doctrine

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Life in troubled times: Conservative Catholic archbishop faces conservative Lutherans

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Life in troubled times: Conservative Catholic archbishop faces conservative Lutherans

Serious fasting is hard, even for a Catholic archbishop, especially when the aroma of spaghetti sauce is wafting through a church during an Italian community dinner.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone learned that lesson during California's bitter battles over the meaning of "marriage," "family" and other common terms that had become controversial. But he had promised to join in 100 days of prayer, and 40 days of fasting, as part of an ecumenical coalition's efforts to defend centuries of teachings on sexuality.

It was evangelical Protestants who proposed the fast, even though traditional Catholics have practiced that discipline for centuries.

"They meant serious fasting — like not eating, or eating very little, just one meal a day. So, not just giving up dessert, you know?", said Cordileone, during this summer's "Issues, Etc." conference at Concordia University in Chicago, sponsored by Lutheran Public Radio. (This independent online network also produces my GetReligion.org podcast.)

The inside joke about Catholics "giving up dessert" hit home, even though he was speaking to Missouri Synod Lutherans.

There was a time when Lutherans would not have invited a Catholic archbishop to this kind of event, said Cordileone. There was a time when it was rare for Catholics to cooperate with evangelicals and other believers seeking common ground on moral and social issues.

"To tell you the truth, I actually long for the good old days when we used to have the luxury to fight with each other over doctrinal issues," said Cordileone, drawing laughter. "But right now, the ship is going down. … The crew cannot afford to stand on the bridge and discuss the best kind of navigation equipment to use — when the ship is going down."

The "ship," he stressed, is not the church — "It's our civilization."

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2023: A 'Barbie' Odyssey does raise (wink, wink) moral, cultural and theological issues

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2023: A 'Barbie' Odyssey does raise (wink, wink) moral, cultural and theological issues

Hollywood worships big movie franchises, so fans can expect "Barbie" sequels.

One plot proposal quickly emerged from an unlikely source -- Sister Mary Joseph Calore of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in St. Cresson, Pennsylvania.

"'Barbie becomes a nun' would be a great sequel," she wrote, on the X platform. Her post contained this pitch to Warner Bros. executives: "Dissatisfied by endless parties and user friends, an eating disorder, spending addictions with clothes and shoes, and cohabitating with the shallow & unemployed playboy Ken, Barbie's sportscar has been parked more and more at an adoration chapel. She is seriously giving thought to draining the pool, putting her condo on the market, cutting her hair and donning the religious habit."

That would be a twist, after a cinematic manifesto arguing that life as a real woman is painful and complicated, but it's better than being an iconic plastic doll.

"This movie should have been silly and fun, but it ended up being preachy and earnest," said Barbara Nicolosi Harrington, a former Catholic nun who became a screenwriter and Hollywood script doctor. "I mean, how far can you go with a story about Barbie?"

Writer-director Greta Gerwig's previous work has been impressive, stressed Harrington, who teaches at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. With "Little Women," Gerwig showed the ability to offer a fresh take on a familiar story. Now, "Barbie" will draw intense scrutiny, since she will direct at least one movie in the upcoming Netflix take on "The Chronicles of Narnia" novels by the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

"Barbie" contains ambitious attempts to mix serious, even if tongue in cheek, social commentary with pop-culture mythology -- such as a shot-for-shot homage to Stanley Kubrick's legendary dawn-of-consciousness scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

The big "Barbie" question, noted Other Feminisms writer Leah Libresco Sargeant, is stated in a soundtrack ballad -- "What Was I Made For?"

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Sparkle on: 'I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child ...'

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Sparkle on: 'I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child ...'

While wrestling with heresies in the Roman world, 2nd-century Christians began combining crucial doctrines into creeds to help converts prepare for baptism.

Soon, the Apostles' Creed emerged as a cornerstone of Western Christianity, with short, ringing phrases that millions recite to this day.

This is not the stuff of viral videos: "I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting."

However, the Edina Community Lutheran Church in Minneapolis created a stir recently by posting part of a Pride Month service that featured a radically modernized take on the faith passed down through the ages — the Sparkle Creed.

"I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling-child of God. I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity," affirmed the congregation, which -- in the video -- appears to consist primarily of aging Baby Boomers.

"I believe in the church of everyday saints as numerous, creative and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder. I believe in the call to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief."

Online commentary noted that this text was not created by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a mainline Protestant flock that now ordains LGBTQ pastors living in committed relationships.

The Sparkle Creed was circulated in 2021 by the Rev. Rachel Small-Stokes of Immanuel United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky. A "Shower of Stoles" website biography notes that she was raised United Methodist, served as a missionary in that denomination and trained for the ministry. However, she switched to the United Church of Christ -- which began ordaining gay ministers in 1972 -- before being ordained in 2009 and marrying her lesbian partner in 2012.

On Facebook, she explained that this creed began with a computer glitch.

"I was voice-to-texting 'the Apostle's creed' to a colleague, and it translated as "The Sparkle Creed," wrote Small-Stokes. "I decided that's exactly what we need for Pride Month. So here's my first jab at it. Feel free to share if it moves you."

