The Guardian: Female deacons could lead to female priests – and the Vatican knows it

This would be a purely academic argument were it not for the crisis that the Catholic church faces as a result of its efforts to maintain a celibate male priesthood all around the world. Broadly speaking, in countries where there are plenty of priests, few of them are celibate, while in the rich north there are very few priests, and celibacy is imposed by old age as much as anything. The median age of Catholic priests in the USA had risen to 64 by 2012, and is presumably higher still now. [...]

Pope John Paul II attempted to close off the question of women priests for a least a couple of centuries. He may have succeeded. But ordaining women deacons would provide a way around the back of his prohibitions. Certainly this was what happened in the Church of England, where the ordination of women as deacons paved the way for their ordination as priests. Once lay people had seen women dressed in priestly robes and performing important functions at the front of the church, the theological distinction between priest and deacons – so very clear and important to anyone inside a dog-collar – came to seem completely irrelevant. [...]

The more the question is discussed, the less convincing the traditional answer becomes. If the commission manages to report before Francis dies, we should see real fireworks.

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Salon: It’s about damn time: Obama’s finally trying to fix an American disgrace by backing a national holiday for election day

Part of the problem is that many citizens are apathetic. There’s a subset of the population that simply won’t vote under any circumstances. But we’ve also made it needlessly difficult for people to vote, and that’s by design. In Republican-led states across the country, for example, efforts are underway to suppress votes, especially minority votes. [...]

Mature democracies in Europe and elsewhere go out of their way to facilitate greater participation. It’s high time America joined the club. In an interview this week, President Obama offered a bit of hope on this front. He was asked directly if he thought America should follow the lead of other nations and make election day a national holiday.

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The Washington Post: The disturbing thing that happens when you tell people they have different DNA

Kimel says that studying how ideas about genetics affect us is particularly important, since people today are so fascinated with genetics and see it as a powerful and fundamental part of who we are. “Especially when the media is reporting on [genetic difference], it can be really harmful, because it’s easy to misconstrue the results, or to fail to emphasize that we are all very genetically similar,” she says. [...]

Overall, the research indicates that people who learn about genetic similarities between conflicting groups tend to support policies favoring a peaceful compromise more than those who do not. Yet the study in Israel showed a more pessimistic picture, says Kimel. There, information about genetic differences appeared to worsen negative and aggressive attitudes, while information about genetic similarities didn't do much.

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Reuters: Special Report: How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria

The six Russian militants and radicals identified by Reuters all ended up in Syria, most of them fighting with jihadist groups that Russia now says are its mortal enemies. They were just a fraction of the radicals who left Russia during that period. By December 2015, some 2,900 Russians had left to fight in the Middle East, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, the Russian security service, said at a sitting of the National Anti-terrorist Committee late last year. According to official data, more than 90 percent of them left Russia after mid-2013. [...]

North Caucasus security officials deny that Islamist radicals were intentionally helped out of the country, but agree their absence helped to solve security problems in the region. "Of course, the departure of Dagestani radicals in large numbers made the situation in the republic healthier," said Magomed Abdurashidov from the Anti-terrorist Commission of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

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Political Critique: Is Poland’s new government opening the door to the far right?

Although occasionally described in the media as “far right”, PiS has so far remained within the boundaries of the mainstream political spectrum. It is committed to fundamental political freedoms, albeit within a more majoritarian framework; it wants to maintain Poland’s EU membership, albeit as part of a looser union with greater national sovereignty; and it accepts the basic tenets of civic pluralism, albeit with a greater role for the state in promoting socially conservative and ‘patriotic’ values, and a more prominent place for the church in public life. The party is a member of the same grouping in the European Parliament as Britain’s Conservatives. Its leading figures would fit comfortably within the US Republican Party (in terms of socio-cultural outlook at least; economically they are to the left of many Democrats). Poland’s actual far right has struggled to make any significant political breakthrough. Some have ascribed this to PiS itself, which has been able to harness the support of all but the most extreme nationalists while itself remaining in the mainstream. Yet there are reasons to worry that this balancing act could break down.

Taken together, these trends offer a worrying vision of Poland’s future direction. Weakened democratic institutions; increased government control over the media, judiciary, and police (including expanded surveillance powers); new “territorial defence” militias (with the defence ministry suggesting there would be no problem if ONR wanted to form one); centrist and left-wing political opposition portrayed as enemies of the nation; a conspiratorial sense of victimization at the hands of shadowy domestic forces and hostile foreign powers; a fear of the encroaching Muslim other, whose arrival threatens national destruction; a historical policy that promotes a one-sided version of Poland’s past designed to fortify patriotic sentiment (and threatens prison sentences for those who write things that are “contrary to the facts”); an angry, neglected youth and growing anti-establishment sentiment – such conditions are rife for exploitation by the far right. 

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The Guardian: For Haredi Jews secular Zionism remains a religious heresy

Haredi theology began as a reaction to the 18th century Jewish enlightenment, the Haskalah, a movement that aimed at the modernisation of Jewish culture in Europe. Whereas the Haskalah wanted to end Jewish segregation and encourage greater engagement with modern ideas and secular society, traditionalists saw this as a threat to Jewish religious identity. Thus the Haredim stuck resolutely to their traditional clothes and ways. They would chat in Yiddish and only pray in Hebrew, too holy a language for social intercourse. And when the secular movement of modern Zionism started to take shape, they opposed this too: only God could bring about the new Israel, they argued. Trying to pre-empt God’s action through secular nationalism was a heresy. Judaism is fundamentally a religious community, they argued, and modern notions of race and nationhood are alien to it. Thus, for many Haredim, the state of Israel remains almost sacrilegious. [...]

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