This is a collection of Catholic and Christian videos from people of diverse languages, countries, and cultures. It is a celebration of faith in music, dance, hymns, stories,and mass; the sorrow of Iraqi Christians, and the drama of myth in two prequels to the Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien's Catholic myth. For further reading there are facts, references, stories, and links in the right column of each page.

Father Richard Neuhaus, founder of First Things Magazine

In this article, Father Forgive Them, he writes of an experience that demonstrates how compelling is the story of the "real world" even to Bishops.

Not long ago I was invited to lecture to a large group of clergy in the Midwest. They had for two days been studying sacramental and liturgical theology, and it came time for the bishop to introduce me. “It has been a rewarding two days,” he said, “as we have been thinking about worship and the sacramental life, but now we have Father Neuhaus to return us to the real world as he addresses the subject of the Church and social responsibility.”

Really? The real world? What then is that other world of worship, prayer, and contemplative exploration into the mystery of Christ's presence, a presence ever elusive and disturbingly near? On the part of the bishop it was perhaps a slip of the tongue, but behind slips of the tongue are slips of the mind and sometimes slips of the soul. It happens among all Christians today, of whatever denomination or persuasion, that there is a great slippage of the soul. It is by this world, this world at the cross, that reality is measured and judged. That other world, the world we call real, is a distant country until we with Christ bring it home to the waiting father.

The Next Christianity, Article by Philip Jenkins

The fact is, we are at a moment as epochal as the Reformation itself — a Reformation moment not only for Catholics but for the entire Christian world.

Christianity as a whole is both growing and mutating in ways that observers in the West tend not to see. ...in its variety and vitality, in its global reach, in its association with the world's fastest-growing societies, in its shifting centers of gravity, in the way its values and practices vary from place to place — in these and other ways it is Christianity that will leave the deepest mark on the twenty-first century.

Today across the global South a rising religious fervor is coinciding with declining autonomy for nation-states, making useful an analog with the medieval concept of Christendom — the Res Publica Christiana — as an overarching source of unity and a focus of loyalty transcending mere kingdoms or empires.

The growth in Africa has been relentless. In 1900 Africa had just 10 million Christians out of a continental population of 107 million #151; about nine percent. Today the Christian total stands at 360 million out of 784 million, or 46 percent. And that percentage is likely to continue rising, because Christian African countries have some of the world's most dramatic rates of population growth.

The population shift is even more marked in the specifically Catholic world, where Euro-Americans are already in the minority. Africa had about 16 million Catholics in the early 1950s; it has 120 million today, and is expected to have 228 million by 2025. The World Christian Encyclopedia suggests that by 2025 almost three quarters of all Catholics will be found in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

May this collection of videos grow to tell the stories envisioned by Father Neuhaus and Philip Jenkins

• Of the Real World of worship, prayer, and contemplative exploration
• Of Res Publica Christiana - the variety, vitality, and global reach of Christianity

There are links to The World Crhistian Encyclopedia, statistical data, Father Newhouse's article, and The Next Christianity in the column, Christianity in the World.

The World Christian Encyclopedia

Link to the encyclopeida here

Statistical Data

By the numbers and by the worldwide expressions of faith in this collection of videos, we wish to share the notion that Christianity is the Real real world.

In this global map of religions in the world Christianity is shaded blue. View the larger image here and its source here

Christians, numbering 2.1 billion, make up the largest group among the major religions in the world. View the statistics here

Catholics, numbering 1.1 billion, represent over half of all Christians, making the Catholic Church the largest organized body of any world religion. Read more here and here

Father Richard Neuhaus

Read the complete article, Father Forgive Them here:

Obituary January 8, 2009: The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest, author and editor of the journal First Things, experienced at least three conversions in his life -- from Canadian to U.S. citizen, from Lutheran to Catholic and from liberal to conservative -- as if he were simply too intellectually questing to stay still.

Even though he was not himself evangelical, Time magazine named Father Neuhaus one of America's most influential evangelicals in 2005 and noted that the president cited him more than any other living authority when interviewed by religious publications. A senior administration official told Time that Father Neuhaus's views had been influential on abortion, stem-cell research, cloning and the defense-of-marriage amendment. Read more here:

Article - The Next christianity

Read the entire article at CERC here: