http://www.realclearreligion.org/ en Copyright 2008 Wed, 22 May 2013 09:30:54 -0400 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.33 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss In the wake of the Tsarnaev brothers' attack on Boston, much was made of the importance of interfaith dialogue. Eboo Patel, founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), has admitted that interfaith programs can't perform miracles, but he insists they still matter. Earlier this month, I caught up with Patel in his Chicago office (with a gorgeous view of the Chicago river) to find out what interfaith programs actually look like and why pluralism is an exceptionally American idea. RealClearReligion: What is the Interfaith Youth Core? Eboo Patel: We want to make... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/22/eboo_patel_the_realclearreligion_interview.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/22/eboo_patel_the_realclearreligion_interview.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/05 05/22/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 22 May 2013 09:30:47 -0400 Let's talk about religion in the latest Star Trek movie: There isn't any. I know that some longtime fans complain about non-conforming details in J.J. Abrams's reboot of the original series. The hormones of human-Vulcan hybrids, for instance, apparently operate more on a human clock (no ponn farr). And the Federation seemed a bit more gun-happy even in the first Abrams movie than in Gene Roddenberry's original vision. But there are lots of ways where Abrams has toed the line. Religion is surely one of those. Mild spoiler alert: I'll not give away much more than... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/21/trekking_without_god.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/21/trekking_without_god.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/05 05/21/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 21 May 2013 00:28:27 -0400 Boston College's seniors graduate today without the traditional blessing of their Archbishop, Cardinal Sean O'Malley. That's because the college chose scandal over solidarity by inviting a politician who flouts Catholic Church teaching to be its commencement speaker. The college invited Enda Kenny, the Prime Minister of Ireland, to speak to graduates. Mr. Kenny is currently pushing an abortion law in Ireland, one of the few fully pro-life countries left in the world. And he is the same man who had his foreign minister close down Ireland's embassy to the Holy See and tried... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/20/why_cardinal_omalley_is_staying_home.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/20/why_cardinal_omalley_is_staying_home.html Ashley McGuire Ashley McGuire 2013/05 05/20/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 20 May 2013 13:14:09 -0400 What on earth might a deracinated evangelical be? The simplest way to answer that question would be to point to any evangelical who looked up deracinated to see if it might be latent form of hate speech -- that's deracinated. The hallmark of an evangelical used to be confidence -- confidence in the Bible, confidence in the message that Scripture entrusted to us, confidence in the reality of the new birth, and confidence in Jesus. Today all such confidence is denounced as triumphalism, or at best is worried over as a suspicious and unbecoming display of epistemic pride. This is because... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/20/fundamentalists_without_a_fundament.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/20/fundamentalists_without_a_fundament.html Douglas Wilson Douglas Wilson 2013/05 05/20/2013/00/00/00 Sun, 19 May 2013 14:49:40 -0400 For decades now, the Roman Catholic Church has been alarmed at the rise of new religions worldwide, particularly evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals, which threaten to draw tens of millions away from older Catholic loyalties. Recently in Rome, the German Bishops' Conference organized a high profile conference on how the church can respond to this potential threat. (Full disclosure: I was of the presenters). At this gathering, like so many others, scholars asked questions that have been familiar since Max Weber founded the scientific study of religion over a century ago: just why... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/18/why_catholics_stay.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/18/why_catholics_stay.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/05 05/18/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 18 May 2013 00:14:26 -0400 In one of the climactic scenes in the movie The Godfather, there's a quick set of cuts between violent murders and a Catholic christening. Mafiosi wives and mothers look on while their men's foul deeds play out elsewhere. At other points in the film, the wives of killers light their candles in church and pray. Do we think: "What awful women?" Or maybe "what an awful religion?" Likely not. Try this for a plotline: A woman is born to wealth and spends her early years in the meaningless pursuit of social status. Suddenly, she discovers a deep faith and piety and... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/17/leave_mrs_tsarnaev_alone.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/17/leave_mrs_tsarnaev_alone.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/05 05/17/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 17 May 2013 11:32:37 -0400 Open homosexuality in Catholic Boy Scout troops? Don't count on it. Next week, delegates from the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America will gather in Grapevine, Texas to vote on whether to change the long-standing membership policy against "open and avowed" homosexuality on the part of youth members of the Boy Scouts. On Wednesday the National Catholic Committee on Scouting (NCCS) released a statement about the upcoming vote that outlines some important principles for Catholic delegates to consider. First is the principle that those inclined toward homosexuality must... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/17/catholic_scouts_wont_go_gay.