Polish Revolutionaries of the Nineteenth Century and the Catholic Church

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Stefan Kieniewicz

The subject of my paper lies in a field of studies seldom pursued in Church historiography. Catholic historians in Poland are concerned principally with the study of the Church itself: its spiritual life, organization, political role, and contribution to national life. Much less attention is given to adversaries of the Church; so that, generally speaking, the study of non-Catholic (and non-Christian) trends or sectors in society is currently left to Marxist or liberal scholars. This is a pity.

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waldemar Gurian

The history of the Catholic Church includes men who, after brilliant services to the Church, died outside her fold. Best known among them is Tertullian, the apologetic writer of the Early Church; less known is Ochino, the third vicar-general of the Capuchins, whose flight to Calvin's Geneva almost destroyed his order. In the nineteenth century there were two famous representatives of this group. Johann von Doellinger refused, when more than seventy years old, to accept the decision of the Vatican Council about papal infallibility. He passed away in 1890 unreconciled, though he had been distinguished for years as the outstanding German Catholic theologian. Félicité de la Mennais was celebrated as the new Pascal and Bossuet of his time before he became the modern Tertullian by breaking with the Church because Pope Gregory XVI rejected his views on the relations between the Church and die world. As he lay deathly ill, his niece, “Madame de Kertanguy asked him: ‘Féli, do you want a priest? Surely, you want a priest?’ Lamennais answered: ‘No.’ The niece repeated: ‘I beg of you.’ But he said with a stronger voice: ‘No, no, no.


Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm

This essay presents a hitherto unknown work: the first autobiography ever written by an Albanian. It was composed in 1881–2 by a young man (born in 1861) called Lazër Tusha; he wrote it in Italian, and the manuscript has been preserved in an ecclesiastical archive in Italy. Tusha was the son of a prosperous tailor in the city of Shkodër, which was the administrative centre of the Catholic Church in Albania. He describes his childhood and early education, which gave him both a love of Italian culture and a strong desire to serve the Church; at his insistence, his father sent him to the Catholic seminary there, run by the Jesuits. He describes his disappointment on being obliged, after six years, to leave the seminary and resume lay life, and his failed attempts to become either a Jesuit or a Franciscan. Some aspects of these matters remain mysterious in his account. But much of this unfinished draft book is devoted to things other than purely personal narrative: Tusha writes in loving detail about customs, superstitions, clothes, the city of Shkodër, its market and the tailoring business. This is a very rich account of the life and world of an ordinary late-nineteenth-century Albanian—albeit an unusually thoughtful one, with some literary ambition.


1969 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
James Tunstead Burtchaell

Looking backward from the early nineteenth century, the Catholic Church in England had disappointingly little scholarly achievement of which to boast since the Reformation. Henry Holden, Charles Butler, John Lingard—all were men to be proud of, but Catholics of such intellectual bent were so few. And understandably so. The penal laws had effectively deprived the recusants of any access to higher education, and would perdure until the latter nineteenth century. Squires whose sons were barred for their faith from most schools and from the two universities had to be content to enroll them quietly at one or another of the exile schools across the channel. The Irish immigrants who later came to fill and overspill the churches in the nineteenth century had even less exposure to—and perhaps appetite for—scholarship. And the clergy who shepherded this extraordinary flock of secluded gentry and boisterous working folk pursued a highly sacramental and understandably unsophisticated pastorate. The Church naturally felt itself somewhat put upon, and fell into rather defensive postures. Scholarship would appear as a luxury at best, and at worst as a weapon that the Establishment seemed always more adept and smooth at handling.


Sympozjum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol XXIV (2 (39)) ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Adam Pastorczyk

The universalist ideology: the submission of the local Church to the universal Church? Although more than half a century has passed since the adoption of the dogmatic constitution on the Church at the Second Vatican Council, a discussion continues in the Catholic Church and in ecumenical discussions about the correct interpretation of the conciliar expression „Ecclesia in et ex Ecclesiis”. The subject of this article, therefore, is an analysis of the conciliar and post-conciliar teaching of the Catholic Church and the ongoing theological discussion on the mutual relationship of the universal Church and the local Church.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 357-363
Author(s):  
Roger Cardinal Etchegaray ◽  
Translated by Mei Lin Chang

Cardinal Etchegaray argues here that the dialogue between church and state, with both parties rooted in sometimes conflicting absolute claims and values, has become more recently a wider-ranging dialogue between the church and a pluralist, relativist liberal society. The very definition of “liberal society” is open to argument, and the church may find elements to commend or oppose in any given definition. Since the nineteenth century the church has often found itself in opposition to various ideas of “liberty,” especially those that represent an idolatry of absolute rights that push aside Christian spiritual and moral concerns. Now that liberalism has become the pervasive model for society, the church finds it may more easily express its critique, with the aim of making society more conducive to allowing people to become fully human. Indeed, the church provides a necessary check on the excesses of liberal society, particularly those of capitalism and democratic populism. Its essential point is the transcendent dimension of the human person—our connection with the divine. The pursuit of economic and political ends needs to be governed by a concern for the ethical, itself founded on the divine. Liberal society will only live up to its own highest aspirations through promoting self-mastery and an awareness that humanity’s freedom is ultimately found only in God.


