Commentary: Think Globally, Pray Locally

In the wake of Pope John Paul II's death and the election of his successor, speculation about the future of the Catholic Church focused on whether the papacy would revert back to an Italian pope, with whom it had been for 455 years prior to John Paul II. In this context Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini was quoted as observing, 'Our perception of the church has broadened, to the point of reaching really global dimensions. You can't reason any more with a national mentality, and not even a Continental one.' In other words, religious thinking—like reflections from many other perspectives—has become global in scope as new technologies have reduced time and distance among locales and peoples. We live and think in globalized space even as we may pray in localized space, a contradiction that has urgently posed the question of what kind of order does and should prevail in the world. ...