The Augustinian spirit of the new papacy

 

Book review: American Hope

Christopher Lamb, an English Vaticanologist who works for CNN (Cable News Network) and has written for The Tablet and the Telegraph, starts to answer the often asked question: will Pope Leo continue the policies of his predecessor as Bishop of Rome or will the brake on reform be put on again?

There are also fascinating descriptions of other characters, such as the newly converted American Vice-President J. D. Vance, who recently suggested that the Augustinian Pope should improve his theology! Lamb’s detailed sketches also include those of conservative bishops and cardinals who opposed Francis. These include those who accuse Leo of faults in safeguarding. Lamb lists where Leo has already put in place reforms, including his part in the abolition of a right-wing Peruvian Catholic society.

Lamb covers the place of women — or lack of it — in the Church, and also the way in which Leo welcomed an LBTGQI+ pilgrimage to St Peter’s. There is a fascinating chapter on the Vatican’s financial scandals, with prelates out of their depth in dealing with corrupt financiers. A final chapter looks at Leo and Gen Z Catholicism.

 

The Augustine Bible: a Catholic ESV?

 

 

The Augustine Institute has now published the "The Augustine Bible" - the first accessible Catholic Bible in the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible translation. It's not perfect, however (none are!). So below I will call out some of the positives and negatives I have discovered. If you found this video valuable please LIKE and if you are interested in Christian #apologetics, #theology, and #philosophy, please SUBSCRIBE and click the BELL for notifications!. 

 

"The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power"

Amy Hawk is a writer, a Bible teacher, and a YouTuber. She discusses why she chose to stand up to Donald Trump's corruption of the White Evangelical church.

In 2016, Amy Hawk was a hyper-patriotic, Jesus-loving, white, evangelical, church-attending, and ministry-leading wife and mom living in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. She came into the election determined to vote Republican, but when she saw the video of Donald Trump mocking a disabled journalist, she hurled herself off the Trump train and never looked back. Shunned by some in her conservative evangelical community, her world was shattered and her faith tested as she was forced to reevaluate the Christian institutions she devoted her life to. Disoriented and confused by the church’s embrace of a man who is the antithesis of Jesus, Hawk turned to the Scriptures for answers.

Part Bible study and part personal faith journey, The Judas Effect is about the selling out of Christian values for political gain. It’s about how, buoyed by Trumpism, the message ringing from church bells across America has morphed from “goodwill toward men” to “it’s us against them.” By sharing her own faith crisis, Hawk casts a vision for the evangelical church that steers us away from Judas’s power lust, toward a Christ-centered mission of servitude, humility, compassion, and kindness.

 

Christian Jihad: Neo-Fundamentalists and the Polarization of America

 

 

 

In "Christian Jihad" Copyright 2012, Colonel V. Doner presents an authoritative and extraordinary dissection of the Neo-Fundamentalist mind, focusing primarily on its manifestation within Christianity. Doner provides an inside look at what drives the culture war with all its fear and paranoia, its "God-given" mandates, its "biblical" vision for God, country, and family, and how someone like Sarah Palin has become possible. But after showing us how we got into this mess in the first place, Doner provides a strategy for discovering a civil and peaceful way to disagree, even to find reconciliation, and finally end the vitriolic rhetoric and polarization that continues to cripple our country.

The Great Dechurching

 

We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest shift in American religious history. It's bigger than the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and every revival our country has ever experienced combined. But this isn't a great awakening, it's a great dechurching. 40 million American adults have left church, and almost all within the last 30 years. Also, Central Florida is one of the fastest dechurching areas in the country. However, the good news is that 20 million of the dechurched are willing to return. These numbers come from the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America. It was commissioned by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, the authors of The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? Join Jim Davis and Michael Graham on Saturday, August 19, 2023, at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. to learn why the dechurched left and how the Diocese of Central Florida can welcome them back. Bishop Justin Holcomb will host the evening and moderate Q&A. C-Span will be recording the event for Book TV.

UNDERSTANDING CHRISTIANITY

 

UNDERSTANDING CHRISTIANITY, 

by Christie P. Moon

A 10-Week Course on Foundational Principles, 

2nd Edition

This bi-lingual (Japanese - English) discipleship workbook equips Bible study leaders to walk new and non-believers through the foundational principles of Christianity. 

このバイリンガル（日本語 - 英語）の弟子訓練ワークブックは、聖書研究の指導者がキリスト教の基本原則を新しい信者や非信者に教えるためのものです。

How John Lewis Became a Moral Force in America

 

John Lewis was enrolled in a seminary in the Jim Crow city of Nashville when he embraced the belief that allowing himself to be beaten nearly to death in public would hasten the collapse of Southern apartheid.

In 1960, Lewis and his contemporaries carried that spirit into the sit-in campaign that forced Nashville to integrate its “white only” lunch counters. The following year, young protesters experienced homicidal levels of brutality when they boarded southbound Freedom Ride buses to challenge segregation in interstate transportation. When Lewis’s bus reached Montgomery, Ala., passengers were savaged by a white mob whose members carried every conceivable weapon — including bricks, chains, tire irons and baseball bats. Outside Anniston, Ala., Klansmen firebombed another bus and held its exit doors shut with the aim of burning the passengers alive.

The battering Lewis received four years later during the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march in Selma, Ala., stands out for what happened next. Congress responded to the barbaric spectacle of state troopers bludgeoning demonstrators by finally outlawing the methods that the South had long used to prevent millions of Black people from registering to vote. Lewis was recovering from a fractured skull when Lyndon Johnson summoned him to Washington for the signing of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights movement’s holy grail. L.B.J. admonished Lewis to get the white South “by the balls” — by registering legions of Black people to vote — and to “squeeze, squeeze ’em till they hurt.”

Revitalizing Catholicism in America: Nine Tasks for Every Catholic

How did the Church in the U.S. go from a vital, thriving institution with active parishes around the country to a corporate body barely breathing? A major contributing factor, according to the authors, was the easy assimilation of individual Catholics en masse into secular culture. Even before the pews started emptying, parishioners prioritized fitting in to their social circles rather than evangelizing them. The Church and the faith of Jesus Christ ceased being the organizing principle of people’s lives. Their minds and hearts had left the Church long before their hands and feet. Some of the clergy provided reasons to ignore ecclesial life. Now, the statistics compiled by organizations like the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate confirm the exodus.