Jim Morris came of age in a West Texas town, which means the locals didn’t need to use street addresses to tell where they lived. All he had to say was that his house was one block from Wood Creek Baptist Church and a vacant lot away from the Camp Bowie Sports Complex. That would cover the essentials, out where nobody talks much about the separation of church and sports. “The first thing you need to understand about West Texas... Read more
As the college student knelt at the altar rail, another parishioner pointed accusingly and loudly said: “Don’t give him communion. He does not believe. He is mocking us all.” Stunned, Father George Carey asked the student for his response. He looked up and said: “I am confirmed. I am here because I want to follow.” The priest served him communion. This scene occurred at St. Nicholas Parish in Durham, England, years before Carey began his decade-plus service as the 103rd... Read more
Rome would not issue a bishop a red hat and send him to New York City unless he had demonstrated at least some ability to stay cool in a media firestorm. So reporters in Rome must have been baffled last week when Cardinal Edward Egan uttered this twisted response when asked about his views on gays in the priesthood. “I would like to say this,” the cardinal told the New York Times. “The most important thing is to clean up... Read more
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It’s hard to imagine “Romeo and Juliet” with a happy ending. But what if William Shakespeare had been preparing his manuscript for sale in stores linked to what used to be called the Christian Booksellers Association? What changes would he have been pressured to make? “The lovers would meet, just as before, and the parents would still disapprove. Probably one set would not be Christians at all, providing a convenient subplot of salvation,” said novelist Reed... Read more
Call them the Evangelical Alpha Males. There’s Chuck Colson and James Dobson, James Kennedy and Robert Schuller, and Paul Crouch and Pat Robertson. There are many more. They are 60 years old or much older, but they still command the spotlight. “During this decade the American Church will experience a massive turnover in … leadership,” note researchers George Barna and Mark Hatch, in their book, “Boiling Point.” If history is a guide, “the impact of many of the personality-driven ministries... Read more
In their visions, key supporters of the U.S. Prayer Center kept seeing fields of bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas. But that was not all they reporting seeing. “In the past three weeks, six intercessors, who do not know each other, have reported to us written descriptions of dreams that they have had in which President George W. Bush appeared to have been assassinated,” said an email from the Houston-based ministry (www.usprayercenter.org) about this time last year. There were more... Read more
The doctor’s verdict was blunt and he didn’t want to quibble about details. The patient’s heart and blood were in terrible shape. He was working too hard and the stress was about to kill him. The doctor said he should quit his job — immediately. But the 50-year-old patient was a Roman Catholic priest. “I thought I had, maybe, a year,” said Father Joseph Girzone. “I remember thinking: What do I want to do before I die? What is it... Read more
In the Anglo-Catholic tradition, the last rites of Holy Week offer a procession of images both glorious and sobering — a drama painted in sacrament, scripture, incense, chants and candlelight, fading into the darkness of a tomb. It is a time for soul searching. That will certainly be the case this year for Father David L. Moyer of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, a sanctuary for Anglican traditionalists on the Philadelphia mainline. He chose to go on... Read more
Germany has the world’s fastest-growing Jewish population. One of Judaism’s hottest schools of spiritual renewal has its roots in Argentina. Jews in Atlanta set out to raise $25 million and ended up with $50 million, including nearly $5 million poured into the project by Coca-Cola — a corporate pillar of the old Protestant South. These are snapshots of modern Judaism. Get used to it. “Obviously, when people think of Judaism they think of Israel and that’s as it should be,”... Read more
Few Catholic boys grow up to be men of the cloth without drawing inspiration from their parish priests and receiving the blessing of their mothers. Both halves of that equation have to work or the church suffers. “When you talk about how young men enter the priesthood, you are talking about the future of the church,” said Father Donald B. Cozzens, former vicar for clergy in the Diocese of Cleveland and then rector of a graduate seminary in Ohio. “At... Read more
Terry Mattingly
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