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Has the DNA of Southern Baptist Convention doctrine changed on ordaining women?

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Has the DNA of Southern Baptist Convention doctrine changed on ordaining women?

After decades as America's most famous Sunday school teacher, Jimmy Carter decided to cut the symbolic ties binding him to the Southern Baptist Convention.

The former president remained active at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, and didn't renounce his faith. His 2000 letter to 75,000 American Baptists explained that he rejected a revision of the SBC's Baptist Faith and Message document, months earlier, to oppose the ordination of women.

"I have been disappointed and feel excluded by the adoption of policies and an increasingly rigid SBC creed," wrote Carter, who is now 98 years old and in hospice care. He stressed that, with his wife Rosalynn, he would cooperate with "traditional Baptists who share such beliefs as separation of church and state, servanthood of pastors, priesthood of believers, a free religious press, and equality of women."

From Carter's point of view, the SBC had evolved from a convention of autonomous churches -- with individuals claiming "soul competency" when choosing their own beliefs -- into a denomination that defines orthodoxy on doctrines.

The issue isn't who is a Baptist and who is not. Church historians struggle to count the number of organized Baptist groups and thousands of Baptist churches are totally independent. The question is whether the SBC's DNA has changed in ways that will affect local churches, as well as agencies, boards and seminaries at the state and national levels.

The Rev. Rick Warren -- an American evangelical superstar -- urged the recent national convention in New Orleans not to "disfellowship" congregations that ordain women, such as the giant Saddleback Church he founded in 1980.

"For 178 years, the SBC has been a blend of at least a dozen different tribes of Baptists," said Warren, during floor debates. "If you think every Baptist thinks like you, you're mistaken. What we share in common is a mutual commitment to the inerrancy and infallibility of God's Word, and the Great Commission of Jesus.

"No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology. I am not asking you to agree with my church. I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist -- who have historically 'agreed to disagree' on dozens of doctrines in order to share a common mission."

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What if New York City became a community? Tim Keller came to the city to stay

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What if New York City became a community? Tim Keller came to the city to stay

On the Sunday after 9/11, thousands of New Yorkers went to church, with many joining a line stretching outside the Redeemer Presbyterian services in a Hunter College auditorium.

The Rev. Tim Keller asked his staff if they could manage a second service -- doubling the day's attendance to 5,300. Keller's sermon, "Truth, Tears, Anger and Grace," began with Jesus weeping before raising Lazarus from the dead.

Many Americans were "coming to New York to fix things," he noted. "We are glad for them. They will try to fix the buildings. We need that. And eventually they will leave. But when Jesus weeps, we see that he doesn't believe that the ministry of truth -- telling people how they should believe and turn to God -- or the ministry of fixing things is enough, does he? He also is a proponent of the ministry of tears. The ministry of truth and power without tears isn't Jesus."

This sermon contained major themes from the life and work of Keller, who died on May 19 death at age 72, after a three-year battle with Pancreatic cancer. Instead of seeking quick fixes, especially through politics, he kept urging conservative Protestants to stress compassion and face-to-face ministry, while continuing to defend centuries of Christian doctrine.

In Keller's case, that meant building a church for New Yorkers that addressed their blunt, exhausting, even cynical, concerns about life.

In that first sermon after 9/11, Keller noted that everyone had an opinion about New York City and America as a whole. Some were claiming that "God is punishing us" because of rampant immorality. Others said America had been judged because of social injustice and greed. Instead of blaming the victims, Keller said it was time to ask who would stand their ground and love their neighbors.

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Dreams at Ignatian Q: LGBTQ Catholics see progress toward a changed Catholicism

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Dreams at Ignatian Q: LGBTQ Catholics see progress toward a changed Catholicism

As a child in inner-city Milwaukee, Father Bryan Massingale's grandmother gave him a leather-bound copy of The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, along with a dream that he might need it someday.

"My grandmother was not delusional. She did not live in denial of reality," said Massingale, a Jesuit priest who holds an endowed chair in ethics at Fordham University, in New York City. "Her gift was a vision, an act of hope. It was a dream, a hope, a reminder that the neighborhood, with its drugs, violence and rodent-infested corner store with overpriced goods, did not define or limit who I could be."

That's important to know, he declared, since he was speaking as "a Black, gay priest and theologian" at Fordham's recent Ignatian Q Conference for LGBTQ students from Jesuit campuses. This event was a "space for our dreaming, for queer dreams" of hope for "despised and disdained and stigmatized peoples," he added.

"I dream of a church where gay priests and lesbian sisters are acknowledged as the holy and faithful leaders they already are," he said, in a published version of his address. "I dream of a church where LGBTQ employees and schoolteachers can teach our children, serve God's people and have their vocations, sexuality and committed loves affirmed. …

"I dream of a church that enthusiastically celebrates same-sex loves as incarnations of God's love among us."

Theological visions of this kind inspire hope for some Catholics and concern for others.

