Take the religion quiz

Now you can test your general religious knowledge against those who took the Pew Forum's religion quiz. That's the one mentioned in yesterday's post, the one where atheists scored best over all. Yours truly scored 100, but no pressure. It's a quick quiz. Give it a shot.

From the Pew Forum's site:

How much do you know about religion?

And how do you compare with the average American? Here's your chance to find out.

Take our short, 15-question quiz, and see how you do in comparison with 3,412 randomly sampled adults who were asked these and other questions in the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. This national poll was conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life from May 19 through June 6, 2010, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish.

When you finish the quiz, you will be able to compare your knowledge of religion with participants in the national telephone poll. You can see how you compare with the overall population as well as with people of various religious traditions, people who attend worship services frequently or less often, men and women, and college graduates as well as those who did not attend college.

Click HERE to take the quiz.

Atheists ace religion test. Catholics, not so much

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Just yesterday, as I was searching for Catholic background information on some off-the-beaten-path teachings, I came across a website run by an atheist which was, quite frankly, better than a lot of the Catholic information I'd been finding up until that point. I found it disturbing, although not surprising. Now, a new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life confirms exactly what I as thinking as I did my research yesterday: Atheists often know more about the Catholic faith than many Catholics do.

According to the new study (h/t Deacon's Bench), Atheists, who are typically raised believing in God, tend to spend a lot of time reflecting and researching their beliefs before they decide to abandon them. But, really, should they know more about the Eucharist than those who receive Communion week after week?

Some shocking survey results as reported by the Los Angeles Times:

If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.

Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.

Atheists and agnostics -- those who believe there is no God or who aren't sure -- were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge -- so close as to be statistically tied.

The good news? Eight in 10 people knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Seven in 10 knew that, according to the Bible, Moses led the exodus from Egypt and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. So I guess that's something.

According to the L.A. Times story:

"The Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister from Leawood, Kan., and the author of "When Christians Get it Wrong," said the survey's results may reflect a reluctance by many people to dig deeply into their own beliefs and especially into those of others.

"I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths. … That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith," he said.

Read the full story HERE. For the Pew survey, click HERE.

A much-needed response to the CNN Report

If you watched any of the CNN Report, "What the Pope Knew," then you know that a clear-headed and truthful response is in order. Of course, don't expect to see that on CNN. Thankfully, OSV's publisher Greg Erlandson has a great post on this topic over at our other blog, Pope Benedict XVI and the Abuse Crisis:

By Greg Erlandson

The CNN Report, “What the Pope Knew,” was as bad as the sneak previews suggested. It was a messy patchwork of ominous music, endless photos of a solemn Pope Benedict, one-sided commentary and truly sad interviews with victims who recounted shameful incidents of abuse and then were coaxed to link them to Pope Benedict.

If mega-lawyer Jeffrey Anderson should have gotten co-authorship rights for his role in The New York Times exposes of last March (as Ken Woodward opined), then he should have been listed as a producer on this show. His documents, his clients and his agenda dominated: And that agenda is simply to lay the groundwork for a legal case against the Vatican.

The CNN special report, reported with particular unctuousness by Gary Tuchman, stitched together several reports of priest abusers to infer that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was somehow guilty of obstruction of justice. At each turn in the story, CNN avoided shedding real light on the incidents, but instead used generalizations and innuendo to suggest that Ratzinger was insensitive to the plight of the victims. For editorial commentary, the report relied heavily on independent journalist David Gibson. Unfortunately, even though Gibson is first quoted as saying that Cardinal Ratzinger is neither hero nor villain, in the rest of the show he seems to tilt rather decisively to the latter. Continue reading...

18-year-old Chiara Badano to be beatified today

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Chiara “Luce” Badano, a member of the Focolare Movement who died of bone cancer in 1990 at the age of 18, will be beatified at the shrine of Divine Love in Rome at a ceremony presided over by Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes. Chiara's recognized miracle was the healing of a little boy dying of meningitis last year.

Thousands of Focolare members are expected to gather in Paul VI Hall to celebrate the first beatification of someone from the movement. You can join them and watch the beatification live at 10 a.m. ET by clicking HERE.

In an article by Father John Larson, MIC, on the Divine Mercy website, he writes of Chiara as a typical teenager -- enjoying tennis and dancing and arguing with her parents about curfew -- until a sharp pain in her shoulder turned out to be bone cancer.

From Father Larson's article:

"She spent some time alone in her room and essentially abandoned herself to divine providence. She wrote "The illness arrived just at the right moment because I was going in the wrong direction" and saw it as improving her relationship with God. As the painful treatments were applied, she offered all her pain up without hesitation. She would say, "It's for you, Jesus; if You want it, I want it too." This was said, no doubt, in the sense of being a victim soul and sharing in the sufferings of Christ. She focused on Jesus Forsaken — a way of looking at Christ that is promoted in the Focolare movement. She focused on consoling Jesus.

"Her doctor was an atheist who was very critical of the Church. However, he was impacted by her witness. He said that because of her he found consistency in the Christian message. "Everything about Christianity makes sense to me."

"Her illness lasted three years, but she remained cheerful through it all. She wrote the following to Chiara Lubich, foundress of the Focolare movement, in July of 1990: "Medicine has laid down its arms. Since we stopped the treatment, the pain in my back has increased. But it's my Spouse who is coming to see me. I repeat with you, 'If You want it, I want it too.'"

"As her suffering increased, she refused morphine saying "It reduces my lucidity, and there's only one thing I can do now: to offer my suffering to Jesus because I want to share as much as possible in His suffering on the cross."

"Her last words were, "Be happy, because I am."

Founded in 1943, the Focolare Movement is active in 182 countries and promotes the idea of unity and universal brotherhood, not only among Catholics but people of all faiths. Chiara Lubich, founder of the movement, died in 2008 at the age of 88. For more information, visit the Focolare Movement's website by clicking HERE.

An execution is set. Where do we stand?

By Mary DeTurris Poust

UPDATED: Teresa Lewis was executed by lethal injection at 9:13 p.m. ET tonight at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia.

Teresa Lewis, 41, a convicted killer who some say has an IQ that classifies her as "borderline mentally retarded,"will become the first woman to be executed by the state of Virginia in almost a century if the lethal injection that is scheduled for 9 p.m. tonight ET goes ahead as planned.

Lewis was sentenced to death for planning the 2002 killings of her husband and stepson. The two men who carried out the killings were not sentenced to death but to life without parole.

For Catholics, the Lewis execution presents a tough but clear challenge: We are called to oppose it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church spells that out quite clearly. Of course, the Gospel teachings of Jesus spelled it out first -- and without question. I'm not saying this is an easy teaching to swallow, but do we -- when we say that we believe in the sanctity of life from conception to natural death -- mean it?

When I wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Catholic Catechism, this is how I described the sometimes-difficult-to-follow teaching on the death penalty:

"The death penalty is not completely out of bounds, according to Church teaching. However, its use is severely limited. The death penalty is to be used when it is the only way to defend people from a particular aggressor. If "nonlethal means" are available and sufficient to protect people's safety, then authorities should avoid use of the death penalty in keeping with the 'dignity of the human person.' (CCC 2267)

"Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life) said that in the modern age, instances when the state is unable to protect the public through nonlethal means 'are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.'"

So the question for us as Catholics today is this: Is it possible for the government to protect us from Teresa Lewis through "nonlethal means?" If the answer to that question is yes, then, as difficult as it may be to defend a killer, our Gospel call is to do just that. Life is life, no matter where it falls on the spectrum.

Thanks to Danielle Bean and the Deacon's Bench for posting on this issue earlier this week. Your thoughtful comments, of course, are welcome here.

U.S. media missed what was important about Pope Benedict's UK trip

Deacon Greg Kandra, of the Deacon's Bench blog, did an informal test and finds that Americans — including Catholics in the pews — got shortchanged in media coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to Great Britain last weekend.

Most people, he believes, came away thinking that the pope went for the main purpose of meeting sex abuse victims, and that Brits by and large weren't happy about him being there.

At least that's the impression he got after talking to his daily-Mass-going father-in-law out of state.

I started to wonder what sort of coverage the trip had received. After I hung up the phone, I searched through several newspaper websites. I clicked on the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe. Nothing, nothing, nothing. None of them mentioned on their home page the pope's just-completed trip.
 

