Ringing Out Hope in Nagasaki - First Things

Ringing Out Hope in Nagasaki - First Things

The riddle of Japanese Catholicism has long fascinated me. At the end of World War II, Catholics were less than 1 percent of the population of Japan. Today, eighty years later, Catholics are less than 1 percent of the Japanese population, although Japan (with a below replacement level birth rate for decades) is in demographic free fall. Despite this seemingly unbreakable glass ceiling, however, Japanese Catholicism has been, and remains, more in…

Ringing out hope in Nagasaki

The riddle of Japanese Catholicism has long fascinated me. At the end of World War II, Catholics were less than 1% of the population of Japan. Today, eighty years later, Catholics are less than 1% [...]

Ringing Out Hope in Nagasaki

Wikimedia Commons A Catholic Church in Nagasaki, destroyed by the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing of the city. COMMENTARY: My interest in Japanese Catholicism was reignited recently by the Nagasaki Bell Project...