To those for whom religious "preference" is of no more consequence than any other lifestyle choice -- something like Saab or Volvo, Nationals or Orioles, medium-rare or rare, chardonnay or chablis -- the recent document from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, clarifying once again the self-understanding of the Catholic Church vis-a-vis other Christian communities as that self-understanding was expressed at the Second Vatican Council, can only sound strange, even offensive. To those who take seriously Christ's promise that he would preserve his Church in truth through the power of the Holy Spirit, the CDF clarification (approved by Pope Benedict XVI) is an invitation to serious theological conversation. That conversation emphatically includes theologically serious Christian believers in non-Catholic Christian communities. So let's try a little theology.

Continue »

The current press conniption over Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta amounts to a tempest in a teapot, although one that illustrates the media's ignorance about the spiritual lives of saints far more than it does the life and struggles of Mother Teresa.

That the diminutive Albanian nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner had, for decades, experienced a sense of living in a spiritual desert had been well known to those paying attention, ever since excerpts from the "positio," the critical biography prepared on behalf of her beatification cause, were published before her beatification by Pope John Paul II in October 2003; those interested may wish to consult Carol Zaleski's insightful and sensitive article, "Mother Teresa's Dark Night," in the May 2003 issue of First Things. So there is, in fact, no news here (except, perhaps, the "news" that religion reporters an editors should put www.firstthings.com into their computers).

Continue »

Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo" and that deeply misleading staple of high school English courses, "Inherit the Wind," have thoroughly confused our understanding of the relationship between biblical faith and the emergence of modern science. To clear the cobwebs, ask yourself a question: Why did the scientific method, which assumes that the natural world is rationally knowable, arise in the West, and not elsewhere? Other cultures had made important advances in mathematics and technology, but it was the West that invented the scientific method. Why?

Continue »