archives

These stories appear in the Dec. 28, 2007 issue of National Catholic Reporter.

Odyssey Catholics: Young and restless, tenuously connected to their faith
By GREG RUEHLMANN
    Justin Brandon has been weighing his options. The 25-year-old San Francisco resident recently applied to Stanford’s highly competitive MBA program, but even if admitted, he isn’t sure he wants to leave his job at Better World Books, the promising dot-com where he has coordinated online marketing since June.
    Brandon isn’t used to feeling so content about a job. In the three years since he graduated from the University of Notre Dame, he has done extended volunteer work in Puerto Rico, served as a video production assistant at Notre Dame, shot documentary films in Ghana and Haiti, and worked as a search quality technician for Google in Silicon Valley.
    “Every year,” he said, “part of me wants to move cities or switch jobs.”
    Brandon and his restless ventures represent a generational trend among some young college-educated men and women who are free to choose flux over stability. Some social scientists have dubbed these post-college years the “odyssey years” -- a nomadic period when young adults move from one job to another, from one city to the next, delaying marriage, children and permanent career tracks longer than previous generations. Spiritually, they tend to be seekers, a characteristic that applies even to many with deep roots in a traditional religion such as Catholicism and no great desire to venture too far from the fold. Read the full story

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

A Venezuelan-born Princeton scientist who is a strong environmentalist and believer in global warming was appointed today to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Vatican’s chief “think tank” on scientific issues, by Pope Benedict XVI.

Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe, 65, is also a believer in evolutionary theory, who says that Darwinian evolution poses no conflict with religious faith and that the rival school of intelligent design has been “completely rejected” on a purely scientific basis.

Creedal Reform
With talk about liturgy reform, is there also the possibility of creedal reform? The Nicaean Creed of the Roman Catholic Church was pulled together at the Council of Nicaea held in Nicaea (present-day Iznik in Turkey) in 325 A.D. This first ecumenical council was convoked by and under the power and authority of the Roman Emperor Constantine I. The people of the Catholic Church who say this creed are hampered by the archaic language which can imply erroneous beliefs, even though 1700 years ago in the Latin language, something entirely different may have been on the male minds that created this dogma. Two important changes have taken place in our language and beliefs. We no longer must believe that God is a male person, and we no longer assume that the English word "man" means both men and women.

In order to really hear the message that is proclaimed to us in the Gospel today, it's very important that we situate this incident within the context of what was happening in the Jewish Christian community for whom Matthew wrote the Gospel. We may not be so aware, but we need to remind ourselves that the Gospels, like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were not written down immediately after Jesus left. The gospels developed out of oral traditions that were passed on for a number of years before anything was written down.

By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON -- Members of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests are calling for Cardinal Bernard F. Law’s retirement and subsequent removal from eight Vatican congregations before the pope’s visit to the United States in April.

Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, along with three other SNAP members, personally delivered a letter to the Vatican Embassy in Washington Jan. 9 stating their desire that Law, former archbishop of Boston, officially retire. The letter was addressed to Pope Benedict XVI in care of Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the apostolic nuncio to the United States.