The Female Body in Catholic Theology: Menstruation, Reproduction, and Autonomy

Horizons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Doris M. Kieser
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Female Presence ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Sexual Theology ◽  
The Church

Female bodies as sexual and reproductive are subject to much scrutiny in Western societies and the church. Mysteriously missing from discourses related to such scrutiny is the reality of menstruation and its place in theology and females’ lives. From within a feminist theological perspective, this article aims to recover menstruation and menstrual awareness, and to advocate for the positive possibilities of widespread recognition and acceptance of, and engagement with, these realities to advance female presence in sexual theology and related discourses. In engaging contemporary social discussions, Jewish and Christian histories of menstruation, contemporary sexual theologies, and varied feminist theologies, this article proposes a robust view of menstruation in the sexual lives of faithful females.

Revelation and Relativism in the Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr

Horizons ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Alfred J. Ede
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
The Self ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
American Landscape ◽  
Dei Verbum ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Closed Society ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
The Church

AbstractH. Richard Niebuhr's theological perspective was formed at a time when Protestantism was adjusting to a radically altered position on the American landscape, similar in many ways to the present American Catholic predicament. This essay initiates a dialogue between Niebuhr and Catholic theology at a point that is key to his thought, the theology of revelation. The positions of Niebuhr and Vatican II's Dei Verbum, although developed within different theological frameworks, provide a basis for beneficial discussion. Both view revelation as the self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ to an historical community that is the bearer of that revelatory experience. For Niebuhr, however, revelation of the God of radical monotheism elicits a faith response to the center of being and value that shatters the boundaries of all closed societies and redirects all moral considerations. His development of the theological implications of historical relativism offers a corrective for the Church's henotheistic tendencies to distort its own meaning and mission by fashioning a closed society. Vatican II took steps to extend the vision of the Church beyond the confining barriers of past ecclesiologies. Niebuhr's theology provides one possible framework within which those first steps can be explored toward a more truly catholic understanding of faith.

‘I saw a knock-out’: Fatness, (In)visibility, and Desire in Shallow Hal

Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Wykes
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Fat Body ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Knock Out ◽  
Dominant Meaning ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Fat Bodies ◽  
Sexual Body

When the Farrelly brothers' movie Shallow Hal (2001) was released, one reviewer suggested that the film ‘might have been more honest if [it] had simply made Hal have a thing about fat women’ ( Kerr 2002 : 44). In this paper, I argue that Kerr hits the mark but misses the point. While the film's treatment of fat is undoubtedly problematic, I propose a ‘queer’ reading of the film, borrowing the idea of ‘double coding’ to show a text about desire for fat (female) bodies. I am not, however, seeking to position Shallow Hal as a fat-positive text; rather, I use it as a starting point to explore the legibility of the fat female body as a sexual body. In contemporary mainstream Western culture, fat is regarded as the antithesis of desire. This meaning is so deeply ingrained that representations of fat women as sexual are typically framed as a joke because desire for fat bodies is unimaginable; this is the logic by which Shallow Hal operates. The dominant meaning of fatness precludes recognition of the fat body as a sexual body. What is at issue is therefore not simply the lack of certain images, but a question of intelligibility: if the meaning of fat is antithetical to desire, how can the desire for – and of – fat bodies be intelligible as desire? This question goes beyond the realm of representation and into the embodied experience of fat sexuality.

BODY PRACTICES OF WOMEN IN THE LIGHT OF FEMINIST DEBATES

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-156 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Academic Feminism ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Body Practices

The paper provides an analysis of the structuralist and phenomenological traditions in interpretation of female body practices. The structuralist intellectual tradition bases its methodology on concepts from social anthropology and philosophy that see the body as ‘ordered’ by social institutions. Structuralist approaches within academic feminism are focused on critical study of the social regulation of female bodies with respect to reproduction and sexualisation (health and beauty practices). The author focuses on the dominant physical ideal of femininity and the means for body pedagogics that have been constructed by patriarchal authority. In contrast to theories of the ordered body, the phenomenological tradition is focused on the “lived” body, embodied experience, and the personal motivation and values attached to body practices. This tradition has been influenced by a variety of schools of thought including philosophical anthropology, phenomenology and action theories in sociology. Within academic feminism, there are at least three phenomenologically oriented strategies of interpretation of female body practices. The first one is centred around women’s individual situation and bodily socialization; the second one studies interrelation between body practices and the sense of the self; and the third one postulates the potential of body practices to destabilize the dominant ideals of femininity and thus provides a theoretical basis for feminist activism. The phenomenological tradition primarily analyses the motivational, symbolic and value-based components of body practices as they interact with women’s corporeality and sense of self. In general, both structuralist and phenomenological traditions complement each other by focusing on different levels of analysis of female embodiment.

