European Catholicism

Does the Priest Have to Be There? Contested Marriages Before Roman Tribunals. Italy, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. In: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 3, 2009, 10-30.

by Cecilia Cristellon

The Council of Trent established the requirements that a marriage be celebrated by the parish priest and two or more... more The Council of Trent established the requirements that a marriage be celebrated by the parish priest and two or more witnesses be present at the marriage (1563), but neglected to specify who the parish priest was. The decrees provoked confusion among both laymen and churchmen. Traces thereof can be found in the hitherto essentially unexplored documentation of The Congregation of the Council. This institution was founded in 1564 specifically to resolve the questions that arose all over the catholic world by the application of the decrees promulgated at Trent. The related records are held in the Vatican Secret Archive. Through an examination of this documentation, complemented by files of the Holy Office the author analyzes how the new rules were understood, experienced, used, circumvented, and manipulated both by laymen and churchmen in order to end an unwanted marriage, to facilitate a union that was socially transgressive, opposed by family, or even heterodox, and to respond to pastoral concerns.

Jesus+Golgotha+Medici Alter+Mary Queen of Scots..

by Frank Dougan

My visit to the Holy Sepulchre Basilica, Jerusalem, Israel; February 2012

Jesus+Golgotha+Medici Alter+Mary Queen of Scots..

All pictures presented and directed by; Frank... more Jesus+Golgotha+Medici Alter+Mary Queen of Scots..

All pictures presented and directed by; Frank Dougan...


Jerusalem

He sat on a donkey on palm strewn paths

Cries of delight arose from the mouths

The First born Son of God Christ Jesus.

To the temple he was led

There the money changers the people were bled

He cast them out of the House of His Father

The Sanhedrin were in a rage

Who is this Man to whom multitudes did gather?

He taught a new ideology of the age.

Secret plans they did form to bring Him down

To rob Him of His holy crown

Pilate and the Roman lords were sought

A price of 30 silver coins His friend was bought

At the Garden of Gethsemane from a kiss He was put in chains

Plans to kill Him for their ill-gotten gains

Pilate washed his hands of the affair he could find no crime

The high priest Caiaphas mind was distorted with grime

On His 6th day in Jerusalem they hung Him on a cross

He called to heaven that none of His sheep were lost

His promise to Peter He would return

The start of a new beginning had begun

Jesus is the Messiah the Chosen One.

He cried out loud before He went away

“Eli, Eli, Lama sabachthani”?

His dead corps was taken down and in a crypt buried

On the 3rd day from His death His word delivered

The Son of Man rose from the dead at the hand of Rome

In Jerusalem the spark of light was born Jesus was in His holy home.

By Frank J Dougan


Inside the Basilica of The Holy Sepulchre....is Golgotha (Calvery) where Jesus Christ was executed.....

The Holy Sepulchre Basilica also contains the tomb where Jesus lay...and rose from the dead!

At the foot of where The Cross stood stands the Medici Alter...

Mary Queen of Scots name is inside the Medici Alter!

The Medici Alter was commissioned a few months after Mary was martyrd!

The Alter is on the exact spot where Jesus lay after He was taken down from the cross and Held in His Mother Mary's arms!

Catherine de Medici was the mother Francis II of France....Mary was married to him!

The 11th Station - the Latin (Catholic) chapel.

The chapel's striking altar marks the 11th Station, the site at which Jesus was nailed to the Cross. A fine example of Renaissance art, the altar was made in Florence in 1588 and given to the church by Cardinal Medici a few decades later.

Look for the Medici name. Six panels of hammered silver (four in font and one on each side) depict scenes from the Passion.

— in Jerusalem, Israel.

A language for the Catholic Church in Malta

by Adrian Gellel

Gellel, A., & Sultana, M. (2008). A language for the Catholic Church in Malta. Melita Theologica, 59(2), 21-36.

'Correspondence from Jean-Baptiste Devenet and Claude Prost, book merchants of Lyon, to Fr Luke Wadding OFM, 1647-1654,' Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 104 (2011), 519-45.

by Benjamin Hazard

Neocatholicism and darwinism at classrooms in Spain

by Carles Sirera Miralles

This paper was published in Ayer, nº 81, and was awarded special mention in the 2009’s Contest for young researchers organized by the Spanish Association of Contemporary History (AHC).

The present paper examines the academic and intellectual life of two Neocatholic relevant Professors from the... more The present paper examines the academic and intellectual life of two Neocatholic relevant Professors from the Valencia’s Public School who taught between 1845 and 1918: Miguel Vicente Almazán and Manuel Polo y Peyrolón. Their political positions supported a society ruled by a strong authority inspired by The God’s Law, although they recognized the necessity of incorporating some elements from the liberal mainstream related to the economic thought as the material progress. Therefore they were completely integrated in the liberal system of education and they could coexistence with the spread of Darwinism, despite their political commitment.

