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Phoenix, Jan 14, 2009 / 11:42 pm (CNA).- A new survey of denominational loyalty reports that churchgoing Catholics are significantly less likely than churchgoing Protestants to change denominations.Six out of ten active Catholics would only consider attending a Catholic church, while about 30 percent would prefer attending a Catholic church but would consider others, the survey says. Eleven percent of churchgoing Catholics reportedly do not show a specific preference for attending a Catholic church.By contrast, only 16 percent of Protestant churchgoers will only consider attending a church of their present denomination. About 51 percent express a preference for one...

While Catholics and Protestants both fall under the broad umbrella of Christianity, they practice their faith in different ways. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of regular churchgoers found that 25% of Evangelical Christians read the Bible on a daily basis along with 20% of other Protestants. Just seven percent (7%) of Catholics do the same. At the other extreme, 44% of Catholics rarely or never read the Bible along with only seven percent (7%) of Evangelical Christians and 13% of other Protestants. Consider the divergence among the faiths in other areas, too. (All the figures that follow are based...

President Bush may follow in the footsteps of his brother Jeb and convert to Catholicism, several European papers are reporting. In the wake of the president’s visit to see Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Italian newspapers, citing Vatican sources, said Bush was open to the idea of converting to Catholicism. The Italian newspaper Il Foglio referred to such talk about Bush’s possible conversion and stated that “anything is possible, especially for someone reborn like Bush.” Noting that Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office as Britain’s prime minister last year, the paper also stated that “if anything happens,...

My niece's husband is a trainee Baptist pastor. Jimbo's hip, friendly, and fun to be with. He's smart and theologically savvy. I like him. He loves Jesus and believes the Bible, and on most moral and doctrinal issues I can affirm what he affirms. We agree on a lot. But even when we agree, we don't see eye to eye. Somehow we seem to have reached our religious conclusions from different starting points and through different routes. A chapter in Mark Massa's book Anti-Catholicism in America illuminated the problem for me. Massa quotes an important theological work by David Tracy,...

The Times March 6, 2008 That Martin Luther? He Wasn’t So Bad, Says Pope Richard Owen in Rome Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices. Pope Benedict will issue his findings on Luther (1483-1546) in September after discussing him at his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians — known as the Ratzinger Schülerkreis — at Castelgandolfo, the papal summer residence. According to Vatican insiders the Pope will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy, was not a heretic....

The Future Lies in the Past -- Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.Many 20- and 30-something evangelicals are uneasy and alienated in mall-like church environments; high-energy, entertainment-oriented worship; and boomer-era ministry strategies and structures modeled on the business world. Increasingly, they are asking just how these culturally camouflaged churches can help them rise above the values of the consumerist world around them. For younger evangelicals, traditional churches are too centered on words and propositions. And pragmatic churches are compromising authentic Christianity by tailoring their ministries to the marketplace and pop culture....

In a videotape titled "The Pope: The Holy Father," Catholic apologist Scott Hahn claims the proliferation of Protestant denominations proves the Reformers' principle of sola Scriptura is a huge mistake: Do you suppose that Jesus would say, "Well, once I give the Church this infallible scripture, there really is no need anymore for infallible interpretations of scripture. The Church can hold together just with the infallible Bible." Oh, really? In just 500 years, there are literally thousands and thousands of denominations that are becoming ever more numerous continuously because they only go with the Bible. It points to the fact...

Does the seizure of the Labour leadership north and south of the border by Presbyterian progeny signal the revival of religion in British public life? Both Gordon Brown and Wendy Alexander are self-consciously "children of the manse": happy, we are told, to bring their Protestant sensibility to bear upon public policy. Whether it is opposing supercasinos, or rolling back cannabis liberalisation, or calling for a "coalition of conscience" against the atrocities in Darfur, the Presbyterian ethos of "giving witness in life" has returned to the higher echelons of government. But this is eyewash: the Protestant mindset has rarely played less...

In an act of jaw-dropping hubris, Pope Benedict Joseph Ratzinger recently declared Protestantism's churches "not true churches." In an effort to underscore the wisdom of such a position at this time, he then had his "document" signed by none other than Cardinal William Levada, a pro-gay, pro-pedophile, pro-molestation cleric hailing recently from San Francisco and Portland. Apparently hypocrisy is in abundant supply in the Vatican larder. Levada is one of the papal appointments that causes either great puzzlement about (or gives great insight into) this Pope's orientation. Fresh off of scandals in his previous appointments, Levada received one of the...

Pope Benedict XVI declared yesterday that Christian denominations other than his own were not true churches and their holy orders have no value. Protestant leaders immediately responded by saying the claims were offensive and would hurt efforts to promote ecumenism. Roman Catholic- Anglican relations are already strained over the Church of England's plans to ordain homosexuals and women as bishops. The claims came in a document, from a Vatican watchdog which was approved by the Pope. It said the branches of Christianity formed after the split with Rome at the Reformation could not be called churches "in the proper sense"...

