Word: priesting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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OCCUPATION Singing and dancing priest, whose "aerobics of the Lord" services are topping Brazil's charts...
...Most priests won't turn supplicants away, but Brazil's Padre Marcelo Rossi, 31, must--or risk a riot. Second only to the Pope, the 6-ft. 4-in. priest is the greatest crowd gatherer in the Roman Catholic world. His appeal? After Mass, he sings and dances the Lord's praises in an electric whirlwind that he has termed, appropriately, "the aerobics of the Lord." While his followers sing along, he executes choreographed jumps, leaps and twists that the faithful try to copy. And when the spirit moves the Father especially vigorously, he will pour buckets of holy water...
...Ladd Report, are more than twice as likely to volunteer as people in Germany or France. And the percentage of Americans volunteering, unlike participating in government, is going not down but up; it more than doubled between 1977 and 1995, from 26% to 54%. Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of social science at the University of Chicago, argues that these high rates stem largely from America's religiosity. Americans who attend religious services weekly are twice as likely to volunteer their help as those who attend barely at all. One-third of the people who volunteer...
...kidding? Not in this century, anyway. But let's drop down the hierarchy a little to a more approachable rank of shepherd. Forget, for a moment, Catholic or Protestant, priest or minister. What are the odds that your primary spiritual guide and mentor will be a woman? Fifty percent, minimum...
Which returns us to Catholicism. The Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 set off what religion futurist Richard Cimino calls "an explosion of lay ministry." This, plus a persistent priest shortage, caused some parishes to approximate a female pastorate. Circuit-riding priests would stop by a church to celebrate Communion and hear confession. In between, however, women--church trained and often called pastor--ran the parish. Eventually there were at least 300 such arrangements (some say there were thousands), but after John Paul II's 1994 letter banning further talk of ordaining women, the movement tailed off. The Pope...