SHREWSBURY, Mo.—On a recent rainy Saturday, about 125 Catholics packed a basement conference room, many of them older, most of them lay people. Many were representing their parishes.

They gathered here to learn how to spread the faith, a concept that is both fundamental to Christianity and nearly foreign to modern Roman Catholics.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Three days after Pope Francis appealed for greater inter-religious dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, a high-profile Italian Muslim who converted to Catholicism and was baptized by Pope Benedict XVI announced that he will leave the church to protest its soft stance against Islam.

Update (Mar. 15): We've updated our list of must-read articles on Pope Francis. Updates now appear first on the list.

News outlets went wild Wednesday after the surprisingly quick election of a new leader for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, flooding social media and online news feeds with countless articles on Pope Francis.

Presuming you don't have time to read everything—and assuming you've already read CT's coverage of reactions from American and Argentine evangelical leaders (including Luis Palau)—here are CT's picks for the most helpful articles on former archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio (in no particular order).

Updates appear first on the list.

Update (March 1): Pope Bendedict XVI officially stepped down from his position as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics yesterday. He is the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years, but World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) Theological Commission chairman Thomas Schirrmacher, a Protestant expert on the Catholic Church, says he has not been surprised by the events.

"Pope Benedict had made it unmistakably clear...that when a pope is physically or mentally no longer in a position to lead the Church, he has the right, “indeed under certain circumstances the duty,” to step down," Schirrmacher said in a WEA interview. "Presumably it will not be the last resignation due to reasons of age but should rather become the rule."
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Update (Feb. 5): After a windfall of criticism last week, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), a nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital in Colorado, has backtracked on its legal argument that, under state law, a fetus is not a person with legal rights.

According to NBC News, "On Monday, the hospital and the state's bishops released a statement acknowledging it was 'morally wrong' to make [that] legal argument."

RNS has the full story.
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The United Kingdom's once-a-decade census indicates that the proportion of Protestants in Northern Ireland is declining, dropping below majority status for the first time.

(Update: The Vatican has critiqued press coverage for entirely missing the main message of the book.)

The newborn Christ may have been placed in a manger filled with hay, but that does not mean donkeys, cattle, and sheep were present at his birth. At least, so claims Pope Benedict XVI in his newest book, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives.

The global economic crisis is leading European cities to reconsider centuries-old tax breaks to churches.

A set of laws exempts the Roman Catholic Church and other recognized religious and nonprofit organizations from paying property tax in Spain, according to Time magazine.

Catholicism being the dominant religion in Spain, church properties currently are used as schools, homes, parks, sports fields, and restaurants. The Church's privileged status exempts it from an estimated 3 billion euros in taxes.

In ongoing disputes between national Catholic groups and the federal government, victims of sex trafficking might suffer the most damage.

The Washington Post reported this week on mounting friction between the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS decided in late September to end a contract underwriting the conference's service to trafficking victims. The $19 million contract, awarded to USCCB since 2006 under President Bush's faith-based funding initiative, helped provide housing and counseling to trafficking victims.

Following church teaching, USCCB had refused to refer victims to contraceptives or abortion services. HHS officials decided to award the grant to three other groups, despite some HHS staff's protests that the USCCB should continue to get funding based on its score from an independent review board. The Post reports the review board scored two of the competing groups significantly lower than USCCB.

Citing anti-Catholic discrimination, USCCB is now threatening legal action, and recently formed an Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty. Mary Ann Walsh, USCCB's leading spokesperson, wrote on its media blog:

. . . [A]t least until now, the U.S. government sought to sincerely address the issue [of human trafficking]. It asked USCCB for help when regional programs weren’t reaching victims outside the usual hotspots for trafficking. USCCB created an extraordinary program in conjunction with several partners, Christian and secular, including Lutheran Family Services, Jewish Family Services, Salvation Army, YMCA affiliates, domestic violence shelters, World Relief and others. Only one-third of its subcontractors were Catholic-affiliated, but with the USCCB infrastructure they reached virtually everywhere in the USA. . . .
Apparently HHS rules about the benefits of experience and cost effectiveness can be waived. So can rules about being fully operational by a certain date. What can’t be waived is the new, albeit unwritten rule of HHS, the ABC rule – Anybody But Catholics.

