The growth of short-term mission trips by young Americans has often struck me as little more than what is derided as “religious tourism,” although I am ambivalent in my criticism: Missionaries and church leaders and young people themselves talk about the experience as life-changing, or at the very least alerting them to a much wider–and…

These and other questions will press in on the true believer as Apple releases its new and improved version of the iPhone. Or perhaps this “Second Coming,” as the NYTimes’ tech writer David Pogue puts it in his column, isn’t the rapture many expect. Part of the problem may be the very religious sentiments that…

Following up on earlier posts here and here about the canonical penalties against Sister of Charity Louis Lears, formerly of St. Cronan’s parish in St. Louis: National Catholic Reporter just broke a story that the archdiocese authorized someone to videotape a Catholic women’s ordination ceremony that took place in a synagogue last November that Lears…

This morning’s update on the widening Aussie sex abuse scandal, also via dotCommonweal: Australia’s ABC News has obtained police wiretaps of a conversation between Fr. Terence Goodall and Anthony Jones, the man Goodall allegedly raped in 1982. Cardinal Pell had dismissed Jones’ complaint of abuse because he said Goodall told the cardinal the sex was…

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