scholarly journals In persona Christi Capitis: Agency problems when God is the principal

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Jace ◽  
Ennio Emanuele Piano
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Agency Problems ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Credence Goods ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Optimal Response ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
The Individual

The "in persona Christi Capitis" doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church guarantees the validity of sacraments, irrespective of the morality of the individual priest. While this protects the value of the sacraments as credence goods, it seemingly encourages moral hazard on the part of the clergy. We argue that the adoption of this doctrine by the Roman Catholic Church, when combined with an increase in screening of candidates to the priesthood, may have been an optimal response to changing historical circumstances. The historical evidence supports the hypothesis that the development of the "in persona Christi Capitis" doctrine was accompanied by marginal increases in the screening of priestly candidates by the Roman CatholicChurch. Also consistent with our hypothesis, a crossection of contemporary Christian de-nominations shows a correlation between a group’s stance on sacramental theology and the strictness of its screening of candidates to religious ministry.

scholarly journals In Persona Christi Capitis: Agency Problems When God is the Principal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara E. Jace ◽  
Ennio E. Piano
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Optimal Response ◽  
Opportunistic Behaviour ◽  
Personal Morality ◽  
Contemporary Christian

The in persona Christi Capitis doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church guarantees the validity of its sacraments, irrespective of the personal morality of the priest who performs them. While this protects their value as metacredence goods, it seemingly opens the door to opportunistic behaviour by the clergy. To balance out its institutional incentives, the Roman Catholic Church must rigorously screen its candidates for the priesthood. Historical evidence supports our hypothesis that the development of the in persona Christi Capitis doctrine was accompanied by marginal increases in the screening of seminarians, which may have been an optimal response to changing historical circumstances. Also consistent with our hypothesis, a cross section of contemporary Christian denominations shows a correlation between a group’s stance on sacramental theology and the strictness of its screening of candidates to religious ministry.

The ideational clinch of the Roman Catholic Church and the EU

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-197
Author(s):  
Petr Kratochvíl ◽  
Tomáš Doležal
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Eu

The article explores the so far largely ignored question of the political relations between the European Union and the Roman Catholic Church. It analyzes the deeper mutual ideational influences of the two entities, asking whether there has been a convergence of views about several basic political notions between the Church and the EU. The analysis centres on the Church’s approach to four fundamental notions related to the EU – (1) secularism, (2) the individual(ism), (3) free market, and (4) the state, stressing in particular the discursive strategies the Church employs to defend its own position. The conclusion focuses on the relation between the RCC’s “theopolitical” imagination and the EU’s political form and argues that the surprisingly strong support of the Church for the integration process is not only a result of the aggiornamento, but a peculiar example of the Church’s ongoing Europeanization. Methodologically, the paper builds on a discourse analysis of almost 160 documents released by the three key Church bodies which often comment on the EU: the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, and the Curia.

Justification, religious

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diogenes Allen
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The State ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Individual

Justification is about the restoration of human beings after Adam’s Fall, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the beginning of a new life that anticipates the glory of heaven. According to the Roman Catholic Church, justification has two aspects: forgiveness of sin and the infusion of grace that makes Christians just (innocent). It is the beginning of a new life of grace, in which the gifts of faith, hope and charity enable one to perform meritorious works. However, the restoration is never complete in this life and concupiscence remains; a fall from the state of grace is thus possible, but this is reversible through penance. A central feature of the Protestant Reformation was a dispute with the Roman Catholic Church over how justification should be understood. According to Luther, one does not become renewed (innocent) in justification. Rather, one is forgiven because the righteousness or justice of Christ is imputed to those who have faith in God’s promise of redemption; however, one remains a sinner. More recent thought, however, has pointed to the fact that in both Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of justification, there is a sense of incompleteness, that it is just part of the process of redemption. There has also been interest in the idea of justification involving an indwelling of God rather than a gift from God to the individual; this has interesting affinities with Eastern Orthodox beliefs.

Martin Luther’s Sacramental Theology

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon A. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Measuring Stick

Martin Luther’s emphasis on the sacraments as a visible, tactile means by which the justifying action of God is conveyed to the believer brings the pastoral heart of the Reformation into clear focus. As Luther continued to explore how justification, the “first and chief article” (Smalcald Articles 2 in BC 301), was the measuring stick by which all theology is evaluated, he was forced to define and clarify his understanding of the sacraments as a “more than verbal” (Robert W. Jenson, Visible Words: The Interpretation and Practice of Christian Sacraments [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978], 5) word that proclaims the promises of God and makes those promises a reality. Using this and other, correlated criteria, Luther justifies the reduction in the number of sacraments found in the Roman Catholic Church of his time. The sacramental controversies that arose in the 1520s also force him to shape and clarify the interconnected nature of the sacramental elements, the word, and faith. By 1530, Luther’s sacramental theology had matured and could be defined by the “sacramental unity” between the word, faith, and earthly elements. This sacramental union also provided the foundational basis for his insistence on the efficacy of the sacraments, since this union was intimately connected to God’s promise of the gospel, proclaimed and enacted.

A Pneumatological Description of Sacrifice for Mitigating Idolatry

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-225
Author(s):  
David Farina Turnbloom
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Eucharistic Theology ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
The Way

The nature of eucharistic sacrifice has been an ongoing point of contention between the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Drawing from the pneumatology and sacramental theology of Thomas Aquinas, this article provides a way of describing eucharistic sacrifice that is intended to help avoid the idolatrous notions of sacrifice often found lurking in eucharistic theology. The article concludes by using the linguistic concepts of metaphor and synecdoche to describe the way that the language of “sacrifice” can be strategically used to mitigate the concerns that continue to arise in Lutheran/Catholic dialogues.

Eugenics and Roman Catholicism An Encyclical Letter in Context: Casti connubii, December 31, 1930

1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 527-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etienne Lepicard
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
First Time

The ArgumentLittle has been written about religion vis à vis eugenics and, even less on Roman Catholicism and eugenics. A 1930 papal encyclical, Casti connubii, is usually held by historians to have been the official condemnatory view of the Catholic Church on eugenics, and the document is further supposed to have induced the only organized opposition to eugenic legislative efforts in several countries (especially France). In fact, the encyclical was not directly about eugenics but a general statement of the Catholic doctrine on marriage.This article attempts to clarify the issue of a Catholic position on eugenics by re-examining the encyclical itself as well as its contemporaneous reception in Germany and France, where there was a strong Catholic presence. Casti connubii introduced a change in the prescribed hierarchy of the aims of marriage when, for the first time, relations between spouses took precedence over procreation. While condemning the means (abortion, sterilization, etc.), the encyclical did not condemn positive eugenics. In the broader context of the history of eugenics, the reception of the encyclical emphasizes the family as the third entity between the individual and society. Eugenics, as a “religious Utopia” of modernity, developed a hegemonic discourse over the family realm. As such it entered into competition with more traditional religious institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church.

Popes, Saints, Beato Bones and other Images at War

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-364
Author(s):  
Kristin Norget
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Peripheral Populations ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
Local Cultures

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.

DIALOG Z HUMANIZMEM RENESANSOWYM W DZIEŁACH PIOTRA SKARGI / PIOTR SKARGA’S DIALOGUE WITH RENAISSANCE HUMANISM

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka -Jeżowa
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Ignatian Spirituality ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

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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