Some web browsing.........

A quick jaunt around some issues that came up on the blogosphere over the last while that you might be interested in reading, in no particular order:

• Study suggests religion in Ireland may become extinct
• Ever get frustrated sometimes with people and be fit to say "Let's see: You don't believe God exists. And you're angry with him. Huh......."
• The Popes message to the opening of the ""Courts of the Gentiles" within the Church at a gathering Paris. This image refers to the vast open space near the Temple of Jerusalem where all those who did not share the faith of Israel could approach the Temple and ask questions about religion. There they could meet the scribes, speak of faith and even pray to the unknown God. The Court was then an area of separation, since Gentiles did not have the right to enter the consecrated area, yet Jesus Christ came to "break down the dividing wall" between Jews and Gentiles, and to "reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility in himself". In the words of Saint Paul, "He came and proclaimed peace..." (cf. Eph 2:14-17). At the heart of the Paris in front of Notre Dame cathedral, a great court has been created in order to give fresh impetus to respectful and friendly encounter between people of differing convictions"
• In Deference to Crisis, a New Obsession Sweeps Japan: Self-Restraint - can our suffering neighbours teach us something in our recession obsessed country?
• John Allen provides his analysis of the ruling from the European Court of Human Rights decision concerning the display of crucifixes in Italian classrooms.
• Max Lindemann thralls through various comment boxes across various blogs and identifies Nine Types of Catholic Commentators.
• What nuns can teach you about social media!
• Romero: the voice of those who have no voice
• Remembering the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
• Benedict XVI, Hans Kung and the future of Catholicism - New books from Pope Benedict XVI and Fr. Hans Kung, two theologians who worked as contemporaries and whose careers were nurtured on the same German soil, show them to be worlds apart in their understanding of the Catholic Church. Unlike Kung, Benedict’s vision of the Church, writes Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg,  is “focused upon deepening its knowledge of, faithfulness to, and love for Christ. It’s also a Church that engages the world, but is not subservient to passing intellectual-fashion. Finally, it’s a Church which is evangelical in the best sense of the word: proposing – rather than hedging or imposing – the Truth revealed by Christ.”
• Never judge a church by its cover
• The widowed ex-trappist parish priest who inspired the fonts used by Apple on their Mac's!
• Another view on the benefits of the Internet for evangelisation - "I got my religion online" - John Paul II told us to cast out into the deep. Pope Benedict wisely promotes doing so with the most modern of nets. The internet can be exactly that: a net, over the abyss, and even a path toward the light!
• Do beautiful churches produce vocations?
• Prayer is absolutely essential..... or your die - Ed West meets Fr Michael Shields, the priest who exchanged the frozen wastes of Alaska for the post-Soviet wilderness of Siberia
• The 21st Century saint you have never heard of.
• Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York issued an interesting and reflective Lenten pastoral letter looking at the relationship between The Alter and the Confessional.
• The Filipino bishops challenge their communities for Lent - give up sex!
• Citizens of a world on fire - "We believe in beginning again. We believe in something better to come: redemption, and resurrection. We turn over shovels of ash to regrow the garden. We are stardust".
• Taking a look inside Europe's last leper colony from the BBC
• Brenda O'Brien in the Irish Times discusses how reform Archbishop Martin seeks will only come when a spiritual reform happens