Martin Marty: Sightings
Furies over immigration
By Martin E. Marty — January 19, 2017
In his homily at mass for National Migration Week, [Cardinal Cupich] asked for constructive dialogue on the way to "[a] conversion. A new way of thinking about those who are strangers."
The metaphysical moment
By Martin E. Marty — January 12, 2017
Many moments ago—two millennia or so—all this was called “Gnosticism,” which never left our cultures, and returns in newly marketable forms.
Many sightings of hope
By Martin E. Marty — January 5, 2017
“We do not know enough about the future to be absolutely pessimistic.”
Suicide among priests?
By Martin E. Marty — December 21, 2016
From the prosperous-appearing church of 1979 to the disappearing church of 2016, the Irish experience elicits responses on countless grounds.
The religiocification of hate
By Martin E. Marty — December 13, 2016
We hereby nominate 2016 as the year in which the “religiocification of hate” was more visible, patent, and dangerous than in any other year in decades.
Infallibility and heresy
By Martin E. Marty — December 6, 2016
Not since certain American Protestants were publicly anti-Catholic, as older readers may remember them having been, have we read as many headlines with words like “infallibility,” “heresy,” papal “plots,” “schism,” etc., as we do these days.
Saints displaced and replaced
By Martin E. Marty — November 7, 2016
If one cannot handle the dust of the grave, there is comfort to be had, it is reasoned, in the designer urns to be mounted on the mantel at home.
Reformation jostlings
By Martin E. Marty — November 1, 2016
Because heirs of Luther are supposed to be humble, they don’t ordinarily make noise or news, though they will sing and shout this year.
Children on Christian or Secular swings?
By Martin E. Marty — October 25, 2016
The Founders solved the religion problem by not solving the religious problem, which is why we still have to debate it each year.
InterVarsity blues
By Martin E. Marty — October 18, 2016
What is to be the reaction of those who are not hostile to evangelicalism and who have had positive experiences with -- and, frequently, high regard for -- IVCF? Two words: sadness and regret.
Much ado about Mormon leadership
By Martin E. Marty — October 13, 2016
The secularist, anti-communal, anti-organizational impulses that mark Millennials and other younger Americans increasingly are also more characteristic than before of the Mormon, soon to be ex-Mormon young.
Father Michael Pfleger: ‘Just a parish priest’
By Martin E. Marty — October 4, 2016
The people at St. Sabina, against all odds, hope for justice, compassion, care of the weak and needy, and then use that vision to help change the scene around them.
The meaning of a religious ‘moment’
By Martin E. Marty — September 29, 2016
Only believers in inevitable and enduring progress, or who idolize their own efforts and causes, forget that episodes and moments come and go -- for better and/or for worse.
How Americans ‘got’ religion
By Martin E. Marty — September 21, 2016
I can advise readers that nowhere else are they likely to find a more informed, impassioned story of how Americans in these years “got” and kept -- or abandoned -- religion.
Clergy for a new drug policy
By Martin E. Marty — September 13, 2016
...priests, ministers, and rabbis are on the front line and frustrated by the futility of the War on Drugs.