I Want More of You: The Politics of Christian Eroticism in Postwar Guatemala

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Lewis O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Teenage Girl ◽  
Media Relations ◽  
Intense Pain ◽  
Eyes Closed ◽  
The Face ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
Great Love ◽  
The Church

The image appeared on the cover of a Sunday bulletin, produced and distributed by one of Guatemala City's most conservative neo-Pentecostal mega-churches. The picture presented the face of a young teenage girl, her eyes closed, lips wet, and skin kissed by a soft, transcendent light; the young woman's head was even tilted to the side in what Jacques Lacan would call jouissance (1998). Across her pink lips read Psalm 4:6: “In peace, I lay myself down.” This image, stitched together by the church's media relations department, makes a sly reference to Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture, St. Teresa in Ecstasy (1652). The statue in Rome presents one of Teresa of Ávila's (1515–1582) mystical experiences of God, which the sixteenth-century Spanish saint narrates with unblinkingly erotic imagery. In her autobiography, St. Teresa writes how “the great love of God” often left her “utterly consumed,” “penetrated to [her] entrails,” and made her “utter several moans” for both the “intense pain” and its “sweetness” (Peers 1927: 197). With St. Teresa in mind, my own reaction to the church bulletin parroted Jacques Lacan's response to Bernini's statue. “She's coming,” Lacan commented, “There's no doubt about it” (1998: 76).

Mechanisms for Unity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

This chapter investigates changes in mentalities after the Black Death, comparing practices never before analysed in this context—funerary and labour laws and processions to calm God’s anger. While processions were rare or conflictual as in Catania and Messina in 1348, these rituals during later plagues bound communities together in the face of disaster. The chapter then turns to another trend yet to be noticed by historians. Among the multitude of saints and blessed ones canonized from 1348 to the eighteenth century, the Church was deeply reluctant to honour, even name, any of the thousands who sacrificed their lives to succour plague victims, physically or spiritually, especially in 1348: the Church recognized no Black Death martyrs. By the sixteenth century, however, city-wide processions and other communal rituals bound communities together with charity for the poor, works of art, and charitable displays of thanksgiving to long-dead holy men and women.

Double Honor: Elite Hutterite Women in the Sixteenth Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Darlage
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

Studies of early modern Anabaptism have shown that many Anabaptists sought to model their communities after the examples of the New Testament and the early church before the “fall” of the church into a coercive, sword-wielding institution through the person of Constantine in the fourth centuryc.e.The Anabaptists claimed that one had to voluntarily choose to become a Christian through believer's baptism and suffer for his or her faith just as the martyrs of old had done in the face of Roman persecution. During the course of the sixteenth century, their Protestant and Roman Catholic enemies did not disappoint, as hundreds of Anabaptists were executed for their rejection of “Christendom.” To the “magisterial” Christians, Anabaptists were dangerous heretics because they denied the God-given power of spiritual and secular authorities.

scholarly journals Philip Neri and Charles Borromeo as Models of Catholic Reform

Perichoresis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Charles D. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Core ◽  
The People ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Catholic Reform ◽  
The Church

AbstractIn the face of the external challenge of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the internal threat of spiritual, moral, and disciplinary corruption, two Catholic saints worked tirelessly to reform the Church in different but complementary ways. Philip Neri (1515–95) and Charles Borromeo (1538–84) led the Catholic Counter–Reformation during the middle–to–late sixteenth century, placing their distinctive gifts at the service of the Church. Philip Neri used his personal humility, intelligence, and charisma to attract the people of Rome to Christ, while Charles Borromeo employed his gifts for administration and his experience as a top aide to the pope to promote needed institutional reform. Both men achieved great personal holiness and moved others to holiness of life. It is their response to and sharing of the ‘universal call to holiness’, then, that constitutes the core of both of their approaches to ecclesial reform. Their focus on holiness, expressed in an emphasis on either the ‘charismatic’ or ‘hierarchical’ dimensions of the Church’s life, also provides a model for today’s Church, scarred as she is by scandal and in need of a new movement of reform.

