The Challenge To Change The Church Confronts The Future Ed

Situating the church within the context of post-World War II globalization and the Cold War, American Catholicism Transformed draws on previously untapped archival sources to provide deep background to developments within the American Catholic Church in relationship to American society at large. Shaped by anti-communist sentiment and responsive to American cultural trends, the Catholic community adopted "strategies of domestic containment," stressing the close unity between the Church and the "American way of life." A focus on the unchanging character of God's law as expressed in social hierarchies of authority, race, and gender provided a public visage of unity and uniformity. However, the emphasis on American values mainstreamed into the community the political values of personal rights, equality, acceptance of the arms race, and muted the Church's inherited social vision. The result was a deep ambivalence over the forces of secularization. The Catholic community entered a transitional stage in which "those on the right" and "those on the left" battled for control of the Church's vision. International networking, reform of religious life among women, international congresses of the laity, the institutionalization of the liturgical movement, and the burgeoning civil right movement positioned the community to receive the Vatican Council in a distinctly American way. During the Second Vatican Council, the American bishops and theological experts gradually adopted the reforming currents of the world-wide Church. This convergence of international and national forces of renewal -- and resistance to them -- says Joseph Chinnici, will continue to shape the American Catholic community's identity in the twenty-first century.

This book brings light to an area of American history that has received little attention: the educational history of the American women religious and the place of the Sister Formation Conference (SFC) within that history. This study places the movement in a broad historical context that encompasses the directions and directives of the Church, the educational trends of the period, and the struggles and developments within American religious life during this time. Changes occurred and frustration was generated because church structures did not change with the same rapidity as American women religious changed. The challenge of renewal and adaptation and constant call in the history of the church, placed these women as prophets and models to the whole church.

It takes only one look at today's news page or one listen to the news shows to understand that, clearly, there is no shortage of kingdom challenges for the twenty-first-century church at large, for Christian organizations and agencies, or for us as individuals. In the face of such enormous problems as the rise of pagan world religions, AIDS, sexual abuse and trafficking, urban poverty, and ethnic and religious conflict, what can you and your fellow Christians do? According to the diverse group of contributors in this book, you can choose to get involved, sharing not only the kingdom burdens but the kingdom opportunities with other brothers and sisters in Christ so that no Christian, no church, no ministry, no nation has to confront these challenges alone. But how can you join in doing the work you are called to do? The superb analysis, biblical solutions, and reality-tested ideas put forth in this book by some of the leaders of the global Reformed and evangelical church will show you. Coming from the fields of religion, education, medicine, broadcasting, psychology, urban ministry, and missions, these fellow Christians are encountering the challenges daily. Their suggestions will give you a grasp of not only what is necessary to be a global evangelical Christian today but how to respond to the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs of others around the world-and perhaps in your own backyard.

Charity Alive: Sisters of Charity, Halifax, 1950-1980 is the sequel to Sister Maura Power's chronicle of the first one hundred years of the congregation's history (Ryerson, 1956). Based on congregational records and interviews with members of the order, the book traces, describes, and assesses the events which moved the Sisters from the traditional patterns of religious life over the first century into the 1980's. It shows the Sisters' response to the documents of Vatican II and the economic, cultural, and religious challenges during three decades of adaptation, renovation, and renewal. Charity Alive also presents the transformation effected within the congregation which liberated the Sisters and empowered them to reach beyond their traditional ministries of education, health and social services to embrace new forms of ministry such as serving the less visible needs of the economically poor on the fringes of society.

Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).