Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Another Big Supreme Court Term Starts Monday
posted on October 2, 2012At Salon, Mark Sherman reports on the start of the new Supreme Court term, which is expected to issue important decisions on gay marriage and affirmative action. After his unexpected support for President Obama’s health care law, Chief Justice John Roberts will be watched closely for more surprising decisions. Still, Sherman predicts, “this term’s big cases seem likely to have Roberts in his more accustomed role of voting with his fellow conservatives.”
Bangladesh Muslims Torch Buddhist Shrines, Police Say
posted on October 2, 2012Farid Ahmed of CNN reports that, in response to a picture posted on Facebook of a burned Quran, some Muslims in Bangladesh attacked Buddhist shrines in that country. According to Ahmed, “the protestors chanted anti-Buddhist slogans, blaming the burning of the Muslim holy book on a Buddhist boy.” In Bangladesh, Muslims make up ninety percent of the population, far outnumbering Buddhists who compose less than one percent of the Bangladeshi population.
Catholic Bishops Rev Up Political Machine to Fight the Gays
posted on October 2, 2012John Gehring writes for Faith in Public Life that American Catholic bishops are fighting against the legalization of same-sex marriage, this despite the support for gay marriage among the majority of lay American Catholics. Gehring believes that Catholic bishops are placing their energies in the wrong place, especially since the number of Catholic marriages is dropping. “Bishops have enough housecleaning of their own to do with it comes to strengthening Catholic marriages and rebuilding trust in the face of clergy abuse scandals. They should drop the culture war politics,” writes Gehring.
Vatican Newspaper Calls ‘Jesus Wife’ Fragment a ‘Clumsy Fake’
posted on October 2, 2012At Religion News Service, Alessandro Speciale reports that the Vatican has declared the recently publicized papyrus, in which Jesus mentions that he has a wife, a fake. Harvard professer Karen King has studied the fourth-century Coptic fragment and believes it suggests that some early Christians believed Jesus was married. Giovanni Maria Vian, a historian of early Christianity and editor of the Vatican daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, writes that the fragment represents “a contemporary ideology which has nothing to do with ancient Christian history, or with the figure of Jesus.”
Keeping Your Faith in College
posted on October 2, 2012At First Things, R.R. Reno offers advice to college students on how to maintain faith in college, where it is easy to let religious faith slip away. “For nearly everyone, college is a time of introspection and self-examination,” writes Reno. “What do I believe? What do I want to do with my life? What about love, sex, and marriage? It’s important that we ask these questions in the company of Christ. That requires a discipline of our interior lives to complement regular church attendance.”
California Bans Gay ‘Conversion’ Therapy for Minors
posted on October 1, 2012Mary Slosson of Reuters reports that California Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a bill “banning a controversial therapy that aims to reverse homosexuality in minors.” Many in the LGBT community are calling this a major victory. Yet “[o]pponents said the bill encroached on the rights of parents to make choices for their children. They also said politicians should not regulate what they considered to be a matter for medical boards to decide,” Slosson writes.
Anti-Semitism Fight Hinges on Definition
posted on October 1, 2012At The Jewish Daily Forward, Seth Berkman reports on the controversy over a nonbinding resolution passed in the California State Assembly to monitor and discourage anti-Semitism at state-funded colleges. According to Berkman, critics of the resolution argue that it “threatened to label as anti-Semitic those who strongly criticize Israel over its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or advocate measures to oppose its policies.”
Read at The Jewish Daily Forward
The Susan Rice Credibility Gap
posted on October 1, 2012The American Conservative’s Patrick J. Buchanan argues that the Obama administration’s recent decision to acknowledge that the Benghazi attacks were the work of terrorists raises serious questions about U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s credibility. In the days following the attacks, “Rice was trotted out on every Sunday talk show to blame the massacre on a mob inflamed by the Internet video ‘Innocence of Muslims,'” writes Buchanan. “Rice was either ignorant of what went on in Benghazi when she was sent out to do those TV shows, or misled by her own government, or sent out to lie to ensure that America’s anger was not redirected to her administration.”
Read at The American Conservative
The High Holidays and Reason’s Limits
posted on October 1, 2012At First Things, Noah Glyn examines the phenomenon of increased rates of religious participation among Jews “who otherwise demonstrate little interest in their faith and heritage” during the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Glyn dismisses the tendency to disparage “High Holiday Jews” as “hedonists.” “They wish to perpetuate some semblance of their ancestors’ religion, even if they consider the religion antiquated and reject it through their lifestyles.”
Homeland Insecurity
posted on October 1, 2012At Tablet, Judith Miller reviews the first episode of the new season of Showtime’s “Homeland.” According to Miller, “[a]mong other things, the show is a psychological roadmap for how far Americans have collectively traveled in the decade since terrorism became a household word.” Miller concludes, in terms of distance from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans haven’t traveled that far.