masturbation

Pope Francis turned heads with statements that suggest a course correction in the church’s attitude toward gays and women, but ultimately it’ll be what ministry, decision-making power, and moral authority women share that will answer the question.

On sacrament-denial and slut-shaming: why Barbara Johnson is a Catholic hero.

Six years late and with little understanding of her intentions, the Vatican denounced Margaret A. Farley’s book on sexual ethics. Is the Vatican reining in scholars it finds threatening?

According to Vatican representative Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, ending discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgender persons would make those who oppose such human rights the real victims.

Two sisters quit the Girls Scouts over “anti-life, pro-abortion agenda.”

Jesus didn’t say “do not contracept!” he said, if you love justice and peace as I do, if you are good news to the poor as I am, “then all will know that you are my disciples.”

Annie Lobért knows that sex sells. The 16 years she spent as a stripper, prostitute, and high-class escort, most recently on the Las Vegas Strip, taught her that.

“It was what I found in the archives that inspired me to write the book—Craddock’s unpublished book manuscripts on everything from ancient sex worship to contemporary marriage reform. And then there was her journal of mystical experiences—a diary so baffling and intense in its combination of spiritualism and sexuality as to demand attention.”

76-year-old never-married evangelist Bill Gothard teaches a form of wifely submission that another evangelical theologian has referred to as “the basest form of male chauvinism I have ever heard in a Christian context.” Sarah Posner had the chance to speak at length with the controversial religious leader, as well as with critics and former adherents. The picture that emerges shows the risk, and the devastation, of the abuse of spiritual authority.

As Catholic sex abuse scandals once again dominate headlines from Boston to Belgium, and even the fast-track canonization of Pope John Paul II is marred by questions of culpability, the role of the Catholic hierarchy in enabling clergy abuse seems indisputable, admitted even by die-hard church partisans like the Catholic League. But what’s less understood is how these same patterns persist in today’s Church, where demographic shifts and a dwindling priesthood may be creating a new set of scenarios for abuse. The story of Katia Birge is a case in point.