The pope set aside his prepared text during his address and spoke candidly to the audience.

Using an analogy, Francis said "All religions are a path trying to reach God".

"They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all" he said.

"Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God."

No religious fights

In a moment of reflection, Pope Francis warned against religious division.

"If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn't', where will that lead us?" he asked.

"There's only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sheik, Muslim, Hindu, Christian and they are different paths [to God]."

When at war, first strategy is to take out communication

The pope's address was directed mainly at the youth, encouraging them to actively promote interfaith dialogue that maintains peace and understanding between religions.

"For interreligious dialogue among young people, it takes courage because youth is the time of courage in our lives" he said.

"You can also have this courage and use it for things that don't help you, or you can use it to move forward and engage in dialogue.

"One thing that helps a lot is to respect dialogue.

"I want to tell you something historical: every dictatorship in history, the first thing they do is take away dialogue" he said, urging the young people to be brave in engaging with those of different faiths.

"Why do I say this? Because overcoming these things helps in your interfaith dialogue since it is built upon respect for others. This is very important.

"If you dialogue as young people, you will dialogue more as adults, as citizens, as politicians" he said.

Giving further encouragement, Francis said "Do not be afraid", noting that fear is a dictatorial attitude that "can paralyse you".

Singapore: A religious mosaic

According to Pew Research Center, Singapore is ranked as one of the most diverse countries in the world in terms of religion.

Approximately 26% of Singaporeans identify as Buddhist, 18% as Muslim, 17% as Christian and 8% as Hindu. An additional 22% of Singaporeans do not identify with a specific religion.

Controversial comments

While the pope's message was welcomed by many, it has also sparked controversy among conservative Catholics.

Some fear that his remarks undermine Catholic doctrine, particularly the belief in Christ as the sole saviour of the world, and could discourage missionary efforts.

Despite this, the pope remained steadfast in his call for respect and dialogue.

Sources

• Vatican News
• Crux
• CNA

Too many people, when they grow older, give up on the God they learned about as children.

What they really need to do is think about God in a more mature way.

This can be a crisis of faith for many people, especially young people who can no longer relate to the God they learned about as children.

Too often, priests will tell them that this is a temptation.

They are told to have greater faith.

Hold on to their God and don't let go.

In truth, when someone is undergoing a crisis of faith, they may need to leave their old image of God for a new one.

We need to change our understanding of God as we mature, just as we need to change our understanding of our parents as we mature.

Psychologists, like Erik Erikson, teach us that humans go through stages of development as they mature.

The great Catholic mystics taught the same thing for centuries when they wrote of the purgative, contemplative and unitive ways. More recently, spiritual writers like James Fowler have used modern psychology to enrich our understanding of spiritual development.

My own simplified vision of spiritual development has three stages:

• turning away from sin,
• the practice of virtue and
• being embraced by God's love.

These stages are not airtight compartments but more a matter of emphasis.

All our lives involve turning away from sin and practicing virtue, but the emphasis will be different as we mature.

Many of the greatest saints were first great sinners.

They had to go through a conversion, reject sin, do penance and accept God's mercy.

Many Christian ministers put a great emphasis on this process, focusing on sin and the need for conversion in their preaching.

Their God is a lawgiver and judge and sometimes even a policeman.

God's wrath will fall on sinners, but his mercy will come to those who turn away from sin.

Pentecostals, Baptists and conservative Catholics are good at challenging sinners and calling them to repent.

This approach can be especially successful in dealing with prisoners and those with addictions.

Knowing that God is watching can also keep ordinary Christians from falling into sin.

The fear of getting caught and punished keeps many people from doing wrong. We are like children who behave because we don't want to be spanked.

The prayer life of a person at this stage of development is all about contrition, recognizing we are sinners and saying we are sorry.

If we hear the parable of the prodigal son, we identify with the prodigal and his brother, and how we are just like them.

We spend a lot of time examining our conscience and listing all the sins we have committed in confession.

At this stage, God can sometimes come across as arbitrary and vindictive.

When I was a child in the 1950s, we were taught that it was a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday or miss Mass on Sunday.

Adolescents were told that they would go to hell if they enjoyed a "dirty thought."

Wives were told to stick with their husbands, even in cases of abuse.

For many, it seemed absurd to burn in hell alongside Hitler for eating a hamburger on Friday.

This was a God who could be easily rejected.

At some point after turning away from serious sin, a Christian needs to move on from a focus on sin to a focus on the practice of virtue.

If you are no longer a great sinner, it is time to move from the negative to the positive.

We need to move from "How can I stop sinning?" to "How can I be a better Christian?" Scrupulosity is a sure sign that it is time to move on.

In this second stage of spiritual development, God is not so much a judge as a coach.

We ask him for help to be a better Christian.

He urges us on to greater and greater virtue.

When we pray and read the Gospels, we don't focus on sin, but on Jesus as the person we want to follow and imitate.

"What can I do for the Lord?"

"How can I be better?"

Most Christians spend most of their lives at this stage of spiritual development.

We are not great sinners, but neither are we saints who practice the virtues perfectly.

We try to be better but frequently fail.

We don't pray well, we don't love as much as we should, we struggle and don't seem to get better.

This can get tiresome after a while.

The coach wants us to run faster, but we know we are never going to win a gold medal.

We begin to resent the coach for asking too much of us.

At this stage of development, we are like a teenager trying to win someone's love with the perfect clothes, hairstyle, makeup, conversation and social media.

We are looking in the mirror all the time, not at the person we are with. By being good, we think we will earn God's love.

In the third stage of spiritual development, we focus not on ourselves but on God.

We look less at the prodigal son and his brother than at their father.

Many Scripture scholars call the story the parable of the prodigal father because of the love that he showers upon his sons.

When we look at Jesus in the Gospels, we see someone who will not just tell us to stop sinning and follow him.

Rather he is someone who is wonderful and who tells us about his Father, who is loving and compassionate.

In this stage of development, we are not looking for sin or ways to be better; we are looking at the Scriptures to learn how awesome and wonderful God is.

I sometimes think that the hardest act of faith is not to believe a particular dogma but to believe that God loves us unconditionally, that above, behind and in the universe is a benevolent God.

In each stage of spiritual development, our prayer life is different.

• In the first stage it is mostly contrition (I am sorry),
• in the second stage it is mostly petition (help me) and
• in the third stage it is mostly thanksgiving and adoration (you are amazing).

To truly fall in love, we must forget ourselves and focus on the person in front of us. God is amazing and we give thanks to him for all that he has done for us.

In the final stage of spiritual development, we fall in love.

We aren't good out of fear or to win God's love; we are loving and kind because God has first loved us.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

I believe that God's presence is expressed in every heart and in every reality, beyond the signs and words (religious or otherwise) that express this presence.

"The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit," (John 3, 8).

Here in France, our experience and sociology tell us that Catholics - those men and women who affirm their faith in God and live out the ordinary signs of that faith, including community prayer - are now in the minority.

And yet, we do our utmost to hold onto the former signs of God's presence, including those churches and buildings that are often no more than traces of it.

