22AR27-08
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pdf = www.bit.ly/33R428P
AR 27:8 - Does Scripture weaken the gender binary?
In this issue:
BIAS - "monumental hypocrisy from Big Tech"
GENDER - how the Bible (allegedly) affirms transgender and nonbinary identities
ROMAN CATHOLICISM - "the Church must reform itself before it can pretend to preach to the world with any authority"
+ "what it took to uncover the sexual hypocrisy of a Cardinal"
Apologia Report 27:8 (1,561)
February 25, 2022
BIAS
"Who Gets to Be a Social Media Gatekeeper? For years, social media platforms have profited from a business model that ignores truth and promotes outrage" by Danny Duncan Collum -- an interesting example of blame-shifting. (More on the way.)
"[I]n the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, social media companies were "shocked" to discover violent anti-Semitic and white nationalist agitators lurking in plain sight on their platforms. With their usual earnest hypocrisy, the companies took action, banning tens of thousands of groups and individuals from the social media universe. Facebook and YouTube suspended Donald Trump's accounts. Twitter permanently banned him.
"Never mind that in the preceding days and weeks those same social media platforms hosted the planning for Jan. 6, or that for years they have profited from a business model that ignores truth and promotes outrage. But when some of their more unruly customers got off the leash and started threatening the people who write antitrust laws, Facebook, Google, and Twitter suddenly became tribunes of civility.
"Of course, such monumental hypocrisy from Big Tech gave many Republican politicians the opportunity to change the subject from their own possible complicity in the insurrection to what they claim is suppression of free speech by the liberals in Silicon Valley. To this, clever liberals have replied that the First Amendment only applies to government, not to private corporations." Sojourners, Apr '21, <www.bit.ly/3sl8YeA> (paywalled)
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GENDER
"Meeting God Beyond the Gender Binary: How the Bible affirms transgender and nonbinary people" by Joy Ladin <joyladin.wordpress.com> -- "Transgender people have become a flash point in America's culture wars, particularly in communities and institutions based on religious traditions that see the gender binary - the idea that human beings are always, and only, male or female - as a fixed theological principle rather than a mutable feature of human culture. The statement that God created human beings 'male and female' (Genesis 1:27) is often cited as the basis for this belief, interpreted as meaning that binary gender is a divinely determined aspect of humanity - and transgender and nonbinary people, therefore, are not.
"From this perspective, the gender binary is a cornerstone of the Divine-human relationship, a way in which God's conception of humanity is reflected in our bodies, our intimate relationships, our families, customs, rituals, and communities. Transgender and nonbinary people - people like me who do not identify as the gender associated with the sex of our bodies - must either be deluded or heretical, misunderstanding who God means us to be, or consciously rejecting the Divine-human relationship and opposing the divine order of creation.
"Whatever our motivations, our claims that human beings can really 'be' transgender or nonbinary, and that such identities should be acknowledged and respected, are seen as posing an existential threat to the religious traditions that safeguard the sacredness of family, community, and humanity." Sojourners, Nov '21, <www.bit.ly/34jknUf> (paywalled)
For helpful insights on the controversy, see (for example) Carl Trueman's review of Gender Ideology: What Do Christians Need to Know? by Sharon James (Christian Focus, 2019) at 9Marks <www.bit.ly/3IdtXGN>
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ROMAN CATHOLICISM
"What Happens Now? Catholicism has clearly lost ground in the American cultural landscape" by David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture <www.bit.ly/3JP3kbC> at Fordham University (Notre Dame Magazine, Winter 2021-22) -- before speculating that "a new look at timeless tenets of faith" may be the required remedy, Gibson reviews the devastating setbacks to date.
"Vocations to the priesthood continue to lag, as they have for decades, and the same goes for vowed religious life. Mass attendance continues to fall, parishes continue to close and participation in the sacraments is trending downward as well — fewer baptisms and funerals; fewer marriages and confessions. Defections mount as Catholics leave for other churches or, just as likely, for nothing at all. Lay ministry programs that were once a source of hope for Catholic renewal are declining steadily — and the number of candidates for lay ministry along with them. The number of deacons is also heading south after the sharp growth ... in the 1970s. ...
