On The Catholic Church: Shut It Down?
Except that other examples of Christianity--Eastern Orthodoxy, Unitarianism, pretty much everything except Roman Catholicism--is maintaining its mystery just fine. The primary difference is that only Catholicism considers the church itself the source of faith. If you take away the institution's authority, the whole thing falls.
But human-centered and God-centered faiths are thriving; it's the church-center faith that's in trouble.
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On Can You Guess Who Is Having The Easiest Time In This Recession?
I doesn't surprise me that people making over $150k have jobs--to make that much in the first place, you have to have skills that are a) in demand and b) on the whole rarer. And those tend to be skills that make other people money, so even a laid-off unethical derivatives trader can quickly find a job, even in a bad economy.
The other thing is in the unemployment models themselves: if a rich person loses her jobs, she doesn't necessarily need to be out there looking. She can wait out the recession. And thus she's not counted in the unemployment rate.
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On What Can Confession Mean Now?
"(One also assumes that if the Church-sanctioned app solicits a confession of sexual abuse from a member of the clergy, it will trigger a Mission Impossible-style immolation of app, phone and—who knows?—user.)"
...ironic, given that immolation itself was an invention of the Church.