POLITICS

Faith, Politics, and Abortion: Is Joe Biden a Real Catholic?

If the USCCB had their way, no Catholic would be qualified for political office.

Joe Biden delivers remarks during a DNC post election event at the Howard Theater in Washington, DC, USA, 10 November 2022.

SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

In 1960, as John F. Kennedy was running for president of the United States, a question of his faith became a major issue in the campaign.

Only one previous Catholic candidate had ever been nominated by a major party — Al Smith, a Democrat who lost badly to Herbert Hoover in 1928. Many protestant voters believed that Kennedy would be subject to the will of the Vatican and would serve the pope before he served the American people.

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Culture Feature

Busy Philipps and 9 Other Celebrities Who Are Open About Their Abortions

Nicki Minaj and Chelsea Handler are just a few of the others who have spoken out.

Play God - Ani DiFranco (Official Music Video)

Last year, actress Busy Phillipps revealed that she had an abortion at the age of 15.

"The statistic is one in four women will have an abortion before the age of 45," she said on her E! late night talk show. "That statistic sometimes surprises people, and maybe you're sitting there thinking, 'I don't know a woman who would have an abortion.' Well, you know me."

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Music Reviews

Amanda Palmer Faces The End of the World

Her new album There Will Be No Intermission wrenchingly explores womanhood, fear, and loss

Kahn & Selesnick

There Will Be No Intermission is Amanda Palmer's odyssey.

The album is a melancholic jigsaw, moving through the political and the revelatory with an intimate, theatrical power. Palmer centers the record on the trauma of living in a female body, writing about the stigma around abortion, the emptiness of loss, the guilt of bringing a son into a world that won't ever love him like as she does.

But it's proof of her strength as a narrator that none of this ever feels truly hopeless. The interlude-song structure challenges the listener to imagine the album as a series of movements, with her scintillating voice, dense lyricism, and her magnificent piano work acting as guides through the album's stark orchestral production. Her writing is poetic, but never subtle, and it doesn't—shouldn't—have to be. Palmer sees the world ending in slow motion, a perspective she skillfully reflects and pushes back throughout the album's expanse.

There Will Be No Intermission is a plea for empathy as much as it is a fierce demand for recognition. Palmer writes the personal into the communal and back into herself: "Everything is gonna be just fine," she sighs on "The Ride," but you wouldn't dare mistake that for optimism. It's a decision to live and to keep living. There Will Be No Intermission becomes a celebration of life's heaviness, of the chances she's gotten to make herself new in the face of fear. She, and the rest of us are just here for the ride.



Matthew Apadula is a writer and music critic from New York. His work has previously appeared on GIGsoup Music and in Drunk in a Midnight Choir.


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