John Allen
John Allen Jr., a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and author of The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church, will speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, at The O'Shaughnessy on the St. Paul campus of St. Catherine University.
Free and open to the public, the talk is sponsored jointly by St. Catherine University and the University of St. Thomas. Tickets are required to ensure seating; call The O'Shaughnessy ticket office, (651) 690-6700, between noon and 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
In addition to his work with the National Catholic Reporter, Allen is known as the Vatican analyst for CNN and as a prolific author on church issues. His other books include All the Pope's Men: The Inside Story of How the Vatican Really Thinks, and a biography of Pope Benedict XVI.
Each of the 10 trends that Allen argues could reshape the Catholic Church within the next century is highlighted in a separate chapter, including "A World Church," "The Biotech Revolution," "Expanding Lay Roles," "The New Demography," "Pentecostalism" and "Islam."
"The issues, party lines, and ways of doing business that have dominated Catholicism in the 40-plus years since the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, that watershed moment in modern Catholic life, are being turned on their head by a series of new forces reshaping the global Church," Allen writes in the book's introduction.
An American journalist based in Rome, Allen has worked for the National Catholic Reporter since 1967. His weekly column about world Catholicism is called "All Things Catholic." Prior to mid-2006, it was known as "The Word from Rome."
