Transhumanism, Posthumanism, and the Catholic Church

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-396
Author(s):  
Alcibiades Malapi‑Nelson

In this essay, I engage the foreseeable consequences for the future of humanity triggered by Emerging Technologies and their underpinning philosophy, transhumanism. The transhumanist stance is compared with the default view currently held in many academic institutions of higher education: posthumanism. It is maintained that the transhumanist view is less inimical to the fostering of human dignity than the posthuman one. After this is established, I suggest that the Catholic Church may find an ally in a transhumanist ethos in a two‑fold manner. On the one hand, by anchoring and promoting the defense of “the human” already present in transhumanism. On the other, rethinking the effectiveness of the delivery of sacraments in a humanity heavily altered by these technologies.

1972 ◽  
Vol 18 (69) ◽  
pp. 22-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Carpenter

During the latter part of the reign of James II, the Church of Ireland was in a position of considerable delicacy. On the one hand, there was a real fear that the church would face annihilation at the hands of the ruling administration; if the threats of the catholic population had come to fruition, if the statutes passed by the Jacobite parliament of 1689 had been put into effect or if the Tyrconnell administration had remained in power any longer than it did, this fear would almost certainly have been realized. On the other hand, by the spring of 1689, Anglican churchmen could see that a Williamite victory might spell for them—as it did for the Church of Scotland—summary disestablishment. Most Irish Anglicans had already fled to England, thereby lending support to the Williamites; the northern presbyterians had actually taken up arms on the Williamite side. Only the remnant of the Church of Ireland left in Dublin seemed to be disloyal to the protestant king: and this remnant, to save its skin, had to continue outwardly loyal to its de jure and de facto monarch, James II. Whatever the outcome of the war which they all foresaw, the leaders of the remnant of the Church of Ireland can have held little hope for the future. A Jacobite victory would almost certainly mean the triumph of the catholic church and the despoiling of the Church of Ireland: a Williamite victory might well mean the triumph of the presbyterians and a partial disestablishment. In either case the Church of Ireland, dependent for its very existence on a firm establishment, would founder.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Ayub Khan

This chapter discusses the emerging models of knowledge cities in many countries of the world and the potential challenges posed by them for the existing as well as the future academic institutions of higher education (universities) in those countries in particular and in the in world in general. Specifically, this chapter is dedicated to the study of various issues and themes that concern the evolving knowledge cities such as the long-term and short-term objectives behind the establishment of knowledge cities and their potential benefits (i.e., social, economic, financial, environmental, and knowledge) for their societies. The chapter concludes that the development of knowledge cities are beneficial for all stakeholders including the academic institutions of higher education that directly or indirectly associated with such programs.


Author(s):  
Jalal Nouri ◽  
Ken Larsson ◽  
Mohammed Saqr

<p class="0abstractCxSpLast">The bachelor thesis is commonly a necessary last step towards the first graduation in higher education and constitutes a central key to both further studies in higher education and employment that requires higher education degrees. Thus, completion of the thesis is a desirable outcome for individual students, academic institutions and society, and non-completion is a significant cost. Unfortunately, many academic institutions around the world experience that many thesis projects are not completed and that students struggle with the thesis process. This paper addresses this issue with the aim to, on the one hand, identify and explain why thesis projects are completed or not, and on the other hand, to predict non-completion and completion of thesis projects using machine learning algorithms. The sample for this study consisted of bachelor students’ thesis projects (n=2436) that have been started between 2010 and 2017. Data were extracted from two different data systems used to record data about thesis projects. From these systems, thesis project data were collected including variables related to both students and supervisors. Traditional statistical analysis (correlation tests, t-tests and factor analysis) was conducted in order to identify factors that influence non-completion and completion of thesis projects and several machine learning algorithms were applied in order to create a model that predicts completion and non-completion. When taking all the analysis mentioned above into account, it can be concluded with confidence that supervisors’ ability and experience play a significant role in determining the success of thesis projects, which, on the one hand, corroborates previous research. On the other hand, this study extends previous research by pointing out additional specific factors, such as the time supervisors take to complete thesis projects and the ratio of previously unfinished thesis projects. It can also be concluded that the academic title of the supervisor, which was one of the variables studied, did not constitute a factor for completing thesis projects. One of the more novel contributions of this study stems from the application of machine learning algorithms that were used in order to – reasonably accurately – predict thesis completion/non-completion. Such predictive models offer the opportunity to support a more optimal matching of students and supervisors.</p>


