Cooking to Save the Planet: Lenten Fasts and Spinach Lasagna

It's a Friday in Lent, and your Penanometer® is clicking wildly away--"Must do penance! Must fast!--and so what to do? My suggestion: go green. Go for what's green, fresh, available in your local market, and turn all the greenstuff you can find into a savory meatless and exceedingly penitential meal today.

Fr. Paul Surlis: "Lost Hope Has Put the Church in Today's Crisis"

Joseph Ratzinger at Vatican II

Margaret Talbot is not the only one currently writing about the lost opportunity for Catholic reform under pope Benedict XVI. At Consortiumnews, Fr. Paul Surlis, who taught moral theology at St. John's University in New York for many years, discusses "The Catholic Church's Lost Hope." As he notes, the reforms mandated by the second Vatican Council, which provided great hope for many Catholics, were stopped in their tracks by John Paul II and his successor Benedict, and loss of hope produced by this reactionary decision has placed the Catholic church in serious crisis.

Margaret Talbot on a Church Surely "In Some Kind of Trouble": Squandered Opportunities for Catholic Reform

Margaret Talbot puts her finger right on the glaring sore spot in a church that is, as she says, surely "in some kind of trouble" when it can expel a priest faster for advocating women’s ordination than for raping children. As she says, sexual abuse of minors exists in other institutions, but when it comes to the Catholic church, the following stands out:

Fred Clark on T.F. Charlton re: Abuse in Sovereign Grace Ministries Churches, TheraP on Inappropriate Parental Role of Employers Denying Contraception to Employees

Yesterday, I blogged about T.F. Charlton's outstanding essay at Religion Dispatches re: abuse cases in the Sovereign Grace Ministries "family" of churches. Today, I want to draw readers' attention to Fred Clark's valuable commentary on Charlton's essay at his Slacktivist site.

Quote for the Day: Sexual Abuse Rooted in Abuse of Power Reinforced by Silence and Dishonesty

Rev. Giles Fraser

Quote for the day: Giles Fraser at Thinking Anglicans reflects on the implications of the story of Cardinal Keith O'Brien:

"Toxic Teachings on Parenting, Gender, and Sexuality": Roots of Abuse in Sovereign Grace Ministries Churches (with Parallels to Catholic Story)

I highly recommend T.F. Charlton's essay right now at Religion Dispatches, re: the culture of abuse being exposed by lawsuits filed against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM). Charlton grew up in an SGM church. She describes the group as "a U.S.-based church-planting network (they say 'family') of predominantly white, suburban, reformed evangelical congregations." This church-planting network sprang from Covenant Life Church (CLC) of Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is named in the lawsuits filed against SGM. 

Mary Hunt on What Papal Transition Means and What Feminists Can Do About It

At the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) website, theologian Mary Hunt asks why feminists should be concerned with the transition in the Roman Catholic papacy. Her short answer: POWER. The papacy itself is about tremendous power; the transition of the papacy is about power in the balance. And feminists must be concerned about how power is allocated in the world, if they are to achieve their goal of a more just and equitable distribution of power worldwide.