Part three: 14% of Americans, and 20% of Americans 18-31 say they have no particular religion. But the 'nones' are a religiously complicated and fascinating group:
Part five: Do American Catholics trust their bishops to address the sexual abuse crisis? What do they think about Pope Francis? What do they believe about the Eucharist?
Our contributing editor @Brendan_m_Hodge did yeoman's work to make this survey series happen.
And we've got plans for more data-driven reporting like this. So if you think it's important, become a paying @PillarCatholic subscriber, and join our team:
I see there is a discourse about homilies. I’m not sure why. I’ll only say this:
I learned there was a Catholic intellectual tradition through homilies, and it could answer my questions, and was more than the vapid Dr. Suessian pablum I’d heard in youth groups.
I have been convicted by homilists preaching the kerygma, the Last Things, the catechism, the saints, impending judgment, the Blessed Mother, the love and mercy of God, the Holy Spirit's power, the fathers of the Church, and every once in a while, the witness of their own lives.
I have been scandalized by homilists reading a canned thing they bought from a syndication service.
Bishop Dan Mueggenborg, auxiliary bishop in Seattle, has been appointed Bishop of Reno, Nevada.
Bishop Randy Calvo, outgoing Reno bishop, is 70 years old - five years younger than customary retirement age, but reportedly submitted his resignation months ago for health reasons.
Mueggenborg, 59, was a priest of Tulsa until he became an auxiliary in Seattle in 2017.
Bishop Mueggenborg has been Seattle’s VG and moderator of the curia. He was previously a formator and the vice rector at the North American College.
It has never been the case in Christian history that the Eucharist was a kind of universal meal. From the earliest decades of Christianity, the Church understood the Eucharist as an expression of communion, and admitted to Eucharist those who were fully in the Church’s communion.
In the early centuries of the Church, Christian initiation took years of formation. And so did penance for grave public sins. Penitents would enter the “order of penitents,” and live sometimes for years doing public penance for grave sins, to atone for wound to Church’s unity.
I would, no doubt, have spent most of my life in the “order of penitents.”
The idea was not punishment in order to shame or humiliate. The idea was to effect conversion, to take seriously the integrity of the Church’s unity and witness, and to take seriously God’s judgment.
Well, in my curiosity about “Free Britney,” I listened to Blackout and Britney Jean last night.
When I thought they were satiric social commentary I thought they were genius. When I realized they weren’t, my enthusiasm for the albums dampened.
But Britney should have justice.
None of us know the real situation of Britney Spears’ mental health. She should have a fair and free hearing.
But it does seem obvious how misogyny and media shading could have played a role in where she is now.
And no one should have a coercive IUD. That’s immoral and tragic.
When Dave Chappelle had a mental health situation and quit the Chappelle Show, he wasn’t judged through the “hysterical unbalanced starlet” lens that Britney seems to be saddled with.
"giving back to the Church" is the sort of phrase that generally suggests an ecclesiology of institution rather than an ecclesiology of common baptismal mission.
It raises my antennae.
"Giving back to the Church" is the sort of phrase one uses when he is glad the Church gave his children a foundation for being perfectly nice and well-mannered people, and not when one realizes that Christ will fling him and his family into some mission of trust and abandonment