The recent dispute is not the first between national Catholic bodies and HHS, most notably its August mandate requiring all private health insurers to cover abortion and contraceptives with no out-of-pocket charges or co-payments. At a heated House subcommittee meeting today on the rule, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo wrote that Catholic groups "will have no choice but to stop providing health care and other services to the needy who are not Catholic, or to stop providing health coverage to their own employees." DiNardo wrote,

Is the drive to maximize contraceptive coverage, even among those who do not want it, such an urgent national priority that it transcends concerns about religious liberty, our nation’s ‘First Freedom,’ as well as concerns about women’s health and about access to basic health care for men and women alike?

In a National Review Online op-ed today, Steven Wagner charges that HHS's recent decisions will only hurt sex trafficking victims more. The HHS human trafficking program director from 2003-2006, Wagner noted:

The provision of abortions is banned by the Hyde Amendment and the provision of contraceptives is banned by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, so HHS is demanding that service providers do things which HHS cannot pay for.
Worst of all, the provision of abortions or contraception to victims of human trafficking who have not yet been rescued is tantamount to aiding and abetting the crime of exploitation. Current victims cannot, by definition, provide informed consent, so the only beneficiary is the trafficker/pimp.

For more on how U.S. Christians are helping victims of sex trafficking, visit This Is Our City, which is spotlighting trafficking all week.

Justice John Paul Stevens’s announcement today that he will retire this summer will add to speculation (already voiced by NPR’s Morning Edition, The Washington Post, and others) that the next Supreme Court term will open with no Protestants on the court.

Morning Edition wonders if it’s okay even to talk about it. Both the Post and NPR wonder if it even really matters. “Clearly, the court thinks of itself as post-religious,” says the Post’s Robert Barnes. “But perceptions matter.”

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Frank Lockwood says it doesn’t matter: the divide today isn’t between Protestants and Catholics but between traditionalists and liberals in both camps. “Most evangelical leaders, I’m guessing, would rather see a Catholic like Scalia than a Protestant like Stevens.”

(The debate on this question got rather heated when Catholics became the majority on the court in 2006. A key issue: Is there a reason there are no evangelicals on the Court?)

Some headlines are just made for comments threads, even if you feel a little bad about poking fun at a guy's name.

From Catholic News Agency: Bishop George Lucas appointed to Archdiocese of Omaha

"He'd better not take the Yub Yub song out of Revelation."

"I don't care what the archbishop says. Goliath did not shoot first!"

"All excommunications over the creation of Howard the Duck are hereby withdrawn."

"The good news: The archdiocese will no longer collect offerings. The bad news: It's retaining all merchandising rights."

Sorry, archbishop.

Despite the Catholic Church's attempts to stop the procedure, a 9-year-old Brazilian girl whose stepfather allegedly sexually abused her had an abortion Wednesday after doctors warned that giving birth might result in death. Physicians at the hospital in the coastal town of Recife said the girl - 15 weeks pregnant with twins and weighing 80 pounds - could not give birth without putting her life at risk.

In response, on Thursday Jos? Cardoso Sobrinho, archbishop of Olinda and Recife, excommunicated the girl's mother, who authorized the abortion, and the doctors involved.

"The law of God is above any human law," the archbishop said in an interview with Globo television that aired Thursday. "So when a human law, i.e., a law enacted by legislators, is against the law of God, that human law has no value. The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion, have incurred excommunication." Excommunication is the Catholic Church's severest censure for an individual, who can no longer participate in church of receive the sacraments, except that of Reconciliation.

Amy Welborn, one of the longest-running and most prominent Roman Catholic bloggers, announced yesterday that her husband, Michael Dubruiel, "collapsed this morning at the gym and was not able to be revived despite the efforts of EMTs and hospital personnel." Our prayers are with Amy, her children, and their family.

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., best known among evangelicals for his ecumenical work with Evangelicals and Catholics Together, died at 6:30 this morning at a Jesuit infirmary in Bronx, New York, first reported by In All Things, the blog of national Catholic weekly America. His health had been failing from the effects of childhood polio. He was 90 years old.

Dulles was widely considered to be one of America's top Catholic theologians, rising to the position of cardinal in 2001 without having first been a bishop, and was personally visited by Pope Benedict XVI in April.

An account of Dulles' ascendancy to cardinal can be found here. Collections of Dulles' work can be found here and here.

Update: Reactions from ECT evangelicals.

Dulles was the preeminent Catholic theologian in North America for generations and deeply informed Catholic, evangelical and ecumenical theology, said Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School and longtime participant in Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT).