When I got to work on Monday, I searched CNN Newsource, which provides newsfeeds to my show, "Currents," as well as to countless other news programs around the country. I found a grand total of one item, running about a minute long, slugged "Anti-Pope Demonstrations."
 

That was it.

Deacon Greg resists the temptation to accuse the media of anti-Catholic bias, instead seeing the "under-reporting, or un-reporting, or mis-reporting" of religion stories as a result of newsroom budget cuts. That beat is one of the first to go.

Call me old school, but there's something wrong here.
 

If my father-in-law, a fairly well-informed guy in the pews, didn't know what he didn't know, I have to wonder: how many others in the pews are also being left in the dark?

Read the entire post here.

More reaction to the papal visit

By Mary DeTurris Poust

New York Times' columnist Ross Douthat has an excellent op-ed piece in today's paper on the papal visit to the UK. We've been saying a lot of what he's saying all along -- about the Church's willingness to go against the culture and its ability to withstand the test of time -- but coming from a columnist at a paper not known for its love of the Church, it seems that much more powerful.

Here's a highlight:

"The Vatican of Benedict and John Paul II, by contrast, has striven to maintain continuity with Christian tradition, even at the risk of seeming reactionary and out of touch. This has cost the church its once-privileged place in the Western establishment, and earned it the scorn of fashionable opinion. But continuity, not swift and perhaps foolhardy adaptation, has always been the papacy’s purpose, and the secret of its lasting strength.

"Catholics do not — should not, must not — look to the Vatican to supply the church with all its saints and visionaries and prophets. (Indeed, many of Catholicism’s greatest figures have had fraught relationships with the Holy See — including John Henry Newman, the man beatified on Sunday.) They look to Rome instead to safeguard what those visionaries achieved, to guard Catholicism’s inheritance, and provide a symbol of unity for a far-flung, billion-member church. They look to Rome for the long view: for the wisdom that not all change is for the better, and that some revolutions are better outlasted than accepted.

"On Saturday, Benedict addressed Britain’s politicians in the very hall where Sir Thomas More, the great Catholic martyr, was condemned to death for opposing the reformation of Henry VIII. It was an extraordinary moment, and a reminder of the resilience of Catholicism, across a gulf of years that’s consumed thrones, nations, entire civilizations.

"This, above all, is why the crowds cheered for the pope, in Edinburgh and London and Birmingham — because almost five centuries after the Catholic faith was apparently strangled in Britain, their church is still alive."

Read the entire column HERE. And, if you missed our earlier exclusive post from a Catholic journalist in the UK, be sure to click HERE and read Paul Burnell's insider's view of the pope's visit.

Chasm between pro-life and social justice

By Russell Shaw

Early this year, as the battle over health care was nearing the end, something deeply disturbing happened. The Catholic bishops’ conference, true to its word, said it couldn’t support the bill because of its abortion-related provisions; but the Catholic Health Association, which up to then had stood by the bishops, broke ranks and backed the plan.

This incident dramatized the Church’s diminished ability to present a united front on a major political issue. But it did something more, spotlighting a split between pro-life people and social justice people in the Church that has grown wider and deeper in the Obama years.

In theory it shouldn’t be like that. As Pope Benedict XVI and many others point out, the values at stake under both headings, pro-life and justice, converge in the human person. Integral human development—the fullest possible flourishing of people in all dimensions of their personhood—is the goal that links both.

But real life, alas, is not so simple, and the clash between the bishops’ conference and Catholic health care interests was a painful reminder of that. Often enough, instead of common ground, what we get instead of working together for shared goals are conflict and name-calling.
Here’s a small case in point. Not long ago I read the text of a homily praising a priest known for helping the poor and promoting social justice causes. I know the priest in question, and the praise was well deserved.

Unfortunately, the homilist couldn’t leave it at that. For no visible reason, he began by lambasting a prominent Catholic layman for saying the bishops should “stop talking” about justice issues. Surprised—since I know this man, too—I took the trouble to consult the source cited by the homilist, an article in The New York Times Magazine. According to the writer, what the man had really said was that the bishops should “stop talking so much” about these things.

Of course you can disagree with that as well, and disagreement could conceivably serve as a starting point for a useful conversation. But it should be obvious that there’s a world of difference between saying bishops should stop talking about something and saying they shouldn’t talk about it so much. Besides misrepresenting a man he thinks he disagrees with, the homilist was killing off the possibility of conversation, not encouraging it.