2000 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW J. FINCH

The Catholic Church in Korea dates its foundation from 1784 when Yi Sŭng-hun returned from Beijing where he had been baptised by a member of the resident Catholic mission. He had sought out the Catholic priests at the instigation of Yi Pyok who, in the winter of 1777, had been a member of a meeting of young, reform-minded Shirhak (‘New Learning’) scholars. This meeting had been called to examine scientific, mathematical and religious treatises written by the Jesuits in China. On his return, Yi Sung-hun brought with him books and religious articles which he shared with Yi Pyok, and together they began to evangelise among their friends and neighbours. It was not very long, however, before their activities began to meet with opposition from other Confucian scholars and to arouse the suspicions of the authorities. In 1785 Yi Pyok and other Christians were arrested at a meeting in the house of Kim Pom-u, a member of the chungin class of technical specialists. Those present were given a lecture on proper Confucian conduct and released, apart from Kim Pom-u who was severely beaten and sent into exile where he died from his injuries. Worse was to follow in 1791 with the execution of Yun Chi-ch'ung and his cousin, Kwon Sang-yon, for their refusal to perform the chesa ancestral rites for Yun's dead mother. Nevertheless the Church continued to grow during the 1790s, and its members pressed the bishop of Beijing to send a resident priest. This was achieved in 1795 when a Chinese priest, Fr Chou Wên-mu, arrived in Seoul. Under his ministry, and with the assistance of members of the laity, the Church grew from around 4,000 believers to nearly 10,000 at the outbreak of the Shinyu persecution in 1801. This persecution cost the lives of Fr Chou and at least 300 of the laity, but the Church survived.


1955 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
Bruno H. Vandenberghe

AbstractIs there an opposition between spectacles and the Church? Such is the question that normally comes to one's mind in reading the diatribes of the Fathers of the Church against spectacles. The subject is thicklish and should be handled with precision and tact, without preconceived prejudice. In examining the passages on the subject in ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, the author has precisely made the attempt to solve the problem. Methodical in his proceedings, he first examines the part, spectacles played in the life of the peoples of A n t i o c h and C o n s t a n t i n o p l e. So engrossed with the love of spectacles had they become, that the only two things, requested from their masters by this frivolous population, were: bread and games! The whole of Antioch, the whole of Constantinople was to be found in the Circus or in the Theatre. On holidays, christians rushed to the hippodrome, with the same ardor as the pagans. Like so many of the Fathers, C h r y s o s t o m , condemned this frequentation, which he considered an apostasy and a return to the idols, one of the greatest enemies of purity and one of the most serious obstacles to his pastoral mission. Seldom does he attack comedies and tragedies, directing his most strenuous efforts against Pantomimes. In latter years, taking up again the same textes, B o s- s u e t fell into regrettable exaggerations. Austere moralist and rigorist, he condemned the theatre without discrimination. In locating the debates, by first giving an historical account of the struggles which divided the Church and the theatre, the author ascertains that nowadays a more charitable and just conception of the spectacle and the artist, dedicating his life thereto, has been reached. The pleasure of the spectacle is innocent in itself and the Catholic Church finds no fault with it: the sole requirement, the Church imposes, being that this pleasure, in its application, be subjected to the principles of christian morals.


1972 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick B. Pike

In order to have avoided the criticism of most writers priding themselves on their progressive and modern spirit, the Catholic Church in the nineteenth-century Hispanic world would have had to accept religious toleration, would have had to surrender much of its material goods, and would have had to reconcile itself to secularism by relinquishing influence in the temporal order. Various circumstances, many of them arising as much from social conditions as from theological viewpoints, caused the Church first in nineteenth-century Spain and somewhat later in Spanish America to set itself resolutely and militantly against these three desiderata of its liberal critics.


2019 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Kaucha

There are two purposes of this article: the first one — to clarify the meaning of the term ‘credibility of the Church in contemporary Poland’ from a theological perspective, and the second one — to describe the basic signs of such credibility and the difficulties they are facing. The article consists of three parts and a conclusion. The first part deals with the theological understanding of the Church’s credibility in contemporary Poland in the light of new researches and inspirations offered by Joseph Ratzinger’s ecclesiology and by the book Oblicza Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce. 1050. rocznicaChrztu [Features of the Catholic Church in Poland. The 1050th Anniversary of the Christening] (ed. by J. Mastej, K. Kaucha, P. Borto, Lublin 2016). The second part is focused on the signs of the Church’s credibility in Poland (sign of Peter, of the Apostolic Collegium, of unity, of holiness, of universality, of apostolicity, agapetological, praxeological, martyriological, and culture-creative), which started to be described about 25 years ago by Rev. Marian Rusecki, who was co-founder and the most excellent representative of the Lublin School of Fundamental Theology. The third part presents some new signs of the Church’s credibility in Poland according to the author of the article (charitable, staurological, resurrectional, paschal, anthropological-vocational, of freedom, of the priority of the Spirit and spiritual life, of peace and reconciliation, of protest, of the faith’s pure- ness). In the conclusion the author underlines the values of the semeiological method in describing and testing the credibility of the Church in contemporary Poland.


1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 434-449
Author(s):  
Stewart M. Foster

The lives of many converts in nineteenth-century England underwent quite significant, and often drastic change as a result of their decision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. Social ostracism, rejection by family and friends, and acceptance of the loss of professional advancement were counted among the risks of ‘going over’ to Rome. Conversion brought with it a discontinuity with the past; yet the Catholic careers of many of those received into the Church exhibit a remarkable continuity with the subject's non-Catholic past, if not in matters of doctrine and worship, then certainly in the field of social and apostolic goals. Father George Bampfield, educator of the poor and lower middle classes, and pioneer of Catholic evangelization in Hertfordshire and North Middlesex, is one such example. His career, in both its Anglican and Catholic spheres, represents the realisation, in albeit very changed circumstances, of a vision first glimpsed and a commitment made within the bosom of the Establishment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document