A couple of weeks ago, I saw a New York magazine report on Whisper, the latest in social media. Whisper users post their updates, secrets, and statuses anonymously. Other users can “heart” or reply. User stats aren’t public, but the company says it gets over 3 billion page . . . . Continue Reading »
Theologies have the life of a mayfly. They come into fashion, rise, and then slip away, mostly unnoticed. It might be good, then, for seminarians and other readers to first learn some of the old theologies before traipsing off through the daisy fields of any new ones. Oscar Cullmann (1902-1999) is . . . . Continue Reading »
Twenty-five years ago, on Jan. 27, 1989, a joint statement from the communist government of Poland, the Solidarity trade union, and the Catholic Church announced a national “Roundtable” to discuss the country’s future, including major structural issues of political and economic . . . . Continue Reading »
During the 1950s and 1960s, when Pete Seeger and Malvina Reynolds coaxed classrooms full of kids to join them in the singing of folk songs, no one paid much attention, not even those who, in the middle of the Cold War, saw America’s “singing left” as a threat to the republic. . . . . Continue Reading »
Spend time before a crucifix and the major virtues Christ Jesus embodies there are quickly in evidence: love, patience, humility, obedience, and detachment. We might identify as well, the virtue of understanding who and what one is, even (or especially) within one’s obedience. Continue Reading »
If ideas have consequences, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus will long be remembered as the most serious Christian thinker and the most consequential public theologian in America since Reinhold Niebuhr. . . . Continue Reading »
We think of unbelief as the enemy of piety. To a certain extent that’s true. But there’s a more profound threat. Sovereign desire wars against faith with the greatest ferocity. . . . Continue Reading »
One Sunday morning in the middle of last January, I was busily preparing my church for the coming liturgy as part of my sub-deacon duties. My friend Mark greeted me, pointed to flowers in vases on each side of the altar, and asked, “Can you tell the difference between the two bouquets?” Continue Reading »
Frequently I am invited to add my name as an endorser of a position paper on some topic of public concern. And when I decide not to sign it, it often has to do with my impression that the group making the declaration is trying too hard to be “prophetic.”. . . Continue Reading »
A Religion News Service (RNS) story several days ago highlighted how the usually Catholic-dominated annual March for Life, which occurred yesterday, is more deliberately reaching out to evangelicals. One prominent evangelical speaker yesterday was former Focus on the Family chief James Dobson, age seventy-seven but still fiery. . . . Continue Reading »
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