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On Wednesday, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass for the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order to which he belongs. The pope paused to remember those Jesuit priests who had given their lives in service of their faith. “I’m thinking of Padre Paolo,” he said.

At the moment, no one in the room knew if Father Paolo Dall’Oglio was still alive.

Two days before the pope’s prayer, Father Paolo, an Italian Jesuit priest associated with the Syrian opposition, had been seen walking the streets of Raqqa, a rebel-controlled area in northern Syria. Then he disappeared. Activists reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a militant group affiliated with al Qaeda, had kidnapped him. Contradicting reports soon emerged. Had Father Paolo been kidnapped, or had he purposefully met with the group to negotiate the release of hostages and to broker a truce between Kurds and Islamic extremists fighting in the north?

One thing is certain: No one has heard from him since.

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[Robert] Bellah’s answer was more hopeful than [Philip] Rieff’s, he writes. He thought modernity “something less monolithic, and the therapeutic ethos less triumphant, precisely because they are not the whole of human experience. All the old stories, cosmologies, and interdictions still rattle about, even inside the most seemingly iron of cages. There is no escaping that mythic dimension” ”” particularly religion, which is “culture’s most profoundly developed form of ”˜socially charged narrative’.”

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A15-year-old boy confided in me after I addressed his class at a Sydney school last year. He cried as he told me that he had been using porn since the age of nine. He didn’t have a social life, had few friends, had never had a girlfriend. His life revolved around online porn. He wanted to stop, he said, but didn’t know how.

I have had similar conversations with other boys since then.

Girls also share their experiences. Of boys pressuring them to provide porn-inspired acts. Of being expected to put up with things they don’t enjoy. Of seeing sex in terms of performance. Girls as young as 12 show me the text messages they routinely receive requesting naked images.

Pornography is invading the lives of young people. Seventy per cent of boys and 53.5 per cent of girls have seen porn by age 12, 100 per cent of boys and 97 per cent of girls by age 16.

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[General Ray] Odierno called the moves “one of the largest organizational changes probably since World War II” for the service.

“If we go though full sequestration there’s going to be another reduction in brigades, there’s no way around it,” Odierno warned, adding that there will likely be more cuts coming in the heavy armor brigades, sequestration or not.

Fewer brigades, fewer soldiers, less money, and an uncertain modernization profile. With all of this in flux, what missions will the Army prioritize in the future?

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Anglican Church bishops from Western Kenya have asked Kenyans to maintain peace. The bishops arrived from Rwanda last Saturday. They had been invited by bishops in the Anglican Church of Rwanda for a one week session on peace.

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Canadians are increasingly working while on vacation, according to a recent study by Regus PLC, a global provider of flexible workplaces. The study found that 53 per cent of the Canadian professionals who responded would work one to three hours a day while on holiday. While entrepreneurs and freelancers have been taking so-called “workations” for years, now more Canadian nine-to-fivers are using the increased flexibility that technology offers to travel while continuing to work at their full-time jobs from the road. Workations allow people to travel the world without sacrificing their careers, explains Wes Lenci, a vice-president at Regus Canada, who cites significant benefits such as boosted creativity from the exposure to different cultures as well as stress reduction for employees.

But while Mr. [Tony ] Vlismas confirms technology is “absolutely important” to a workation, he found he wasn’t as reliant on technology as he expected. When in Toronto, where he also keeps a flexible schedule, he’s constantly available on his devices, but when he travels to places such as that remote Greek island, he’s in a different time zone and has limited Wi-Fi and spotty cellphone coverage. He simply makes do by setting up his calls in advance or letting people know the best times to reach him.

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Robert Neelly Bellah, a preeminent scholar of religion in America, bestselling author and the Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at UC Berkeley, died early this week of complications related to heart surgery. He was 86.

