[NOTE: Last weekend we posted a report on the deeply conservative Polish Catholic church, which is locked in a mutually vampiric embrace with the very rightwing Polish government, and losing young Poles as one result. In the country next door, Germany has another large cohort of bishops, but of a very different stripe: in Catholic … Continue reading German Catholic Bishops vs. Pope Francis: The “Liberal” Opposition
The Polish church is in a deep crisis, as its authority is sapped by cascading sexual abuse scandals and as more people grow wary of its perceived alliance with the country’s right-wing government.
The news here is not so much the Senate’s passage of the same sex marriage bill, but the big shift in its denominational support: the switch of the Mormon church (aka LDS) to supporting it, after decades of being a pillar of opposition.
Particularly when it comes to politics, I seem to be a perennial pessimist, even a catastrophist, expecting every election to yield defeat and disaster. The last time this blanket prediction went wrong was in 2012, a decade which feels like an eon ago. (The 2020 election initially seemed better; but that November was followed by … Continue reading Aftermath #3: Crumbling Pillars? The Dawning of a Long Dark Night?
My grandpa Denham grew up in the tenements of Glasgow back when the residents leaned out the window and shouted, “Comin’ oot!” and threw the contents of the chamber pot into the street. Grandpa got sick of being dumped on and brought his brood to Minneapolis and he never looked back. He wasn’t nostalgic … Continue reading Garrison Keillor ‘Fesses Up