“Baseball is indeed the fulcrum on which the narrative is balanced — and the game’s storylines are essential to the tale — but this is only because the novel is actually about sacrifice — about a series of sacrifices that various characters make in order to advance the good of others.”
The incident took place as Jerusalem spiraled into a weekend of violence as seven Israelis were killed on Jan. 27 at a synagogue after prayers and another shooting the next day left two Israelis injured just outside of the Old City in the Palestinian village of Silwan.
“In a nutshell, the decline in religious engagement does clearly have potential negative unintended consequences for mental and physical health,” says one psychology professor.
In his formal talk to the congress, Pope Francis said that “authentic religiosity” is needed to fight fundamentalism and extremism in religion and to show the world that it has no reason to distrust or have “contempt for religion as if it were a destabilizing force in modern society.”
In a new book with fellow sociologist Jean-Louis Schlegel that came out this past spring, “Vers l’implosion? Entretiens sur le présent et l’avenir du catholicisme” (“Toward Implosion: Interviews on the Present and the Future of Catholicism”), she dissects the causes of the current model and suggests possible changes.
Data show that while religion is important to many young Catholics, they’re not seeking it out in the same way or following the same practices their parents and grandparents did.
A senior U.N. official has urged faith-based groups to help reach a global agreement to curb plastic pollution, amid experts warning that single-use or disposable plastics were choking the planet.
This book — a collection of 14 essays mostly by academics — doesn’t solve any problems, but it shows that divisions and culture wars are nothing new in a society where religion and politics often combust.
