Top these lists.

The media have been busy reporting the compilation of lists marking the end of the century and the millennium. Not to be left out, the religion world has also waded into this flurry of list-making.

During last October's Special Synod of Bishops for Europe, Milan's Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S.J. came up with a list of topics for a proposed council of all the world's bishops to address: the shortage of priests, the status of women in church and society, the role of laity in the church, marriage and remarriage after divorce, relations with Orthodox churches, and the relationship between moral values and democracy and civil laws, reports CRUX of the News.

The Albany, New York diocesan newspaper The Evangelist assembled a panel of scholars to answer the question, "What is the worst mistake the church has made over the past two millennia?" One panel member cited Catholics' "failing to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit and listening to one's own prejudices," especially during the 15th and 16th centuries when the church splits of the Reformation developed. Another pointed to the Crusades, which intensified Muslim-Christian hatred and legitimized the use of force and violence as a means of Christian missionary activity. Other scholars identified the Inquisition, the church's attitude toward slavery, triumphalism, the demonization of non-Catholics and non-Christians, and a general "disrespect for the freedom of the individual conscience" as the church's worst mistakes.

The Religion & Ethics Newsweekly public television program listed its top 10 news stories of the millennium: 1) the schism between the western and eastern churches; 2) the Crusades; 3) the extension of Muslim power in the Middle Ages; 4) Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and his publication of the Bible in 1455; 5) church patronage of art; 6) the Reformation; 7) the Christian missionary movement; 8) the immigration of religious dissidents to the United States beginning in the 17th century and its implications for church-state relations; 9) the challenge to religion in the 19th century by evolution, psychoanalysis, and communism; and 10) the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel.

Another list was the "Top 100 Catholics of the 20th Century" (www.DailyCatholic.org/top100.htm), which includes people one might expect, like the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and Catholic Worker cofounder Dorothy Day. Also selected, however, were entertainers Bing Crosby ("forever remembered as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way"), Pat O'Brien ("famous Irish-Catholic actor"), and Danny Thomas.