Sara Lin Wilde is a recovering Catholic (and cat-holic, for that matter - all typographical errors are the responsibility of her feline friends). She lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she is working on writing a novel that she really, really hopes can actually get published.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Church’s “goodwill ambassador to secular non-believers,” has big plans for dialogues between Catholics and non-Catholics in early May. He’s bringing his “Courtyard of the Gentiles” on the road for its first-ever Latin American experience at universities in Monterrey, Puebla, and Mexico City. The “Courtyard of the Gentiles” is the name Pope Benedict XVI gave to Ravasi’s dialogue sessions, planned as a tool of outreach aimed at atheists and agnostics. In this particular case, the topic up for discussion will be the problem of drug trafficking in Mexico, and the somewhat sticky problem of traffickers’ devout professions of faith. Atheists are used to being asked whether one can be good without God, but how can some people be so bad with God? These sessions will take a look at that question. [Click headline for more…] Read more
RoundGames.com has created a Vatican-themed video game — try it out here! — that has sparked outrage amongst Spanish Catholics in particular: Players take on the role of a pixelated pontiff, who bears a distinct resemblance to ex-Pope Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. The Pope leaps to high balconies to retrieve altar boys, then delivers them to shifty-eyed cardinals who disappear with the youngsters into darkened Vatican rooms. To complicate things, the Pope must avoid or attack roving reporters with cameras and microphones, bent on exposing the scandal. If a reporter catches the pontiff with a boy in tow, it’s game over for the Catholic Church. [Click headline for more…] Read more
In a social climate where more than half of American Catholics support equal marriage rights for gay couples, yet another high-level cleric made it crystal clear that the Church will not tolerate differences of opinion in matters of human sexuality. In a statement to the Detroit Free Press on Sunday, Archbishop Allen Vigneron condemned Catholics who support gay marriage while participating in the Eucharistic ritual at the heart of Catholic Mass: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The great thinkers of the Enlightenment had grandiose dreams for the progress of human civilization. They envisioned a world in which all men were created equal, reason triumphed over superstition, and human beings in all their natural variability were free to pursue their own pursuits. Are we there yet? That forms only part of the question astrophysicist and former NASA staff scientist Stuart Jordan seeks to answer in The Enlightenment Vision: Science, Reason, and the Promise of a Better Future (Prometheus Books, 2013). [More…] Read more
