Facing death head on, pastor learns acceptance
By Bob Abernethy
Forrest Church, minister of public theology at the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York, has used his fight against terminal cancer to repair broken relationships in his life. Religion News Service photo.
NEW YORK -- Forrest Church is pastor of one of this city's prominent churches, with two dozen books to his name, an adoring congregation built over 30 years, and a devoted wife and four children.
He also has terminal cancer of the lungs and liver.
He guesses he has less than a year to live.
"I'm being gifted a month at a time, and rejoicing in that," Church told Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly in a recent interview. "But eventually the treatment will lose its valence, and the barbarians will storm the…
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wanted: 4,546 translators
The Bible, as everyone knows, is the world's all-time bestseller. So you might be excused for thinking that there is no shortage of it.
But according to tomorrow's edition of the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, after all these millennia the Good Book has still been translated into only 2,454 of the world's 7,000 existing languages, and editions of the entire text are available in a mere 438.
So in a prudent cost-cutting move that could also yield significant ecumenical benefits, work will soon begin to define a text acceptable to the Catholic as well…
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USED BOOKS Theological books donated by U.S. seminaries and publishers are sent to places like the South Asia Institute of Theology in Sri Lanka by the Michigan-based Theological Book Network. For use with RNS-USED-BOOKS, transmitted Oct. 9, 2008.
Religion News Service photo courtesy Theological Book Network.
Peter Manseau is the author of the new novel "Songs for the Butcher's Daughter." For use with RNS-10-MINUTES, transmitted Oct. 8, 2008. Religion News Service photo courtesy Peter Manseau.
Peter Manseau
By Kevin Eckstrom
Two years ago, Peter Manseau wowed audiences with "Vows," a searing account of growing up the son of a not-quite-excommunicated Catholic priest and a former nun in the heady days of 1960s Catholic America.
Now Manseau, 33, is back with his debut novel, "Songs for the Butcher's Daughter," which follows the fictional life of Itsik Malpesh, who believes he's the world's last living Yiddish poet.
The book has made Manseau a finalist for the prestigious John Sargent First Novel Prize. So why does a self-professed "fallen Catholic" get so verklempt about Yiddish? Some…