I'm not speaking of parish priests. Of those men whom we know have violated children, their numbers are too great to list here.

     I am speaking of men in the United States Church administrative hierarchy.

     T… Read full post »

      Some doctors are now attempting to prevent intersex infants… Read full post »

              &nb… Read full post »

 ^{Marvin Wilson}

      The United States Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that no state may under any circumstances execute, regardless of the nature of a perpetrator's crime, a retarded convict.

     This has be… Read full post »

The Challenge:

We are afraid that Chairman Ryan’s budget reflects the values of his favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand. Survival of the fittest may be okay for Social Darwinists but not for followers of the gospel of Jesus.

          --from a letter to Budget… Read full post »

     It would be simple to be cynical given the avalanche of hate-based state legislation aimed at women and girls we've seen and they've endured over the years and particularly over the past few. I highlighted here yesterday a particularly vicious South Dakota law requiring doc… Read full post »

     Whatever we think of past abortion rulings, whether we're discussing Roe or any among the hundreds of lower court rulings since 1973, we've never before been asked to decide whether or not it's good law or good social policy for a court to give a state a… Read full post »

  
     First, Good News.

^{Philadelphia's (former) Msgr. William Lynn}
 
 
 
     Doing for the Church and for children what it was unwilling to do for itself and its children in all of its dioceses and for so lon… Read full post »

 
 
     On 30 September, 1960, at 8:30 in the evening, The Flintstones, hoping to capitalize on the The Honeymooners run, debuted on ABC. I was nine. I was keen to stay up.

     In order to have my wise parents allow… Read full post »

                ^{The best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.}

                         ^{--  Daisy Buchanan}… Read full post »

^{This is a re-post of a piece I wrote in early May, 2011. I 've been thinking of many of these first-friends lately.} 

 Love & Suffering: On My Forty-Eighth Grade-School Reunion





This may be all I know, or ever need to know, about life:

Everyone we ever knew… Read full post »

      In the year since the Albany legislature passed New York State's landmark marriage equality law, over ten thousand couples w… Read full post »

     In my last prep school teaching year I offered a senior elective about several historically important issues that have come before the Supreme Court. Needless to say, 1973's Roe v. Wade stirred interest as did the cases from the early 1900s that challenged Paramount… Read full post »

     For over a generation researchers have been searching for a medication that might successfully prevent H. I. V., the virus that may lead to AIDS. Last week cames news, finally, of a medication, Truvada, that may do just that. The U.S. Food and D… Read full post »

     Holy-Land Archeological Quarterly reports that two researchers, Professor P. R. Saul and Father Ryan McElroy of the Israeli Ministry of Old Bones and Manuscripts have recently uncovered shards, fragmentary evidence that suggests strongly that what had been thoug… Read full post »

"What is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow; this is the whole of the Torah [the Law]."

           -- The Rabbi Hillel, Jesus' contemporary

"What you do to the least among us you do to me."

 … Read full post »

      A disabled child. Far and away most likely.

     A kid with disabilities, according to a World Health Organization study published in the Lancet, is four times "more likely to be a victim of violence", including sexual… Read full post »

     Since the next president may be a man who has giving the back of his greased hand to, and because I will considering a running in '16, I think now is the momentum when I should open uppity.

I. MY RETROACTIVE-RETIREMENTS

     First,… Read full post »

                                                                             … Read full post »

     Worse than Mr. Romney's deliberate misuse of his NAACP speed-date in Houston, worse than his transparently cynical desire to have white, independent voters see him as an expansive person with a multi-cultural, trans-class economic, inclusionary agenda...worse is the… Read full post »

    A: 

     When, years back and year over year, you've been repeatedly sexually abused by that priest, when you've suffered long-term related depression, tried suicide numbers of times, and have been given $650,000 by that priest's hush-minde… Read full post »

     Exodus, aside from the title of Mr. Marley's hard-driving and best live performance number ever and a fascinating study of the emergent ancient Hebrew clans' and God's/Moses' face-to-face...is also the name of the now justly riven yet heretofore very well-fund… Read full post »

Shibe Park, renamed Connie Mack Stadium in '53, home to the Athletics and Phillies, Lehigh Avenue at 22nd Street, North Philadelphia

Connie Mack Stadium in the '60s

     When, in the late '60s, the City of Philadelp… Read full post »

      Under the national radar and for several years there has been what the Associated Press calls "a widening sex scandal" in the Air Force's Training Command at Texas' Lackland AFB and, perhaps, at Training Commands elsewhere. In recent months at least thirty-on… Read full post »