Mid-City Christian: RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY

Friday, November 14, 2008

RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY

Catholic Church and Labor

The Church has had a long history of defending the rights of workers dating back 100 years to Pope Leo XIII. But recently, Catholic Bishops and Catholic school teachers across the nation have been fighting over union representation. In the Diocese of Scranton, Bishop Joseph Martino refused to recognize a Catholic teachers union representing one-third of its teachers for more than 30 years. Instead, he formed one of his own designed to serve teachers and Diocesan employees. The Bishop's decision caused an uproar in Scranton's heavily unionized Catholic community and reignited the national debate over union protection under state law for teachers in religious schools of all faiths.

Lucky Severson travels to Scranton for a closer look at this controversy. According to Michael Milz, president of the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers, "We're not used to those kind of tactics coming from the Catholic Church. How can you not say it's hypocrisy when . . . they urge other employers to allow their workers to have the right to organize, yet deny it to your own workers?" However, Professor Brian Benestad, who teaches theology at the University of Scranton, argues "If the Catholic schools are required to recognize the union, then you're going to have government . . . intervening in the school, making decisions about whether the bishops' invocation of doctrine is really genuine."
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Kathleen Norris

Poet and writer Kathleen Norris has won many admirers among religious believers. She first became popular in the '90s with a story about her relocation to the Great Plains from New York City in the book "Dakota" and then authored three more, including "Amazing Grace, "The Cloister Walk" and the "Virgin of Bennington" before she retreated from the literary world for almost 10 years. Now with the publication of her newest memoir "Acedia and Me," the author is breaking her nearly decade-long literary silence and sharing the reasons for her absence.

Bob Abernethy visited Norris during a recent visit to Washington, D.C. to talk about how her personal experiences have shaped her latest work, especially the title, which explains what she calls her ongoing spiritual indifference. "The last ten years, I would say, have been really rough," Norris observes. "And in some sense, this book is a miracle for me because I was able to finish it at all. There were so many temptations, especially after my husband died, to just give up and say, 'Why write at all? Why bother?' -- which is the ultimate question with acedia."
Read an excerpt from ACEDIA & ME by Kathleen Norris.
Read the extended version of Bob Abernethy's interview with Kathleen Norris.
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Garrison Keillor at Washington National Cathedral

The bard of Lake Wobegon and "A Prairie Home Companion" spoke recently at the Washington National Cathedral, talking about poetry, singing old hymns, and telling stories about the strict fundamentalists who raised him. "They believed in forgiveness in theory, but in practice it was, of course, more difficult, and living in a small town, they knew much too much about you to be merciful sometimes," he said. "But they loved the King James. They loved Scripture....As strict as they were, their salvation was their love of language. Somehow poetry saved their souls and gave them some mercy and some kindness."
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Online Only

Monks and Writers
This week our profile of writer Kathleen Norris notes her attraction to Benedictine monasteries. For more on the monastic experience, revisit the Web exclusive "Into Great Silence."

For more on women writers, revisit our pieces on Anne Lamott, Alice McDermott, Mary Gordon, and Marilynne Robinson.

God and Empire
Theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars are turning to the issue of empire as a field of study.