This was a small incident yet symptomatic. Pro-life conservatives err the same way by using exaggerated rhetoric and simple misstatements of fact to slam social justice people. This quarrel has been going on a long time, though as noted the Obama agenda has helped bring it to a head.

No matter by whom pursued, tactics of misrepresentation and unjust reproach are not only unfair but destructive. They have no rightful place in intra-Church dialogue and debate. This is more than a matter of good manners. At the deepest level, the dichotomizing of morality that the tactics take for granted is not allowable. Concern for social justice and concern for human life necessarily come together in defending the human rights of flesh and blood human beings. This is what an authentic consistent ethic of life is all about.

By no means does that rule out operational specialization. Some people need to concentrate on human life issues, others on issues of social justice. No individual and no group can be fully competent and effective on both. But people in both camps should recognize and acknowledge that issues of both kinds are serious and those who work on them deserve respect.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor.

An insider's view of the papal trip to Britain

I met Paul Burnell, a UK-based Catholic journalist, at "The Church Up Close" program in Rome earlier this month. Paul checked out of the newsroom to attend the beatification Mass for Cardinal John Henry Newman as a regular member of the faithful this weekend. I asked him if he would be willing to share his experience with OSV Daily Take. Thank you, Paul, for giving us this exclusive insider's view:

By Paul Burnell

Pope Benedict came to Britain to beatify John Henry Cardinal Newman – one shy intellectual Catholic genius honouring another. But in a certain sense the pope’s visit resembled that of the forgotten hero in the Newman story – Blessed Dominic Barberi, the Italian Passionist who received Newman into the Church.

Pronouncing the Church’s latest Blessed at the massive outdoor Mass in Birmingham on September 19, the Pope revealed that his feast day would be October 9, the day when Blessed Dominic arrived soaked to the skin and freezing at Littlemore near Oxford after traveling on top of a stage coach to Oxford from the North of England. Blessed Dominic believed in the conversion of England, a vision that had inspired his order’s founder, St Paul of the Cross. Little did he know how profound – yet unsung -- his role would be in English Catholicism’s Second Spring.

Like Dominic I arrived freezing and soaked to the skin for the outdoor Mass in a park close to Newman’s grave and the hills where he sought R and R. We were delivered by our coaches – the police decreed no pilgrim could travel on their own – to a post industrial wasteland, the site of one of the UK’s biggest ever car plant.

Now we marched carrying our food blanket and chairs for what seemed like an eternity to the park but nobody complained. The love, joy and unity was there for all to see, and when we arrived just after dawn with three hours to go until Mass it was like being bathed in grace. There was peace despite the cold, fatigue and rain. Then the Pope arrived and literally the rain stopped, the sun shone and the wind dropped. Even the media thought this was providential timing.

The beauty and power of Holy Mass combined with the sense of history and joy at this momentous raising of John Henry Newman, the world's most famous convert from Anglicanism to the RC faith. This pilgrim tried valiantly to sing Newman’s hymns during Mass -- "Firmly I believe...Praise to the holiest in the height..." – but those pesky tears wouldn’t stop. I sobbed tears of joy. I was not alone.

Four days earlier there had been trepidation talks of protests, terror attacks and pretty virulent prose and comments in the media and on the airwaves – even snide jokes about abuser priests in the office. It reminded me of Blessed Dominic’s first years in the UK, like Benedict, a foreigner who suffered all kinds of calumny. He was even pelted with mud and rocks as he walked through the streets. Mercifully for the Pope the only missiles were verbal but the hatred was the same.

When Dominic died, however, the streets of Protestant England were lined by thousands wanting to honour this saintly priest, who is buried near Liverpool in a shrine which also includes Mother Mary Prout, founder of the Passionist Sisters, and Father Ignatius Spencer, a Passionist priest and ancestor of Princess Diana.

By the time the Pope left, there was a similar change in public mood this humble and holy genius of a pontiff had even won over the country’s notorious tabloids. “Benes from Heaven and the People’s Pontiff,” said one headline. Prime Minister Cameron, who was comforted by the pope over the recent death of his father, said the pope had made the people of Britain “sit up and think.”

