The Crisis of the Dogma of Sovereignty in the History of Ideas

Sovereignty ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 61-78
Author(s):  
Hermann Heller

This chapter considers Bodin’s theory of sovereignty. Bodin’s concept of sovereignty was the result of a war fought by the French state under the leadership of the king and the University of Paris against the king’s subjection to the Catholic Church and the empire, as well as against the subordination of state power to the feudal barons. Even before Bodin, the “initially relative, comparative concept of royal sovereignty” had changed to “an absolute one.” The state, represented in the king, which had heretofore only been superior in its relationship to the Church, empire, and barons, now became “supreme.” Bodin was the first to claim sovereignty as a defining criterion of the state.

Author(s):  
Polina S. Antonenko

The article considers the changes in the position of the Catholic Church in Spanish society caused by the democratic transition. The beginning of the reign of Juan Carlos I was marked by the rethinking of the dialogue between the state and the Catholic Church. The king introduced the initiative to revise the provisions of the Concordat, thereby limiting the power position of the Spanish Catholic diocese. This decision looks like an intention to divide the history of Spain into Franco and democratic periods in the political and public consciousness. But the full-fledged democratization of society would have been impossible without the modernization of the church institution. The Constitution of 1978, being the main law of the country, reflects the state's attitude to religious issues, emphasizing the secular status of Spain and the pluralism of religion of the Spaniards. Despite the restrictions imposed on the Catholic Church, caused by the transition to democracy, the position of the religious institution remains high due to the pressure of the historical memory of Spain, in which Catholicism is a nation forming factor. As a result, the democratization of the Catholic Church was successful, and the church institution took a harmonious position in the conditions of democratic Spain.


1987 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 409-427
Author(s):  
J. H. Burns

If ‘the later conciliar controversy’ may be regarded as having come to an end by the middle of the fifteenth century, the years considered here may perhaps be seen as the period of the last controversy of quite that kind. It is true that words like ‘first’ and ‘last’ are always hazardous in historical discourse, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the history of ideas. Clearly the argument about the place of general councils in the polity of the Church had not completely died away in the second half of the fifteenth century; nor did it come to a sudden end in 1518 (specified here as the year which saw the Concordat of 1516 reluctantly accepted by the University of Paris and also the publication of John Mair’s Commentary on St Matthew’s Gospel, with its strenuous assertion of conciliarist principles). Twenty years more were to pass before the posthumous publication of the longest single work generated by the entire conciliar controversy, Domenico Giacobazzi’s De concilio. And seven years later it was, of course, a council of the Church that faced the challenge of what had, from small beginnings within the period examined here, become a schism more fundamental and far-reaching than that which had precipitated the original conciliar movement. Even at Trent, moreover, there were those who were prepared to speak up for ‘conciliarist’ principles and policies. Yet it still seems true to say that the years of the Council (or what purported to be the Council) of Pisa and Milan, and of the Fifth Council of the Lateran, saw the last significant and direct confrontation between conciliarism and papalism as those positions had developed in the ecclesiology and ecclesiastical politics of the period inaugurated by the Great Schism. No doubt this last act was an anticlimax, a controversy over the dubious claims of a conciliabulum which was at least politically used if not originally inspired by purely political motives. In the history of ideas, however, and perhaps especially in the history of political ideas, the debate is not so easily dismissed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Jacek Wojda

Seventieth of XIX century were very hard time for Catholic Church in Polish Kingdom. Mainreason was aim for independency in Poles’ hearts. Deeply connected with polish nation, Churchsuffered because of Tsar’ political repression. Although different stages of its history are not closelyconnected with post uprising’s repressions.Report of French General Consulate in Warsaw bearing a date 1869 stress accent on samekind of the Catholic Church persecutions, which were undertaken against bishops and dioceseadministrators, and some of them were died during deportation on Siberia, north or south Russia.Hierarchy was put in a difficult position. They had to choose or to subordinate so called Rome CatholicSpiritual Council in Petersburg or stay by the Apostolic See side. Bishop Konstanty Łubieński isacknowledged as the first Victim of that repressions.Outlook upon history of persecutions, which is presented, shows not only Church but pointsout harmful consequences Russia’s politics in the Church and society of the Polish Kingdom. Citedarchival source lets us know way of looking and analysing history during 1861−1869 by Frenchdiplomats.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-176
Author(s):  
Mária Csatlós

With the available archival resources and through exploring the life, work and political actions of Endre Ágotha, the dean and parish priest of Nyárádselye I trace the unfolding and failing of the schismatic catholic peace movement legitimated in Marosvásárhely in the period 1950-1956. The state backed “Catholic Action” did not succeed in severing the Catholic Church in Romania from Rome by settling the “pending cases” between the church and the state and only a small portion of the clergy joined the movement, yet it has made significant moral damages by dividing the believers and the clergy. The Holy See condemned the movement and it’s key figure Endre Ágotha has brought upon himself the harshest punishment of the Catholic Church: excommunicates vitandus. He received absolution only on his deathbed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-119
Author(s):  
Bartosz Kapuściak

The primary task of the military intelligence in the People’s Republic of Poland was to acquire materials on the armament and stationing of NATO troops. However, due to the demand of the communist authorities, it also conducted political activities aimed at, among others, the Catholic Church. The interest of the state authorities increased especially during the pontificate of John Paul II. According to the assessment of military intelligence, the election of Karol Wojtyła as Bishop of Rome stimulated the Catholic Church both in Poland and in the Vatican. In this way, the activities of the Second Directorate of the General Staff of the Polish Army were within the scope of civil intelligence interests. The article aims to show the role played by intelligence officers and informers operating in Rome undercover as military attachés or in civilian institutions. Their actions resulted in the establishment of contacts with the church environment and acquisition of voluntary and involuntary informants. In this way, the Second Directorate of the General Staff of the Polish Army provided the party and political apparatus with interesting news and materials. Following the introduction of martial law in Poland, the church from the Rome area started sending parcels of food, clothes and medicines to Poland. This aid for the country was used to establish contact with the Polish clergy thanks to the initiative of Colonel Franciszek Mazurek.


1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Corish

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.


1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-523
Author(s):  
Osmund Lewry Op

As many had done long before, John Henry Newman, in his sermon of 1842 on ‘The Christian Church an imperial power’, drew his model of the corporate life of the Church from the state: ‘We know what is meant by a kingdom. It means a body politic, bound together by common law, ruled by one head, holding intercourse part with part, acting together’. This description, little changed, could have applied as well to the university community of Newman's Oxford, and it is not implausible that an experience of fellowship there, strained and divided as it sometimes was, could have provided an unconscious model for his understanding of the ecclesial community. Even if it did not become explicit in Newman's thought, the analogy of head and members was present to the thinking of university men at Paris with regard to their own corporate life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, particularly when relations were strained and division of the body threatened. Whatever the origins of conciliarist theory, then, in the reflections of canonists and theologians, there was an experience of ecclesial community in the corporate life of medieval Paris that could have given living content to speculation about the Church in the most influential intellectual centre of Christendom. The shaping of that experience deserves some attention as a matrix for conciliarist thought.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 71-92
Author(s):  
Denis Bećirović ◽  

