Not just the leaders, not just the theologians, but all Christians are called to ponder and explore the history and meaning of our beliefs and practices. We all sort out our traditions in the light of faith and in the context of the church, and we do it individually and in common. Read more
Tradition, then, in the broadest sense, is the language in which a community recognizes itself and becomes such. Traditions embrace origins, a past and a future identity in the present. Read more
And what is happening now has happened before. It has happened here. But since it happened to people who were not white, were not citizens, the nation pretended it didn’t matter. The nation pretended that the atrocities of history were always happening somewhere else. The official line, here in the United States, is that we are so much better than those other countries. And it’s a line that is easily sold—to those of us who have enough white privilege to buy it. Read more
People tell us that sorrow and anger are unproductive , and I don't believe it. I think this is a lie that serves the narrative that no systemic change is needed, or that we should simply accept injustice. Read more
I think many of O’Connor’s fans can handle the vision of redemption that she presents because it happens later, over there, in the afterlife. So long as they are able to carry on as kings and queens in their tiny kingdoms on earth, what happens in the kingdom of heaven can wait. But when justice is done here and now, this becomes far more unsettling for them. When racial justice and movements for social equality unfold right beneath their noses, the violence is no longer titillating. It is no longer enclosed within a book or infinitely deferred. It is no longer safe. Read more
When we talk about "good Catholic" employers, and "good Catholics" schools or universities, we should address the question of how they treat their workers. If their workers are not granted living wages, sufficient to provide for a secure family life, those employers and schools are not in keeping with Catholic teaching and should, rightly, be regarded as heterodox. Read more
Every presidential election year, the same debate returns to Catholic circles: may a Catholic, in good conscience, vote for a candidate who is not pro-life? Much has been written on both sides of the question. Some argue that is it impossible. They say that the only moral vote a Catholic may cast is for a pro-life candidate. Some take this even so far as to state that voting for a pro choice candidate is a mortal sin –... Read more
What we are objecting to is not men. We are objecting to immorality. And for men who have been accustomed to calling the moral shots, setting up ethical rules to their own advantage, perhaps this does seem like an attack. We aren’t telling them to be less than men, however. We are asking them to wake up and start being more human. Read more
The arc of history will indeed bend again towards justice if Christians everywhere can in that way rediscover the earliest understanding of the Cross and the Creed. A world that awards dignity unequally to winners and losers is always also a shaming world and therefore mistaken, unredeemed and passing away – even if it calls itself Christendom. Our adventure is always to affirm and realize together the equal and infinite dignity of all. Read more
by guest writer Sean O’Conaill Part I – Redemption as Freedom “The cross stands at the centre of the Christian faith of African-Americans because Jesus’ suffering was similar to their American experience. Just as Jesus Christ was crucified, so were blacks lynched. In the American experience, the cross is the lynching tree.” James H. Cone Nothing is clearer in the New Testament than that its authors passionately believed that they had been ‘set free’ in their own time... Read more
suspended in her jar
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