The protesters could only muster 10,000; more than 200,000 lined the streets of London to cheer the pope – unheard of on a Saturday night – for a massively successful youth rally in London’s Hyde Park where he received a pop star welcome.

The Pope said so many pungent and telling remarks on the journey, but for me the tone was set in Scotland when he arrived in Edinburgh. “As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society,” he said.

Or as he told young people at the papal Mass in Glasgow: “There are many temptations placed before you every day -- drugs, money, sex, pornography, alcohol -- which the world tells you will bring you happiness, yet these things are destructive and divisive. There is only one thing which lasts: the love of Jesus Christ personally for each one of you. Search for him, know... him and love him, and he will set you free from slavery.”

Back in Birmingham, as we rejoiced at the beatification, I felt a strong sense of the Lord’s hand in reclaiming my native land. Somehow in a mysterious way a lot of threads were woven together on this papal visit. The first great evangelization of England came when Pope Gregory sent
Benedictine monks led by St Augustine of Canterbury. The next wave came in the 19th Century, described by Newman as the "Second Spring." Many of the key figures ministered from Birmingham, most notably Newman, and elsewhere the Benedictines were reestablishing parish life in small mission churches, after the rupture caused by the Reformation.

Is it too much to hope that the combination of a pope inspired by St. Benedict, beatifying Newman in Birmingham, and suffering like Blessed Dominic might be heralding a new flourishing of the faith? Blessed John Henry Newman and Blessed Dominic Barberi pray for us.

Pope beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman

On the final day of his four-day trip to England and Scotland, Pope Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman at an open-air Mass in Birmingham.

From the pope's homily:

Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, or “Heart speaks unto heart,” gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons, “a habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every emergency – prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before; gradually … he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv, 230-231). Today’s Gospel tells us that no one can be the servant of two masters (cf. Lk 16:13), and Blessed John Henry’s teaching on prayer explains how the faithful Christian is definitively taken into the service of the one true Master, who alone has a claim to our unconditional devotion (cf. Mt 23:10). Newman helps us to understand what this means for our daily lives: he tells us that our divine Master has assigned a specific task to each one of us, a “definite service,” committed uniquely to every single person: “I have my mission,” he wrote, “I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place … if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling” (Meditations and Devotions, 301-2).

Watch the moment of beatification by clicking HERE for the BBC video clip. Click HERE for a story from Vatican Radio on the event.

A new perspective on the Mass

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Having come of age in the era just post Vatican II, I never experienced the "old" Mass. Although my parish did have a Communion rail in its chapel, where I received Communion often, my general experience of the Mass growing up was of the groovy variety, with lots of Kumbayas and felt banners. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So when I got to Rome, I was in for a little spiritual culture shock. Because the churches are so old, the altars are built into the wall under the tabernacle. What does that mean? It means the priest has no choice but to celebrate Mass with his back to the congregation. If you had asked me before my recent pilgrimage to Rome how I would feel about this change of positions, I probably would have expected it to be a little off-putting. Turns out it was anything but.

At the risk of setting myself up for a wave of comments, I have to say that I LOVED attending Mass this way. Why? Because I felt it was a great equalizer. Rather than seeing the priest in a position of power, facing me, almost as if performing for the congregation, I saw him as praying with me. He was facing God as I was facing God. We were in it together, looking heavenward as one rather than looking at each other.

I was fortunate enough to attend multiple Masses in Rome, but the ones with the most impact and where the priest-facing-away situation felt the most powerful, were in St. Peter's Basilica and in Chiesa Nouva at a Mass celebrated in front of the body of St. Philip Neri. Both had an intimate feel -- the Mass at St. Peter's was in a side chapel to Our Lady of Perpetual Help -- and both made me feel as though the priest was one with the congregation, even when the congregation was just me and an OSV colleague (as in St. Peter's).

So that's my new perspective on an old tradition. Let's hear how you feel about this in the comment section?

Follow the pope's UK visit live via webcast

Click the link below for live coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's four-day visit to England and Scotland live via webcast 24/7:

http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/webcast

Another miracle for saint-to-be Newman?

CNS is reporting that a "severely deformed baby was born in a perfectly normal condition after the child's mother prayed to Cardinal John Henry Newman for a miracle." Cardinal Newman will be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on September 19, the last day of the pope's four-day trip to England and Scotland.

