Helen Berry writes for the OUPblog about Why history says gay people can’t marry…nor can anyone else* (*unless they have kids of their own).
Bishop Pierre Whalon writes for The Huffington Post Why I Am Not An Atheist.
At Cif belief Thomas Prosser argues that Christian teen camps are wicked, innit, whilst Steve Clifford responds that Christian camps are not about indoctrination.
John Dominic Crossan writes for The Huffington Post about The Search for the Historical Paul: What Paul Thought About Women.
Martin Saunders writes for Cif belief that After the riots, my faith-based youth work gives me hope in this generation.
“Faith-based youth work has something special to offer young people, because it offers something distinctive: transformation.”
In an otherwise good piece, Helen Berry says “gay marriage” is no longer a divisive issue in the United Kingdom since the passage of civil partnerships in 2004. The issue is not gay marriage, which makes it sound as if same-sex couples were demanding special rights, but rather marriage equality. She quotes the title of Governor Cuomo’s bill, which has “marriage equality” in it, but insists on saying “gay marriage.” Same-sex couples should have the same rights as all other couples to marry. For several years New York State already recognized same-sex couples who married elsewhere, such as in Canada,… Read more »
John Dominic Crossan’s article in ‘Huffington Post’ deserves careful reading. He recounts a visit to a cave near Ephesus which contains a wall painting of Saint Paul, seated between two women of the Early Church: St. Thecla on his right, and her mother, Theoclia, on his left. “Both St. Paul and Theoclia have their right hands raised in gestures of teaching”, so that it would appear, from the fresco, that both Paul and Theoclia have identical teaching roles. Crossan postulates the possibility of Paul’s initial openness to women’s ministry having been compromised by later writings attributed to him in the… Read more »
Crossan’s article is indeed interesting and also the fact that an attempt was made to cancel Theoclia’s gesture. It struck me in today’s Gospel that a pagan woman is the first person in Matthew to recognise Jesus publicly as the ‘son of David’ (although earlier on in chapter 9 the crowd asks whether he might not be). A pagan woman … a little food for thought, and of course she uses an intelligent strategy which causes our Lord to change his mind. That must have been a radical affirmation in the early Christian world, given the status of women, and… Read more »
I noticed that some of +Pierre Whalon’s atheist commenters made their Usual Objections…*oblivious* to the fact that Whalon specifically addressed these usual objections.
“Why bother to READ the essay by the Invisible Big Kahuna con-man, when I can just grandstand my denunciations same as always?” {sarcasm/Off}
Sad.
Father Ron Smith: `Crossan postulates the possibility of Paul’s initial openness to women’s ministry having been compromised by later writings attributed to him in the canon of the N.T. Scriptures.’ I’m guessing that you mean, in particular, 1 Timothy 1:20-2:15 and 1 Corinthians 14:26-35. There’s something I’ve been wondering about those two passages for a while… In both cases, in English, one can devise subtle tweaks of punctuation and page layout that would turn the meaning of the passages through 180 degrees, so that what Crossan calls the `reactionary Anti-Paul’ disappears, and we’re left with Paul making the case in… Read more »