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A Catholic Professor Wonders What can be Done about Godless Notre Dame

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I read a very long post on a Christian sight written by a retiring professor at Notre Dame. The professor is obviously a devout Catholic and vented his frustration that Notre Dame, which bills it Catholic roots prominently, does mostly nothing to keep the Catholic tradition embedded in the institution. To the contrary, he says nearly everyone from its Presidents to its Deans blow off, even make fun, of the faith. This goes on, he says, even though Notre Dame claims it considers its Catholic founding very important. The retiring prof says institutions, especially those of higher education, should not be different than what they say they are. If it says it's Catholic it should be Catholic. He ignores the fact that in its documents one will find all kinds of goals and aspirations listed. The prof says as many practicing Catholics as possible should be hired. While it must not discriminate, the secular people who have been hired should become familiar with the history and tenets on Cat...
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It's Been 10 Years since a Pope visited the U.S...Not Coming Now Either

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  Looking at the travel plans of Pope Leo, we see no trip to the U.S. is planned this year. When the Pope travels it must be really expensive. I can imagine there are endless hours of disagreement at meetings deciding where and when to spend this money. The last Pope visit was Frances in 2015.  If I was an executive in the Vatican, I would want the Pope going to places where there is a chance to beef up numbers and increase revenue. I suppose there would be some appeal to go places where the publicity would stem loses that are occurring, but those places would be less profitable.  The conventional wisdom on Christian sites is that Christianity is growing in Africa and that is where the faith's future lies. Pope Leo is planning to spend a lot of time in Africa in 2026. It is tempting, I'm sure to go where big crowds turn out and there are converts. These are invariably countries with low education and incomes. When incomes rise, people tend to drift off.  Visiting the...
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Catholic Bishops Condemned Racist Video. How About Women

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The Catholic Bishops condemned the video used by Trump of the Obamas portrayed as monkeys. Why cannot they find the same juices to condemn sexist portrayal of women? My prediction is every branch of Christianity, denominations, individual churches and groups of churches that consider women not worthy to hold the office of clergy or higher, will slowly fall into the trash bin of history. This is a solvable problem. Every denomination picks and chooses which parts of passages in the Bible it chooses to believe and follow. I've never heard of a denomination that forbids clothing made of clothe with different materials in the threads. We all know of the ancient food taboos.  But, some the men in the faith cling to the mythical views about the "proper roles" of genders. Of course, a current hot button issue is defining gender. All the stuff about gender can be written off as ancient myth and ignored. When there is self interest at stake, we will see men putting women in second...
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Whatever Happened to Southern Baptist's Disney Boycott

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Back in the 1990's there was a lot of news about a boycott by the Southern Baptist Convention of Disney theme parks. The main personality in the boycott was a Baptist preacher named Wiley Drake. Drake died this week and it brings back with amusement his determination to get the SBC to "boycott" Disney which it did for several years.  The reason for the boycott and its failure are fun to remember. Wiley Drake was a preacher at a Baptist church four miles from Disney in California. With thousands of gay people in California, some started encouraging their community of attend the Disney park on certain days of the month. They advertised the gay days at Disney. I recall reading that Disney itself never advertised the events but did not discourage them either. They simply welcomed the gay guests.   The other thing that bugged Rev. Drake was that Disney provided spouse benefits to gay couples just as it did to straight ones. This was medical and pension benefits.  It would...
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Ireland's Politics has Turned on the Catholic Hierarchy

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It seems like most places where Christianity is losing ground, things move along slowly. The numbers fall a little each year. Some Christian taboos, but not all, tipped over. Ireland seems like the exception. A few years ago, there was a nation-wide vote to made abortions available. From what one reads in the press, the defeats of the faith, including ridicule, continue s. To preface current Irish events, we need to revisit a topic discussed almost continually for the past few decades. It is about forcing abortion into government and into the politics that ultimately run governments. I can't recall how many times in conversations among my liberal friends someone pointing out that, "If government can stop abortions, government can require abortions. Anti-abortion would be smart to leave politics and government out of its efforts." Ireland is a good example. For decades, abortions were outlawed in Ireland. The Catholic hierarchy called the shots about abortion. It inserted ...
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Return to the Basics: What is Christianity

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In his book, "God is Not One " Professor Stephan Prothero presented a simple but profound question. Is the faith about what denomination officials claim it to be, what its seminaries teach it to be or what those in the pews think it is? The last one is most always different than the first two. He thinks the last one is most important and the book is about what religious people in the pews think their respective faiths are about. For Christianity, he says the faith is about one topic, sin. That is, the people in the pews talk about and worry about sin more than any other topic. This seems especially important to me, an economist, because people are buying the church membership and expect to get what they value. Prothero says they value worry about sin. What people talk about and worry about are the religious issues that find their way into local, state and federal legislation. Sin brings passion. Elected people respond to passion. Theological hair splitting is not addressed in...
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Will Republicans Find Enough "Villains" to Last Until Midterms

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Outside of arguments on policy such as health care, taxes, debt and budget, each party needs some terrible villain they will defend against. President Trump has rolled out many in his years of the Presidency. There have been the election crooks, immigrants, the Godless. the Chinas, Obama, Biden and readers know of the others.  Democrats have it easy. Trump is the villain. Then, there are the anti-abortionists. Trump and preachers/priests will be there for them for quite a while yet, so Democrats do not have to keep looking for new villains. The Republicans' problem is they need to keep finding new villains. The courts are taking away prosecution of some of Trump's favorite. Others, like workers in Mexican restaurant kitchens, do not seem like villains. Certainly, the innocent citizens killed by ICE in Minneapolis have not appeared to the public as villains.  The unspoken, of course, is that non-white people are villains and that will work to some degree for Republicans. Its sh...
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