Reading Time: 4 minutes Growing up in Orange County California, where money was king, Reagan was God, and Rush Limbaugh his prophet, that was the question. Homosexuality was not an appropriate discussion topic. Ever. Gays were icky, and we should just pretend they don’t exist at all. Especially if you’re Catholic, or pretending to be. By the time I […]
Catholicism
Posted inReproductive rights
The Catholic Justices driving the Supreme Court’s Roe reversal
Reading Time: 5 minutes I grew up Catholic, so I know something about the ancient faith’s hammerlock absolutism, especially regarding anything even remotely sexual. That’s why I immediately thought of sexuality when I learned along with everyone else this week about the “leaked draft opinion” of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in a case that threatens […]
Posted inLGBTQ News
Teachers at UK Catholic school vote to strike after gay author’s speaking ban
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last month a campaign by Christian homophobes, supported by a Muslim psychologist, succeeded in having Simon James Green, an award-winning British writer LGBT+ fiction, banned from addressing pupils at two Catholic schools. According to Church Militant, Green intended discussing one of his books, Noah Can’t Even, which it claims is “blasphemous” and akin to “child […]
Posted inCulture, History, Myth & Folklore, Religion
The Rifle, and Other Stories, by Tomás Carrasquilla: Translating a Catholic writer as a secular humanist
Reading Time: 11 minutes Outside my work here at OnlySky, I’m a writer of speculative and science fiction, and a translator. My science fiction usually focuses on alternative justices and social contract theory, so the overlap with my humanist essays is obvious. But my work as a translator? Well, that’s a labor of love, and an act of thanks. […]
Posted inReligion
Joseph Ratzinger, God’s own monster: An obituary before the fact
Reading Time: 13 minutes When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, boarded the plane at Ciampino Airport, Rome, he wondered if he would be greeted by stern-faced German policemen when he landed in Munich. Since giving up his job as God’s representative on Earth, he had ensconced himself within the safety of the Vatican, protected from the […]
Posted inEvolution
Editing the infallible
Reading Time: 3 minutes For nearly a century and a half after the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, the Catholic Church did a coy dance with evolutionary theory, deciding at last to accept it in the same way it decided Galileo deserved an apology—glacially and partially. I at least give the Vatican credit for noticing something […]
Posted inLeaving Religion
Jesuit evangelist demands: tolerate ‘the intolerant,’ darn it
Reading Time: 5 minutes I’m guessing that Catholic leaders’ massive misogyny, entrenched sexism, and endless horrific bigotries are indeed quite a dealbreaker for younger adults. I’d worry about someone who didn’t consider that stuff a dealbreaker.
Posted inHistory, Secularism
Spain, U.S. growing more secular at similar, relentless rates
Reading Time: 4 minutes America for decades has lagged behind Western Europe in growing more secular. Now we seem to be catching up with Spain, though.
Posted inEthics, Secularism
Of faith and fetal cells, COVID and cannibalism
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Catholic Church has been surprisingly nuanced in weighing fetal-cell use in coronavirus vaccines vs. life-saving vaccine efficacy in advising faithful.
Posted inPolitics, Secularism
Cardinal Burke yet another religious leader laid low by Covid after dissing vaccines
Reading Time: 4 minutes Disinformation about Covid-19 and its vaccines, as that perpetrated by now-infected Cardinal Raymond Burke, causes needless suffering and death.