From the CNS story:

Andrea Ambrosi, the Vatican lawyer in charge of Cardinal Newman's cause for canonization, has revealed in a BBC program to be broadcast Sept. 18 that he hopes the inexplicable healing may be the miracle needed to canonize Cardinal Newman as Britain's next saint.

..."I am about to leave for Mexico City precisely because that could be the miracle for his canonization," Ambrosi said in the documentary -- "Newman: Saint or Sinner?" -- excerpts of which were released by the BBC Sept. 9.

"We are in a very preliminary phase," he added. "I cannot say anything yet, but this shows how the cardinal answers these prayers."

Apparently the pregnant woman was told her unborn baby was severely deformed and that nothing could be done to help the baby's condition. But the mother, a devout Catholic, prayed to Cardinal Newman and the baby was born completely healthy, an outcome that doctors could not explain.

Read the full story HERE.

The Anchoress and Rome's Eternal Shrug

A stunningly beautiful post by a fellow colleague from my recent Rome trip. Elizabeth Scalia (aka The Anchoress), a blogger over at First Things, captures something I've been thinking about since I got home -- the Roman shrug and my need to incorporate it into my frantic life here in New York.

From Elizabeth's post:

"It takes a traveler mere minutes in Rome to understand why she is called the “Eternal City.” Speeding from the airport, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica suddenly looms from beyond the Vatican walls and time seems to turn in on itself. Insta-communications and all the glories of the present age become as passing fancies—the grass that withers and fades. To watch the sun rise over domes and spires and to consider the mostly-anonymous human beings who labored to produce them, is to feel keenly one’s own smallness and mortality, and to make peace with both.

"Rome’s recklessness is utterly at odds with the precision of her architecture. Drivers chatter amiably, turning to gesture at their passengers even as they are merging into traffic while sending a text-message and answering a dispatch. Pedestrians, cars, buses, and trucks seem engaged in an endless game of “Frogger,” one where drivers affect a grudging respect for those who dare to step off a curb beyond the crosswalk, and pedestrians tempt fate, and it is all of a piece; in an eternity-minded city, everything boils down to a shrug. Danger, like a day, is a state of mind..."

Continue reading HERE.

Who needs Catholic schools?

We all do, according to a must-read piece by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York in America magazine.

From the archbishop's America article:

"It is time to recover our nerve and promote our schools for the 21st century. The current hospice mentality—watching our schools slowly die—must give way to a renewed confidence. American Catholic schools need to be unabashedly proud of their proven gritty ability to transmit faith and values to all their students, particularly welcoming the immigrant and the disadvantaged, whose hope for success lies in an education that makes them responsible citizens. This is especially true for the Catholic Hispanics in the country, whose children account for a mere 4 percent of the Catholic school population. Failure to include the expanding Hispanic population in Catholic education would be a huge generational mistake.

"To re-grow the Catholic school system, today’s efforts need to be rooted in the long-term financial security that comes from institutional commitment through endowments, foundations and stable funding sources and also from every parish supporting a Catholic school, even if it is not “their own.” Catholic education is a communal, ecclesial duty, not just for parents of schoolchildren or for parishes blessed to have their own school. Surely American Catholics have sufficient wealth and imagination to accomplish this.

"It is both heartening and challenging to remember that Catholic churches and schools were originally built on the small donations of immigrants who sacrificed nickels, dimes and dollars to make their children Catholics who are both well educated and fully American. Have we Catholics lost our nerve, the dare and dream that drove our ancestors in the faith, who built a Catholic school system that is the envy of the world?

"We cannot succumb to the petty turf wars that pit Catholic schools against religious education programs and other parish ministries. Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that the church is all about both/and, not either/or. Strong Catholic schools strengthen all other programs of evangelization, service, catechesis and sanctification. The entire church suffers when Catholic schools disappear."

Read the full piece HERE.

Chance encounters turn Rome into home

By Mary DeTurris Poust

When I arrived in Rome, I expected to be awed by the sheer spectacle of the scenery. How can you walk though the Roman Forum or stand in the Colosseum or pray in St. Peter’s Basilica and not be bowled over by the magnitude of where you are and all that came before you? And then there is the beauty around every corner – the churches that house the Caravaggios and Berninis and Michelangelos as if they are just ordinary works of art in any neighborhood church. Rome really is a feast for the senses, even before you get to the fabulous food.

