Common Ground

As anybody of faith who pays any attention to the world around them can tell you, the Church universal is full of contentious debates-- and nowhere is that more evident than the Catholic Church in particular. Yesterday in my article round-up I referenced an Op-Ed by David Gibson entitled, "Who Is A Real Catholic?", and I'll be writing more about it soon, having forwarded it to several of my friends from the Catholic Student Association at my university for their responses. In the meantime, I've been encountering topics of contention in the faith-based world more and more in my Internet reading, so I thought I would post some of the articles I've come across.

1. Abortion. A highly contentious and seemingly irreconcilable difference between factions of believers and nonbelievers...or is it? The blog dotCommonweal has excerpts from three different speakers at Notre Dame University's commencement, all of whom are calling for common ground.
2. Homosexuality. What's a religious person to do about a practice that is expressly forbidden in many places in Scripture? Commonweal magazine has an article from a couple of years ago, containing two views on the matter that are still highly relevant.
3. Women in Ministry. This is highly personal to me, as someone who believes that women have a place in every level of ministry. I've been told by some that Scripture forbids it...but is that really true? Betty Miller explores the Scriptural ramifications of women in ministry.
   
4. Priestly Celibacy. This one is mostly specific to the Catholic Church, but it's still interesting. Cesar Baldelomar discusses the most recent priest scandal that is reopening the celibacy debate.

Obviously there are far, far more issues up for debate, but these are probably the top four hot ones. I admit that the articles I linked to are generally ones that I find agreement with, but opinions are by no means limited to these-- and they do typically address the other side of the debate. There's room for conversation-- and conversation needs to happen.