"Catholics have in fact not kept pace with the growth of the overall population and have dropped from about one-quarter of all Americans a generation ago to just one-fifth, maybe less by now. In fact, the largest 'denomination,' if you want to call it that, are the 'nones,' those religiously unaffiliated Americans who now comprise as much as 23 percent of the population and growing.
"Internally, immigration has changed the composition of the Church, even if it is not enough to keep up with defections. Latinos now account for nearly 4 in 10 Catholics in the U.S., but the Church has not adapted to their presence nor assimilated them as they did previous waves of immigrants. Old-line white Catholics are trending in one direction politically and theologically, while Latinos and other immigrants may as well be living in another universe in terms of their social and religious sensibilities. ...
"To be honest, these trends have been so clear for so long that you didn't need the charism of prophecy to see what was coming. ... Catholics truly are adrift, and the cynicism engendered by the ongoing sex-abuse revelations, combined with the pandemic-enforced shutdown of religious services for so long — not to mention the renewed infighting that anti-COVID-19 measures sparked — only intensifies the sense of exodus and crisis."
Journalist Peter "Steinfels has argued that 'the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is on the verge of either an irreversible decline or a thoroughgoing transformation.' ...
"Our decline is tracking the precipitous fall of onetime Catholic strongholds like Ireland and precedes that of Poland....
"American Catholics have achieved the American Dream; we have assimilated and are turning out to be as indifferent to religious practice as our European forebears. ...
"John Haughey, S.J., framed the dilemma back in 2004.... He wondered why Catholic students, and even his colleagues, are so reticent to speak about a 'personal relationship' with Christ, when that ought to be the baseline condition, and testimony, of an engaged Catholic."
Today's U.S. immigrants, "especially the Latinos who are ostensibly going to save the Church, are not like the European immigrants of old. They are less likely to be Catholic when they arrive, and they are less likely to remain Catholic after they settle in. ... Immigrants will migrate out of the Church more easily than they left their home countries. Meanwhile, America's 'indigenous' Catholics may keep the Catholic label but little of the content. ...
"At the turn of the millennium, the Church in America welcomed some 170,000 converts a year into full communion. Today the number is about 100,000. ... In 1970, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate <cara.georgetown.edu>> at Georgetown University, roughly 3 million American Catholics identified as converts — half a million fewer than people who called themselves 'former Catholics.' Today, in a far larger U.S. population, the number of those identifying as converts to Catholicism has risen to 4.4 million, while those calling themselves 'former Catholics' have multiplied by a factor of eight to nearly 30 million. ...
"[Pope] Francis said in 2019, 'Christendom no longer exists.' And good riddance, if clinging to Christendom keeps us from being authentically Christian.
"The challenge is finding something to replace it, starting with what my Fordham colleague C. Colt Anderson has called an 'apologetics of humility.' That the Church must reform itself before it can pretend to preach to the world with any authority...."
Gibson concludes with a lengthy discussion of what is not working and what is not the problem. <www.bit.ly/3LgiEiS>
Leonardo De Chirico offers a global perspective on Roman Catholicism's woes in "The Church Is Burning, What Can Be Done?" (Vatican Files, Oct 1 '21) <www.bit.ly/35sCbw0>
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Released in October, Brian Devlin's book, Cardinal Sin: Challenging Power Abuse in the Catholic Church, is just one more example relating to the first items above.
Columba Books explains: "As the papal conclave that was to choose Pope Francis was being called, a cardinal of the Catholic Church was exposed and took a monumental fall from grace. Since then, many more high-profile Catholic clerics have been confronted. One of four whistle-blowers, former priest Brian Devlin relates what it took to uncover the sexual hypocrisy of Cardinal Keith O'Brien in this previously untold inside story. ... With far-reaching insights, the book offers genuine lessons to help avoid future horror stories involving Catholic leaders. The author asks the hard questions, analyzes the harsh responses of the Catholic hierarchy, and provides ways the Church can heal and regain the trust of its faithful." <www.bit.ly/3rublMJ>
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