The Catholic Church Vis-à-Vis Liberal Society

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 357-363
Author(s):  
Roger Cardinal Etchegaray ◽  
Translated by Mei Lin Chang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Liberal Society ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Cardinal Etchegaray argues here that the dialogue between church and state, with both parties rooted in sometimes conflicting absolute claims and values, has become more recently a wider-ranging dialogue between the church and a pluralist, relativist liberal society. The very definition of “liberal society” is open to argument, and the church may find elements to commend or oppose in any given definition. Since the nineteenth century the church has often found itself in opposition to various ideas of “liberty,” especially those that represent an idolatry of absolute rights that push aside Christian spiritual and moral concerns. Now that liberalism has become the pervasive model for society, the church finds it may more easily express its critique, with the aim of making society more conducive to allowing people to become fully human. Indeed, the church provides a necessary check on the excesses of liberal society, particularly those of capitalism and democratic populism. Its essential point is the transcendent dimension of the human person—our connection with the divine. The pursuit of economic and political ends needs to be governed by a concern for the ethical, itself founded on the divine. Liberal society will only live up to its own highest aspirations through promoting self-mastery and an awareness that humanity’s freedom is ultimately found only in God.

Lamennais

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waldemar Gurian
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Third ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Papal Infallibility ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

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.

The First Albanian Autobiography

2020 ◽  
pp. 255-273
Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Early Education ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Italian Culture ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

This essay presents a hitherto unknown work: the first autobiography ever written by an Albanian. It was composed in 1881–2 by a young man (born in 1861) called Lazër Tusha; he wrote it in Italian, and the manuscript has been preserved in an ecclesiastical archive in Italy. Tusha was the son of a prosperous tailor in the city of Shkodër, which was the administrative centre of the Catholic Church in Albania. He describes his childhood and early education, which gave him both a love of Italian culture and a strong desire to serve the Church; at his insistence, his father sent him to the Catholic seminary there, run by the Jesuits. He describes his disappointment on being obliged, after six years, to leave the seminary and resume lay life, and his failed attempts to become either a Jesuit or a Franciscan. Some aspects of these matters remain mysterious in his account. But much of this unfinished draft book is devoted to things other than purely personal narrative: Tusha writes in loving detail about customs, superstitions, clothes, the city of Shkodër, its market and the tailoring business. This is a very rich account of the life and world of an ordinary late-nineteenth-century Albanian—albeit an unusually thoughtful one, with some literary ambition.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 292-304
Author(s):  
Jennifer Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Theatre ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Catholic Church

Taking the 1903 death of Pope Leo XIII as its starting point, the conclusion extends beyond the legal separation of Church and State (1905) in order to trace the ways in which the processes of transformation that were set in motion during the late nineteenth century continued well into the twentieth century. Pierre Nora’s concept of the lieu de memoire illuminates the numerous ways that the sites of Catholic and French memory that the book explores—whether as opera, popular theatre, or concert—found an extraordinary ally in the Republic as it collectively harnessed the power of memory. From its “origin” in the French medieval era, to its transformations throughout the fin-de-siècle, to the response to the devastating fire at Notre-Dame in 2019, the Catholic Church provided (and continues to provide) a new mode of expression for the French Republic. In effect, the success of the twentieth-century renouveau catholique was set in motion by its nineteenth-century forbear: the path was paved by the Republic’s musical Ralliement and the memorialization of its Catholic past as a fundamental cornerstone of its modern existence.

Separating Church and State in Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-84
Author(s):  
Michael W. Homer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Marriage ◽  
Public Announcement ◽  
Pius Ix ◽  
Pope Pius Ix ◽  
Official Status ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

In 1852 King Victor Emmanuel’s ministers proposed legislation to recognize civil marriages in the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont). This proposal was opposed by Pope Pius IX and other Catholic apologists who argued that it would result in undermining the official status of the Catholic Church and one of the church’s sacraments. Even worse it would mean that Jewish and Protestant marriages would be recognized. This legislation coincided with Mormon missionaries proselytizing in Torino and the public announcement that the church practiced polygamy. Catholic opponents of this legislation argued that even Mormon polygamous marriages would be recognized if the legislation passed. During fierce debates that took place Catholic apologists also claimed that Mormons formed alliances with other Protestant “sects” to push through the civil marriage litigation. The specter of Mormon plural marriages in a civil marriage system continued to be mentioned until civil marriages were finally recognized in 1865.

The Biblical Question and the English Liberal Catholics

1969 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
James Tunstead Burtchaell
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Irish Immigrants ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Looking backward from the early nineteenth century, the Catholic Church in England had disappointingly little scholarly achievement of which to boast since the Reformation. Henry Holden, Charles Butler, John Lingard—all were men to be proud of, but Catholics of such intellectual bent were so few. And understandably so. The penal laws had effectively deprived the recusants of any access to higher education, and would perdure until the latter nineteenth century. Squires whose sons were barred for their faith from most schools and from the two universities had to be content to enroll them quietly at one or another of the exile schools across the channel. The Irish immigrants who later came to fill and overspill the churches in the nineteenth century had even less exposure to—and perhaps appetite for—scholarship. And the clergy who shepherded this extraordinary flock of secluded gentry and boisterous working folk pursued a highly sacramental and understandably unsophisticated pastorate. The Church naturally felt itself somewhat put upon, and fell into rather defensive postures. Scholarship would appear as a luxury at best, and at worst as a weapon that the Establishment seemed always more adept and smooth at handling.

scholarly journals Giambattista Della Porta and the Roman Inquisition: censorship and the definition of Nature's limits in sixteenth-century Italy

