A Stronghold of Catholicism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Church

Compared to other Western European countries, Italy stands out in its rather high level of religiosity. Weekly church attendance has consistently exceeded the one third mark; confidence in the church has increased slightly; belief in God has remained at a high level; and belief in life after death, and in heaven and hell, has increased. The chapter investigates why both church practice and people’s ties to their faith have remained more or less stable since the 1980s. The shorthand answer is diversity in unity. Just as the Catholic movement is supported vertically by the high density of personnel and the developed institutional structures of the Catholic Church, so it is embedded horizontally in a climate of acceptance of Catholicism practised as a habit. At the same time, it is able to give mobilizing impulses both to the church hierarchy and its members.

The Catholic Church

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Pope Benedict Xvi ◽  
Benedict Xvi ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Christian Family ◽  
The One ◽  
Cover Up ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Roman Catholicism stands at a crossroads, a classic ''best of times, worst of times'' moment. On the one hand, the Catholic Church remains by far the largest branch of the worldwide Christian family, and is growing at a remarkable clip. Yet the Church has also been rocked by a series of scandals related to the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, and, even more devastating, the cover-up by the Church hierarchy. The decade-long crisis has taken a massive financial toll, but the blow to both the internal morale and the external moral standing of the Church has been even steeper. Today, the Church has enormous residual strength and exciting future prospects, but also faces steep internal and external challenges. The question of ''whither Catholicism'' is of vital public relevance, for believers and non-believers alike. In The Catholic Church: What Everyone Needs to Know, John L. Allen, Jr., one of the world's leading authorities on the Vatican, offers an authoritative and accessible guide to the past, present, and future of the Church. This updated edition includes a new chapter on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the election of Pope Francis, and his extraordinary tenure thus far.

scholarly journals Charismatic Leadership in the Catholic Church

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Irina Borsch ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The article analyzes the ideas of charismatic leadership developed in the Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century. These ideas are connected, on the one hand, with the biblical revival, with the attempts to rediscover the heritage of the Church of the first centuries, and on the other hand, with new social phenomena, which are typical for the era after the Second World War. The social dimension of charisma and its role in the creation of associations were rediscovered in Catholicism during the Second Vatican Council. At the same time, a huge number of new social and evangelical initiatives appealing to charisma appeared. The new church movements became the most prominent and well-known examples of catholic “charismatic associations”. The author shows how the Catholic hierarchy managed to streamline and incorporate the charismatic leadership of lay associations into the reality of the universal church structure. The article emphasizes that the concept of charismatic leadership in the Church is in the process of evolution. The author concludes that the documents of church governance, proclaiming the absence of a conflict between charisma and institution in theory, reflect the political processes of the contemporary Catholic era: the emergence of Catholic movements with a predominant role of laity, the change of generations of Catholic elites and the formation of a new balance of responsibility between movements and the church hierarchy.

‘A Moment of Truth’? The Church and Political Change in Malawi, 1992

1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Newell
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Party System ◽  
Urban Riots ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Industrial Action ◽  
Political Dominance ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
The One ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
The Church

The immediate origins of the democratic elections held in Malawi in 1994, which brought to an end over 30 years of political dominance by President Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), lie in the unprecedented events which shook the entire nation in 1992. Although that turbulent year was characterised by industrial action, serious urban riots, student demonstrations, the emergence of new domestic political groupings, and the Government's agreement to hold a national referendum on the future of the one-party system in the country, in retrospect perhaps what was most remarkable about these developments was that they were sparked off by the Catholic Church, and that their momentum was sustained at crucial stages by other Christian denominations in Malawi.1

scholarly journals The Problem of Democracy against the Background of the Theory of Origin and Authority in the Social Doctrine of the Church Fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas

2020 ◽  
pp. 661-670
Author(s):  
Tomasz Pawlikowski
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Social Doctrine ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The Times ◽  
The One ◽  
Doctrine Of The Church ◽  
The Church

"e modern social doctrine of the Catholic Church supports all of the abovementionedviews with the exception that it treats some of its elements as theso-called “signs of the times” in which the creators of these views lived andwrote. "erefore, we cannot say that they became somehow time-barred. "eyhave entered the tradition of the social doctrine of the Church. Similarly, onecannot reasonably claim that the basic theses of the socio-political theoriesof Saint Augustine or Saint "omas Aquinas are obsolete in philosophical terms.At the most, one can disagree with them or try to correct them. Nevertheless, itseems that there are no better analyses of the nature of authority and its originfrom God. Considering these issues from the perspective of historical applicationsof the theories, especially the one coined by St. "omas, it is impossible notto notice the significant analogies of the reflections of Doctor Angelicus and theidea of a “nobles’ democracy” implemented in the First Polish Republic threehundred years later. It is also difficult to believe that a$er the creation of thescientific community of the Jagiellonian University in the fi$eenth century, theydid not affect the minds of Polish politicians at a time when the foundationsof this democracy were formed. Moreover, it seems that these considerationswere widely applied in the centuries-old process of crystallizing other modernand contemporary democratic system.

scholarly journals The Idea of Patriarchate of the UGCC in the Ukrainian Diaspora on the Eve of the Second Vatican Council

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Anatolii Babynskyi
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
The Third ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Face ◽  
Post War ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Church

The article covers the development of the idea of ​​patriarchal status in 1945-1962 within the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the diaspora, focusing mainly on the third wave of Ukrainian emigration. After the Second World War, about 250,000 Ukrainian refugees found themselves in Western Europe (DP camps), from where in 1947-1955, they moved to the countries of North and South America, Western Europe and Australia. The growing role of the Church, which continued to play a significant role in their lives after their resettlement to the countries mentioned above, marked the experience of their stay in the DP camps. The DP camps became a place of a closer rapprochement between Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians, one consequence of which was the appeals of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops with a proposal to create a joint patriarchate with Ukrainian Orthodox, which would be in unity with Rome. On the other hand, the expansion of the geography of the presence of the UGCC and the founding of new metropolises in Canada and the United States brought to the fore the question of the unity of all structural units of this Church at the global level, which, as some believed, could have been secured by the patriarchal institution. Finally, the patriarchate was considered by the post-war Ukrainian emigration as a means of preserving the unity of the diaspora in the face of assimilation and disintegration. Furthermore, in the future, as an institution that could effectively help the Church revive at home after independence. The last aspect of the patriarchal idea had a significant impact on the emergence of the Ukrainian patriarchal movement, and its closeness to the goals set by the third wave of Ukrainian emigration provided that movement with a high level of massiveness and passionate vigorousness for the movement.

scholarly journals The Quick Growth of the Catholic Church in Manggarai: A Phenomenology of Conversion and Some Explanations

MELINTAS ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 276
Author(s):  
Fransiskus Borgias M.
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
External Factor ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

<p>Since the arrival of Christianity together with the colonial rulers, Manggarai, Flores, Indonesia, undergoes physical and spiritual changes. These changes can be explained with theory of intellectual voluntarism (the free will of the repentant) and theory of structural determinism (enforcement by external factor). It appears that the changes in Manggarai happen because of the mixture of both factors in their diverse variants, such as the political-economical, educational, social-services related, and religious-theological factors. There are two horizons in the whole process of encounter and transformation in this area. On the one hand, there is the horizon of European Christian missionaries (supported by government), and on the other hand, the horizon of the Manggarain, with their cultural life in the broadest sense of the word. The two horizons fuse to each other in one drama of cultural encounter throughout the growth of the Church. Following the hermeneutical discourse of Gadamer, it might be said that the fusion of the two horizons results in the emergence of a new face of unique local and contextual Christianity. In its uniqueness and locality, it has also something to be contributed to the universal Church.</p>

The Idea of a Political Theology, I.

Worldview ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
J. Bryan Hehir
Keyword(s):  
Long Range ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Modem World ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

There is a dimension of Catholic thought rooted in the Vatican Council that extends beyond it in a way that could have significant implications for the Church's role in the political order. The basis for a political theology lies in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World; the purpose of this document was to reformulate the perspective in which the Church understood and evaluated contemporary culture and defined her rote in it. Many observers have singled out this document as the one with the greatest potential for shaping the long-range development of the Catholic Church.

The Church as the Community of the Shared Story

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Eddy Van der Borght
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethnic Churches ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

AbstractWithin this article, three ecumenical documents that discuss reconciliation and healing memories and that were published in the twenty first century are analyzed. The focus is on the way they deal with the past link between church and ethnicity, and how this has contributed to the inability of actual national or ethnic churches to be an expression of the one, catholic church of the ancient creeds. The result of the analysis is disappointing. The texts avoid dealing with this issue.

‘Let history judge who was to blame’, 1990–1998

2019 ◽  
pp. 159-198
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Scull
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
One Step ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Individuals within the Church, rather than the institution as a whole, became the main negotiators for peace after the revelations of clerical child abuse in the early 1990s. Priests like Fathers Alec Reid, Gerry Reynolds, and Denis Faul worked privately to convince paramilitary groups to lay down their weapons. The Church hierarchy was forced into a defensive position in order to protect its reputation as a moral arbiter after the child abuse revelations. The institutional Catholic Church was no longer able to play a role in the peace process by this point. However, individual priests who fostered relationships with their Protestant counterparts continued to act as negotiators for an end to the conflict. The signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement marked one step in the peace process but after this point the Catholic Church had no influence on these policies.

The Laywoman Project

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary J. Henold
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
National Council ◽  
New Era ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

Summoning everyday Catholic laywomen to the forefront of twentieth-century Catholic history, Mary J. Henold considers how these committed parishioners experienced their religion in the wake of Vatican II (1962–1965). This era saw major changes within the heavily patriarchal religious faith—at the same time as an American feminist revolution caught fire. Who was the Catholic woman for a new era? Henold uncovers a vast archive of writing, both intimate and public facing, by hundreds of rank-and-file American laywomen active in national laywomen’s groups, including the National Council of Catholic Women, the Catholic Daughters of America, and the Daughters of Isabella. These records evoke a formative period when laywomen played publicly with a surprising variety of ideas about their own position in the Catholic Church. While marginalized near the bottom of the church hierarchy, laywomen quietly but purposefully engaged both their religious and gender roles as changing circumstances called them into question. Some eventually chose feminism while others rejected it, but most, Henold says, crafted a middle position: even conservative, nonfeminist laywomen came to reject the idea that the church could adapt to the modern world while keeping women’s status frozen in amber.

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