TruthBook Religious News Blog

Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life

By ARIEL DAVID (AP) – Nov 10, 2009

VATICAN CITY — E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

"Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe," he told a news conference Tuesday. "There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe."

Thirty scientists, including non-Catholics, from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Chile attended the conference, called to explore among other issues "whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds."

Funes set the stage for the conference a year ago when he discussed the possibility of alien life in an interview given prominence in the Vatican's daily newspaper.

The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system — including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

"If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound," he said.

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Labels: Ariel David, Catholic, extraterrestrials, Vatican

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Saturday, September 19, 2009

EMOCLICK Survey reveals that Latinos would Prefer to do away with the Celibacy Requirement of Catholic Priests

The question was: "¿Do you believe the Catholic Church should allow priests to Marry?"

Miami, FL (PRWEB) September 11, 2009 --

A poll conducted by EmoClick among members of the major Faith based Social Networking Site KuMundi.com indicates a considerable majority of the 28,288 Internet users agree the Catholic Church should allow Catholic priests to marry if they so desire.

The question was: "¿Do you believe the Catholic Church should allow priests to Marry?"

The results of the poll required reveal a clear divergence of opinion with the requirement of celibacy by the Catholic Church. A total of 18,561 visitors voted in favor of lifting the rule, and only 5,727 voted in favor of preserving the traditional requirement.

For the results visit http://encuesta.elcelibato.com/

The survey, offered in promotion of the release of the new book "El Celibato" received the response of 15,365 visitors who identified themselves as Catholic, and 5,006 who identified themselves as Evangelical (the poll also included the participation of other religious denominations including agnostics and atheists). The countries representing the highest number of participants were México, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.

El Celibato is the debut novel by Daniel Garza. Audio novel is also available starting September 24th narrated by voice talents Andres Garcia Jr. and Elluz Peraza.

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Labels: Catholic, celibacy, Daniel Garza, El Celibato, EmoClick, KuMundi.com, priests

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Lone priest shepherds tiny flock of Catholics in Afghanistan

KABUL-SHEPHERD Jul-27-2009

Lone priest shepherds tiny flock of Catholics in Afghanistan

By Jessica Weinstein
Catholic News Service

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNS) -- In the midst of the escalating war in Afghanistan, there is a place of peace for Kabul's tiny Catholic population.

Inside the Italian Embassy compound visitors will find a small white building marked simply with a cross. Its guardian is the shepherd of Kabul, Barnabite Father Giuseppe Moretti.

A warm 70-year-old Italian with graying hair and a sharp sense of humor, Father Moretti is the only priest in Afghanistan.

"Our presence is the presence of the master's seed," he said in an interview with Catholic News Service.

Father Moretti first arrived in Afghanistan in 1977, two years before an invasion by the former Soviet Union touched off a generation of fighting. When the war between the Soviets and the Afghan Muslim fighters known as mujahedeen ended in 1982, it was quickly followed by a civil war that raged throughout the 1990s. In 1994, the embassy was attacked and Father Moretti was shot. He survived, but he left the country.

After American forces drove the Taliban, a Sunni Muslim fundamentalist religious and political movement, from Kabul in 2001, Pope John Paul II asked Father Moretti to return.

"It was my duty as shepherd to stay with my flock," he said.

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Labels: Catholic, Father Giuseppe Moretti, Jessica Weinstein, Kabul

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Thursday, December 25, 2008

Across Differing Faiths, Shared Holidays

Nadav Neuhaus for The New York Times

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PAM GAWLEY is Jewish, her husband, Steven, is Catholic, and from the time they started dating, they celebrated each other’s holidays together. Christmas and Easter, they went to his parents’ home; Rosh Hashana, Hanukkah and Passover, to her parents’.

“Everything was very equal,” said Mr. Gawley, a music executive. They were married by a judge in a civil ceremony 18 years ago, and each December, their home in Port Washington, N.Y., is decorated for both holidays. “We started with a small Christmas tree and a menorah with electric bulbs,” Mr. Gawley said. “And then the tree got bigger, and we got Hanukkah pillows...”

“Mixing the holidays was always very easy, we didn’t really give it much thought,” Ms. Gawley said.

Until nine years ago, when their firstborn, Michaela, was 3. As usual, Mr. Gawley was working long hours, so Ms. Gawley, a stay-at-home mom, put up the Christmas tree, with the help of her brother and her dad.

When Mr. Gawley came home from the office, everyone was admiring the tree, and little Michaela asked, “Why do we celebrate Christmas?”

“Because Christmas is God’s birthday,” Mr. Gawley said.

“I didn’t say a word,” Ms. Gawley said. “I just said, ‘Can you come into the bedroom with me?’ ”

“She wasn’t happy,” Mr. Gawley said.

“I went bananas,” Ms. Gawley said. “Here my dad, my brother and I had just put up this Christmas tree — three Jews. I said to him, ‘You can’t say that.’ At that moment I knew we had to figure out how to handle this.”

Kids change everything. For Ms. Gawley, her daughter’s question started her on a search for a more systematic way to provide their children (the couple have three, now ages 12, 8 and 3) with a balanced religious upbringing in a mixed marriage.

The Gawleys have lots of company. In 1970, 13 percent of married American Jews were in mixed marriages; by 2001, 31 percent were, according to the National Jewish Population Survey done by United Jewish Communities. And that rate has risen steadily; between 1996 and 2001 (the last time the survey was conducted), nearly half the Jews who married — 47 percent — married outside their faith.

While most mixed families find their own way through the holidays, a small but growing number like the Gawleys, mainly in urban areas, have joined interfaith groups. In New York there is Interfaith Community, which started in the late 1980s with a handful of parents whose children attended the Trinity School in Manhattan, was formally incorporated in 2003 and now has 120 families, with chapters on Long Island, in Westchester and Connecticut, along with a chapter that combines Orange and Rockland Counties in New York and Bergen County in New Jersey.

Most who join have young children, find comfort in prayer, have a belief in God and are trying to expose their youngsters to both parents’ religions with the idea that later in life the children will make their own choices. “We couldn’t ignore this until they were 17, and tell them to go look around. They’d have no grounding,” said Fred Engel of Larchmont, who has two girls, 9 and 12.

During the holidays, Mr. Engel, an investment banker, and his wife, Ruby, a psychologist, take their daughters to an Episcopal church, a Reform temple and Interfaith services.

At one point, the Gawleys tried a Unitarian church as a compromise between her Judaism and his Catholicism, but both felt out of place. “It was too new to both of us,” said Ms. Gawley. “We weren’t looking to merge traditions, we were looking to hold on to our traditions.”

Interfaith Sunday school classes are taught both by Jewish and either Catholic or Protestant educators. Each holiday gets its due (“Hanukkah-mas” bushes are not the goal here), with some chapters holding separate interfaith Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations.

“We don’t want to smoosh them together,” said Joanne Sirotkin of Harrison, N.Y.

No smooshing is central to the Interfaith ethos. Linda and Tom Woodward of Westwood, N.J., the parents of two children, 8 and 9, keep the Hanukkah menorah downstairs in the playroom, the Christmas tree in the living room. Soraya and Don Meyers of Highland Mills, N.Y., who have three girls, put the Christmas tree in the study and light the menorah in the family room.

While Interfaith provides detailed guides to each religion, families often puzzle out the trappings, like the holiday decorations, themselves.

Labels: Catholic, Christmas, Hanukkah, Jewish, Nadav Neuhaus

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Jews, Latino Pentecostals together

12/12/2008
By Christina Hoag
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- When Randy Brown visited Hispanic Pentecostal congregations in Southern California, he was stunned by displays of Star-of-David flags, fervent prayers for peace in Israel and Hebrew words in their church names.

Brown, an executive with the American Jewish Committee, saw an opportunity to build Jewish-Latino relations and combat anti-Semitism among the immigrants, who generally have little exposure to Jews in their predominantly Roman Catholic native countries.

The Los Angeles office has since worked to forge new bonds: They have taken groups of Pentecostal Hispanic pastors to Israel, offered a course called "The Essence of Judaism" at a Southern California Pentecostal seminary, and invited Hispanic pastors and their families to Passover seders and Sukkot harvest celebrations.

While Latino immigrants in the U.S. are mostly Catholic, evangelicals comprise a notable 15 percent of the population, according to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Many are Pentecostal, one of the fastest-growing streams of world Christianity, known for spirit-filled worship and speaking in tongues.

A 2007 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found a higher-rate of anti-Semitic views among foreign-born Latinos than among U.S.-born Hispanics. Twenty-nine percent of Latinos born elsewhere harbor anti-Jewish views, while the rate for Hispanics born in the country -- and for the U.S. population in general -- was 15 percent, the study found.

The 2007 numbers are slightly lower than those in a 2005 survey, but Jewish leaders are worried all the same, especially as Latin Americans are expected to become 29 percent of the national population by 2050.

Latin American countries are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and are steeped in a five-century-old tradition of a church that wields much influence. With the exception of Argentina, Jewish communities in Latin America are tiny and tend to keep a low profile.

By contrast, U.S. Jewish and Catholic leaders have held high-level interfaith talks for years. Several Catholic colleges in the country have centers for Jewish-Catholic understanding, and U.S. bishops heavily emphasize the Second Vatican Council teaching that Jews are not collectively responsible for the Crucifixion. That outlook influences not just Catholics, but also other Christians in the U.S.

Pastor Tony Solorzano, who heads the Iglesia Llamada Final, a 5,000-member congregation in Downey and Inglewood, said some Latinos simply need more education about Judaism to dispel stereotypes. Some consider Jews "Christ-killers."

