Afire with the Itinerant Spirit

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-241
Author(s):  
Donna Maria Moses
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Faith Formation ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
The People ◽  
Dominican Sisters ◽  
Mutual Conversion

Before the Maryknoll Sisters were affiliated to the Dominican Order in 1920 for the express purpose of planting the faith in Asia, Dominican Sisters from the United States had already begun to answer that call. After the collapse of colonial empires at the start of the twentieth century, Dominican Sisters were missioned to Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba to rebuild the Catholic church under duress in the wake of global shakeup. As women of the Dominican Order brought education, health care, social services, and faith formation to places in need around the globe, they were radically transformed by ongoing mutual conversion among the people they were sent to evangelize. The paradigm shifts that occurred in the foreign missions of the Order are described in this chapter.

Church and State

1950 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-340
Author(s):  
Hans Rommen
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
State Problem ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Church

The problem of Church-State relations—if under Church is understood the Church universal in its Catholic form—may be answered without too much difficulty on a high abstract level. But on the contingent level of concrete historical development the problem becomes not only highly involved, but almost inexhaustible. For every growth in the Church's doctrine, (for example, the decrees of the Vatican Council and every deeper-going change in the other partner's constitutional forms or in its philosophical and ethical justification or a change in its aims to greater comprehensive competencies) poses a new problem. No wonder, therefore, that in our era of restlessness, of dynamic social changes, of conflicting ideologies fighting for the baffled minds of the masses, of wavering traditions decomposed by the acid of nihilist skepticism, the Church-State problem arises in a new intensity and urgency. The external signs are there for everyone to see: the fury of a Hitler against the “Black International,” the violent persecution of the Church in die satellite countries of the Russian orbit, and the complete subjugation of the Orthodox Church not to a “Christian” Czar but to die confessedly adieistic Politburo. In minor degree the problem is also bothering the people of the United States. A secularist outlook, indeed, may slur over the reality and intensity of the true problem. For the secularized outlook die Church in her essence—and even more so the churches and the sects—is not different in genere from odier numerous private organizations for die furtherance of more or less rational aims and longings in a constitutionally pluralist society. The secularist will, therefore, recognize only one pragmatic rule: tolerance unless the public order and the competency of the police power is directly concerned. Public order includes all too often for the secularist his reform ideas and his social ideals based on a relativist pragmatism in ethics and thus makes him highly sensitive to die criticism by a Church which bases ethics on revelation and on competencies which die secularist can only consider as unfounded and arrogant. Only if the Church remains in the private sphere of private individuals and stays in this “free” sphere where the secularist will tolerate any mass-idiosyncracies, only dius will he condescendingly tolerate the Church. His attitude may be explained to a degree by the fact of an exceedingly strong religious individualism and a subjective and emotional spiritualism, inimical to form and tradition (indigenous to this country and resulting in the easy dissolution of doctrinal unity into a multiplicity of sects). This spiritualist “formlessness” of religion, here, makes the emphasis on organically grown and established forms and on the objective institutions of religious life, so characteristic of the Catholic Church, a somewhat strange and suspicious thing. Yet there is no avoiding the nature and self-understanding of the Church, if the problem of Church and State should be approached. Otherwise the term “Church” would stand only for utterly private opinions by very private individuals in that sphere of irrational feeling and unscientific imagination which for the secularist agnostic is religion. And it is clear that upon such suppositions it would follow that the political authority has exclusive and plenary competency to judge about the compatibility of such a religion with the policy and the public order of the state. The consequence of such thinking is the abolition of the Church-State problem by the complete elimination of the Church.

The Archives of the Consolata Mission and the Formation of the Italian Empire, 1913-1943

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Alberto Sbacchi
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Southwestern Ethiopia ◽  
The People ◽  
Original Plan ◽  
The Right

The Institute of the Consolata for Foreign Missions was founded in Turin, Italy in 1901 by the General Superior, Giuseppe Allamano (1851-1926). The primary purpose of the mission is to evangelize and educate non-Christian peoples. Allamano believed in the benefit of religion and education when he stated that the people “will love religion because of the promise of a better life after death, but education will make them happy because it will provide a better life while on earth.” The Consolata distinguishes itself for stressing the moral and secular education and its enthusiasm for missionary work. To encourage young people to become missionaries, Allamano convinced Pius X to institute a world-wide mission day in 1912. Allamano's original plan was for his mission to work among the “Galla” (Oromo) people of Ethiopia and continue the mission which Cardinal Massaia had begun in 1846 in southwestern Ethiopia. While waiting for the right moment, the Consolata missionaries ministered among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. In 1913 the Propaganda Fides authorized the Consolata Mission to begin work in Kaffa, Ethiopia. In 1919 it entered Tanzania and, accepting a government invitation in 1924, the Consolata installed itself in Italian Somalia and in 1925 in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Before the World War I the mission also expanded in Brazil, in 1937, and after 1937 its missionaries went to Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Canada, the United States, Zaire, Uganda, South Africa, and South Korea.

A Joyful Spectrum of Service

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-42
Author(s):  
James T. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Services ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Care Education ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Order Of Preachers ◽  
Lay Members ◽  
Parish Work

In 1853 a small group of nuns arrived on the waterfront of New York City commencing the service of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) to New York City and its environs. In time the Dominicans served in health care, education, parish work, and a myriad of social services. The evolution of the Order of Preachers in New York eventually included friars, nuns, sisters, and lay members—a singular distinction. The Dominican roots in New York spread to other parts of the United States and to various foreign missions.

Health Policy under Austerity Capitalism: The Impact of the “Tax Revolt”

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Bodenheimer
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Proposition 13 ◽  
The People ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Austerity Policy

The United States has moved from the postwar period of prosperity capitalism to the current era of austerity capitalism. Two pillars of austerity policy are cutbacks in social services, including health care, and a further shift in the tax burden from corporations onto individuals. The corporate-controlled media attempt to justify these austerity measures by insisting that the government cutbacks and corporate tax reductions represent the will of the people, as expressed by the “tax revolt” of Proposition 13 in California and Proposition 2½ in Massachusetts. This paper argues that the tax revolt is actually a protest against the massive shift in taxes away from corporations and onto individual taxpayers. In addition, the tax revolt is not a rejection of government services, as the media and politicians have maintained. In fact, the majority of Americans want more rather than less public services and want more rather than less taxes on large corporations.

Treatment of Addicted Parents and their Children: The Odyssey House Parents’ Programme

1981 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-22
Author(s):  
Judith Tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Treatment Services ◽  
Probation And Parole ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Drug Free ◽  
Health Programmes

The James McGrath Foundation’s Odyssey House is a drug-free, residential therapeutic community for the treatment of drug addiction. The programme was initiated by Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, a psychiatrist and lawyer, in the United States of America fifteen years ago, and has been operative in Australia in New South Wales since October, 1977 and in Victoria since July, 1980. The Victorian residential facility is located at Lower Plenty in a spacious building originally constructed by the Roman Catholic Church, situated on nine hectares of land and now “home” for one hundred and thirty former drug addicts. There are three specific programmes incorporated within the overall Odyssey programme offering treatment services to adults, adolescents thirteen to seventeen years old and parents and their dependent children. Referrals to these programmes are in general from medical and mental health programmes, social services agencies, schools, jails, courts and probation and parole departments. In addition, fifty-two percent of residents are self-referred or referred by family or friends.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM VERSUS SEXUAL EXPRESSION: A GUIDE

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen M. Alvaré
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sexual Expression ◽  
Close Link ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
Free Exercise Of Religion ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractClaimed rights to sexual expression unlinked to the creation of children are among the strongest challenges facing the free exercise of religion in the United States today. Such rights gained importance by means of a series of Supreme Court opinions associating consensual sexual expression unlinked to children with human dignity and even personal identity. These were accompanied by legal and cultural movements, led by more privileged Americans, diminishing children's rights in favor of adults', in the context of sex, marriage, and parenting. Laws and regulations protecting and promoting sexual expression detached from children are powerfully affecting religious institutions that operate health care, educational, and social services available to all Americans; the Catholic Church is a particularly prominent supplier of all of these services. Respecting the Catholic Church, it is possible but quite difficult to maintain respect for its free exercise of religion in the current environment, potentially by highlighting its measurable contributions to the common good. It might also be useful to show the close link between Catholic teachings on sex and marriage and the entire Catholic cosmology, such that coercing Catholics to behave otherwise is tantamount to coercing them to practice a different faith.

Being Catholic and Being American

Horizons ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Charles E. Curran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
American Catholic Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
The Catholic Church

The story of Catholicism in the United States can best be understood in light of the struggle to be both Catholic and American. This question of being both Catholic and American is currently raised with great urgency in these days because of recent tensions between the Vatican and the Catholic Church in the United States.History shows that Rome has always been suspicious and fearful that the American Catholic Church would become too American and in the process lose what is essential to its Roman Catholicism. Jay Dolan points out two historical periods in which attempts were made to incorporate more American approaches and understandings into the life of the church, but these attempts were ultimately unsuccessful.In the late eighteenth century, the young Catholic Church in the United States attempted to appropriate many American ideas into its life. Recall that at this time the Catholic Church was a very small minority church. Dolan refers to this movement as a Republican Catholicism and links this understanding with the leading figure in the early American church, John Carroll. Carroll, before he was elected by the clergy as the first bishop in the United States in 1789, had asked Rome to grant to the church in the United States that ecclesiastical liberty which the temper of the age and of the people requires.