"It's a great loss to the Church," said George. "He's irreplaceable. There's nobody in Catholic theology near his stature."

"This is a very serious blow to the whole Christian movement," said Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and co-founder of ECT. "I am deeply grieved by Cardinal Dulles' passing."

Dulles had been highly active in ECT, an ecumenical group of 10 evangelical and 10 Catholic theologians first convened by Colson and Richard Neuhaus in 1994, since its inception and never missed a meeting until last year, said George. Even after a stroke left Dulles unable to speak, the cardinal attended ECT meetings and participated in discussions via keyboard.

George, who worked directly with Dulles on drafts of ECT statements, said the cardinal was skilled at keeping the ecumenical group focused on its goals and reframing discussions to move past impasses.

"He's been especially encouraging to evangelicals?. He saw the importance of evangelicals and Catholics working together for unity," said George.

Dulles will remain influential as the ecumenical movement moves on. "We have a lot of wisdom still to garner from his writings. He will continue to be a major figure we refer to in the future," said George. "We will continue to follow in his train as best we can with the Lord's help."

First there was non-Catholic Sally Quinn, co-editor of On Faith and wife of my hero, displaying incredible religious ignorance or insensitivity when she took communion at the funeral for her friend, Tim Russert. Here was her reaction:

I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started "On Faith" and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I'm so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him.

Wow. Really missed the point there, unless Russert died for her sins (not to denigrate the saintly journalist or our Lord).

Then a University of Central Florida student claimed he was receiving death threats for "smuggling" the communion wafer out of church.

Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn't eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it.

Catholics worldwide became furious.

"Would you believe this isn't hyperbole?" asked PZ Myers, the often-offensive atheist blogger.

Myers thought the reaction of many Catholics was ridiculous (I agree), and let his readers know it in a manner with which I don't agree: by trashing those who think Christ's body has taken the form of a "GOD--MNED CRACKER!"

"There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so god--mned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid," he wrote. "And nothing makes them stupider than religion."

Evangelizing persons of other faiths, or even committed atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers, is tricky business in our pluralistic and increasingly politicized religious landscape. In Western cultures where tolerance is preeminent among public virtues, such efforts are generally met with scorn, chastisement, and much journalistic gnashing of teeth. In other parts of the world, interfaith gospelers are subject to far worse than a tongue-lashing from the cultural gatekeepers. Such activity may win them spots in jail, or cost them and their families their livelihood, if not their lives.

Too much press coverage misunderstood what the Vatican was doing in issuing its recent list of serious sins. (See the excellent media criticism piece by Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion.)

But as you engage in serious self-examination this Holy Week, you might want to read a light-hearted op/ed posted today at the Indianapolis Star website (the piece originated with sister newspaper Noblesville Ledger).

Ledger columnist Jane Younce reflects on the new list of sins and finds them, well, not as personally challenging as the old Seven Deadlies: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Those were sins that everyone had to avoid. Whereas the new list seems to be dominated by sins of the rich and powerful: embryo-destroying stem cell research, environmental pollution, poverty, excessive wealth, etc.

It's not that we can do nothing about embryonic stem-cell research or environmental pollution. I recycle and use compact fluorescents, but I don't really think the Vatican is counting the occasional unrecycled paper cup among the mortal sins. That warning about environmental pollution is surely for the captains of industry.

The danger that Jane Younce's delightful column hints at is this: It is easy to feel righteous about recycling that urethane foam milkshake cup and to forget about the gluttony that I abetted by buying that milkshake.

But don't let me blather on. Just read Younce's op/ed.

Lithuanian Catholics have an incredibly odd, and I would say bigoted, Lent tradition of dressing up as heavily stereotyped, grotesque Jews -- haggling peddlers with big noses, sidelocks and hideous features. The Forward has the story and reports that Jews in Vilna don't complain because they don't want to cause conflict.

During Carnival - or Uzgavenes, as it is known in Lithuania - Catholics from around the world congregate for a feast of foods prohibited during Lent. The festival usually involves a parade or circus, with attendees in masks and costumes. But in Vilnius - commonly known to Jews as Vilna - participants traditionally dress and act "as Jews," a feat that generally calls for masks with grotesque features, beards and visible ear locks and that is often accompanied by peddling and by stereotypically Jewish speech.

And I thought Mardi Gras was a strange, unholy tradition.