Sometimes we also believe that visible, even violent, public affirmations of God are what would please and serve the Divine. What a waste of energy, even misdirection.

Who would think that the words and attitudes of Jesus Christ would encourage displays of power?

The head of state must not be confessional

The fact that Catholics are in a minority not only concerns their percentage of the population as a whole, but also expresses itself in institutions.

The French Revolution put an end to the "very Christian king".

The Third Republic, with the law of December 9, 1905, formally decreed the Separation of the State and the Churches.

Admittedly, the public and political link between the State and the Catholic religion in France lasted for many centuries, from Clovis to Louis XVI.

But this model can in no way be based on any requirement of scriptural or Church teaching, and it is up to each people to choose its own political regime.

Nowhere does Christian tradition demand that heads of state or public institutions be confessional, or that they implement religious laws.

The only thing the Church expects is religious freedom, the freedom to believe in whomever and whatever one chooses, as long as this belief does not infringe on public liberties.

The idea that the only good ruler is a believer, and a Catholic one at that, is not an idea that Christian thought suggests.

When the Bible speaks of praying for our governmental leaders, it is not with a view to converting them, but so that "we may be able to live peaceful and quiet lives with all devotion and propriety" (1 Timothy 2, 2).

Suspicion

However, my remarks cannot ignore the long history of the alliance between the army and the clergy.

Suspicion has long been rife in people's minds: suspicion of a political power seeking to control religions, suspicion of a religious power seeking to impose its views on the nation and its leaders.

Fortunately, I don't have my hands on people's hearts, or on the suspicions they may harbour, but the law of our country is clear, and could allay many unfounded fears. Marseille is worth a Mass!

And as Catholics, let's have the humility to accept our institutional minority, for example by choosing just a few places - one or two churches for every sprawling parish cluster - so that the presence, attention and commitment of human life can mobilise us.

This is where we will discern signs of God: human life must be the place of our closeness.

The churches - our churches that we have inherited and to which many people are attached - are the vestiges of the faith of others, of the faith of the generations that preceded us.

Churches speak of yesterday. But with each generation, the Church must be born anew.

• Pascal Wintzer is the Catholic archbishop of Poitiers (France), a post he took up in 2012.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Several months later, while giving a talk for my diocese about Scripture and the Eucharist and discussing these tables, the same thing happened.

I choked up, fought back tears, and eventually had to apologise and take a quick break before I could continue talking. What is wrong with me?

I think I've figured it out. I was moved to tears because the ancient polytheists, those whom we often call "pagans," saw God everywhere.

God was in every nook and cranny of their lives. God was at the entrance to their homes, in the marketplace, around their hearth, at the gymnasium and at their tables.

These were polytheists, of course, but these are the very people whose conversion made Christianity's growth and success possible.

While we might look back on their lives and see them as superstitious or weird, there is a profound beauty and power in their piety.

The doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist developed in a world where God was everywhere.

My Thessaloniki tears flowed at the realisation that today, we don't see God anywhere.

The headline-making statistics about Catholics not believing in the real presence are a symptom, not a root cause. The root cause is a diminished sacramental worldview, a broad malaise in which God increasingly finds no foothold in anything we do.

The most common response in the church in the United States to the perceived lack of belief in the real presence has been to focus on adoration and catechesis.

The thinking goes that we can pray and teach our way back to the right path, so people will believe and understand the real presence.

Such activities, obviously, are well and good. But I can't help wondering if they are misguided as an attempt to solve the problem.

I suspect that many of the reasons Catholics today don't see God's real presence in the Eucharist is because they don't see God's presence anywhere.

All the adoration and catechesis in the world will not help the problem if, deep down, individual believers do not have a vibrant sacramental worldview in which God's is active everywhere.

Rather than focus only on adoration and catechesis, the Church would do well to work to inculcate a sacramental worldview, to seek out ways to experience God in all parts of our lives.

With this in hand, we will have a better foundation for the special presence of God in the Eucharist.

One way to breathe life into our sacramental worldview would be to think about how to experience God in other people, particularly the poor.

The Eucharist is not simply a moment for personal piety and reflection. It should never be only about "me and God." The Eucharist is also about other people.

Jesus's own self giving offers a pattern of life and self-denial that the Eucharist should create in our lives. Continue reading

• Micah D. Kiel is a professor in the theology department at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. He is the author of Apocalyptic Ecology and Reading the Bible in the Age of Francis.

A little girl had run back to her parents, shouting, "I just ate Jesus!"

Later, the child asked her mother, "How does Jesus get from our stomach to our heart?"

The mother replied, "Jesus can do anything."

That is simple truth.

Our memory tends to become a library of special events, and mine has kept the details of that day.

Jesus was in the radiant face of the priest.

Jesus was also in the warm laughter of the congregation.

He was in the child's statement, her question and the mother's answer.

Age brings us back to the simplicity of childhood, we look at the hills and valleys of life, and say Amen to everything that has happened to us.

We know that we grew with Jesus.

His birthday was the biggest event of the year. As wise men brought gifts to baby Jesus, so are his birthday gifts given to us.

We learned that Jesus loved children. He told his grumpy disciples that children were like the angels in Heaven.

Then, through Holy Communion, we knew that Jesus was within us, even though we didn't understand how that worked.

We felt different.

Growing up was difficult at times.

It was difficult for Jesus, too.

Did he die for our sins?

Well, that's how they thought in those days - sacrifice for atonement.

But with Jesus, something much bigger was going on.

Resurrection was bigger than crucifixion.

The holy man of Galilee died to be available to the world.

That's what the little girl in Singapore was celebrating.

That was the truth spoken by the mother.

It is also the truth of our lives with Jesus Christ.

Growth comes through our own crucifixions and resurrections, and Jesus is always with us.

The beauty of this relationship is expressed in the writing of Simeon the New Theologian (9099-1022). The following is translated from the original Greek by Stephen Mitchell.

We waken in Christ's body as Christ wakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ's.

He enters my foot and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully, my hand becomes Christ's, becomes all of Him ( for God is invisibly whole, seamless in His Godhead.)

I move my foot, and at once, He appears like a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous?

Then open your heart to them and let yourself receive the One who is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ's body, where our body, all over, every most hidden part of him, is realised in joy as Him, and He makes us utterly real.

And everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and realised as whole, lovely and radiant in His light, He wakens as the beloved in every last part of our body.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator. Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Gender is something that belongs to humans; God is beyond gender.

But because we believe in a personal God, and people are gendered, some of us can't help but envision God as having a gender.

Throughout Christian tradition, believers have leaned heavily toward depicting God as male.

Lord (Ps. 6:2; 23:1), King (Ps. 10:16; 24:8), and Father (Matt. 6:9; Luke 11:2) are among the most dominant images.

