Mixed Jurisdictions and Convergence: The Louisiana Example

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren M. Billings

Once on a plane to New Orleans I chanced to half overhear a conversation between two passengers who shared the same row of seats with me. Somewhere between wakefulness and drowsiness, my ear caught a telltale accent that betrayed one of my seatmates as an Orleanian as they chatted animatedly about the Crescent City, Louisiana, and the ways that both diverged from the rest of the country. The native noted reverently the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, he remarked grandly on the extraordinary cuisine, he waxed pridefully about the city as the birthplace of jazz, and he spoke warmly about the manifold ethnic origins of his fellow Louisianians. Then, as if to fortify his contention that he hailed from a truly unusual place, he pointedly observed that Louisiana was the only state in the nation whose legal system rested upon the Napoleonic Code, even as he confessed to an uncertainty about why that difference existed or what it meant precisely.

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka -Jeżowa

Summary The article tries to outline the position of Piotr Skarga in the Jesuit debates about the legacy of humanist Renaissance. The author argues that Skarga was fully committed to the adaptation of humanist and even medieval ideas into the revitalized post-Tridentine Catholicism. Skarga’s aim was to reformulate the humanist worldview, its idea of man, system of values and political views so that they would fit the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. In effect, though, it meant supplanting the pluralist and open humanist culture by a construct as solidly Catholic as possible. He sifted through, verified, and re-interpreted the humanist material: as a result the humanist myth of the City of the Sun was eclipsed by reminders of the transience of all earthly goods and pursuits; elements of the Greek and Roman tradition were reconnected with the authoritative Biblical account of world history; and man was reinscribed into the theocentric perspective. Skarga brought back the dogmas of the original sin and sanctifying grace, reiterated the importance of asceticism and self-discipline, redefined the ideas of human dignity and freedom, and, in consequence, came up with a clear-cut, integrist view of the meaning and goal of the good life as well as the proper mission of the citizen and the nation. The polemical edge of Piotr Skarga’s cultural project was aimed both at Protestantism and the Erasmian tendency within the Catholic church. While strongly coloured by the Ignatian spirituality with its insistence on rigorous discipline, a sense of responsibility for the lives of other people and the culture of the community, and a commitment to the heroic ideal of a miles Christi, taking headon the challenges of the flesh, the world, Satan, and the enemies of the patria and the Church, it also went a long way to adapt the Jesuit model to Poland’s socio-cultural conditions and the mentality of its inhabitants.


1952 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-44

With the assistance of ten students and six priests over a period of 12 months, the head of the department of sociology at Loyola University of the South conducted a field study of the social actions of parishioners and clergy in a single Roman Catholic Church unit in the city of New Orleans. The methodology and conceptual framework of the analysis of action within the context of the social institution, viewed structurally and functionally, have been magnificently adhered to. Religious actions, conceived as such by the actors and by others who interpret their behavior, are the substance of this study in parochial sociology. Data were collected by patient observation of the many aspects of the detailed religious patterns of action in which Roman Catholics engage. These are, among others, the typical and atypical behavior associated with church attendance, the sacraments, retreats, missions, recruitment for the priesthood, special devotions and feast-days, and the observances relating to baptism, matrimony and death.


2019 ◽  
pp. 135-158
Author(s):  
Дионисий Шлёнов

Известнейший аскет и мистик конца XIII в., стоящий у истоков расцвета исихазма в XIV в., прп. Никифор Итал был автором не только трактата «О хранении сердца», вошедшего в «Добротолюбие», но и диспута о вере, который никогда не переводился на русский язык. Диспут состоялся в городе Птолемаида/Акра в конце 1276 г. с Фомой, латинским патриархом Иерусалима, папским легатом в Святой Земле и известным персонажем в иерархии Римско-католической церкви. В настоящей публикации предлагается русский перевод памятника, важного не только для истории полемики между латинянами и греками, но и как сочинение, в котором в зачаточном виде присутствуют черты учения о сущности и энергиях Бога, впоследствии развиваемого свт. Григорием Паламой. «Диспут» носит яркий автобиографический характер и, помимо богословия, проливает свет на жизнь прп. Никифора Исихаста, которую можно реконструировать по отдельным внешним свидетельствам. В целом данный памятник важен, в том числе, и для формирования учения о неизменности предания семи Вселенских Соборов, которое впоследствии применялось в антилатинской полемике. The most famous ascetic and mystic of the end of the 13th century, who stood at the origins of hesychasm in the 14th century, was the author of not only the treatise «On the Keeping of the Heart», which was included in the «Philocalia», but also the author of a debate on faith, which was never translated into Russian. The dispute took place in the city of Ptolemais Acre at the end of 1276 with Thomas, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, papal legate in the Holy Land and a famous figure in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. This publication offers a Russian translation of the monument, which is important not only for the history of polemics between the Latins and the Greeks, but also as an essay in which the features of the doctrine of the essence and energies of God, later developed by St. Gregory Palamas, are presented in their earliest stage. «The Dispute» has a vivid autobiographical character and, in addition to theology, sheds light on the life of St. Nicephorus the Hesychast, which can be reconstructed on the basis of some external evidence. In general, this work is important for the understanding of the formation of the doctrine of the immutability of the tradition of the seven Ecumenical Councils, which was later used in the anti-Latin polemics.


