Lisa Miller

Does the BP Oil Spill Herald the Apocalypse?

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A growing conversation among Christian fundamentalists asks the question that may have been inevitable: is the oil spill in the gulf a sign of the coming apocalypse? About 60 million white evangelicals live in America, and about one third of them believe that the world will end in their lifetime, according to the Pew Research […]

The Catholic Church Attacks Nuns

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Earlier this month, in something of a surprise, a nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix was excommunicated for approving a first-trimester abortion last year at that hospital to save the life of a critically ill patient. “An unborn child is not a disease,” said Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Phoenix diocese. “While medical professionals […]

Catholic Bishops Get It Right on Immigration

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Let’s hear it for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I’m not even remotely joking. Catholic bishops, both in the U.S. and abroad, have taken a justified beating in the press of late (including in this magazine) over their defensive and self-serving efforts to explain the Vatican hierarchy’s role in the sex-abuse crisis that […]

The Vanishing Role of Women in Church Readings

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Response to my April 12 article “A Woman’s Place Is in the Church” was overwhelming. Maureen Dowd cited it in her New York Times column. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, critiqued it in an op-ed. But one of the questions most often asked in e-mails […]

The Troubled Future of Catholic Celibacy

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In 1998 a Roman Catholic nun named Marie McDonald wrote a brief and painful summary of her concerns to her colleagues and superiors. It was labeled “strictly confidential.” She was worried, she said, about the sexual abuse of nuns by Roman Catholic priests in Africa. The memo—titled “The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African […]

A Women’s Place is in the Church

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Here they are, the members of history’s oldest and most elite all-male club, trying to manage what began as a domestic crisis. For decades, priests in America, Europe, Ireland, Brazil (and God knows where else) abused—raped or otherwise molested—children and teenagers not in the frescoed halls of the Vatican but in their own backyards: on […]

Can Science Explain Heaven?

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There are those who believe that science will eventually explain everything—including our enduring belief in heaven. The thesis here is very simple: heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event. It’s something that happens in your brain as you die. I first encountered this idea as I was researching […]

Is Pope Benedict XVI a Bad Shepherd?

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Two years ago Pope Benedict XVI—once known as “God’s Rottweiler”—displayed his gentler side on a pilgrimage to America. Television pundits spoke of his soft white hair, his smile, “his great warmth and his sense of humor,” says Thomas Noble, head of the history department at Notre Dame. On the trip Benedict confronted head-on the American […]

Excerpt from “Heaven”

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It’s Easter—that most pleasant of springtime holidays—when children stuff themselves with marshmallows and stain their fingers with pastel dyes. In reality, of course, Easter is about something darker and more fantastic. It’s a celebration of the final act of the Passion, in which Jesus rose from his tomb in his body three days after his […]