Worldview ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Denis Kenny

In 1834 the French priest Félicité de Larnmenais wrote Paroles dun Croyant, in which he asserted that it would not be a nation or a Icing or a church that would bear the future destiny of mankind but "the people." Lammenais and the L'Avenir group in Paris had appealed in 1831 to Pope Gregory XVI, advocating that the Catholic Church abandon its traditional alliance with the thrones of Europe to align itself with and become the champion of the freedom of the people; In the encyclical Mirari Vos Gregory XVI repudiated Lammenais's appeal and reaffirmed the mutually reinforcing relationship between the true religion and established political power as the one guarantee against "an ever-approaching resolution-abyss of bottomless miseries."


1977 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Levine ◽  
Alexander W. Wilde

The issue of politics and the Catholic Church in Latin America, relegated until recently to nineteenth-century historians, is very much alive today. On the one hand, the church as an institution is enmeshed in public controversy over human rights with repressive regimes from Paraguay to Panama, from Brazil to Chile. When it serves as a shelter for political and social dissent, it is accused by secular authorities of engaging in a “new clericalism.” On the other hand, it has been assailed by critics within for being wed to existing political powers. These radical clergy and lay people believe that the church's social presence is inevitably political, but want to change its alliances to benefit the poor and dispossessed. Furthermore, they believe that the existing order in given situations is aform of “institutionalized violence” against which the Christian response must be “counterviolence.” Such attacks from right and left occur, paradoxically, just at a time when the Latin American church has turned with unprecedented resolve to fundamental pastoral tasks. Politics has thus become a problem just as the hierarchy can claim, with considerable justification, to have eschewedthe practice of partisanship and the pursuit of power.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Evgenia Tokareva

In the extremely difficult international situation of the second half of the 1930s, relations between the USSR and the Vatican occupied a very insignificant place. This is partly why the sources that would cover this problem more prominently are very scarce. Under these conditions, the Soviet press becomes an important and still insufficiently appreciated source. With the general strict censorship of the press of this period, it allows us to identify various, but sometimes quite significant nuances of perception of the Vatican policy in the Soviet Union. The first event that influenced some reassessment of the image of the Vatican was the VII Congress of the Comintern, held in 1935, which put forward the tactics of a united front, which assumed, among other things, cooperation with confessional organizations of workers, and even with the petty-bourgeois strata of the population. In the light of this new tactic, a certain line is beginning to be drawn, albeit almost imperceptibly and even, perhaps, unwittingly, between the Vatican as a political force and the national structures of the Catholic Church. A more noticeable reassessment of the image of the Vatican took place in 1938, when the differences between Italian fascism, German Nazism, on the one hand, and the Vatican, on the other, on racial problems and on the issue of the persecution of the Catholic Church became obvious and could not fail to attract the attention of Soviet diplomats and, following them, the Soviet press. The subsequent election of Pope Pius XII to the papal throne in 1939 allows us to strengthen this line and enrich it with attention to the Vatican&apos;s peacemaking policy. But the conclusion of the Molotov — Ribbentrop pact once again returns the image of the Vatican to its supposedly political conjuncture, but this time in the interests of the other side, which has now become the main opponent of the USSR, i. e. England and France. And only the German attack on the USSR allows for a brief moment to see the possibility of forming a different image of the Vatican, an opponent of racism and fascism in all its manifestations. A careful reading of the press allows us to draw a preliminary conclusion about the absence of a clearly developed and formulated position of the governing bodies of the Soviet Union in relation to the Vatican, which varied, albeit slightly, depending on changes in the foreign policy interests of the Soviet state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Paula Montero

