Articles for tag: Catholics

January 30, 2020

Of Pageantry, Baptism, and the Catholic Church

A lively editorial page from January 26, 1935, touched on such topics as the activity of the Holy Spirit, the Roosevelts planning to serve wine at the White House (Prohibition had been repealed in 1933), and reaction to a Robert Benchley essay called “The Sunday Menace” (the humor author had suggested outrageous acts “to get rid of the dullness of midafternoon on Sunday”). But the editorial we share today is a measured, almost melancholy observation about how baptism is practiced in the Roman Catholic Church. _ _ _ THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS MISSING SOMETHING Editorial; January 26, 1935; p. 4

May 26, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Culture & Public Square

“Fewer Christians in the U.S.” Good News?

By Mark A. Taylor News outlets across the country reported the Pew Research Center”s findings that fewer Americans than ever are calling themselves Christians. Most secular reports led with the summary statistic, that only 70.6 percent of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians in 2014, compared with 78.4 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, the “nones,” those who claim no religious affiliation, increased by about 19 million. The Pew study projects that 56 million American adults, almost 23 percent of the total adult population, say they have no religion. Christian writers tried to find a positive spin in the

May 19, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Culture & Public Square

Considering Ourselves Amid the Decline of Mainline Churches

My Mark A. TaylorÂ If you think religion in America is claiming less loyalty than ever, the latest data released by the Pew Research Center will affirm your concern. At the same time, it offers a few morsels of encouragement for Evangelicals, who seem not to be losing as much ground as mainline Protestants and Catholics. America”s Changing Religious Landscape, based on more than 35,000 extensive phone interviews with adults in all 50 states, summarizes the situation this way: “The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any

April 18, 2012

Christian Standard

Church Leadership

Sacrifice and Balance in a Life of Ministry

By Mark A. Taylor Several readers wrote to thank us for our January 22 issue on preacher”s kids. Their e-mails made me realize we had touched a nerve. With preacher”s kids, as well as with preachers themselves, we live in constant tension: We want them to be everyday folks while we silently feel that, somehow really, they”re different. I thought about this again when I read an intriguing column in the February 8 Wall Street Journal by Richard Cipolla, a married Catholic priest. If you”re like me, you didn”t realize there is such a person, but Cipolla was ordained in

July 15, 2007

Christian Standard

Church & Ministry Church Leadership Pastoral Transitions & Succession

TRANSITIONS: Facing the Facts of Transition

By Darrel Rowland If there”s one organization that should realize this life doesn”t last forever, it ought to be the church, says Russell Crabtree. But you wouldn”t know it from churches” lack of planning, especially for leadership transitions. “We live in absolute denial of the fact that the tenure of our leaders is going to come to an end,” said Crabtree, co-author of The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken About Pastoral Transitions. “We really don”t have the structures that encourage this kind of thinking. We have a mind-set about the clergy that they are like parental figures. Well,