Weekend Roundup – News and Commentary – 09/25/16

No sooner do I empty my inbox each weekend, that it fills right up again! Here’s the news from the last seven days:

• Christ Cathedral, Formerly Crystal Cathedral, to Unveil Virtual Tour of $72 Million Renovation

Remember smiling ecumenical minister, Robert $chuller (pictured)? He was the Joel Osteen of the previous generation. No messages about sin or hell, just lots of smiles. He died last year and his ostentatious glass church complex was bought by the local Catholic diocese and is currently being renovated to the tune of $72 million. $chuller’s ultra doctrine-lite grandson, Bobby Schuller, unsurprisingly has a regular slot on TBN.

• Billy Graham Slams Prosperity Gospel: ‘You Cannot Serve Both God and Money’

Graham is absolutely right about the prosperity gospel, but I don’t know what was more harmful to the true Gospel witness; the prosperity gospel that’s rampant on TBN or Graham’s ecumenism with Rome?

• Pope cracks down on cash payments in miracle approval process

Enlightening! Ca$h for canonization! No surprise. These kinds of backroom deals have been part and parcel for the Catholic church for centuries, folks.

• A whiff of schism: when different Catholics hold radically different beliefs
• Catholic church’s total ban on contraception challenged by scholars
• 500 Catholic scholars lash back at Humanae Vitae critics
• Catholics Face a Choice
• On Communion debate, Pope Francis opts for decentralization

Catholic traditionalists and progressives continue their no-holds-barred fight to control the future of the church. This is not how you spell u-n-i-t-y.

• Where have all the children gone?
• Young People Are Abandoning Religion, Especially Catholicism
• What Tim Kaine and Mike Pence say about the diluted identity of the American Catholic Church
• No, American politics didn’t create ‘Cafeteria Catholics.’ Catholicism did.

The American Catholic church is in deep, deep crisis mode as younger people are dropping away like the plague. They wonder why they should climb Catholicism’s mountain of religious legalism and liturgical rigmarole when the pope says even atheists will go to Heaven if they “follow the light they are given” and are “good.”

• Joint Catholic Lutheran commemoration a sign of hope to divided world
• Pope, Christian leaders pray for peace, victims of war

A week doesn’t go by that I don’t see a story about Rome pushing its ecumenical agenda.

• The Catholic Church and the visions of Fátima

This is an interesting article on the Catholic church’s premier Marian apparition, with the church marking Fatima’s 100th anniversary next year with great fanfare.

• Evangelicals in Italy back school head who bans Catholic mass

I applaud this school official in Italy who banned Catholic mass from public schools. I think I need to post a message down the road about American evangelicals who continue to bemoan the discontinuation of prayer in public schools.