Pentecostals, who interpret the Bible literally, believe God promised the Jewish people the historic land of Israel. Many consider the modern state of Israel a fulfillment of biblical prophecy -- and a precondition of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

They often cite a passage from Genesis where God makes a covenant with Abraham that those who bless Abraham's people will be blessed, those who curse his people will be cursed.

Jewish leaders are building on Pentecostal pro-Israel sentiment to dispel stereotypes between both groups. Many Jewish groups in recent years have accepted such support without questioning the theology behind it, which says that all people, including Jews, will ultimately accept Christ.

Pentecostal congregations, often housed in storefronts filled with rows of folding chairs, have become fixtures in Latino neighborhoods across the United States, as well as Latin America. Pastors tend to be influential opinion-makers in their congregations and some, like Lopez, have radio programs or stations, expanding their reach.

At the Latin University of Theology in Torrance, which trains Pentecostal pastors, many of the students in Brown's Spanish-language "Essence of Judaism" course hail from Latin American countries. He hopes they'll return home with new knowledge about Jews and Judaism to change negative images and misperceptions.

Nationally, the American Jewish Committee has formed a Latino and Latin American Institute, and in 2001 convened the first Latino-Jewish Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss common policy concerns such as immigration.

Labels: Anti-Defamation League, Catholic, Christina Hoag, evangelicals, interfaith, Jews, Latinos, Pentecostalism

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Friday, November 07, 2008

Catholics, Muslims Affirm Shared Mission

Say Religion a Source of Harmony, Not Conflict

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 6, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Catholics and Muslims agree that youth must be formed in their own religious traditions and correctly educated about other religions, to give witness to transcendent values in a secular society.
The recently established Catholic-Muslim Forum affirmed this in a joint declaration released today, the result of their first seminar, which began Tuesday. The forum is comprised of 29 members of each religion and was formed by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and representatives of the 138 Muslim leaders who sent an open letter to Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders in October 2007.

The theme of the three-day seminar was "Love of God, Love of Neighbor," with a specific focus on two areas: "Theological and Spiritual Foundations" and "Human Dignity and Mutual Respect."

The final statement of the forum reflected many points of similarity between the two creeds as well as resolutions for positive action to build solidarity and peace between the two.

Foundation of love

The forum recognized the specific focus of Christian love: "The source and example of love of God and neighbor is the love of Christ for his Father, for humanity and for each person. God is Love and God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God's love is placed in the human heart through the Holy Spirit. It is God who first loves us thereby enabling us to love him in return."

They continued with a summary of how love for one's neighbor in word and deed follows necessarily from the Christian's love for God. This love imitates Christ's sacrificial love, and includes every human person, even enemies.

Turning to the Muslim perspective on love, the declaration affirmed: "Love is a timeless transcendent power which guides and transforms human mutual regard. This love, as indicated by the holy and beloved Prophet Muhammad, is prior to the human love for the one true God. […] God's loving compassion for humanity is even greater than that of a mother for her child; it therefore exists before and independently of the human response to the One who is 'The Loving,'"

In regard to love of neighbor, the statement added some Muslim beliefs similar to those of Christians: "Those that believe, and do good works, the Merciful shall engender love among them. […] Not one of you has faith until he loves for his neighbor what he loves for himself."

Given these common foundations of love for God and neighbor, participants in the seminar recognized the gift of human life and the need to protect it. They asserted the belief that human dignity is based on each person's creation "by a loving God out of love." Thus every person deserves recognition of "his or her identity and freedom by individuals, communities and governments, supported by civil legislation that assures equal rights and full citizenship."

The declaration acknowledged God's creation of human personas as male and female, and noted the commitment of the forum to ensure "that human dignity and respect are extended on an equal basis to both men and women."

Religious differences

Members of the forum wrote that love of neighbor includes respect for each person's choices regarding religion. They affirmed that religious minorities are to be respected and that sacred figures, symbols and places should not be ridiculed.

They acknowledged: "As Catholic and Muslim believers, we are aware of the summons and imperative to bear witness to the transcendent dimension of life, through a spirituality nourished by prayer, in a world which is becoming more and more secularized and materialistic. […]

"We are convinced that Catholics and Muslims have the duty to provide a sound education in human, civic, religious and moral values for their respective members and to promote accurate information about each other's religions."

A source of peace

Seminar participants recognized that plurality in God's creation is a richness and should not be a source of conflict. They professed the belief that "Catholics and Muslims are called to be instruments of love and harmony among believers, and for humanity as a whole, renouncing any oppression, aggressive violence and terrorism, especially that committed in the name of religion, and upholding the principle of justice for all."

They challenged individuals from any religion to come together to help the needy, and to work toward upstanding financial systems that will consider the needs of the poor and relieve individual or national suffering.

Forward looking

The joint declaration recorded the conviction that young people are the future of the religious communities as well as societies. It asserted the necessity of forming youth, in their own religions as well as in the understanding of other cultures and religions.

The statement closed with a plan to hold a second seminar in two years, in a Muslim-majority country. Benedict XVI received the members of the forum in an audience, and participants ended the seminar by expressing gratitude to God for the fruitful dialogue among them.

Labels: Catholic, Catholic-Muslim Forum, Christianity, Jesus, love, Muslims, peace, Vatican

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Obama made inroads with religious vote

The Democrat prevailed with Roman Catholic and Jewish voters. He even picked up support among Evangelicals.
By Alexandra Marks
New York

This year it appears the Democrats got religion, at least in terms of the vote.

In becoming the president-elect, Barack Obama made gains among religious voters of almost every type compared with recent Democratic presidential candidates. He handily won the Catholic and Jewish votes, and even picked up support among Protestants and some Evangelicals, long a pillar of Republican ballot-box strength.

Some theologians suggest that the religious shift signals the emergence of a faith-based coalition that will counterbalance or, perhaps, replace the religious right. It’s made up of mainline religious progressives, black and Hispanic Evangelicals, and a growing number of younger, white Evangelicals and Catholics.

During the campaign, both presidential camps made a point of reaching out to the opponent’s core religious constituencies. Obama’s campaign spearheaded a grass-roots drive to bring in young Evangelicals and Catholics. The McCain campaign relied more on surrogates like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) of Connecticut to try to bring Jewish voters into the GOP.

Their success varied. The McCain campaign had hoped to exploit Jewish voters’ initial unease with Obama, raising questions about the depth of his support for Israel and his willingness to negotiate with its enemies, such as Iran. It ran television ads in Florida and other places with large Jewish populations that quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “Ahmadinejad says Israel won’t survive…. Obama says he would meet with him personally.”

Senator Lieberman, a leading political Jewish voice and a former Democratic vice presidential nominee, was frequently with Senator McCain on the stump. When he wasn’t, he was often in Florida working on behalf of his GOP Senate colleague.

Some Republicans also sought to exploit fears that Obama was secretly a Muslim or had close associations with anti-Semitic black leaders such as Louis Farrakhan.

That did not sit well with some Jews, who organized rabbis and others to counter such attacks on Obama.

Then there was Sarah Silverman to contend with. The young Jewish comedienne became the spokeswoman for the so-called Great Schlep. It signed up more than 25,000 young Jewish voters and urged them to go to Florida to get their grandparents to support Obama.

Obama managed to solidify Jewish support: 78 percent supported him over McCain, according to an analysis of election polls by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In 2004, 74 percent of Jewish voters backed Democrat John Kerry for president.

The Obama campaign was more successful in making inroads with some of the GOP’s core constituencies. It reached out to Catholic voters who attend mass regularly – a group that went for Mr. Bush by 12 percentage points in 2004. This year, Obama and McCain split that vote. Among Catholics who attend mass less often, Obama won overwhelmingly.

“In 2004, Bush split with Kerry those Catholics who attended less often, but Obama won that group by 18 percentage points. That is a very significant shift,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Part of the explanation is the significant shift to Obama among Hispanic Catholics.”

Obama also worked to reach out to the Republicans’ white evangelical base, but he had less success there. He did win more support among them than Senator Kerry did in 2004, but only by a few percentage points.

“When we’re looking at white Evangelicals, we’re looking at one of the strongest Republican constituencies in the country – a group that would be very hard to move into the Democratic column under any circumstances,” says John Green, senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum. “From that perspective…, one could argue that this may be some evidence of success.”

Other analysts say Obama did make inroads with younger white evangelicals in key states like Colorado and Indiana, where he boosted his support among Evangelicals by 14 percentage points and 8 percentage points, respectively, over Kerry’s 2004 levels.

Labels: Alexandra Marks, Barack Obama, Catholic, evangelicals, voters

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Practicing vs. non-practicing

October 20, 2008
Knights of Columbus poll reveals political divisions among Catholic voters

Washington, D.C. / (CNA) -- A recent survey sponsored by the Knights of Columbus sheds new light on the Catholic vote by examining the differences between the 65 percent of Catholics who regularly practice their faith and the 35 percent who do not. The survey finds that, while a majority of practicing Catholics is pro-life, a majority of non-practicing Catholics favors abortion rights.

Additionally, a supermajority of practicing Catholics opposes same-sex marriage, but non-practicing Catholics, while still largely in opposition to the proposal, favor same-sex marriage at a rate higher than the American population as a whole.

The survey, “Moral Issues and Catholic Values,” was conducted by the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion between Sept. 24 and Oct. 3. Surveying 1,733 Americans among whom 813 were Catholics, it claims a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent for all Americans and 3.5 percent for Catholics specifically.

