Good news for post-Christendom

Catholic New Times, Dec 19, 2004 by Stuart Coles

Good news for post-Christendom Amid today's ever-darkening temptations to give up in despair, several medications keep this aged pilgrim trudging on--among the most tonic of them all, the CNT.

This note of thanks is triggered by a convergence in my incoming mail, between two articles in your current issue--those by Rosalie Bertell and Gregory Baum (CNT, Dec. 5, 2004)--and a recent newsletter from Inter Pares.

The convergence that caught my attention clusters around the concept of evolution.

Gregory and Rosalie are extraordinarily insightful, communicating perceptions that are valuable advances from the separatist dogmatisms of our past; but both seem only part-way toward accepting the demise of the Christendom era. Their analyses stop short of affirming the cancerous insolvency of tribalized religions; a letting-go step that is now urgently demanded if we are to venture abetting the evolution from our mottled past to a just and healthful globalism.

I found instructive, and cogent the Inter Pares statement. It presents a lucid, realistic and persuasive exposition of the spiritual evolution that is rendering all our entrenched presumptions obsolete; an energizing redefinition of evangelism that is indeed good news for our post-Christendom world.

Evangelism sourced outside official religion, and using almost no religious terminology--does this disreligionized spirituality intrigue you as it does me?

On a magnitude of wickedness comparable to the Nazi holocaust of. Europe's Jews, the world today is confronted with an era when Christians and their neighbours have to deal with a demonic fact: the fact that what calls itself "Evangelical Christianity" is unabashedly guilty of complicity in the on-going murder of more than 100,000 men, women and children in the Middle East, and the maiming of tens of thousands more. As a creed envisioning and enabling globally inclusive all-faiths' action for justice and well-being, how about Inter Pares 'trinity'--resistance, opposition and proposition?

The Inter Pares manifesto is follow-up to the insights of Rosalie and Gregory, building on their contributions; thereby deepening our awareness of the evolutionary nature of a vital discipleship. "One step further."

I'd like your reflection on its acumen in discerning the signs of this time and what we are to do with the discernment.

Stuart Coles

Toronto