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Part two of a two-part series.
In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), displaying his penchant for finding the memorable image, Pope Francis excoriates Christians who have turned “into querulous and disillusioned pessimists, ‘sourpusses,'” and whose lives “seem like Lent without Easter.”
Such people might be smart and they might even be morally upright, but they will never be successful evangelists.
Anthony Doerr’s All […]
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Part one of a two-part series.
The whole Christian world has watched with fascination as Pope Francis, over the past several months, has reached out to evangelicals.
Who can forget the mesmerizing iPhone video, filmed by the pope’s (late) friend Bishop Tony Palmer, in which the Bishop of Rome communicated, with father-like compassion, to a national gathering of American evangelical leaders?
His smile, his tone of voice, and the simple, direct words that he chose constituted a bridge between Catholics and evangelicals. What I found particularly moving was the remarkable reaction of the evangelical audience after they had taken in the video: a real prayer in the Spirit.
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Editor’s note: Because of its length, this column by Bishop Robert Barron will be published in a two-part series.
One of the most impressive literary figures of the 20th century was the Irish writer Iris Murdoch. You may have heard of her surprising and thoughtful novels such as A Severed Head and The Good Apprentice; or perhaps you are conversant with her more abstract philosophical texts such as The Sovereignty of Good and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.
She reached her greatest notoriety, posthumously, in the work of her husband John Bayley, who penned a moving memoir of his wife’s slow and emotionally wrenching descent into Alzheimer’s disease. To hear the story of one of the brightest women of her time gradually losing her mind is, to say the least, unnerving. But due to Bayley’s artful telling, the experience becomes, almost despite itself, uplifting as well.
