Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

A Discussion on Faith and Culture

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Entries from February 2012

Congregationalist Catholicism

February 25th, 2012 · 9 Comments

In Baltimore, parishes were closed one or two at a time, and I noticed little outcry. Ethnic parishes had been built within a block or two of each other, and the neighborhoods had become almost entirely back, with very few Catholics. Other dioceses held onto a structure that was built for a far larger and [...]

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Tags: Episcopal Church · Popular religion

Mourning the Church

February 25th, 2012 · 8 Comments

On Thursday I heard Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea speak in Naples at a VOTF series.  She is a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and had spoken to the bishops 2002 at the Dallas conference.

She focused on what she saw as the roots of the sexual abuse crisis. She had left the Catholic Church some time ago [...]

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Tags: clergy sex abuse scandal

Adolescents and Alcohol

February 19th, 2012 · 12 Comments

When I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia 1969-1975, the undergraduate college had a deserved reputation as a party school. Easters, which had begun as a series of genteel dances, had degenerated into a mammoth drunken orgy that attracted debauchees from across the country, until it was finally suppressed. Every year one [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized

Shoots of Life in a Spiritual Desert

February 17th, 2012 · 20 Comments

Commonweal has an excerpt, “Nazi Racism and the Church,” from a forthcoming book by John Connelly that will appear next month:  From Enemy to brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965.

Briefly, Msgr. Oesterreicher was far more of a critic of the Vatican and of Pius XII’s dealings with the Nazis before [...]

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Tags: Anti-Semitism · Catholic Church · clergy sex abuse scandal