However, while there is biblical support for these images, many biblical texts also envision God as female. For example:

• Moses warns the Israelites not to forget "the God who gave you birth" (Deut. 32:18).
• When Israel is being rebirthed after the Babylonian exile, the prophet Isaiah speaks of God as being like "a woman in labour" bringing the Israelites to new life (Isa. 42:14).
• Further, Isaiah speaks of God's tenderness toward Israel like that of a mother consoling her child (Isa. 49:15; 66:13).
• Both Isaiah and the psalmist portray God as a midwife, helping the renewed Israel come forth from the womb (Isa. 66:9; Ps. 22:10-11).
• In several gospel parables, Jesus speaks of God and himself as being like a woman who hides yeast in bread dough (Luke 13:20-21), who searches for a lost coin (Luke 15:8-10), or who confronts an unjust judge and demands justice (Luke 18:1-8).

All the language we use to speak of God is figurative and can be metaphorical, analogical, or symbolic.

A metaphor compares two things that are similar yet different, by making a statement of equivalence: for example, "God is a rock" (Ps. 18:2).

God is perhaps solid and dependable like a rock, but God is not literally a rock.

Analogy is a comparison of two distinct things, with a focus on how they are alike. An example is a statement such as "God is good."

God is not the same thing as goodness, but we can understand God through understanding goodness. Symbol (from the Greek synballo, "to throw together") is something that stands for something else.

It matters what metaphors, analogies, and symbols we use for God and God's gender. Continue reading

A 2019 Pew Research Center Survey of Americans aged 13 to 17 found that only 50 per cent believed religion was an important part of their lives, as opposed to 73 percent of their parents.

This trend has caught the attention of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which published on its website an article titled "Confronting Secularism Today" by Robert Spitzer, S.J., who posits four causes for this trend:

• A perceived contradiction between God and science.
• A lack of evidence for God from science and logic.
• An implicit belief in materialism.
• A general disbelief in the historicity and divinity of Jesus.

While all these factors may indeed cause some young people to abandon their faith, the list feels incomplete to me. After all, the same Pew survey found approximately 85 percent of teens believed in a higher power.

As a 17-year-old Catholic, I know many people my age who are abandoning their churches and their faith.

I spoke to a few to understand why. (I've used pseudonyms, due to the personal nature of their comments.)

The institutional church, to many of my peers, is seen as antiquated and corrupted by greed, paedophilia and bigotry.

They place the blame for these things on the shoulders of church leaders.

Still, many also feel personal dissatisfaction with the church.

While the answers my friends provided are anecdotal, a common theme emerged: The most prevalent issue that is widening the gap between young people and the church is the institution itself.

Stigmas and suffering

The tone and emphasis of catechesis, especially in preparation for the sacraments, can have a real impact on how young people perceive the church as a whole.

One of of my friends, Jo, talked about an abstinence and pro-life lecture she was required to attend in preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation, a lecture she found deeply uncomfortable.

She felt the presenters left no room for genuine questions from those who doubted the church's teachings and focused too much on shame.

Jo told me she became concerned that people would assume that she would be similarly closed to the discussion around her politics or personal beliefs based on her religious affiliation.

"I would just [tell people] I'm a Christian, but I wouldn't say Catholic," she said.

The idea that somebody can be turned off by the church because of the church can be tough to grasp.

One of the people I spoke with is a friend of mine named Dominic, who has a strong faith in God and attends church every Sunday.

When I asked him if he thought the church was driving people away, he told me, "I think it is impractical to believe in God in the 21st century because people want to believe in what they see, not something that requires faith alone… They aren't used to the idea that something that cannot be seen can be real."

Dominic's answer also resonates strongly with the belief that people are leaving the institution because of a growing sense of materialism and a feeling that God doesn't have any room in daily life.

Another friend decided to walk away from religion because of a perceived separation between themselves and God.

James, who was raised Catholic and attended Mass every Sunday as a child, is now an agnostic.

While preparing for his confirmation, he began feeling that relying on an invisible God to help him out when times were tough wasn't enough.

Witnessing the long and painful deaths of his aunt and uncle, who were both very religious, also frustrated him.

James reflected on this experience by saying, "I guess it kind of set me back from religion just to realize what God can do to such kind people who also believed in him."

Today, James has abandoned the church and, for the most part, his faith.

James says he only entertains the idea of God existing when someone he knows is religious is going through a sad or painful ordeal.

In those situations, he says that he does pray for that person on the off chance that there is a God listening.

Confronting a secular trend

My friend Andrew is an atheist, raised by Catholic parents, who rarely attended Mass growing up.

For as long as I have known him, he has been vocal about his stance on religion as an unnecessary institution that sets unnecessary rules.

He says he is not against the church; rather, he simply feels no desire to attend. He also says the lack of exposure to religion has made him question its validity.

For Andrew, the concept of faith itself is challenging.

And indeed, Father Spitzer's four reasons do apply in Andrew's case, too, as he believes science and God contradict each other, and that there is little to no appreciable scientific evidence of a creator.

Andrew isn't opposed to going to Mass, but doesn't see himself as the type of person who would join the church.

He told me, "Maybe if the opportunity ever arose, I'd be open to it. But as of now, I don't really see a reason to attend Mass or attend church regularly."

While an intellectual approach may be able to answer some of the questions my secular-leaning friends have—like Andrew's questions on God in relation to science and James's questions on suffering—I believe the church leaders need to approach the issue from another angle, as well. Continue reading

Five years ago, when I was sixty-five, I decided to study adolescent mathematics, because my first encounter with it had left me feeling stupid and defeated.

Also unsettled, privately, about my fitness for a successful life, since I hadn't ever lost so profoundly to anything like I lost to math. It led me to wonder how many more losses might await me and how many might result from similar, not-yet-come-upon insufficiencies.

Studying simple mathematics a second time changed how I apprehended the world, which was an outcome I didn't expect.

I used to feel that I saw something divine in nature, and now I think that what I saw was an intimation of mathematical structure, of pattern and motion and symmetry and scale, among other things, and that these produced a sense of the divine.

Is it possible that existence reduces to numbers, that things in themselves are numbers or, at least, can be described by them?

It is an ancient conjecture that still has potency.

Numbers originally described simple quantities then later showed themselves capable of describing grand aspects of nature intimately—the orbits of planets, for example.

Mathematics is the language of science because it is the most efficient means we have for precisely describing complex material and even ineffable things.

The theory of relativity can be expressed in prose, but E=mc² is more succinct.

I did not expect that studying a childhood discipline would lead me to wonder about divine matters, but the possibility of a divine entity is threaded throughout mathematics, which, in its essence, so far as I can tell, is a mystical pursuit, an attempt to claim territory and define objects seen only in the minds of people doing mathematics.

Why do I care about abstract possibilities and especially about God, when I have no idea what such a thing might be?

• A concept?
• An actual entity?
• Something hidden but accessible, or forever out of reach?
• Something once present and now gone?
• Something that ancient people appear to have experienced at close hand?

I seem temperamentally drawn to the idea of a divinity.

As a child, I sometimes had the feeling of an accompanying presence, usually when I was by myself in the woods, a feeling of something infinite behind everything.

It was an awareness of the world itself as somehow animated.

This is a manner of thinking called immanence, in which the divine is believed to be among us, as it were, obscurely present, felt but not seen.

