Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen notes: 

First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of [...]

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Nicholas Kristof has an article in the New York Times (The Boys Have Fallen Behind) about the growing alienation of boys from education and about the consequent decline in their academic achievement. This decline is disguised by the fact that the people at the top of most professions are still male; but under them the [...]

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Patrick Welsh, who teaches in the Washington D.C, school system, has diagnosed the problem of poor academic achievement among black students: Making the Grade Isn’t about Race. It’s About Parents.

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”
In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class [...]

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The NYT article on the Calvinist and ultra-masculine Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle is not too bad. Driscoll, by rejecting the prissiness of much of evangelical America, has some success in reaching rough young men with the gospel.
 
The theological analysis in the article uses stereotypes. Calvinists believe in total depravity – but [...]

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Dietrich Bonheoffer denounced liberal Proetstantism because it preached cheap grace: “Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
 A leading minister of the United Church in Canda has decided the the [...]

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In Chapter Seven of my book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity (available on line at another part of this web site) I examine the strong streak of erotic mysticism in Catholicism, a streak that turns to turn men off. 
Kath.net has a brief article on Marcelo Rossi, a Brazilian priest who is a hit [...]

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Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz in the Tagesspost (acknowledgement to Kath.net) has asked that the church consider the possibility of opening the diaconate to women. Gerl-Falkovitz is a professor of the philosophy of religion at the Technical University of Dresden. I have heard her speak at the International Institute of Culture’s seminars in Eichstaett, Germany. She is known [...]

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