According to the survey, about 45 percent of registered practicing Catholics said they would definitely vote for a candidate who supports embryonic stem cell research. Close to 38 percent said they would definitely vote for a candidate who would “leave the economy to market forces,” while only 27 percent said they would definitely vote for a candidate who provided amnesty to illegal immigrants currently working in the U.S.

The survey also shows specific demographic divisions of the Catholic population. Seventy percent of Catholics are white, while 25 percent are Latino. Among practicing Catholics, 72 percent are white and 24 percent are Latino, while among non-practicing Catholics 65 percent are white and 26 percent Latino. While within the poll’s margin of error, only one percent of practicing Catholics and four percent of non-practicing Catholics are African American.

Labels: Catholic, Knights of Columbus, Marist College Institute of Public Opinion, Moral Issues and Catholic Values, non-practicing, practicing

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Nationwide Poll Provides Beneath-the-Surface Look at Catholic Voters

By: PR Newswire
Oct. 14, 2008 02:00 PM

Some major differences between practicing and non-practicing Catholics

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A just-completed nationwide poll provides new insights into America's Catholic voters, highlighting the ways in which they differ from the electorate as a whole. But the survey also examines in detail the ways in which the 65% of Catholics who practice their faith regularly differ from the 35% who do not. The poll was conducted for the Knights of Columbus by the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion between September 24 and October 3, 2008.

In some areas, the poll finds that Catholic voters' views are similar to the general population, on issues like government funding for the poor, amnesty for illegal immigrants, global warming, civil unions and same-sex marriage and a belief that the economy is the nation's number one problem. 70% of all registered voters and 70% of all registered practicing Catholics say they would vote for a candidate who believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman, including majorities of the electorate and of practicing Catholics who would "definitely vote for" such a candidate. Catholics and non-Catholics agree that America needs a moral makeover. 71% of all US residents and 73% of US Catholics believe that "the country's moral compass right now points in the wrong direction."

Some of the most dramatic differences are found within the community of Catholic voters. 59% of practicing Catholics are pro-life, while 65% of non-practicing Catholics are pro-choice. Non-practicing Catholics are far more likely to be pro-choice than the population at large (65% vs. 50%). Only 30% of US residents favor same-sex marriage, while 46% of non-practicing Catholics do. 75% of practicing Catholics oppose same-sex marriage.

Parental notification if a daughter under 18 is planning to have an abortion is supported by 77% of U.S. residents, and by 84% of practicing Catholics.

Full details of the poll results can be found at www.kofc.org.

SOURCE Knights of Columbus

Labels: abortion, Catholic, Marist College Institute of Public Opinion, non-practicing, practicing, same-sex marriage

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Pope urges Australian youths to spurn materialism

By KRISTEN GELINEAU – 2 days ago

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday a "spiritual desert" was spreading throughout the world and he challenged young people to shed the greed and cynicism of their time to create a new age of hope for humankind.

Speaking at a Mass before some 350,000 Roman Catholic pilgrims and a likely television audience of millions more, Benedict wrapped up the church's six-day World Youth Day festival. He urged the young people in his more than 1 billion-strong flock to be agents of change because "the world needs renewal."

"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair," the pontiff said.

The 81-year-old pope said it was up to a new generation of Christians to build a world in "which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished — not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed."

They must embrace the power of God "to let it break through the curse of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age," he said.

The aim was "a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deadens our souls and poisons our relationships," he said.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said 350,000 attended Sunday's Mass. Australian organizers surmised a global television audience of up to 500 million during big World Youth Day events.

The pope flew over the scene early Sunday in a helicopter — dubbed "the holy-copter" by bleary-eyed pilgrims below — to see the assemblage swarmed all over the track in a jumble of sleeping bags, backpacks and other personal items.

He later took a slow drive through the crowd, stopping once to plant a kiss on the forehead of a toddler held up to the popemobile's window. Pilgrims from more than 160 countries gave him a rock-star welcome, waving the flags of their nations, cheering and chanting: "Benedicto! Benedicto!" — the pope's Italian name.

The pope was due to leave Australia for the Vatican on Monday. He announced that Madrid, Spain, would host the next World Youth Day in 2011 and told the pilgrims: "I look forward to seeing you again in three years' time."

Benedict, who shrugged off the effects of a longer-than 20-hour flight from Rome and kept a hectic schedule during his time in Australia, coughed a couple of times during Sunday's Mass and at one point blew his nose, prompting reporters to ask about his health.

"It was chilly, and everybody felt it, no?" Lombardi said. "But he is in fine health."

Associated Press Writer Victor L. Simpson in Sydney contributed to this report.

Labels: Australia, Catholic, Kristen Gelineau, Pope Benedict XVI, World Youth Day

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Poll: Revealing New Look at Religious Voters

By Deal W. Hudson
6/18/2008

The volatility of the Catholic vote created by the Iraq War was confirmed by the study's findings.

WASHINGTON, DC (Inside Catholic) - A new survey on religion and politics provides important background on the dynamics at work among religious voters in 2008.

The "National Survey on Religion and Public Life" published by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College was based on a large sample of 3,002 interviews, nearly three times the sample size of most political polls.

Analyzed by director Corin E. Smidt, the survey data yielded the following major conclusions:

Mainline Protestants are now firmly identified with the Democratic Party, 46 percent to 37 percent. Smidt calls this "an historical turning point," but the shift has been in the making for over a decade. Taking their place in the Republican Party are, of course, the Evangelical voters -- 54 percent to 25 percent, slightly down from 2004.

White Catholic loyalties lean slightly toward the Democrats, 41 percent to 38 percent, reflecting the 30-year migration of Catholics into the GOP. Democrats used to own the Catholic vote in years gone by.

The White Catholic vote is "up for grabs in the 2008 presidential election." Because of the instability created by the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and the Vatican's criticism of it, I agree with him.

The news about Latino Catholics is not good for the GOP. Only 15 percent call themselves Republican, compared to 57 percent for the Democrats. The number of independents among these voters is growing (28 percent).

Individual religious beliefs and practices are more important than denominational affiliation in predicting political views. When you distinguish between traditionalists, centrists, and modernists within each denomination, each group's politics will resemble the others across the denominations. Modernist Catholics will think politically like modernists belonging to other denominations, and so on.

Traditional believers of all denominations are more likely to be Republican, and modernists are more likely to be Democrats -- with the odd exception of modernist Evangelicals, who lean toward the GOP.

The survey numbers on abortion and gay rights bear the importance of looking beyond denominational affiliation. Catholics overall agreed, 51 percent to 43 percent, that "abortion should be legal and solely up to the woman to decide." Among traditionalist Catholics, the number changes dramatically, with 71 percent disagreeing. Modernists, not surprisingly, agree 80 percent with a woman's "right to chose."

Gay marriage is not supported as strongly as abortion among religious voters, but comparing 2004 with 2008, support appears to be growing: 9 percent among Evangelicals, 5 percent among mainline Protestants, but only 2 percent among Catholics, who have heard Benedict XVI quite outspoken in opposition to gay marriage.

The volatility of the Catholic vote created by the Iraq War was confirmed by the study's findings. Non-Hispanic Catholics did not agree that the United States rightly took action against Iraq, 52 percent to 42 percent, while traditionalist Catholics supported the war 56 percent to 36 percent.

Centrist and modernist Catholics overwhelmingly oppose the war: 54 percent to 34 percent, and 68 percent to 29 percent, respectively. Latino Catholics disapprove by a margin of 69 percent to 25 percent.

The Calvin College poll asked its respondents whether they would vote for McCain or the Democratic nominee (Obama was not yet the clear victor) for president in 2008. White Catholics favored McCain 43 percent to 39 percent, but Latino Catholics supported the Democratic nominee 63 percent to 19 percent. Evangelicals picked McCain 59 percent to 24 percent, and mainline Protestants slightly favored McCain over the Democrat; 19 percent were still undecided at the time of the survey.

The methodology of the survey suggests that an innovative way for political candidates to organize their religious outreach may be in the offing. Instead of a Catholic or Evangelical outreach, future campaigns may focus on the newer categories of "traditionalists" and "modernists," regardless of denomination.

Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster, 2008).

Labels: abortion, Catholic, Deal W. Hudson, Democrat, gay rights, Iraq, National Survey on Religion and Public Life, politics, protestants, Republican

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Catholics, Evangelicals Differ On Views Of Sin

Evangelicals More Traditional Than Catholic Counterparts

Last updated Friday, May 30, 2008
By Terry Mattingly
Scripps Howard News Service

One tough challenge that Catholic shepherds face, Pope Benedict XVI said this past Lent, is that their flocks live in an age "in which the loss of the sense of sin is unfortunately becoming increasingly more widespread."

"Where God is excluded from the public forum the sense of offense against God -- the true sense of sin -- dissipates, just as when the absolute value of moral norms is relativized the categories of good or evil vanish, along with individual responsibility," he told a group of Canadian bishops, early in his papacy.

"Yet the human need to acknowledge and confront sin in fact never goes away. ... As St. John tells us: 'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.'"

But there's a problem at pew level. Many American Catholics who regularly attend Mass simply do not agree with their church when it comes time to say what is sinful and what is not. In fact, according to a recent survey by Ellison Research in Phoenix, if the pope wanted to find large numbers of believers who share his views on sin he should spend more time with evangelical Protestants.

For example, 100 percent of evangelicals polled said adultery is sinful, while 82 percent of the active Catholics agreed. On other issues, 96 percent of evangelicals said racism is sin, compared to 79 percent of Catholics. Sex before marriage? That's sin, said 92 percent of the evangelicals, while only 47 percent of Catholics agreed.

