WaPo: Indianapolis Diocese Threatens "To Strip Away Catholic Identity" from Schools "That Employ People Who Are Not Heterosexual"

The statement I've underlined from this Washington Post article will be challenged. People will say this is not about punishing schools that hire employees who are not heterosexual. It's about going after gays who don't behave themselves and who publicly dissent from Catholic teaching, they'll maintain.

Owen Jones on Obligation to Confront Trumpism, "A Resurgent Global Far Right" That Is Racist, Xenophobic, Misogynistic, and Homophobic

Holy hell did he snappic.twitter.com/TVWM9ONKGq

— Na'ama 🌈 (@iknowplacesmp6) May 24, 2019

Owen Jones is rapidly becoming a journalistic hero of mine. In the clip above a few days back, after Theresa May shed tears on announcing her intent to step down and the media found those tears the most important thing in the world to talk about for a time, he stated,

"With Nationalists Topping the Polls in Two of Europe's Three Main Founding Nations, It's Hard to See How Any of This Is Worth Celebrating"

The same politicians who claim they are for life fight living wages, want to cut food stamps & don’t want people to have health insurance. There’s a lie going on somewhere. https://t.co/AHgy1kefOH

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) May 28, 2019

It's very foolish for us to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that what is unfolding around us is not actually happening, and that the recent European elections give us reason to breathe a sigh of relief and say that the hard fascist right is not making inroads in very many places in the world now — when this is simply untrue, and this development should intently concern us: