Marriage Equality Marches On To It's 11th...and 12th State

Double vistories for marriage equality this week in Delaware and Minnesota. The "First State" is now the 11th in the country to ratify marriage equality and Minnesota is now on track to be the first non-coastal state to approve marriage equality by an act of the legislature (Iowa got it through the courts). It's a remarkable measure of progress since last November when 4 states voted on marriage equality and won.  As of this month, a full 25% of the 50 United States will have recognized marriage equality. And, note to conservative church and Republican types, this number is only increasing...Illinois is likely to be next.

There's a great article on Mother Jones' website today postulating that the surge in marriage equality could be directly related to the Mormon Church. Last year, the Church gave up it's well publicized and incredibly well funded crusade against gay marriage.  You'll recall the Mormons were crucial in defeating Proposition 8 in 2008 which set off the recent push for marriage equality across the country and at the federal level as well. Now that they are out of the fight, the Catholic church has been trying to pick up the slack but when they lost Maryland (a large Catholic state and originally a Catholic colony), the writing was on the wall. They can't fight this fight the way the Mormons can.

I'm glad that the Mormons cames to their senses and realized this was only hurting their image and, obviously, was not exactly in line with the phrase "what would Jesus do."  Jesus believed in love not hate and fear. If only the Catholic church would come to its senses on this issue too they could save themselves a lot of time, effort and money.

New Catholic Mass Debuts In The U.S.

If you are Catholic, yesterday was not only the beginning of a new liturgical year (with the first Sunday of Advent) but also the start of a new liturgy too.  I was home for the holiday and actually went to the first new mass with the first new "script" since the Vatican II changed the mass to English almost 40 years ago.  The revisions, which are meant to track closer to the original Latin, are not as extensive as I was led to believe though some of them are certainly strange.

The biggest change is that the response to "the Lord be with you" has been changed from "and also with you" to "and with your spirit".  Which means...what exactly?  As I recall from taking Latin in high school, some Latin just does not translate very well.  Also, words like "begotten" and "consubstantial" are tossed into the mix just to confuse everyone.  It seems odd to make this big revision when the previous mass was so clear. Now they're just muddying things up again.  My theory is that the real reason the church is doing this to remind everyone who is in charge....The Vatican!

Hundreds of American priests are in a bit of revolt over the new mass, according to a piece in today's TIMES. I can report that the priest at my old parish in Maryland was clearly not happy about the change and said as much during his homily. He even related that other priests in the diocese were also not pleased by the change up.  But, he wearily said they will change anyway and that everyone will get used to mass 2.0 eventually.  As they say, when in the Roman Catholic church...