He begins by discussing Catholicism in the Global South, with this rather useful analogy:
In other words, the central challenge for world Catholicism at the moment is not decline, but growth, and making sense of the new interactions between faith and culture this growth is generating.
"Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" has passed into the cultural idiom as a synonym for blithe indifference to an underlying crisis. I would suggest that much conversation in Western Catholicism these days is more akin to arguing over which buggy whips are best, while ignoring the emergence of the car; that is, a completely new world is taking shape, one destined to render many of this era’s debates obsolete.
What I have called the "upside down church" of the future, one driven increasingly by the experience and priorities of the South, is likely to take scant interest in matters that have set the Catholic agenda in the West for more than a century, such as the balance of power between Rome and the bishops, or debates over various questions of doctrine. Instead, it will be the "cash value" of Catholicism in the confrontation with poverty, disease, corruption, war and cultural conflict that will increasingly be on the minds of most Catholics on the planet.
Here’s a fascinating observation:
Third, as Lamin Sanneh, a native of Ghana who now teaches at the Yale Divinity School, notes in his 2003 book Whose Religion is Christianity?, the 20th century explosion in Christianity occurred at a time when "conversion" had become a bad word. Thus it has largely flown below the radar.
"Political correctness created a PR vacuum," Sanneh wrote.
Pope to Israel in 2007?
A long-time veteran of Jewish-Catholic relations told NCR this week that the Vatican has confirmed Benedict XVI’s intention to visit Israel in 2007, though no date has yet been established for the trip.
According to this source, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo relayed the pope’s intention in conversations with Israeli officials.
Lajolo, this source said, expressed two "desires" with regard to the prospective visit. The first is that long-running negotiations between Israel and the Vatican over the tax and juridical status of church institutions in Israel will be resolved before it happens. The second is that no violence will occur during the pope’s trip, to avoid it being "instrumentalized" to serve the political ends of any party to the Middle East conflict.
According to this source, however, Lajolo said these were "desires" rather than conditions that must be satisfied before the trip can take place.
Though no itinerary has been discussed, when Benedict XVI met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav last November, he expressed interest in seeing Meggido, a site in northern Israel where archeologists recently unearthed what is believed to be the oldest Christian church yet discovered. Those remains date to the end of the third century.
Some clarification on the Oregon judge’s decision allowing the Vatican to be named as a defendant:
Most legal experts say it’s a long shot that the court will eventually take jurisdiction, among other things because it’s a stretch to argue that every Catholic priest, brother and sister in the world is an "agent" of the Vatican. (That would suggest a corps of more than 1.2 million Vatican "agents" in every nook and cranny of the planet). Normally an "agent" or "employee" is defined as someone whose day-to-day activities are directed by the employer, who is supervised by the employer, and whose paycheck is signed by the employer. It would be difficult, experts say, to show that such was the case with Ronan.
Further, it would have to be shown that the "sovereign," meaning the Holy See, caused the abuse in Oregon to take place, or that it knew of the abuse and failed to stop it. One would have to prove that someone in the Vatican tracked Ronan’s affairs, and hence in theory should have known what he was up to.
Aside from the Oregon and Kentucky cases, there’s one other lawsuit currently making its way through American courts that seeks to establish jurisdiction over an agency of the Holy See — the Institute for the Works of Religion, popularly known as the "Vatican Bank." Alperin v. Vatican Bank deals with the Vatican’s alleged role in recycling loot stolen by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia during World War II (the Franciscan Order is also named as a defendant).
To date, the wall of sovereign immunity in American courts has held up where the Vatican is concerned. As with floods and hurricanes, however, the problem with lawsuits is that it only takes one.
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