Jamie L Manson's blog

Much has been made in recent months about an ad placed in The New York Times urging liberal and nominal Catholics to "quit the church" because it can never be changed from within, and to participate in it is to cooperate with its oppressive system.

The ad was paid for by an organization called the Freedom from Religion Foundation. But the more I reflect on both the ad and the behavior of our hierarchy lately, there is part of me that wouldn't be surprised if we learned that the Vatican itself had secretly paid for the advertisement.

Those who heard Ada María Isasi-Díaz's moving keynote address on solidarity during November's Call to Action conference might be stunned to learn that she passed away this weekend.

Isasi-Díaz succumbed to an aggressive cancer on Mother's Day, a touching irony since she is widely considered the mother of Mujerista theology, a theological tradition born out of liberation theology. Isasi-Díaz was born in Cuba and arrived in the United States as a political refugee at the age of 17.

A scholar, activist and mentor, Isasi-Díaz dedicated her life's work to empowering the voices of Latinas and Latinos in the fields of theology and religious studies. She was professor emeritus of theology and ethics at Drew University in New Jersey, where she founded the Hispanic Institute of Theology.

Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Miami and one of Isasi-Díaz's many mentees, offers a tribute in Religion Dispatches that details her impact on Hispanic/Latino theology:

As I listen to the fallout from President Obama's announcement that he supports marriage equality, I have been struck particularly by the argument that marriage between a man and a woman is superior to committed relationships between same-sex partners.

Official Roman Catholic teaching bases this belief on the theory of natural law, arguing that all sex acts must take place within the state of marriage and must have the potential to create new life. This is why, according to the doctrine, sexual intercourse must always be involved in any sexual activity between a wife and husband.

Since same-sex couples do not have "complementing genders" and, therefore, cannot procreate, their relationships are by their very nature inferior. Having read Aristotle's and Aquinas's theory of natural law, I believe that the church has taken a very rich idea and reduced it to purely the level of biological function.

It is an interesting commentary on the state of the church when the most well-attended event in Yale Divinity School's recent history is a lecture not by a minister or theologian, but by a physician.

On April 26, Dr. Paul Farmer, chairman of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, addressed the Divinity School community on "The Corporal Works of Mercy and the 21st-century Struggle Against Poverty."

In his Holy Thursday sermon, Pope Benedict XVI made headlines for criticizing those who refuse to obey the church's position on the ordination of celibate men. He traced his argument back to Christ's obedience to the will of God.

"His concern was for true obedience," Benedict said, "as opposed to human caprice."

Last night, "PBS NewsHour" dedicated a segment into the Vatican takeover of LCWR. They interviewed two women of opposing views on the issue. Supporting LCWR was Jeannine Fletcher Hill, a professor specializing in feminist theology at Fordham University. Supporting the Vatican was Donna Bethell, a lawyer who serves as the chairman of the board at Christendom College.

Christendom College, for those out of the loop (and I was one of them until last night), is a liberal arts college founded 30 years ago "in response to the devastating blow inflicted on Catholic higher education by the cultural revolution which swept across America in the 1960s."

The college's website boasts, "Catholicism is the 'air that we breathe,' " and "Academic excellence takes the Magisterium as its guide."

Pope Benedict loves Christendom College. And Bethell spent her airtime discrediting women religious for not presenting the "full doctrine of the church" and not helping members "to understand it and to live it." But a web search of Ms. Bethell quickly reveals that some of her most deeply held convictions conflict significantly with Roman Catholic doctrine.

The Vatican investigation into U.S. women religious, which began in 2009, is finally bearing its first toxic fruit.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops announced Wednesday it has named Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to lead a five-year reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). The reforms include a revision of the LCWR's statutes, a review of its programs (including, in all likelihood, Vatican approval of topics and speakers at their annual general assembly) and reviews of their liturgical norms and relationship with NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported on social service groups who are being denied funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development because of supposed alliances with organizations that support equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender persons.

The article focuses on Compañeros, a small, Colorado-based organization that aids Latino immigrants with access to health care and legal advice.

This is the second part of Jamie Manson's interview with theologian and writer Matthew Fox. Part I can be found here.

You begin your most recent book, The Pope's War, by taking a look at the childhood of Pope Benedict XVI and his time in Hitler Youth. How do you think that experience might have impacted his view of the church?

It has been 20 years since Matthew Fox was expelled from the Dominican order after a 12-year battle with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the decades since, Fox has continued writing, teaching and ministering to various communities. In 1994, he was welcomed into the Anglican Communion as an Episcopal priest. Fox has authored 28 books, the most recent being The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved. The book has been translated into German, and the Italian version will be released this week.