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEIL TARRANT
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractIt has long been noted that towards the end of the sixteenth century the Catholic Church began to use its instruments of censorship – the Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books – to prosecute magic with increased vigour. These developments are often deemed to have had important consequences for the development of modern science in Italy, for they delimited areas of legitimate investigation of the natural world. Previous accounts of the censorship of magic have tended to suggest that the Church as an institution was opposed to, and sought to eradicate, the practice of magic. I do not seek to contest the fact that ecclesiastical censors prosecuted various magical and divinatory practices with greater enthusiasm at this time, but I suggest that in order to understand this development more fully it is necessary to offer a more complex picture of the Church. In this article I use the case of the Neapolitan magus Giambattista Della Porta to argue that during the course of the century the acceptable boundaries of magical speculation became increasingly clearly defined. Consequently, many practices and techniques that had previously been of contested orthodoxy were categorically defined as heterodox and therefore liable to prosecution and censorship. I argue, however, that this development was not driven by the Church asserting a ‘traditional’ hostility towards magic, but was instead the result of one particular faction within the Church embedding their conception of orthodox philosophical investigation of the natural world within the machinery of censorship.

Communist Authorities and Missionary Activities in Poland, 1945-1990s

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-310
Author(s):  
Jaroslaw Rozanski
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Missionary Movement ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractMissionary activities were very strong in Poland before the Second World War. The establishment of a Communist regime after 1945 led to a break in the number of missionaries sent worldwide and, soon after, to a liquidation of all missionary institutions in the country. Because the Catholic Church was very strong, the state did not dare to launch an immediate and frontal attack on the church until 1947. From 1948 however, a full-blown campaign against the church began with nationalization, imprisonments and prohibitions, notably of mission activities. After 15 years, however, some forms of compromise between church and state began to appear. This allowed the Church to rebuild its missionary movement – as of 1965. The year 1980 saw the emergence of the Solidarity movement and the begining of the unmaking of Communism. It led to a revitalization of missionary activities and a normalization of church and state relations, particularly after 1989. The present article describes these developments, establishes a chronology and tries a first causal explanation of the decline and subsequent return of missions in Poland. It also looks at the inheritance of the Communist period for the Catholic Church in Poland.

scholarly journals La Iglesia Católica cubana y el Estado en 1959 según la circular Vida Nueva

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 27-37
Author(s):  
Emőke Horváth
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
Pastoral Letter ◽  
Cuban Government ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The paper analyzes the relationship between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church after the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The struggle of Fidel Castro and his fellow rebels against the Batista dictatorship was supported by a significant number of priests and catholic faithfuls. Three days after the victory of the Ejercito Rebelde, a pastoral letter with the title of Vida Nueva (New Life) was issued by Mons. Enrique Pérez Serantes, the primate of Cuba. This letter is a main source for the interpretation of the Church and State relations at the beginning of the political changes. The analysis of the letter helps to understand the attitude of the Catholic Church toward the new political system and it’s leader, Fidel Castro. After the victory of the revolution, despite the earlier promises, the new Cuban State vigorously opposed the Catholic Church. The new goverment began to weaken its institutional system, and aspired to the elimination of these institutions in some fields.

The Catholic Church in Poland

Worldview ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-26
Author(s):  
Marek Skwarnicki
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
List Type ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The Government ◽  
Private Owner ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The Church and State in Poland are now passing through a period of relaxation. There are innumerable small changes that testify to this, but the most important are these:1. Declarations by representatives of the Party and the Government have stressed equalirv of opportunity for each citizen regardless of his religion. The ultimate criteria in the evaluation of a worker are to be his work outlay, his capabilitv and his knowledge, and not his relationship to the Church.2. The properties of the Catholic Church in the western territories were nationalized in 1961, and since then the Church has been in the position of tenant in that area. Now these properties have been returned. Elsewhere in Poland the Church remains the private owner of sacred objects and of small agricultural plots.3. Talks between the episcopate and the Government, long suspended, have been resumed.4. There has been some liberalization in the policy of taxation of the Church.5. The policy of granting passports has been liberalized, and a greater number of permits are now being given to priests for trips to non-Communist countries either for scholarly purposes or in connection with agencies administered bv them.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TESTED FOR CONFESSIONALISM: THE VATICAN II DOCTRINAL PRINCIPLES

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-171
Author(s):  
Matteo Visioli
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractIn Catholic doctrine, church and state are two different and autonomous institutional subjects, but they are mutually linked. Therefore, a believer, as a citizen, is a subject simultaneously of two legal systems; the state is bound to recognize the confessional dimension of its own members, and the church is called to realize its proper ends within a precise political-social context. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) constitutes for the Catholic Church a point of change and renewal. It did not limit itself to affirming the coexistence of the two systems in their independence, but it declared the necessity of a mutual alliance for the good of citizens and believers.Therefore, the church offers its own contribution to the state, favoring in this way the right to religious liberty; and the state allows the church to establish itself and carry out its proper mission in an institutional form, guaranteeing the protection of the rights of citizens as believers for the free expression of their faith, whether in a private dimension or in an organized form. Vatican II abandons, therefore, the concept of “state religion” in the classic sense of the term, and thus the privilege reserved to one among numerous religious expressions, and opens an authentic collaboration between parties as a prerequisite for the good not only for individual believers and religious organizations, but also for society itself. In particular, religious liberty finds its foundation no longer in the concept of truth (that legitimized the exclusion of other confessions in that they were “not true”), but in the concept of the dignity of the person, which must be protected as such.

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