Archival Formations and the Universal Sentiment

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-135
Author(s):  
Carmen E. Lamas
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
New Spain ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
The Us ◽  
Travel Diaries ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Northern New Spain ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter examines the life and writings of Eusebio Guiteras (1823–93), who lived for twenty-five years in Philadelphia. Guiteras captured American life and culture in his travel diaries of the 1840s–1880s, and he translated Rudo Ensayo, a work by the eighteenth-century priest Juan Nentvig (1713–68) that details the evangelization mission of the Jesuits in what is now the American Southwest, but was then northern New Spain. Contextualizing the production and circulation of the multiple editions of Nentvig’s text in the nineteenth century, specifically one by the well-known antiquarian Thomas Buckingham Smith (1810–71), this Latina/o translation advocates for a constructive place for the Catholic Church in the US and Cuba. This advocacy must be understood in light of the translation’s underlying racial politics. Following his source text and the political designs of the editors of the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society (1894), in which the translation appeared, Guiteras simplistically and erroneously depicts the pacification of Native Americans in New Spain as a compassionate enterprise. In his travel diary, Un invierno en Nueva York (n.d.), Guiteras transposes this spiritual enterprise to the Cuban context, in which the place of Afro Cubans was being debated in the 1880s and 1890s on the island and in the US. In doing so, he envisions Catholic priests and Catholicism as agents for the pacification and assimilation of Afro Cubans in Cuba’s future republic while also arguing for a parallel and positive role for the Catholic Church in fashioning a culturally integrated United States.

Earth Ethics and American Catholic Environmentalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Activist Groups ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter notes that American Catholics were initially quite reluctant to embrace environmentalism. It asks, after decades of political engagement with labor, poverty, peace, women’s rights, and immigration, why did US Catholics largely overlook the growing environmental problems in the twentieth century? And what caused this to change in the early twenty-first century? The chapter summarizes early Catholic efforts to promote environmentalism and describes the initial responses of the Catholic Church and its members, who often prioritized human needs over environmental matters. It also describes how the Catholic Church and Catholic laypeople started placing greater emphasis on the environment toward the end of the twentieth century. The chapter then surveys the main themes of various Catholic teachings and publications—from the US Catholic Bishops Conference’s Renewing the Earth (1991) to Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si (2015)—that have given impetus to more Catholic environmental action. The chapter concludes with a description of the work of two activist groups: the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an ecumenical organization, and Catholic Climate Change.

The poetry of accumulation: Irish-American fables of resistance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamonn Wall
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Frank Mccourt ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mary Gordon ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Authors ◽  
The Catholic Church

Eamonn Wall’s discussion of Irish American Catholic experience reveals many similarities on either side of the pond, and some differences also. The Irish American authors and commentators provide unique perspectives on many facets of Irish life, including the unique role played by the Catholic Church. Among the authors discussed are Frank McCourt, whose account of a poor Catholic childhood in Limerick is so memorably captured in the best-seller, Angela’s Ashes, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín and Mary Gordon. Similarly, the theologian Richard P. McBrien, journalist and writer Maureen Dezell, and sociologist Andrew Greely combine to illustrate the impact that the Irish Church has had on its American equivalent. Wall maintains that looking towards Ireland from the US, and drawing on American notions of egalitarianism and individual freedom, sometimes allows for a more dispassionate view of Ireland’s Catholic heritage and enables envisaging its future with a far greater clarity than can be achieved when change is all around you.

scholarly journals The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 281
Author(s):  
Carolyn M. Warner
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sex Abuse ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Privileged Status ◽  
Child Sex Abuse ◽  
The Military ◽  
Patterns Of Abuse ◽  
The Catholic Church

The paper explores similarities in patterns of abuse and in patterns of how the known abuse cases are handled by the Catholic church and the U.S. military and develops preliminary explanations of why. The paper considers how the two organizations deal with external efforts by civil authorities at oversight and prosecution, and the extent to which they invoke their sacred status authority to evade responsibility and civilian oversight. The paper finds that the handling of sex abuse in each organization has been affected partly by the institutions seeing themselves as sacred, as something apart from the secular state, beholden to alternative authorities. The paper highlights the fact that child sex abuse by religious officials and sexual assault of soldiers by fellow soldiers and officers constitute profound challenges for democracy in the US and elsewhere, as the institutions claim and may be accorded separate and privileged status, beyond the reach of democratic laws and procedures. It is a warning about the costs of public deference to other institutions. The study utilizes documentation of Catholic church clergy child sex abuse cases in the US, and documentation of sex abuse cases in the US military.

