ChristendomToApostolic
-
Shea Week Eleven
In a Christendom age, a deeper conversion to Christ usually means taking more seriously the moral teaching of the church. In such an age, there’s not much argument over dogmatic teachings. Everyone believes that there is a God and there’s a heaven and hell and there are angels and demons and there’s going to be Continue reading
-
Shea Week Ten
Since the church is no longer in the heart of the broader culture, it can do little by means of the traditional methods of diplomacy, developing relationships and maintaining influential positions. We don’t have any influential positions anymore. But we can still be witnesses. Consider the witness of Mother Teresa. She spent her life treating Continue reading
-
Shea Week Nine
That’s not to say that we won’t have quirky charismatic leaders in an apostolic age. The church needs to be ready for some energetic messiness if she wants to remain alive and capture the wider culture. Because the age of Christendom is no more, church administrators should probably not waste too much time trying to Continue reading
-
Shea Week Eight
Practices that incarnate the Christian vision The world is somewhat blind to the spiritual reality that is actually more real than what the world sees. So part of our mission is to have the spiritual world become a living force in our minds and manifested in our lives. We have to become those witnesses that Continue reading
-
Shea Week Seven
Practices that incarnate the Christian vision The world is somewhat blind to the spiritual reality that is actually more real than what the world sees. So part of our mission is to have the spiritual world become a living force in our minds and manifested in our lives. We have to become those witnesses that Continue reading
-
Shea Week Six
We see inside the Catholic Church today some of the tensions that would naturally arise between a component of the church that was nostalgically looking for a return to Christendom or foolishly thinking that nothing really had changed and everything was fine versus a component of the church that is already adopting an apostolic strategy. Continue reading
-
Shea Week Five
The author introduces a term “imaginative vision” that he says is a set of assumptions and a way of looking at things especially with regard to moral matters and spiritual matters that is largely taken for granted rather than argued for. As a holistic way of seeing things, it is usually secured by a religion Continue reading
-
Shea Week Four
The pace of change over the last hundred to 150 years has been so rapid that institutions aligned to the eternal mindset of God seem to be pretty far behind the curve. The Catholic Church was established by Jesus Christ and is protected by the Holy Spirit. God — who is eternal — set up Continue reading
-
Age of Change
Contributing to the idea that everything is changing in this age, and therefore change may be the defining characteristic of this age, is the rapid pace of technological innovation and revolution. We spent about 100 years moving from horse-drawn vehicles that moved at about three or 4 miles an hour to automobiles — that is Continue reading
-
Christendom and the Need for Something New
Christendom is a term that means different things to different people, so it will be important that we define it for our purposes and for the purposes of understanding Monsignor Shea’s message. Let’s consider world history from a very high perspective. In the ancient world, there were many dominant civilizations tied to pagan religions. The Continue reading
Bound in Love 