archives

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

Since Pope Paul VI created the Synod of Bishops in 1965 to give the bishops of the world a voice in governance of the universal church, the body has met 21 times. Among other things, these sessions have sometimes been criticized as overly abstract and out of touch with the concrete realities in various parts of the world.

Perhaps aware of that concern, participants in the next Synod of Bishops in October, this one devoted to the theme of the “Word of God,” decided to conduct a sociological survey of attitudes towards the Bible in various nations. Sponsored by the Catholic Biblical Federation and carried out by GFK Eurisko, Italy’s leading market research organization, the survey polled people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and Russia. Plans call for four other countries shortly to be added to the mix, all in the global South: Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines, and Australia.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

I’ve long said that trying to report on Roman Catholicism through the prism of corporate logic or secular politics is like trying to present a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional space: inevitably only bits and pieces of the reality come into view, and the resulting picture is often badly distorted.

That’s a nice sound-bite so far as it goes, but most people need a concrete example to get the point. Recent days have given us a doozy, in the form of controversy surrounding the election of Fernando Lugo, a former Verbite priest and the emeritus bishop of the San Pedro diocese in Paraguay, as his country’s new president -- a victory which came despite Vatican insistence that Lugo remains a bishop and thus should stay out of the partisan fray.