“I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors....Jesus could have hung out in the high-end re...”

“God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and di...”

“Church isnt perfect. Its practice.”

“What makes us saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather Gods ability to work through sinners.”

“There is a reason Mary is everywhere. I've seen her image all over the world, in cafs in Istanbul, on students' backpacks in Scotland, in a market stall in Jakarta, but I don't think her image is e...”

“I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Beliefis going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm ...”

“As long as there have been women." Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.”

“In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.”

“And in the sin of wantingalways to be right, the punishmentis knowing it isn't possible.”

“The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated.”

“I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.”

“Told often enough that they are the source of sin, women may well begin feeling guilty as they accept the necessity for penance. Taught effectively enough that they are irrelevant to the important ...”