Year: 2007

The truth about the Gospel of Judas

Last year the National Geographic announced a new second century manuscript, Gospel of Judas Iscariot, that reportedly claimed that Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. In yesterday’s New York Times, April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, and the author of The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says, has an op-ed that argues that the translation of the Gospel was wrong

Read More »

Spe Salvi: a new Papal encyclical

On Friday, Pope Benedict XVI released his second encyclical, Spe Salvi, or “Saved in Hope.” The bibical reference is to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:24, “For in hope we were saved.” John Allen offers an analysis in the National Catholic Reporter.

Read More »

Beginning to shake

There is perhaps nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up. Where life is firm we need to sense its firmness; and where it is unstable and uncertain and has no basis, no foundation, we need to know this too and endure it.

Read More »

Growing in faith

Manya Brachear of The Chicago Tribune has written a story that should be read by everyone who thinks about church growth, whether in numerical or

Read More »

Every word is true?

Mark Silva of The Baltimore Sun writes: For a presidential contest in which religion – and indeed the religious faith of at least one candidate – will play a certain role in the choices which many voters make, two questions loom large here: Is every word in the Bible true, and “what would Jesus do’’ about capital punishment.

Read More »

The Year in God

2007 may be recorded as a pivotal year for religion and politics — relatively quiet, unremarkable at first glance, but nonetheless significant as a harbinger of things to come. “There are a lot of discrete things, but if you put them all together, you get the sense that change is in the air,” said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Read More »

The “Compass” and the Catholic League

The Catholic League is calling for a boycott of the film The Golden Compass, based on the first book in Phillip Pullman’s brilliant “His Dark Materials” trilogy, and Mark Mordford of the San Francisco Chronicle thinks he knows why.

Read More »

The limits of our knowledge

A tad over a century ago, the great British scientist Lord Kelvin made some very hasty prophecies. In the 1890’s, Kelvin said variously that “radio has no future” and “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” In his most famous line, he told fellow scientists in 1900 that there remain only “a couple of small clouds” obscuring our understanding of the physical universe.

Read More »
Archives
Categories