In recent weeks, the Southern Baptist Convention has garnered extensive attention for its decision to remove Saddleback Church from fellowship over the California-based megachurch’s decision to allow a woman to serve in the office of pastor.
In June, messengers at the SBC’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, voted overwhelmingly to uphold the disfellowshipping of Saddleback and a smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist Church of Louisville, Kentucky, (88% and 92%, respectively) for having women serve as pastors.
Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, warned during the annual meeting that Saddleback was threatening the unity of the SBC and that the issue of women pastors was not nonessential.
“It’s not just a matter of church polity; it’s not just a matter of hermeneutics,” Mohler stated during the appeals session. “It’s a matter of biblical commitment, a commitment to the Scripture that unequivocally we believe limits the office of pastor to men.”

Nearly 85% of folks who were raised Catholic were still a member of that faith group when they were interviewed. For Protestants it was even higher – over 90%. Christians just didn’t move around a whole lot back in those days. However, among those who raised without religion, the vast majority picked a faith tradition as they moved into adult-hood. That was the case for 2/3 of those raised nones in the 1970s.
However, those trends lines have not stayed flat over the last five decades. Retention is down for all Christians, but at different rates. For Catholics, it dropped below 80% somewhere in the early 1990s and it fell below 70% in the early 2010s. For Protestants, it’s still fairly high but is clearly down from the 90% reported in the 1970s. Today, about 80% of folks raised Protestant are still Protestant as adults.
The nones are different story entirely, though. It used to be that 2/3 of those raised nones identified with a religion as adults. Now, about 2/3 of those raised with no faith group are still nones into adulthood. In other words, most people raised none are still a none now. .
Evangelicals have very good retention rates, even in the last decade nearly three quarters were still part of the same faith tradition as adults. The overall retention decline for evangelicals is just five percentage points. For mainline it’s much worse. They started right around the same level as evangelicals (76%), but now it’s just 58%. That means that if you found five people who were raised in the mainline, two of them would no longer be mainline today.

After experiencing violence and persecution in the recent past, new clouds are gathering over the future of Christians in Iraq, and now threaten the highest Christian authority in the land, the Chaldean Patriarch, Card Louis Raphael Sako.
Recently, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid issued a decree ending the “institutional recognition” of the office the cardinal holds. This was done by repealing Decree 147, signed by Mr Rashid’s predecessor, the late Jalal Talabani, on 10 July 2013, which recognised the patriarch’s appointment by the Holy See as head of the Chaldean Church “in Iraq and the world” and thus, “responsible for the assets of the Church”.
The latter aspect is what matters. “Someone wants to take control over the assets and properties held by Christians and the Church,” a source told AsiaNews.
Following the decision, President Rashid tried to clarify his decision. His Office issued a statement saying: “Withdrawing the republican decree does not prejudice the religious or legal status of Cardinal Louis Sako, as he is appointed by the Apostolic See as Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and the world.”
The press release goes on to say that, “the abolition of the Presidential Decree is intended to correct the situation. A constitutional or legal basis was not provided for the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 147 of 2013.” At the same time, it says that Card “Sako is highly valued by the Presidency of the Republic” as “Patriarch of the Chaldean Church throughout the world.”

The 300-bed Divine Mercy Hospital near Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka will become the biggest Christian-run healthcare facility in the Muslim-majority nation when it opens in November this year.
The hospital, being built at a cost of  3 billion taka (US$ 28 million), is the signature project of Christian Cooperative Credit Union Limited (CCCUL) and has about 50,000 Catholic and Protestant members with total assets of 12 billion taka (US$ 110 million).
Founded on July 3, 1955 by American Holy Cross missionary, Father Charles J. Young, this lay-run organization is the largest non-banking financial organization in Bangladesh aiming to promote the socio-economic welfare of people, including the minority Christian community.
Young allowed clergy to be advisers of the union but ensured that decision-making powers rested with laypeople, which became the key to its success, says Nirmol Rozario, 62, the union’s former president and a lay Catholic.
Rozario, currently the president of the Bangladesh Christian Association (BCA), the country’s largest lay-run Christian forum, however, says the Church hierarchy lags behind in promoting lay people like Young did more than seven decades ago.
A democratic mind-set “does not exist in the hierarchy and its structure,” Rozario told UCA News.
Lay involvement is limited to membership in parish councils and diocesan advisory committees. And, most lay members of parish councils are selected based on “loyalty to clergy and the decision-making powers rests with the parish priest,” Rozario said.
“Clergymen should not consider themselves as super humans and look down upon laypeople,” he said, adding that priests should join hands with the laity for the common good of the Church “without egoism,” he said.

People who attend worship services regularly tend to have more close friendships, which can in turn lead to better health outcomes.
Most health care professionals know they can’t fully assess patients’ health without looking at social determinants, the nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes. Income, housing, quality of schools, access to fresh produce and other factors play an important role in wellness. But there’s one we don’t fully acknowledge: the role of faith.
Faith, spirituality and a sense of purpose all have a beneficial effect on one’s emotional, physical and mental health.
This connection is well-established by researchers. Belief in a divine plan for one’s life can foster optimism and hope “ attitudes that can boost mental and physical health, according to an analysis of more than 40 studies. Spiritual practices, such as prayer, can reduce stress and anxiety.
Spirituality and faith can even affect our physical health. According to a study published in the Journal of Health Psychology, religiosity, spirituality and frequency of prayer have been tied to lower cortisol levels.
In a study of more than 1,700 older adults, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that those who practice religion had better immune function than those who didn’t. The findings persisted even when researchers adjusted for other factors that could impact immune system function, such as depression or chronic illness. The researchers suggest that the shared promotion of positive thoughts or experience of worship and adoration may help explain the physical health benefits.
Here’s how physicians at the Mayo Clinic sum up research on the topic: “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.”
We also know that some health benefits can be more pronounced in organized religion than in belief itself. For example, if you’re a member of a house of worship, you’ve likely noticed that few people attend services alone. Just as important as the internal attitudes religion can foster are the social connections it can bring.
An epidemic of loneliness and a lack of community have contributed to a rapid rise in “deaths of despair” from suicide and substance abuse. Belonging to a faith organization can foster the sense of community that’s missing in so many people’s lives.
People who attend services regularly tend to have more close friendships, which can in turn lead to better health outcomes. One study found that cancer patients who belonged to a church choir reported better vitality and mental health despite no changes in their physical condition. Simply having social support and coming together to sing was enough to improve their sense of well-being.