Non-Geographic Classes? Reformed Geography

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Leon van den Broeke
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Reformed Church In America ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

Abstract The Reformed Church in America is wrestling with an interesting question in ecclesiology and church order: is there a place within the church for so-called non-geographic classes. Non-geographic classes are classes which are not formed around a geographic regional principal, but by agreement in theological perspective or a peculiar way that a congregation is shaped. The question central to this article is then: is there a place in Reformed churches for non-geographical classes? In answering this question, the following will be considered: a similar proposal from the Gereformeerde Bond in the Netherlands Reformed Church in 1998; the geographic-regional principle; the Walloon Classis; the Classis of Holland; the Reformed Church in America; Flying, diocesan and titular bishops and finally a conclusion.

scholarly journals The Monk by M. G. Lewis: Revolution, Religion and the Female Body

Text Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Łowczanin
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

This paper reads The Monk by M. G. Lewis in the context of the literary and visual responses to the French Revolution, suggesting that its digestion of the horrors across the Channel is exhibited especially in its depictions of women. Lewis plays with public and domestic representations of femininity, steeped in social expectation and a rich cultural and religious imaginary. The novel’s ambivalence in the representation of femininity draws on the one hand on Catholic symbolism, especially its depictions of the Madonna and the virgin saints, and on the other, on the way the revolutionaries used the body of the queen, Marie Antoinette, to portray the corruption of the royal family. The Monk fictionalizes the ways in which the female body was exposed, both by the Church and by the Revolution, and appropriated to become a highly politicized entity, a tool in ideological argumentation.

scholarly journals Why Catholic Theology Needs Metapshysics: A Christological Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Thomas Joseph White
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Intellect ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Church

The Chalcedonian confession of faith asserts that Christ is one person, the Son of God, subsisting in two natures, divine and human. The doctrine of the communication of idioms is essential to the life and practices of the Church insofar as we affirm there to be properties of deity and humanity present in the one subject, the Word made flesh. Such affirmations are made without a confusion of the two natures or their mutually distinct attributes. The affirmation that there is a divine and human nature in Christ is possible, however, only if it is also possible for human beings to think coherently about the divine nature, analogically, and human nature, univocally. Otherwise it is not feasible to receive understanding of the divine nature of Christ into the human intellect intrinsically and the revelation must remain wholly alien to natural human thought, even under the presumption that such understanding originates in grace. Likewise we can only think coherently of the eternal Son’s solidarity with us in human nature if we can conceive of a common human nature present in all human individuals. Consequently, it is only possible for the Church to confess some form of Chalcedonian doctrine if there is also a perennial metaphysical philosophy capable of thinking coherently about the divine and human natures from within the ambit of natural human reason. This also implies that the Church maintains a “metaphysical apostolate” in her public teaching, in her philosophical traditions, as well as in her scriptural and doctrinal enunciations.

Conscientia, Capax Dei y Salvación en Agustín. ¿Qué hubiera dicho Agustín del «vacío explicativo» (‘explanatory gap’)?

Augustinus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-448
Author(s):  
Diana Stanciu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Explanatory Gap ◽  
The West ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scriptural Exegesis ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Church

How to characterize the scriptural exegesis that Augustine of Hippo develops in the Sermons on Scripture? The interpretations of the pericope of the act of faith of the centurion (Matth. 8:5-13) allow, by comparison, to provide elements of answer to this question. Only two continuous commentaries of it are preserved in the works of Augustine: the Sermon 62 (Carthage, 399) and the Sermon Morin 6 (409). It is, however, the subject of some sixty mentions, covering all genres (letters, exegetical treatises, polemics) and almost all chronological and polemical contexts (Manicheism, Donatism, Pelagianism). With this pericope, Augustine reminds both the Manicheans that Scripture must be received with faith, and the Donatists that members of the Church come from the east and the west. The accents are very different in the two sermons: the clearly theological perspective in the Sermo Morin 6 is colored in the Sermo 62 of a discrete and complex rhetorical use which aims to prepare the exhortation not to go to the banquets of the idols that form the second part of this sermon. Augustine’s homiletic exegesis enters into full consonance with the double inscription of the sermon in its liturgical and historical contexts: the first involves developing the faith of the faithful to unify the Body of Christ and the second to lead them to put into practice the requirements of this faith in the concrete circumstances of their lives. The themes of homiletic exegesis then con- tribute to making the sermon one of the mediations of grace in the work in the liturgy.

Saeculum–Ecclesia–Caliphate: An Eternal Golden Braid

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Paul J. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church ◽  
Catholic Perspective ◽  
Secular State

The secular state, the church, and the caliphate are associations that each hold universal aspirations, at least implicitly. While the universal aspirations of the church and caliphate may be obvious enough, every state seeks dominion over the whole world. (“Secular” describes states that limit their vision to this world, as opposed to the transcendence to which both the church and caliphate appeal.) As an essay in Catholic speculative theology, Griffiths asks two questions: Whether Catholic theology supports or discourages the variety of political orders, and whether these orders could be ranked in terms of goodness from a Catholic perspective? In response to these questions, Griffiths appeals to two aspects of St. Augustine’s political thought: Political rivalries serve the common good; and the principal indicator of the degree to which a state serves the common good is its explicit service to the god of Abraham. The United States (a secular state) is compared with ISIS (an attempted caliphate).

Sacraments

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Braine
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Latin Word ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Church ◽  
Modern Term

The Christian theory of ‘sacraments’ underlies ideas of a general ‘sacramentality’ in the universe whereby ordinary things have religious significance by their own nature or by virtue of some hidden power within them. The pre-Christian Latin word sacramentum meant a non-returnable gift marking the taking on of some binding obligation; more informally it meant an oath, and later a secret or mystery. Latin theology turned it to Christian use, initially in rough translation of the Greek mysterion, applied to the Church, to the Scriptures and to Old as well as New Testament rites. The word then became the predominant medieval and modern term specifically designating those rites in permanent use in the Church which human authority was conceived not to be free to abolish, add to or change in their essentials. Each such rite presupposes that the creaturely things used have some aptitude which allows or invites the particular ritual use concerned, that is, which presupposes some more general sacramental potential in natural things. The conceptual tools developed in Catholic theology – ‘effective sign’, ‘matter and form’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘authority’, ‘power’ and ‘institution’ – sharpen enquiry into the phenomenology of rituals within many different religious traditions.

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