Religion

A correspondent envisions a

“conservative ecumenism that would bring about a revival of Christendom, with Catholic, Orthodox, and even theologically conservative Lutherans and other Protestants finding some way to join as the reunified Body of Christ.”

I think my correspondent’s remark may have been prompted by a comment I made that

“it is important for

What is the Christian attitude toward race, ethnicity and peoplehood?

Such things do not determine human worth any more than other aspects of social position do. Nonetheless, it seems important to me to recover a Christian conception of legitimate particularism. Such a conception would necessarily include some degree of ethnic identity and loyalty and therefore … More ...

Rock ‘n roll overthrew communism, says Hungary’s ambassador to the United States. According to Andras Simonyi, it was the Beatles, Cream, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix—not the Bible, Bach, or S�ndor Pet�fi—that gave Hungarian baby boomers the resolve to bring down the communist state.

The fall of communism, like the defeat of Nazi Germany, was … More ...

So how can Christendom be restored? Liberals view the question as one of force—will people be forced to accept some particular religious dogma, or will they be free to follow their own consciences? In fact, of course, it’s not fundamentally a question of force, but of how the world is understood. Is equal satisfaction of … More ...

Can Christendom be restored? When something started disappearing in the Middle Ages, and has been disappearing more and more every year since then, it looks like the tendency of things is rather against it. Still, there are points that should be kept in mind:

• The definitive public rejection of Christendom was actually quite recent, mid-to-late

What orthodox Catholicism looks like from the standpoint of liberalism: The Crusaders. The author (a staffer at the Boston Globe) is a clever writer and doesn’t adhere to the sterner demands of honesty, but the piece is substantive enough to be useful.

Some interesting points:

• The author seems to have no idea of

The NYC marathon put the kibosh on the Latin Mass I usually go to in Brooklyn, so on All Saints Day and Sunday I went to Mass a couple of places in Manhattan. It’s remarkable how different it can seem in different presentations (High or Low Mass, music, behavior of the congregation, physical setting and … More ...

An Italian court has banned crucifixes in schools. As the judge points out, the crucifixes show an intent to portray Catholicism as the center of everything, even though the Vatican has accepted since 1984 that Catholicism is no longer the religion of the state. Since that’s so, the decision makes sense. The Church has … More ...

Here are some extremely interesting observations by a Lutheran observer at Vatican II. From what the man says it appears that the bishops got to Rome without any particularly pressing concerns of their own to deal with, they were asked to pass on grand issues for which they weren’t prepared, the experts argued rings around … More ...