Tag: Christianity

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Bishop Donald J. Hying

‘Christianity is for losers!’

Ted Turner, the famous media mogul, once memorably said that Christianity is for losers.

In his opinion, religious faith is a crutch for those who are too weak to stand on their own two feet and simply acknowledge that we are alone in the universe.

What he hurls at us as an insult, we should actually wear as an epithet of honor. Christianity is for losers!

Our faith is custom-designed by God for those who are humble enough to acknowledge that they are sinners in need of a savior, those who do not have it all put together, those who need Christ’s help.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Theologians and catechists: wake up!

First in a two-part series on a Pew Study about why young people are leaving the active practice of Christianity.

After perusing the latest Pew Study on why young people are leaving the active practice of Christianity, I confess that I just sighed in exasperation. I don’t doubt for a moment the sincerity of those who responded to the survey, but the reasons they offer for abandoning Christianity are just so uncompelling.

That is to say, any theologian, apologist, or evangelist worth his salt should be able easily to answer them. And this led me (hence the sigh) to the conclusion that “we have met the enemy and it is us.”

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Bishop Robert Barron

Vikings is religiously interesting show

At the prompting of some of my younger colleagues at Word on Fire, I spent time during a recent vacation getting caught up on the History Channel show Vikings.

My friends had told me that Vikings, curiously, is the most religious show on television. They were right.

Don’t get me wrong. There is enough violence, pillaging, plundering, sword-fighting, and political intrigue to satisfy the most macho viewers; but Vikings is also drenched with religion — and for that I applaud Michael Hirst, its sole writer and director.

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George Weigel

Easter is not a question mark

Excavating my desk recently, I found the program notes from a Tallis Scholars concert my wife and I had attended a few months ago.

The Tallis Scholars are a marvelous a capella ensemble, but most of their music that night was rather too minimalist for my tastes. In any event, the author of the program notes described Arvo Pärt’s I am the true vine and its “qualities of stasis and timelessness,” as reminiscent of what “former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has described as ‘silently waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark’.”

Changes in Harvard’s crest

Which put me in mind of an old joke that used to circulate in the editorial offices of First Things. Harvard University’s crest, it seems, used to read Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae [Truth for Christ and the Church].

Christ and the Church were jettisoned over a hundred years ago; the crest now reads, simply, Veritas.

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Kevin Wondrash, Catholic Herald Staff

Lay movement celebrates anniversary at home and around the world

MADISON — On Saturday, March 7, Pope Francis met with more than 80,000 members of the Communion and Liberation lay movement who filled St. Peter’s Square in Rome and the boulevard leading to it.

It marked the 60th anniversary of the movement, which has the purpose of forming its members in Christianity in order to make them coworkers in the Church’s mission in all areas of society.

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Tony Magliano

Revisiting the just war theory

Is there such a thing as a just war? Can the massive death and destruction of armed conflict ever be morally justified by followers of the Prince of Peace?

For the first disciples of Christ the answer was a resounding “No!”

Following Jesus’ command

During the first 300 years of Christianity, it was unthinkable for followers of the nonviolent Jesus to kill a human being.

They took most seriously Jesus’ command: “But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other as well. . . . Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

Typical of early Church teaching on nonviolence, St. Clement of Alexandria said to wealthy Christians, “Contrary to the rest of men, enlist for yourself an army without weapons, without war, without bloodshed, without wrath, without stain — pious old men, orphans dear to God, widows armed with gentleness, men adorned with love.”

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Fr. Robert Barron

Hercules, N.T. Wright, and the modern meta-narrative

On the first day of my recent vacation, I perused N.T. Wright’s latest book, a collection of essays on contemporary issues in light of the Bible.

A point that Wright makes in a number of the articles is that modernity and Christianity propose fundamentally different meta-narratives in regard to the meaning and trajectory of history.

The emergence of modernity

Modernity — at least in its Western form– is predicated on the assumption that history came to its climax in the mid- to late-18th century, with the definitive victory of empirical science in the epistemological arena and liberal democracy in the political arena.

Basic to this telling of the story is that modernity emerged victorious after a long twilight struggle against the forces of obscurantism and tyranny. The matrix for these negative states of affairs was none other than the Christian religion, which enforced a blind dogmatism on the one hand and an oppressive political arrangement on the other.

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Fr. Robert Barron

The joy of evangelizing

An emergency tends to focus one’s mind and energies and to clarify one’s priorities.

If a dangerous fire breaks out in a home, the inhabitants thereof will lay aside their quarrels, postpone their other activities, and together get to the task of putting out the flames. If a nation is invaded by an aggressor, politicians will quickly forget their internal squabbling and put off their legislative programs in order to work together for the shared purpose of repulsing the enemy.

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