On one of the hottest of hot-button issues, 94 percent of evangelicals said it's sinful to have an abortion, compared with 74 percent of American Catholics. And what about homosexual acts? Among evangelicals, 93 percent called this sin, as opposed to 49 percent of the Catholics.

The Catholics turned the tables when asked if it's sinful not to attend "religious worship services on a regular basis," with 39 percent saying this is sin, compared to 33 percent of the evangelicals.

Sellers said his team sifted evangelicals out of the larger Protestant pool by asking participants to affirm or question basic doctrinal statements, such as, "The Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all that it teaches" and "Eternal salvation is possible through God's grace alone."

The split between Catholics and evangelicals jumped out of the statistics.

It's clear that most Americans are operating with definitions of sin that are highly personal and constantly evolving, said Sellers. These beliefs are linked to faith, morality, worship and the Bible, but also are affected by trends in media, education and politics. For example, 94 percent of political conservatives believe there is such a thing as sin, compared to 89 percent of political moderates and 77 percent of liberals.

The declining numbers on certain sins would have been even more striking if the Ellison researchers hadn't added a strategic word to its survey.

The study defined "sin" as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective."

Note that linguistic cushion -- "almost."

"We had to put that 'almost' in there," Sellers said. "Most Americans do not believe in absolute truths, these days. So if you present them with a statement that contains an absolute truth, people are immediately going to start challenging you and looking for some wiggle room. ... They just can't deal with absolute statements and that messes up your survey."

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. His Web site is www.tmatt.net. His column is distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.

Labels: Catholic, Ellison Research, evangelicals, Pope Benedict XVI, sin, Terry Mattingly

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Monday, May 12, 2008

Catholic-Muslim conference concludes

Participants agreed that to develop critical thinking skills, students must know about religions in a balanced way, neither emphasizing negative features nor promoting the religion in a devotional style more appropriate to a mosque or church setting.

Saturday, May 10, 2008
By Spero News

The Mid-Atlantic Muslim Catholic Dialogue met on April 23-24 in Washington DC and looked at inter-religious education in the United States.

The meeting, which was convened by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Catholic representatives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, explored teaching about different religions in private and public institutions. Discussion was guided by the experiences of the Institute on Religion and Civic Values, represented by Shabbir Mansuri and Munir Shaikh.

The discussion follows upon a meeting in 2007 where Safaa Zarzour described the development of a Muslim-Catholic educational exchange by the Council of Islamic Societies of Greater Chicago and the Archdiocese of Chicago. Zarzour chaired a panel of Muslim representatives at the April 23-24 meeting.

Mansuri, Shaikh and Zarzour noted there already is consensus on the need to educate about world religions in public schools, thanks to the work of the First Amendment Center in Washington DC. Discussion at the April meeting focused on the many audiences for inter-religious education: seminarians, university students, school teachers, public and religious school children.

Sandra Keating PhD related the discussion to theological and pedagogical principles. From a pedagogical perspective participants looked at effective ways to educate about other religions, and said the most effective approach should not only provide basic information but also draw attention to the spiritual values of a religion. They said maintaining a positive tone in curriculum content can help correct a bias against religion that exists in some educational and political environments.

Participants also agreed that to develop critical thinking skills students need to know the story of religions in a balanced way, neither emphasizing negative features nor promoting the religion in a devotional style more appropriate to a mosque or church setting. Participants also noted that sensitivity in how one communicates and works with other traditions should be part of any program and stressed particular attention to the training of religious leaders and school teachers for all school systems.

Rev. Gregory Fairbanks presented a curriculum for ecumenical and inter-religious training required by Catholic seminaries and recommended for clergy and lay leaders. He cited documents of the Second Vatican Council and other more recent church documents. He highlighted U.S. pastoral concerns, including inter-religious marriages, social justice cooperation or tensions, and educating non-Catholic children in parochial schools.

Imam Ahmed Nezar Kobeisy offered reflections on the training of imams for U.S. mosques. He highlighted efforts, such as psychological and marriage counseling, that would not be so urgently required of imams in majority-Muslim countries.

In other remarks, Bishop Dennis Madden, co-chair, recalled the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He reminded participants of the pope’s call to achieve what the pope called the "truth of peace" while maintaining "a clear exposition of our respective religious tenets."

The next meeting of this round will be in May, 2009, and focus on “Developing a Strategic Plan on Interreligious Education.” In the coming months, a survey on inter-religious education will be sent to Muslim and Catholic educators.

Labels: Catholic, Mid-Atlantic Muslim Catholic Dialogue, Muslims, religion, Spero News

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Monday, April 21, 2008

A Populist Shift Confronts the U.S. Catholic Church

Piotr Redlinski
for The New York Times

Page one of two...please click on "external link" for complete article

To say she was a practicing Catholic would be an understatement. For years, Maria Aparecida Calazans was a mainstay at her Long Island church, joining dozens of fellow Brazilian immigrants for the Portuguese language Mass on Sunday mornings. She and her husband, Ramon, were married at the church. Their two daughters were baptized there, and every Friday she attended a prayer meeting that she had helped organize.

But six years ago, her husband went to a relative’s baptism at a Pentecostal church in a warehouse in Astoria, Queens, and came home smitten.

The couple made a deal. “We would go to the Pentecostal service on Thursdays and to Mass on Sundays, and then we would decide which one we felt most comfortable with,” Mrs. Calazans said.

Within 40 days, they had given up Roman Catholicism and embraced Pentecostalism, following the path of the estimated 1.3 million Latino Catholics who have joined Pentecostal congregations since immigrating to the United States, according to a survey released in February by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

“I feel whole here,” Mrs. Calazans, 42, said one recent Sunday in the Astoria sanctuary, the Portuguese Language Pentecostal Missionary Church, as she swayed to the pop-rock beat of a live gospel band. “This church is not a place we visit once a week. This church is where we hang around and we share our problems and we celebrate our successes, like we were family.”

As Pope Benedict XVI completes his visit to the United States on Sunday with a Mass at Yankee Stadium, in a borough that has been home to generations of Latinos, he does so facing something of a growing challenge to the church’s immigrant ranks.

For if Latinos are feeding the population of the church, many have also turned to Pentecostalism, a form of evangelical Christianity that stresses a personal, even visceral, connection with God.

Today, it has more Latino followers in the United States than any other denomination except Catholicism; they are drawn, they say, by the faith’s joyous worship, its use of Latino culture and the enveloping sense of community it offers to newcomers. As the Pew survey revealed, half of all Latinos who have joined Pentecostal denominations were raised as Catholics.

They are part of a global shift. Pentecostalism, the world’s fastest-growing branch of Christianity, has made such sharp inroads in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, that in an address to bishops there last year, Pope Benedict listed its ardent proselytizing as one of the major forces the Catholic Church must contend with in the region.

Catholic leaders and experts on the church in the United States say that the impact of Pentecostalism has been less dramatic here. Still, the pope has urged the nation’s bishops to make every effort to welcome immigrants — “to share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials, and to help them flourish in their new home.” And any number of Catholic clergy and laypeople have conceded that the church needs to work harder at reaching, and keeping, its Latino flock.

“That some of the newly arrived Latinos are drawn to Pentecostalism is certainly reason for concern,” said the Rev. Allan Figueroa Deck, the executive director of the Office for Cultural Diversity, which was created last June by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to help the church adjust to its changing ethnic makeup.

“But we can counter that with the kind of music we use, with the sense of celebration that we bring to our worship, the spontaneity and some of the popular customs that are not part of the official liturgy of the church. We’re doing some of that, but we could do better.”

The Pentecostal church in Astoria vividly shows what Catholicism is up against. It offers enough activities to fill a family’s calendar: services on Sunday and Thursday, youth group meetings on Friday, a Bible study group on Wednesday and all-night prayer vigils throughout the year. Then there are the birthday and engagement parties, to which every congregant is invited.

The church, on the second floor of a stucco building opposite a nightclub and three blocks from the subway, is half house of worship and half community center. It ministers primarily to a single immigrant group, Brazilians, in the group’s language, Portuguese — much as the ethnic urban parishes founded by European Catholics did more than a century ago.

Labels: Brazil, Catholic, Latinos, Pentecostal, Piotr Redlinski, Pope Benedict XVI

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Diverse religious, political strains to greet pope

By Sharon Schmickle
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

When Pope Benedict XVI lands at Andrews Air Force Base today, he will be welcomed by a nation that is teeming with religious intensity surpassing anything he could hope to find in Europe.

A good share of the religious rhetoric has as much to do with politics as with spirituality in this highly charged election year. And a good share of the religious tension comes within the ranks of Catholics themselves, who disagree with Rome and each other over birth control, the role of women in the church and other issues.

But this pope already has taken bold strides into broader issues that are roiling America in its pews and in its streets. Catholics and non-Catholics alike will be listening for his message on the Iraq war, the environment and the moral state of the nation.

Pope Benedict has consistently opposed the Iraq war from its beginning. On Palm Sunday this year, he thundered, "Enough with the bloodshed, enough with the violence, enough with the hatred in Iraq!"

The pope's main reason for visiting the United States is to speak before the United Nations on Friday, said the National Catholic Register.

Still, pundits don't expect to see the pope launch a direct broadside against President Bush's foreign policy or to comment on the U.S. election, said the Associated Press.

The pope's itinerary also calls for him to address leaders in Roman Catholic higher education, pray at Ground Zero and hold Masses in the new Nationals Park in Washington and Yankee Stadium in New York. His 81st birthday is Wednesday, and a party is planned in Washington.

The environment

At the United Nations, the pope also is expected to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a moral cause for Catholics, The Independent of London reported.

