Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-2/page/9/)
This canonization is a scandal. WHY is the pope making so profound a mistake? Why create a patron saint for colonizers and racists in the year 2015? Why not instead take the occasion of his visit to the United States to do an about-face and canonize those thousands of native peoples who died at the hands of misguided, badly theologically trained, servants of the Empire?
Rev. Pinckney of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church led a church founded by men who gave their lives for this principle: better to risk death than abandon your people. Like those men, Rev. Pinckney took his fire pan and stood between all of us and the terrible plague that threatens to engulf us still.
We have Pope Francis to thank for moving the climate conversation forward, and our tradition of Hinduism, in concert with the universal Earth-honoring wisdom embedded in every community of faith, has much to say about climate change and environmental justice.
While I and other European-heritage Jews clearly understand that we have been accorded white privilege vis-à-vis minoritized “racial” communities, we also understand the history and legacy of anti-Jewish persecution and, yes, how dominant groups have racialized us as well. And I believe at this point in history, individual Jews would answer the question, “What is my race?” in very different ways.
The best way to support the Pope is to build an interfaith movement based on these values articulated in the New Bottom Line. It is only when people begin to see a spiritual progressive movement in the public sphere with a strategy for how to save the planet that is willing to challenge the fundamentals of global capitalism that they will be able to imagine overcoming their own passivity, emotional depression, and mistaken certainty that “nothing will ever make possible a new economic system.”
Why, why, why in 2015 canonize someone who represents such bad theology and bad intercultural values, utterly lacking the respect and humility that lie at the foundation of interfaith work and beliefs and values? No one who has passed Psychology 101 can believe in a masochistic treatment of one’s body in the name of a Creator God any longer, and no one who believes in a God of Justice can possibly subscribe to sadistic treatment of people of other faith traditions or no faith tradition. Sadism is not a virtue.
Consistent with the principle that anything not expressly prohibited by God is permitted, Jewish law, or halacha, generally takes a permissive position on GMO food. But just because halacha doesn’t expressly prohibit GMO food, doesn’t mean it’s entirely silent on the issue.
Blumenfeld argues that the Catholic church’s reaction to Caitlyn Jenner and other trans individuals follows their pattern of using means of attempted body control (whether that’s reproductive, sex, or otherwise) to control minds. “when patriarchal social and family structures converge with patriarchal religious systems, which reinforce strictly defined gender hierarchies of male domination, women and girl’s oppression and oppression of those who transgress sexual-, sexuality-, and gender binaries and boundaries became inevitable.”
Popes Francis’ upcoming encyclical (an authoritative form of papal discourse) is an opportunity for the Catholic Church to further develop a relationship between humanity and the environment in a way that gives both parties agency. William Bole uses the moments before the encyclical’s posting on June 18th to look at how this relationship has already begun to develop within the tradition and questions how Pope Francis can add something of substance to this development.
I want to criticise Israel not to do down the tribe but to stay loyal to it. I want to uphold the values and teaching that I think of as mine by birth and by upbringing. I’m not boycotting Jews or Judaism when I make the case for a radical change in our attitude to the Palestinian people. Rather I am upholding all I see as worthwhile, eternal and universal from my Jewish heritage and history.