Free Republic

(AgapePress) - David Wells, in his new book Above All Earthly Pow'rs (Eerdman's), bemoans contemporary evangelicalism: "This is probably the first time that Christian people anywhere in the West have thought that ecclesiastical architecture is, in principle, offensive, that religious symbols, such as crosses, should be banned from churches, that pulpits should be abandoned, that hymns should be abolished, that pews should be sent to the garbage dump, and that pianos and organs should be removed. All of this has been happening on the forefront of this movement. This is probably the first time, too, that churchgoers have wanted their...

Joseph Ratzinger, Christ’s Donkey Born in Bavaria on Holy Saturday of 1927, Joseph Ratzinger’s life has been entirely within and for the Church, which, he is convinced, is the way of greatest service to the world. This and much else become evident in his remarkable account just published by Ignatius, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (300 pp., $14.95 paper), which takes the reader from his childhood to his appointment as Archbishop of Munich. The years in Rome as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will, one hopes, be the subject of another memoir. But there is a great...