NEWS NOTES: January 19, 2012

Here are links to some items you might find of interest:

1) Pope Benedict XVI urged American bishops in Rome for their ad limina visit to protect religious freedom.  Though marriage debates were not mentioned, the American bishops are increasingly using the supposed threat to religious freedom as a way to oppose marriage equality initiatives.  The National Catholic Reporter has a news story about the pope’s speech: “Pope warns of threat to religious freedom, conscience in US”  You can read the entire text of the speech on http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com .

2) What’s wrong with the way secular opponents of marriage equality argue their case? Conor Friedersdorf examines their arguments in The Atlantic’s “The Logical Fallacy Gay-Marriage Opponents Depend On.”

3) Michael Bayly of TheWildReed.blogspot.com continues his excellent series “Beyond the Hierarchy: The Blossoming of Liberating Catholic Insights on Sexuality” with an excerpt from an article by the esteemed Fr. Charles Curran entitled “A Vatican II View Could Allow for Gay, Lesbian Unions.”

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry