The Morning After

Mass Exodus ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 189-222
Author(s):  
Stephen Bullivant

In the wake of the ‘Catholic sixties’, the 1970s and 1980s were a period of uncertainty and crisis. Alongside other worrying trends—falling numbers of converts’ vocations, the departure of large numbers of clergy and religious, existential crises for many religious orders and other Catholic institutions—Mass attendance began falling and falling. As Paul VI put it in 1972, ‘It was believed that after the Council would come a sunny day in the history of the Church. Instead, a day of clouds, storms, gloom, searching, and uncertainty has arrived.’ Using new data, this chapter quantifies the declines in practice and affiliation among British and American Catholics. It also examines the related trends of ‘religious switching’ in the USA—fuelled by the advent of Evangelical megachurches from the mid-1970s onwards—and the mainstreaming of nonreligiosity in Britain.

This second volume in The History of Scottish Theology comprises 29 essays ranging from the early Enlightenment to the end of the ‘long nineteenth century’. Attention is devoted to key doctrinal and apologetic themes relating to the inheritance of Reformed orthodoxy and the appearance of deism, as well as to newer challenges and revisionist approaches that later emerged. The extent to which the mid eighteenth-century scholars of the Church of Scotland were committed to the movement that later became known as ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ is discussed by several contributors who explore the importance of Moderate and Evangelical trends. The influence of nineteenth-century continental developments, including kenotic Christology, idealism, and biblical criticism, is also registered, alongside exploration of the issues raised by religious scepticism, slavery, and the natural sciences. Several essays are devoted to describing the wider dissemination and refraction of theological ideas in Gaelic women’s poetry, Scottish literature, liturgical reform, preaching, hymn writing, and civic architecture. The international influence of Scottish theology is also described, both through the work of important thinkers who migrated to the USA and in the establishment of Scots colleges in Europe.


Author(s):  
David W. Kling

The long Catholic Reformation, which lasted from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, is one of the most active, intense, and expansive in the history of Christian conversion. This chapter begins with an examination of the conversions of two profoundly influential Catholics from the Iberian Peninsula (Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Ávila) and then considers efforts by the religious orders to re-Catholicize Europe. With the Jesuits leading the way, the Church evangelized the masses, drawing them into a personal relationship with God by encouraging the very things Protestants condemned: cults of intercession, pilgrimages, concern with purgatory, feast days, adoration of Christ in the Eucharist, and devotion to the saints. The chapter then moves to a discussion of conversion in the context of religiously mixed communities (Catholics and Protestants) in the Low Countries and France and ends with a discussion of Pierre Bayle’s defense of free conscience as the basis of true conversion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Siarhei A. Anoshka ◽  

This article attempts to analyse a contemporary phenomenon from the sphere of alternative religiosity in the form of joke religions. The main subject of the analysis is a new religious movement called the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CFSM), founded in the USA in 2005. By referring to the theory of carnival fun, joining the sacrum and profanum, and passing through the various doctrinal threads of this religious movement, the author attempts to answer the question of whether the CFSM can be considered a genuine religion or only a joke. The article begins with a short reflection on the possibility of joking about religion and faith, and the response to religious humour by people of faith, which may range from anger to disgust and sometimes even to aggression. Then, after a short history of this new (pseudo-)religious movement, a perspective is developed. It emerges that the whole structure of the so-called doctrine of this (quasi-)religion refers to other known religions and beliefs, including other new religious movements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 767-786
Author(s):  
Michał Chaberek

The article discusses the history of reforms of American religious sisters initiated by Pius XII and concluded by a joint agreement between the LCWR and the Commissions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The article shows the character of the reforms undertaken before and after the Council and how two organizations representing American sisters were established. The continuous departure of the LCWR from the teaching of the Church is presented in opposition to the fidelity of the second organization with canonical status – CMSWR. The lack of vocations among the sisters gathered in the LCWR is a sign of mistakes in the reforms that were undertaken and politicization of the organization.


1986 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-420
Author(s):  
Arthur F. Glasser

Conceding that the “church growth” concept and methodology have come under fire, the author shares an insider's reflections on how the movement has fared since Donald McGavran originated it three decades ago. The history of the movement and the relation between the Institute for Church Growth and the School of World Missions at Fuller Theological Seminary are traced. Dialogue and controversy with the WCC in the sixties, and growing influence within the Lausanne movement in the seventies, are sketched. The impact and consequences of church growth for world missions and for church life in the USA are noted. Finally, in a series of “random thoughts,” Glasser appraises both the strengths and weaknesses of the church growth concept, affirms that it is being corrected and enlarged, and claims for it an enduring place in the church's evolving missionary strategy of the eighties.


1986 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Frederick Schwaller

The history of the Church in Mexico has seen an ongoing confrontation between the secular and the regular clergy. During various periods one or the other side would achieve ascendency, only to decline at a later date. The religious orders have chronicled the exploits of their brothers and friars, yet to this day the activities of the secular clergy have remained largely unknown. One critical period in the development and expansion of the secular clergy occurred between the promulgation of the Ordenanza del Patronazgo in 1574 and the end of the sixteenth century. In this quarter century many of the basic institutions of the diocesan establishment came into being, and in general the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy felt the changes. This essay specifically will focus on the implementation of the Ordenanza del Patronazgo and its effect on the secular clergy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002436392110245
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Dailor

Although the care of the sick has been a charism of Catholic community since the beginning, and hospitals as we know them have developed since the fourth century, religious orders began to develop hospitals as part of their mission work during the colonial expansion of the seventeenth century. These early efforts, however, were primarily a response to the needs of the colonists as well as recognition that the poor who were sick required care in these regions. It can be argued that medical missions developed during the twentieth century as a response to the outreach of Protestants as well as the exposure of physicians to the needs in mission territories, and that their advancement and success impacted the attitudes of the popes and bishops of the twentieth century. This article examines several individuals and organizations who have contributed to the development of medical missions in Africa in modern times and trace the approach of the Church toward medical missions by exploring missionary religious orders, especially women’s religious orders, and papal and council documents. It primarily considers the role of medical missions in areas that had only a limited Catholic presence prior to nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and where Catholic health care and the local Catholic Church essentially developed together, and considers ways in which the growth of medical missions and the thinking of the Church developed together.


2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Verhoef

From the commentaries on Paul's epistle to the Philippians, much can be gleaned about the circumstances of that period. But what happened in the time after the Philippians received Paul's letter? From the fourth to the sixth centuries, at least five churches were built. Were these churches necessary due to large numbers of churchgoers, or did one or more of these churches belong to heretical groups? This article attempts to provide a plausible overview of the development of the church in Philippi in the period following Paul's preaching there and the end of the sixth century. The famous studies by Collart and Lemerle cannot be ignored, but far more information than what those scholars had access to is now available to us. The recent works by Peter Pilhofer, in particular, are highly instructive. Using new evidence, we can now provide a more detailed history of this church's history than ever before.


2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 144-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Arnold

Polydore Vergil (c.1470–1555) was a controversial critic of the church of his day. As this essay will show, his radical solution to its problems was based upon his reading of the church’s history. An Italian cleric on English soil for much of his life, Vergil is most famous for hisAnglica Historia(1533), the first Tudor history of England. However, he was also responsible for another great (although now neglected) work,De Inventoribus Rerum(‘on the inventors, or discoverers, of all things’). Consisting of eight volumes, it is an example of early encyclopaedic technique from original Latin and Greek sources, including the Bible, Josephus and Eusebius, as well as observation from contemporary life, in which ‘invention’ is depicted as a category of historiography and a means of examining scientific and cultural history. The first three books were published in 1499 in Venice and deal mainly with scientific phenomena. The other five books, with which we are concerned here, consider the origins of Christian institutions(initia institutorum rei Christianae)and were published much later, in 1521, although Vergil continuously revised the entireDe Inventoribus Rerumuntil his death. The topics covered range from early church history, baptism, clerical and religious orders, penance, prayers and simony, to heresies and schisms, martyrs and the triumph of Christianity. An extremely popular work, with over forty editions in Vergil’s lifetime, it was, nonetheless, censured for its criticisms of the church. Indeed, the purpose of Books IV–VIII was to demonstrate what was initiated by Christ and what the true nature of the church was, not by examining its doctrine but by seeking the origins of its practice.


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