The illumination of the state policy of separating „positive“ from „negative“ priests of the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most important issues in the scientific understanding of the position of this religious community during the first decades of existence of AVNOJ Yugoslavia. The post-war government in Bosnia and Herzegovina treated a large number of priests of the Catholic Church as real or potential enemies of the state. In addition to ideological reasons, which were more or less similar in all communist parties, the negative attitude of the CPY towards the Catholic Church was influenced by the fact that some priests supported the Ustasha movement during World War II. The justification for the negative attitude of party structures towards priests was argued most often in the documents of the Commission for Religious Affairs with the following reasons: that most priests supported the occupier and domestic traitors during the war; that they spread hostile propaganda against the national liberation movement; that they actively participated in the fight against the new social order; that they had committed war crimes and persecuted members of other faiths, and that they had been linked to criminal Ustasha emigration abroad. In addition to „negative“ priests, there were „positive“ priests that also acted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as they were reported in the documents of the Commission for Religious Affairs. They did not agree to the policy of confrontation with the state and demanded the establishment of dialogue and co-operation between the Church and the state. Some of the most prominent representatives of this group of priests were: Fr Bono Ostojić, Ph.D. Karlo Karin, Fr Mile Leko, Fr Josip Markušić, Fr Serafin Dodig, Fr Kruno Misilo and others. Holders of „positive tendencies“ among the clergy, according to the Commission for Religious Affairs, understood the importance of establishing communication and contacts with state authorities and the harmfulness of the negative attitude of the Catholic Church towards the state. Their goal was to change the methods of solving problems between the Church and the state, and to build a path that would suit the interests of the priests of the Catholic Church and the interests of the state community, without interfering with the church's dogmatic canonical principles. The „differentiation“ of priests was treated as a positive result of the work of the new government, because, according to their assessments, in the first post-war years, representatives of religious communities had a hostile attitude towards the newly created socialist Yugoslav state. Therefore, the Commission for Religious Affairs (federal and republican) has continuously pointed out the importance of implementing a policy of „stratification and differentiation“ within religious communities. According to the observations of the Federal Commission for Religious Affairs, the post-war „differentiation“ among the priests happened primarily due to their attitudes regarding the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. Some considered it desirable and useful to establish communication with the newly created authorities, while others maintained a negative attitude. In addition to these two groups, there was a third group that was undecided. When considering the biographical data of the priests of the Catholic Church proposed for state decorations, it can be stated that the authorities carefully took into account which priests would be on the list of candidates recommended for awards. A positive attitude towards the new socialist social order, active participation in the establishment of the Association of Catholic Priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina, loyalty, patriotism towards socialist Yugoslavia, and contribution to the development of the Association of Catholic Priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are some of the most important reasons for choosing candidates for awards. In the article, based on unpublished archival sources, the author contextualises the political circumstances and the circumstances in which the state policy of differentiation of „positive“ from „reactionary“ priests of the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina took place, points out the reasons for and bearers of such policy, and analyses its expression and results. Also, the author presents the policy of awarding state recognitions and decorations to individual priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Slovene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 368-391
Author(s):  
Ilya V. Semenenko-Basin ◽  
Stefano Caprio

The article is devoted to the menologion (calendar of saints) compiled in the 20th century for Russian Byzantine Catholics. The latter are a church community with its own Byzantine-Slavic worship and piety, which follow both the Catholic and the Eastern spiritual traditions. Like the entire liturgical literature of the Russian Eastern Catholics, the menologion was created in Rome under the auspices of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, as part of the activities of the Russian Catholic Apostolate, i.e., of the mission of the Catholic Church addressed to Russia and the Russian diaspora in the world. The corpus of service books for Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian Eastern Catholics was called Recensio Vulgata. The menologion under study is contained in the books of Recensio Vulgata and was compiled on the basis of the Orthodox menologia of pre-revolutionary Russia. The compilers of the Byzantine-Catholic menologion did not just select Russian liturgical memories in a certain way, they also included the names of several martyrs of the Eastern Catholic Churches and some additional commemorations of Western saints. According to the compilers of the menologion, the history of Catholic (orthodox) holiness in North-Eastern Russia ended at the turn of the 1440s, when the Principality of Moscow and the Novgorod Republic abandoned the Union of Florence. The menologion reflects the era after the Union of Florence in the events that show the invariable patronage of the Mother of God over the people and the Russian land. The Recensio Vulgata menologion (RVM) contains twelve Russia-specific holidays that honor icons of the Mother of God, nine of which celebrate the events of the period from the late 15th to the 17th centuries. The compilers of the menologion created a well-devised system in which the East Slavic saints, the ancient saints of the Byzantine menologion, the Latin teachers of the Church, the saints of the Byzantine Catholic churches of different eras all are subject to harmonious logic, and harmony serves to organize the whole.


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