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HIDDEN HERITAGE: THE LEGACY OF THE CRYPTO-JEWS. By Janet Liebman Jacobs. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2002. In 1492, an edict of Isabel and Fernando gave Spanish Jews the choice of converting to Roman Catholicism or going into exile. Thousands of Jews chose exile; others converted to Christianity, though sometimes as a political-economic expedient; a third group, the marranos or crypto-Jews, observed Catholicism in public and practiced Judaism in private, thereby becoming targets of the Inquisition. Some crypto-Jews escaped to the New World and found relative safety in northern Mexico and New Mexico, where their descendents continued some Jewish observances down to the present. This study, which is based on interviews with 50 "crypto-Jews" --28 now practice Judaism, 12 blend Jewish and Christian beliefs, and 10 practice Christianity -- is a fascinating investigation of the implications of family-secrecy and personal self-discovery, the role of women in preserving and transmitting Jewish rituals, the blending of beliefs and religious observances, ethnic identity and public conversion to Judaism.

GLOBAL CATHOLICISM: PORTRAIT OF A WORLD CHURCH. By Bryan T. Froehle and Mary L. Gautier. The Catholic Church Today 2. CARA: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. 2003. What is the world-wide membership of the Roman Catholic Church? 1,045,058,100 --according to this book. This answer is probably as reliable as any comparable global statistic; however, it should be noted that Vatican-sources generally measure membership by baptism, thereby including not only infants and people whose actual practice of Catholicism is minimal but also people who are now affiliated with another religious tradition. The countries with the largest Catholic populations are Brazil and Mexico, then the United States and the Philippines practically tied for third, while Italy is fifth. There is an appendix with separate statistical profiles on 192 countries and 31 territories. For people who love statistics, this book is a veritable gold-mine.

"Reflections on Dominus Jesus by the Lutheran-Catholic Covenant Commission of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Synod and Saint Paul Synod ELCA," ECUMENICAL TRENDS 32/2 (February 2003) points out that the Lutheran and Catholic traditions have different understandings of Church and ministry; also of note is the intra-mural Roman Catholic debate about the meaning of the Second Vatican Council's teaching that the Church of Christ subsistit in the Roman Catholic Church.

Mitzi Budde, "The Goal of the ELCA Full Communion Agreements," ECUMENICAL TRENDS 32/3 (March 2003) examines the recent ELCA agreements with: [1] Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Reformed Church (1998), [2] Moravian Church (1999), and [3] Episcopal Church (2001) in light of Facing Unity and the Canberra Assembly of the World Council of Churches (1991) which stated that the "ecumenical goal" is full communion: what does "full communion" mean and what are the next steps after "full communion"?

William Rusch, "Towards a Second Conference on Faith and Order in North America," ECUMENICAL TRENDS 32/3 (March 2003) gives a capsule-history of Faith and Order and an up-date on the proposed North American conference on the theme "The Church: Its Faith and Unity" that is tentatively scheduled for 2005.

Eden Grace, "Guided by the Mind of Christ -- yearning for a new spirituality of church government," ECUMENICAL TRENDS 32/4 (April 2003) proposes moving beyond the confrontational methods of Roberts' Rules of Order to conducting church business by consensus: "In Quaker process, we look for the Spirit of unity in the gathered meeting as a sign of our correct discernment of the will of God. If we have not achieved that unity, we continue to wait for further wisdom."

A similar theme is evident in the Report on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches, THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW 55/1 (January 2003) which proposed that a consensus method be used by the Council in addressing social and ethical matters; in addition, the Report encouraged the Council's Faith and Order Commission to address such ecclesiological questions as visible unity and diversity as well as the relation of the Church to the churches. Some commentators, however, voiced disagreement with the Report.

The Canadian journal, ECUMENISM 149 (March 2003) addresses the implications of "Globalization" for the churches from different perspectives: Orthodox (Patriarch Bartholomew), Protestant (Konrad Raiser), and Roman Catholic (Hermann Schalück).

The INFORMATION SERVICE of the Pontifical Council For Promoting Christian Unity, N. 111 (2002/IV) provides information on the international dialogues of the Roman Catholic Church with Malankara Orthodox, Mennonites, Methodists, Anglicans, and the Assyrian Church of the East. In addition, a report of the dialogue with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was released: "Receiving and Handing on the Faith: The Mission and Responsibility of the Church."