Daily links: Mon., Sept. 18: Christians for taxes, a Palestinian gamble, and the return of meatless Fridays

With the president showing his hand on his deficit-reduction plan, Chicago Theological Seminary Prof. Susan Brooks Thistlewaite argues that the anti-tax mantra of the Tea Party isn’t very Christian, but progressive taxation is; USC’s own Liz Fefebvre has her own nicely calculated riff on accusations of “class warfare.” On the international front, dotCommonweal is collecting Catholic statements on the Palestianian effort to achieve state recognition at the UN; the Vatican has yet to weigh in. An America editorial takes the side of the Palestinians.


On to news of the church: The new English Mass translation roll-out continues; the UK Tablet carries mostly negative letters (some more here) from Brits along with an essay by a bishop from New Zealand, who reports that after about a year of the new translations, 83 percent of respondents to a survey give the new texts a thumbs down. In addition to the new Mass texts, English Catholics have been called back to meatless Fridays by their bishops, and Father Tim Gardner has some flesh-free recipes to make abstinence go down easier. On the other side of the Channel, the French began implementing a ill-conceived (OK, dumb) law against prayer in public, driving the Muslims of France into indoor makeshift mosques.


Finally, Philadelphia’s Catholic parents breathe a sigh of relief as Catholic teachers and the archdiocese resolve their labor dispute.