Parsons, Priests, and the People: The Rise of Irish Anti-Clericalism 1785–1789

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
The People ◽  
Self Interest

During the eighteenth century the major problem confronting the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was that of survival. Throughout most of the century the Irish Catholic clergy had to live and work under a code of laws designed to destroy the ecclesiastical organization of their church and, thereby, to end Catholic religious observances in Ireland. In their effects, however, the Popery laws failed their purpose. Ireland was not transformed into a state, “Protestant and past all danger of relapsing again into Popery.” In all of their respective parts, the laws against priests were impossible to enforce, perhaps never even meant to be enforced. Although the laws were sufficiently enforced to affect profoundly Catholic religious institutions and religious practices, Ireland's Catholic environment was never destroyed and never replaced by a Protestant one. The Irish language, divisions among Protestants, self-interest, jobbery, politics, missed opportunities, and stupidity combined to prevent rigorous enforcement of the laws and to frustrate the missionary and educational schemes planned by the leaders of the Established Church.

The Aggiornamento Phenomenon and the Second Vatican Council

2020 ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Hiermonk Ioann ( Bulyko) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
The People ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Pope John Xxiii ◽  
The Church

The Second Vatican Council was a unique event in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, it was intended to make the Roman Catholic Church more open to the contemporary society and bring it closer to the people. The principal aim of the council was the so called aggiornamento (updating). The phenomenon of updating the ecclesiastical life consisted in the following: on the one hand, modernization of the life of the Church and closer relations with the secular world; on the other hand, preserving all the traditions upon which the ecclesiastical life was founded. Hence in the Council’s documents we find another, French word ressourcement meaning ‘return to the origins’ based on the Holy Scripture and the works of the Church Fathers. The aggiornamento phenomenon emerged during the Second Vatican Council due to the movement within the Catholic Church called nouvelle theologie (French for “new theology”). Its representatives advanced the ideas that became fundamental in the Council’s decisions. The nouvelle theologie was often associated with modernism as some of the ideas of its representatives seemed to be very similar to those of modernism. However, what made the greatest difference between the two movements was their attitude towards the tradition. For the nouvelle theologie it was very important to revive Christianity in its initial version, hence their striving for returning to the sources, for the oecumenical movement, for better relations with non-Catholics and for liturgical renewal. All these ideas can be traced in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and all this is characterized by the word aggiornamento.

Martin Luther’s Perspective on Political Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Keen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
The People ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Civil Government

Luther’s position on the duties of rulers to preserve social order and on the obligation of subjects to obey them for the sake of civil tranquility is scripturally grounded, principally in Romans 13:1–7, and presupposes an anthropology in which humans are so sinful as to need worldly government. The foundations of Luther’s thought about politics can be located in two sources: his doctrine of the Two Kingdoms and his understanding of the Pauline precept in Romans 13 to obey worldly authorities. Woven into each of these positions is a theological anthropology that holds that fallen humanity is too sinful to survive without divine aid. In the political realm, this aid takes the form of civil government; as a correlate, the authority of the church for Luther is limited to spiritual matters only and has no influence in the governance of the people. Luther’s defense of the social order and civil government set him in sharp opposition to the leaders of the Peasants’ War and led him to support the Protestant princes in their opposition to the Holy Roman Empire (founded on the spurious authority of the Roman Catholic Church in political affairs) after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg. In his defense of obedience to worldly powers and his grounds for justified resistance to impious rule, Luther left a seemingly ambiguous legacy that manifested itself after his death in a division over advocates of obedience to a conciliatory ruler (who wished to reintroduce elements of Roman worship) and purists who insisted that such obedience was a violation of Luther’s intention.

The Never-Ending Story? Or, Does the Roman Catholic Church Remain Vulnerable to Charges of Improper Handling of Clergy Child Sex Abuse?

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick S Nash
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Sex Abuse ◽  
Organizational Settings ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Child Sex Abuse

Abstract This article explores whether the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the clergy child sex abuse scandal shields it from further charges of improper handling of cases. It begins by noting the current topicality of institutionalized abuse and how several high-profile public inquiries have recently been established to investigate child sex abuse across a range of secular and religious organizational settings. Although numerous religious institutions have become embroiled in clergy child abuse crises, the Catholic Church has come in for particular scrutiny and condemnation on account of its distinctive institutional characteristics which have exacerbated its own abuse scandal in a uniquely severe way. The Church’s own understanding of this issue is that a culture of antinomianism has taken root within the clerical hierarchy and that, were canon law to be applied properly, the crisis would be resolved. This contrasts quite dramatically with the typical external understanding of the crisis which sees the canonical legal system as part of the problem, namely the Church’s refusal to cooperate fully with the secular criminal justice system and effective assumption of a criminal jurisdiction of its own. The article concludes with a final prognosis of the prospects of fundamental legal and cultural change.

scholarly journals Roman Catholic Ecclesiology from the Council of Trent to Vatican II and Beyond

2018 ◽  
pp. 262-292
Author(s):  
Ormond Rush
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
People Of God ◽  
The People ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Church

For 400 years after the Council of Trent, a juridical model of the church dominated Roman Catholicism. Shifts towards a broader ecclesiology began to emerge in the nineteenth century. Despite the attempts to repress any deviations from the official theology after the crisis of Roman Catholic Modernism in the early twentieth century, various renewal movements, known as ressourcement, in the decades between the world wars brought forth a period of rich ecclesiological research, with emphasis given to notions such as the Mystical Body, the People of God, the church as mystery, as sacrament, and as communio. The Second Vatican Council incorporated many of these developments into its vision for renewal and reform of the Roman Catholic Church. Over half a century after Vatican II, a new phase in its reception is emerging with the pontificate of Pope Francis.

