Sexuality
From the Archives: A Bitter Pill
In the April 23, 2004, issue of Commonweal, Leslie Woodcock Tentler wrote on American Catholics and contraception:I want … to contest the bishops' seeming...
‘Intrinsic Evil’ & Public Policy
Everyone knows what the Catholic Church teaches about abortion, right? It is an “intrinsically evil act.” Yet the answers of Joe Biden and Paul Ryan in the recent...
Ever Ancient, Ever New
Referring to God’s love, a college theology teacher of mine once used the Latin phrase prorsus indebitum, “completely undeserved.” He told us the phrase came from...
Theology as Survival
I met the theologian Fr. James Alison in the blogosphere. I’d written a post presenting his fascinating suggestion that Benedict XVI was slowly preparing the way...
Bad Reaction
Conservative Catholics complain that too many liberal Catholics instinctively greet every statement from the Vatican with suspicion, skepticism, or derision. It’s a...
Better Late Than Never
Politicized culture wars are debilitating because they almost always require partisans to denigrate the moral legitimacy of their opponents, and sometimes to deny...
Bad Decision
The Obama administration has rejected appeals to exempt religious-affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from the mandate issued by the...
A Modus Vivendi?
During the 1960s, nearly 80 percent of adult Americans were married. A recent analysis of U.S. census data reported that only 52 percent of adult Americans were...
Protecting Religious Freedom
The Catholic Church is strenuously—some would say obsessively—opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage. How persuasively is the church making its case? Is...
‘Society Men’: An exchange
Grown-Up Men Barry Gault’s article “Society Men” (April 22) raises thoughtful questions. Does Catholic priesthood, as it is actually lived today, promote certain...
No Labels, Please
Sometimes, when talking to younger audiences, the theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill will describe herself as a “relic” of the distant and benighted era before the Second...
A First Step?
When the German journalist Peter Sewald recently asked Pope Benedict XVI whether the Catholic Church was “opposed in principle to the use of condoms,” the pope...
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