I think so many people experience this that it seems quaint to regard it as original or even unusual. I simply add myself to those who have perceived it.

There is a period of childhood when the balance between the conscious and the unconscious is not weighted so much toward consciousness, a period when one receives sensations differently and is less inclined to analyze them.

I feel this presence still, often in nature, in the vicinity of the infinitely large and the infinitely small, as in the night sky. Also, in the contemplation of the number line, which embodies both the infinitely small and the infinitely large.

Infinity itself occasionally contradicts intuition.

There are as many fractions as there are whole numbers, for example, but there are also an infinite number of fractions between any two whole numbers.

Between any two fractions, no matter how tightly bound, there is sufficient room to place an infinite number of other fractions. An infinite collection of numbers exists, but there is also an infinite collection of numbers that haven't been imagined yet.

In "Two New Sciences," Galileo noted the discordance in considering two line segments of unequal length.

Each segment consists of an infinite number of points, but the longer segment would seem to have more points.

He speculated that, on the one hand, the concepts of less, greater, and equal didn't apply to infinite things, and, on the other hand, that there might also be a greater circumstance than infinity.

Something is infinite when it includes collections that have as many terms as it does, Bertrand Russell writes.

Something is also infinite when you can take things from it without making it smaller. Such observations, while concisely Western, also seem to have the purpose of confounding the mind in a Zen-like way.

If one is inclined toward mysteries, mathematics can lead one to the conclusion that behind the veil of life there is a structure and an order.

Among certain mathematicians, some of the great ones historically and presently, there is the belief that, at its highest ranges, mathematics seems to converge toward a unity and that this unity is God. Continue reading

Now, however, it is logic itself that I am doubting.

You hear people saying 'everything happens for a reason', and so they attach a reason to things.

Reason is not the explanation. It's a face-saving gimmick we humans import to cover up our failure to think in any other terms except cause-and-effect.

Why do colours splosh about among flowers? Remember the poem, "… Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air".

Nonsense!

All those flowers are seen by other flowers and lots of other creatures who like to see and brush against and contrast and celebrate those jazzy petals!

There is a place in the USA called Death Valley, where nothing ever grows in the sandy patch - except that every few years, it rains.

Then a sea of dazzling yellow flowers flood the patch for a few days.

Where were the seeds all this time?

Where did they come out of in the first place?

And why come out anyway?

Everything that moves makes noise.

Why?

Because the entire cosmos is love made visible, audible, smellable, tangible, sensible — communicable.

Why?

Because that's the way love is!

It is always saying "I love you!" in one way or another because love is like that.

When you read the holy books, you're inclined to say "Back off!" when the verses gush about God.

But that's because the writer had to say something bubbling up inside her/himself! She/he had or was having this extraordinary experience of divine love.

Hence the poetry and the excitement.

Love - it's what everything, everything is about

But where did the "bubbling" come from in the first place?

Now you're talking in circles - it came because that's the way love is, it has to communicate, the same as water has to seek its own level, hot air to rise, and so on.

Love is the final cause of everything.

And not just your love my love dad's love mum's love… even the tree's love the bird's love the caterpillar's love the elephant's love… the wind's love the rain's love the night's love the winter's love - it's what everything, everything is about.

Isn't language funny?

We never 'fall in hate' or 'fall in fear' or 'fall in joy'- no; we have other verbs for all these.

But for 'fall in love' - that's what we've got.

Always fall.

We don't decide whether I shall love this guy or this girl. We can pretend, of course; we can be seduced, of course, all that is so. But the actual whoosh - there's the word. Fall.

You've been there yourself.

Hopefully, still are.

And not necessarily with a person.

Language itself - all the bits of languages I know anyway - have this special word for the experience of love.

So what am I on about today?

I am on about the irrationality of the most important of our human experiences.

That's the territory where inspiration happens, where wonder happens, where creativity happens. Hey, they're all 'super' words.

Exactly - and these, these are roads we find ourselves on when we experience the marvel of ourselves, the amazing being I am.

Try not to get so wearily logical, and celebrate that often logic has nothing to do with it.

We sometimes force a logical explanation.

No: celebrate the mystery that you are, the centre of all full loving.

That someone loves you is the biggest thrill of your life. This is the visibility, the tangibility, of God.

Not a 'dimension,' an identity.

And that 'love' that I'm on about - it's the cosmos, the constellations, the multiverse: use all the words you like.

It's you, yourself.

Congratulations.

God bless.

• Brendan MacCarthaigh is a Christian Brother from Dublin working in India.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

It shouldn't surprise, given the 2021 census results concerning religion, those critical of Christianity and the Catholic Church have used the fall in numbers to suggest religion is moribund and no longer relevant to Australian society.

With newspaper headlines like "Abandoning God: Christianity plummets as ‘non-religious' surges in census" (Sydney Morning Herald), "Losing our religion as Christianity plummets" (The Age) and comments like "Australia's rapidly changing population is more godless (the Guardian) it would be easy to conclude religion is in its death throes.

In the same way the report of Mark Twain's death was premature (Twain replied "the report of my death was an exaggeration) it's also true that religion, Christianity and Catholicism, are still powerful and significant forces in Australian society.

While the numbers identifying as Christian have fallen significantly over time and now sits at 44 per cent, the reality is 60 per cent of older Australians still identify as Christian and it should not surprise, given the concerted public campaign telling Australians not to tick the religious box, numbers have fallen.

Leading up to and during the week of the census, groups like Humanists Australia and staunch Christian and anti-Pell critics including Tim Minchin, on television, radio and social networking sites, told young people, in particular, to tick no religion.

What critics ignore, as detailed in the recently released Christianity Matters In These Troubled Times, is Christianity underpins and nourishes Australia's political and legal systems, our way of life and much of Western civilisation's art, music, language and literature.

Concepts like the right to liberty and a commitment to social justice and the common good, as detailed in Larry Siedentop's Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, are derived from the New Testament and Jesus' admonition to "love thy neighbour as thyself".

As the Bible states "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus". To listen to Rachmaninov's Vespers, to admire the stained-glass windows of Chartres Cathedral or to contemplate Michelangelo's Pieta is to sense the divine and to soar with the angels.

Christian virtues and religion's ability to engender a sense of the spiritual and transcendent are vital for human flourishing. Also ignored by secular critics is without Christianity Australia's education, health, welfare, aged care, social welfare and charitable services would collapse.

Christian schools educate approximately 34 per cent of Australian students, charities like the Salvation Army and Vinnies serve countless thousands of the nation's most disadvantaged and Christian aged care and hospitals are an essential part of Australia's social fabric.

In emphasising what the census tells us about religious beliefs secular critics ignore what the 2021 snapshot tells us about Australian society more broadly.

Of particular concern is out of a population of just over 25.5 million there are 8 million Australians described as having a long-term health condition.

Top of the list, ahead of asthma and arthritis, is mental health where just over 2.2 million Australians describe themselves as suffering some form of anxiety and depression.

