Over the past few decades, sexual abuse survivors, whistleblowers, and journalists have exposed a horrific pattern of sex abuse and cover up in the Roman Catholic Church. As a Catholic millennial, I have never known a church unmarked by the abuse crisis. In the bathrooms at my Catholic high school and my small Midwestern parish, I distinctly remember posters detailing who I should call if I was abused or assaulted by an authority figure. Last year, the Pennsylvania grand jury report and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick revelations made my generation aware of this crisis in a renewed way. Too often, in responses, the voices of survivors themselves are too often lost.
I recently had the opportunity to discuss the current state of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis with Tim Lennon, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. Lennon is the president of the board of directors of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a nonprofit support network for survivors of sexual abuse by religious and institutional authorities.
It is said that politicians must campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Presidents, perhaps more than any other national figures, must tell the nation a story about itself — of its heroes and villains, of its problems and their causes, of its promise and future.
The former First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, recently published Becoming, a remarkable memoir that is the best-selling book of the season. I greatly enjoyed the book, but I admit that I am very troubled by her description of Jeremiah Wright as a wild-eyed, out of touch extremist who is “paranoid” and “careening through callous and inappropriate rage … at white America.” I don’t question the sincerity of her opinion, but as a long-time friend and admirer of Wright, I see him quite differently.
This week, conservative pundit Laura Ingraham announced that President Donald Trump would be hosting the young men from Covington Catholic who attended the March for Life, where they got into an altercation with participants in the Indigenous People’s March. It’s unclear whether the administration has extended an invite, but Trump has taken to Twitter to voice his support for the young men. He’s also made clear over the course of his presidency and campaign his disregard for the voices of Indigenous people — whether by slashing the size of Bears Ears National Monument, greenlighting pipelines that impact Native lands, or using racist and derogatory terms to instigate fights with Sen. Elizabeth Warren over claims to Native heritage.
If it needs doing, will it
if it needs dying, kill it
Don’t spend more time disclaiming than proclaiming
Do the work and let the work speak for itself.
If you can, say yes. If you can’t, say no, and make sure your WHY can stand before God
In the cliffs high above the Dead Sea archaeologists chip away with pick axes, hoping to repeat one of the most sensational discoveries of the last hundred years - the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The scrolls, a collection of manuscripts, some more than 2,000 years old, were first found in 1947 by local Bedouin in the area of Qumran, about 20 km east of Jerusalem.
They gave insight into Jewish society and religion before and after the time of Jesus, and spurred a decade of exploration, before the search fizzled.
Recent finds have stirred fresh excitement however, and archaeologists are probing higher and deeper than before. Hundreds of caves remain unexcavated and the experts are racing against antiquities robbers.
The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily closed the door on President Donald Trump's effort to end protections for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants with the justices again silent on Tuesday on three related appeals.
With the lower court’s ruling against the administration and the high court not yet taking action, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program remains in place for now, essentially maintaining the status quo for current DACA recipients. DACA protects about 700,000 immigrants, often called "Dreamers" based on the name of the Dream Act legislation that failed to pass Congress, from deportation and provides them work permits, though not a path to citizenship.
As technology continues to evolve, it is rapidly outpacing the standard ethical frameworks by which we normally approach new developments. The nucleus of technology and sexuality, which was situated around questions of porn, has been forced to answer new questions, grappling not only with what is right and wrong, but why. With the rise of new, impending sexual technology, the church must learn how to speak into this realm.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday let President Donald Trump enforce his policy barring certain transgender people from joining or staying in the military as the justices put on hold lower court rulings blocking the plan on constitutional grounds.
The focus of the confrontation between Phillips and Nick Sandmann remained caught in the news, and people immediately raced the well-worn paths to their ideological camps. But missing from the narrative — and certainly from the new counter-narrative — are the Indigenous voices that have been silenced or villainized by the rise and power of white supremacy in America.