Widely known as one of the world’s most influential sociologists, Bellah was a Harvard-educated social theorist who taught for three decades at UC Berkeley. Best known for his scholarship on how religion shapes ethical, cultural and political practices, his literary legacy includes “Religion in Human Evolution” (2011), “Tokugawa Religion”(1957),”The Broken Covenant” (1975) and “Beyond Belief” (1970). His writings were said to have irked both the religious right and the secular left at various times. He was profoundly loved and respected by many of his students and peers.

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The Church should be a “movement of prayer” which creates “collateral blessing”, the Archbishop of Canterbury (above) said on Monday night. He was speaking at New Wine, a Charismatic Evangelical festival in Somerset, which he and his family attended for 12 years when he was a parish priest.

“The US Army gave us the expression ‘collateral damage’, which means killing people you did not mean to target,” he said. “People seeking Christ create collateral blessing. That means changing the world for the better, in ways you could not have predicted.”

Archbishop Welby continued: “There has never been a renewal of the Church in Western Europe without a renewal of prayer and the life of religious communities. Never. And if we want to see things changed, it starts with prayer.”

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Christians in these circumstances are facing a dangerous backlash, Church leaders having supported the ousting of Mr Morsi. Pope Tawadros II of the Coptic Orthodox Church ”“ at whose enthronement last November in Cairo the Archbishop of Dublin acted as a representative of the former Archbishop of Canterbury ”“ was critical of Mr Morsi’s pro-Islamist approach and attended the ceremony at which the army’s commander, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, announced the suspension of the country’s constitution. The killing of a Coptic priest and attacks on Christians’ homes have shown very clearly how vulnerable the approximately 10 per cent minority is in the situation.

The Church must heed the call of Bishop Anis and pray at this time for healing in a very troubled nation, and for all Christians in Egypt who are suffering real personal dangers.

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The Anglican ordinariates have been given permission by Pope Francis to evangelize lapsed Catholics. On 31 May 2013 the pope amended Article 5 of the ordinariates governing Norms, widening its base for evangelization from ex-Anglicans to include those Catholics who had fallen away from the church before being confirmed.

The new Article 5 §2 of the ordinariate’s Norms states:

A person who has been baptised in the Catholic Church but who has not completed the Sacraments of Initiation, and subsequently returns to the faith and practice of the Church as a result of the evangelising mission of the Ordinariate, may be admitted to membership in the Ordinariate and receive the Sacrament of Confirmation or the Sacrament of the Eucharist or both.

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O God, who by the lowliness of thy Son hast raised a fallen world: Grant to thy faithful people perpetual gladness; and as thou hast delivered them from eternal death, so do thou make them partakers of everlasting joys; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

— Roman Breviary

Now when they had passed through Amphip’olis and Apollo’nia, they came to Thessaloni’ca, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and for three weeks he argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas; as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.

–Acts 17:1-4

A credit unions expert has praised the Church of England for its plan to out-compete payday lending company Wonga.

Dr Peter Davis, of the University of Leicester’s School of Management, has worked as a consultant on credit unions and other forms of co-operative around the world – including for the United Nations Anti-Poverty Unit.

He welcomed the Archbishop of Canterbury Rev Justin Welby’s plan to build up credit unions as an alternative to payday loans that charge astronomical interest rates.

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More than 130 years after it was founded opposite St Peter’s Cathedral, St Barnabas’ Theological College is coming home to North ­Adelaide.

The college is planning a $1.3 million building behind the Anglican Archbishop’s historic home, Bishop’s Court, in Palmer Place.

Construction will start in October ahead of an opening next July.

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Justin Welby, the 57-year old former oil executive who quit the world of high finance in 1992 to become a priest, was enthroned in March as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury. And now the spiritual leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, has revealed that he speaks “in tongues”.

During an interview with Charles Moore of The Daily Telegraph at Lambeth Palace, London, he was asked by Moore that since he was an evangelical, could he speak “in tongues” which the journalist said is the “charismatic” spiritual gift recorded in the New Testament.

Moore said that Welby answered “Oh yes”, as if he had been asked if he plays tennis.

“It’s just a routine part of spiritual discipline – you choose to speak and you speak a language that you don’t know. It just comes,” the Archbishop said.

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