Abstract Using Davis Buckley’s (2013) notion of “Benevolent Secularism” this article examines how the evangelical movement in Brazil, in particular, the neopentecostal movement, challenges the historical stability of relations between state and religion. Until very recently this relationship was based on cooperation between the Catholic Church and the State in the one hand and an inter-religious coalition led by Catholicism in the other. In this text, I will first discuss the concept of “benevolent secularism” and its theoretical-methodological implications. Then, I will present empiric examples to describe how Christian religions relate to politics in Brazil. Those examples will test the applicability of Buckley’s concept to represent Brazilian secularism. And, they will also demonstrate the heuristic virtues of this concept for the understanding of the impact of the evangelical modus operandi in the configuration of the secular in Brazilian society.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Halemba

Based on an analysis of existing literature on Marian apparitions and field research-based case study from contemporary Transcarpathian Ukraine, this article asserts that an interpretation of Marian apparitional movements as a form of acquiescence to the authoritarian and conservative vision of the Catholic Church is too simplistic. The Virgin Mary appears in moments of crisis that are often caused or exacerbated by conflicts, especially ecclesiastical ones and it is also true that the sites of apparitions often do give a voice to those critical of modern changes. However, they are not always instrumentalized in support of conservative ideas. To the contrary, Marian apparitions are often sites of religious experimentation and innovation. On the one hand the Church can be extremely skeptical of or even hostile to apparitional events, still on the other hand the Church makes use of them as places of religious modernization with an aim to revitalize religious adherence.


Author(s):  
Margit Kern

ABSTRACTUp until now, researchers have strictly made connections between the program of images on the 1573 balcony of the Wittenberg town hall and the office of those who wield authority. And in fact this interpretation is documented by the German inscriptions on the front of the structure. However, another dimension of the program has not been taken into account: The Latin distichs pertaining to the figures of the virtues relate not to the city councilors and political transactions; rather, they characterize the role of virtue and good works in the life of the Protestant Christian in general. It is particularly emphasized that Christ and not good works effect redemption. In contrast to the goal of the German inscriptions, the Latin distichs provide no guide to carrying on daily business. Instead, they paraphrase the Lutheran doctrine of justification. With this pointed reference to Lutheran theology, the commissioners of the program distanced themselves, on the one hand, from the Catholic church; on the other, they rejected contested theological positions within Protestantism, such as the theses of Johann Georg Major. The coat of arms of the territorial ruler and the personifications, Peace and Religion, give evidence that the Wittenberg city council wished to display prominently its agreement with the strict Lutheran position of the prince, Albertine Elector August.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Łukasz Burkiewicz

This article takes a close look at excerpts from an account of a journey to the Holy Land made in 720s by the English monk Willibald (700–787/789), later bishop of the Bavarian city of Eichstätt, an associate of the Archbishop of Ger­mania, St. Boniface and a saint of the Catholic Church. Willibald dictated the account of his peregrination many years after his pilgrimage to a related nun, Hygeburge of Heidenheim, who then wrote down his biography and descrip­tions of his travels in a work entitled Hodoeporicon Sancti Willibaldi. Frag­ments of the above‑mentioned travel account concerning the specific political, social, and cultural situation in Cyprus that took place between the 7th and 9th centuries are the subject of the detailed analysis contained in this paper. Willibald arrived on the island during this period: specifically in the year 724. Cyprus at that time acted as an Arab‑Byzantine quasi‑condominium, being the object of efforts of these two powers, on the one hand officially trying to preserve its neutral character, while on the other working to diminish the influence of their competitor there. This peculiar situation had its effect on the relationship between Muslims (Arabs) and Christians (Cypriots and Byzan­tines) living on the island.


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