The Pope’s Subversive Encyclical?
Over at Vox Nova, I note an interesting subtlety in the pope’s new encyclical letter, which compares faith to both light and darkness and to both seeing and not seeing.
Tagged: pope benedict XVI
Some clarifications and further thoughts on new atheism and the Church
I’ve gotten some good pushback on my new atheist post, and probably – quite likely even – my thoughts on the matter were not quite clear enough going in to craft as cogent a...
New atheism and the cult of victimhood
[updated] ‘Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first...
Pope Benedict and the Legion of Christ
Over at True/Slant I begin to lay out what I see as an emerging narrative of Pope Benedict (both as pope and as Cardinal Ratzinger) as the reformist waging an unseen war against an...
Cardinal Ratzinger and Father Marcial Maciel
In this slide (9/16) on ABC’s slideshow report on the supposed mishandling of the abuse cases of Father Marcial Maciel, we are told: Before he became Pope in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI was Cardinal...
Andrew Sullivan spins and spins
In yet another misleading and emotionally driven post, Andrew Sullivan attempts to spin the decision to suspend the canonical trial of Father Lawrence Murphy into a cover-up by then Cardinal Ratzinger. This despite the...
and one more thing…
Thinking about this some more, it appears Andrew has missed my point entirely. The aesthetic argument was not my defense of Benedict at all. My defense is simply this: the Pope is innocent until...
Off with their heads!
Andrew writes that my defense of the Pope is ‘incredibly wrong-headed and simplistic’ and then focuses entirely on the argument I made regarding the aesthetics of Benedict. My point in so arguing was that...
Surely only theocons would dare support Benedict
“[T]his basic truth remains: the moral authority of Catholic church’s central authority is over. The only two options are denial and defensive p.r. (the current knee-jerk response) or open repentance and total transparency, led...
A brief defense of the Pope
[updated] “I read the coverage of the Pope every day in the newspapers and listen to the BBC news and as a Catholic and a journalist I feel like crying out pathetically: “This is...
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