"What response does seeing human suffering demand of us?"

This question, which opens the new documentary An Encounter with Simone Weil, couldn't be timelier. From the unfathomable violence in Syria and Afghanistan to the epidemics of disease and famine in the global South, the suffering in our world is so overwhelming it is difficult to conceive of any response, let alone an adequate one.

As painful as it has been to hear the story of Barbara Johnson, an openly lesbian woman who was denied Communion at her mother's funeral last week, I have been heartened by the national attention the story has received.

Those who read NCR are sadly aware that many Catholics, whether gay, lesbian, transgendered, divorced, cohabitating or pro-choice, have been either denied the Eucharist or threatened with denial of the Eucharist.

I didn't set out on Ash Wednesday not wanting to participate in its rituals. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't until I was on a ferryboat ride to Manhattan and saw the foreheads of some of the passengers that I even realized it was Ash Wednesday.

How could I have forgotten? I was at a church event the previous weekend and was reminded of the day and time of the community's service.

"One of the well known truisms in ethics is that good moral judgments depend in part on good facts."

So wrote Dr. Ron Hamel, senior director of ethics for the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) in the January-February 2010 issue of their journal Health Progress.

This edition of Health Progress focused on emergency contraception, particularly on the just treatment of women who check into hospital emergency rooms after suffering rape.

When Archbishop Timothy Dolan's initial reaction to President Barack Obama's compromise on the contraception mandate was "It's a step in the right direction," I knew it was too good to be true.

I knew this because, the night before the compromise was announced, I had listened carefully to Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the USCCB, imply that the bishops were seeking conscience exemptions for far more entities than Catholic institutions. As he said on PBS's "Newshour," the exemptions should cover "both religious employers and employers with religious people running them or other people of conviction who are running them."

If you listened carefully to the "PBS News Hour" interview with Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a chill didn't go up your spine, allow me to highlight one crucial moment in the conversation that ought to be cause for alarm.

Co-host Ray Suarez questioned Picarello about the breadth of protection sought by the bishops. Here is his response:

Editor's note: Starting this week, Jamie Manson's column, Grace on the Margins, will be posted on Mondays.

As the battle over contraception coverage raged in our national debate last week, a small report on "PBS NewsHour" demonstrated the devastating effects that the Catholic church's ban on contraception has on poor nations.

In what could set a significant precedent, Catholic Healthcare West, "one of the nation's largest hospital systems and operator of four Bay Area hospitals, is ending its governing board's affiliation with the Catholic Church and changing its name to help the system expand," the San Jose Mercury News reports.

The system's change to a nondenominational board will create "a tremendous opportunity that will help accelerate our growth," Lloyd Dean, the president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare West, told the Mercury News.

The article also reports that "secular hospitals added to the system will be required to adhere to the 'Statement of Common Values' that apply to Catholic Healthcare West's secular hospitals."

Although the article doesn't note this, the move will also allow the hospital to provide its employees with all of the provisions included in the Affordable Healthcare Act, including access to contraception, without involvement from the hierarchy.

Of all of the reactions that I've read to the Department of Health and Human Service's refusal to change the rules on contraception coverage, I've noticed that few commentators have referred to the formal name of the government mandate the bishops are fighting.

The provision is called the Affordable Care Act. This new law is intended to ensure the just treatment of women and couples who cannot afford adequate medical treatment when it comes to contraceptives and who want to raise families in a safe, responsible manner.

"The buzz anticipating Super Bowl XLVI is already astir," writes Nancy Conway in a recent op-ed on the new site cleveland.com. "However, 11 congregations of Catholic nuns are stirring things up as well."

Conway, a leadership team member for the Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph in Cleveland, explains that these women religious are members of the Coalition for Corporate Responsibility for Indiana and Michigan (CCRIM). The organization's mission is to "invest in certain businesses, including the lodging industry, to be in a position to affect social change where we see human suffering that needs to be stopped."

Wherever the Super Bowl is hosted, sex trafficking seems to swell with the festivities.

As reported in the Huffington Post, "An estimated 10,000 prostitutes flocked to Miami for the 2010 Super Bowl."

Is it me, or are a lot of young women kicking butt on the silver screen lately?

Today, not one, but two movies will be released that promise to deliver female lead characters with a supernatural command of martial arts and some very big guns.

The trailer to the forthcoming Haywire opens with a question: "She is our nation's most valuable weapon, so why did they betray her?"