Benedict has earned the title "green pope" for his emphasis on a duty to "protect creation" and safeguard the poorest on the planet from the effects of global warming.

"Before it is too late, it is necessary to make courageous decisions that reflect knowing how to re-create a strong alliance between man and the earth," he told a youth audience in September.

Vatican City recently became the world's first carbon-neutral state, offsetting its carbon footprint by planting a forest in Hungary and installing solar panels on the roof of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Clergy sex abuse

Some Catholics are disappointed that the pope isn't visiting the Archdiocese of Boston, where the clergy sex-abuse crisis erupted in 2002 and then spread nationwide, the AP said.

However, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — the Vatican secretary of state — told the AP that Benedict will address the scandal during his trip and "will try to open the path of healing and reconciliation." A likely forum could be when Benedict speaks to priests during a Saturday morning Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

Diverse voices

By several measures, the United States is one of the most devout nations in the developed world. But the faithful often disagree vehemently. And, whether or not he sees it, the full flavor of that diversity will greet the pope. Groups advocating a stronger role for women, gay marriage and peace are prepared to demonstrate along the papal route.

Some Catholics also will urge the pope to remonstrate against mass consumerism, rampant free enterprise, and the neoconservative agenda for global democratic revolution, said the feisty American Conservative magazine.

They may not be disappointed. The Conservative predicted the pope will speak to such issues, reflecting themes of a forthcoming social encyclical, which is expected to be published on May 1.

"The document may touch on subjects that make many conservatives blush," the Conservative said.

Labels: Catholic, environmentalism, Iraq, Pope Benedict XVI, priest sex scandal, Sharon Schmickle, Unites States

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Monday, April 14, 2008

Hispanics help reshape US Church

Hispanics help reshape US Church

By Kevin Connolly
BBC News
April 14, 2008

In the remote village of Chimayo, where the mountains of New Mexico swell up out of the desert scrub, the faithful pray for miracles, and offer a clue to the pressures and influences helping to reshape modern American Catholicism.

One of the faithful gathers "holy dirt" - believed to have mystical powers

The ancient tribal peoples of the region believed that the fine, sandy soil from the local hillsides had mystical powers to heal broken bodies and broken lives, and there are plenty of 21st century American Catholics who agree with them.

The soil is kept in a small, dry, shallow well in a side chapel of the church, and the faithful queue to collect it, using a children's plastic beach shovel to pour it into containers brought from home. They touch samples of the soil to affected areas, they offer it to dying relatives, they ask priests to bless their sample. And they believe.

"I definitely felt the Holy Spirit in there; the presence is everywhere here, whether the healing is spiritual or physical," she told me.

Folk beliefs

Hispanic immigrants bring with them a vitality and a tradition of folk beliefs

Like many other churches across the south and west of the United States, the decor at the church of Chimayo and the tone of worship are set by Hispanic immigrants, who bring with them not just the Spanish language, but a vitality and a tradition of folk beliefs that are very different from the values of Catholics in the colder cities to the North.

Immigration from Latin-American countries though (and the high birth rates among those groups) are more than making up for the decline. About a half of all American Catholics under the age of 40 are Hispanics, and that proportion will continue to grow.

"Church of immigration"

Luis Lugo of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says that is simply evidence of an old historical pattern repeating itself in a new community.

"The growth (of Hispanic influence) has really been since the major changes in US immigration policy in the mid 60s, so it really would once have been very much a European Catholic church: Irish, Italian, German influence," he says.

The truth is that while Chimayo creates an awkward dilemma for the modern Church (several people there told me of miraculous cures, but there's no sign that the Catholic authorities intend to start to promoting or publicising them).

On the one hand, it inspires claims that might be difficult to substantiate under the scrutiny of modern science. But on the other, there is a spirituality to the place that helps to bring a much-needed vitality back to a Church over which the priestly child sex abuse scandals of recent times still throw a long shadow.

Damaged confidence

The crisis created difficulties at many levels, chief among them, of course, is the trauma suffered by the many victims whose suffering was eventually publicised after years of secrecy and shame.

For the Church, the cost of compensating those victims is crippling and will continue to be a drain on resources for years to come.

But perhaps more importantly, it damaged the confidence of ordinary Catholics in their priests and bishops.

Even Father Funtum, an engaging and convincing spokesman for the spiritual energy at Chimayo, had his story of being falsely accused of perversion by a parishioner who happened to see him pat a small child on the head at a church social.

That charge was absurd but it is a demonstration of the extent of how almost every conversation about American Catholicism (like mine with Father Jim) ends up being dominated by the issue of abuse.

We will know soon the extent to which Pope Benedict intends to address the subject, but it's highly unlikely that he will get through the visit without it being raised.

We already know that the Pope won't be heading for Chimayo - not this time around anyway - and in a way, it's a shame.

If he wanted to get a feeling for how the American Church will look in the future - more Hispanic, more charismatic, more populist and perhaps more mystical - he could do worse than to travel into New Mexico's mountains to see for himself.

Labels: Catholic, Chimayo, Hispanics, holy dirt, Kevin Connolly, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, spirituality

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Monday, March 24, 2008

Marketing The God Business

by Laurence D. Cohen

Few enterprises know the marketing challenge of attraction and retention more profoundly than the God business, the churches, religious denominations and faiths and cults and Obama worshipers.

It was sort of easy in the old days. Your parents were some sort of Presbyterians or something, you burst from the womb — and a new Presbyterian was born.

The latest national survey on religion from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests a marketplace more akin to fast food and cars. The general market leader, Protestants, is losing market share faster than Ford and General Motors. Protestants will soon be less than 50 percent of the American market.

Even among Catholics, where brand loyalty was pretty high, Hispanics are gravitating to the evangelical products — and remaining Catholic customers are calling the 1-800 number and demanding to speak to a manager.

Disgruntled Prayer People

The Catholics did a major brand overhaul a while back, modernizing and updating the product line and sales pitch. As you might expect, many of the existing customers were furious. They don’t want no suburban, guitar-strumming, banner-waving Mass with a cool, new post-Vatican II liturgy and a with-it priest.

There are few barriers to entry in the American religion market; the Hindus and Buddists can open up a church on the corner with much the same ease as more mainline American faiths — and even among the mainline Protestants, there is a casualness among the faithful as to where they attend and to what degree they claim allegiance to one denomination or another. Crest and Colgate receive more loyalty than that.

The Pew survey suggests that about half the adult American population has changed religious affiliation.

The need for sharper marketing among the mainline Protestants has been apparent for years. A poll in 1996 indicated that the only thing most Americans knew about the Lutheran faith, for example, was that it was some sort of religion.

Some of this loss of marketing focus and denominational identity was intentional, of course. One suspects that many students at Wesleyan University in Middletown don’t know why the school is, or was, called Wesleyan — and at Trinity, students might be somewhat fuzzy about why the Book of Common Prayer was the volume of choice in the Trinity College chapel. Yale recently dropped the chapel’s formal United Church of Christ affiliation, without prompting a religious war or even a whimper.

The turmoil in the religious marketplace may or may not be a “crisis.” Many of the Founding Fathers encouraged such competitive energy, to avoid the tyranny of a dominant faith. James Madison praised America’s multiplicity of faiths, “for where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”

There’s a hint of anti-trust law in that. Praise the Lord.

Labels: affiliation, Catholic, Laurence D. Cohen, marketing, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religion

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Streaming video on Internet seen as new way to spread Gospel

By Franz Klein
Catholic News Service

LA CROSSE, Wis

Streaming video is all the rage on the Internet, and some people are starting to realize how valuable a tool this technology can be in reaching out to young Catholics.

If St. Augustine were alive today, he "would have done his 'Confessions' in video and streamed it on the Internet," Travis Boudreaux, the tech-savvy Louisiana Catholic who founded Catholic-Tube.com several months ago, told The Catholic Times, newspaper of the Diocese of La Crosse.

On his Catholic-Tube blog, Boudreaux posts daily some of what he considers the best Catholic videos and podcasts uploaded to major sites such as YouTube.com and GodTube.com, as well as smaller Catholic operations such as LoveToBeCatholic.com and SQPN.com.

A veteran Web watcher, Boudreaux believes that video is the future of the Internet.

"There will always be room for audio and the written word, but video provides a dynamic that's not there otherwise," he said. "Imagine if you could see St. Augustine's emotion. There's so much that's lost without voice inflection and hand gestures."

YouTube.com was created in 2005 and was bought by Google Inc. in October 2006. According to Alexa.com's statistical analysis, YouTube is currently the third most frequented Web site on the Internet.

On YouTube, users can upload, view and share music videos and television clips, as well as video content of their own creation. More than 65 million videos have been uploaded to date. While no pornographic or nude videos are permitted, YouTube relies on its community of viewers to identify and flag such uploads, meaning there is a definite time lag before they come down.

A quick search of YouTube's contents for "Christian" will return a staggering 329,000-plus videos, while a search for "Catholic" will yield 21,000-plus results.

Several bishops use the site, including Philadelphia's Cardinal Justin Rigali, who posted a series of reflections, and Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, whose monthly "Lectio Divina" meditations have been watched by thousands of viewers.

But nearly half of the videos on the first page of search results for "Christianity" portray the faith in a negative light. And while a search for "Catholic" will yield an inspirational video by "KaterinaMarie" called "Why I am Catholic," and a clip of a Mass with Bishop Fulton Sheen in 1941 among its initial results, there's also a video parodying the church sex abuse scandals, as well as many others that are anti-Catholic or contain salacious material.