While Covid-19 may have contributed, to have so many, especially young people, at risk is an indictment of a society where so many lack resilience and the ability to find a more lasting and enriching sense of solace, strength and comfort.

While Christianity is not always a panacea to experiencing loss, fear and anxiety, as suggested by the Christian mystic St Teresa of Avila: "Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices".

Also of concern is the fact the number of single-parent families in Australia has reached one million with 75 per cent of single parents being women.

Common sense suggests, supported by research, two-parent families are one the foundation stones of a stable and flourishing society and the best place for children to be raised.

There's no doubt those professing to be Christian, since the time Jesus worked on this earth, have committed grievous and unforgivable sins, ranging from the corruption of medieval and Renaissance popes, pogroms against the Jews to paedophilia.

At the same time, there is much to acknowledge and praise about Christianity and to celebrate and defend.

The author of The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, when explaining the millions killed and starved under communism and fascism argues the reason is "Men have forgotten God. The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century".

While the numbers have diminished, religion is still a vital element in Australian society and the lives of the faithful and with God's grace, it will continue.

• Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and the author of The Culture of Freedom.
• First published in The Catholic Weekly. Republished with permission.

Long gone are the days when the statue of David displayed in Melbourne's Myers emporium had to be covered with a fig leaf and where nudity in the musical Hair caused moral outrage.

The cultural revolution of the late 60s and early 70s heralded a sexual revolution epitomised by the slogan ‘make love, not war'. This was a time when the birth control pill radically changed sexual mores, the gay/lesbian pride movement became active and the traditional family was seen as inflexible and outdated.

We now live in a world where pornography of every description is available in a virtual world 24/7, where marriage no longer involves a man and a woman, where children are taught boys can be girls and girls can be boys and where explicit sex scenes on TV and in movies is commonplace.

"To overthrow capitalism and what he describes as "repressive morality" Reich, instead of focusing on the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, champions complete sexual empowerment and freedom."

While many see this age of sexual liberation and empowerment as beneficial and beyond reproach, the Italian philosopher and cultural critic Augusto Del Noce, in his essay ‘The Ascendance of Eroticism' published in 1970, describes what he terms eroticism as a dangerous and malignant disease infecting Western societies.

Del Noce traces today's sexual revolution to the publication in 1930 of Wilhelm Reich's The Sexual Revolution.

To overthrow capitalism and what he describes as "repressive morality" Reich, instead of focusing on the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, champions complete sexual empowerment and freedom.

Central to Reich's thesis, Del Noce writes, is the belief "the core element of life will be sexual happiness" and "the achievement of sexual happiness would lead to the extinction of the authoritarian spirit and to a form of internationalism free from all compromises".

Reich argues religious teachings about the sanctity of marriage and the importance of monogamy reinforce capitalist domination.

As a result, Del Noce warns "the idea of indissoluble marriage and other ideas related to it (modesty, purity, continence)" no longer apply. Proving how prescient he was, Del Noce also notes, given the impact of Reich's book and the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s,

"It is clear that what today is called the left fights less and less in terms of class warfare, and more and more in terms of ‘warfare against repression'".

The lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, intersex, queer, plus rainbow alliance (LGBTIQ+) best illustrates how successful the neo-Marxist inspired cultural-left has been in its fight against what is condemned as the repressive morality associated with Western civilisation and Christianity.

"The Canadian gender activist Cristian Scarlett Milloy argues ‘With infant gender assignment, in a single moment your baby's life is instantly and brutally reduced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete set of expectations and stereotypes …'"

The so-called Safe Schools gender fluidity program, funded by Liberal and Labor governments, tells students there is nothing preferable or beneficial about the love between a woman and a man. Such a relationship is condemned as hetero-normative and guilty of cis-genderism.

While the overwhelming majority of babies are either female or male with XX or XY chromosomes respectively, hospitals are now ‘assigning' a gender on the basis that babies must not be stigmatised by labelling them as boys or girls.

The Canadian gender activist Cristian Scarlett Milloy argues "With infant gender assignment, in a single moment your baby's life is instantly and brutally reduced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete set of expectations and stereotypes, and any behavioural deviation from that will be severely punished …"

In Tasmania, it is now possible to change one's birth certificate to identify as non-binary, indeterminate or other (including but not restricted to transgender, transsexual, bigender or agender).

In a recent article in The Age newspaper, the journalist Madonna King praises schools and students for championing LGBTIQ+ rights.

Examples include wearing non-binary ‘they' badges, setting up a non-binary ‘safe space', not telling parents their child wants to transition and girls wearing pants so as not to be seen as female.

A second article in the same paper by Farrah Tomazin praises a boy who transitions to being a girl and his role in changing the law to make it easier for teenagers to take puberty blockers. The author also praises the Victorian government for banning gay conversion therapy.

"As argued by Del Noce, radical, neo-Marxist inspired eroticism and gender ideology represents an attempt to destroy human sexuality and the family."

Not surprisingly, in the UK, America and Australia programs like Safe Schools and the campaign to normalise LGBTIQ+ ideology, there has been an upsurge in gender dysphoria, especially among girls, with clinics recording ever-increasing numbers.

As argued by Del Noce, radical, neo-Marxist inspired eroticism and gender ideology represent an attempt to destroy human sexuality and the family. Ignored, as argued by Pope Francis, is radical gender ideology, especially transgenderism, which is against the natural order and God's plan.

Francis argues: "when the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God".

• Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and the author of The Culture of Freedom.
• First published in Catholic Weekly. Republished with permission

An older campaign by feminists, including those working in the world of liturgy, sought to shun male pronouns — particularly when either gender is meant — in favour of plural they-them-their usage with singular antecedents.

This increasingly common wording is of course grammatically incorrect given the structure of the English language and can be confusing for readers.

That's now combined with the efforts of transgender and nonbinary advocates to suppress gender-specific adjectives by applying that same singular "they" along with newly crafted pronouns.

A list of such neologisms recommended at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — said to be non-exhaustive — covers ae, e, ey, fae, per, sie, tey, ve xe, ze and zie.

So, for example, with "xe," the variants to parallel she-her-hers-herself are xem-xyr-xyrs-xemself.

As you would expect, references to God himself — or is that "themself"? — are now part of this debate.

Religion News Service ran a column last week from one of its regulars, Mark Silk, headlined "Why our preferred pronoun for God should be 'they.'"

He thinks calling God "they," not "he," and similar verbal tactics have become "imperative."

How would other progressives respond? His proposal was immediately publicized in a tweet from RNS' Roman Catholic columnist, Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, and the online comments began flowing.

Silk is the director of Trinity College's Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, former editor of its now-defunct Religion in the News magazine and well-known on the beat otherwise — for instance as a one-time reporter and editorial writer on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and author of "Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America" (1995).

Your biblical sources could explore the idea as follows:

Theologians would agree with Silk's starting point, that although male singular personal pronouns are used in English to refer to the God worshipped by Jews, Christians and Muslims, "God is not gendered" according to the teaching of all three faiths.