The Wall Street Journal today interviewed Charles Zech, director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova, which has just launched an M.B.A. program for clergy. The degree is geared specifically for Catholics priests, following the clergy-abuse scandal and, more recently, a church embezzlement crisis. "Our center on church management surveyed chief financial officers of U.S. Catholic dioceses in 2005 and found that 85% had experienced embezzlements in the previous five years," Zech said. He continued:

There clearly are serious questions about internal financial controls at the parish level, and we are now doing research on parish advisory councils and asking questions about such things as who handles the Sunday collection and who has check-writing authority. Does the same person count the collection, deposit the money and then reconcile the checkbook? Obviously, you're just asking for problems if it's the same person; you can imagine the temptations.

Evangelical colleges and universities have launched M.B.A. programs, which can be financially attractive to CCCU schools who are often very dependent on tuition-paying students. But a church M.B.A. I don't think even the Leadership Network has thought of, though evangelical churches are not immune to fraud.

Leon Podles, senior editor at Touchstone, has a new book out: Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.

Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, which is not unlike Touchstone, didn't like it. In the recent issue, he called Podles's book rambling and shrill. "Even righteous anger does not justify the author's suspension of caution and charity in attributing motives," Neuhaus wrote.

Today, on Touchstone's blog, senior editor S.M. Hutchens struck back on Podles's behalf. He callsFirst Things "the finest journal of its type" and Neuhaus "genuinely likeable and for whom I have the highest regard," but then comes a poem that begins:

Ah, good Father Richard, on hearing screaming boys,
Is just as right as ever in keeping out the noise.
No rambling rants like Podles’ should ever make one think
The faith is made of suffering more than stately rows of ink.

The poem goes on. As do the comments. Perhaps it's better if, on this item, you comment there rather than here.

The other day Pope Benedict XVI reiterated official church teaching that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church, that the Orthodox Church is defective, and that Protestant churches are not true churches. The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued two documents holding that that "ecclesial communities originating from the Reformation [i.e. Protestant congregations] are … not churches in the proper sense of the word." Some Protestants have taken offense. Not me.

I would have been far more worked up if Benedict had said (to borrow a phrase from Khan in Star Trek II) that we are all just "one big, happy fleet." You were expecting him to endorse Willow Creek? He is the pope, after all.

In this age of mushy moral equivalence, I think drawing some bright lines is helpful (even if I disagree with where the pope drew them). While Catholics and Protestants agree on many key areas of doctrine (such as the deity of Christ), we differ on other vital matters of faith (such as the canon, papal succession and authority, etc.). While some evangelicals convert to Catholicism and others can ask whether the Reformation is finally over, I find the pontiff's forthrightness refreshing. Especially in light of such recent silliness as an Episcopal priest embracing Islam while declining to give up her leadership position in the church--as if Jesus and Allah are one and the same! No, real and crucial differences between the RCC and other branches of the Christian tree remain.

By all means, let's keep talking, remembering that there can be no real dialogue without difference. And let's keep working together to better society and build (as John Paul II said) a culture of life. We Protestants and Catholics may differ on religious doctrine, but in our best moments we are united in our desire to glorify God by serving our fellow human beings.

So to the pope who isn't afraid to ruffle some feathers, I respectfully say, "Thank you, sir. May we have another?"

According to LifeNews.com, Catholic politicians are deeply offended that Pope Benedict wants the church to be the church. Benedict recently said that Catholic politicians who vote for policies that support abortion automatically excommunicate themselves. In response, a group of these politicians said, the penalty of excommunication "offend(s) the very nature of the American experiment and do(es) a great disservice to the centuries of good work the church has done."

God forbid that the church would do anything to question the American experiment.

The headlines were so predictable I almost didn't read the stories: "Pope Opens Trip with Remarks Against Abortion" (New York Times) and "Pope Stresses Opposition to Abortion" (Associated Press).

Is the Pope Catholic?

But there seems to be some news here. On his flight to Brazil, the Pope made some remarks that seemed to condemn not only women who have abortions and the doctors who provide them, but also the polticians who vote for legalization of abortion--as they did recently in Mexico, providing for legal abortions up to 12 weeks gestation.

Papal spokesman (when it's the Vatican, you can use the gender-specific term) Federico Lombardi immediately tried to soften the possible implication of the Pope's words. But then, well, I'll let the New York Times tell the story:

The pope's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, quickly issued a clarification that played down his words, but then issued a statement approved by the pope that seemed to confirm a new gravity on politicians who allow abortion.

"Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist," the statement said, and politicians who vote that way should "exclude themselves from communion."

So, this turns the clock back to the 2004 election controversy over St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke telling pro-choice Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry that he should not receive communion when campaigning on Burke's turf. If memory serves, Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick tried to soften the potential impact of Burke's statements. But now that Benedict has spoken, it looks like Burke may have been right.

The automatic self-excommunication that applies to women who have abortions and their doctors also applies to legislators. This doesn't mean that priests are supposed to become the Communion police, but it does mean that the Church considers it a pretty grievous thing for a Catholic politician who has voted to legalize abortion to present him or herself to receive Communion.

Christianity Today's June 2004 editorial on the dispute between Burke and Kerry can be read in the CT Library (paid archive).

Last year, just before the students returned to the campus of the Roman Catholic Georgetown University, the school's Protestant chaplain informed six evangelical student ministries that they were being "disafilliated." That is, they could not use campus facilities for their events, could not advertise their events on campus, and could not use the Georgetown name or logo.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was one of the affected ministries, and the irony could not have been sharper: the daughter of IVCF president Alec Hill was a Georgetown student.

InterVarsity has been fighting legal battles at public campuses defending students' right to join voluntary associations on campus that could hold to the standards of Christian belief and behavior. There have been some very positive results from these legal actions at, for example, Rutgers (2002) and the University of Wisconsin-Superior (2007).

Georgetown, though, is a private, church-related university, and it had the legal right to ban any non-Catholic group from its campus. But that's no way to run a university. As Alec Hill said at the time, "As a parent, I am surprised Georgetown as a major university would close down freedom of association for their students. That seems contrary to Georgetown's ethos. It's an open marketplace of ideas."

Well, today I received a news release from IVCF announcing that Georgetown had completely restructured things, clearing the way for IVCF and other similar ministries to reaffiliate. Read InterVarsity's news release here.

While IVCF had to bring legal pressure elsewhere, genuine dialogue and listening seemed to work in this case. A university open the free exchange of ideas! What a blast from the past!

Slate reports on the potential return of the Latin Mass to the Roman church. "Traditionalists prefer the power of Latin to what they see as the banality of the liturgy in English. And many Catholics associate the Latin Mass with the church's glorious heritage of ancient music and solemnity in worship - a heritage some say has been lost in the liturgical changes that have been enacted over the last few decades."
So will Protestants pick up the "hocus pocus" jeers of the Reformation? Or, perhaps the jeers were never dropped.

How many "base communities" are there in Brazil? And how healthy is the liberation theology that spawned them?

The New York Times run-up story to Pope Benedict's visit to Brazil wants you to believe that reports of liberation theology's demise are greatly exaggerated. Despite official attempts to suppress this Marxist version of politicized Catholicism, says the Times, there are 80,000 active base communities in Brazil's vast territory.

The Associated Press is more conservative. It estimates the number that have been active in the past at about 60,000.

Neither the Times nor the AP sources its numbers.

The Economist, a news magazine that is supposed to be good with numbers, does not offer an estimate. It only reports that the notably pro-liberation 1968 Medellin conference of bishops "spawned innumerable ?base communities,'" and reports that their numbers are now in decline.

The numbers the Economist does cite show an overall decline in the Roman Catholic market share in Brazil, a point also made in the AP report.

In Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, the church has lost adherents at a rate of 1% a year since 1991, mainly to Pentecostal churches. Fewer than three-quarters of Brazilians are now Catholics while 15% are Protestants (known locally as "evangelicals").

For the sake of comparison, the World Christian Database estimates more than 80% of the overall population of Latin American is Roman Catholic.

The shifts are not only in the direction of Pentecostal Protestantism, says the Economist, but also in the direction of charismatic-style Catholicism. At least half of active Catholics in Brazil have gravitated toward the charismatic movement. "The Catholic response to the Pentecostal challenge is to imitate it."

I've seen more surprising news, but Francis Beckwith's decision rejoin the Roman Catholic Church will send some kind of tremors through the Evangelical Theological Society, which he served as president. Beckwith, associate professor of church-state studies at Baylor University, has resigned as ETS president but said he will maintain his membership. Anyone reading the comments on Beckwith's blog can attest: No, the Reformation is not over.