Having spent most of the last two years in conversation with Nones, seekers, doubters, and those who feel culturally bound to a religious tradition even while they don’t participate in one, the latest Pew survey results come as no surprise. It’s been clear for years that Mainline Protestant Christianity in America is on the decline. That Catholicism also is in precipitous decline—and the …
US Catholics ready to follow Pope’s ‘marching orders’ on climate change – Suzanne Goldenberg
Leaders of the Catholic church in America took their “marching orders” from the pope’s encyclical on Thursday, fanning out to Congress and the White House to push for action on climate change. The high-level meetings offered a first glimpse of a vast and highly organised effort by the leadership of America’s nearly 80 million Catholics to turn the pope’s moral …
‘Climate Is a Common Good’: Pope Francis Calls for Justice on Warming Planet – Jon Queally
A message to leaders and supporters of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Francis, cataloging the threat of climate change and the moral imperative to act aggressively to combat its root causes, is being heralded around the world on Thursday as a powerful—even ‘radical’—statement from one of the world’s most recognizable religious leaders. “What makes the pope’s message so radical isn’t just …
NASA: The Earth is Running Out of Water – Lauren McCauley
Bottom line: the Earth is running out of water. Two new NASA studies led by researchers from the University of California Irvine and published Tuesday show that the depletion of global groundwater resources, due to the dueling impacts of global warming and growing human demand, has caused the world’s water supply to drop to dangerous levels. The first report compares statistical analysis …
Pope Backs Climate Change Science, Denounces World Leaders by John Follain
Pope Francis has endorsed the science behind global warming and denounced the world’s political leaders for putting national self-interest ahead of action. Now, Catholic priests are gearing up to spread the word. The 192-page leaked draft of a papal encyclical, published Monday by the Italian magazine L’Espresso, is an attempt to influence the debate before United Nations climate talks scheduled …
Judgment Day For Pervert Priests? – Barbie Nadeau
For the first time in the long and sordid history of the Catholic Church’s saga with pedophile priests, the Vatican has approved a special judicial tribunal that could bring to justice the bishops who have helped protect offending priests. But is it enough to protect kids? Survivors groups hope that this time the Vatican has come up with an approach that …
SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE: RELIGIOUS (NON) AFFILIATION MIGHT NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS – Peter Laarman
If religious kitsch is a guilty pleasure, one of my favorite indulgences is a graphic that depicts a school of ichthus—the simple outline of a fish that is was an early symbol for followers of Christ—with a contemporary “evangellyfish” swimming in the opposite direction. The caption reads, simply, “Go against the flow.” The 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, which is being rolled …
PREDICTING THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT – Ed Simon
This week’s news from Pew on the decline of institutional Christianity, with its trove of data on the “unaffiliated” and the decline of the mainstream, has stolen the stage from last month’s release of Pew’s report on the Future of World Religions—a study that concluded that while atheists, agnostics and the unchurched are on the rise in the U.S. their numbers are projected to decline globally. …
Why More and More Women Are Embracing Non-Belief – Amanda Marcotte
Atheists were abuzz this week over Pew Research releasing new numbers [3] showing that the number of “nones” (people who have no religion at all) in the U.S. is soaring to record levels, making up a whopping 56 million Americans. In just the past seven years, the percentage of Americans who say they have no specific religious affiliation went from 16 percent to …
Vatican: UNICEF and WHO are sterilizing girls through vaccines
Vatican Radio last week charged that United Nations organizations promoting population control are using vaccines to surreptitiously sterilize women in Third World countries. Kenya’s Ministry of Health, along with the UN organizations — World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF — deny the charges, which carry the full weight of the Vatican. Vatican Radio is the official “voice of the Pope and …