Faith Fades Where It Once Burned Strong
Mon Oct 13, 2:56 PM ET

By FRANK BRUNI The New York Times

ROME, Oct. 12 Like many Italians in decades and childhoods past,
Giampaolo Servadio used to go to Roman Catholic Mass every week. He even
served as an altar boy.

But last Sunday morning, as church bells tolled around this city of
storied cathedrals, he followed a different ritual: he went running. It
struck him as a more relevant use of time.

"The church seems really out of step," said Mr. Servadio, 39, mentioning
issues like birth control and questioning the very utility of prayer. "I
don't see how something like a confession and a few repetitions of the
`Hail Mary' are going to solve any problems."

He wondered if he should call himself Catholic: "When you realize that
for 20 years you don't do this you don't even go to church what kind of
Catholic are you?"

A fairly typical one, at least in Italy and much of Europe, where the
ties of Christianity no longer bind the way they once did and often seem
not to bind at all.

This week Pope John Paul II is to celebrate his 25th anniversary as the
head of the Roman Catholic Church, which is both Europe's and
Christianity's largest denomination.

It has been a quarter century of enormous changes, and few have been
more significant, for his church and mainstream Protestant
denominations, than the withering of the Christian faith in Europe and
the shift in its center of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere.


The article continues at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&e=5&u=/nyt/20031013/ts_nyt/
faithfadeswhereitonceburnedstrong

--
Gregory Gadow
techbear@serv.net
http://www.serv.net/~techbear

"If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Faith Fades Where It Once Burned Strong
Mon Oct 13, 2:56 PM ET

By FRANK BRUNI The New York Times

ROME, Oct. 12 Like many Italians in decades and childhoods past,
Giampaolo Servadio used to go to Roman Catholic Mass every week. He even
served as an altar boy.

But last Sunday morning, as church bells tolled around this city of
storied cathedrals, he followed a different ritual: he went running. It
struck him as a more relevant use of time.

"The church seems really out of step," said Mr. Servadio, 39, mentioning
issues like birth control and questioning the very utility of prayer. "I
don't see how something like a confession and a few repetitions of the
`Hail Mary' are going to solve any problems."

He wondered if he should call himself Catholic: "When you realize that
for 20 years you don't do this you don't even go to church what kind of
Catholic are you?"

A fairly typical one, at least in Italy and much of Europe, where the
ties of Christianity no longer bind the way they once did and often seem
not to bind at all.

This week Pope John Paul II is to celebrate his 25th anniversary as the
head of the Roman Catholic Church, which is both Europe's and
Christianity's largest denomination.

It has been a quarter century of enormous changes, and few have been
more significant, for his church and mainstream Protestant
denominations, than the withering of the Christian faith in Europe and
the shift in its center of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere.


The article continues at
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&e=5&u=/nyt/20031013/ts_nyt/faithfadeswhereitonceburnedstrong

--
Gregory Gadow
techbear@serv.net
http://www.serv.net/~techbear

"If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you."
-- Benjamin Franklin