David Van Biema’s essay on the decline of liberal Catholicsm in the United States was among the more perceptive articles written in the wake of Pope Benedict’s recent visit to the United States. The Church that American Catholics have struggled to create since Vatican II bears striking similarities to a certain mainline Protestant denomination.
Stephen Pinker on The President’s Council on Bioethics: The general feeling is that, even if a new technology would improve life and health and decrease suffering and waste, it might have to be rejected, or even outlawed, if it affronted human dignity. The problem is that “dignity” is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it.
There are a variety of perspectives about war that emerge from the Christian tradition, and preachers and church leaders would do well to recognize that pacifists, veterans, active duty officers, as well as victims of war sit in our pews. But still, couldn’t we have the courage to examine the tradition of just war and the various forms of pacifism and do this in a way that could raise the tenor of discussion?
Of all the persons of the Trinity, I suppose the Holy Spirit is the hardest to define. Most of us can at least begin to describe the other two: God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, who makes the sun shine and the rain fall. God the Son, who was human like us: our savior, teacher, helper, and friend.
The atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.
– David Brooks
Hagee’s letter explains some of the harsh words he has used when describing the Catholic Church. “I better understand that reference to the Roman Catholic Church as the ‘apostate church’ and the ‘great whore’ described in the book of Revelation” — both terms Hagee has employed — “is a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary,” he wrote.
What struck Saul on the road to Damascus strikes many even now. Others experience dramas less vivid but enjoy transformations no less complete. Truth unfolds. And if a winter Sunday in London inspired a process that led to a May morning in Richmond, then something happened before — and something happened since.
We long to see the consecration of women bishops in the Church of England, and believe it is right both in principle and in timing. But because we love the Church, we are not willing to assent to a further fracture in our communion and threat to our unity. If it is to be episcopacy for women qualified by legal arrangements to “protect” others from our oversight, then our answer, respectfully, is thank you, but no.
In preparation for the second of the three phases of litigation between the parties in the property dispute between the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and the CANA churches, the parties have filed supplemental briefs. The trial on the constitutionality of the 57-9 stature is scheduled for May 28. Whatever the outcome of that trial, a third trial is scheduled for October to decide the ownership.
Did you know the word “conspire” means to breathe together? Take a breath. Now blow it out again. There! You have just launched a conspiracy. You can hear the word “spirit” in there too—to conspire—to be filled with the same spirit, to be enlivened by the same wind.