A Sound of Sheer Silence

A few days ago, I said that I think people should cut Pope Francis some slack for trying to talk about gender discrimination in a positive way.   Well, Frank Bruni is not willing to cut anyone any slack. Let me say, first off, that Bruni is completely right on his substantive criticisms.  You cannot talk about pay imbalance as a "scandal" and also prevent women from even having leadership positions in the first place in the context of the Church.  The supporting infrastructure for the idea that "Jesus wanted only men as priests" is somewhere between flimsy and non-existent.  The current ban on women's ordination is an injustice, full stop. It is also correct of Bruni to point out the ways in which opposition to artificial contraception limits opportunities for women in a concrete way, and how the Catholic vision of sexuality reflects a masculine perspective .  And he is right that the investigation of the Sisters in the U.S. was an embarrassing, misogynist ...

The Gospel reading for this Sunday  on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (assuming you attended a church that uses the Common Lectionary or one of its predecessors or derivatives--basically Catholics and most Mainline Protestants) is one of the most famous in the entirety of the Gospels--the Annunciation. In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over th...

This Sunday, the Irish Sunday Mail published a horrifying story.  A couple of kids were playing around on a property formerly known as "The Home" in County Galway, on the west coast of Ireland.  From 1925 to 1961, "The Home" was a facility for unmarried, pregnant girls and their children, much like the Magdalene Laundries that were shown in the recent movie Philomena .  The boys accidentally broke through an old septic tank and discovered the bones of what might be as many as 800 infants and children .  They were buried together in a mass grave, with no identifying markers.  A Galway historian discovered contemporary health inspector reports that described the children in this facility as "emaciated," "with flesh hanging loosely from their limbs."  The children, who did nothing other than being born to an unmarried mother, were referred to as "inmates."  Clearly, these children were neglected, and then almost literally flushed down the ...