Why our preferred pronoun for God should be 'they' https://t.co/neL2e6lOyB via @RNS @directorsilk
— Thomas Reese, S.J. (@ThomasReeseSJ) September 29, 2021

How might we get around this?

"It" instead of "he" doesn't work because God is personal. Silk acknowledges that speaking of God by his preferred plural "they" instead of "he" could seem to "undermine monotheism," the belief in the one and only God that is at the heart of all three of these world religions.

A problem? "No," Silk insists, because in the Hebrew Bible, the plural form Elohim refers to Israel's God and collectively to other gods. He says experts can ponder whether this "signifies an embedded polytheism in ancient Judaism."

The "New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible" is among resources that explain Elohim in plural form "is the usual name of the one true God," expressed "as the plural of majesty," and also serves in Scripture as the common noun for plural divinities in general.

Looking to the past, one such project that pretty much flopped was the production of "inclusive language" rewrites of the standard three-year lectionary cycle of Bible readings by the National Council of Churches that were issued by several mainline Protestant book houses in 1983-1985.

With "his" forbidden, the repeated guttural sounds became almost comical as in, for example, Isaiah 62:8: "God has sworn by God's right hand and by God's mighty arm."

In the effort to shun "kingdom," the NCC's "reign of God" sounded like precipitation, not sovereignty. Eyebrows arched especially when the NCC team began the Lord's Prayer with the alternate reading "O God, Father and Mother, hallowed be your name." As with Silk's "they," critics complained that this seemed to evoke a belief in two deities, not one.

• Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for AP, Christianity Today and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.
• Published in Religion Unplugged. Reproduced with permission.

"Language change is a spectator sport," McWhorter writes.

"It isn't whether but how things will change over time, and getting to witness a major change like what's happening to ‘they' is a kind of privilege, a top ticket."

Not that I have a choice, but I'm down with this particular privilege. And here's a modest proposal: Let's extend it to God.

In contrast to human beings, it has long been accepted that God is not gendered, at least within the main Abrahamic theological tradition.

A phrase such as "God the Father" should be treated as a metaphor — and for those concerned about the embedded misogyny of the tradition, to say nothing of post-binary folks — a deeply problematic one.

As a result, we have been faced liturgically as well as theologically with the imperative of gender-neutral language, which means being obliged to repeat the word "God" where a gendered pronoun would normally be used and to have recourse to the unattractive neologism "Godself" lest, God forbid, we find ourselves saying Himself.

"They," "theirs," "them," and "themself" (or maybe "themselves") solves the problem. As in: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; / Praise Them, all creatures here below," etc.

But, Mark, I hear some of you protesting, wouldn't this grammatical démarche undermine monotheism, the idea of the singular God that lies at the very heart of the Abrahamic tradition?

Well, no. Monotheistic Abrahamic theology has had to deal with an embedded grammatical pluralism ever since it came into being.

That's because the word for god in ancient Hebrew, elohim, is a plural form, used with reference to both the Hebrew god and any other god or gods — as distinct from the singular form of the Hebrew god's actual name, JHWH (customarily translated into English as "Lord"). Here's how that works at the start of the Book of Exodus' 20th chapter, where God is laying down the 10 Commandments:

And elohim spoke these words, saying. I am JHWH your elohim who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no elohim before me.

Scholars have found cognate words in other ancient Semitic languages — words in the plural form used to denote one divinity and more than one divinity. Whether it signifies an embedded polytheism in ancient Judaism is a question for the experts to debate.

The great 12th-century Jewish theologian Maimonides took a relaxed view of the matter, writing in his "Guide for the Perplexed": "Every Hebrew knows that the term Elohim is a homonym, and denotes God, angels, judges, and the rulers of countries." Less relaxed was the modern Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen, who called it "an almost insoluble riddle."

So, sure, it sounds strange to refer to the biblical god with what we have been accustomed to consider plural third-person pronouns, but no doubt there were people who felt similarly when modern English jettisoned the singular "thou art" in favour of the heretofore exclusively plural "you are."

Check out verse 10 of Psalm 86 in your Bible Hub. The King James Version translates it, "For thou art great … thou art God alone." Just about every modern translation has, "For you are great… you alone are God."

If you've not got a problem with that, you should be able to live with Exodus 15:2 as follows:

The Lord (JHWH) is my strength and my song;
they have become my salvation.
they are my God, and I will praise them,
my father's God, and I will exalt them.

Now that would be top ticket.

• Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

A new poll out the other week found that for the first time, a majority of Democrats say they prefer socialism over capitalism.

FoxBusiness.com reports: "A new Fox News poll showed that more Democrats favour socialism over capitalism, in a sharp reversal from just a year and a half ago.

The poll…showed that 59% of registered Democratic voters who participated had a positive view of socialism, compared to just 49% who felt that way about capitalism."

It's possible in some cases that they are just simply mistaken about definitions-that they think capitalism means greed, whereas socialism means sharing.

No, capitalism means freedom to earn, whereas socialism means the government is free to steal from those who earn.

Everywhere around the world, we see the bitter fruit of Marxism.

Everywhere his ideas have been put into practice, death, misery, loss of basic freedoms, and poverty follow.

Can anybody name a square inch spot on the planet, anywhere, where Marxism has brought anything good? Certainly not in China, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

And yet there are millions of Americans who have been brainwashed into thinking that Marxism is good, that it means compassionately sharing with others.

No, it effectively means the government stealing from its citizens…for the sake of the ruling class to be enriched.

Here's an example: Most Cubans live on $44 (U.S.) per month.

In contrast, when Fidel Castro died in 2016, his net worth was estimated at $900 million.

In America, wealth is created by providing value in voluntary exchanges, and there is no inherent limit on it. But in a Marxist setting like Castro's Cuba, the government controls the economy, and it's a zero-sum game. Castro's wealth was at the expense of the Cuban people.

Even Critical Race Theory, which is tearing many school boards apart, is merely repackaged Marxism, enforcing the never-ending Marxist principle of "oppressor" versus "oppressed."

And all of this gets back to a miserable anti-Christian man in 19th century Germany-Karl Marx.

I recently learned from Dr Paul Kengor something I didn't know about Marx, his favourite quote.

It speaks volumes.

Kengor is a bestselling author and a professor of history and political science at Grove City College. I've interviewed him many times.

In his latest book, The Devil and Karl Marx, Kengor points out that Marx loved the line that comes from the devil character, Mephistopheles, in Goethe's Faust: "Everything that exists deserves to perish."

Dr Kengor elaborates: "Friends said Marx would chant this.

He would recite this-'Everything that exists deserves to perish. Everything that exists deserves to perish.'

This is a philosophy that's about tearing down, burning the foundation, levelling the house, to where you have Marx standing there in the smouldering embers, saying, ‘Now we are ready to begin.'

So, anybody that thinks that this is a philosophy that is just about helping one another or sharing the wealth or redistributing wealth, they do not understand Marx and Marxism."

And what do we see in our streets today?

Destruction, riots, tear it all down.

Let's build a new and supposedly better world. Continue reading

• Jerry Newcombe, CP is Op-Ed Contributor at Christian Post

In the Scandinavian country, often hailed as a champion of gender equality, the statistics are clear.

