Tag: new york times

Ads for Secular (Liberal) Catholics

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Amy Levin: The New York Times committed a liberal faux pas last month. As if they’d forgotten just how controversial ads can be, they accepted $39,000 from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) to run a full-page. . .well I’ll just say it, “anti-Catholic” advertisement. The ad features a political cartoon–with a grumpily outraged male bishop and a frustrated cosmopolitan, white, middle-aged female sandwiching a birth control pill–that reads, “All the outrage over something like this is a bit hard to swallow.” Next to the cartoon in giant bold letters the ad visually screams “Open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics. It’s your moment of truth.” Feast your eyes down the page and you’ll find any number of quintessential reasons to leave the Catholic church, most prominently, women’s reproductive rights. Here’s a fun clip:

Why put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, which excludes half of humanity?

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Evangelicals, Not Invited to the 9/11 Party

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The best and most prominent reminder of the diversity of American Christian thought arrived on the New York City mayor’s desk this week, in the form of a petition with 62,000 signatures.  It was written by that epicenter of hate speech, The Family Research Council (and City Councilman Fernando Cabrera, a Bronx pastor).  FRC’s beef?  That the ceremony at the World Trade Center tomorrow will not include pastors or priests.  Each year, in a ceremony format now a decade old, moments of silence break up the hours-long reading of names of those who died.  Representatives from across the religious spectrum attend. But the petitioners want explicit prayers and they want them from their own leaders. Continue Reading →