I call it “reality-based theology”, theologian Jeff Astley calls it “ordinary theology”, Tom Beaudoin at America magazine calls it “theology from below”. Whatever the words, what they have in common is the idea that theology that matters, is that which…
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Canadian Lutherans Approve LGBT Clergy, Blessing Same-Sex Marriages
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) has followed the example of their US counterparts two years ago, and voted to approve openly gay or lesbian clergy. On gay marriage, they have moved ahead of the USA, and voted to…
Church “Bullying” & the Great Persecution: Some Historical Context.
Bart has described (quite accurately) some bishops’ obsession with opposition to marriage and family equality, and their associated excoriation of Catholic politicians who see the faith as incorporating a commitment to working for justice as “bullying”. I have no quarrel…
NY Presbyterian Minister Will Conduct SS Weddings
It’s been obvious to me for a long time that the spread of legal recognition for same-sex marriage and civil unions, and the parallel growth in acceptance of openly gay or lesbian partnered clergy would put pressure on the Churches…
Church Bullying, and the Gospels.
One of the consequences of bullying by the Church, is that it doesn’t simply bring the Church itself into disrepute - for some people, it tarnishes the whole question of faith and the Christian Gospels. This is how Bart put…
Vatican II themes: The church as mystery, or sacrament | “The best preparation for the new millennium,” the late Pope John Paul II wrote in his apostolic letter of 1994, Tertio millennio adveniente (“On the approaching third millennium”), “can only…
Bullying tactics
[Links to bishops Dolan and Tobin’s comments courtesy of Joe.My.God] The dust hasn’t settled on the same-sex marriage triumph in New York, neither has the positive outcome of the civil-unions legislation (in Rhode Island) seeped into public consciousness, yet the…
NY Bishops’ Sane, Pastoral Response to Gay Marriage: Get Hitched, and Bless These Unions.
No, these are not the Catholic bishops, but some of the Episcopal bishops of New York, notably Lawrence Provenzano of Long Island (which includes Brooklyn and Queens), Gladstone B. Adams of Central New York, R. William Franklin of Western New York and Mark…
The Great Persecution: The Vere Street Molly House Raid, 1810
Although the Catholic ideologues like to pontificate about the “constant and unchanging tradition” of the teaching on homoerotic relationships, the truth is that the teaching, and the practical effect, have changed substantially over the centuries. For the first millenium and…
Donald Boisvert, on “Rituals, Sexual and Otherwise”.
Ritual is an important part of religious practice (perhaps more so in the Catholic Church than in others), but is also found in many other contexts, including the sexual. Donald Boisvert knows something about ritual in religion: he is a former…