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/17/catholic_scouts_wont_go_gay.html Cathy Ruse Cathy Ruse 2013/05 05/17/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 16 May 2013 18:42:52 -0400 Liberals are particularly adept at telling the rest of us that the time has passed for our traditional beliefs, especially on the political social issues. They demand that we abandon those beliefs or be left to wither on "the wrong side of history." Nowhere is this more prevalent than when advancing their pro-abortion agenda. Last year I wrote that radical liberals would rather see women die of breast cancer than allow the Susan G. Komen Foundation to defund Planned Parenthood. When Komen relented under tremendous public pressure, the Planned Parenthood-NARAL-NOW triumvirate and... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/14/kermit_gosnells_tyranny.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/14/kermit_gosnells_tyranny.html Patrick Hughes Patrick Hughes 2013/05 05/14/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 14 May 2013 00:12:21 -0400 Civilizations believe things. If they didn't believe things, they couldn't be civilizations. Nothing ever gets built, whether pyramid or skyscraper, if everybody is just wandering around in aimless little circles muttering that whatever they think is simply their opinion, which of course could be wrong. That kind of behavior does go on, of course, but only when a civilization is down to its fin de siecling of the drain. That's how they fall apart, not how they get built. Now if these civilizations are very conceited, or if they don't get out much, they frequently may not... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/13/secularists_with_bible_tinsel.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/13/secularists_with_bible_tinsel.html Douglas Wilson Douglas Wilson 2013/05 05/13/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 13 May 2013 12:15:12 -0400 Language speaks us. Much as I hate quoting that post-modern cliché, it captures the truth that certain words and phrases become so deeply inlaid in our everyday conversation that we are scarcely able to realize their ideological slant. As a prime example, I offer the wave of investigations that the United States and other countries undertook into Communist subversion and espionage in the Cold War years. Well, that description is a little wordy, so let's just use the convenient short-hand that has become so standard: the McCarthy witch hunts. It's concise, it's... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/10/joe_mccarthy_was_no_witch_hunter.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/10/joe_mccarthy_was_no_witch_hunter.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/05 05/10/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 09 May 2013 20:42:39 -0400 Pope Francis keeps doing Franciscan things. And however gently he rotates the apple cart, the bouncing fruit makes noise. Last week, he kicked up sand with, of all things, a tweet: "My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost." Which got him tarred as a wooly-headed socialist or worse by some in the Twitterverse. NBCnews.com quoted this: "And John MacDonald, managing director at the JMAGroup accounting firm in Oakville, Ontario, shot back: 'blah blah blah... it's always the capitalist....what about... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/09/rooting_for_francis.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/09/rooting_for_francis.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/05 05/09/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 08 May 2013 22:22:20 -0400 When the Catholic Press Association named Michael Sean Winters's National Catholic Reporter blog as last year's "Best Online Blog," it gushed that the author's writing is "impressive," "very lively," and "demonstrates consideration for a broad range of opinions." Has the Association actually read anything by Michael Sean Winters? I'm skeptical. A cursory review of Mr. Winters's posts reveals him to be a habitual name-caller. Papal biographer and theologian George Weigel is "noxious." Bishop Thomas Paprocki is... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/08/michael_sean_winters_snakebit_scribe.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/08/michael_sean_winters_snakebit_scribe.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/05 05/08/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 07 May 2013 22:55:49 -0400 One of the most significant fault lines in Western culture opened up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when what we now know as the "modern" world separated itself from the classical and medieval world. The thinking of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Newton, Jefferson, and many others represented a sea change in the way Western people looked at practically everything. In almost every telling of the story, this development is presented as an unmitigated good. I rather emphatically do not subscribe to this interpretation. It would be foolish indeed not to see that... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/07/modernity_is_boring.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/07/modernity_is_boring.html Robert Barron Robert Barron 2013/05 05/07/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 06 May 2013 16:31:47 -0400 In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, some members of the Tsarnaev family resolutely refused to accept the charges against the two brothers, and hinted at dark official conspiracies. I know exactly why they are so suspicious. Please understand, I do not personally accept any allegations of official conspiracy in this affair. In my view, law enforcement agencies acted as bravely and efficiently as they possibly could against two truly dangerous terrorists. But here's the problem. Over the past twenty years, the independence struggle of the Chechens and neighboring peoples of the North... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/01/tsarnaev_conspiracy_central.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/01/tsarnaev_conspiracy_central.