Four types of younger Catholics? Isch don’t think so

Over on the Commonweal blog, Fr Joseph Komonchak has posted an interesting excerpt from an article in the magazine featuring a conversation between former and current Commonweal editors.

In the excerpt Peter Steinfels, who spent many years at the magazine, muses about the Commonweal readers of the future.

He identifies four groups: the fundamentalists “who want something, whether it’s the Pope or particular texts opr certain forms of ritual, that can be relied upon to provide their identity” for whom “things are not to be challenged; they are to be taken literally”, the neo-conservatives, a group which is “much more questioning and intellectually adventurous but whose identity is very much defined over against the secular liberal culture”.

Steinfels juxtaposes these first two groups with two subsequent groups to which he assigns no handle. They consist of “a very large liberal group that has a Christian and Catholic commitment but are not willing to isolate themselves” who want “to be engaged with the culture in conversation with it, not just in battle with it” and the fourth group “is a more radical and political group that forms an identity largely around very personal, radical social justice commitments.”

Africa and the Anglican provision…

Our friends over at the Intentional Disciples blog have been following the news developing in the wake of last week’s surprise announcement about the Anglican provision . While much of the world’s attention (and ours too) has focused on the Church of England and the Traditional Anglican Communion, some commentators have looked at what the Anglican provision–the Personal Ordinariates–might mean for Africa.

Can we learn from the Alpha Course?

The Intentional Disciples (a United States based group blog “devoted to the baptismal call, spirituality, gifts, vocations, ministry, work, history, theology, evangelization, formation, bad jokes, and pastoral support of lay Christians seeking to live their faith in the 21st century”) have an interesting discussion up on their blog regarding the rapid spread of the Alpha Course, a Christian evangelical movement pioneered by Nicky Gumble at Holy Trinity Brompton. (The Alpha Course/Alpha Movement/phenomenon was featured in Time Magazine last year).