evangelicals & catholics
Who might be the next pope?
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
When the reigning pope creates new cardinals, it is because he is thinking not only of the Roman Catholic Church of today but, above all, that of tomorrow.
Cardinals are those who, in addition to assisting the pope with governing the universal Church, meet in conclave and elect the successor once the reigning one has died or, as in the case of Pope Ratzinger, resigns.
evangelicals & catholics
Eating God? A glimpse of Roman Catholicism
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
At first glance, it seems like a cannibalistic gesture, even if it is addressed to God and not to a human being. Yet it is the quintessence of Roman Catholicism.
We are talking about ‘eating God,’ an act that is at the heart of the Roman Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. Can Roman Catholicism really be thought of as the religion of ‘eating God’? Exploring it is Matteo Al-Kalak, Professor of Modern History at the University of Modena-Reggio, in his latest book, Mangiare Dio. Una storia dell’eucarestia (Eating God. A History of the Eucharist).
evangelicals & catholics
The liquid Pope?
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
Since the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman coined the expression Liquid Modernity (2000), the adjective ‘liquid’ has been applied to almost all phenomena, e.g. liquid society, liquid family, liquid love, etc.
In our world, liquidity seems to describe well the vacillating, uncertain, fluid and volatile feature of contemporary life. To the already wide range of associations, liquidity has been added as a descriptor for a specific religious tradition, i.e. liquid Roman Catholicism. George Weigel, a conservative American intellectual, talks about it in a worried tone in his article ‘Liquid Catholicism and the German Synodal Path’ (First Things, 16 February 2022).
evangelicals & catholics
Puzzling over the Pope
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
Among the many puzzling things introduced by Pope Francis, his teaching (magisterium) is perhaps the level that was most impacted by the Argentinian Pontiff.
Many Roman Catholics (and also many non-Catholic observers), accustomed to associating the papal magisterium with an authoritative, coherent and stable form of doctrinal teaching, are perplexed if not dismayed by a Pope who seems both to say and not say, to argue for something and to undermine it, to state one position and then contradict it the next breath.
evangelicals & catholics
A Roman stop after a Catholic push
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
Roman Catholicism can seem to be a pairing of contradictions. It is both Catholic (inclusive, welcoming, absorbing) and yet at the same time it is Roman (centralised, hierarchical, institutional).
The former characteristic gives it its fluidity, the latter its rigidity. Certainly there are historical phases in which the Catholic prevailed over the Roman and there are different combinations in the way the two qualities are intertwined with each other.
evangelicals & catholics
Rome sweet Rome? The shock awaiting Nazir-Ali
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Feb 2022
I am not English, nor Anglican, but the story of the conversion of the former Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali to Catholicism struck me.
Bishop Nazir-Ali’s concerns over the trajectory taken by the Anglican Church on some key doctrinal and moral issues made him look at Rome as a much safer place to identify with. Rome’s image was perceived as being a traditional, stable, authoritative institution with an aura of doctrinal and moral integrity. The question is whether Bishop Nazir-Ali is aware of the evolutions of Roman Catholicism under the papacy of Francis, which are the result of trends stemming from Vatican II.
letter from Italy
Right-wing renaissance?
Leonardo de Chirico
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
The victory of a nationalist coalition headed by Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female Prime Minister, chimes with concerns also visible elsewhere in Europe, such as Hungary, Poland and Sweden.
The global crisis, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, increased energy prices and migrations arouse anxieties that the right seem better able to interpret.