Popes, Saints, Beato Bones and other Images at War

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-364
Author(s):  
Kristin Norget

This article explores new political practices of the Roman Catholic Church by means of a close critical examination of the beatification of the Martyrs of Cajonos, two indigenous men from the Mexican village of San Francisco Cajonos, Oaxaca, in 2002. The Church’s new strategy to promote an upsurge in canonizations and beatifications forms part of a “war of images,” in Serge Gruzinski’s terms, deployed to maintain apparently peripheral populations within the Church’s central paternalistic fold of social and moral authority and influence, while at the same time as it must be seen to remain open to local cultures and realities. In Oaxaca and elsewhere, this ecclesiastical technique of “emplacement” may be understood as an attempt to engage indigenous-popular religious sensibilities and devotion to sacred images while at the same time implicitly trying to contain them, weaving their distinct local historical threads seamlessly into the fabric of a global Catholic history.

2007 ◽  
pp. 70-76
Author(s):  
Maksym Tarasovych Kyiak

Many years of experience with market economies show that without the Church, as a social institution, it is quite problematic to create an environment for a fair economy. That is why a voice of such moral authority, which is capable of improving the moral climate of the modern economy, is extremely necessary in our time. In particular, Catholic social teaching has long paid attention to economic issues. The Roman Catholic Church has been, and remains, indifferent to the issues of international economy, private property, labor, humanization of the economy and a range of other problems. Poverty, hunger, unlimited desire for profit and benefits are a painful topic in papal speeches, encyclicals, and epistles. Along with changing social conditions, the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church itself evolved. This fact could not but affect the consideration of economic issues in Catholic social doctrine.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-595
Author(s):  
Rosario Forlenza

Until the 1980s the history of the Roman Catholic Church and Catholicism in modern Europe was mostly the preserve of the theologically and confessionally defined field of ‘church history’ or ‘ecclesiastic history’. Catholic historiography was sealed off from mainstream (North American and British) historiography, with nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholicism seemingly little more than a backward-looking footnote in the dominant narrative of secular modernity and progress. In a 1991 review article David Blackbourn pointed out that ‘historians in the mainstream have commonly considered Catholicism, if they considered it at all, as a hopelessly obscurantist force at odds with the more serious isms that have shaped the modern age’. Within the same review, however, Blackbourn signaled the emergence of timid but nevertheless clear ‘signs of a change’ in the historiographical direction and a new interest in Catholic history.


2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinga Sekerdej ◽  
Agnieszka Pasieka

Abstract The article discusses methodological problems of researching the dominant religion by native anthropologists in a majority Catholic society. By presenting both ethnographic examples and scholarly publications on religion we point at a Catholic hegemonic frame in Poland, within which religion is interpreted. Such an approach results in treating Catholicism as the taken for granted denomination, and the Roman Catholic Church as a bearer of moral authority. Engaging critically with the existing scholarship we argue that in Poland one can speak of methodological Catholicism, connected to certain implicit assumptions: treating Catholic faith as a desirable norm, describing religiosity at large with Catholic vocabulary and measuring religiosity through the prism of the Church dogmas as opposed to inquiring about the ways Catholicism is lived as a religion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Ahmad Yunani

The Hati Yesus yang Maha Kudus Church is the oldest Catholic church in Makassar. Built in 1898, the church later became the cathedral church in Makassar. In this paper, the author makes the church as the object of research using the method of archaeological descriptions. This study aims to find out how the application of building styles in gothic churches and its changes to date. Through the embodiment of the visual elements of the oldest Catholic church in Makassar, the gothic style and other artistic styles of the buildings the church shows an interesting and unique blend of architecture. The shape of windows, doors, and curved roofs is part of the Gothic style that was the influence of the Dutch colonial period. Although the style and forms of this church have a resemblance of form with the later Christian church, the Christian church of Immanuel Makassar, the Hati Yesus yang Maha Kudus Church has become part of the Roman Catholic church structure which has many historical values, both in Makassar's local history, as well as Indonesian national history. Keywords: Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Catholic, history, Architecture, Makassar. Gereja Hati Yesus yang Maha Kudus merupakan gereja Katolik tertua di Makassar. Dibangun pada tahun 1898, gereja ini kemudian men-jadi gereja Katedral di Makassar. Dalam tulisan ini, penulis menjadi¬kan gereja Hati Yesus yang Maha Kudus sebagai objek penelitian dengan menggunakan metode deskripsi arkeologis. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana penerapan gaya bangunan pada gereja gotik dan perubahannya hingga saat ini. Melalui perwujudan unsur-unsur visual pada gereja Katolik tertua di Makassar tersebut, gaya gotik dan gaya artistik lainnya dari bangunan memperlihatkan perpaduan arsitektur yang menarik dan unik. Bentuk jendela, pintu, dan atap melengkung adalah bagian dari corak gotik yang merupakan pengaruh dari masa kolonial Belanda. Meskipun gaya dan bentuk gereja ini memiliki kemiripan bentuk dengan gereja Kristen yang muncul kemudian, yaitu gereja Kristen Immanuel Makassar, Gereja Hati Yesus yang Maha Kudus, menjadi bagian dari struktur gereja Katolik Roma yang memiliki banyak nilai-nilai sejarah, baik sejarah lokal Makassar, bahkan sejarah nasional Indonesia umumnya. Kata Kunci: Gereja Hati Yesus yang Maha Kudus, Katolik, sejarah, Arsitektur, Makassar.


2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka -Jeżowa

Summary The article tries to outline the position of Piotr Skarga in the Jesuit debates about the legacy of humanist Renaissance. The author argues that Skarga was fully committed to the adaptation of humanist and even medieval ideas into the revitalized post-Tridentine Catholicism. Skarga’s aim was to reformulate the humanist worldview, its idea of man, system of values and political views so that they would fit the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. In effect, though, it meant supplanting the pluralist and open humanist culture by a construct as solidly Catholic as possible. He sifted through, verified, and re-interpreted the humanist material: as a result the humanist myth of the City of the Sun was eclipsed by reminders of the transience of all earthly goods and pursuits; elements of the Greek and Roman tradition were reconnected with the authoritative Biblical account of world history; and man was reinscribed into the theocentric perspective. Skarga brought back the dogmas of the original sin and sanctifying grace, reiterated the importance of asceticism and self-discipline, redefined the ideas of human dignity and freedom, and, in consequence, came up with a clear-cut, integrist view of the meaning and goal of the good life as well as the proper mission of the citizen and the nation. The polemical edge of Piotr Skarga’s cultural project was aimed both at Protestantism and the Erasmian tendency within the Catholic church. While strongly coloured by the Ignatian spirituality with its insistence on rigorous discipline, a sense of responsibility for the lives of other people and the culture of the community, and a commitment to the heroic ideal of a miles Christi, taking headon the challenges of the flesh, the world, Satan, and the enemies of the patria and the Church, it also went a long way to adapt the Jesuit model to Poland’s socio-cultural conditions and the mentality of its inhabitants.


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