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/05 05/01/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:49:53 -0400 The accusation is most often hurled from the right side of the political spectrum at the left, sometimes with full justification: Too many Americans have become wannabe victims, quick to claim any criticism as an attack. But in the past week, I spotted two examples of putative conservatives crying wolf. And both examples have religious overtones. Start with a column on the conservative CatholicCulture.org website, by site editor Phil Lawler. He's complaining that, in the moments immediately after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, priests were turned away. Here's a nugget: Doctors... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/01/wannabe_christian_victims.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/05/01/wannabe_christian_victims.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/05 05/01/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:33:26 -0400 When Pope Benedict XVI met with Catholic educators at the Catholic University of America in 2008, he reminded them that the Catholic identity of their schools "is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction." Nearly five years to the date, I spoke with the President and CEO of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities about that conviction and the campus controversies it may bring. RealClearReligion: What does the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities do? Michael Galligan-Stierle: The Association of Catholic... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/30/michael_galligan-stierle_the_realclearreligion_interview.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/30/michael_galligan-stierle_the_realclearreligion_interview.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/04 04/30/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:43:34 -0400 The proper configuration of immigration law is clearly a matter on which Catholics can disagree. But one would never know that from the recent pronouncements of the United States bishops. What they call on their web page the "Catholic Church's position on Immigration Reform" is not orthodox teaching but tired left-wing clericalism. Blurring the line between real Church teaching and personal political opinions disguised as Church teaching undermines both orthodoxy and unity. But clericalist bishops don't seem to care. They like that blurred line, as it allows them to play... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/29/render_unto_bishops.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/29/render_unto_bishops.html George Neumayr George Neumayr 2013/04 04/29/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 29 Apr 2013 01:30:23 -0400 Yes, by definition, we in East Watertown were terrified last week. Many of us awoke in the middle of the night to gunfire and explosions; and we received calls and texts alerting us that the Boston Marathon Bomber was loose in our neighborhood. Some of us sobbed in the dark of our houses through the long unsettling night, startled by every creak and murmur, amazed at how slowly time could creep. When, in the dawn mist, SWAT teams surrounded our houses, scouring under our porches and in our garages, searching attics and closets, most of us huddled together with our families in shock; others... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/27/terrified_but_not_terrorized.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/27/terrified_but_not_terrorized.html Ananda Rose Ananda Rose 2013/04 04/27/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:34:15 -0400 The collaboration between the world's foremost nuclear proliferators appears to be accelerating. In September 2012, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea signed a bilateral scientific and technological agreement opening the way for nuclear as well as missile technology collaboration. In February 2013, North Korea tested, no doubt with Iranian scientists observing, a nuclear device which U.S. experts suspect may be based upon highly enriched uranium. A report just surfaced in Washington that North Korea may have acquired the capability to... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/26/give_democracy_a_chance.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/26/give_democracy_a_chance.html Amir Fakhravar and G. William Heiser Amir Fakhravar and G. William Heiser 2013/04 04/26/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:21:45 -0400 Were the Boston bombers Muslims? On the one hand, that appears to be an increasingly easy question to answer. Their family was Muslim. The Tsarnaev brothers were seen at mosques. Investigators are saying that they were "motivated by religion." Case closed? The other hand is being waved by Muslims. From a CNN report: "I don't care who or what these criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize these criminals as part of my city or my faith community," said Yusufi Vali, executive director for the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the largest mosque in the... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/23/the_tsarnaev_excommunication.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/23/the_tsarnaev_excommunication.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/04 04/23/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:08:20 -0400 Although there are plenty of candidates for this title, the most pernicious item that has ever appeared on the Internet may be Inspire, the online English-language magazine circulated by al Qaeda. Part of its goal is to instruct individual would-be jihadis how to cause the maximum carnage without access to modern arms or explosives. Why not just drive a car into a crowd of infidels? Or build a bomb from a simple pressure cooker? And as the British Daily Telegraph was the first to point out, the bomb design offered by the magazine was precisely that adopted by the Tsarnaev brothers in their... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/22/a_tsarnaev_house_divided.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/22/a_tsarnaev_house_divided.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/04 04/22/2013/00/00/00 Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:35:26 -0400 Today commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the Waco firestorm of 1993, and no doubt we will hear a good deal about religious fanaticism, and over-reach by law enforcement. In order to understand the disaster, though, we have to recall another context only tangentially connected with religious matters. The Waco siege was an accidental blowback from an American terrorist crisis that has now largely faded into oblivion. At first sight, terrorism may seem to have little to do with the Waco story. The group involved, the Branch Davidians, originated in the 1920s as a breakaway from the... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/19/the_waco_diaries.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/19/the_waco_diaries.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/04 04/19/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:49:29 -0400 When the National Catholic Reporter's senior correspondent John L. Allen, Jr. was called upon to put a question to Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, the Vatican press officer said: "Holy Father, this man needs no introduction." I caught up with Mr. Allen yesterday when he spoke at DePaul University in Chicago as a part of its Center for World Catholicism's World Catholicism Week. We discussed the new Pope, why he thinks appointing a Protestant as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See would be just fine, and what makes him nervous. RealClearReligion: Time magazine referred to you as... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/16/john_allen_the_realclearreligion_interview.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/16/john_allen_the_realclearreligion_interview.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/04 04/16/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:09:55 -0400 As we approach 2014, we can expect a barrage of commemorations of the centennial of the First World War, a transforming event in human history. No less assuredly, certain stereotypes and myths are going to surface repeatedly, and wearyingly. Among these is the myth of the Clear Blue Sky. You've seen it in endless films and Masterpiece Theaters, in Downton Abbey, and in Upstairs Downstairs before that. The world of 1914, we are told, is a country house idyll, the Indian Summer of Edwardian England, and none of the characters is too alarmed when someone reads about an archduke being... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/09/apocalypse_1913.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/09/apocalypse_1913.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/04 04/09/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:04:16 -0400 It was one of those moments when the veil between this world and the next becomes a bit thinner, sitting in a Pei Wei chomping my Asian Chopped Chicken Salad, hold the chicken and wonton strips. In a conversation where I was expected to have the answers, a friend said something about his preschool-aged girls that dropped into place a long-missing puzzle piece about Christian spiritual practices. "I've been thinking," he said, "My girls may love Jesus more now than they ever will. Why withhold Baptism and the Eucharist from them when their trust is so complete and their... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/08/let_the_children_come.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/08/let_the_children_come.html Kenneth Tanner Kenneth Tanner 2013/04 04/08/2013/00/00/00 Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:28:43 -0400 I spent part of my Easter Sunday with members of what may be the most persecuted and reviled religious minority in America: The annual convention of the American Atheists. I don't mean that description as ironic. People who are certain there is no God are operating, ultimately, as much on faith as any other religious system. Prove a negative? And with the possible exception of Muslims, I can think of no faith-related group that paddles so upstream in America as the aggressive nonbelievers who belong to this particular organization. Even in a nation where "none of the above" has... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/03/easter_with_atheists.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/03/easter_with_atheists.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/04 04/03/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:20:53 -0400 The recent papal election has reminded us just how truly global the Roman Catholic church is, and how that institution carries on flourishing and growing despite so many seemingly ruinous problems. In trying to explain that durability, I turn to an odd source, namely the Victorian English writer Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859). Little of his vast literary output is much read today, but one piece in particular demands to be remembered for its brilliant observations about the nature of religion, and the reasons why some forms of faith succeed while others fade and die.... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/01/macaulays_catholic_dissidents.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/04/01/macaulays_catholic_dissidents.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/04 04/01/2013/00/00/00 Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:53:53 -0400 I saw a piece the other day about the ever-ongoing debate about the legal status of abortion that quoted a statement issued earlier this year by Texas Governor Rick Perry: "Last session the governor signed a law requiring physicians to perform a sonogram before performing an abortion, ensuring women deserve to all the information before making such a life-ending decision." Yeah, that seems to be a little garbled. "Gov. Oops" and all that. But it's exactly what it says on his website. And despite the tossed-word salad, it clearly includes a phrase I've seen used... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/27/rick_perrys_pious_hypocrisy.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/27/rick_perrys_pious_hypocrisy.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/03 03/27/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:12:49 -0400 Like many people, I'm a longtime fan of CBS's 60 Minutes. But even Homer nods, and this past weekend's piece on the dispute between the largest organization of American Catholic sisters vs. the Vatican reeked of needless bias. To be clear: I've got no particular rooting interest in either side of the argument and I'm not close to being able to parse which side is right in any absolute sense. But the job of objective journalism, even investigative journalism, is to lay out the facts and even suggest conclusions -- without tipping the scales beyond where the facts... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/20/60_minutess_inquisition.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/20/60_minutess_inquisition.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/03 03/20/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:48:28 -0400 When the cardinals of the Roman Catholic church considered the qualifications of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to serve as Pope, they found much to admire: his leadership experience, his intellect, his passionate but nuanced views on social justice issues. I doubt if they paid much attention to what might actually prove to be one of his most valuable attributes. Unlike many other candidates, the new Pope Francis actually has lived in a multi-religious society, and one that has long faced many of the issues that are becoming so pressing, in Europe especially. The choice of Cardinal Bergoglio has... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/19/muslims_have_a_friend_in_francis.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/19/muslims_have_a_friend_in_francis.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/03 03/19/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 19 Mar 2013 01:01:37 -0400 Having written my first book on the papacy in light of Eastern Orthodox thought, it was a point of small, admittedly geeky, pride that I seem to have been one of few people -- amidst the crushing mass of commentar -- to have picked up a hugely significant phrase used by the new pope. In his second paragraph from the loggia last Wednesday, Pope Francis quietly and without explicit reference quoted one of the oldest phrases extant to describe the Church of Rome as being the one "which presides in charity over all the Churches." This phrase goes back to Ignatius of Antioch, one of the... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/19/reading_the_franciscan_tea_leaves.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/19/reading_the_franciscan_tea_leaves.html Adam DeVille Adam DeVille 2013/03 03/19/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:09:44 -0400 Among the many millions who celebrate Irishness every March 17, scarcely any wonder for a second whether there is any historical substance to the figure of St. Patrick, any more than to a host of other medieval wonderworkers. Treating such a tale as serious history, they assume, makes about as much sense as writing a critical biography of the Easter Bunny. Sadly, such indifference means that moderns are missing a story that is not just rock-solid history, but is one of the most moving in early Christianity. Normally, reconstructing the life of an early saint means picking through wildly... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/16/raging_on_st_patricks_day.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/16/raging_on_st_patricks_day.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/03 03/16/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:28:02 -0400 We know from his autobiography that President Barack Obama likes to think of himself as audacious, but this takes the cake. On the morning of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio's ascension to the papacy, Obama told George Stephanopoulos that he thought an American pope would govern just fine and refused to believe that such a pope might listen to him. "I don't know if you've checked lately," he laughed, "but the conference of Catholic bishops here in the United States don't seem to be takin' orders from me." We can leave aside for a moment the... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/15/barack_obamas_black_smoke.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/15/barack_obamas_black_smoke.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/03 03/15/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:17:59 -0400 There are a handful of Americans for whom the protections of political correctness or common decency still don't apply: fat people, smokers, and Catholics. In 21st Century America, it's perfectly acceptable to relentlessly mock all three groups without fear of being labeled a bigot. This cultural double standard was on its fullest, most egregious display during the media's coverage of the Papal Conclave. Let's first make something perfectly clear: I'm not Catholic. I have major theological and ideological disagreements with the Catholic Church, and I always have been... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/15/open_season_on_catholics.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/15/open_season_on_catholics.html Alex Berezow Alex Berezow 2013/03 03/15/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:50:08 -0400 If your knowledge of St. Francis of Assisi is limited to garden statuary, you probably think the name chosen by the new pope is no more than friendly. But religious historians take the name "Francis" as something pretty radical. Imagine a U.S. President a few centuries hence deciding for some reason to take on the name of Ron Paul or Ralph Nader. Francis of Assisi might have been that level of odd for his era. The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina broke deeply with tradition this week with his choice of papal name. The last pope to pick a name that had never been... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/14/whats_in_the_name_francis.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/14/whats_in_the_name_francis.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/03 03/14/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:24:39 -0400 As a former president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States and an expert in all things Latino theology, Peter Casarella's phone won't stop ringing -- for good reason. Rome has a new Bishop in Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, hailing from Argentina. Dr. Casarella is a professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, and in 2008, was named founding director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology. I spoke with him about the new Pope, Argentine liberation theology, and what to expect on World Youth... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/14/peter_casarella_the_realclearreligion_interview.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/14/peter_casarella_the_realclearreligion_interview.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/03 03/14/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:17:35 -0400 As the 115 Cardinal electors vote in the seclusion of the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pontiff, the unbridled speculation about Pope Benedict XVI's successor will only escalate. The guessing game is an amusing but irrelevant ritual, for as the ancient Roman dictum goes, "He who enters the conclave a pope, leaves a cardinal." History, for the most part, gives truth to that maxim. Few guessed that in 1958, the genial but elderly diplomat Angelo Cardinal Roncalli would emerge as Pope John XXIII or that twenty years later the humble and obscure patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani,... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/13/we_need_another_john_paul_i.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/13/we_need_another_john_paul_i.html Mo Guernon Mo Guernon 2013/03 03/13/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:28:56 -0400 If you watched any television circa 1997, you should know Roma Downey. Roma graced millions of television sets every week as the angel Monica in the popular Touched By an Angel series. Last week, she and her husband, Mark Burnett of Survivor fame, returned to your living rooms in the History Network's new docudrama, The Bible. Roma and I recently spoke about their highly-rated series and their proposed Bible mandate. RealClearReligion: Why the Bible? Why now? Roma Downey: Why not? No one has ever done a series on the whole Bible -- individual stories have been told, but not as a whole.... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/12/roma_downey_the_realclearreligion_interview.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/12/roma_downey_the_realclearreligion_interview.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/03 03/12/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:54:56 -0400 If my experience in small town USA is at all representative, American Protestants are intensely curious about the closed-door proceedings that start in Rome today. Cardinals from all over the world will start the process of electing a new pope and people have questions about that. How do the elections work? Who is eligible to be pope? What will Pope Benedict XVI do now? Is there a frontrunner? And, most intriguingly: What happens if you get a bad pope? Leave it to Protestants to ask the question experts in all things Catholic are only tiptoeing around. Phil Lawler, about as straight a shooter... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/12/what_if_you_get_a_bad_pope_106665.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/12/what_if_you_get_a_bad_pope_106665.html Jeremy Lott Jeremy Lott 2013/03 03/12/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:38:11 -0400 My dear Wormwood, It is good to speak with you again after so many years. Much has happened since 1941. We are winning. The battle for Europe has been won but America remains the prize. "Belief" is in decline. I note with satisfaction that now twenty percent of the American people are now non-believers or have no religious affiliation. The population is in favor of normalizing gay marriage, but abortion is a more difficult task. We are capturing the language, which as I have told you before is His weakness. The people live busy lives and will use short cuts in thinking about... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/12/dear_wormwood_we_are_winning.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/12/dear_wormwood_we_are_winning.html Jeff Pantages Jeff Pantages 2013/03 03/12/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:27:43 -0500 I feel sorry for most of the reporters who have thronged to Rome this week. I've seen estimates that as many as 4,000 are there to "cover" the selection of a new pope. The truth is that, for about 99 percent of them, they're a hunting pack with hardly a prayer of finding prey. Whatever importance there is in the choice of the man who will follow Benedict XVI is a story that can best be explored far from St. Peter's Square. And yet, even in these budget-strained times, many media companies want to have somebody there for every puff of pope-ballot smoke. I feel their... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/09/invasion_of_the_poperazzi.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/09/invasion_of_the_poperazzi.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/03 03/09/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:46:41 -0500 Let me begin with a necessary admission of ignorance: I have no earthly idea who will be crowned the next pope sometime next week. But then, most of the experts who are providing commentary about the closed-door, burnt-ballot papal elections that begin in the Sistine Chapel next Monday, don't either. Not a few of the men who emerged as pope caught the world largely unawares. John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years. The Polish pontiff's shock election was made possible because his predecessor died after only a little over a month in the Vatican. When John Paul I... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/please_god_not_an_american_pope_106661.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/please_god_not_an_american_pope_106661.html Jeremy Lott Jeremy Lott 2013/03 03/08/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:38:03 -0500 After a three hour flight, we were wheels down in Salt Lake City. In town for work, it wasn't a destination I normally would have chosen for a vacation. I really didn't know what to expect. I had recently seen the Book of Mormon musical, so my perspective was a bit like South Park. Even in the months running up to the presidential election, I learned less about what Mormons actually believed and more about whether it mattered for the Republicans. Was polygamy still kosher? If so, were any of Mitt Romney's five sons looking for an extra mate (wink, wink)? I was clueless. The... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/stuck_in_a_missionary_position.