September 09, 2015:
Pope Francis' Influence in World Politics Has Made Vatican Globally Relevant Again
Religion News Service | By David Gibson
Posted: 06/04/2014 7:14 pm EDT
(RNS) When Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet at the Vatican next Sunday (June 8), it will be another sign of how Pope Francis has returned the Vatican to the global stage to a degree not seen since the 1980s, when John Paul II’s shuttle pilgrimages helped end the Cold War.
The upcoming Israeli-Palestinian prayer summit is drawing particular attention because it comes as traditional diplomatic efforts in the region have once again stalled. It also follows on the heels of Francis’ three-day pilgrimage through the Holy Land, where he spoke forcefully on behalf of peace, and often matched his words with bold actions.
Click on Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/04/pope-francis-world-politics_n_5448134.html
White House Credits Pope Francis for Facilitating Cuba Deal
BuzzFeed News Reporter
WASHINGTON — Pope Francis was instrumental in facilitating the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, a senior White House official said Wednesday.
President Obama is expected to announce a deal with the Caribbean nation Wednesday afternoon that will pave the way for the first U.S. embassy on Cuban soil since the Kennedy administration and a relaxing of many of the American economic and travel restrictions on Cuba that have defined the relationship between the two nations for decades.
Francis played a big role in bringing the longtime rivals to the negotiating table, the official said. Francis sent what was characterized as an extraordinary personal letter to Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro over the summer, urging both parties to end their frosty relationship. Following the letter, and the negotiations, Obama and Castro had a phone conversation that helped lead to Wednesday’s announcement.
Click on Link:
Climate Change and Religious Unity: Catholics and Jews, Together, Caring for Creation
Posted: 06/18/2015 1:18 pm EDT
Unity, though often preached by most of the world's religions, has been unevenly practiced over the past two millennia. How true for Catholicism and Judaism, two venerable traditions with a challenging joint history. Who could have imagined this moment, when from the pews to the highest leadership levels, there's enthusiastic coordination and concerted action in so many arenas?
On a wide range of social teaching -- including social justice, racial equality, worker's rights, human dignity -- Jewish and Catholic social thought aligns closely, and our institutions work arm-in-arm to bring the fruits of that alignment to the wider world. Right now, our shared commitment to tackle the challenge of climate change is a shining example of this new unity.
Thanks to His Holiness, a conversation about religion and the environment is unfolding in the media and the public sphere like never before. Our Catholic friends have provided their interfaith partners a holy opportunity to be heard with this encyclical, released (on June 18th) in advance of the papal visit to the U.S. (September 22-27, between Yom Kippur and Sukkot), and before the critical "COP-21" climate negotiations in Paris (early December).
Click on Link:
Rick Warren’s Call for Christians to Unite With Catholics, ‘Holy Father’ Raising Concerns
December 2, 2014 |
By: Heather Clark
In a new video, megachurch leader and author Rick Warren is calling for Christians to unite with Roman Catholics and “Pope Francis,” who Warren recently referred to as the “Holy Father”—a move that is raising concerns among Christians nationwide and is resulting in calls for Warren to repent.
Warren made the comments following his visit to the Vatican last month, where he spoke at an interfaith conference on the “Complementarity of Man and Woman.”
“We have far more in common than what divides us,” he said in the two-minute video released by the Catholic News Service on Wednesday, described as being an outline for “an ecumenical vision for Catholics and Protestants to work together to defend the sanctity of life, sex and marriage.”
Click on Link:
The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline
August 2008
America was Methodist, once upon a time”Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian. A little light Unitarianism on one side, a lot of stern Calvinism on the other, and the Easter Parade running right down the middle: our annual Spring epiphany, crowned in bright new bonnets.
Which makes it all the stranger that, somewhere around 1975, the main stream of Protestantism ran dry. In truth, there are still plenty of Methodists around. Baptists and Presbyterians, too”Lutherans, Episcopalians, and all the rest; millions of believing Christians who remain serious and devout. For that matter, you can still find, soldiering on, some of the institutions they established in their Mainline glory days: the National Council of Churches, for instance, in its God Box up on New York City’s Riverside Drive, with the cornerstone laid, in a grand ceremony, by President Eisenhower in 1958. But those institutions are corpses, even if they don’t quite realize that they’re dead. The great confluence of Protestantism has dwindled to a trickle over the past thirty years, and the Great Church of America has come to an end.
