A Sound of Sheer Silence

I stumbled upon a old post by Rachel Held Evans entitled "13 Things that Make Me a Lousy Evangelical."   It is a nice mix of theological and cultural issues where she departs from standard conservative Christian talking points.  Along the same lines, here are my 13 things that make me a bad Catholic, at least for certain values of "Catholic." 1.  I find saying the Rosary to be extremely tedious, so I almost never do it. 2.  I've read all of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body lectures.  I think there are mostly incomprehensible, and the parts that are understandable are cartoonishly misogynistic. 3.  I think priests and bishops who wear the old-fashioned clerical garb, like Cardinal Burke in this picture, look ridiculous.  Plus, and I want to say this delicately, I think Liberace would find an outfit like this to be somewhat over the top. 4.  I think Medjugorje is basically a scam.  I have serious doubts about Fatima and maybe...

Here are two surveys from the Pew Research Center that, taken together, raise some very interesting questions about what is going on in modern Catholicism. The first survey involves the views of gays and lesbians toward various religious groups.  The specific question asked was "do you view a particular religious group as friendly or unfriendly toward LGBT people?"  Here are the results: Religion                  % Unfriendly Islam                                  84 Mormon (LDS)                   83 Catholicism                         79 Evangelical Protestant          73 Judaism                              47 Mainline Protestant ...

Pope Benedict has a new book coming out on Wednesday, which takes the form of a long interview with journalist Peter Seewald.  "L'Osservatore Romano", the Vatican City newspaper, published some very interesting excerpts from the book.  The big story for most commentators is the Pope's comment that it is more moral for an HIV infected male prostitute to use a condom than not use a condom.  That would seem to be a non-story: condoms are a problem from a Catholic perspective because they are a form of birth control, not because they are some kind of morally cursed object.  If you are engaging in sexual activity that is inherently not capable of leading to conception (i.e. gay sex), then it doesn't matter whether you are wearing a condom, except insofar as it prevents someone else from getting an STD.  That seems to me to be completely divorced from the question of whether condom use is OK to prevent the spread of HIV via heterosexual sex, a topic which, based ...