scholarly journals John Calvin's Christological Assertion of Word Authority in the Context of Sixteenth Century Ecclesiological Polemics

1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-486
Author(s):  
John D. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Face ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
The Church

The late medieval synthesis reflected in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) generally and in the doctrine of transubstantiation in particular established an understanding of the nature of the church and authority that was to be varied and wide in its effects. Transubstantiation as doctrine and as coalescor of Church worship laid the groundwork for a particularly formative understanding of the ekklesia of Christ. It issued in a view of immanental, divine authority and grace that would come to manifest itself in the indulgences, the treasury of merits, invocation of saints, relics, etc. To be critical of the Mass was to bring into question the entire hierarchy of the Church and its authority on earth. In this context of strong ecclesiological authority, God was reckoned primarily as immanent and immediate through the papal head. In the face of this development, John Calvin asserted that Christ, as center of all true Christian reality, is the necessary focus and the preeminent authority in and to the Church through the Word of God, the Scriptures.

Spiritus, ecclesiae anima: Colet, Linacre, and a Galenic Mystical Body

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 197- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Daniel Lochman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Health Related ◽  
John Colet ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

John Colet knew Thomas Linacre for approximately three decades, from their mutual residence in Italy during the early 1490s through varied pedagogical, professional, and social contacts in and around London prior to Colet’s death in 1519. It is not certain that Colet knew Linacre’s original Latin translations of Galen’s therapeutic works, the first printed in 1517. Yet several of Colet’s works associate a spiritual physician—a phrase linked to Colet himself at least since Thomas More’s 1504 letter inviting him to London—with Paul’s trope of the mystical body. Using Galenic discourse to describe the “physiology” of the ideal mystical body, Colet emphasizes by contrast a diseased ecclesia in need of healing by the Spirit, who alone can invigorate the mediating “vital spirits” that are spiritual physicians—ministers within the church. Colet’s application of sophisticated Galenic discourse to the mystical body coincided with the humanist interest in Galen’s works evident in Linacre’s translations, and it accompanied growing concern for health related to waves of epidemics in London during the first two decades of the sixteenth century as well as Colet’s involvement in licensure of London physicians. This paper explores the implications of Colet’s adaptation of Galenic principles to the mystical body and suggests that Colet fostered a strain of medical discourse that persisted well into the sixteenth century.

The Church as a Sacrament in a Time of Pandemic: The Philippine Experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-280
Author(s):  
Rhoderick John Suarez Abellanosa
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The declaration of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in various provinces and cities in the Philippines did not impede the Catholic Church from celebrating its sacraments and popular devotions. Mired with poverty and various forms of economic and social limitations, the presence of God for Filipinos is an essential element in moving forward and surviving in a time of pandemic. Predominantly Roman Catholic in religious affiliation, seeking the face of God has been part of Filipinos' lives whenever a serious disaster would strike. This essay presents how the clergy, religious and lay communities in the Philippines have innovatively and creatively sustained treasured religious celebrations as a sign of communion and an expression of faith. In addition to online Eucharistic celebrations that are more of a privilege for some, culturally contextualised efforts were made during the Lenten Season and even on Sundays after Easter. This endeavour ends with a reflection on the Church as the sacrament of God in a time of pandemic. Pushed back to their homes, deprived of life's basic necessities and facing threats of social instability, unemployment and hunger, Filipinos through their innovative celebrations find in their communion with their Church the very presence of God acting significantly in their lives.

The Prophetic Voice of the Church in a Democratic South Africa – A Theological Reflection

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lufuluvhi Maria Mudimeli
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hefling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Book Of Common Prayer ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

‘The healthe of my soule’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Clark
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Family ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Royal Supremacy ◽  
The Church

Throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, the Howards are usually described as religiously ‘conservative’, resisting the reformist impulse of the Reformation while conforming to the royal supremacy over the Church. The women of the family have played little part in this characterization, yet they too lived through the earliest stages of the Reformation. This chapter shows that what we see is not a family following the lead of its patriarch in religious matters at this early stage of the Reformation, but that this did not stop them maintaining strong kinship relations across the shifting religious spectrum.

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