Religious Leaders Keep Finding Demons Everywhere, While Ignoring Actual Evil

Last updated on: September 22, 2019 at 12:21 am By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

Writing for audiences both inside and outside of religious circles keeps me attuned to how differently different cultures approach the supernatural. It might seem as though one could draw a strict line between the rationalists, who stick with science, and the superstitious, who believe in signs, wonders, miracles, demons, angels, afterlives, and the rest. This is far too simplistic a division, however. Mere rejection of superstition is not in itself the same as scientific savvy or rational processes. Moreover, in... Read more

Why the Jews? A Reflection on Yad Vashem

Last updated on: September 17, 2019 at 10:24 pm By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

Christians added to the stock xenophobia a religious hatred perhaps born in the moment of Christian origin: Jews killed the Messiah. Medieval Catholicism‘s rejection of Jews on religious grounds carried with it legal measures meant to fix Jews in the status of a social underclass, to determine where and how they could live, to restrict the sorts of jobs they could do, to mark them as now marginal to the history of salvation, to leave them at the mercy of the mob. The massacres of first Crusade (1097-98 CE) left no doubt as to the helplessness of Jews and the murderous intent of a Christian army. Read more

Yes, Catholic Women Should Preach. But Why Is This So Frightening?

Last updated on: September 11, 2019 at 12:05 am By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

Why is it so important for them to keep us silent? What do they have to lose, should we women find our voices? Read more

A Message to Bishop Rhoades: Take Notice, and Oppose Anti-Semitism

Last updated on: September 8, 2019 at 11:16 pm By Guest Contributor

it grieves me to write this letter at the dawn of the 21st century. This letter feels more at home in the 13th century, when Pope Innocent IV was forced to declare Jews innocent of using Christian blood for ritual purposes. That this letter needs to be written in 2019 is a sad commentary on our times. Read more

To Reform the Church, We Must Rethink, Repair, or Replace Its Failed Institutions

Last updated on: September 7, 2019 at 11:03 pm By Guest Contributor

I’m saying that the Catholic church needs to rethink the institutions it has relied on, repair them or replace them. Those institutions historically have clearly failed the church, and not only in the abuse of children. Read more

Anti-Semitism is On the Rise. Will You Stand In Solidarity With the Jews?

Last updated on: August 26, 2019 at 12:14 am By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

Please understand: those of you who are white, non-Jewish, not presently targets of white supremacist hatred may think that you can turn away from all this...because, well, you can. We can not. Nor can we avoid making certain comparisons with history Read more

My Response to the Men Who Think It’s a Sin For Women To Work Outside the Home

Last updated on: August 18, 2019 at 11:29 pm By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

So here's what I have to say, ultimately, to the Twitter trad-bros who are trying to shame working mothers with lies about Church teaching: we do not care what you guys think. Read more

The Right Wing Is Dominant – And Real Courage Means Standing Against It

Last updated on: August 13, 2019 at 4:27 pm By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

This is not a culture in which the radical left, or even a moderate left, has won. In the universities, in the arts, and in some branches of politics, a centrist left is pushing back against a far-right movement that bears too many similarities with other far-right movements that have caused such horror in our recent past. Those of us who oppose this movement, even from a conservative or moderate perspective, are being labeled radicals. Read more

Seven Steps Towards Ending Clericalism

Last updated on: August 9, 2019 at 12:42 pm By Guest Contributor

This is the seventh in the “Reform” series by guest writer William M. Shea Answers to serious questions, especially political ones, tend to multiply and to develop and change over time. I began a spectrum slide from William Buckley-Barry Goldwater small-government Republican politics some sixty years ago and have landed in the past few years in the mystery called democratic socialism. I wish I could say that I slid on the basis of pure knowledge but I admit to my... Read more

Gun Owners Need To Be At the Forefront Of Calling For Gun Safety Legislation

Last updated on: August 4, 2019 at 11:25 am By Rebecca Bratten Weiss

If you, as a gun owner, are opposing proposed legislation that would ensure greater public safety given the lethality of the tools you possess, you are proving yourself a person unfit for gun ownership. Read more