Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
J Street’s New Senate Ally
posted on June 6, 2012Tablet’s Allison Hoffman writes that a politically savvy endorsement just helped the left-leaning, Israel advocacy group, J Street, gain a prominent new supporter: California Senator, Dianne Feinstein. While Feinstein’s Senate seat is not under serious threat, Hoffman posits that Feinstein decided to accept J Street’s endorsement in order to raise “her appeal among staunchly liberal partisans” in California, and perhaps, to strengthen her efforts to slow Israel’s “rush to war with Iran.” For J Street, “Feinstein lends them much needed gravitas.”
Catholic Schools at a Crossroads
posted on June 6, 2012Rising costs, competition from charter and magnet schools, and changing demographics have forced many Catholic schools in Chicago to close, reports Jim Jaworski of The Chicago Tribune. Rev. Tony Dosen, a Catholic priest who teaches at Chicago’s DePaul University, says “[s]ome Chicago-area schools have made changes to both improve finances and attract more students.” However, Dosen also notes that, “[o]ne such change, switching high schools from single-sex to coed, may yield only short-term benefits.”
Why One Black Minister Is Risking His Church to Support Gay Marriage
posted on June 6, 2012At The Atlantic, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz interviews Reverend Oliver White, a black pastor who leads a United Church of Christ congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the weeks following his 2005 public announcement that he supports gay marriage, White lost two thirds of his congregants. Still, while he scrambles to pay a loan that, if unpaid, might force the shuttering of the church, White remains resolute that he made the right decision. “[This] is a civil rights issue! When you stand up and preach against the gays and lesbians, that’s discrimination. It’s pure and simple to me.”
Mississippi Governor Advocates Nondenominational School Prayer ‘At Some Point’
posted on June 6, 2012The Huffington Post’s Gregory Kristof reports on recent controversial statements from Mississippi governor, Phil Bryant. Last week, Bryant told 300 high school boys gathered in Hattiesburg for Mississippi’s American Legion Boys State that, “I think at some point at a moment of enlightenment in the future, the federal government and perhaps a future Supreme Court is going to say it’s not a bad thing for children to hear prayer in school.” Kristof notes, “Governor Bryant’s comments come at a time when the Bible belt is swarming with alleged infringements on the separation of Church and State.”
Mormons and Homophobia; Mormons and Gay Pride
posted on June 6, 2012After a group of some 300 straight, active Mormons marched in Salt Lake City’s gay pride parade this past Sunday, Religion News Service’s “Flunking Sainthood” blogger, Jana Riess, observes, “[i]n the last two years I’ve discerned a palpable shift in overall Mormon attitudes about homosexuality.” Nevertheless, Riess, herself a Mormon convert, notes that there is room for improvement in the official position of the LDS Church towards homosexuals. For example, Riess cites a little known church policy that lumps together “adult homosexual behavior with incest, [and] sexual and physical abuse of children.”
An Unholy Alliance
posted on June 6, 2012Three months after a coup toppled the country’s democratically elected government, Mali may be on the verge of peace, but a peace at a high cost. The Economist reports that in the country’s north, a secular coalition of Toureg rebels has joined with a local Islamic fundamentalist group, known as “Ansar Eddine,” to govern the newly formed Republic of Azawad. Yet, according to The Economist, Malians “still have reason to be scared. Ansar Eddine has become almost indistinguishable from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). This is the closest to government that al-Qaeda, under any guise, has ever come.”
Rights You Can’t Give Away
posted on June 6, 2012At First Things, Texas A&M political scientist, James R. Rogers, distinguishes between alienable and inalienable rights. “[A]n inalienable right cannot be given away by the person who has it,” Rogers writes. Rogers explains the practical role that inalienable rights play in preserving democratic rule, and not just when governments attempt to “grab power from their citizens without their consent…inalienable rights inure against the possibility that people in some situations can be induced to give those rights away.”
Losing faith in Democrats’ religious outreach
posted on June 5, 2012Compared to 2008, Barack Obama may not see as much support during the election from religious voters, Rachel Zoll reports for the Associated Press. She writes that some religious leaders and scholars who supported Obama in 2008 say “the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus, squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and worry it will hurt Obama in a tight race against Republican Mitt Romney.”
CDF Notification: Sr. Margaret Farley, R.S.M.
posted on June 5, 2012Commonweal’s Michael Peppard reports that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a criticism of Sister Margaret Farley’s 2006 book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. The criticism claims the book contains “erroneous propositions, the dissemination of which risks grave harm to the faithful” and calls on Farley, a professor emerita at Yale Divinity School, “to correct the unacceptable theses in her book.” In defense, Farley said “the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”
Wis. Recall: A Trial Run For The Presidential Race
posted on June 5, 2012On Tuesday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker faces a recall election, which NPR reports is “one of the most expensive statewide races in American history.” Drawing campaign funds from all over the country, many see the election as a forerunner for the presidential election this November. NPR’s Mara Liasson says “the Republicans believe that if Walker wins, Wisconsin automatically becomes a gettable state for Mitt Romney.”