Anna and Tranquillo

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Stow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
English Language ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Language Translation ◽  
Jewish Woman ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Historical Significance

This text presents an historical interpretation of the diary of an eighteenth-century Jewish woman who resisted the efforts of the papal authorities to force her religious conversion. After being seized by the papal police in Rome in May 1749, Anna del Monte, a Jew, kept a diary detailing her captors' efforts over the next thirteen days to force her conversion to Catholicism. Anna's powerful chronicle of her ordeal at the hands of authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, originally circulated by her brother Tranquillo in 1793, receives its first English-language translation along with an insightful interpretation in this book of the incident's legal and historical significance. The book's analysis of Anna's dramatic story of prejudice, injustice, resistance, and survival during her two-week imprisonment in the Roman House of Converts—and her brother's later efforts to protest state-sanctioned, religion-based abuses—provides a detailed view of the separate forces on either side of the struggle between religious and civil law in the years just prior to the massive political and social upheavals in America and Europe.

scholarly journals Bad Apples, Bad Barrel: Exploring Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy in Australia

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodi Death
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Institutional Abuse ◽  
Cover Up

This paper considers constructions of institutional culture and power in the cover-up of child sexual abuse (CSA) by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church of Australia. The issue of cover-up has previously been considered in international inquiries as an institutional failing that has caused significant harm to victims of CSA by Catholic Clergy. Evidence given by select representatives of the Catholic Church in two government inquiries into institutional abuse carried out in Australia is considered here. This evidence suggests that, where cover-up has occurred, it has been reliant on the abuse of institutional power and resulted in direct emotional, psychological and spiritual harm to victims of abuse. Despite international recognition of cover-up as institutional abuse, evidence presented by Roman Catholic Representatives to the Victorian Inquiry denied there was an institutionalised cover-up. Responding to this evidence, this paper queries whether the primary foundation of cover-up conforms to the ‘bad apple theory’ in that it relates only to a few individuals, or the ‘bad barrel theory’ of institutional structure and culture.

scholarly journals Church Growth in Times of Secularization: A Case Study of People Joining Evangelical Congregations in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Vermeer ◽  
Peer Scheepers
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Church Growth ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The People ◽  
The One

AbstractBackground: Today the Dutch religious landscape is characterized by two opposite trends. On the one hand, there is a massive and dominant trend of religious disaffiliation which mostly affects the Roman Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant churches, while on the other hand the Netherlands also witnesses the emergence of several independent, evangelical congregations of near megachurch size. Purpose: Against the background of these opposite trends, this paper focuses on the second trend and tries to explain why some people join an evangelical congregation. Methods: For this purpose, quantitative data gathered among the audiences of six thriving evangelical congregations are analyzed in view of the following research questions: (1) What was the previous religious affiliation of the people who switched or converted to one of the six participating evangelical congregations? and (2) Which factors induced the switch or conversion to these congregations? Results: Results of bivariate and multivariate analyses show that these congregations attract both mainline and orthodox Protestant switchers as well as a significant number of secular converts, whose decision to join these evangelical congregations is induced by early socialization experiences, their intrinsic religious orientation and the switching of their partner. Closer scrutiny into the background of the apparent secular converts reveals, however, that several of these converts are probably re-affiliates. Although these secular converts indicated to be a religious none in their early teens, their conversion to evangelicalism is in part still induced by certain, early religious socialization experiences. Conclusions and Implications: This insight puts the alleged success of these evangelical congregations in more perspective. It shows that their success is more a matter of circulating, religious believers and not so much a matter of successfully reaching out to the unchurched. In all likelihood, then, thriving evangelical congregations will remain an exception in secular societies like the Netherlands and evangelical church growth in no way marks a break with the ongoing trend of religious disaffiliation.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-236
Author(s):  
Kathryn Dickason
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
The People

During a 2007 conference on the liturgy and the sacraments, Francis Arinze, a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was asked about the role of dance in the Mass. Cardinal Arinze answered that “dance should not enter the liturgy at all.” And, he continued, “the people discussing liturgical dance should spend that time saying the rosary. . . . We have already enough problems. Why banalize more? Why desacralize more?”...

scholarly journals Rights of the roman catholic religious minority in the Principality of Serbia

2013 ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
Velibor Dzomic
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Religious Minority ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Roman Catholics

Due to the sparse Roman Catholic population in the Principality of Serbia, Roman Catholics fell under the category of a religious minority. Through different constitutional and other legal provisions Serbian state authorities guaranteed Roman Catholics freedom of religion and also granted the legal status to the Roman Catholic Church in Serbia. Austria and Russia had a substantial influence on the resolution to this issue, and these relations became even more dynamic after the Congress of Berlin. Decades-long process of regulating the exercise of religious freedom for Roman Catholics was overburdened with specific social and political circumstances and the overt inclination of Roman Catholic clergy to proselytism, which was not the case with other religious minorities in Serbia. Although several legal regulations concerning this issue were enacted in the Principality of Serbia, it was only with the Concordat between the Kingdom of Serbia and the Holy See (1914) that the issue was resolved amicably for both agreement parties.

The lodger population in the traditional world of the mid-eighteenth-century Carpathian Basin

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAMÁS FARAGÓ
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Carpathian Basin ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Comparative Analyses ◽  
Household Characteristics ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Life Career ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis article examines households containing lodgers in the Carpathian Basin during the eighteenth century, using the status animarum, lists of inhabitants made by the Roman Catholic Church. The author argues that lodgers had special demographic and household characteristics. Evidence is provided to show that the majority of lodger households consisted of both families fragmented by family catastrophe and young couples at the beginning of their life-career. It is further argued that it would be worthwhile to extend the work on lodgers with comparative analyses, particularly because such work would shed light on this stratum of society, which is so often missing from micro-level demographic histories.

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