From Gary Wills’ new article at New York Review of Books:

The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.”

Ashley Baxstrom: You’ve probably heard at this point about the Vatican’s statement concerning what it considers to be the wayward actions of its sisters in faith. You can refer to The Revealer’s “Radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” for the basics, including how nuns were “reprimanded for making public statements that ‘disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.’”

And then, you’ve probably heard about some of the reactions, people talking about Christian feminism, and hierarchy, and personal histories with the Church and faith. One major trend in the reactions has been people coming to the defense of the nuns for acting on behalf of social justice and the poor. But we all know a trend of movement hasn’t really gained steam until it’s gone viral, and that’s where we find ourselves today.

Florida Times-Union writer Phillip Milano spoke with me–and Philip Jenkins–about “anti-Catholic” bias in the media.

It’s been more than a decade since the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal rocked Boston.  In that time, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has provided national support to victims of abuse.  But recently SNAP is finding that the Church’s new approach to managing national lawsuits is not apology and reparation but counter-attack.  Seeking to prove that SNAP is not a “rape crisis center” the Church is subpoenaing to access confidential communication between SNAP and victims, thus exposing victims to public scrutiny.

Mary Valle:  Fr. Marcel Guarnizo, the priest who denied Barbara Johnson (also known as the “lesbian Barbara Johnson”) communion at her mother’s funeral, has been put on administrative leave for having “engaged in intimidating behavior toward parish staff and others that is incompatible with proper priestly ministry.”

There’s much more at stake in the discussion about conscience clauses than who gets the bill for the pill.

By Ann Neumann

On January 20th Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that contraception would be covered free-of-charge in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Obama administration’s stifled, delayed-release attempt at reforming health care.  The announcement included an exemption “for churches and houses of worship, but not for other religious institutions such as hospitals, universities and charities.”  Women’s rights groups cheered the decision, having feared the worst after the record of “compromise” this administration has established.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) did not cheer; they immediately orchestrated a campaign that included letters read at mass and heavy lobbying of conservative lawmakers and activists, peculiarly claiming that the decision was an affront to religious freedom.  It was yet another sparkling demonstration of the access that bishops have over health care legislation. The Pope himself took the opportunity of a visit with U.S. bishops and military leaders on January 19th to lament the erosion of religious freedom, saying:

When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey… to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.

Prohibit families from deciding when to have children, he threatened, or risk the specter of totalitarianism!  Or rather, Comply with Catholic teaching and be free!

So guess what, Occupy Wall Streeters!  Your lucky day!  Jim Wallis has invited you in from the cold!  I totally can’t tell if Wallis is making a funny parody of all the inaccurate media coverage of the movement or if he actually thinks the people on the streets are pathetic orphans.

So let’s invite them to our Thanksgiving dinners all across the country, and have “table fellowship,” because that’s what church people do!

Don’t miss my interview on WBAI’s “Healthstyles,” with Barbara Glickstein.  Tonight at 11 pm on 99.5 FM. I’ll be discussing Catholic hospitals and end of life care, issues discussed in my last article for The Nation, found here.

It’s a two part series so check out the second segment on August 25th, same time and place.

A quick shout-out to Bilgrimage, a blog by theologian William D. Lindsey, that recently linked an article by Mary Valle from our series on the John Jay report about sex abuse in the Catholic Church — and caused some good discussion.  (Other contributors aren’t shabby either, by the way.  See the entire series here.)

Part of The Revealer’s series on the John Jay report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.”

by Jack Downey

Last month, a team of researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, led by Dr. Karen Terry, published a 150-page report entitled The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010 .  The report is the second installment of  research into the scandal that has crushed the American Church for the past two decades as reports of abuse and its administrative cover-up came to light, the high-water mark being the 2003 prison murder of convicted abuser priest John Geoghan.  Causes and Context is the culmination of five years of research initiated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) National Review Board, to the tune of $1.8 million, approximately half of which was funded by the USCCB itself.  Its preceding document, The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, was meant to be a descriptive analysis of the phenomenon – cataloguing the 10,667 individual reports of sexual abuse by clergy from 1950 through early 2003 – with Causes and Context providing more analytical reflection.  However, the study’s immediate legacy has been marred by allegations—and threats–from critics of all stripes that the research itself was crippled in some way by ethical bias, aggravating the already tectonic divisions within American Catholicism on the subject.