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/stuck_in_a_missionary_position.html Stephanie Auditore Stephanie Auditore 2013/03 03/08/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 08 Mar 2013 03:33:46 -0500 If Republicans cave on same sex marriage, they will lose their base and the "party" will be over. Phyllis Schlafly knows this and Republicans would do well to listen to her. Drawing a line in the sand, Schlafly, a member of the 2012 Platform Committee, has written a letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus with this warning: "We expect all Republican officials to support the Platform. The endorsement of same-sex marriage is not acceptable...We call on the Republican National Committee to consider passing a resolution, at its next meeting, re-affirming its support of the Platform... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/the_wisdom_of_phyllis_schlafly_106659.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/the_wisdom_of_phyllis_schlafly_106659.html Sandy Rios Sandy Rios 2013/03 03/08/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:47:14 -0500 I've been re-reading a book that is quite eerie in light of the upcoming anniversary of the 1993 Waco disaster, the catastrophic fire at the Branch Davidian compound. Long before that event, in 1954, Gore Vidal's Messiah offered a wide-ranging satire of religious fanaticism, which stands out today because it depicts true believers pursuing their faith by ritual suicide. As I have argued, we should be very skeptical about claims concerning such "cult suicide" events. In the Waco case, we can debate whether the Branch Davidians actually did cause their own deaths, as opposed... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/reading_gore_vidal_in_waco_106657.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/08/reading_gore_vidal_in_waco_106657.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/03 03/08/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:16:50 -0500 On this year's fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, thirteen Women's and Gender Studies students trashed a Young Americans for Freedom "Flags for Life" display on DePaul University's campus because they were "offended." They upended five hundred pink and blue flags representing aborted babies and stuffed them in nearby trashcans. Kristopher Del Campo and his friends were left to pick up the pieces. After Young America's Foundation published the vandals' names, the University pursued disciplinary sanctions against Del Campo. He was told that in... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/01/soviet-style_vincentians.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/01/soviet-style_vincentians.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2013/03 03/01/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:35:43 -0500 Twenty years ago yesterday, on February 28, 1993, federal agents clashed with members of the Branch Davidians, a small religious sect based in Waco, Texas. The confrontation ended with a catastrophic fire that April, in which eighty Davidians perished in what was commonly portrayed as an act of mass cult suicide. We can debate at length what actually happened: did they die because of deliberate decisions by the group's leaders and members, or were they killed by the federal agents storming the compound? But whichever view we take, few challenge the underlying idea that some fringe... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/01/the_myth_of_cult_suicide.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/03/01/the_myth_of_cult_suicide.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/03 03/01/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:20:06 -0500 I've been waiting for the latest Tim Tebow controversy to make a lick of sense. And now that it seems to have pretty much played out, there's only one part of it that does: His initial willingness to speak at First Baptist Dallas. Much of the rest of it, from the overheated media reaction to Tebow's explanation for why he canceled, is as logical as a third down punt from midfield. What the what? To review: Tebow, an NFL quarterback whose conservative Christian faith is as much a part of his public persona as his college triumphs, was scheduled to speak in Dallas at the church... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/27/much_ado_about_tebow.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/27/much_ado_about_tebow.html Jeffrey Weiss Jeffrey Weiss 2013/02 02/27/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:56:11 -0500 All too often these days we hear, "I used to believe in God, but..." then the individual tells you about a personal tragedy, points to abstract suffering in the world, or to an all-too-real example of terror. They reason that in the wake of overwhelming sadness and tragedy they doubt God could possibly exist. After all, how could a just and loving God allow such unchecked evil and then answer us with only silence? The harsh and essential truth is that the deafening silence in the face of pain, disease, and loved ones dying is supposed to cause doubt and doubt is absolutely essential... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/26/doubt_is_the_way_to_heaven_106652.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/26/doubt_is_the_way_to_heaven_106652.html David Welch David Welch 2013/02 02/26/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:55:10 -0500 Even if they are themselves believers, most people in the modern West find it all but impossible to reconstruct the religious mindset of ordinary people in earlier centuries. Yes, we are divided from them by views of the age and size of the universe, or the relative locations of Earth and Sun, but other points of division are still more basic. Above all, it is difficult for us to realize just how thoroughly integrated religious ideas and terminology were into the cycles of the year, and the ways in which ordinary people defined the time in which they lived. In Europe, that meant a Christian... http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/22/a_reformation_of_time.html http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/02/22/a_reformation_of_time.html Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins 2013/02 02/22/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:36:57 -0500