World Religions News

(RNS) — Across the country, scores of catechumens were baptized into the Catholic Church for Easter this year. Many of these new Catholics were young people. Even though precise figures won’t be available for some time, there is enough anecdotal evidence from both pastors and secular media to draw attention.

Whether this amounts to a Catholic revival remains to be seen. I hope so, but I doubt it. In the latest year for which we have data, 2024, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown University-affiliated research center that studies the Catholic Church, reports that 34,501 adults were baptized into the Catholic Church. This is up from the pandemic year, 2020, when only 25,356 were baptized, but still down from 2019, when 35,799 adults were baptized.

And the numbers of adult baptisms in the past were significantly higher, according to CARA: 118,622 in 1964; 80,035 in 1974; 87,996 in 1984; 66,886 in 1994; 76,605 in 2004; and 42,751 in 2014.

Clearly, the number of baptisms has been generally decreasing since 1964. It would take a huge increase in adult baptisms to get anywhere near the numbers we had then. And until that happens, we should not speak of a Catholic revival.

Since then, the number of priests and religious has also declined significantly, while the number of people who have left the church has gone up. Church attendance is also way down, which research has found consistently. 

Some have personal explanations for these declines. Reactionaries blame the Second Vatican Council, conservatives blame the excesses of liberal pastors and theologians, liberals say that Vatican II did not go far enough, and reformers blame clericalism and the sex abuse crisis.

All of these explanations are too simplistic. The decline began long before clerical sex abuse became known. And if liberal excesses drove people out of the church, why did the numbers continue to decline during the papacies of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI? If the Catholic Church needs to be more liberal or conservative, why are both liberal and conservative churches in the United States seeing declines?

And for those who think that people leave the church over doctrine, it should be noted that many people stay Catholic even when they disagree with the church about issues like birth control, abortion, migration, women priests, peace and social justice. It is also highly probable that many people joining the church disagree with it on one or more of these issues. Perhaps doctrine is not as important as bishops and priests think.

Catholics do have some unique features that have changed and probably had an impact on numbers. Prior to Vatican II, non-Catholic spouses tended to convert. At a minimum, they had to promise to raise their children Catholic. Catholics also went to church at high rates because the church told them that if they missed Mass on Sunday, they committed a mortal sin and would go to hell. Research shows that if a married couple is of the same religion and they go to church as a family on Sunday, their children are more likely to stay with their church.

In Europe, where Christianity thrived for centuries, we find an even more secular and unchurched population than in the U.S. We thought we were exceptional, but perhaps we were just slower to change.

We know, for example, that rural areas are more religious than urban. And even in cities, people with strong roots in their ethnic neighborhoods are also more religious. Those who move away from family and neighbors also tend to lose contact with their religion.

In villages and ethnic neighborhoods, if you were not at church, the neighbors noticed and commented. In the past, social pressure kept people going to church even when they no longer wanted to. Now, nobody cares if you don’t go to church. It is a personal choice, a commitment you have to make on your own.

In countries where Christianity is part of the cultural fabric, churches become lazy because they have a guaranteed audience. Like monopolies, they do not listen to their customers (congregants), they do not innovate, and their marketing (evangelizing) becomes boring.

Young people today say that they are interested in spirituality and are longing for community. Almost by definition, that is what Christianity is supposed to provide.

The Catholic Church has a rich tradition of spirituality, but it needs to do more than simply repackage old products. Contemporary spirituality needs to respect developments in psychology, science and culture.

The church also needs to be more welcoming if people are to see a community that they want to join. This means more than offering coffee and doughnuts after Mass. The church must be a place where people are spiritually nourished and feel welcomed and at home. That would cause a real Catholic revival.

In contradistinction to those whose intact moral compass tells them that violently attacking another human being is immoral regardless of identity categories, the progressive imagination doesn’t find immorality in the act of violence at all. It locates morality in identity, not conduct.

The post It Was Never About the Victims appeared first on Jewish Journal.

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV said Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization was “truly unacceptable” and said any attacks on civilian infrastructure violate international law.

In some of his strongest comments yet against the war, the American pope urged Americans and other people of good will to contact their political leaders and congressional representatives to demand they reject war and work for peace.

“Today as we all know there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable,” Leo said as he left his country house in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

He was referring to Trump’s threat that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran fails to meet his latest deadline to strike a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Leo recalled his Easter appeal for peace and to reject war, “especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate, and which is not resolving anything.”

He invited all people of good will to contact their political leaders and congressional representatives to remind them that attacks on civilian infrastructure are “against international law” and also are a “sign of the hatred, the division, the destruction human beings are capable of, and we all want to work for peace.”