Review of Guy G.[edaliahu] STROUMSA, A New Science: the Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason [Cambridge, MA-London: Harvard University Press, 2010]

by Eugen Ciurtin

Published in Archaeus. Studies in the History of Religions 15 (2011), fasc, 3, pp. 509-521 [November 2011].
Published in Archaeus. Studies in the History of Religions 15 (2011), fasc, 3, pp. 509-521 [November 2011].

Vatican letter Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots....Congregation for Causes of Saints

by Frank Dougan

Catholic Encyclopedia

Sharing the Karma: Some Reflections on the Dialogue between Catholicism and Buddhism

by Huaiyu Chen

“Sharing the Karma: Some Reflections on the Dialogue between Catholicism and Buddhism,” in James L. Heft SM ed., Catholicism and Interreligious Dialogue, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oct., 2011, pp. 153-159.

Pink Smoke, Call to Disobedience, and a Holy Shake-Up: Is it Time to Convene the Third Vatican Council?

by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

Published in Feminism and Religion Blog (www.feminismandreligion.com)

This past August I wrote about the canonical warning that Fr. Roy received and the issue surrounding the exercise of... more This past August I wrote about the canonical warning that Fr. Roy received and the issue surrounding the exercise of conscience over church teaching. For a more detailed explanation of the warning and the background regarding the ordination of women, please see my prior article.

October 17th (this past Tuesday), Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Erin Saiz Hanna (Executive Director of Women’s Ordination Council), Therese Koturbash (Coordinator of Canada’s Catholic Network for Women’s Equality), Nicole Sotelo (Call to Action), Miriam Duignan (Womenpriests), and about 14 other representativesof various other Catholic organizations from around the world went to the Vatican to

present a petition containing 15,000 signatures supporting full and equal participation of women as deacons, priests, and bishops in a renewed church. The group was not permitted in St. Peter’s Square because of their signs; they did not have the proper permit. Access was also denied to the Women who wore albs/stole because their dress was considered a form of protest. “We love our family, the Catholic Church,” stated Miriam Duignan of Women-Priests. “We feel obliged in conscience to make our carefully considered reasons known. In doing so, we fulfill our canon law duty to speak out, as our present Pope has encouraged us to do.” Koturbash states “even though canon law invites our Church leaders to hear from the faithful, our leaders are silent when we try to engage.”

Secrecy and the Social Construction of Heresy in Medieval Languedoc

by John Bilodeau

unpublished...so far....

Secrecy is a powerful tool in religious conflict. The careful manipulation of information is critical to the strategic... more Secrecy is a powerful tool in religious conflict. The careful manipulation of information is critical to the strategic success of a religious group in its attempt to gain recognition of its legitimacy and status in a community or region. This work uses the historical context of the encounter between the Church and the Good Men and Women of Languedoc in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to analyze the use of secrecy the discourse of religious conflict. Reports from Languedoc describe communities who have left the institutions of the Church behind, and fallen into what the Church interprets as dangerous heresy. The “dangerous heresy” are the beliefs and practices of people who self-identify as “Good Christians”. The encounters between the representatives of the Church and the Good Christians begin with debate and argumentation and proceed into war and physical coercion. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the allies of the Church assemble armies in order to extirpate the heresy from the lands around Toulouse. Following the Albigensian crusade, the Inquisition is founded to finish the work of reconciling the people of the region of Languedoc to the rest of Christendom. This thesis looks at the role played by secrecy in the conflict and its overall impact on the outcome.

Der Niedergang des liberalen Katholizismus

by A. Alexander Stummvoll

Published in www.derstandard.at on 25 August 2011.

Der Weltjugendtag in Madrid zeigte, dass die Zukunft der Kirche anders aussehen wird, als es sich liberale Reformer... more Der Weltjugendtag in Madrid zeigte, dass die Zukunft der Kirche anders aussehen wird, als es sich liberale Reformer wünschen

Can we have a 'Second Spring' of Catholic Higher Education?

by Leonardo Franchi

Published in the Journal of Catholic Higher Education 30 (1) pp. 39-56

The challenges facing Catholic Higher Education today offer the Church an opportunity to re-think the conceptual... more The challenges facing Catholic Higher Education today offer the Church an opportunity to re-think the conceptual framework within which it operates. The educational vision found in the relevant writings of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI offer possibilities for an educational project centred on the role of truth and authority in education. Pope Benedict’s recent comments on a perceived ‘educational emergency’ are the latest articulation of a broader concern for the direction in which contemporary education is heading. Within this context, Catholic Higher Education can act as a spur for the renewal of higher education today by clearly focusing on the role of the liberal arts as the medium for learning what it is to be human and by challenging those whose vision of education is influenced by utilitarianism.

