A Sound of Sheer Silence

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and offer a prediction for what the Christian landscape will look like in the year 2100. In the year 2100, there will be loose alliance of Christian bodies and churches that we can call, for purposes of these predictions, Team Blue.  Team Blue consists of somewhere between one and at most a half dozen churches that see themselves as being heirs to the Apostolic, "high church" tradition--complete with bishops, liturgy, high Eucharistic theology, etc.  These entities will have meaningful differences in theology, but will view themselves as being united as part of a broader grouping, and might very well have agreements to share clergy, resources, etc.  Also on Team Blue will be a few, maybe a dozen or two dozen, networks of "low" churches and congregations.  Some of these networks will be more robust, in the sense that are more like what we think of today as "denominations," than others.  The differences between the h...

"After all . . . I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." - Anna Scott [played by Julia Roberts], Notting Hill 1. There is a story out there, widely believed by many folks, that goes something like this.  Once we had a society (either broader political society, church society, or both) that had a very clear set of rules about how men and women were supposed to interact.  These rules were good, because sexuality is powerful and dangerous and at least a little bit evil and shameful, and the rules worked to control those instincts in socially constructive ways.  We need clear structures, defined rules, a rather rigid superstructure to contain all of this stuff.  And, if you add in the religious dimension, this structure is ordained by God, so there is really no reason to question or even think too hard about any of it.  Yes, sure, isolated people violated these norms from time to time, but there were wise (if, perhaps, harsh) mea...

About nine months ago, I wrote a paean to Nativity Parish in Fair Haven, New Jersey , the first Catholic parish where I really had a experience of God and of faith.  The pastor of Nativity when we were there was Richard C. Brietzke.  His name is on the list released today of priests in the Diocese of Trenton who have had "credible accusations" of abuse .   According to this list, he was "removed from ministry." What is interesting is that this seems to have come as a surprise to everyone.  This article from the local paper suggests that this was not a known fact about him .  This is backed up by a glowing piece in the Diocesan paper upon his retirement , providing no indication that anything was amiss.  One wonders, though.  Brietzke was the chancellor of the Diocese of Trenton in the 00s, during the period when, or so we are told repeatedly , the Roman Catholic Church "fixed" its problems with the Dallas Charter.  And the man responsible f...