In recent weeks, history’s first U.S.-born pope has escalated the tone of his opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran after initially issuing muted appeals for peace and dialogue.

Last week for the first time, Leo publicly named Trump in saying he hoped the U.S. president was truly “looking for an off-ramp.”

The Vatican has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality and it is rare for a pope to name a political leader or country specifically in a critical way. But the war in Iran has nudged even a reserved pope to break with typical protocol.

On Tuesday, Leo didn’t cite Trump by name but in comments in English he urged people to contact their political leaders and congressional representatives “to ask them, tell them to work for peace and to reject war.”

“We have a worldwide economic crisis, an energy crisis, (a) situation in the Middle East of great instability, which is only provoking more hatred throughout the world,” he said.

He said the message to political leaders should be: “Come back to the table, let’s talk, let’s look for solutions in a peaceful way and let’s remember especially the innocent children, the elderly, sick, so many people who have already become or will become victims of this continued warfare.”

The Vatican is particularly concerned about how the Iran conflict has spread to a renewed war in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. The Vatican fears for Christians in southern Lebanon, who are an important bulwark for the church in the region.

Earlier in the day, the Vatican released a special message from Leo to the residents of Debel, Lebanon after a convoy carrying over 40 tons of aid led by the Vatican was prevented from arriving with an Easter shipment. It was canceled for what Lebanon’s Maronite Church said were “security reasons.”

(RNS) — Investigative reporter Amy Littlefield loved Agatha Christie murder mysteries and especially the character Miss Marple, the older lady detective. So, in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the 50-year-old right to abortion, Littlefield put on her inner Miss Marple to investigate who was responsible for killing the law.

In her book, “Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights,” Littlefield interviewed some of the leading figures in the anti-abortion movement. She made no bones about her own views. She is a feminist, a fierce believer of the right to an abortion and an atheist. She is also the mother of two children.

She nonetheless scored interviews with people such as Paul Haring, who first approached Catholic bishops with the idea that would become the Hyde Amendment, the 1976 provision that prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions for poor women. She interviewed Richard Viguerie, the pioneer of political direct mail and the “funding father” of conservative strategy; Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, which in 1987 began blockading the entrances to abortion clinics; and Mark Lee Dickson, the pastor who led the charge for “sanctuary city for the unborn” ordinances.

Littlefield also interviewed leaders of the abortion rights movement to try to understand how they view their failure to stanch the anti-abortion forces. She paints poignant accounts of two women who died as a result of botched abortions, Rosie Jimenez and Becky Bell.

The book offers a sobering and compassionate critique of society’s failure to protect women — and especially poor women. RNS spoke to Littlefield, who lives in Boston, via Zoom. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

How did you get all these leaders of the conservative anti-abortion movement to agree to talk to you?

I honestly think being upfront about my point of view and my motives was helpful. I think there’s a huge amount of skepticism and even vitriol in the conservative space toward the media right now. As someone who was able to say, “Look, I am left-leaning. I am pro-abortion rights, but I still want to talk to you, because you pulled off this incredibly impressive victory and defeated Roe v. Wade, and frankly, I want to understand it better.” It was appealing to them, to get to tell that story of triumph.

Many of those anti-abortion campaigners had sincere religious motivations. They also identified with unborn fetuses. Explain that.

As a feminist, I’m so used to thinking about the anti-abortion movement as being motivated by misogyny and by a desire to control women, and I don’t think that’s necessarily inaccurate. But when I would ask people what motivated them, they would say some version of “My anti-abortion activism will get me into heaven.” It just felt so simple, so transactional to me. I also found it a little poignant at times the way some of these men seem to identify with the unwanted fetus and to feel unwanted in some way themselves. Randall Terry talked about how, when his mom was pregnant with him, that it was an unintended pregnancy. Mark Lee Dickson, who is an anti-abortion pastor and creator of the “sanctuary city for the unborn” initiative, talked about seeing a connection between abortion and suicide and this idea that everybody should feel wanted. I’m not a psychologist, but it was a pattern I noticed that many of these men seem to have a really difficult time with the idea that a woman could reject a pregnancy.

Was religion driving them more than politics?

It’s all connected. Many of these men believe God communicates with them directly. They believe their interpretation of God’s plan for humanity is the correct one. Paul Haring is following the Catholic Church’s teachings and what he believes the world should look like based on that vision of the world. There are traditional gender roles for men and women, and becoming a mother is the highest possible role a woman could fulfill. It’s not right for a woman to prioritize her career or her hopes or dreams or even her health over the embryo or fetus that she’s carrying. And so, I think it’s all connected to this Christian right view of the world, and very much tied into the role that they see for women in society. Paul Haring didn’t hate all women, but he seemed to reserve his reverence for women who followed the path taken by the Virgin Mary and were willing to sacrifice their own bodies and well-being for the pregnancy they were carrying.

