The Independent News Source
Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
In Search of the Emerging Church
Breaking the poverty cycle
by Tom Roberts on Nov. 19, 200919th in the series
Camden, N.J., is a place where a parish holds services to remember the tens of kids killed by gunshot and other violent means, a roll call of the dead of this peculiar urban warfare. Pick any day, any hour and drive past corners where the posture of the kids and their blank eyes say hopelessness.
Read the full story here: A place that breaks the poverty cycle
In time of 'diminishment,' Jesuit connects to 'a God of hope'
by Tom Roberts on Oct. 29, 200918th in the series
For Jesuit Fr. Jeff Putthoff, his ministry at a Camden, N.J., a technology training center, is his declaration about the future of the church as well as his answer, for the moment, to unsettling questions he poses to himself about what it means to be a priest and to be a Jesuit. They become particularly pressing questions in this era of dwindling numbers and resources, a time he refers to as a period of “diminishment.”
Read the full story here: Hopeworks 'n Camden
Mission creativity in Las Cruces
by Tom Roberts on Oct. 15, 200917th in the series
Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, 72, a member of the Congregation of St. Basil, was appointed founding bishop of the Las Cruces diocese in 1982. He is widely recognized as a skilled pastoral leader who has great rapport with the people of his diocese, which remains among the poorest in the country. It depends a great deal on financial help from outside the diocese and has had to be creative in tending to parishes with few priests. Ramirez sat down the morning of Aug. 11 for an interview with NCR at the diocese’s Pastoral Center.
Read the full story here: Recognizing lay gifts bears fruit in Las Cruces, bishop says
Two who embody the forces shaping the Catholic community
by Tom Roberts on Oct. 07, 200916th in the series
Though separated in age by at least two generations, and worlds apart in life experience, Sara Nolan and Sr. Bernice Garcia represent some of the strong impulses within the Catholic community that are shaping its future: the growing role of laity in the church, especially women; the conviction reinforced by the Second Vatican Council that Catholics, by virtue of their baptism, have an essential part to play in salvation history; and the rising awareness of the social dimension of a life of faith.
I spoke at length to both women during my recent visit to New Mexico, Garcia in the Santa Fe archdiocese, covering the central and northern portions of the state, and Nolan in the Las Cruces diocese, which stretches across the state's southern tier.
Read the full story here: Old meets new in faith lives of two New Mexico women
New Mexico church may hold answers for the future
by Tom Roberts on Sep. 30, 200915th in the series
ALBUQUERQUE AND LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- New Mexico has about it an austere, out-of-the-way character, long stretches of desert and horizons of abraded, reddish mountains, evocative of the biblical quality of unseen significance. Few might look to New Mexico when conversation turns to the future of the church.
If so, they could be missing something. This land of hidden prospects might hold some answers for the future.
Read the full story: Hidden prospects.
Contemplative tradition is shaping the emerging church
by Tom Roberts on Sep. 18, 200914th in the series
Albuquerque, N.M. -- Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, NM. Rohr believes that the contemplative tradition, the third of what he describes as four pillars of the emergent church and his point of entry into the discussion, is precisely the sort of tradition that allows one to see "with a different set of eyes" and perhaps shift the focus a bit.
On the road again: New Mexico and Camden, NJ
by Tom Roberts on Aug. 18, 2009I’m winding up nearly two weeks on the road, another leg of reporting for the Emerging Church series. I visited the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Diocese of Las Cruces in New Mexico, as well as Camden, N.J., locations that are rarely referenced when the conversation turns to the future of the church. But maybe they should be given more serious consideration.
Some things about the church are out of my control
by Tom Roberts on Aug. 14, 200913th in the series
In interviews earlier this year with young Catholics (most were in their 20s and 30s, two were in their mid-40s) at Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish in Jersey City, N.J., it seemed clear that some ideas about church membership are definitely age- or generation-specific. Younger Catholics appear reluctant to use such labels as conservative or liberal in describing themselves or others, while traditional pieties and the church's tradition itself can play an important role in someone's decision to become Catholic.
Those around the table, all of whom had chosen to become active in a particular Catholic community, said they spent little time worrying about hierarchical matters or many of the hot-button issues that might concern those of an older generation. In general terms, they had opted for Catholicism for a host of reasons and, while not ignoring the problems or controversies, did not allow them to get in the way of their participation in church life.
Read the full story: Young Catholics accept the church as is
The warning was loud and clear
by Tom Roberts on Jul. 16, 200912th in the series
For Catholics reading the signs of the times 20 years ago, the warning was loud and clear: the church was heading toward big problems because of the priest shortage. Most of us ignored the warnings. The bishops clearly wished the bad news would go away.
Sister of St. Joseph Christine Schenk got moving. Using the new data being compiled by top notch Catholic researchers, she began educating the community far and wide. She was more than a harbinger of doom. She and the organization she represented, FutureChurch, were mining church history and our sacred texts for alternatives that would preserve the integrity of individual Catholic communities, as well as our Eucharistic tradition. I caught up with Schenk in Cleveland earlier this year.
Read the full story: A map to the future church
The newest immigrants
by Tom Roberts on Jul. 07, 200911th in the series
Our Lady of Vietnam Catholic Church in Silver Spring, Md., is a soaring representation of that ethnic group's presence in the Washington area and in the larger U.S. church. Though a tiny minority in the overall church, Vietnamese are well represented among religious and diocesan clergy.
While Asian Americans make up just 1 percent of the Catholic church in the United States, "they account for 12 percent of all Catholic seminary students nationwide. And the majority of those are Vietnamese."
