The Marriage Equality Situation in Arkansas, An Update: Rallies, Editorials Full of Flying Fur, Duelling Bible Verses, the Whole Shebang

So it occurs to me to update you all about what has been going on in Arkansas since our supremes stayed marriage equality. Shortly after the stay, this happened. 

Andrew Sullivan on Mass Grave of Irish Babies Born to "Fallen Women": "That Is Not a Sign of a Church Gone Astray. It's a Sign of a Church Given Over to Evil"

Andrew Sullivan looks at the discovery of the bodies of 800 babies in a mass grave (they were stuffed inside a septic tank) behind a home for "fallen women" run by the Sisters of Bon Secours in Tuam, Ireland, and asks why such a kerfuffle ensued when the U.N. Rapporteur on Torture tried to indict the Vatican for "crimes against humanity" because of its cover-up of the mass rape and abuse of children. As he notes, what can possibly describe the story now emerging from Tuam except the term "crime against humanity"?

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: GM Ignition Switches, Church Leaders Who Cover Up Abuse of Minors, and How Silence Kills

In a recent op-ed for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, clergy abuse survivor Mark Crawford asks how it can be that the federal government can take action (after years of looking the other way) against GM for hiding information about a defective switch that placed people's lives at risk, while it cannot muster the will to act when powerful religious (and other) institutions endanger children and employ lies and silence to protect themselves. Crawford writes,

Pope Francis Announces He'll Meet with Abuse Survivors; Colleen Baker on "Keeping the Laity Religiously Infantilized and Dependent on the Clergy"

At Enlightened Catholicism, Colleen Baker sees the story of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church as the story that keeps "changing spots," which is "still the most important story hanging over the Church." In her view, the story won't go away (and changes its spots every time a new challenge surfaces) "because the Vatican is terrified of its real solution and that solution is completely revamping the theology of the priesthood."

Cardinal Dolan's Recent Paean to Free-Market Capitalism Ghost-Authored by Former Reagan Administration Official Larry Kudlow

At Religion Dispatches, Patricia Miller writes, 

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Double Canonization Doesn't Lead to Recognizing Diversity but to Neutralizing Both Options"

The following snippet is from a statement issued by the Spanish Asociación de Teólogas y Teólogos Juan XXIII at the end of May, re: the double canonizations of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. At the Iglesia Descalza site, Rebel Girl has helpfully provided an English translation:

Ta-Nehisi Coates's Case for Reparations: Do We Really Want to Know about the Experience of African Americans (or of Women) in the U.S.?

John Stewart cleverly suggests that we don't want to know the truth — not about the recent Isla Vista shootings and the deep roots of misogyny that constantly fuel violence in American culture. The "we" on whom Stewart is focusing in the clip to which this link points is largely the mainstream media with its big talking heads, who have now so thoroughly befouled all conversations about mass shootings in this country that "we" have ended up throwing up our hands in defeat and concluding, "Well, these things do happen, don't they?"