The Church around the World – a new website

There’s a new website launched on 4 Feb. which may be of interest and use to broaden horizons.
Catholics & Cultures has pages about the wide variety of life in the Catholic Church around the world, not just Latin rite.
“About this site” says:
“Most Catholics experience the faith through a single cultural lens. Yet people all around the world live and imagine it in a rich diversity of ways. Catholics & Cultures widens the lens with a scholarly, vivid and accessible look at the religious lives and practices of contemporary Catholics in countries around the globe.
“Catholics & Cultures, an initiative of the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, aims to foster comparative study of contemporary Catholic life around the globe and to provide teaching resources about Catholic life in all its richness and particularity. The initiative focuses on “lived Catholicism,” the ways that ordinary Catholics practice their faith in their everyday lives. The initiative will sponsor scholarly conversations, international conferences, and publications, including an electronic journal.”
The website is at https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/.
It has features on the Church in countries around the world. Look at the Ireland pages and see what you think. While I know we have many challenges and difficulties, the account there seems more pessimistic than I would estimate. A lot of what we were used to has gone, and there seems little positive movement among our leaders, but as I see it all this is making way for a new model of the Church in Ireland.
On the page on Worship in Ireland, we have:
“… perhaps the most remarkable thing about the style of worship in Ireland is how mechanical and even perfunctory it can be. Priests and laypeople alike joke about how they value a short Mass with few frills …
“Though Catholic & Cultures aims to provide video that gives a good sense of liturgy in different cultural contexts around the world, this was not possible in Ireland. In the aftermath of the abuse scandals, among the many new regulations in place are prohibitions of photos inside church buildings that might include children. Even for the still photos shown here, it was announced in advance that a photographer would be taking some pictures, and why.”
At the end of each page of the website there’s an email address for feedback. See what you think; or how to improve it!
Pádraig McCarthy