Worship Times

Last spring, America magazine published its first-ever media issue (May 8, 1999), and associate editor James Martin confessed right on the inside front cover that he doesn’t even have e-mail. He doesn't have e-mail because he doesn't have a computer. Turns out he can't type because he used to have a computer, and he used it so much he developed tendinitis. ML shudders at the thought of having to turn out a magazine using only the Pilot Razor Point pen that Martin uses. But, as he says, it's Y2K compliant and is completely safe from the Melissa virus.

Don't read the issue just for the light-hearted editorial by Martin, however. Paul Soukup raises some interesting and probing questions about how the openness and lack of control on the internet introduces a new dynamic into the church and into theology. He also makes the point that this impact is not only a result of the interaction between those who use the internet but also a result of what does not happen because of those who do not use the internet.

Robert Kinast also writes about the internet in an article titled “Making Faith Sense of Communication Technology.” The goal of his article is to outline the work involved in making faith sense of the accumulation of communication technology experiences. He does a good job of pointing out the paradoxes caused by the burgeoning development of interactive media. He is careful to point out that there may be a lot of things that make us uncomfortable with the new media, but we shouldn’t overlook the benefits and possibilities it offers for making faith sense.

The web page for America is www.americamagazine.org.

More Catholics

Here’s a pop quiz. Is the number of Catholics in the United States increasing or decreasing? If you said decreasing, you’re wrong, but you’re not alone. Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw says that, “like most other Catholics, I had assumed that our numbers are going down” (Church, [Summer 1999], 5). He also said that is perhaps the number one complaint he gets from people who fret that the church is in decline.

But the actual numbers tell a different story. According to the recently released 1999 Official Catholic Directory, there are now more than 62 million U.S. Catholics. That’s up from 61,563,769 in 1998.

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