An invitation to readers

I wonder if the trend Expanding Lay Roles should be more properly titled, "Expanding Lay Roles Being Significantly Reduced." It seems to me that within the last few years there has been a real emphasis within the Church to reduce the roles of lay ministers and replace them with deacons and/or religious. I believe this is being done because some of the hierarchy is concerned about not having enough controls built in over the laity.

Maybe the idea as we grasp that consious bits of "dust" in a vast universe is in the biotech field. But I know it weighs on me more than some of the other areas though there in not a one I think that should not be there.

How will any of these so called "factors" have anything to do with Catholicism as far as faith and doctrine are concerned? What is the difference between a World church and globalization?

GLOBALIZATION is the BUZZ word in our Catholic Schools at the moment...worryingly so. i put up some Vatican links on my blog..

In all seriousness and with due respect: really, John?

You really want to have a conversation--on a blog, no less--with bloggers who post to your blog, after you wrote the following about bloggers on October 30?:

"At least in my experience, blogs call to mind what Homer Simpson once said about who watches cable access TV at three in the morning: 'Alcoholics, the unemployed, angry loners …' The vox populi, in other words, it ain't.)"

Don't conversations imply mutual respect among conversation partners? If they're going to be fruitful, they have to imply such respect.

What kind of respect for those who follow your blog and respond to it do you imply with your blanket statement about blogs and bloggers on October 30? And when you don't issue an apology for that statement, despite requests from bloggers offended by the statement that you do so?

Or even a clarification . . . .

Your refusal to apologize or clarify suggests to me that you regard your own blog or the blogs of certain unnamed "authorities" as functioning at some level higher than the level at which most other blogs function.

We might have a fruitful conversation if we first engaged that assumption and those issues. I don't see how we can have a fruitful conversation when we refuse to engage that assumption and those issues, now that it's on the table with your October 30 remark, which hasn't been retracted, clarified, or apologized for. The dynamic that remark sets up, in the absence or retraction, clarification, or apology, is an exploitative one, in which you benefit from comments of bloggers whom you yourself admit you don't really respect.

Dear John,
Each time you offered an opportunity to contribute thoughts over the years of doing groundwork for this book, I offered a conviction that women's issues should make the list as a church-changing trend. Although I haven't read the book and probably won't have the opportunity in the near future, I need to say I'm deeply disappointed that, once again, women-as-change-force is ignored. I'm tempted to judge that of course, the old saw held: "Women aren't ignored. Their impact is discussed under many other issues." Under what titles will I find women's probable impact on the future church: Expanding Roles for Laity (I understand that religious brothers and sisters are technically laity as well as the rest of us Baptized non-clerical hordes)? The New Demographics: looked at globally I imagine this is one avenue for subsuming women's conceerns. the demgraphics and resulting engergy currents in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin America all and each hinge on a growing and more vocal feminine foundation. The same can be said for each of the rest of the trends you deem more important. If it's truly the case, and I think it is: the global, deeply intense, continual reaction and response to one hierarchically authorized process alone (the two U.S. investigations by Rome of women apostolic institutes and a leadership conference) is only one instance of a movement important to our Church's future.

I guess that if "Attending to Women's Concerns" is "covered" in every item you discuss, I wonder what's so sacred about ten trends. Why isn't there an eleventh trend? I remember an NCR article in recent years in which the author purported to bring forth rising worries about "the feminization of the church." Doesn't this say anything? Could it not be another unspoken reason for opening the doors to conservative Anglicans? Or do we have to perpetually live with "not counting women and children?"

With all due respect, when I read John Allen, I tend to forget that I am reading the National Catholic Reporter...and feel more like I am reading the National Catholic REGISTER! He impresses me as the cheerleader of the status quo in the Church. I certainly hope that the Spirit has more in store for the Church in the coming decades--like the FULL implementation of the documents of Vatican II--than the continuation of the tendencies of this Pope and those of his predecessor to restore the Church as it was before Vatican II, which--if I understand him correctly--Allen thinks is in store for the Church.

I find most of the comments made by readers of NCR online to be not at all helpful and sometimes full of vitriol both on the right and the left. It would help to have guidelines for respectful dialogue that focus on inquiring into the topic itself in a more objective manner. Until this happens I choose not to waste my time.

I appreciate John Allen's reports and analyses. My take on the future church is that the Vatican seems to be doing its best to turn Catholics into a marginal group with little relevance to the North American and European societies evolving today.
Open-minded Catholics are encouraged to leave or join groups like Catholic Womenpriests.

Looking forward to the new info!

Any list of Catholic Church concerns which does not include nuclear disarmament must be dismissed as unrealistic and inadequate, to say the least. It should be at or very near the top of any such list. If the churches don't mobilize and unite around this issue, the world may not survive long enough to address the other issues.

What a pity that your blogue does not deal with this momentous event: the return of beauty and tradition within the Catholic Church!

Wow...

This blog idea sounded interesting.

However, if it's going to degenerate into whining and spleen venting...well, I really don't need the aggrevation.

(Nothing but love for you though, John!)

Maybe a moderator to edit out the vitriol?

Not very impressed with this top 10 list; but then again, I'm not very impressed with most of the comments posted either. This blog appears as if it will be a sounding board for the ever-shrinking 'hermeneutic of rupture' crowd. It's a shame, but not that surprising.

I know the National 'Catholic' Reporter is a pretty out-of-touch publication as well as being a fring element of the Catholic media, but the advertisement for "support nuns being investigated by the Vatican" posted by " 'Catholics' Speak Out" is absolutely beyond the pale, and is truely scandalous. The advertisement link leads to a page advocating:
*Gender equality, including ordination for women
*The civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons
*An end to the rule of celibacy for Catholic clergy
*Full communion for divorced and remarried Catholics
*Due process for church employees and theologians

Shame on you National 'Catholic' Reporter; please stop calling yourself Catholic, as you're anything but.