You also have criticism of the left and some of the leaders of the abortion rights movement. What mistakes do you think the left made?

The big mystery I was trying to solve is how it’s possible that a constitutional right that has long been supported by a majority of Americans was eliminated. One was a failure to really build a grassroots movement that focused on state legislatures. Most anti-abortion legislation came out of the states, not the federal government, including the law that was used to ultimately reverse Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court. The abortion rights movement did not have power in the red and purple states where these bills were being advanced.

Another was the huge focus on keeping abortion legal, which left out the people for whom abortion was not accessible. Groups like NARAL offered a limited vision of abortion rights centered on choice that families should be able to make independent of government intervention. On one level, it worked really effectively to win public support from moderates and conservatives who might not otherwise have supported abortion rights, but it had this unintended effect of making abortion sound like a conservative issue and allowing it to fit into a paradigm of limited government. And so the focus on choice rather than on the much more expansive framework of reproductive justice didn’t resonate with low-income folks for whom it was an economic issue. Many people make choices about an abortion based on what they can afford, and yet we don’t talk about it as an economic issue.

Your book focuses less on the death of Roe as on the annual funding of the Hyde Amendment. Why is that?

I saw the Hyde Amendment as the smoking gun in the death of abortion rights. The story starts almost immediately after Roe v. Wade was decided, when conservatives realized that if they weren’t able to ban abortion for everyone, they could ban abortion for poor women, who were far less popular than the legal right to abortion itself. And I tell the story of how strategic they were about it, how they used this sort of backdoor maneuver and tacked it onto an appropriations bill, and the arguments they made in support of the Hyde Amendment, namely that taxpayers — which is code for white male property owners — shouldn’t have to pay for abortions, and that somehow they were saving babies who might otherwise have been aborted because their parents were poor, and so they had this whole paradigm of like, saving Black babies. I think that foreshadowed the way that the anti-abortion movement would offer itself to conservatives as a civil rights movement for white people that copied the rhetoric and the moral righteousness of the Black-led civil rights movement — but offered a way to dismantle abortion rights and the rights of people of color while claiming that self-righteous banner. That was all contained in this early anti-abortion victory.

You speak with two women in the book who were for abortion rights and yet supported presidents who did their best to deny abortion rights. How do you explain that?

That was really chilling to meet a docent who volunteered her time at a library dedicated to the memory of Ronald Reagan, but didn’t realize Reagan had been anti-abortion. That shocked me, and I think it was emblematic of a lack of awareness of history among many voters, and also a lack of awareness of the abortion issue in general. The (other) woman I talked to outside the polling place in Amarillo, Texas, was voting against the anti-abortion ordinance in one of the most conservative areas of the country, and yet she was voting for Donald Trump, who had appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. She told me she was OK with Trump, having turned the issue back to the states. She lived in a state that had banned abortion completely, and so that was an example of being drawn in by this rhetoric Trump was using to position himself as a moderate after the Dobbs decision. And I think the lack of understanding and a high degree of confusion around anti-abortion laws — I think that serves politicians like Donald Trump, who rely on that confusion to be able to shape themselves as moderates as they may need to convince different factions of their electorate.

You end the book on a hopeful note. What gives you hope?

My argument is that justice doesn’t come in big, dramatic moments. It comes from people often acting behind the scenes, outside the political spotlight, doing the work of making justice themselves. And I see that work happening when I see city councils passing unprecedented ordinances to expand access to abortion. I see that in the clinicians who are risking their liberty to mail medication abortion into Texas and other states where abortion is banned. I see that in the daily work of abortion funds that are figuring out, in a very unglamorous way, how to get somebody in a rural corner of Alabama the abortion they need. I see it in the work of Black-led reproductive justice organizations who have long been advocating for a much more expansive vision of abortion rights within a wider framework of the right to parent, the right to raise kids safely — and who are doing that work in a moment where those are under direct threat by immigration raids, by increased criminalization of people of color. I see hope in the fact that organizations and activists who have more radical visions of reproductive justice are kind of making their way to the forefront in the wake of this monumental loss. We’re seeing the folks who have a more justice-oriented frame gaining momentum, I think even in this moment of profound loss.

