Faith Digest

Posted: 3/02/07

Faith Digest

No pope for Anglicans. An Anglican-Catholic commission has warned that doctrinal disputes within the Anglican Communion are an obstacle to unity between the two churches. An upcoming report by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission lays out areas of doctrinal agreement and disagreement between the two churches and outlines ways to continue ecumenical dialogue. But contrary to rumors, officials said, the report does not propose a plan for Anglicans to unite under the pope. “Talk of plans to reunite the two communions is, sadly, much exaggerated,” the commission said. The “present context” of Anglican dispute would make it premature to issue a formal Anglican-Catholic statement of shared beliefs, which was the goal set by Anglican and Catholic bishops who launched the commission in 2000.

Beliefnet names ‘most influential black spiritual leaders.’ Two Texas pastors—T.D. Jakes of the Potter’s House in Dallas and Kirbyjohn Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston—have been listed among the 17 “most influential black spiritual leaders” by Beliefnet, an interfaith website. “Whether inspiring their congregations to stand up against social injustice or urging a focus on God-centered family values, African-American religious leaders are a crucial component of a rich and diverse spiritual landscape,” the Beliefnet editors wrote in their introduction to the list. Others on the list include William Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, and Gardner Taylor, senior pastor emeritus of Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Catholic parochial schools take dip. The glory days of the U.S. Catholic parochial school are gone, according to a new University of Notre Dame report. Enrollment in the nation’s 7,800 elementary and secondary Catholic schools is now about 2.4 million, after peaking near 5 million in the mid-1960s. Recent school closures wiped out the modest enrollment increases of the 1990s. The nuns and priests who educated generations of American Catholics are almost gone, retired or deceased. Collections and Mass attendance are down. Faculty salaries are too low, while tuitions and costs are rising, the report noted. Internal and external trends are responsible for the declines, including demographic shifts, the “changing role of religion in the lives of American Catholics” and an increase in other educational options. Moreover, only 3 percent of Latino families send their children to Catholic schools, despite the nation’s rising Hispanic Catholic population.

Canadians most tolerant toward Muslims. Canadians have the most tolerant attitudes toward Muslims among citizens of 23 Western countries, according to a new international study that measured levels of fear of Islam in each nation. More than 32,000 respondents from 19 European countries, plus Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, were asked the question: “Would you like to have a person from this group as your neighbor?” Of nearly 2,000 people surveyed in Canada, only 6.5 percent said they would not like to live beside a Muslim. Respondents in Greece (20.9 percent), Belgium (19.8), Norway (19.3) and Finland (18.9) were most likely to answer “No” to the question. Results in the United States and Britain were 10.9 and 14.1 percent, respectively. The average percentage of negative responses in all Western countries was 14.5 percent. The study, called “Love Thy Neighbor,” was co-written by economists Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and John Mangan of the University of Queensland in Australia.