Welcome to the CORPUS Blog. CORPUS is a faith community affirming and rooted in a revitalized church including an inclusive priestly ministry. Please visit our web site: www.corpus.org Our Blog will be a portal to news, articles and resources enabling you to keep up-to-date in the Catholic Reform process.
In the Gospel of Luke, a scholar of the law poses a question to Jesus that continues to echo in our hearts today: “And who is my neighbor?” (10:29). It is a question that reveals both the yearning and the resistance found within the human spirit—a desire to do what is right and yet a temptation to draw artificial boundaries around our compassion.
After the release of a Vatican report opposing the restoration of women deacons last week, the advocacy group Discerning Deacons quickly put together two online prayer and reflection gatherings that attracted more than one hundred people. Many of the attendees were women who have felt called to the diaconate for much of their lives and have been engaging with the synod process in the hopes of seeing some positive change on the issue. They were disappointed with the latest setback.
Nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God, than friendship for the friends of God.
—Simone Weil, “Waiting for God”
Friendship is the first and most important thing, and is the true cement of the Church built by Christ.
—Thomas Merton, “Striving Towards Being”
Can we have friends among the dead? Is it possible to have a friendship with someone you have never met? Can you be friends with a person who never knew you even existed?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then I am friends with Thomas Merton—and you may well be, too.
I met Merton the way most of us have: through his writing. Our friendship began in a most accidental way, when a photocopy of his poem “Elegy for a Monastery Barn” drifted off the bookshelf in my English Department office I shared with a colleague. As a young literature professor and a practicing poet, I was, and still am, ever on the lookout for voices, poems and poets who are new to me.
While 43 per cent of the oldest Americans say they attend religious services at least once a month, only 26 per cent of young adults claim to do so.
Alamy
A survey carried out by the Pew Research Centre found that levels of religiousness have been relatively stable in the United States over the past five years, with no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults.
The report from the nonpartisan “fact tank”, which conducts public opinion polling and demographic research, said the percentages of Americans who say they pray every day, that religion is very important in their lives, and that they regularly attend religious services have remained steady since 2020, which suggests that the prolonged religious decline seen in previous decades has plateaued.
