If the vote (for marriage equality) in Ireland proves anything, it is that both Francis, the good cop, and Parolin, the bad cop, will fail in their efforts. Ireland demonstrates that the pope's understanding of acting mercifully toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will not be adequate to bring them into the pews.

Sure, Pope Francis believes the church should minister warmly to LGBT people, but he also believes they should never be given the impression that their relationships have the same potential for goodness and holiness as heterosexual relationships. The pope's brand of mercy suggests that LGBT Catholics should be tolerated by the church, but not embraced with genuine justice.  continue

Sure, Pope Francis believes the church should minister warmly to WOMEN, but he also believes they should never be given the impression that THEY have the same potential for goodness and holiness IN PRIESTLY MINISTRY AND CHURCH LEADERSHIP ROLES as THOSE BLESSED ENOUGH TO HAVE BEEN BORN WITH MALE BODY PARTS. The pope's brand of mercy suggests that WOMEN should be tolerated by the church, but not embraced with genuine justice.

Take a look at this list of countries: Belgium, Canada, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Luxembourg and Ireland. Name two things that they have in common.

They don’t share a continent, obviously. Or a language.

But in all of them, the Roman Catholic Church has more adherents, at least nominally, than any other religious denomination does.

And all of them belong to the vanguard of 20 nations that have decided to make same-sex marriage legal.  continue reading

DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland's citizens have voted in a landslide to legalize gay marriage, electoral officials announced Saturday — a stunningly lopsided result that illustrates what Catholic leaders and rights activists alike called a "social revolution."

Friday's referendum saw 62.1 percent of Irish voters say "yes" to changing the nation's constitution to define marriage as a union between two people regardless of their sex. Outside Dublin Castle, watching the results announcement in its cobblestoned courtyard, thousands of gay rights activists cheered, hugged and cried at the news.   continue reading

“This decision makes every citizen equal and I believe it will strengthen the institution of marriage,” Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said.

The assassinated Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero is at the final milestone of a tortuous road to sainthood with his beatification by the Roman Catholic Church on Saturday. The occasion has brought celebrations of the highest order in his native El Salvador. But the event calls for much wider rejoicing — for it reveals a victory over malign influences within the church and provides further evidence of the radical nature of the revolution Pope Francis is forging in Rome.  continue reading

The president of the Boy Scouts of America on Thursday called for an end to the group’s blanket ban on gay adult leaders, warning Scout executives that “we must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be,” and that “any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement.”

At the same time, religious organizations that sponsor a majority of local Scout troops, including the Mormons and Roman Catholics, should remain free to set their own policies for leaders, said the president, Robert M. Gates, the former director of the C.I.A. and the former secretary of defense.  continue reading

DUBLIN — Gays in Ireland often have faced a stark choice between leading secret lives or emigrating to more liberal lands. This week, the Irish could turn that tradition on its head and vote to legalize same-sex marriage in the world's first national referendum on the matter.

The campaign ahead of Friday's constitutional referendum has featured searing testimonies designed to make the voters of this predominantly Roman Catholic nation look in the mirror. continue reading

…When it comes to human evolution, the Vatican of 2015 is stuck in a time warp, unable to integrate the explosion of new knowledge about humanity’s origins and its potential future into a meaningful narrative for the Catholic Church, whose 1.2 billion members worldwide look to it for guidance in a changing world.

The inability to adapt to basic knowledge is a monumental failure on the part of Rome and its theologians, one that, in the prophetic words of the late Pope John Paul II, can only lead to the continuing fragmentation of human culture – not to mention the fragmentation of the Church itself. In fact, refusal to accept the findings of science threatens the Church and its membership not just in Europe and the US (where one in 10 of every Americans is already an ex-Catholic), but in Latin America, Asia and Africa, in almost every populated part of the Earth.  Read full essay.

[John Farrell writes about science and technology for publications including Forbes, New Scientist and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of The Day Without Yesterday (2005), and lives in Boston.]

WASHINGTON (RNS) The United States is a significantly less Christian country than it was seven years ago.

That’s the top finding – one that will ricochet through American faith, culture and politics – in the Pew Research Center’s newest report, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” released Tuesday (May 12).  continue reading

...Right now, the church has contradictory teachings about women's roles. It teaches that women are equal but that they are forbidden to exercise that equality in church decision-making. If this crazy-making cognitive dissonance prevails, women will forever be deprived of full participation in church life and leadership, not to mention the selection of pastors, bishops and popes.

We have two possible ways out of this debacle. We ordain women, or we change canon law so that governance rests with baptism rather than with ordination.

I personally favor the latter option. The church will make better decisions if the great diversity of voices, lay and ordained, is brought to bear on decisions that affect all of us. Plus, clericalism is an equal-opportunity affliction, and feminist Catholics often caution against an "add women and stir" mentality that does nothing to change oppressive top-down structures.

That said, I also favor anything that provides women with greater leverage in decisions affecting them and their families. If ordination -- beginning with women deacons -- is the only practical option right now, then I'm for it.   read full essay

[A Sister of St. Joseph, Sr. Christine Schenk served urban families for 18 years as a nurse midwife before co-founding FutureChurch, where she served for 23 years. She holds master's degrees in nursing and theology.]

CANTERBURY, England (RNS) The country’s first women-only mosque will open in Bradford, a 19th-century industrial boomtown and one of the most heavily Muslim-populated cities in the U.K., the Muslim Women’s Council announced.

The plan seeks to provide women with a platform where they can play a larger role in the religious life of their community, a role that would include women leading prayers on Fridays and the introduction of female imams.  continue reading

Pope Francis seems to be saying a lot about women lately. Headlines declaring his call for the church to hear the voices of women and his call for equal pay could be spotted in both the religious and secular press during the last two weeks of April.

What wasn't talked about much in the media, however, was the context in which those headline-making statements were made.  continue reading

He (Francis) left out the part about women in the Roman Catholic Church not even getting a shot at equal work. Pay isn’t the primary issue when you’re barred from certain positions and profoundly underrepresented in others.

The church’s refusal to follow some other Christian denominations and ordain women undermines any progress toward equality that it trumpets or tries. Sexism is embedded in its structure, its flow chart.

Men but not women get to preside at Mass. Men but never women wear the cassock of a cardinal, the vestments of a pope. Male clergy are typically called “father,” which connotes authority. Women in religious orders are usually called “sister,” which doesn’t.  read full essay

The Roman Catholic Church, a mammoth institution plodding through history, changes slowly. Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich and others may move toward fuller inclusion of women, but until they extend all seven sacraments to women, the Roman Catholic Church will not reach wholeness.

Until the Church accepts women as truly equal, the fullness of God’s creation will not be.  continue reading

The call to religious vocation came at different times in different ways. For some, it was a thunderclap, a great moment of clarity. For others, it was a building crescendo after a lifetime of being in harmony with their faith.

But the seven women ordained as Catholic priests last weekend in Morristown all agree on this: Their call to a religious pastoral life was genuinely sent by God and is as pure as any man's.  continue reading