My lucubrations for today’s webposting would like to argue just this one single point: Doctrinal clarity is lost when Catholics call Protestant heretics. To be sure, that habit of unthinkingly hurling accusations of heresy at Protestants pretty much died out after the Second Vatican Council, when talk of “separated brethren” became all the rage. But a random spot-check of some Catholic blogsites of a conservative bent–where heresy is often used as the term of choice when these bloggers are in their Colonel Blimp harumphing mood–tells me it’s time for some clarity here. Which prompts the following reflections. First of all,...

Seventeen-year-old Stephanie Sanchez had been impregnated for the third time by Adrian Estrada, her youth pastor, when she was strangled and stabbed, prosecutor Scott Simpson told jurors Tuesday in Estrada's capital murder trial. Estrada had held Bible studies and ministered to Sanchez in his role as youth pastor at El Sendero Assembly of God church, Simpson said in opening statements. And in December 2004, when she was 16 and he was 21, he took her to abort her first pregnancy. By the time she was killed a year later, Simpson said, Estrada was interested in another young girl. "Rather than...

Canada's Christians have been trounced and their venture into the sacrosanct precinct of secular politics has proved a singular failure, brayed the heathen last week, after the House of Commons endorsed gay marriage by a much bigger majority than when it approved of it last year. The heathen in this case was a senior columnist in the super-secularist Globe and Mail, who wrote in undisguised exaltation: "Thoughtful evangelical Christians must [now] ask themselves some hard questions, such as: 'Isn't it about time we admit we've failed? That, both here and in the United States, our efforts to influence the political...

A watchdog committee at Westminster has said the Goverment isn`t tackling the underperformance of Protestant pupils urgently enough. The committee has sent the Department of Education an end of term report. It grades the department on what it has done to lift exam results in loyalist areas. The verdict: could do a lot better. GCSE Maths: Appalling performance; literacy and numeracy: progress manifestly unsatisfactory. In fact the latter criticism applies across Northern Ireland. The Public Accounts Committe reports that one in five pupils leaves school here without being able to read and write properly. But though concerned with the broad...

My great-great-great-grandfather was named Moses. My cousins have names like Sarah, Deborah, Jeremy, Judith, Esther, Raphael, and Samuel.... Yet I do not (as far as I know) have a single drop of Jewish blood in my veins. Neither did I, nor any member of my family, convert to Judaism. But philo-Semitism, which often includes an emotional identification with the Jewish people, is part of the heritage of the community I was raised in: The French Huguenots, or Protestants.... But perhaps the most moving example of Protestant efforts on behalf of French Jewry occurred in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small, all-Protestant town...

The Church of England has broken with tradition dogma by calling for doctors to be allowed to let sick newborn babies die. Christians have long argued that life should preserved at all costs - but a bishop representing the national church has now sparked controversy by arguing that there are occasions when it is compassionate to leave a severely disabled child to die. And the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, who is the vice chair of the Church of England's Mission and Public Affairs Council, has also argued that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should...

The Church of England believes doctors should be given the right to withhold treatment from some seriously disabled newborn babies in exceptional circumstances, The Observer reported. The view comes in a submission from the church to a British medical ethics committee looking at the implications of keeping severely premature babies alive through technological advances, the weekly newspaper said. The Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, was said to have written that "it may in some circumstances be right to choose to withhold or withdraw treatment, knowing it will possibly, probably, or even certainly result in death". Last week, Britain's Royal College...

Pity the poor values voter. She's all dressed up, but does she have anywhere to go? In 2004, she was the darling of the election. Now she feels like a wallflower, taken for granted by the Republicans and mocked by the Democrats. "Values voter" is, of course, a euphemism for evangelicals and conservative Catholics. It is more politically correct to use the euphemism than to acknowledge that one's religious faith actually influences their decision in the voting booth. After all, one must take care not to run afoul of the radical notion of separation of church and state promoted by...

Some have joked that Presbyterians are "denser" in Pittsburgh than anywhere else. All over Allegheny County, you can find Presbyterian churches within a stone's throw of each other, and despite population losses, Western Pennsylvania continues to have more Presbyterians than any other region of the nation. There's a strong historical reason for that. It is connected to a group of immigrants who were a bedrock of the region's early settlement, but whose role in American history is virtually unknown to many people. They are the Scots-Irish, although it's not a term they originally would have applied to themselves, according to...

When it comes to salaries among some church leaders, the policy seems to be "don't ask, don't tell," even though tithes from parishioners pay those salaries. While Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches have no qualms about revealing pastors' salaries, many local Protestant churches do not reveal salaries to nonmembers. Salaries of pastors at Protestant churches tend to be set by overarching religious associations or by a church board or both. The figure is often based on the church's location and parish size. Salaries tend to fall within the lower to upper middle-class range. A general rule among Protestant churches may...