✣ Highlights from the week online
If God is dead in Britain, explain thisIs God dead in Britain? To listen the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, you might think so: he lamented earlier this year that “the culture becoming anti-Christian, whether it is on matters of sexual morality, or the care for people at the beginning or end of life. It is easy to paint a very gloomy picture.”
However, that’s not the only perspective, said Katie Edwards and Meredith J C Warren at theconversation.com.
“While the demographics of church attendance have shifted over the past few decades, as indeed they have since Christianity first emerged as a religion in its own right, interest in religion itself has increased sharply.
“For instance, religion is the fastest-growing A-level subject in all of the humanities, social sciences, and arts, increasing a whopping 110 per cent since 2003.”
Young people’s participation, Edwards and Warren wrote, is perhaps best described by the sociologist Grace Davie’s phrase “believing without belonging”.
Saying the rosary amid an earthquake
At onepeterfive.com, Norcia resident Hilary White described what happened when the earthquake struck the town. Mini-quakes are common, White wrote. But on Sunday morning, “The shaking got stronger and the noise louder, and we knew this was a Big One.” Everyone rushed outside.
“The street leading down to the Palazzo Seneca where I usually work was piled with rubble from the 14th-century church of San Francesco, cars that had been parked next to it were crushed under huge chunks of masonry. I stopped and burst into tears.”
When White and her friends got to the piazza, the local Benedictines “rushed past us towards the damaged buildings and shouted, ‘Pregare! Pregare!’
“We nodded and knelt down, and a few minutes later Fr Basil came and started leading us in the rosary, as more people appeared, often in pajamas and wrapped in blankets.”
It was when the nuns appeared that White realised the town would be completely evacuated. “The Poor Clares never leave their cloister. You never see them. Until yesterday.”
The Pope who carries his own briefcase
At Reuters, Philip Pullella explained that Pope Francis often bypasses the Vatican bureaucracy. “He carries his own black briefcase, keeps his own agenda, and makes many of his own calls.” Indeed, “it is virtually impossible to determine who, if anyone, is really close to him.”
He also likes to send “signals that he alone is calling the shots,” said Pullella. When Benedict and John Paul gave press conferences on airplanes, “they were always flanked by the secretary of state or the deputy secretary of state”, as symbols of “a centuries-old bureaucracy.” Under Francis, “those prelates now stay out of sight in the front section of the plane.”
✣ Meanwhile…
When the Catholics of Denver went on a Eucharistic procession outside an abortion clinic headquarters, they were intending to witness to Christ. But they didn’t know their witness would be preserved by, of all things, Google Maps. Until last week, the website’s featured image for “Planned Parenthood – Denver Stapleton Health Center” showed the Blessed Sacrament procession. After someone noticed, Google changed the picture to a more nondescript image.
✣ Swedish doll-makers have an eye for a business opportunity. As Pope Francis visited the country last week, several commemorative toys appeared on the shelves. In one Lund shop display, the Pope appears alongside Lutheran Archbishop Antje Jackelén, whom he embraced in the cathedral. She tweeted a photo of the display, adding: “‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism’ – joyful ecumenism!”
✣ The former First Lady of California, Maria Shriver, has put in a good word for the Jesuits. Shriver, the estranged wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, told readers of her blog that Ignatian discernment had been “illuminating and helpful in times of turbulent change or indecision in my own life”. The Jesuits’ style of discernment might help US voters feeling uncertain or agitated as election day approaches, Shriver said.
✣ The week in quotations
Through dialogue and shared witness we are no longer strangers
Joint declaration of Pope Francis and Lutheran World Federation
Precarious subsistence conditions
Bishop Jean-Paul Jaeger of Arras describes the Calais migrant camp, which is now being evacuated
Official statement
It’s meditative and brutal simultaneously
Andrew Garfield, star of Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Jesuit epic Silence
Fandango.com interview
Father, I hope you are praying for this country!
A stranger approaches Bishop Andrew Cozzens, of Minnesota
Archdiocesan newspaper