Next, we see actress Gina Carano's character talking to a brute who is trying to coerce her into his car. After he strikes her, she retaliates with a series of sweep kicks, punches and, finally, a slap in the face with a gun that sends his teeth flying.

But that's only the beginning. What follows is a manic montage of Carano's extraordinary acts of violence against men. One is strangled, one is shot in the neck at close range, and another, after being knocked out, gets a steel storefront gate dropped across his abdomen. "You'd better run," Carano snarls at the trailer's conclusion.

They receive millions each year in state and federal aid.

They pay no taxes on their profits or on their houses of worship.

And now they want special exemptions from civil rights laws.

On Thursday, five U.S. bishops, including Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, deepened their union with right-wing religious organizations by signing an open letter titled "Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods that Stand or Fall Together."

The missive, which is addressed to religious leaders and "all Americans," is the latest addition to the ongoing push by conservative religious leaders to maintain what they see as their right to discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples.

If Cardinal Francis George has proven anything over these past few weeks, it's not that he can tell the difference between white pride and gay pride.

When the cardinal attempted to make a connection between those fighting for equal rights for LGBT persons and those fighting for the right to assert the supremacy of the white race, he also demonstrated that he needs a history lesson.

Part two of a series. Read the first installment here.

In 2002, when Sisters of Mercy Margaret Farley and Eileen Hogan were assisting in the planning the first All Africa Conference: Sister to Sister (AACSS) program in Nairobi, Kenya, they could not have foreseen that, a decade later, they would be as active as ever in 13 countries throughout the continent.

There is a story floating around in small but very knowledgeable circles that Pope Benedict XVI will canonize Hildegard von Bingen at a ceremony in October 2012. Word has it that he also plans to name her a Doctor of the Church at the ceremony.

There are 33 Doctors of the Church. As of now, only three are women. (I'll save you a Google: Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena and Therese of Lisieux.)

The story came initially from Andrea Tornielli at the Vatican Insider on Dec. 16. Rome Reports also picked up the story and posted a brief video on saint-to-be.

Hildegard lived in the 12th century in what is modern-day Germany. She was a theologian, cosmologist, physician, botanist, poet, painter, composer and, last but not least, mystic. She is considered a pioneer in many of these fields.

This column is part one of a series.

After a long career in the academy, most scholars look forward to a retirement free of the demands of teaching, writing and traveling.

For Margaret Farley, life as Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University has meant deepening her commitment to confronting the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the continent of Africa.

This is part two of a two-part series. The first part can be found here.

To those who believe that change in the Roman Catholic Church can only come from within the institution, Mary Ramerman would like to offer an invitation view the work and witness of the Spiritus Christi community.

Ten years after her historic ordination, Mary Ramerman rarely makes it into the papers anymore. Watching her minister as a priest today, it may be hard to believe that she was at the center of a highly publicized, painful battle between the diocese of Rochester, N.Y., and the parish then known as Corpus Christi in the late 1990s.

In her book American Madonna: Crossing Borders with the Virgin Mary (Orbis Books, 2010), author Deirdre Cornell chronicles the three years that she, her husband and five children spent as Maryknoll Missioners in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Blending personal reflection, Marian scholarship and social justice advocacy, Cornell deepens our understanding of Mary by allowing us see her through the lens of Latin American people. As she journeys to various sites of pilgrimage in Mexico, we encounter the struggles, hopes and deep faith of those who inspire Cornell along the way. Mary Cornell discovers a universal Mother who invites us to cross the borders of cultural, economic and linguistic difference and to locate our common humanity and spiritual heritage.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with Cornell about the ways in which the Latin American church opened her eyes to a new vision of Mary.

Jamie Manson: So much of your book is about pilgrimage. It's remarkable to look at how your own life's journey led you to explore the presence of Mary within Latin American culture. You credit your grandmother with starting you on the path.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy rarely utters the word transsexual or transgender. And when it does, it's only to say that transgendered persons either don't exist or are suffering from a psychiatric disorder.

Add this latest statistic to the "discrepancy between hierarchical teaching and lay conviction" file: According to a recent study by the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute, a staggering 93 percent of Catholics in the United States support rights for transgendered persons.

The Public Religion Research Institute is also responsible for the study earlier this year that found that an overwhelming 74 percent of Catholics favor legal recognition for same-sex relationships, either through civil unions (31 percent) or civil marriage (43 percent).

That figure is higher than the 64 percent of all Americans, 67 percent of mainline Protestants and significantly higher than 48 percent of black Protestants and 40 percent of evangelicals.