All posts tagged: Communion

Communion by JD Vance review – a strange, poignant book about faith and the modern world | Religion

Communion by JD Vance review – a strange, poignant book about faith and the modern world | Religion

Published by Sam Flores

At the heart of this strange, perhaps rather poignant, book is the biblical question: “What must I do to be saved?” Not in the crude sense of how to secure a place in heaven, but as an urgent challenge to a whole repertoire of destructive assumptions and habits endorsed by the majority culture. Vance’s famous first book, Hillbilly Elegy, chronicled, among other things, the impact of substance abuse on generations of the rural poor. It is not too much of a stretch to see this book as a vision of the modern west through the lens of addiction and its generational effects. Except, this time, it is the norms and expectations of elite modernity that are as lethal for the ambitious young professional as fentanyl is for the less privileged. Vance offers a diagnosis that is not particularly original, but derives its force from the intensity of the personal questioning he undertook to arrive at it. The US vice president describes with clarity the pervasive mechanisms, in education and the professional and political worlds, that …

With Cuba in crisis, faith groups work to influence policy, deliver aid

With Cuba in crisis, faith groups work to influence policy, deliver aid

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — In the face of an accelerating U.S. pressure campaign, deteriorating public utilities and economic inefficiency, Cuba’s communist government on Thursday (June 18) announced sweeping economic reforms, the largest privatization since before Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. Since January, the Trump administration has made repeated threats of military action, and its sanctions and an oil blockade have been compounding Cuba’s existing fuel shortages, power outages and scarcity of food and medicines.  Amid the mounting internal and external pressure, faith communities have been speaking up and meeting with both the U.S. and Cuban governments. U.S. Republican administrations have long seen faith groups as a cornerstone for humanitarian aid and community trust as they push for regime change in Cuba. In the last few months, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Mike Hammer, has met with top Catholic bishops, a Catholic priest known for being critical of the Cuban government, a Methodist bishop and members of the Alliance of Evangelical Churches in Cuba, which includes several groups more often critical of the government, including the Assemblies …

JD Vance writes of journey to Catholicism in ‘Communion,’ his first book since ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

JD Vance writes of journey to Catholicism in ‘Communion,’ his first book since ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

Published by Sam Flores

Vice President JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism whose faith has been central to his adult life, writes about his religious journey in a new book that could ultimately serve as a sort of origin story for a future presidential campaign. “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” comes out Tuesday from Harper, and The Associated Press obtained a copy ahead of its release. The HarperCollins imprint also put out “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling memoir from 2016 that helped make Vance a national figure. Vance has been working on and off on his new book since then, a tumultuous decade that included a Hollywood movie about his youth, a short stint as a U.S. senator from Ohio and now vice president to Donald Trump. There’s not a lot about Trump or other insider stories from Vance’s political years, although he does express regret for criticizing the Democratic Party’s “childless cat ladies,” a comment that came back to haunt him while Trump’s running mate. Instead, “Communion” serves as a sort of manifesto for the role of …

JD Vance Is Using His ‘Communion’ Press Tour to Launch a New Persona. Is It Working?

JD Vance Is Using His ‘Communion’ Press Tour to Launch a New Persona. Is It Working?

Published by Sam Flores

Even as he reinvents himself for the cameras, though, Vance has been struggling publicly to explain why he got into politics to begin with. In Communion, which Vance says he started working on in 2017—shortly after the release of his first bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy—he notes that he began exploring Catholicism while feeling unfulfilled despite the acclaim he got for that book, and the riches he’d acquired from his career in venture capital. He had “the arrogant desire to rise above others,” he writes. Nowadays, Vance writes, he’s more focused on fatherhood, and less on ambition. Put aside the irony of writing those words from the desk at the Vice President’s Naval Observatory residence, and you might notice that a lack of ambition accurately describes Vance’s political project. In his most recent public appearances—the ones where he avoids the incendiary nature of his podcast stints and posts on X—Vance also puts little emphasis on the future of the country, or any potential policies the Trump administration might pursue to improve the lives of Americans. Instead, …

Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace | Fiction

Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace | Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ recent deaths, he finds himself drawn into participating in a local theatre production – playing a disciple in Owen Sheers’s now-legendary Passion of Port Talbot, an immersive community-led re-enactment of the crucifixion that took place over several days in Port Talbot in 2012, starring Michael Sheen. Mack is recruited after a steelworker from the plant where he works as a security guard drops out of the show. Material enough for a novel already, one might think, but all this becomes more or less background noise when, on the same night he agrees to be in the play, Mack bumps into Siwan, a young woman he was close to at school. Siwan’s mother was an environmental …

For the first time, the Anglican Communion will be led by a woman. Here’s how women are celebrating

For the first time, the Anglican Communion will be led by a woman. Here’s how women are celebrating

Published by Sam Flores

LOS ANGELES (NPR) — On a bright morning in Hermosa Beach, Calif., sunlight enters St. Cross Episcopal Church at a slant, catching a bit of church history in the colored panes of a stained-glass window. For the Rev. Rachel Nyback, the church’s rector, it is something closer to a record of quiet upheaval. “What I love about this piece of stained glass is that you see the first woman who was called in the Diocese of Los Angeles to serve as a priest,” said Nyback, “and she was hired here at St. Cross.” The figure in the glass is of Rev. Canon Victoria Hatch, who was ordained at a moment half a century ago when the presence of a woman at the altar or in a pulpit was an innovation — and an argument. On Wednesday the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch, will witness another historic moment: the installation of Sarah Mullally as the first woman to lead the global association of churches that trace their roots to Henry …

New Communion rules spark debate over bishop’s authority in Charlotte Catholic diocese

New Communion rules spark debate over bishop’s authority in Charlotte Catholic diocese

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — After Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte issued a pastoral letter outlining that Catholics are expected to stand during the reception of Holy Communion in the diocese — and directing churches to remove kneeling supports like altar rails — clergy and lay Catholics quickly began reacting both in Charlotte and online.  In the Dec. 17 letter, Martin cited guidance from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, with Vatican approval, in stating that “the norm … is that Holy Communion is to be received standing, unless an individual member of the faithful wishes to receive Communion while kneeling.” Martin emphasized that Catholics will not be denied Communion “solely based on their posture.” However, the new directive prohibits diocesan churches from placing kneelers, altar rails and prie-dieus, all used to provide support for those who choose to kneel. The directive is set to take effect Jan. 16. Pre-existing, permanent altar rails will not be removed, diocesan officials said. Only temporary or movable kneelers are set to leave churches. Liz Chandler, director of communications …