"That's why we believe biblical topics need to be discussed in a forum that is respectful of the Word," GodTube.com co-founder and chief executive officer Chris Wyatt said in a Catholic Times interview.

With its first version launched last January, GodTube's quick growth has been phenomenal. The site, which recently added an alternative to the secular networking site Facebook.com, already contains more than 48,000 videos. Wyatt said the site logged more than 10 million visitors by the end of 2007.

But accusations of anti-Catholicism have plagued GodTube, as some users have posted videos that try to discredit the church's teaching on the priesthood, the sacraments, the papacy and other things.

Wyatt, a Baptist, said anti-Catholicism would not be tolerated. "We don't stand for that," he said, although he admitted there were some anti-Catholic videos on the site until a recent string of articles brought them to the company's attention.

Even with these videos removed, clips claiming to discredit elements of Catholic teaching remain on the site, including a John MacArthur lecture series on "The Pope and the Papacy."

Thomas Hall, founder of LoveToBeCatholic.com, believes he has come up with a better alternative.

"About a month ago, I typed 'Catholic' in on YouTube, and six of the first 10 responses were anti-Catholic propaganda," Hall told The Catholic Times. "I felt Catholics needed an equal voice and a safe environment to learn about their faith and to evangelize."

With a background including Web work with Fortune 500 companies, Hall, who just moved from Chicago with his family to Minneapolis, naturally turned to the Internet.

At the end of October, he launched LoveToBeCatholic.com as a test. Like YouTube and GodTube, LoveToBeCatholic is a Web platform for people to post videos. But unlike them, LoveToBeCatholic is specifically Catholic, and Hall works to ensure that nothing anti-Catholic gets posted.

Hall said the online Catholic community has embraced his site. "In the first month I went from zero to 3,000 visitors per day," he said. "I immediately ran into bandwidth problems. I've had to upgrade the servers twice, and I'll have to do that again this year. But that's a really nice problem to have."

Videos range from priests' sermons to humorous skits and church events. Some of Hall's favorites are vocations videos that show young religious in habits engaged in sports or other activities with youths. "You can't capture that in text or audio," he said.

Labels: Catholic, Catholic-Tube, Franz Klein, Godtube.com, YouTube

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Religious converts

Changing religions or denominations is growing phenomenon today in United States

By C. Samantha McKevie
Saturday, February 02, 2008

Please click on External link at the bottom to read the whole article, including personal stories of faith-journeys from one religion to another, and one denomination to another.

Kelley Culver grew up in Houston as a Southern Baptist; Fatima Khiyaty was reared Catholic just outside of Cleveland; and Sonja Ozturk was brought up in a Lutheran family in Green Bay, Wis.

Mr. Culver made a pit stop as a Methodist before converting to Catholicism six years ago.

Mrs. Khiyaty and Mrs. Ozturk left Christianity altogether and are now Muslims.

They are not alone.

Although some people live their lives content with being part of one denomination or faith, others change denominations or switch to a different religion altogether.

Changing from one denomination to another within Christianity is not that unusual, said the Rev. Don Saliers, a Methodist minister and an adjunct professor of theology and worship at Emory University.

"Because of the ecumenical context in American Christianity and a lot more social mobility, shifting from one denomination to another is very different from 50 years ago, though in radical conversion experiences, there can still be great personal trauma," he said. "But shifting denominations is quite common. There is much more 'church shopping' when a family now moves to a new city.

Steve Tipton, a professor of sociology and religion at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, said there is "a lot more denominational switching going on now than a few years ago and indeed a generation ago."

"The rates increase with education and age together, and in particular with intermarriage," he said. "If the Christian woman or man marries a Muslim, one of them is likelier to convert.

When switching major religions -- such as Christianity to Muslim or Judaism to Christianity -- a lot more is involved, the Rev. Saliers said.

"The conversion from one religion to another requires a much deeper change of relationships -- family ties, cultural setting and context -- than does most inter-Christian conversions or changes," he said.

LOOK AT THE CHANGES

Barry Kosmin is co-author of Religion in a Free Market, a book that presents the results of the American Religious Identification Survey. The survey tracked adult Americans by their religious traditions and ethnicity from 1990-2001.

In its chapter on religious switching, the book states that "about 16 percent of the nation's population reported that at some point in their lives they had changed their religious preference or identification."

WHO'S MOVING WHERE

Catholics, Methodists, Protestants in general and Jews were among the groups that had significantly higher percentages of people switching out of their faiths.

General Christians, Pentecostals, non-denominationals, evangelicals, Muslims and Buddhists had higher percentages of people switching into their faiths.

The biggest trend he found, though, is a switch to no religion at all, which was the choice of many of the people who left Catholicism, Methodism and Islam, he said.

"The other big trend is mainline, the old people, becoming born-again and joining evangelicals, non-denominational or Christian churches.

In two thirds of marriages where one person switched to the other's religion, it was the woman who switched to make the accommodations, he said.

The switch to Islam occurs mainly among black men and among women who marry Muslims, he said.

Labels: Barry Kosmin, C. Samantha McKevie, Catholic, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, religion

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Odyssey Catholics

December 28, 2007

Young and restless, tenuously connected to their faith

Please click on "External source" for complete article, and interviews with three "millenials."

By GREG RUEHLMANN

Justin Brandon has been weighing his options. The 25-year-old San Francisco resident recently applied to Stanford’s highly competitive MBA program, but even if admitted, he isn’t sure he wants to leave his job at Better World Books, the promising dot-com where he has coordinated online marketing since June.

Brandon isn’t used to feeling so content about a job. In the three years since he graduated from the University of Notre Dame, he has done extended volunteer work in Puerto Rico, served as a video production assistant at Notre Dame, shot documentary films in Ghana and Haiti, and worked as a search quality technician for Google in Silicon Valley.

“Every year,” he said, “part of me wants to move cities or switch jobs.”

Brandon and his restless ventures represent a generational trend among some young college-educated men and women who are free to choose flux over stability. Some social scientists have dubbed these post-college years the “odyssey years” -- a nomadic period when young adults move from one job to another, from one city to the next, delaying marriage, children and permanent career tracks longer than previous generations. Spiritually, they tend to be seekers, a characteristic that applies even to many with deep roots in a traditional religion such as Catholicism and no great desire to venture too far from the fold.

“Catholicism was a deep part of my experience at Notre Dame. It is what opened my eyes to the wider world. It sparked [my journey] and has influenced my way of going about it,” Brandon said.

According to a number of studies, the same holds true for a significant proportion of other young Catholics who belong to the so-called “Millennial generation,” the still-forming group that follows Generation X and includes those born in the period from the late 1970s to the late ’80s. These include 29-year-olds Nicole Shirilla and Ed Fians. Shirilla began medical school this fall in Pittsburgh after teaching in Baton Rouge, La., working in South Bend, Ind., and traveling to Rwanda and Sri Lanka as a filmmaker. Fians plans a springtime move from Chicago to New York City -- his second stint there, and the fourth time he will have decamped for a different state since 2001.

These three Millennials -- unwed at an age their parents are likely to have been married, and still discerning a career path several years after graduation -- believe that Catholicism has informed their journeys. And vice versa: Their journeys have informed their faith. In the fluid world of the odyssey years, their stories split and converge in fascinating ways on issues of religious practice, commitment, community and convictions -- all those things, in other words, that relate to their identities as Catholics.

Their stories reinforce the view expressed recently by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Citing the work of Princeton University scholar Robert Wuthnow, Brooks wrote that today’s children “graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself. Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, writing about recent encounters with Millennials still in college, noted, “I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.”

According to another recent D’Antonio study (coauthored with Vincent Bolduc), the Millennial generation mixes “personal autonomy with new-found concerns for the common good.” More than other generations, they are likely to rely on individual conscience when making moral decisions than on the church’s teaching authority. But the church’s social teaching, particularly its exhortation to help the poor, strongly resonates with 91 percent of Catholic Millennials.

Millennials are demonstrating their altruism through ever-increasing involvement in community service, but they are also integrating it into their shifting career choices.

Indeed, wonders Darrell Paulsen, a church professional well acquainted with Catholic Millennials, what will they find if and when they decide it’s time to engage more deeply with their church? Paulsen, who coordinates marriage preparation at the University of Notre Dame, hears frequent complaints from the young professional couples he directs. He knows that the Millennials are unlikely to hang around if they don’t find what they need, and parishes will be the losers.

“Lots of parishes put up walls to participation for young people,” he said. Among other problems, “they give them trouble for being away from the church, or for cohabitating.”

Yet, Paulsen insists, parishes can’t afford not to welcome these Catholics at a significant moment of “settling,” such as marriage, baptism of a child or the decision to put down roots. “People are out there,” he said. “They’re spiritually hungry, but they want a place where they feel nurtured, not just where they’re told they are wrong. If they think they’re going to be yelled at, or put to sleep or just asked for money, they’re not going.”

That, Paulsen suggests, makes for one of the few easy choices in a Millennial’s young life.

Labels: altruism, career, Catholic, church, community, Greg Ruehlmann, millenials

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Chinese government rethinks religion

Jan. 25, 2008, 5:56PM

Communist party now believes faith can restore social harmony

By Edward Cody
Washington Post

BEIJING — There was Hu Jintao, head of the Chinese Communist Party, warmly shaking hands at a party-sponsored New Year's tea party with one of the country's main Christian leaders. To make sure the message got through to China's 68 million party faithful, a large photograph of the moment was splashed across the front page of the official party newspaper, People's Daily.

