Of those raised Catholic, just 13% still attend Mass weekly, and 37% say they have 'no religion'. But is this all the fault of Vatican II, and its runaway reforms? Or are wider social, cultural, and moral forces primarily to blame? In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the prophecy that 'a new day is dawning on the Church, bathing her in radiant splendour'. Desiring 'to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful', the Council Fathers devoted particular attention to the laity, and set in motion a series of sweeping reforms. The most significant of these centred on refashioning the Church's liturgy—'the source and summit of the Christian life'—in order to make 'it pastorally efficacious to the fullest degree'. Over fifty years on, however, the statistics speak for themselves. In America, only 15% of cradle Catholics say that they attend Mass on a weekly basis; meanwhile, 35% no longer even tick the 'Catholic box' on surveys. In Britain, the signs are direr still. Catholicism is not the only Christian group to have suffered serious declines since the 1960s. If anything Catholics exhibit higher church attendance, and better retention, than most Protestant churches do. If Vatican II is not the cause of Catholicism's crisis, might it instead be the secret to its comparative success? Mass Exodus is the first serious historical and sociological study of Catholic lapsation and disaffiliation. Drawing on a wide range of theological, historical, and sociological sources, Stephen Bullivant offers a comparative study of secularization across two famously contrasting religious cultures: Britain and the USA.

An impoverished illegal immigrant, a San Diego sheriffas deputy, a drug trafficker, the daughter of a Mexican diplomat, a radical political talk show host, and the Mexican secretary of national defenseawhen destiny brings these lives together, the United States of America is forced to mobilize and deploy its military along the U.S./Mexican border in order to protect its interests. The country of Mexico is then strained by their responsibility to hold back the mass exodus of millions of Mexican people that have made their way to the major border cities to protest the brutal beating of a Mexican ahero.a Ultimately, for the first time in recent history, the United States and Mexico are brought to the brink of military conflict.

Vol. 8 includes New Testament supplement.

This text deals with an important often neglected subject: the Palestinian exodus and the creation of the refugee problem. It analyzes the connection between the refugee exodus and the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine and reviews the Palestinian exodus from 1948 through 1967.

This volume follows the chain of events of the summer of 1947 when, escaping from Nazi Germany, Jews were denied passage to pre-State Israel, then British Mandate Palestine. The passengers were forced to disembark in Hamburg. This is the story of that affair and asks what became of the immigrants.