The Extremities of Defending Liberty

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-135
Author(s):  
D. G. Hart

This chapter talks about Barry Goldwater, who regarded William E. Miller's church membership as an asset rather than a liability when he chose him as his running mate in the 1964 presidential election. It describes Miller as the grandson of German American immigrants and reared in the Roman Catholic Church. It also covers Conscience of a Conservative as the ghostwritten product of L. Brent Bozell, which identified Goldwater with the conservative movement and challenged the GOP's East Coast establishment. The chapter notes how Bozell grew up in Nebraska as nominal Protestant then converted to Roman Catholicism before enrolling at Yale University. It discusses how local circumstances, such as national origin and personal convictions, did more to color perceptions of politics than the church's social teaching.

Exchange ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge E. Castillo Guerra

This article searches for contributions provided by the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church to avoid suffering and death under migrants, that, following Pope Francis, are provoked from a ‘culture of rejection’. From an interdisciplinary approach this article facilitates the assessment of mechanisms that generate these situations. It also focuses on the ethical and theological criteria of the Catholic social teaching to achieve a culture of encounter and acceptance of migrants and refugees.


Author(s):  
Ana Carneiro ◽  
Ana Simoes ◽  
Maria Paula Diogo ◽  
Teresa Salomé Mota

This paper addresses the relationship between geology and religion in Portugal by focusing on three case studies of naturalists who produced original research and lived in different historical periods, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Whereas in non-peripheral European countries religious themes and even controversies between science and religion were dealt with by scientists and discussed in scientific communities, in Portugal the absence of a debate between science and religion within scientific and intellectual circles is particularly striking. From the historiographic point of view, in a country such as Portugal, where Roman Catholicism is part of the religious and cultural tradition, the influence of religion in all aspects of life has been either taken for granted by those less familiar with the national context or dismissed by local intellectuals, who do not see it as relevant to science. The situation is more complex than these dichotomies, rendering the study of this question particularly appealing from the historiographic point of view, geology being by its very nature a well-suited point from which to approach the theme. We argue that there is a long tradition of independence between science and religion, agnosticism and even atheism among local elites. Especially from the eighteenth century onwards, they are usually portrayed as enlightened minds who struggled against religious and political obscurantism. Religion—or, to be more precise, the Roman Catholic Church and its institutions—was usually identified with backwardness, whereas science was seen as the path to progress; consequently men of science usually dissociated their scientific production from religious belief.


1934 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Braden

With no other country save possibly Italy has the Roman Catholic Church been more closely linked than with Spain. To think Spain was to think Roman Catholicism. Ferdinand and Isabella whom the world remembers best in relation to the discovery of the western world were known as the Catholic kings and their oft expressed motive in the conquest of the new continent was that of extending the holy faith. Mohammedanism with its resistless armies had made heavy inroads upon the Christian world; Luther and his fellow reformers in Germany, France, and Switzerland had wrought still further havoc, separating vast numbers of the faithful from their allegiance to Rome. To Spain and the Spanish monarchs was to belong the glory of restoring, by their zealous conversion of the western peoples, the power and prestige of Rome. In a few short years Spanish conquerors followed by Spanish priests and nuns had planted the cross from Mexico to the southern end of South America.


Author(s):  
Patrick Flanagan

Benedict XVI, the present pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, published Caritas in Veritate in June 2009. This third papal encyclical of his is distinguished from his others that dealt with the area of theology commonly known as “constructive” or “systematic.” In this most recent publication, Benedict XVI moves his writing into a rich historical arena known as Roman Catholic social teaching. Building upon a solid tradition of popes tackling political, social, and economic issues, Benedict XVI tackles acute contemporary concerns. The key areas Benedict XVI addresses in this encyclical are globalization, the economy, technology, and the environment. Germane to this text, this chapter will seek to explain how globalization is described and critiqued by Benedict XVI in this pivotal letter of his pontificate. While globalization will be the primary focus, because of the interrelationship between the aforementioned topics, attention obviously will also to be given to the other primary areas.


Author(s):  
Lois Ann Lorentzen

This chapter explores Christianity and ecology in Latin America by charting the religious beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and liberation theologians, ecofeminist movements, and Protestant faith traditions (emphasizing evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism). In each case, religious symbols, theologies, rituals, and movements are analyzed as they relate to the nonhuman world. The chapter begins with initial contact between Roman Catholicism and indigenous religions and the consequences for the environment. The ecotheology emerging from liberation theology is explored as well as Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si (Praise be to you): On Care for our Common Home. Environmental movements and activism rooted in both Catholic and Protestant beliefs are also explored.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Reid Karr

During Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Papacy, The Theology Of Conscience Has Taken On A Significant Role. A Developed Theology Of Conscience Emerged During The Second Vatican Council, Most Notably With Gaudium Et Spes, And Later Developed As Essential In Moral Theology. Francis Is The First Pope To Fully Embody Vatican II Teachings, In Particular In His Incorporation Of The Conscience Into Theology And Practice. During The First Months Of His Papacy, He Made It Clear That Conscience Is Crucial To His Theology And, In A Letter Exchange With A Prominent Italian Journalist, He Underscored Obedience To One’s Conscience As The Key To Receiving Forgiveness Of Sins. This Development Has Tremendous Theological And Missiological Implications For The Roman Catholic Church. KEYWORDS: Roman Catholicism, Pope Francis, conscience, missiology, morality, Vatican II, Gaudium et spes


1977 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-210
Author(s):  
Thomas Morrissey

All societies are propped up by conscious and subconscious mythologies about their own origins, and about their mission within the larger world community. Anglo-Saxon mythology about its origins and development, and the position of Roman Catholicism in relation to this mythology, made entering into diplomatic relations with the Sovereign of the Roman States and head of the Roman Catholic Church a very long and delicate process. English Protestants regarded Catholicism as a mixture of anathema, superstition, and papal despotism; and everything that was English and precious was opposed to that terrible and oppressive Romanism which the genius of England had overthrown. England was a model for the world of constitutional liberty, of law and order, or prosperity and mortality; Romanism represented little other than the perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. England prided itself on the literary, social, economic, and political accomplishments of English civilisation; Romanism conjured up images of immoral monks with vast wealth, Babington and Guy Fawkes, Titus Oates and Jesuitical casuistry, James II and monarchical tyranny. England was proud of her constitutional heritage, a heritage with deep roots in the forests of Germany; from the same Germany came the messiah who freed England from the idolatry of Rome; and on the throne of England sat a German constitutional monarch, bound by oath to uphold the Protestant succession. Roman Catholicism was linked with indolent Italians, immoral Frenchmen, and barbarous Irish; with craftiness, and the horrors of the confessional box. Memories of the Armada and Bloody Mary's persecutions, visions of Huguenots burning on St Bartholomew's Day, were still vivid in popular consciousness, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs was high on the best-seller lists.


1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 95-121
Author(s):  
Simon Hyde

The relationship between the Roman Catholic church and the state in nineteenth-century German history appears to have been plagued by discord and mistrust. From the secularization of church lands and the dissolution of sovereign ecclesiastical territories at the beginning of the century to the Kulturkampf of the 1870s, church and state found themselves repeatedly at loggerheads. One thinks of the negotiations between Prussia and Rome on a concordat after 1815, the Cologne mixed marriage controversy of 1837, the Frankfurt Parliament's debates on Article III of the Reich Constitution in 1848, and the hostility aroused by the Raumer decrees of 1852. In a recent article on the Catholic church in Westphalia during the 1850s and his book on popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany, Jonathan Sperber has challenged the validity of this picture of conflict between church and state.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-57
Author(s):  
Roy Robson

AbstractIn the period 1917-45, the Roman Catholic Church vacillated in its views of Russian Orthodoxy and the Russian Revolution. Some forces in the Vatican focused on the “consecration” of Russia, connoting support for Orthodoxy. Others preferred to push for the “conversion” of Russia to Roman Catholicism. The tension between these competing views can be seen in the Vatican's patronage of the arts. From 1925-1945, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches commissioned works by four artists—Leonid and Rimma Brailowski, Pimen Sofronov, and Jérôme Leussink. Collectively, their work illustrated the changing mixture of politics, piety, and aesthetics that characterized Rome's view toward Russia in the first half of the twentieth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Gutmann ◽  
Fabian Peters

The problem of declining membership in Germany’s churches has been apparent for almost half a century. However, few scientific studies have investigated the respective influences of demographic and church-specific phenomena, as well as the potential impact if present trends continue. To answer these questions, we use a cohort component model and project the membership of each German Catholic diocese and Protestant regional church until 2060. Thus, for the first time we present a projection of church members for each of the 27 Catholic (arch-) dioceses and the 20 Protestant regional churches, as well as for the entire Evangelical Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. We collected data from dioceses, Protestant regional churches and the Federal Statistical Office. Under the assumptions made, the results suggest a continued decline in membership and that by 2060 the number of church members would be half the number of 2017. Protestant Church membership would have shrunk slightly more than Catholic Church membership. We can conclude that church-specific factors (baptisms, leaving, and joining the church) would have a stronger influence on declining numbers than demographic factors. Moreover, demographic change would have a greater impact on registered church membership than on the total population. The proportion of Christians in the population would sharply decrease. Although in 2017 54.4 percent of the population belonged to one of the two major churches, according to the projection model, only 31.1 percent would be church members in 2060. As our results are not predictions but projections using trend analysis, we show how changed conditions would affect the projected development in five scenarios.


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