My Other Hat.

There's a reason otherspoon has been quieter than usual. I'm the new editor of a publication that was founded by journalist Jeff Sharlet for NYU's Center for Religion and Media: The Revealer. We've been spending the past two months getting ready for a relaunch, and here it is.

Want to know more? Of course you do! Stop by the site and be sure to tell me what you think!

The Revealer is reborn! We're back with a new site, a new editor (that's me), and new staff, but the same dedication to religion in the media. Visit the site at TheRevealer.org

Imagine this! Or Can a Church hierarchy become a Catholic community? by Angela Zito

Eight years in Catholic school, from which I liberated myself at the age of fourteen into public junior high, has put me into a Facebook flurry right now among former Catholic school kids now grown up. The slow-burning scandal of child-abuse covered up, which started in the minds of many as an American brush fire in 1985 in Louisiana (and which was, in the words of Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker this week: “dismissed as an epiphenomenon of America’s sexual libertinism and religious indiscipline”) has burned right up to the Vatican’s door. Like a horrible slo-mo tennis match, we’ve had new accusations served and returned with ever-more ridiculous attempts by the Church hierarchy to defend the indefensible. (And for a comic round-up of the Church’s “blame game,” visit Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon.)

The critics refuse to approach the problem as the Vatican has, “one sinning priest at a time,” and look instead for structural reasons for the abuse of kids, and for its cover-up. They have attacked hierarchy, the exclusion of women, and celibacy. But in searching for reasons and reforms, they often conflate the problems of abuse and cover-up, thus conflating the psychological and individual with the bureaucratic and communal. I’d like to try to untangle that knot just a bit. Continue reading....

Also:

Piper and Warren, Sittin’ in a Tree

Dear Emergent Church Movement,

The Revealer publisher, Angela Zito, talks to NPR about 3D TV and religion

Mary Valle: Brady Fischer's Problem is Now America's Problem

Religious Laws, Hit Search

Giving Full Scope to People's National Feeling

Cleaning the Crucifix

Upcoming Events:

April 23, Screening/Discussion: "Operation BabyLift," Sponsored by NYU's Center for Religion and Media

May 1, Panel: "The Prison-Spirituality Complex," Sponsored by Killing the Buddha