French Roast News

Anne is reading …

A new report from Pew Research Center says that almost four in ten Americans — 38 percent — currently identify themselves as independents. This number is up significantly from the 32 percent of Americans who considered themselves independents in 2008.

32 percent of poll responders considered themselves Democrats and 24 percent say they are Republicans. As Pew reveals, partisan polarization has surged in the Bush, Obama years. Even among independents, there is polarization.

Two areas in which Republican support for government policies has plummeted is in support for safety nets and also environmental action.

Paycheck Fairness Act

The Senate is scheduled to vote tomorrow on passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill is doomed after the House voted not to consider it last week, and it’s expected to fail in the Senate. The bill would require companies to justify the wages they pay men and women, and show that differences in pay for the same work with similar tenure are not due to gender.

The Hill reports that “Republicans and many business groups are opposed to the bill, in large part because it threatens penalties for different wage scales that might be legitimate and have nothing to do with the gender of the employee.”

Bad Sister Farley

An American nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar was denounced today by the Vatican’s doctrinal office.

At issue is Sister Margaret A. Farley’s book ‘Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics’, reports the NYTimes

I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”

The book, she said, offers “contemporary interpretations” of justice and fairness in human sexual relations, moving away from a “taboo morality” and drawing on “present-day scientific, philosophical, theological, and biblical resources.”

In 2011, the doctrine committee of the United Stated bishops condemned ‘Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God,’ by Fordham University professor of theology Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson.

In her book, Sister Farley wrote positively about female masturbation, saying that it “usually does not raise any moral questions at all.” Wrong!