Hu's display of holiday courtesy to Liu Bainian, general secretary of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, was one in a series of recent signals that China's rulers, despite the party's official atheism, are seeking to get along better with the increasing numbers of Chinese who find solace and inspiration in religion. The shift in tactics does not mean the Politburo has embraced religion, specialists cautioned, but it indicates a desire to incorporate believers into the party's quest for continued economic progress and more social harmony.

The move away from traditional Marxist attitudes evolved from Hu's campaign for what he calls "a harmonious socialist society." The concept, in effect an appeal for good behavior, was designed to replace the moral void left when the party long ago jettisoned historical Chinese values and, more recently, loosened the zipped-tight social strictures of communism under Mao Zedong. Religion, the party has decided, can also be useful in encouraging social harmony because it urges its followers to hew to a moral code.

Hu presided over a special Politburo study session last month on the expanding role of religion in China. Two of the party's religion specialists were called in to explain the phenomenon to China's 25 most powerful men, most of whom grew up with the Marxist idea that religion is a hostile force and, in China, foreign infiltration with ties to the colonial past.

In a speech to the group, Hu seemed to break with that tradition, suggesting the moral force of religion can be harnessed for the good of the party. "We must strive to closely unite religious figures and believers among the masses around the party and government," he said, according to the official account, "and struggle together with them to build an all-around moderately prosperous society while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism."

Liu, the Christian leader shown in the photo with Hu, noted that the president also for the first time included discussion of religion in the party's 17th National Congress in October. Religion should no longer be considered sabotage of the party's economic and social plans, Hu told fellow party members, but rather a positive force that can be enlisted to help put the plans into effect.

The number of religious believers in China has long been difficult to determine. Faced with the party's traditional hostility, many believers have kept their faith hidden. But a government-sponsored survey last year found the number may reach 300 million, nearly a quarter of the population.

Most of those professing belief said they identified with China's traditional religions, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. But those identifying themselves as Christians accounted for as many as 40 million, the survey found, most of them Protestants. Specialists have estimated the number of Catholics at 12 million, divided between those in Liu's government-sponsored Patriotic Catholic Association and those in informal churches who look on the pope as their leader.

Anthony Lam of the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong, who has studied the church in China for two decades, warned that the current warming is a tactic that could easily be reversed. "For me, it's a good thing, but it doesn't mean very much," he said.

Over the years, he added, the party's treatment of believers has varied, but its overall attitude is that religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, is a portal through which foreign ideas and loyalties can make their way into Chinese society.

In the same vein, Ren Yanli, a religion specialist at the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that the party's recent overtures were aimed at enlisting religious beliefs as a force for economic and social progress. Nowhere did the party acknowledge faith and religion as ideals to be pursued in their own right, he said.

Nonetheless, government controls over religious activity have loosened markedly in recent years. Political connotations, such as those attached to Buddhism in Tibet or Islam in the autonomous Xinjiang region of northwestern China, have become the major targets of police surveillance in most areas.

Despite the trend, China and the Vatican have been unable to renew diplomatic relations, with China holding firm to the power to name bishops. Hu himself led a special committee in 2005 to end the hostility; at that time, progress was so rapid that a bargain seemed within reach. Those hopes fell through, however, with the appointment of several bishops who did not have Vatican approval.

In recent months, the momentum toward friendly Vatican ties seems to have revived. Two bishops were ordained with papal approval last month, following the appointment of a Vatican-approved bishop for Beijing in September. Regular quiet contacts have been made between Vatican and Chinese diplomats.

But behind the scenes, Patriotic Catholic Association churches and local religious affairs bureaus have proved to be formidable obstacles, according to a knowledgeable religious source. Their positions — often including state salaries, apartments and prestige — would be endangered if the church fell under Rome's authority. Moreover, the source added, some local jurisdictions have been involved in land deals with compliant bishops in arrangements that might be disturbed by Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI displayed eagerness to mend the split soon after taking over the Vatican. But his zeal seems to have waned, Lam observed. Meanwhile, conservatives in the Chinese party leadership, backed by local bureaus, have prevented a final deal because they are hesitant to abandon the doctrine that the Vatican is a foreign power that should have no authority in China.

Only a strong Chinese leader willing to take a bold initiative could shake the situation loose, Lam predicted, and Hu has never been noted for that kind of leadership.

The handshake in the tea-party photo, he noted, was with a leader of the government-run patriotic church, not a Vatican-approved bishop.

Labels: Catholic, China, Christian, Edward Cody, Patriotic Catholic Association, religion, Vatican

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Sunday, December 16, 2007

Pentecostals in Latin America

A look at the religion's theological roots and how the faith took hold in the region.

By Sarah Miler Llana
from the December 17, 2007 edition

Modern Pentecostalism, whose name comes from the biblical term Pentecost commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, grew out of the Holiness movement at the turn of the 20th century in the US.

Pentecostals place strong emphasis on personal experience with the "Holy Spirit," such as speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophesying. In the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey in 2006, most Pentecostals said that they had experienced divine healings or received revelations from God.

"Renewalists," a term that includes those belonging to Pentecostal denominations and "charismatics," who have adopted the expressive worship services of Pentecostals but belong to Catholic or mainline Protestant churches, now make up an estimated one quarter of the world's Christians, according to the World Christian Database. That number was just 6 percent 30 years ago.

For decades, Pentecostalism remained on the margins of US society, even as missionaries poured into Latin America. Pentecostals now account for 13 percent of Latin Americans. When accounting for "charismatics," the number shoots up to 30 percent.

Scholars say there are many reasons why Pentecostalism has attracted so many adherents. Aggressive evangelism, led at first by US missionaries, has certainly played a role. So has urban anomie and economic crisis. But each country has its own set of factors too, from civil war to natural disasters.

A 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, for example, brought a current of US Christians to Central America, says Paul Freston, a leading expert on religion in Latin America. Today the country has the highest percentage of Protestants in Latin America.

Pentecostals across the region, most of whom considered themselves Catholics before, say they converted in order to tackle their problems, for a sense of community, or simply because Pentecostalism offered something that the rituals of the Catholic mass did not.

Pentecostals have been particularly skilled at reaching out to the region's poor, providing answers to the overwhelming problems their poverty provokes each day. The Catholic answer, in the 1960s, came in the form of "liberation theology," a Marxist-tinged approach to addressing the needs of the oppressed. It had enthusiastic supporters across Latin America, but soon got wrapped up in cold war politics. Religious scholars often quip: "Liberation theology opted for the poor, and the poor opted for Pentecostalism."

Labels: Catholic, charismatics, Holy Spirit, Latin America, Pentecostalism, Pew Forum, protestants, renewalists

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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Devil more popular than Darwin in America

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

More Americans believe in the existence of hell and the devil than Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to a nationwide poll.

Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of US residents polled said they believed in a literal hell and the devil, 60 per cent said they believed in the virgin birth.

Only 42 per cent of those surveyed, however, said they believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution, or “natural selection”. Some 39 per cent of respondents said they believed in creationism.

Broken down by religion, the survey found that only 16 per cent of born-again Christians (or evangelicals) compared to 43 per cent of Catholics and 30 per cent of Protestants believed in Darwin’s theory.

Meanwhile, 60 per cent of born-again Christians, but only 43 per cent of Catholics, believed in creationism.

Overall, the poll reflects the centrality of faith to American life, politics and culture, with 82 per cent saying they believed in God.

Three quarters agreed there is a heaven while 72 per cent believed Jesus is God or the Son of God and 79 per cent believed in miracles.

The question of faith is proving a key issue in campaigning for next year’s presidential election.

The poll, by market researchers Harris, involved 2,455 US adults from across the country selected to reflect the national population in terms of age, sex, race, education and household income.

It also found that significant minorities of Americas believe in ghosts (41 per cent), UFOs (35 per cent), witches (31 per cent), astrology (29 per cent) and reincarnation (21 per cent).

Born-again Christians were more likely to believe in witches (37 per cent) while Catholics were found more likely to believe in astrology and re-incarnation

Labels: America, astrology, Catherine Elsworth, Catholic, creationism, evangelicals, evolution, faith, ghosts, politics

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Ethical, scientific breakthroughs seen in new stem-cell studies

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Scientists, ethicists and church leaders hailed as a breakthrough two studies showing that human skin cells can be reprogrammed to work as effectively as embryonic stem cells, thus negating the need to destroy embryos in the name of science.

Separate studies from teams led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and Junying Yu and James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison were published online Nov. 20 by the journals Cell and Science, respectively.

By adding four genes to the skin cells, the scientists were able to create stem cells that genetically match the donor and have the ability to become any of the 220 types of cells in the human body.

Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, welcomed the news, expressing gratitude "for scientists who took up the challenge of finding morally acceptable ways to pursue stem-cell research, and for government leaders who have encouraged and funded such avenues."

The new technology "avoids the many ethical land mines associated with embryonic stem-cell research: It does not clone or destroy human embryos, does not harm or exploit women for their eggs, and does not blur the line between human beings and other species through desperate efforts to make human embryos using animal eggs," he added.

The White House also praised the breakthrough Nov. 20, saying that President George W. Bush's June 2007 executive order expanding stem-cell research using "ethically responsible techniques" was "intended to accelerate precisely the kind of research being reported today."

"The president believes medical problems can be solved without compromising either the high aims of science or the sanctity of human life," said press secretary Dana Perino. "We will continue to encourage scientists to expand the frontiers of stem-cell research and continue to advance the understanding of human biology in an ethically responsible way."

Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, said, "While it is still early days for this research, it is a very promising discovery which will help scientists to fight serious diseases without resorting to the deliberate destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells."

In Great Britain, the head of the pro-life group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said the new stem-cell studies "show that one can be both pro-life and pro-science."