Faith in the Familiar

by Kim Knibbe

original of the PhD-thesis defended in 2007

The Role of Religious Certainty and Uncertainty in Moral Orientation in a Catholic Province in the Netherlands

by Kim Knibbe

in Social Compass 2008

In the post-secularization debates about the role of religion in contemporary European societies, social scientists... more In the post-secularization debates about the role of religion in contemporary European societies, social scientists and philosophers often build on (speculative) sociological theories as to whether the conditions of life in (high) modernity produce existential insecurities that give rise to a need for a particular kind of religiosity. This religiosity is seen as rooted in the only things that still seem to provide some basis for certainty: experience and the self. In this article the author argues that a focus on processes of signification reveals that both religious certainty and religious uncertainty can be a strong source for moral orientation in contemporary Limburg (in the Netherlands), but does not necessarily lead to a stronger emphasis on experience and the self. Fundamental to this argument is Jackson's insight into practices of signification as a ceaseless negotiation of the boundary between two domains: the domain considered to be susceptible to human control, and the domain outside human control.

L’enseignement et l’édition du droit canonique en France dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle : lieux d’expression du “mouvement vers Rome”

by Laurent Kondratuk

published in Basdevant-Gaudemet B., Jankowiak F., Delannoy J.-P. (dir.), Le droit ecclésiastique en Europe et à ses marges (XVIIIe-XXe siècles). Actes du colloque du centre Droit et Sociétés religieuses, Université de Paris-Sud Sceaux, 12-13 octobre 2007, Leuven, Peeters publishers, 2009, p. 255-265.

The Media and the Catholic Church in Ireland: Reporting Clerical Child Sex Abuse

by Susie Donnelly

Journal article: Donnelly, Susie & Inglis, Tom (2010) ’The Media and the Catholic Church in Ireland: Reporting Clerical Child Sex Abuse'. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25 (1): 1-19.

Insufficient attention has been paid to the relationship between the Church and the media. Using Ireland as a... more Insufficient attention has been paid to the relationship between the Church and the media. Using Ireland as a laboratory for study, we argue that the rise of the media as a public watchdog and social conscience of Irish society can be linked to the secularisation of Catholic Ireland, both at a macro-level in terms of the decline in the institutional power of the Church and at a micro-level in terms of the decline in institutional participation and trust. This article describes and analyses how the media in Ireland have become a major influence in shaping public opinion about religion: the Catholic Church is no longer able to limit and control the media as it once did. This transformation is most evident in reports of Clerical Child Sex Abuse (CCSA). Further analysis highlights a sharp decline in institutional religiosity during the 1990s, when reports of CCSA were commonplace. A less dramatic decline in spirituality suggests a shift towards more personal, privatised forms of religiosity.

The “James Flanelly Chalice”, a Seventeenth Century chalice from the Diocese of Killala

by Robert M Chapple

Cathair na Mart: Journal of the Westport Historical Society 20 (2000), 6-13

La figura del Santo Cristo de Lepanto en la Catedral de Barcelona, puerta hacia el mundo de arriba para la comunicación y la negociación con lo Divino

by Anna Fedele

In this essay we analyse the personal relationships that believers establish towards the Christ of Lepanto. We... more In this essay we analyse the personal relationships that believers establish towards the Christ of Lepanto. We considered the visit to the Christ during the cuaresmal period as a kind of short pilgrimage that allows people to enter a space marked by some clear signs of liminality. After describing the different uses that the Catholic Church makes of the figure of this Christ in the cuaresmal period and during the rest of the year, we focused on the different kinds of “alternative” rituals that people perform, apparently  to oppose to the official practices, using the Christ as a sort of door that permits them a dialogue  with God. 

La formazione del giovane Roberto Nobili

by Paolo Aranha

Published in in Matteo Sanfilippo, Carlo Prezzolini (eds.), Roberto De Nobili (1577-1656): Missionario gesuita poliziano: Atti del convegno Montepuciano 20 ottobre 2007 (Perugia: Guerra Edizioni, 2008), pp. 31-44; ISBN 9788855701785

This is mainly an archival contribution whose purpose is to reassess the concrete phases of Nobili's education. ... more This is mainly an archival contribution whose purpose is to reassess the concrete phases of Nobili's education.  Here I demonstrate that, contrary to what previous historians repeated, Nobili's involvement with the College Romano was very short. Moreover, I have discovered that, before joining the Society of Jesus, he studied at the Seminario Romano. Nobili's school records are the earliest evidence on his life.
The article also hints at some possible implications that this specific Bildung had on Nobili's later missionary activity in India.

"Glocal" conflicts: Missionary controversies on the Coromandel Coast between the XVII and XVIII centuries

by Paolo Aranha

“«Glocal» conflicts: missionary controversies on the Coromandel coast between the XVII and the XVIII Centuries”, in Michela Catto, Guido Mongini, Silvia Mostaccio (eds.), Evangelizzazione e Globalizzazione: Le missioni gesuitiche nell'età moderna tra storia e storiografia, Biblioteca della “Nuova Rivista Storica” n. 42 (Città di Castello: Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, 2010), pp. 79-104.