But more than the art and the food and the buildings, Rome will be seared into my memory because of the smaller moments of grace that seemed to come one after another as I made my way around the Eternal City. God really is in the details, especially when those details take the form of human encounters that make a place or a meal or a church come alive with a real spirit of Christian brotherhood and sisterhood.

During my recent 10-day visit to Rome, it was the chance encounters that made the overly scheduled trip the success that it was. Like the night two colleagues and I -- after a busy day at the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museum -- set out in search of a specific restaurant. We walked for more than a half hour only to find it closed. Then we went in the opposite direction to find yet another restaurant we’d heard about. We couldn’t find that one at all, and so we “settled” for La Pilotta, a small restaurant with a view of the dome of St. Peter’s. There at a long table in the center of the restaurant was a group of men, who were talking and laughing and eating. A good sign. Locals, we thought. We sat down and ordered pasta cooked to perfection and a house wine better than anything I’ve had at home. As we ate, the men at the next table began to sing at the top of their lungs, first in Italian and then in Polish.

They were seminarians from Belarus, there with their bishop and pastor. They were so filled with joy, and they sang extra loud once they heard our applause. We were sad to see them go as we shook hands and tried to communicate in parsed together Italian and English.

The next morning, I stood in Piazza San Pietro with thousands of other pilgrims waiting to get into the papal audience. I was lucky enough to get a special ticket, and ended up in the front row, next to a Jesuit priest and his sister. Since I was hours early, I got out my Magnificat and began to read the Scriptures for that day. A few minutes later the priest asked if I’d like to join him in Morning Prayer. And so we prayed amid the joyful noise all around us, and it was another grace-filled moment.

A little bit later, as Pope Benedict welcomed different groups in attendance, the camera panned to a group of young men. When the pope said their name, they stood up and started singing a familiar song. I looked at the jumbo video screen and saw the seminarians from the night before, our seminarians. Alone in a throng of thousands, in a city where I couldn’t speak the language, I felt at home and in close connection to those seminarians, making me realize that what I had thought was aimless wandering the previous night was really the road I needed to take to meet those particular people in that particular restaurant.

Yes, I saw the pope and reveled in the joy of the thousands of pilgrims who cheered and sang and prayed, but what will stand out most from that morning will be that time of shared prayer, that moment when strangers become friends, and that instant when a song resonating across the Pope Paul VI Hall made me feel as though I was part of a very large family. Which, of course, I am. A family of Catholics who cannot be separated by language or continents.

To read my full Rome journal, with photos from my trip and more follow-up posts in days to come, visit Not Strictly Spiritual.

Offering advice to Obama on being perceived Muslim

By Russell Shaw

The news that a poll had found nearly one American in five convinced that Barack Obama is a Muslim prompted a predictable response: No, he isn’t — he’s a Christian. He just doesn’t like to talk about it much. According to Joshua DuBois, White House advisor on faith-related matters, “the president’s spiritual life … is something that is important to him not for communications reasons or political reasons.”

Fair enough. Different presidents have handled this matter in very different ways. Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, for instance, wore their faith on their sleeves. If Obama would rather not do that, I not only respect his decision but, for reasons of personal temperament and taste, feel sympathetic to it. No matter how sincere public displays of religiosity may be, when a president advertises his faith the line between advertising and exploiting is easily crossed.

But the Obama-as-Muslim flap points to a different sort of problem. Too much presidential reticence regarding his beliefs can only exacerbate confusions that may already exist. We need to strike a reasonable balance here — a golden mean between too much and too little public display of presidential faith. Here are three principles offered as a modest contribution to that.

First, it’s essential to bear in mind that our constitutional tradition bars any religious test for office. Adherence or non-adherence to some form of faith shouldn’t automatically exclude anyone from election to anything. This is one of the essential pillars of a pluralistic nation grounded in religious toleration.

Second, presidents not only may but should share their views on fundamental questions of human dignity and rights. Doing that comes with the job and should be required of anyone who aspires to the office. If the views are religiously based, that should not only be expected but applauded.