Thus, the North American phase of the Vatican's global Synod on Synodality found "strong tensions within the Church," while participants in the virtual assemblies also "felt hope and encouragement and a desire for the synodal process to continue," according to the 36-page report (.pdf here) released on April 12 by U.S. and Canadian Catholic leaders.

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Global South Anglican leaders try to push past LGBTQ wars and into future (Part II)

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Global South Anglican leaders try to push past LGBTQ wars and into future (Part II)

Want to know how to cause a church split?

The deepest fault lines -- sex, money and pride -- have been obvious for centuries, said Archbishop Kanishka Raffel of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia.

"We use nationality or age or gender or wealth or clothing or accent or profession or politics -- to show off and communicate who we are and what sort of person we will or will not engage with," said Raffel, who was born in London, of Sri Lankan descent, and raised Buddhist.

"God's people are frail and very human. We bear the marks of weakness and humiliation. We can be loveless, faithless, tolerant of the intolerable and wretchedly self-satisfied. … God is angry about the abuse of people that comes through sexual immorality, greed and hateful, deceitful and cruel speech. We are not surprised."

For decades, he acknowledged, the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion have been rocked by divisions over biblical authority and colonial-era ecclesiastical structures -- with LGBTQ disputes grabbing headlines.

During the recent Global Anglican Future Conference, held in Kigali, Rwanda, Raffel was one of several bishops -- 315 attended, from 52 nations -- who stressed that traditionalists now need to look forward. It's time to focus on life in their rapidly growing churches, while dedicating less time and energy to clashes with declining churches in England, America, Canada and elsewhere.

This will, Raffel stressed, require looking in the mirror.

"We have been engaged in decades long conversation about sexual immorality. But we have often focused on one form of sexual sin, to the neglect of sexual sins which perhaps are more common among us and just as displeasing to God," he said. "How many women ... have shed rivers of tears over the way their sexuality has been misused by others? I suppose it would be millions. There is a self-serving blind spot of which we must repent, a log in our own eyes with which we are yet to deal. Lord, have mercy."

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Was this news? Global South Anglicans try to cut some Canterbury ties (Part I)

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Was this news? Global South Anglicans try to cut some Canterbury ties (Part I)

After a half-century of decline, the U.S. Episcopal Church has 1.5 million members, and its average weekly attendance was just above 500,000 before COVID-19 and 300,000 afterwards.

After decades of explosive growth, the Anglican Church of Nigeria claims about 18 million members (others say 8 million), and the Center for Global Christianity near Boston estimates it has 22 million active participants in worship.

Caught in the middle of these two trends is the Most Reverend Justin Welby, by Divine Providence the 105th Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and the "first among equals" among bishops in the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion. While his own flock claims 26 million baptized members, about 600,000 attend weekly services.

Now, Global South church leaders -- representing about 75% of Anglicans who frequent pews -- have decided that it's time to start cutting ties between the "Canterbury Communion" and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

“We have no confidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the other Instruments of Communion led by him … are able to provide a godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency and authority of Scripture," warned the Global Anglican Future Conference, which met April 17-21 in Kigali, Rwanda. GAFCON IV drew 1,302 delegates from 52 nations, including 315 bishops.

Meeting together, leaders of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches said they "can no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the 'first among equals' of the Primates. The Church of England has chosen to impair her relationship with the orthodox provinces in the Communion."

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What happened to Catholics going to confession? What happened to beliefs about sin?

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What happened to Catholics going to confession? What happened to beliefs about sin?

In the movies, the penitent enters a confession booth, kneels, and whispers to a priest behind a lattice screen: "Forgive me father, for I have sinned."

This drama was, for centuries, at the center of Catholic life. But in recent decades, the number of Americans who go to confession has plunged to a shocking degree that church leaders have struggled to explain.

But Father David Michael Moses knows what happened during Holy Week this year, when he spent 65 hours "in the box" at his home parish, Christ the Good Shepherd in Spring, Texas, and at St. Joseph near downtown Houston. In all, heard 1167 confessions.

"We are talking about a lot of sin, and lots of grace," he said. "It's about offering people help and hope. In the end, Jesus wins all the battles that people bring with them into confession. That's what confession is all about."

The 29-year-old priest began hearing confessions at 6 a.m. on April 4, as Catholics made their way to nearby office towers. He continued until midnight, with a parish volunteer noting there were 100 people in line at 8 p.m. Another priest arrived two hours later, and everyone had an opportunity for the Sacrament of Penance.

"You keep thinking: 'Do I go slow and just do my best? Do I try to speed things up?' What you can't do is let anyone feel that they were turned away," said Father Moses, a Houston native who is the son of a Baptist mother and Lutheran father who converted to Catholicism.

Hearing confessions "is hard. It's exhausting. But there is nothing in the world that I would rather be doing, right now. This is what it means to be a priest. This is about salvation and the care of souls."

As recently as the 1950s and 1960s, researchers said about 80% of American Catholics went to confession at least once a year. A clear majority said the went once a month.

Then the numbers began falling -- sharply.