Kenrick and the Paulists: A Conflict of Structures and Personalities

1969 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
John P. Marschall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Religious Congregation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Catholic Church

In spite of the nativism that agitated the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church experienced a noticeable drift of native American converts from other denominations. Between 1841 and 1857 the increased number of converts included a significant sprinkling of Protestant ministers. The history of this movement, which had its paradigm in the Oxford Movement, will be treated more in detail elsewhere. The purpose of this essay is simply to recount the attempt by several converts to establish a religious congregation of men dedicated to the Catholic apostolate among native Americans.

A Realignment of the Catholic Church in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-275
Author(s):  
Jonathon L. Wiggins ◽  
Mary L. Gautier ◽  
Thomas P. Gaunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Us Census ◽  
The Catholic Church

The official, parish-identified, Catholic population in the United States over the past forty years (1980 to 2019) has grown 40 percent, from about 48 million to over 67 million. Such a hearty rate of growth might lead one to assume that the Catholic population is increasing across all parts of the country. This growth, however, has been anything but uniform. From 1980 to the present, the Catholic population in some US Census regions—mostly in the South and in the West of the country—has experienced a boom, while in others—mostly in the Northeast and Midwest—it has experienced a bust. In this article, the growth or decline in the number of Catholics in each of the four US Census regions is explored, using data from the 2020 Faith Communities Today survey as well as data submitted by Catholic dioceses. These analyses give a more nuanced portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States, shedding light on both the challenges and opportunities the US Catholic Church is experiencing in 2021.

Catholicism as a Protestantism

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-370
Author(s):  
John A. Miles
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Intentional Community ◽  
The Moment ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
American Catholic Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

“Among the ways in which the American Catholic church has protestantized itself in recent years, the most important has been its transformation into an intentional community. For Catholics now, as earlier for Protestants, religion is a matter of opinion, not of birth; and one may change religion as easily and frequently as one changes one's mind. However—and this is the key point—intentional, Protestant religious communities have long had ways of recognizing and removing those who do not share the grounding intention of the community, whatever it may be. The Catholic Church, for the moment anyway, does not.”

scholarly journals Stephen Bullivant, Catholicism in the time of Coronavirus, Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Catholic Ministries 2020

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-258
Author(s):  
Marcin Krzysztof Nabożny
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Percentage Change ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Annual Average ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Average Percentage ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Ridge ◽  
The Catholic Church

The book is divided into 4 chapters followed by an afterword, appendix and notes; the foreword is written by Bishop Robert Barron; sources gotten from books, the internet, and the Catholic Church. Notably, the whole process, from pitch to perfect, happened over the space of twelve days: Monday, March 30 to Friday, April 10, 2020. The book contains a collection of “structured thoughts” about the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath, and their likely impacts upon the Church’s pastoral and evangelistic mission, focusing on the Catholic Church in the US and UK. Chapter 2 has a table on annual average percentage change in typical Sunday mass attendance in England and Wales, and 22 US (arch)dioceses.

scholarly journals “Wait, She’s One of Us!”: American Catholic Nuns, Gender, and Sexuality

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan P. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
First Century ◽  
Religious Sisters ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Catholic Nuns ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Gender Influences ◽  
The Catholic Church

In this qualitative study of one congregation of American Catholic nuns—the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia—I explore the ways in which gender influences the sisters’ work and their relationship with the Catholic Church and secular society. Through interviews with 23 religious sisters, I analyze the subtle strategies of action they employ to minister to marginalized populations who may feel alienated by the institutional Catholic Church. Despite their own structural position in the Catholic Church and secular society, American Catholic nuns like the Sisters of St. Joseph emerge as powerful women who exercise agency to respond to the human and social needs of lay Catholics and non-Catholics, even when this work is counter to official Church teaching. Overall, I argue that the Sisters of St. Joseph are guiding progressive voices in the Catholic Church—particularly around human sexuality and relationships—and have the potential to shape the direction of the Church in the twenty-first century.

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