NEW YORK (RNS) — Hundreds of protesters gathered at Union Square in Manhattan on Monday afternoon (April 6) for a Passover Seder to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies and corporations working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The demonstration, organized by Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, ended in front of the nearby headquarters of the technological giant Palantir. An ICE contractor since 2011, Palantir has a $30 million contract with the agency for ImmigrationOS, a platform tracking self-deportations and visa overstays. 

As hundreds of protesters chanted “Shut down Palantir” and “Let my people go” outside of the building, a dozen held a sit-in in the lobby. The group, all wearing T-shirts reading “Abolish ICE,” gathered around a black banner that read “ICE kidnaps, Palantir profits. Let my people go.”

Shortly after the protesters arrived in front of the headquarters, the New York Police Department entered the building and arrested about 15 protesters, according to JFREJ. Rabbi Abby Stein, formerly part-time rabbi of Brooklyn’s progressive Kolot Chayeinu congregation, was among the protesters who held the sit-in. 

“As Jews and as New Yorkers, we know all too well that when one group of people is surveilled, we are all in danger,” Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg, founder of the progressive Queens congregation Malkhut, told the crowd parked in front of the company’s headquarters.

Monday’s demonstration was part of JFREJ’s Seder in the Streets, one of the group’s long-standing Passover traditions. In 2024, JFREJ held one to denounce the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Last year, its members joined a Seder in the Street organized by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace to advocate for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student placed in ICE detention for his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. (JFREJ doesn’t “take a position on Zionism.“)

Passover, which is from April 1 to April 9 this year, commemorates the Exodus, the Jewish people’s journey out of Egypt. During the holiday, Jewish families gather for Seders, ceremonies meant to recount the story of the Exodus as told in the Haggadah, the Passover Seder booklet. Participants also eat bitter herbs and flatbread, called matzo, which symbolize parts of the story.

Seder in the Street events trace their roots to the 1969 Freedom Seder that brought together Jewish and African American activists to denounce the Vietnam War and the oppression of Black people.

Sophie Ellman-Golan, JFREJ’s communications director, said organizers chose to dedicate this year’s Seder to protesting ICE because Passover’s story of liberation brought them to consider those currently held in detention. “We can’t celebrate a liberation holiday when so many of our neighbors are in captivity right now or hiding in their homes because ICE is terrorizing them. We want an end to corporate collaboration and profiteering off of people’s pain,” she said. 

At Union Square, the group gathered around a large round banner, representing the Seder plate, painted in blue, reading “Melt ICE.” Attendees held other banners reading “Jews against deportation” and wore black T-shirts that said “We’re not going back” or “Abolish ICE.”

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani made an appearance alongside Phylisa Wisdom, executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, at the Union Square gathering. During his brief address, the mayor said the story of Passover generated hope for many oppressed groups.

“I know that in this moment, for many New Yorkers, that freedom feels out of reach, whether it be freedom from a suffocating cost-of-living crisis, freedom from a rising tide of antisemitism or freedom from the brutality of ICE,” Mamdani said.

The first Muslim to serve as New York’s mayor, he also praised JFREJ’s efforts to combat the “rising tide of Islamophobia in this city.” He was joined by other city officials, including former Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish, and Aliya Latif, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Faith-Based Partnerships.

Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, co-founder of Kolot Chayeinu, who led the evening’s liturgy, told participants the plight of immigrants resonated with Jewish Diaspora communities because of their own story of migration, but also because of the Passover story.

“If this holiday teaches us anything, it is that a better, liberated future is possible — one with no loopholes or carve-outs, and this time, nobody will be left behind,” said the rabbi, who also serves as the co-chair of the board of T’ruah, a Jewish human rights organization.

The group focused most of the evening on singing, bringing together liberation songs from different social justice movements and the Jewish Mizrahi tradition.

The group sang “Let My People Go/Go Down Moses,” which was rewritten for a fundraising campaign to bail people out of ICE detention in 2020, and “This Is for Our Families,” which was sung by protesters in Minneapolis during ICE’s Operation Metro Surge in January.

After sharing matzo, the group proceeded with the ritualistic blessing of the four cups. As he blessed the third cup of wine, Lander noted he had long struggled with God’s commandment to kill the firstborn of each Egyptian family as one of the plagues sent to Egypt. Lander, who is running for Congress, said a medieval midrash, or rabbinic commentary, helped him understand that Jews protected Egyptian children during the 10th plague.

“That’s a question we asked at our Seder table this year,” Lander said. “Would we take the children of Egyptian families, of Palestinian families, of Iranian families, of Lebanese families, of Venezuelan families, of Cuban families, into our home?”