We recently hosted a talk by John Beaumont, author of The Mississippi Flows into the Tiber: A Guide to Notable American Catholic Converts to the Catholic Church. It’s a wonderful compilation of convert stories that includes a few folks associated with this fine magazine. John recounted a number of them. He ended with an arresting question: Why do people convert to Catholicism? There’s no one answer, of course, but many reasons, which John winsomely summarized. Continue Reading »
Anthony, O.F.M., age thirty-five, died in Padua on this date in 1231; 352 days later, Pope Gregory IX declared him a saint. In the history of the Western Church, Anthony’s elevation from the grave to the altar remains the fastest since Pope Alexander III, in 1170, removed from local bishops the power to canonize saints and invested it exclusively in the papacy. About twenty years after the Franciscan friar set his posthumous record, a Dominican friar, Peter of Verona, came this close to breaking it: 354 days. Maybe causes for sainthood just tended to move more swiftly back then. Even so, Anthony’s moved faster than the rest. Continue Reading »
Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason is an important contribution to the ongoing debate within evangelicalism about how to get along as a family of churches. Her narrative reveals how this family of churches has sought to grapple with inherited problems and the fractures between its . . . . Continue Reading »
Like Quebec, Ireland, or Boston, Spain has epitomized the fading of Catholic faith. In the twentieth century, religious practice in Spain fell sharply, especially as the country transitioned to democracy and resentment of the Church’s support for Franco’s dictatorship surfaced. Continue Reading »
As that familiar parody of bad fiction has it, “it was a dark and stormy night”—March 21, 2000, to be precise—when I made my way from the Jerusalem Hilton to the Notre Dame Center, to meet a Senior Vatican Official who had promised me a diskette with the addresses John Paul II would deliver during his epic visit to the Holy Land. The diskette was duly handed over, and back in my hotel room I browsed through the upcoming speeches, paying particular attention to what the Polish pope would say when he came to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem—a meeting about which there had been considerable controversy, involving considerable yammering. Continue Reading »
James Baldwin was a holiness-pentecostal preacher. This historical fact as well as Baldwin’s complicated relationship to the holiness-pentecostal movement must be taken seriously. Continue Reading »
A recent story in the L.A. Times about the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops devoted to the pastoral care of families, offered this provocative view: “Vatican to Debate Teachings on Divorce, Birth Control, Gay Unions.” Continue Reading »
Seeing as the Catholic Church has itself been the victim of a damaging disinformation campaign, one might expect that Church leaders would be careful not to allow themselves to be drawn into a similar slander operation. But, although the Church is still defending itself against charges of wartime anti-Semitism, many Church leaders seem to see nothing wrong with current efforts to vilify Israel. Continue Reading »
When John ascends to heaven, he steps into the middle of a continuous worship service in a transcendent temple (Revelation 4). Twenty-four heavenly priests encircle a throne that is banded by a rainbow, where “one enthroned” sparkles like sardius and jasper above four living creatures. In front of the throne, the seven Spirits burn like lamps, brightening a sea of crystalline glass. When the cherubim say the Sanctus, the elders prostrate themselves and shout the worthiness of the one on the throne at the center of it all. Continue Reading »
Sometime soon, the Supreme Court will announce its decision in the Hobby Lobby case. Depending on how the justices rule, certain institutions may find themselves exempt from the controversial HHS mandate that requires them to arrange for the provision of contraception, sterilization, and certain abortifacient drugs. Although Hobby Lobby is a private corporation with Protestant owners, the case has implications for many others. Continue Reading »