Civil Religion in America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Haberski, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common People ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
The People ◽  
French Nation

Civil religion in America has no church, denominations, or institutional center, and it cannot be traced to a single origin story. And yet, it operates as a religion in ways familiar to Americans—it has priests and pastors, altars and sacrifices, symbols, institutions, and liturgies. So, what, then, is civil religion? The term originates with the 18th-century French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who proposed that the French nation needed a civil religion to replace the “unholy” alliance between the Catholic Church and the monarchy. Rousseau explained in book 4 of his Social Contract that he hoped a “purely civil profession of faith” would satisfy what he viewed as the popular need for something to believe in, to give one’s allegiance to, and even to give up one life’s for—a transcendent, unifying point of reference that existed beyond politics and in place of a denominational (most likely Christian) church. Thus, in philosophical terms, civil religion is the appropriation of religion for political ends. The American version of civil religion, though, differs from Rousseau’s idea by incorporating the nation’s Christian heritage more deeply into an understanding and judgment of America. In the American context, civil religion had to accommodate the country’s variety of faiths and Enlightenment rationalism, but was just as deeply influenced by the power of popular and elite religiosity to order American life. Thus, American civil religion has echoed Protestant values and assumptions, while enshrining the mythic nature of the Puritans, founding fathers, and common people who gave their lives in wars and conquest. Moreover, while Americans do not pray to their nation, they have no trouble praying for their nation; they see presidents and preachers as both serving in capacities that minister to the people in times of crisis, and they invest sacred meaning in events and documents to help them imagine that America is as much an idea as it is a place. Over time, American civil religion has also provided a narrative for a set of ideals, statements of purpose, and symbols to which all Americans, in theory, can appeal. Sociologist Robert N. Bellah (1927–2013) explained in a famous and significant essay titled “Civil Religion in America,” for the winter 1967 issue of the journal Daedelus, “American civil religion is not the worship of the American nation but an understanding of the American experience in the light of ultimate and universal reality.” He contended that Americans could call upon not only a common creed of ideals but also their civil religion to evaluate their nation’s actions. In parlance that became popular following World War II, the United States was a nation “under God,” meaning, as Bellah argued, “the will of the people is not itself the criterion of right and wrong. There is a higher criterion in terms of which this will can be judged; it is possible that the people may be wrong.”

Maryknoll China Symposium: Celebrating the Pastoral Renewal and Development of the Catholic Church in China

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-133
Author(s):  
Janet Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Graduate Studies ◽  
The People ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

An account of an academic symposium held at Maryknoll, NY, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the China Educators and Formators Project, sponsored by Maryknoll Society. This project brings to the United States young leaders of the Catholic Church in China, chiefly women religious and priests, for graduate studies in US colleges and universities. Selected by their local bishops and superiors, they are to equip themselves with requisite skills and capacities that, upon their return to China, resource the life of dioceses, parishes, communities, and ecclesial programs for the flourishing of the faith of the people and upbuilding of the church.

Religion and Mythology in the Chilembwe Rising of 1915 in Nyasaland and the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland: Preparing for the End Times?

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
T. Jack Thompson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The People ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Interesting Difference ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Book Of Daniel ◽  
End Times

Superficially there are many parallels between the Chilembwe Rising of 1915 in Nyasaland and the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland – both were anti-colonial rebellions against British rule. One interesting difference, however, occurs in the way academics have treated John Chilembwe, leader of the Nyasaland Rising, and Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Irish Rising and the man who was proclaimed head of state of the Provisional government of Ireland. For while much research on Pearse has dealt with his religious ideas, comparatively little on Chilembwe has looked in detail at his religious motivation – even though he was the leader of an independent church. This paper begins by looking at some of the major strands in the religious thinking of Pearse, before going on to concentrate on the people and ideas which influenced Chilembwe both in Nyasaland and the United States. It argues that while many of these ideas were initially influenced by radical evangelical thought in the area of racial injustice, Chilembwe's thinking in the months immediately preceding his rebellion became increasingly obsessed by the possibility that the End Time prophecies of the Book of Daniel might apply to the current political position in Nyasaland. The conclusion is that much more academic attention needs to be given to the millennial aspects of Chilembwe's thinking as a contributory motivation for rebellion.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document