Secularity and the Gospel: Being Missionaries to Our Own Children

Rev. Ron Rolheiser is a terrific speaker—authoritative and up to date, with a folksy, laidback charm, qualities that are readily apparent in this three-part series of lectures he delivers before a live audience at King's House Retreat and Renewal Center in Belleville, IL. Rolheiser lays it on the line: churches are graying and emptying, which means that current congregational members need to be missionaries to their own children, helping them to “walk the path of explicit faith with us.” In order to do this, Rolheiser counsels viewers on effectively spreading the Word within a secular society, balancing love of the world and of God, and the positive parts of both conservative and liberal values. Urging his audience to live in faith and hope that the gospel can endure, Rolheiser concludes with observations that our secular society not only displays a powerful interest in spirituality, but also has been responsible for making some important moral gains, and has produced a lot of good and decent people. During these lectures, Rolheiser—a Roman Catholic priest and president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX—develops rich insights into the church's place throughout history, the climate of popular culture, and the spiritual outlook of much of the younger generation, along the way promoting a temperate attitude in bearing witness to the teachings of the church while acknowledging and enjoying the goodness of life on earth. Recommended. Aud: P. (J. Reed)