Female pastoral workers in a German parish are triggering outrage among faithful Catholics after the women processed with the Blessed Sacrament on the feast of Corpus Christi.
Marita Franzen and Sandra Ostermann, who hold the position of gemeindereferentin  (pastoral officer) in the Catholic parish of St. Joseph and St. Medardus in Lüdenscheid, were photographed carrying the sacred monstrance in violation of canon law. The parish of St. Medardus bragged on its website that the women lay assistants processing with the Blessed Sacrament constituted a “new achievement.”

In what’s likely to be seen as a classic example of the adage that “personnel is policy,” Pope Francis on Saturday tapped an Argentine archbishop widely seen as a close ally and ghostwriter for several major papal documents as the Vatican’s new doctrinal czar.
In a July 1 statement, the Vatican said the mandate of Spanish Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria as head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and head of the International Theological Commission has come to an end.
The announcement said that Pope Francis has named Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández of La Plata, Argentina, to succeed Ladaria, formally taking over in mid-September.
A long-time protégé of Francis, Fernández is widely seen as one of the pontiff’s ghost-writers, including for major landmark texts such as his 2015 eco-encyclical Laudato Si’; his 2016 post-synodal exhortation on the family Amoris Laetitia; and his first-ever apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudim, published in 2013 and widely considered a tone-setting text for the rest of Francis’s papacy.
A priest at the time of Francis’s election, Fernández was appointed by the pope as rector of the Pontifical University of Argentina, and he was Francis’s first episcopal appointment.

Honoring Saints Peter and Paul, the patrons of Rome, on their liturgical feast day, Pope Francis said understanding and imitating Jesus is not a matter of following doctrinal formulas or the “rigid observance” of rules and norms.
Rather, it means letting go of preconceived convictions and daily being transformed by his love in order to spread the Gospel to others, the pope said.
Speaking during a Mass for the June 29 Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Pope Francis said the two apostles answered the most essential question for a Christian, “Who is Jesus for me?” in a very specific way: “By following him as his disciples and by proclaiming the Gospel.”
“It is good for us to grow as a Church in the same way, by following the Lord, constantly and humbly seeking him out. It is good for us to become a Church that is also outgoing, finding joy not in the things of the world, but in preaching the Gospel before the world and opening people’s hearts to the presence of God,” he said.
He urged faithful to bring Jesus everywhere they go “with humility and joy: in our city of Rome, in our families, in our relationships and our neighborhoods, in civil society, in the Church, and political life, in the entire world, especially in those places where poverty, decay and marginalization are deeply rooted.”

Pope Francis said on Sunday that he will create 21 new cardinals, including the Vatican’s recently appointed doctrinal chief Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, at a consistory on Sept. 30.
The 86-year-old pope made the announcement from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square after reciting the Angelus prayer on July 9.
This is the full list:
• Archbishop Robert Francis Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops (United States)
• Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (Argentina)
• Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S. (France)
• Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (Italy)
• Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig, Apostolic Nuncio to Italy (Switzerland)
• Bishop Stephen Chow Sau-yan, S.J., Bishop of Hong Kong (China)
• Archbishop José Cobo Cano, Archbishop of Madrid (Spain)
• Archbishop Stephen Brislin, Archbishop of Cape Town (South Africa)
• Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for the Oriental Churches (Italy)
• Archbishop Ángel Sixto Rossi, Archbishop of Córdoba (Argentina)
• Archbishop Luis Rueda Aparicio, Archbishop of Bogotá (Colombia)
• Archbishop Grzegorz Ry, Archbishop of Lodz (Poland)
• Archbishop Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, Archbishop of Juba (South Sudan)
• Archbishop Protase Rugambwa, Coadjutor Archbishop of Tabora (Tanzania)

522,821 German Catholics left the Church in 2022, the German bishops’ conference announced on June 28–up from 359,338 in 2021, 221,390 in 2020, and 272,771 in 2019.
There are 20,937,590 Catho-lics in Germany, nearly one-quarter of the nation’s population. With the loosening of pandemic restrictions, Sunday Mass attendance increased from 4.3% in 2021 to 5.7% and 2022, according to the bishops’ annual statistical report. Mass attendance was highest in the Diocese of Görlitz (13.1%) and lowest in the Diocese of Trier (3.8%).
There were 155,173 baptisms, 162,506 first Communions, 110,942 confirmations, 35,467 weddings, and 240,144 burials in 2022.
Only 45 men were ordained to the priesthood in 2022: 33 men for Germany’s 27 dioceses, and 12 men for religious orders. The numbers of parishes declined from 9,790 in 2021 to 9,624 in 2022, as did the number of priests (12,280 to 11,987) and permanent deacons (3,253 to 3,184).
1,447 adults entered the Church in 2022 (down slightly from 1,465 in 2021), and 3,753 Catholics who had left the Church returned.