Lehahayer ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 347-354
Author(s):  
Andrzej A. Zięba

New Discovery in Iaşi as a Source for Analysis of the "Picture Baptism" of Armenia by Teodor Axentowicz The author compares the oil painting showing the baptism of Thyristates III, King of Armenia, recently found in the Armenian-Apostolic church in Iaşi and attributed (due to the inscription on the back of the canvas) to Teodor Axentowicz, to the work of the same painter on the same subject that is currently displayed in the Roman Catholic church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Gdańsk. He claims that the painting from Iaşi is probably a copy of Axentowicz’s original work from around 1901 and it fully shows his original composition that was intended for the Armenian Catholic altar in the Roman Catholic church in Suceava. By contrast, the painting from Gdańsk only depicts the central part of the original. The reasons for this reduction remain unknown. Perhaps this was done by the buyer to adapt the image to the altar on which it was exhibited, or by the author himself to enhance the artistic value of the new version. The article also talks about the identification of another painting that captured the baptism of the Armenian king. The work was created in Lwów in 1839 by another Polish painter, Feliks Kasper Orlikowski, and it was intended for an unspecified Armenian church in Suceava. It may be that it was meant for the Armenian monastery Hagigadar located in the suburbs of the city.


2003 ◽  
Vol 87 (509) ◽  
pp. 250-266
Author(s):  
Chris Pritchard

Home to just over five million souls, Scotland is the most sparsely populated part of Britain. The people are overwhelmingly white (some 98.7%) and English speaking. Levels of deprivation vary considerably across the country as a whole. Some 20% of the school population was entitled to free school meals in 1995, though the figure was twice as high in the City of Glasgow, where life expectancy is 10 years below that of affluent parts of the south of England. In July 1997 proposals were presented for the creation of a Scottish parliament. Whilst the Westminster parliament would ‘remain sovereign’, many powers would be devolved to Edinburgh, including those relating to virtually every aspect of education. So today, the Scottish Executive Education Department (or SEED) administers Scottish Executive policy for pre-school and school education in co-operation with local authorities that are responsible for providing school education in their areas. No less than 96% of youngsters are educated in state schools. Schools associated with religious groups including the Roman Catholic Church were incorporated into the state system in the 1920s. The annual cost of running the whole education system is a little under £5 billion or some 9% of Scottish GDP [1, p. 17].


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Erik A. de Boer

Abstract In their critique of the hierarchy in the Roman Catholic Church most reformers in the sixteenth century did not argue for retaining the office of bishop. In the English Reformation, led by the king, the bishopric was reformed, and in Hungary, too, the office of bishop survived. Did reformers like John Calvin fundamentally reject this office, or did they primarily attack its abuse? Investigation of the early work of Calvin shows a focus on the meaning of the biblical term ‘overseer’ and on preaching as the primary function of the episcopacy. While the title of bishop is reserved for the one head of the church, the office of the preacher is brought to a higher level. As moderator of the Company of Pastors in Geneva, Calvin would have a standing in the city comparable to the ousted bishop.


Author(s):  
Keith Daniel Roberts

The chapter demonstrates how the arrival of the famine Irish changed (or reinforced) attitudes in the port in a decidedly anti-Irish/Catholic direction. It portrays how the presence of the famine Irish and their ‘strange’ customs resulted in their scapegoating as scroungers and alien economic competitors. The concentration of the Irish population in ethno-religious ghettoes and its effects on the city are also analysed as well as the protagonists and consequences of Irish immigration. It outlines the growth of the Roman Catholic Church in Liverpool, in response to the arrival the famine Irish and demonstrates how Catholic influence grew in line with its congregation, as did the strength of the Orange Order, in response to this influx. Both organisations, the chapter suggests, would become key players in the sectarian dynamics of the city. Attention then turns to the city’s sectarian orators and the violence that characterised the port in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-364
Author(s):  
Kristin Norget

This article explores new political practices of the Roman Catholic Church by means of a close critical examination of the beatification of the Martyrs of Cajonos, two indigenous men from the Mexican village of San Francisco Cajonos, Oaxaca, in 2002. The Church’s new strategy to promote an upsurge in canonizations and beatifications forms part of a “war of images,” in Serge Gruzinski’s terms, deployed to maintain apparently peripheral populations within the Church’s central paternalistic fold of social and moral authority and influence, while at the same time as it must be seen to remain open to local cultures and realities. In Oaxaca and elsewhere, this ecclesiastical technique of “emplacement” may be understood as an attempt to engage indigenous-popular religious sensibilities and devotion to sacred images while at the same time implicitly trying to contain them, weaving their distinct local historical threads seamlessly into the fabric of a global Catholic history.


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