As of July, 50.1 per cent of priests are women and 49.9 per cent are men.

It's very likely the first Church in the world to have a majority of women priests, according to the World Council of Churches.

In the Protestant Lutheran Church of Sweden, which has 5.8 million members in a country of 10.3 million and where ministers hold the title of priest, "women are here to stay," insists Signarsdotter, who was ordained six years ago.

Since 2014, even the head of the Church is a woman, Archbishop Antje Jackelen.

At the Gustaf Vasa church, a smattering of worshippers wait for the service to begin.

"This Sunday, the service will be conducted by three women," the 37-year-old priest says proudly.

Coincidentally, it was in this imposing white church in the heart of Sweden's capital that another woman, Anna Howard Shaw, an American Methodist pastor and suffragette, became the first clergywoman to preach in Sweden.

That was in 1911, at an international women's suffrage conference, and long before women could be ordained in the Church of Sweden, in 1958.

"The men didn't allow her to go up there," explains Signarsdotter, pointing to the marble pulpit above her.

"She was allowed only on the floor," she says, standing at the altar as if to mark the spot.

This Sunday, the service will be held by Julia Svensson, a 23-year-old theology student whom Signarsdotter is mentoring — and she will give her sermon from the pulpit.

The feminisation of Sweden's priesthood is also seen at universities, where the 4.5-year theology studies required to become a priest are dominated by women.

Protestants generally believe that a priest is an expert, a theologist who tends to a congregation, and not a calling, in contrast to the Catholic Church which opposes women priests.

The rising number of women may be due to priests' changing roles over the years, suggests Signarsdotter.

"The priest's role today is not what it was before. There are other requirements, (such as) kindliness … (and) being able to handle many different situations."

"Historically men have held it for themselves but now we see it happening all over the world. Things are changing and new paths are open to us as female priests and women in general."

Divine design

One who has benefitted from the rising number of female priests is stylist Maria Sjodin, who designs vestments for women and whose business is booming.

In her atelier in a southern Stockholm suburb, the designer recently welcomed a regular customer, a female priest looking for a new collared top.

One could say divine intervention landed Sjodin here: in 2001 her daughter made a new friend at kindergarten, whose mother was a priest.

"She asked me to make her a priest shirt, because she didn't like the male shirt that she had to wear," she recalled.

The piece remains one of the most popular in her collection. Continue reading

While boasting about the "economic miracle" he claims to have achieved before Covid-19 disrupted life across America, the president described having a conversation with God about his track record as president.

"We built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and now I have to do it again," he said, repeating a debunked claim about his administration's economic successes during a campaign stop in Mankato, Minnesota.

"You know what that is?" Trump asked. "That's God testing me. He said, ‘You know, you did it once.' And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I'm the only one that could do it.'''

According to Trump, God wasn't too pleased with his boast.

"[God] said, ‘That, you shouldn't say. Now we're going to have you do it again,'" he said as his audience broke into laughter.

"I said, ‘OK, I agree. You got me,'" he said. "But I did it once. And now I'm doing it again." Continue reading

In a study of some 200 women undergoing embryo transfers, the half that had people praying for them had much higher pregnancy rates than those that didn't.

Of course, that could be correlative: People who belong to prayer groups might have a stronger support system, a stronger community or a stronger sense of self than those not connected to prayer groups.

On the other hand, a Harvard study on random intercessory prayer in cardiac patients found no difference between the people prayed for or not prayed for.

The patients themselves did not pray, nor did they know if they were being prayed for. It's as if the scientists were trying to see if prayer could be used like medicine, regardless of the patients' knowledge.

So I'm not here to scientifically prove to you the power of prayer, God, faith or religion.

But if you are a person of faith, belong to a religious community or attend worship on a semi-regular basis, you might discover ways in which this belief system and community provides you strength. You might also find they present some particular challenges.

Fertility treatment has only been around for half a century, so obviously there's nothing written about it in Scripture, other than a general command to "Be fruitful and multiply."

Still, religion scholars opine on all sorts of modern-day ills, from birth control to euthanasia. And even fertility treatment.

For the most part, Jews, Protestants, and Muslims are in favour, with various nuances among the sects and ca­veats, especially when it comes to embryo creation and disposition.

For instance, many Jewish leaders have problems with sperm collection because of the prohibition against wasting seed and require workarounds.

Muslims generally allow both intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) for married (heterosexual) couples — no donor eggs, donor sperm, donor embryos or even a surrogate. But in Shiite-majority Iran, third-party reproduction is permitted.

Catholics are forbidden from using any assisted reproductive technology, though some go to "natural fertility centres" such as the Saint Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, which says it offers "reproductive health care that fully respects life," meaning no IUI or IVF.

But some of the biggest faith-based challenges of infertility may be existing in a family-centred community.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in my early 30s, I walked into a synagogue on the Sabbath and found the entryway — the size of a basketball court — filled with strollers. I went to the beach to work on my surfing instead.

"When you don't have a family, you can feel left out of the whole church experience," says the Rev. Elizabeth Laing Thompson, a North Caro­lina minister and author of "When God Says 'Wait' and When God Says 'Go.'"

During her almost three years of infertility, Thompson found it challenging to be in church. "The Christian faith community tends to circle around family life — marriage classes, Sun­day school kids' classes, youth groups."

At one point, six women in her congregation were all expecting baby boys within a three-week period.

"I could hardly walk through the church fellowship without brushing up against someone's belly," she said.

"The whole church was so excited, hovering around all the moms-to-be, making them meals, throwing them showers­ and there I was, infertile all by myself."

I sympathize.

I remember going to a good friend's circumcision ceremony after a miscarriage.

When I ate the challah bread,­ considered a sign of good luck and fertility, it stuck in my throat as I felt tears forming. I had to excuse myself for a cry in the bathroom.

Thompson said she found a great deal of support in her faith community: Friends at church prayed for them for years. So did the college students where she and her husband served as campus ministers.

At last, when her third IUI resulted in pregnancy, "we were mobbed by screaming, crying college students, all shouting words I could hardly understand." Finally, it was explained to her: A group of girls had been secretly fasting and praying for them for more than a year.

"To this day, I count their secret sacrifice as one of the most pre­cious gifts I have ever received," Thompson said.

For others, however, infertility is enough to push them over the edge.

Katelyn was raised Catholic, from school to camp to church choir, but "fell away" in college. Still, it was her four years of infertility that really made her examine her faith — or lack of it.

"Getting the infertility diagnosis was hard for me, especially as people around me were getting pregnant by accident," the Ohio teacher said.

"I was already struggling with religion when we started trying but was still on the fence about what I really believed."

Despite the church's ban on any intervention, she and her husband started treatment — many, many medicated IUIs, a miscarriage and two rounds of IVF, which resulted in one baby at age 32.

"I don't feel comfortable practicing a religion that doesn't feel my baby should exist," she said.

"I wouldn't have this baby without this intervention."

