Worship Times

Is there life after death? Probably not the way most people think of it, according to Bishop Shelby Spong. “I think the time has come for Christians to say that there is no record-keeping deity above the sky who, like Santa Claus, is ‘making a list and checking it twice* so that this divine king can give the appropriate reward or punishment to his subjects at the final judgment,” Spong writes in his column on Beliefnet .com. Citing the first letter of John, Spong says, “I have touched eternity whenever I have been empowered by love to live fully and to escape my limits. Yearning for a life after death can be envisioned in this way — and the here and now can be a doorway into the eternal.” Spong is the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark.

Call for collaboration

“There is a deepening awareness that even as we are faced with a shortage of priestly and religious vocations, we are being invited to a deeper understanding of the nature of the Christian vocation, and a fuller appreciation of ministry, both ordained and nonordained,” writes Cardinal Roger Mahony together with the priests of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “There was and there remains a strong conviction that the Holy Spirit is leading us toward new horizons.”

The clergymen recently issued a pastoral letter, As I Have Done for You, to provide a planning tool for the future of ministry in the archdiocese. The document calls for more than “mere adjustment and small shifts in practice …. What is called for is a major reorientation in our thinking about ministry as well as in our ministerial practice.”

The leaders call for four things: a recognition that lay ministry is rooted in the priesthood of the baptized and is not a stopgap measure; greater collaboration and inclusivity in ministry in the church; a clear understanding of the nature of lay ecclesial ministry on the part of the baptized and the priests; a common foundational theology as the basis for the formation of seminarians, deacons, religious and lay persons for ministry as well as for the development of more collaborative skills on the part of the ordained. You can read the document on the archdiocesan website: www.la-archdiocese.org. Click on “Pastoral Letter on Ministry.”

Los Angeles is just in time with their collaboration plan, too. A collaborative, and largely lay, parish staff team led by a priest is rapidly becoming the norm in U.S. Catholic parishes, according to the new National Catholic Parish Survey. But the survey also found that pastors seem to like the change — 91 percent say they are satisfied with their overall parish ministry. The overall number of priests serving parishes is down by 28 percent and the number of other ministers is up 54 percent over the last 15 years. Meanwhile, over the same period, the average parish has grown 23 percent. 

The Rev. Eugene Hemrick, the survey's associate director, says, “This study has turned up things we didn't know before. And it is the first to document that the change in parish staffing that everyone talks about happening in the future is already here. The parish as we once knew it has turned a new page in its history.”

You can learn more about the survey at http://members .aol.com/cathparishsurvey /welcome.htm.

Catechetical developments

Three major developments have clarified the nature and tasks of catechetical ministry, according to Berard L. Marthaler: 1) the promulgation of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults in 1972 recalled the intricate ties between liturgy and catechesis; 2) Pope John Paul II, building on the exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi of his predecessor Pope Paul VI, made catechesis an important element in the new evangelization; and 3) most notably, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was published in 1992. Marthaler, author of the recently published commentary Sowing Seeds: Notes and Comments on the General Directory for Catechesis (USCC, 2000), goes on to note that evangelization is a dominant theme in the General Directory for Catechesis and in the church's current catechetical ministry. “The church's vocation,” he writes, “is to proclaim the good news of salvation, reconcile sinners with God, and perpetuate the memorial of his death and resurrection in the sacred mysteries …. Evangelization is not just one of the Church's many ministries, but its principal ministry.” Marthaler is retired from his post as Warren-Blanding Professor of Religion at The Catholic University of America.
Dating the shroud

The Shroud of Turin could be in for a new round of date-testing, according to a May 22 Reuters report. “We know it has to be science, and not faith, that has the last word on this mysterious image,” Archbishop Severino Poletto told a news conference at the Vatican.

Shroud watchers will remember that the cloth bearing the image of a man with long hair and wounds consistent with Gospel descriptions of Jesus was tested 12 years ago and was said to have dated from between 1260 and 1390. Some scientists have criticized the method used in the testing, however, and Archbishop Poletto is calling for another attempt.

We believe

If you believe in miracles, you're not alone. According a recent Newsweek poll, 90 percent of Christians have faith in divine intervention. However, only 46 percent of non-Christians believe. The kinds of miracles folks pray for and believe in include cures by God or by saints (77 percent of Americans) and rescue from accidents and natural disasters (72 percent of those polled). The poll data appears in the May 1 issue of Newsweek and is also available on the web at www.newsweek.com. The information is taken from Newsweek religion editor Kenneth L. Woodward's new book, The Book of Miracles (Simon & Schuster).

No more hunger

“Neither technology alone nor religion alone is powerful enough to bring social justice to human societies,” said Freeman J. Dyson, winner of this year's Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, “but technology and religion working together might do the job.” According to a May 20 report by Bill Broadway in the Washington Times, Dyson believes such a partnership can end hunger, injustice and violence. Dyson, 76, said he thought the coming “green” revolution in agriculture and biotechnology would surpass the “gray” revolution of computers, automobiles and other machinery. Dyson is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. The British native has written 11 books on such topics as the origins of the universe, the history of weaponry and how the internet can decentralize the world*s economy away from cities.
ML

What do YOU Think?
Send an e-mail to ML Editor
or post an entry on the ML Current Issue Discussion Board. (All submissions become the property of RPI and may be edited for length.)