From The New York Times comes an inspiring glimpse at one prominent New York religious leader who decided it was time to step away from the pulpit and work to help the poor: Leafy, affluent Park Slope, Brooklyn, embodies the challenge facing modern American Jewry: Though many Jews live there, few are observant. So it was no small feat when Rabbi Andy Bachman took the helm ofCongregation Beth Elohim in the neighborhood eight years ago and began attracting a vibrant congregation... Read more
Details: He has built a reputation for his down-to-earth style and has no patience for pomp. But even so, Pope Francis surprised hundreds of ordinary commuters when he took public transport to celebrate a Mass in Korea where he is on a five day visit. The pope scrapped his plans to take a helicopter from Seoul to his first public Mass instead taking a local train to Daejeon, where he held a service at a football stadium in the city.... Read more
Details: On Sunday morning Pope Francis baptized 62-year-old Lee Ho-Jin – the father of one of the victims from the Sewol Ferry tragedy earlier this year – who took on the baptismal name “Francis.” Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi reported that the baptism was celebrated in 20 minutes without Mass. It was officiated by a Korean priest, who is acting as the Pope’s translator, with Pope Francis conducting the immersion and anointing. According to the nunciature in Korea where the... Read more
Forget dancing to “Thriller” at a wedding. This instantly blows that idea out of the water. Details: Another reason Irish weddings are the best? There’s always the off chance some “Riverdance” pros might be on the guest list! That’s exactly what happened last week when pro-dancers Michael O’Meara and Nikki Mac Loone tied the knot. Because many of their guests were Irish dancers as well, it’s only fitting that during the wedding reception, they did what they do best: an Irish... Read more
From John Allen: Christianity is a missionary religion, and heading into Pope Francis’s trip to South Korea one big-ticket question mark was whether he could fuel Catholic growth on a continent home to 60 percent of the world’s population. Whether the church gets a “Francis bump” remains to be seen, but in a speech to Asian bishops Sunday Francis suggested that numerical gains are less important than fostering friendships. “Christians don’t come as conquerors,” the pope said. In a line... Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Even as the Muslim population in the U.S. multiplies, the number of religious leaders, known as imams, lags behind.Many Muslim immigrants have steered their children away from religious leadership roles and toward careers in medicine, engineering, law and business, said Jihad Turk, an imam and president of Bayan Claremont, the Islamic graduate school at Claremont School of Theology in Southern California. Many American mosques are run on shoestring budgets by volunteers and can’t always guarantee... Read more
Details: Pope Francis has generally avoided hot-button “culture war” issues like abortion, arguing that the church’s doctrine on the sanctity of life is well-known and that he’d rather emphasize other aspects of church teaching. But he made a strong, albeit silent anti-abortion statement Saturday during his visit to South Korea, stopping to pray at a monument for aborted babies in a community dedicated to caring for people with the sort of severe genetic disabilities that are often used to justify... Read more
Of all the stories that circulated last week about Robin Williams, there was one that I found especially moving. It was from Brian Lord, who for many years was the head of a prominent speakers bureau. A few years back, he was negotiating to book Robin Williams for an event, so he was finalizing the contract. What struck him was one detail in the “rider” to the contract —the addendum that stipulates backstage requirements, like food and working conditions. Brian Lord... Read more
I don’t know anyone who’s getting rich working for the Church, but the good people at CARA have some interesting insight into paid staff at parishes: According to CARA’s recent National Survey of Catholic Parishes (NSCP), the average parish in the United States has nearly six paid ministry staff members (mean = 5.8, median = 4; note there are additional paid non-ministry staff such as bookkeepers, receptionists, facilities maintenance, etc.). Six percent of U.S. parishes indicate they have no paid ministry staff (i.e.,... Read more
“So often we today can find our faith challenged by the world, and in countless ways we are asked to compromise our faith, to water down the radical demands of the Gospel and to conform to the spirit of this age. Yet the martyrs call out to us to put Christ first and to see all else in this world in relation to him and his eternal Kingdom. They challenge us to think about what, if anything, we ourselves would... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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