Third, as already noted, a president is entitled to do as he wishes when it comes to public displays of his personal faith. All the same, though, every chief executive needs to take seriously the teaching function of the office he occupies, and from that perspective occasional public reminders that a president is a person of faith who tries to shape his conduct in its light are not just acceptable but highly desirable.

By coincidence, the attention currently being paid these matters coincides with the 50th anniversary of an event that did as much as anything in modern times to befog understanding of the issues at stake. I refer to John F. Kennedy’s famous talk to the Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, at the height of his presidential campaign.

At the time Kennedy was facing an upsurge of anti-Catholic bigotry that threatened his candidacy. Houston was his response. And he answered the bigots by largely caving in, delivering strongly-worded assurances that his faith as a Catholic would have no influence on his performance as president. This was a huge step toward the privatization of religion — its exclusion from anything more than a ceremonial role in American public life.

Kennedy’s words in Houston helped him win in 1960, and the election of the first Catholic president was a historic event. But thanks in large part to what Kennedy said that day, we are still paying a high price in terms of muddled thinking and conflict regarding the relationship between religion and the presidency. As far as I can see — and leaving aside personal likes and dislikes — Barack Obama’s buttoned-down approach probably doesn’t hurt very much, but in the end the nation needs and deserves something better than that.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor.

Call for Tolerance

By Mary DeTurris Poust

An interfaith group of New York City religious leaders, including Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, have issued a plea for tolerance toward Muslims in the wake of the "ground zero mosque" controversy. As a publicity hungry Florida minister prepares to follow through on his promise to burn copies of the Koran on September 11 (a move condemned today HERE by the Catholic League), the New York leaders took a far different approach as that fateful anniversary nears:

"As religious people, Muslims, Jews and Christians know that at the heart of each of our faiths is the promotion of peace and understanding among all God’s children. Consequently, there can be no place for religious bias of any kind – including anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity, or anti-Islam -- in any of our communities," they wrote.

Read the full statement HERE.

Catching Missionaries of Charity in action

By Mary DeTurris Poust

As I was walking down the street toward Campo di'Fiori in Rome yesterday morning, I happened to see the two Missionaries of Charity in the photo above walking toward me. I watched as they stopped next to a homeless man, greeted him like he was their dearest friend, and started taking food from their bag. It was an awesome sight in a city of endless sights, to see Mother Teresa's legacy at work here on the streets of Rome.

My pilgrimage is only two days old but has already been filled with so many blessings. If you want to keep up with my Rome journal, visit my personal blog, Not Strictly Spiritual.

Pilgrimage prayers promised, requested

By Mary DeTurris Poust

I leave tomorrow for Rome, flying out of New York City at about the same time Hurricane Earl is expected to arrive. I just want all of our OSV Daily Take readers to know that I will pray for you when I am at St. Peter's. If you have any special intentions, please leave them in the comment section or connect with me through Facebook by clicking HERE or Twitter by clicking HERE. I'll be checking and remembering prayer requests throughout my ten-day pilgrimage.

If you'd like to follow my Rome journal, head over to my personal blog at Not Strictly Spiritual.

And, if I could ask a small favor: Will you say a quick prayer for my safe travel? Grazie.

Can we forgive and forget in the digital age?

By Mary DeTurris Poust

We've all read the horror stories about people who've uploaded Facebook photos or blog posts that come back to haunt them when it's time for a job interview or political campaign. But what does that have to do with faith and forgiveness? Find out in my latest OSV story, which is up online with open access for all readers. I'll get you started here:

Is 'forgive and forget' possible in the digital age?

It’s a good thing Facebook wasn’t around when St. Augustine and St. Francis were young and carefree.

Known for their wayward youthful tendencies, these two might never have reached sainthood had they been “tagged” in an online photo album chronicling their hedonistic escapades (in the case of Augustine) or lavish feasts and bouts of drinking (in the case of Francis).

When Augustine and Francis turned their lives over to God, they were able to wipe the slate clean, rebuild their lives and reputations from the ground up. But, had they been alive today, we might be looking at a very different outcome.

Imagine Francis trying to start up his ministry to the poor and focus his life on prayer while the naysayers searched the Internet for proof that he couldn’t possibly change so dramatically. Or Augustine writing his “Confessions,” only to have throngs of angry online commenters parading out every mistake he’d every made and wagging their virtual fingers at him. Continue reading...