Sightings Articles
By the Grace of ... God?
How a recent film raises important questions about Catholic sacramental theology in light of the Church's sex abuse scandal...
February 6, 2020
Summer Storm Watch
It’s summertime, the season when many Protestant denominations hold annual conferences and assemblies that draw hundreds or even thousands of participants from across the nation and the world. Like an enormous extended family during an unruly dinnert...
July 18, 2019
Raw Religion
This Sightings column is about "religion in the raw," and even the rawest—and most damaging—forms of religion. That is because Sightings is keen to catch a glimpse of religion wherever and whenever it appears in public life, and we can’t ignore "raw ...
February 25, 2019
A Firm Purpose of Amendment
A dimension of our public life that is in one respect readily sighted yet in another perhaps too easily slighted is the repetitive nature of certain specific forms of violence and violation that disrupt civic life. Shootings in schools and various pu...
November 19, 2018
Really Big Sins
“This sounds like a flip answer,” said Lutheran Pastor Jan Erickson-Pearson, “but why does [clerical sexual abuse] still happen? Sin.” That was in 2002, but headlines still on occasion use the same three-letter theological word to explain the phenome...
October 8, 2018
Catholic versus Muslim "Terrorism" in the U.S.: A Double Standard
A double standard...
September 13, 2018
Pope Francis Fallible?
Between or after sessions at Vatican II, a circle of us “guests” were conversing with—which meant “listening to”—the Pope. (How’s that for name-dropping on a wintry day?) In one exchange, as my late colleague Robert M. Grant recalled it, the Pope mis...
January 22, 2018
Historical Justice in an Era of #MeToo: Legacies of John Howard Yoder
Defanging the beast....
December 7, 2017
Suicide among Priests?
“Suicide is on the rise among Irish priests” is the kind of report which causes or should cause concern and a sense of crisis among Irish and non-Irish, priests and non-priests, Catholics and non-Catholics—anyone with humane instincts, empathic conce...
December 19, 2016
Two Religions Make News
two religions jarred each other in national big-news and comment-sources last Friday...