The past twelve months have seen a number of conflicts within the realm of what Americans often call “church-state issues.”  The contraception mandate argument in healthcare reform gave way to last summer’s “Fortnight for Freedom.” Last week, as I was writing this post, breaking news suggested the Obama administration has shifted course, providing an exemption from contraceptive coverage for religious non-profits.

Church and state seem to spend a lot of time interacting.  Why? And what does it mean for church, and state?

For many Americans, it might be a surprise to know that the familiar phrase, “separation of church and state,” is not in the Constitution. It comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists. By the middle of the 20^th Century, this phrase had become a powerful metaphor, shaping both the Supreme Court’s view and the mindsets of many, if not most, religious persons. Over 200 years, the pattern of interaction between church and state has drastically changed, with different phases along the way. Continue reading →

I had never participated in the annual March for Life before January 25, and I have to admit, I’d been a bit nervous about attending for the first time.  Don’t get me wrong, the Catholic Church’s consistent prolife ethic, “from conception to natural death,” is one of her teachings which I find at once fully coherent, tremendously countercultural, undeniably Scriptural and personally challenging.  And I have seen many examples of the commitment of so many Catholics to a vision of human life as a “seamless garment,” a phrase from John 19:23 taken up by pacifist Eileen Egan to describe a holistic reverence for life’s sacredness and the consistent application of an ethic of life on issues such as abortion, capital punishment, militarism, euthanasia, and social and economic injustice. Continue reading →

I critique Vasquez’s interpretation of Emile Durkheim in his chapter “Grappling with the Legacy of Modernity: Implications for the Sociology of Religion,” in Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion (2013, Oxford University Press).  Vasquez, of course, is not the only sociologist that misinterprets Durkheim, and I base this evaluation not on any great epiphany of my own but on the work of Anne Warfield Rawls – my professor long ago (Anne is the daughter of the philosopher John Rawls).  Her continuing work on Durkheim has not only been an inspiration but it has helped me think clear headedly about Durkheim’s work (see in particular her 2004 book Epistemology and Practice: Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Cambridge University Press).  I also appreciate Vasquez’s work, especially his recent book More Than Belief (2010, Oxford University Press) and the chapter I mentioned above, but, nevertheless, he gets Durkheim wrong.  My purpose below then is to simply provide the reader with several quotes from Rawls’ book that debunks the notion that Durkheim had an idealist turn and, secondly, to start a further conversation about Durkheim’s work. Continue reading →

Last week, I went on the March for Life with over 600 Notre Dame, St. Mary’s, and Holy Cross students.

The trip was entirely student-run and student-led.  As a faculty member, I tagged along semi-incognito and observed (as sociologists love to do).  I cannot say enough how impressed I was by the students, both the leaders (who did an outstanding job of organizing a very complicated and logistically challenging trip) and the other students I met and got to know.

Sarah Moran is going to write a post reflecting on her own experience and has promised some pictures, but I wanted to mention some of the smaller aspects of the trip there and back that touched me.  These were not part of the march itself–but they impacted me. Continue reading →

Below are some graphs worth reflecting on today (click on the pictures to view them at a larger size):

(from a tweet by Conrad Hackett at Pew)

The graph  above of the number of abortions by time is from Wonkblog at the Washington Post.  As is the one below, showing how view few states had repealed or liberalized anti-abortion laws prior to Roe v. Wade:

Almost exactly a month ago, a friend of mine wrote on facebook:

“My beautiful Emily just came bouncing off the bus, giant smile, big brown eyes gleaming, singing ‘Feliz Navidad,’ and I nearly lost it. Jesus. Not a good day for parents.”

As the father of a 5 year-old daughter in pre-K, I knew exactly what he meant.  In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, just interacting with my daughter (or son, who turns three later this week) left a lump in my throat. Continue reading →

Happy 2013!

Sorry, the blog has been silent for a bit, but with the new semester gearing up, we will begin posting again.  For an initial blog, I thought that we would give a brief review of The Catholic Conversation in 2012.  A big thank you to all of our contributors this past year:  Gary Adler, Carol Ann MacGregor, Mike McCallion, Lucas Sharma, Mike Cieslak, David DeLambo, Sarah Moran, and Linda Kawentel.  And thank you to all of our readers this past year as well!

By the Numbers:

In 2012, we had 84 posts, 7,018 visitors, and 17,872 page views.  The average time viewers spent on a page was 2 minutes 21 seconds.

The single most-viewed post was Linda Kawental’s “Habits in the News:  The Power of Image”  This post received 1,202 pageviews and the average viewer spent 3 minutes and 39 seconds viewing it.  So, Linda wins “The Convo” for 2012–the newly named (and newly created) yet prestigious award for they most popular post on The Catholic Conversation.  Congratulations Linda!

Who will win “The Convo” this year?  We shall find out over the next three hundred and some days.  By the way, let us know how we have done and what you would like to see more of in 2013.

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photo by Michael Holden via Flickr

Last night, I went to our parish’s reconciliation service for advent with my wife and two children.  Importantly, our two children are 5 and 2 years old.  Needless to say, it’s always a challenge keeping them relatively quiet during a service (emphasis on the “relatively” part, since they are never truly quiet).  This time, however, was a special challenge since we had to stand in line for the sacrament, and the service was packed since it was also serving as the First Reconciliation service for the second graders.  Yet, that challenge turned out to be a grace-filled gift. Continue reading →

We’re continuing to summarize Catholic Conversation posts in “compendium” announcements to help readers more easily navigate to earlier topics. This compendium covers posts from June-August, 2012.

Several contributors continued recurring themes in contemporary U.S. parish life.  Lucas Sharma highlighted his study of St. Mary Magdalene Parish in Chicago to consider  homosexuality and parish life.  Michael Cieslak looked at recent research done in the Diocese of Rockford to highlight the role of complex parish dynamics in promoting stewardship.  Moving from parish to national Catholic life, Michael continued considering the merits of competing methods for estimating the U.S. Catholic population, particularly the use of parish baptismal and funeral logs, the Official Catholic Directory and telephone surveys.

Social justice was another key theme during these months.  As Gary Adler proposed reclaiming a sense of responsibility in individual consumer behavior and discussed its role in local and global social (in)justice.  Brian Starks reflected on a talk that emphasized how one of the fruits of Eucharistic celebration is commitment to the poor.

Linda Kawental and Brian considered several topics surrounding contemporary women religious, including the media popularity of women religious (especially in the wake of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious), the lack of lay support for women’s religious vocations, and debates on the success of  LCWR vs. CMSWR vocation recruitment.

Black Friday doesn’t seem to be going anywhere as an American cultural phenomenon.  In fact, what used to be a one-day kickoff to the Christmas shopping season on the Friday after Thanksgiving has become a frenzied four-day shopping weekend culminating in what’s recently been dubbed Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year.  This past weekend, many retailers even offered enticing discounts on Thanksgiving evening itself, so that while some families enjoyed pumpkin pie and conversation, retailers like Walmart were processing “nearly 10 million register transactions” and rang up “almost 5,000 items per second.”  With spending estimated at $59.1 billion, up 12.8 percent from last year, its hard not to be unsettled by American materialism. Continue reading →