Ian Wilmut, the Scottish scientist who created Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996, told the London Telegraph that he had decided in light of the new findings to abandon his efforts to clone human embryos and would instead concentrate on research involving the new reprogramming techniques.

Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, Scotland, chairman of the United Kingdom and Ireland Joint Bishops' Bioethics Committee, welcomed Wilmut's announcement, saying: "The Catholic Church has constantly supported the work of scientists who use adult stem cells, research which has produced much more promising results and avoids the ethical dilemma involved in creating and destroying human life."

The National Catholic Bioethics Center said Wilmut's change of heart "flowed largely from practical considerations" but that the scientist also had acknowledged that the new approach was "easier to accept socially."

However, Thomson and the International Society for Stem-Cell Research called on scientists to continue research involving the destruction of human embryos. More study is needed to ensure that the newly made cells "do not differ from embryonic stem cells in a clinically significant or unexpected way, so it is hardly time to discontinue embryonic stem-cell research," Thomson said.

"These findings do not obviate the need for research using human embryonic stem cells," said the society in a Nov. 20 statement. "Rather, the different avenues of human stem-cell research should be pursued side by side providing complementary information."

In light of that stand by some scientists, Mailee Smith, staff counsel for the Chicago-based Americans United for Life, said: "The need for states to pass legislation that bans all forms of human cloning remains."

Labels: Catholic, embryonic stem cells, ethics, human cloning, Nancy Frazier O'Brien, National Catholic Bioethics Center, science

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Monday, November 12, 2007

A Comeback for Confession

Thursday, Sep. 27, 2007 By TIM PADGETT

Increasingly, it seems the only thing U.S. Catholics confess these days is that they rarely if ever confess. In a 2005 survey by the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate at Georgetown University, 42% said they never go to confession. Only 14% said they go once a year, and just 2% said they go regularly. The fading away of one of Catholicism's best-known traditions has finally gotten alarming enough that bishops have begun turning to modern marketing tools to reverse it. "Confession isn't about rationalizing or explaining away the wrongs we do," says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who has used radio commercials and billboard ads to promote the sacrament in his archdiocese. "It's about having the courage to admit them and experience the healing forgiveness that's waiting."

Any revival effort has a long way to go. Confession has been in steady decline for decades. Reasons range from long-standing doubts about church teachings to the current obsession with public mea culpas that have largely supplanted the confessional booth. One oft mentioned cause is Vatican II, the 1960s church council whose reforms stressed what Pope John XXIII called "the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity." Since confession, with its accompanying penances, is all too often associated with the latter, many Catholics use Vatican II as a cue to scratch the sacrament from their to-do list. Some also cite Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which reaffirmed the church's ban on contraception. Because few U.S. Catholics consider birth control immoral, Humanae Vitae has led to a wider re-evaluation of what constitutes sin--and whether confession is really necessary.

The church's sexual-abuse scandal has also taken its toll. Catholics felt that the bishops--many of them accused of enabling pedophile priests--were arrogantly evading the same kind of penance they demand from their flocks. "The very teachers of the sacrament of confession seemed to be ignoring a constitutive part of that sacrament," says the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the Jesuit-run magazine America. "It made the confession crisis worse." Wuerl, who in fact was praised for taking a hard line on abusive priests, concedes that those are "significant issues." But he also believes that Catholics are tired enough of America's no-accountability culture to make the rite of owning up appealing again--as long as it involves, he adds, a "spirit of gentleness." A campaign Wuerl ran this past Lenten season--dubbed "The Light Is On for You"--made confessions available on Wednesday evenings as well as the traditional Saturday afternoons. Priests were instructed to create warm and well-lit atmospheres at their churches.

Some parishes reported the effort a bust, but many others got results. At St. Patrick's in Rockville, Md., the Rev. Adam Park took a book along the first evening, but instead of reading it, heard confessions for two hours straight. "I think folks rediscovered that getting rid of that weight in a confidential setting can be a freeing experience," he says. Mary Ellen Gwynn, a nurse in Upper Marlboro, Md., who often drove by one of the campaign billboards, agrees: "It reminded me that while telling mistakes to a friend can be cathartic, this seems to do something deeper to help me fix them."

Dioceses in Philadelphia, Phoenix and Toledo, Ohio, say they're planning similar Lenten campaigns for 2008--and some priests are even hearing confessions in venues likes shopping malls. Church watchers like Martin applaud all this as a sign that "the church, like Jesus, is capable of being creative about getting these things across to people." Others, like Gregory Baum, emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, call it a belated Hail Mary pass. "Traditional confession," he says, "just isn't part of Catholic spirituality anymore." Maybe, but for now the church is keeping the light on, just in case.

Labels: Catholic, Center for Applied Research, confession, Tim Padgett

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Pope lauds Christian presence in Saudi

Pope lauds Christian presence in Saudi
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Nov 6

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI lauded the contributions of Christians in Saudi Arabia — a kingdom that embraces a strict version of Islam, restricts worship by other faiths and bans Bibles and crucifixes — in the first meeting ever Tuesday between a pope and reigning Saudi king.

Benedict and the Vatican's No. 2 official raised their concerns during separate meetings with King Abdullah, the protector of Islam's holiest sites.

The Vatican counts 890,000 Catholics, mainly guest workers from the Philippines, among the estimated 1.5 million Christians in Saudi Arabia. Christians are barred from opening churches in the desert kingdom where Islam's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are located.

Benedict greeted the king warmly, grasping both his hands before heading into 30 minutes of private talks in his library.

At the end of the meeting, Abdullah presented Benedict with a traditional Middle Eastern gift — a golden sword studded with jewels — and a gold and silver statue of a palm tree and a man riding a camel. The pope admired the statue but merely touched the sword.

He gave Abdullah a 16th century print and a gold medal of his pontificate.

Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and the kingdom requires all Saudi citizens to be Muslims. Only Muslims can visit the cities of Mecca and Medina.

Under the authoritarian rule of the royal family, the kingdom enforces Sharia, or Islamic law. It follows a severe interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism that rejects the possibility of diplomatic relations with a Christian entity. This interpretation would prohibit a Vatican embassy in Saudi Arabia on the grounds it is equivalent to raising the cross inside Islam's holiest places.

The Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with 176 states and institutions, including many in the Islamic world. Before the king's meeting with the pope, a Saudi official said the Vatican has not asked to have a diplomatic mission in the kingdom or to have diplomatic relations.

It is forbidden to practice Christianity publicly inside Saudi Arabia, and it is illegal to bring symbols from religions other than Islam into the country. Bibles and crosses are confiscated at the border.

Some Christian worship services are held secretly, but the government has been known to crack down on them, or deport Filipino workers if they hold even private services.

The Vatican has said it wants to pursue a dialogue with moderate Muslims after the pope angered the Muslim world in 2006 with a speech linking Islam to violence.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the Vatican hoped the meeting with the Saudi king would produce a "sincere" dialogue on Christian worship in the country.

The Vatican said the talks were "warm" and allowed a wide discussion on the need for inter-religious and intercultural dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews "for the promotion of peace, justice and spiritual and moral values, especially in support of the family," a statement said.

Benedict has said he wants to reach out to all countries that still do not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Those countries include Saudi Arabia and China.

Abdullah had visited the Vatican twice before, as crown prince and deputy prime minister.

Labels: Catholic, Christian, diplomacy, Islam, King Abdullah, Pope Benedict, Saudi Arabia, Sharia, Vatican, Victor L. Simpson, Wahhabism

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Monday, July 23, 2007

Science and Reason Provide Good Answers To "How"

Science and reason provide good answers
By Sheri Glowinski Matamoros

I grew up in a Catholic family. Although I tried hard to be a good Catholic, I knew early on that Catholicism, despite its many beautiful rituals that still to this day influence me, wasn't what rang true for me.

I've explored many different "brands" of religion along the way. Although many parts of many religions appealed to me, I felt frustrated with feeling that I had confined myself to any one particular "whole" of a religious doctrine that didn't resonate completely with me. I could never understand how there could be so many different belief systems - most exclusively claiming to be the one true answer - and only one of those really be the correct "answer."

How could so many people worldwide who gently believe so deeply and honestly in their religion - be it Christianity, Buddhism, Islam - be wrong? If there really is one true answer, isn't it possible that there are many different, yet equal, paths to that answer?

These questions give sustenance to my own spiritual quest. I personally look to many sources to explore life's transcending mystery of which I am a part.

I believe that science and reason are appropriate conduits to answer the essential "hows" of life and it is exciting to me to explore these types of questions in a scientific, systematic manner.

I also feel that to have science without a sense of spirituality, or vice versa, is to have tunnel vision.

A system of "checks and balances" is needed to provide depth of vision. And so I also find truth in the rhythms of the natural world. In this realm, I feel the pulsing of life, a connection to everyone and everything on some level.

We all share the same atoms, after all, albeit in beautiful unique combinations. Here I find retreat and replenishment for my occasionally weary soul. Here I find soothing when I need reminding that death, in all its forms, is a natural part of the rhythm of life.

It is also here that I am constantly reminded that I am not separate, either from the earth upon which I depend or from my neighbor. Indeed I am responsible for every step that I take, whether that step be toward something productive or something harmful, to myself or to others.

What I do here on Earth matters, and I try to live my life with this as my guiding principle.

And so, in summary, this is what I've come to believe in my search for truth: There is one underlying source of life that makes itself known differently to different people and that ultimately, it's not so much in what (or who) a person believes, it's what that person does with her beliefs that really matters.

Labels: Catholic, reason, religion, science, Sheri Glowinski Matamoros, spirituality