Eduardo Moisés Peñalver on Latest Firing of Gay Catholic Teacher, Mark Zmuda: Continuing Inconsistency in Treatment of Straight and Gay Employees of Catholic Institutions

I appreciate the work that Eduardo Moisés Peñalver has been doing at the Commonweal website to invite Catholics of the comfortable center to think (and talk honestly) about the conspicuous injustice Catholic institutions frequently do to gay employees, as they apply to those employees criteria from which heterosexual employees appear to be exempt. Back in April last year, Peñalver commented on the firing of a gay Catholic teacher then dominating the news--Carla Hale's firing by Bishop Watterson school in Columbus, Ohio--noting, "[T]o be honest, I'm sick of this stuff happening in my name as a Catholic."

Novelist Sue Monk Kidd on Empathy and Seeing World from Bottom Up: Echoes of Pope Francis on Center and Peripheries

Pope Francis has stated (pdf file),

Mary Hunt on What Worries Her about Francis: "Substantive Structural and Doctrinal Issues Do Not Evaporate Just Because the Pope Does Not Wear Prada"

In a new essay at Religion Dispatches, theologian Mary Hunt discusses three puzzles that she's trying to make sense of as she looks at the Francis phenomenon and how Pope Francis is currently being lionized in the media:

National Catholic Reporter Suspends Comments After Weekend of "Vile and Demeaning" Discourse in Some Threads

A brief footnote to my posting last Friday about the "food for worms" response to a eulogy of Father Bob Nugent of New Ways Ministry: 

Rebecca Solnit on the Arc of Justice and the Long Run: "Everyone Has a Genealogy"

Rebecca Solnit's new essay at The Nation about the arc of justice and the long run is illuminating. She writes, 

Pope Francis and the Clerical System: Jerry Slevin on Lay Catholics and Making a Mess, Colleen Baker on Seeing from the Margins and Interpersonal Relationships

Yesterday, I asked about Pope Francis and his reform of the Catholic church: "Will he continue the disastrous decision of his two predecessors to hinge the future of the Catholic church on the maintenance of the clerical system at all cost?" I realize that Francis has said quite a bit that's critical of clericalism.

Another Prediction for 2014: Talk of the Dying of Catholicism Even as Lay-Led Catholic Movements Flourish

Another prediction I'd be willing to go out onto a limb and make as the new year begins: we will be hearing more in this year about the death of the Catholic church in this culture and that culture--though counter-indicators in many of these cultures will indicate that Catholicism is alive and well within the culture. But the Catholicism that is flourishing in these cultures is often a new (and simultaneously old) expression of the Catholic tradition.