The editorial board of the National Catholic Reporter this week endorsed the ordination of women. Basing its position on a 1976 vote by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, on “countless conversations in parish halls, lecture halls and family gatherings,” and on the supposed support of myriad unnamed bishops, the Reporter calls “for the Catholic church to correct this unjust teaching.” … Continue Reading »
In the forthcoming issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, sociologist Philip Schwadel reports that between 1974 and 2010, the “probability of reporting a strong religious affiliation declined considerably among Catholics” in the U.S. and “increased among evangelical Protestants.” The thing is, this is not necessarily quite the bad news it might sound to be for Catholics, and not quite the good news it might sound to be for Evangelicals… . Continue Reading »
As anxious as many Christians are about religious freedom in America, nothing we’ve experienced”and God willing, never will”comes close to the brutal persecution of Christians abroad. The stunning extent of this persecution is documented in Times Literary Supplement religion editor Rupert Shortt’s evenhanded and unsettling new book, Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack… . Continue Reading »
“His recently published last testament has stunned the Vatican” and “rocked the ecclesiastical establishment,” declares the English writer Jonathan Aitken, writing of Cardinal Carlo Martini’s last interview. It’s the standard line in secular reporting, when a liberal Catholic has said something the secular reporter wants him to have said… . Continue Reading »
Some years before he was elected pope, Joseph Ratzinger was asked what he thought about the health of the Church. He answered that she was doing very well; she was just a lot smaller than most people thought. He was exactly right. We need to think of the Church in our age as a seed of life embedded in layers of dead tissue. We also need to distinguish the Church in the emerging world from the Church in developed nations… . Continue Reading »
I happened to be in London when the Church of England voted to reject female bishops. The verdict came as quite a surprise. Women have been ordained as priests in the Church for twenty years, and allowing them to become bishops would certainly seem to be the next logical step. Twelve years of negotiations between “reformers” and “traditionalists””apparently a way of life in the C of E”had culminated in a compromise under which dissenting parishes not wanting to be under the authority of a female primate could request hierarchal supervision by a male… . Continue Reading »
The Pope’s new book, Infancy Narratives, was released on November 21. The day’s headline of the Daily Mail? “Killjoy Pope crushes Christmas nativity traditions: New Jesus book reveals there were no donkeys beside crib, no lowing oxen and definitely no carols.” CNN’s online story followed suit. The New York Daily News repeated the claim about the animals, adding not that the pope agreed with some historians on an earlier dating of the birth of Christ but that “the Christian calendar has Jesus’ birth year wrong, Pope Benedict XVI claims in a new book.” … Continue Reading »
Growing up in the 1980s, it seemed there were a few basic Bible translations different Christians in my circles used. My Evangelical friends had the New International Version (NIV), we Lutherans had the Revised Standard Version (RSV), and my fundamentalist friends had the King James (KJV). My Catholic friends had their own various translations, either the official New American Bible (NAB), the Jerusalem Bible, or the Douay-Rheims. Many people also had the paraphrase The Living Bible on hand… . Continue Reading »
It all comes down to abortion. That’s what my late father-in-law always said. No philosophical disagreement, no policy debate, no theological quibble rivals our fundamental and unbridgeable divide on the question of abortion. No other issue carries half as much baggage in the public mind. Not taxes, not health care, not immigration, not war, not peace. In the final tally, it all comes down to abortion… . Continue Reading »
From the beginning, Christians have had to decide how they want to relate to culture. Many of us make this decision subconsciously based on events, belief systems, and personal experiences that form who we are. In his well-known book Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr identified five possible ways in which Christians have chosen to view and interact with culture… . Continue Reading »
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