When I married Solomon, a staunch athe­ist, I knew I was leaving religion behind for good.

Still, when faced with repeat miscarriages over the next three years, I couldn't help but wonder if it was God's revenge. Especially because my religious friends and family kept telling me they were praying for me.

I should have been grateful that they wanted to help, but instead, I was mad.

Are my prayers not good enough? I thought.

Does God really have the power to give me a baby?

And if so, why isn't he doing it?

Am I not deserving?

After my fourth miscarriage, this time with a donor egg, I felt abandoned by both medicine and God.

By the time I was ready for my last transfer, it was the Jewish High Holidays, the only time of year I still went to the synagogue.

You owe me, God, I murmured into my prayer book, bowing my head and ignoring the official liturgy. My sister was pregnant with her first; my brother pregnant with his fifth. You owe me this one baby, I de­manded.

But that's not the way God works, said Rabbi Chaim Poupko, leader of the Orthodox Congregation Ahavath Torah. He said, "I know bad things happen to everybody, and who is to say I deserve this less than anyone else?"

Bad things did happen to him. His third daughter, at the age of one, was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. She died 14 months later. "We don't know why God does these things, and we do our best to reckon with them," he said.

When he and his wife started trying to have children again, they faced infertility.

"The whole notion that God may owe me something, it's a little simplistic. I don't know how God works, I don't know if he owes me."

Intellectually he knows that, but emotion­ally he sometimes feels otherwise.

"I can still be angry and questioning and not understanding of the very same God I still ask things for and believe in," Poupko said.

"Faith helps, in a sense. I think God provides in ways I did not un­derstand, with the people around us, the community around us and in each other."

Three years of trying to get pregnant resulted in a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy. Two rounds of IVF were unsuccessful. And then they took a break. "We were stopping for a moment and playing it by ear," he said. "We couldn't keep doing that to ourselves."

That's when his wife got pregnant.

"To me, the greatest testimony to God's presence in our lives isn't whether he sent us this or that miracle," said the rabbi. "It's how those who are com­mitted to him conduct themselves, how supportive they can be. I don't see (our baby) as a miracle, but as a gift."

• Amy Klein
• The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews

The survey, released Monday by the Pew Research Center, revealed a gaping "God gap" between relatively rich and poor countries.

In Kenya, for example, the country with the lowest gross domestic product per capita in the survey, 95% of people said belief in God is necessary for a person to be moral.

In Sweden, the richest country, just 9% of people connected God with good morals. (The survey did not break down respondents by religion.)

Even within countries, the rich and poor don't agree on God and morality, the survey said.

In the United States, to take one example, there is a gap of 24 percentage points between high and low income Americans. The poor were much more likely to say belief in God is necessary to be good.

"People in the emerging economies included in this survey tend to be more religious and more likely to consider religion to be important in their lives," wrote the authors of the study.

Pew's study seems to lend weight to the secularization thesis: the idea that nations become less religious as their people get richer and more educated.

For decades, the United States defied this theory by being both rich and religious. But even that is changing, according to a number of other studies.

In 2002, 58% of Americans said belief in God is necessary to be good. In 2019, that number slipped to 44%.

Religion remains a powerful force in the life of people around the world, including the United States. A majority of people in 23 of the 34 countries survey said religion is "very" or "somewhat" important to them. In the United States nearly half — 47% — called it "very important." Continue reading

It's a switchboard of extemporaneous ideas, thoughts, memories and questions that is always on, always lit up, always busy.

Did I plug in the slow cooker?

I wonder how many calories I'll burn if I keep swinging my leg like this. College Dropout was definitely Kanye's best album.

Or maybe it was Graduation.

How long would it take me to learn how to do a backflip if I started today? Am I too old to do a backflip? I want to write a book. I'm going to write a book. I think I'll… oooh gelato.

My attention span is easily seduced by distractions and the internet only exacerbates my mental outbursts of randomness.

I start off checking the weather and end up researching how many times it's snowed in Nigeria. (That's actually a true story.)

So you can understand why prayer has been a challenge, not because I don't want to do it or I don't feel the urge to do it, but because I often struggle to concentrate enough to eek out more than quick, drive-by talks with the Lord.

For a long time, too long actually, I felt guilty because I couldn't submit myself to uninterrupted meditative prayers like I'd seen my grandmother, and other saintly women who'd been my faith-walking role models, do.

But almost 10 years ago, I accidentally discovered that I'm a better pray-er when I'm moving.

I don't remember how it all came together but I noticed that when I'm walking and praying, I can stay present longer, I can get deeper — and sure, I can go off on a tangent, but I still come back and recenter myself more than I ever could if I was sitting or kneeling.

I found out the same was true if I was dancing, painting, driving or journaling, even grocery shopping or house cleaning.

I also learned by accident that this type of movement-intensive invocation actually has a name — kinesthetic prayer.

Bill Tenny-Brittian, pastor of Raytown Christian Church in Raytown, Missouri and author of Prayer for People Who Can't Sit Still, describes it as prayer that uses more than just your mouth or your mind.

It engages your fingers, hands, feet, sometimes your entire body.

"When that happens, the two sides of your brain begin to light up equally. They're working together and you're better able to give your whole being into prayer," he explains.

"It allows you to focus and be well-balanced, and prayer is a natural outflowing of that." Continue reading

While I was in little danger (my tumour was benign, and, yes, one sometimes needs radiation for that), I daily met people who were close to death.

Every weekday for six weeks I would hail a cab and say, "68th and York, please."

Once there, I would stop into a nearby church to pray.

Afterwards, walking to my appointment in a neighbourhood jammed with hospitals, I passed cancer patients who had lost their hair, exhausted elderly men and women in wheelchairs pushed by home health care aids, and those who had just emerged from surgery.

But on the same sidewalks were busy doctors, smiling nurses and eager interns, and many others in apparently perfect health.

One day it dawned on me: We're all going to 68th and York, though we all have different times for our appointments.

In just the past few weeks, millions have started to fear that they are moving to their appointment with terrifying speed, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The sheer horror of this fast-moving infection is coupled with the almost physical shock from its sudden onset.

As a priest, I've heard an avalanche of feelings in the last month: panic, fear, anger, sadness, confusion and despair.

More and more I feel like I'm living in a horror movie, but the kind that I instinctively turn off because it's too disturbing.

And even the most religious people ask me: Why is this happening? And: Where is God in all of this?

The question is essentially the same that people ask when a hurricane wipes out hundreds of lives or when a single child dies from cancer.

It is called the "problem of suffering," "the mystery of evil" or the "theodicy," and it's a question that saints and theologians have grappled with for millenniums.

The question of "natural" suffering (from illnesses or natural disasters) differs from that of "moral evil" (in which suffering flows from the actions of individuals — think Hitler and Stalin).

But leaving aside theological distinctions, the question now consumes the minds of millions of believers, who quail at steadily rising death tolls, struggle with stories of physicians forced to triage patients and recoil at photos of rows of coffins: Why?

Over the centuries, many answers have been offered about natural suffering, all of them wanting in some way. Continue reading