America Editor Mischaracterizes Bishops' Recent Involvement in Public Square: My Response

And, as a gloss on what I've just posted about the involvement of Archbishop Timothy Dolan in what's taking place in Albany, New York, right now: someone needs to help educate America magazine editor Karen Sue Smith about how Dolan and other Catholic bishops do their business in the public sphere of American democracy.  For someone who holds such a prestigious position and speaks on behalf of a distinguished American Catholic journal, Smith seems to be woefully ill-informed about how the U.S. Catholic bishops have been doing business in the public square, as they try to block and remove civil rights from a targeted minority.

Marriage Equality Debate, Nature, and Reason: Historical Perspectives

One of the primary props of those arguing against marriage equality in the U.S. today is the constantly advanced argument that the "natural order" established by God dictates that marriage must be between a man and a woman, and tampering with that natural order will throw everything in the society that disregards natural order into chaos.  A corollary of this argument is that we know this "natural order" not only by divine revelation, but by reason, as well.

Turmoil in Kansas City, after Bishop Finn Hides Pedophile Priest: Finn's Response? Latin Mass

And so guess what song and dance Bishop Robert Finn and his supporters are cooking up now to juju the restless laity of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Catholic diocese and divert attention from Bishop Finn's choice to shield a pedophile priest?  Last weekend, it was a public procession with jangling rosaries, Latin chants, girls in long skirts and lacy mantillas, and Our Lady of Fatima sweeping majestically by on a platform.  

Summer Solstice: Still Bonfires to Jump (for Some of Us)

But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society (Thoreau, Walden, “The Village”).

Today's the summer solstice, the feast of St. John in the traditional Christian liturgical calendar.  The solstice and memories it evokes of the celebrations we used to see in our years in south Louisiana--bonfires lit along the levees of the Mississippi on St. John's night--have had me thinking all day long about the ancient pre-Christian roots of this Christian feast.  And of the similar bonfires we've seen being prepared in parts of Europe, including the small Bavarian village in the Oberpfalz from which Steve's maternal ancestors came and in which some of his cousins still live, when we happened to be traveling on St. John's day.

Academy of American Poets Celebrates Gay Pride

In celebration of gay pride, the Academy of American Poets' Poetry.org website offers a webpage full of rich resources for reading about the lives of gay poets, as well as reading poems about love written by LGBT poets.  Unimaginable, in my childhood or even young manhood, to come across such riches as these for gay human beings and those who want to understand the experience of gay persons, openly displayed by such a prestigious group.

We have come a long way towards humanity.  We still have far, far to go.

A Reader Writes: How Do We Tell When Pastoral Relationships Are Exploitative?

In response to what I posted yesterday about David Clohessy's press statement calling on the Minnesota bishops to denounce the attempt of Fr. Christopher Wenthe to undermine Minnesota laws prohibiting inappropriate behavior of pastors with those in their pastoral care, Gbullough, a good reader of this blog wrote, 

David Clohessy Issues SNAP Press Statement on Wenthe Case: Laws Apply to the Church, Too

In a response to a comment at the thread that has developed with my posting earlier today about the lawsuit of Fr. Thomas Wenthe in St. Paul, Minnesota, challenging the constitutionality of the Minnesota law governing inappropriate behavior of pastors with those under pastoral care, I mention that David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, had issued a press statement about the Wenthe case earlier today.  I have been watching for this statement to appear on SNAP's website, but haven't seen it pop up there yet.  When it does, I'll provide a link to the statement.

(Here it is.)