Grace on the Margins is a weekly column from award-winning writer Jamie Manson.
I can’t remember a time when I looked forward to Father’s Day. For most of my life, I had the dubious distinction of being the child of what some refer to as a “deadbeat dad.”
Deadbeat dads were those fathers who failed to pay child support, and who often ran off to another state (Florida and Arizona seemed particularly popular) and didn’t keep in contact with their kids.
Scholars do it.
Activists do it.
Even educated, justice-oriented parishioners do it.
No, Cole Porter fans, I’m not talking about falling in love, but rather falling fall prey to the internalized clericalism of the laity.
Later today, Oprah Winfrey will present the final episode of the epic 25-year run of her talk show. Whether you belong to the Oprah or the "Just Say Noprah" camp, it is difficult to deny that, for millions, Winfrey's program has been much more than a talk show. The devotion that she has inspired goes beyond her massive car and gift giveaways and her ability to attract the most powerful celebrities to her stage.
Earlier this week, Jim Wallis and Sojourners magazine, upheld by many as the great, white, progressive hope of Protestant Evangelicalism, found themselves on the defense after rejecting a video ad from an organization called Believe Out Loud.
The ad, which can be seen on Youtube, shows a young boy walking up the aisle of a church flanked by two adults. As the threesome moves past the pews, children point at them and adults give them disapproving stares. When they reach the front of the church, the camera raises to show that the boy is accompanied by his two mothers. A clergyman looks at them from the sanctuary and announces, “Welcome, everyone.”
As the progressive Catholic world continues to lament the imminent expulsion of Fr. Roy Bourgeois from the Maryknoll community, Bishop Patricia Fresen stands as a quiet reminder that many Catholic women have already suffered a similar fate for publicly supporting women's ordination.
Of all of the celebrations that rang out after the death of Osama bin Laden was announced, the festivities that erupted on U.S. college campuses were particularly intriguing.
John Paul II’s imminent beatification has led both secular and religious media to make an old idea like sainthood new again.
For most of us, saints seem otherworldly, far removed from ordinary existence. We get images of a perfect, selfless saint or an ecstatic, medieval mystic with an oozing stigmata. They are angelic beings, far easier to pray to than relate to. It’s no wonder that Dorothy Day famously quipped “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
I’ve had more than one Catholic who grew up either before or on the cusp of Vatican II tell me horror stories of how they were taught that Jesus died because of their sins.
This was a particularly heavy-handed way for priests and nuns to lay an even thicker coat of guilt on impressionable Catholic school children. Because they were sinners, Jesus had to suffer and die to redeem them. It was one rendering of the traditional theological interpretations of the crucifixion -- that Jesus had to die to fulfill the Scriptures and that his death atoned for the sins of the world.
One of my earliest memories of church is watching my mother being forced to abstain from the Eucharist during my First Holy Communion. The scene is still vivid for me.
I sat in the third pew, squirming in the frilly, miniature bridal gown and veil that we were required to wear. When I returned from my first taste of the host and sacramental wine, I turned around to watch my family receive communion.
He won a purple heart for his service in Vietnam. He lived and worked among the poor in Bolivia for five years. He has served nearly five years in federal prison for non-violent protests, calling attention to U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. And now Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been told that he no longer has a place in the community of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.
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