Giles Fraser: "A Church Is at Its Best When It Fails, When It Gives Up on All the Ecclesiastical Glitter, When the Weeds Start to Break Through the Floor"

Giles Fraser in The Guardian on how Christianity is, in its most central affirmations, all about the failure of a man condemned to a humiliating death as a common criminal, who died virtually alone after his followers abandoned him. Christianity is all about empty tombs and weeds breaking through church floors:

The Abuse Crisis and the Church's Empty Tomb: Statements by Anne Barrett Doyle and Peter Isely

On this Holy Saturday, a statement by Anne Barrett Doyle of Bishop Accountability to add to the ones about the revolt in the Chilean church over the episcopal appointment of Juan Barros that I cited on Thursday: 

Easter Weekend Poem: All Creatures Dream Alive

Good Friday Meditation: Hearing the Gospel from Lips of a Gay Buddhist Actor (But Not from the Leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church)

Some Good Friday meditation points for you, from a Buddhist who happens to be gay. The graphic above is from MSNBC's Facebook feed, pointing to a statement George Takei published several days ago about the hateful no-cake-for-queers laws popping up all over the U.S. of late, to assure that LGBT citizens of the U.S. remain in no doubt that they are not welcome or wanted in many parts of the nation — not wanted specifically by people who claim Jesus as their lord and savior. Takei states,

As Culture-War Battle Against Gay Rights Is Being Lost, American Catholic Leaders Now Want "Respectful Dialogue": Religious Leaders on Wrong Side of History

Here's how it seems to me: in the past several weeks, American culture has just begun to turn a very important corner. An important national conversation is now underway about whether LGBT human beings deserve to be despised, excluded, and discriminated against in the name of religious conviction. We're far from there yet. For the first time ever, many Americans are becoming aware that a large percentage of states have no protections against discrimination in place for LGBT citizens. But for the first time in my memory (and I'm now 65 years old, or did you know that?), there's a national-level conversation about this issue, with strong, visible, national buy-in for the conviction that religion used to attack and discriminate against people on grounds of sexual orientation is religion spectacularly abused.

Continued Discussion of Revolt in Chilean Catholic Church: Pope's Refusal to Reassess Appointment of Juan Barros Endangers Reputation as Reformer

As a follow-up to the previous items I've posted (here and here) on the revolt in the Chilean Catholic church after Pope Francis chose to ignore the pleas of many Catholics that he not appoint Juan Barros  bishop of Osorno, Chile, when survivors of abuse report that Barros helped cover up the sex crimes of Father Fernando Karadima, some excerpts from recent articles worth reading:

The Arkansas Anti-Gay "Religious Freedom" Legislation: My Update from the Ground