A poll taken of Long Island Catholics and reported in Newsday has a finding that has become customary in media discussions. While 88 percent of Catholic respondents regard religion as “very important” or “fairly important” in their lives, they aren’t that happy with Church doctrine. . . . . Continue Reading »
At Christmas 1969, Professor Joseph Ratzinger gave a radio talk with the provocative title, “What Will the Future Church Look Like?” (You can find it in Faith and the Future, published by Ignatius Press). One of the concluding paragraphs was destined to become perhaps the most quoted . . . . Continue Reading »
This past spring, the renowned sociologist Robert Putnam made waves with a claim that American churches had dedicated “all their resources”to fighting about abortion, gay marriage, and other matters of sexual morality, when they should have been addressing poverty and social inequality.
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Does the Church actually need a new (or new old) option? Continue Reading »
Media reports of the last week have speculated that recent fires at black churches are racist arsons somehow linked to the horrible murders at the historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. A July 1 headline in The Atlantic ominously declared: “Black Churches Are Burning Again . . . . Continue Reading »
When the Pope’s highly anticipated encyclical, Laudato Si finally appeared, Detroit’s Archbishop Allen Vigneron summed up its significance by calling it “a moment of grace.”The new encyclical has been widely described as “the pope’s encyclical on climate change.” But one shouldn’t be . . . . Continue Reading »
A liberal Christian may be able to affirm that Jesus literally walked on the water or rose from the dead, yet he still retains the right as an individual to accept only that which supports his own experience of faith. Continue Reading »
On September 2, 1939, the House of Commons debated the British government’s response to the German invasion of Poland the previous day. The ruling Conservative Party was badly divided between those demanding that Britain fulfill its obligations to Poland and those addicted to the habits of appeasement. “Party loyalty” was being invoked to drown out Conservative opposition to Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain when the deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party, Arthur Greenwood, rose to speak. Then, from the Tory back benches, came the voice of an anti-appeasement Conservative, Leo Amery, who cried, “Speak for England, Arthur!” Continue Reading »
On a chilly afternoon last October, as my son and I walked through a bustling shopping district in Xi’an, China, we passed a group of teenage girls who were chattering loudly in Mandarin. Obviously they had been shopping in a nearby mall, as several of them were carrying bags labeled with familiar names, including “Gap.” What struck me especially, though, was that one of the young women wore a t-shirt featuring a picture of Justin Bieber.Earlier that day I had given a lecture to 120 pastors from midwestern and western China, who had been brought together by the Three-Self church leadership for continuing education. In our conversations, several pastors expressed concern about a growing penchant for consumerism in the younger generation, a reality that was confirmed for me by my brief encounter with the teenagers. Continue Reading »
Only those churches which have a firm and elaborate grasp of the Christian faith are likely to survive in the coming years.
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