New
: I neglected to tell you that the new edition of Jewsweek is up with some interesting stuff, including links to the Yiddish Cat in the Hat and a review of a book on what brought the Catholic church to its present cliff:
In a startling comparison, Steinfels believes “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical barring the use of artificial means of birth control, “is the Vietnam War of the Catholic Church.” Although Vietnam was “strategically and economically marginal to American interests,” advocates of the war believed a communist victory in Vietnam “would tilt the world balance of power against the United States.”
So too, contraception, Steinfels writes, “in itself marginal among Catholic teachings was elevated to centrality by a domino theory that all the principles of Catholic sexual morality would collapse if change was accepted on this one point.”
Steinfels believes the church’s current positions on sexual morality and limiting the role of women is “a form of Catholic fundamentalism” and a defensive reaction to threatening change.
