Acedia, loneliness, and the mandatory celibacy of Catholic parish clergy: a theological-sociological exploratory analysis

This article utilizes the analytical concept of acedia as the fundamental theoretical framework and applies a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed materials and documents on spiritual sloth, spiritual dryness, Catholic clerical celibacy, social bonding and communal spirituality. This article explores how the Catholic parish clergy’s mandatory celibacy intensifies loneliness and facilitates the spiritual sloth of parish clergy or what is theologically known as acedia. Unlike religious priests who live in religious communities, parish clerics fundamentally live, work, and pray alone in the parish, without strong communal support from fellow priests, bishops, and lay parishioners; thus, making them prone to loneliness, a main component of acedia. This article argues that mandatory celibacy further deprives parish clerics of the social and spiritual support necessary to enhance diocesan clerical spirituality and strengthen spiritual resistance against acedia. It recommends a structural adjustment in the social and spiritual life of parish priests, creating small communities of priests situated in similar territory or districts to allow them to live and work as a team with strong social and spiritual support in the spirit of “living baptismally” to overcome priestly acedia.

Hizbullah's Changing Identity

<p>Hizbullah’s initial entry into Lebanon’s confessional political system seems contradictory considering the organisation’s perpetual view that this electoral system is corrupt and the very cause of Lebanon’s problems. Hizbullah views this system to have disenfranchised the Shi’a of Lebanon. Since its emergence in the 1980s Hizbullah has shifted from the religiously motivated goal of an Islamic revolution in Lebanon to the more nationalistic and secular project of providing ongoing resistance to Israel. This movement can be explained if we consider two separate facets of Hizbullah’s identity: It’s primordial Shi’a identity, and its identity as a resistance movement. A movement from the former to the latter has taken place. This work argues that Hizbullah has moved away from placing importance on that which defined it primarily as an organisation seeking the advancement of Shi’a to an identity that places more emphasise on its resistance activities against Israel. This latter identity is more instrumentalist in nature. While placing importance on its Shi’a identity was not counter-productive to participating within politics, it did oblige Hizbullah to adopt more idealistic political projects. Therefore, this shift initially allowed Hizbullah to deal more effectively with the pragmatic realities of political life in Lebanon, for which it requires more broad-based cross-communal support. However, recent events in the Middle East have indicated that Hizbullah’s resistance identity may not necessarily guarantee it political success.</p>

Hizbullah's Changing Identity

<p>Hizbullah’s initial entry into Lebanon’s confessional political system seems contradictory considering the organisation’s perpetual view that this electoral system is corrupt and the very cause of Lebanon’s problems. Hizbullah views this system to have disenfranchised the Shi’a of Lebanon. Since its emergence in the 1980s Hizbullah has shifted from the religiously motivated goal of an Islamic revolution in Lebanon to the more nationalistic and secular project of providing ongoing resistance to Israel. This movement can be explained if we consider two separate facets of Hizbullah’s identity: It’s primordial Shi’a identity, and its identity as a resistance movement. A movement from the former to the latter has taken place. This work argues that Hizbullah has moved away from placing importance on that which defined it primarily as an organisation seeking the advancement of Shi’a to an identity that places more emphasise on its resistance activities against Israel. This latter identity is more instrumentalist in nature. While placing importance on its Shi’a identity was not counter-productive to participating within politics, it did oblige Hizbullah to adopt more idealistic political projects. Therefore, this shift initially allowed Hizbullah to deal more effectively with the pragmatic realities of political life in Lebanon, for which it requires more broad-based cross-communal support. However, recent events in the Middle East have indicated that Hizbullah’s resistance identity may not necessarily guarantee it political success.</p>

Who Studied at the Beit Midrash?: Funding Palestinian Amoraic Education

The house of study of Amoraic Palestine has resisted study because of its informality. By situating it alongside Hellenistic, Roman and Christian education, this article argues that examining their funding provides a means of understanding the structural tendencies of these study circles. Communal support appears mostly aspirational, providing clues as to intention and conflicts regarding inclusion. Similarly, narratives concerning individual gifts urge their moral good rather than their reliability, thus pointing inevitably to fees as the underlying means of support for the beit midrash. The necessity of fees in turn demands consideration of how those of more marginal means, including scribes, could afford this tuition. Finally, that teaching younger children provided one avenue of such support reveals a complex interdependency of those who had easier access to this education and those who had less access, as well as the barely glimpsed suggestion of other educational alternatives.

Hutterites in Moravia

The Hutterites endured generations of persecution, forced migration, as well as loss of property and legal recourse often resulting in desperate poverty. Although plagued by internal conflicts from the beginning, they represented the most radical and most creative form of communal support in the sixteenth century. While religion was the reason for their suffering, it was also the reason for their resilience. As recorded in The Chronicle, Hutterites highlighted their trials and tribulations, as well as their successful reconciliation with other factions. Their leaders, such as Jacob Hutter, Peter Riedemann, and Peter Walpot provided the theological rationale for the practice of the community of goods, which required the total sharing of goods to care for the entire community. The surrender of all temporal goods was a requirement to join the Hutterite colonies (Bruderhof). This practice of communal property became the central marker of Hutterite piety as designated leaders managed the collective resources to alleviate the needs of their community.

Rebekah Hyneman’s Leaves of the Upas Tree: A Tale of (In)temperance and (Im)morality

The intent of this paper is to examine the use, by nineteenth-century American authors, of the temperance novel, a popular literary sub-genre in antebellum America, as a literary means for presenting the widespread controversy in the nation as regards the achievements of temperance societies. Moreover, my goal is to show that the popularity of temperance novels, in spite of their didactic and moralistic nature, displays the public’s readiness to consume temperance literature, thus reciprocating the attempt of writers to promote social ideals and heal social ills. Finally, since Rebekah Hyneman, a convert to Judaism, is the only Jewish-American writer who wrote a temperance novel, and is one among a small number of female writers who used this genre, it is interesting to examine if and how her double “Otherness” (being a Jew and a female novelist) distinguishes her from her literary Christian male and/or female counterparts. Hyneman’s novel Leaves of the Upas Tree: A Story for Every Household (1854–55) serves as a case in point of a temperance novel that demonstrates how a dysfunctional American family operates as a microcosm and how temperance and other charitable societies fail to cope with individuals’ tribulations. More importantly, the novel aims to attest that a familial defective unit, affected by excessive drinking, breeds a ruthless societal macrocosm, lacking compassion, empathy, and social and communal support. The merciless, xenophobic and anti-Semitic community depicted in the novel serves as a prism through which the author presents much more acute plagues afflicting America.

The Shining Path

Chapter 6 explores the case of the Shining Path and accounts for variation in the outcome of targeting efforts. As the Shining Path became less bureaucratic in structure and experienced a loss in communal support, it became more susceptible to destabilization in the wake of leadership attacks. When Abimael Guzmán was arrested in 1992, the organization had a large amount of communal support and an organized bureaucratic authority structure. The ideology upon which the group relied was based on Guzmán’s interpretation of Marxist thought. Given the group’s high degree of institutionalization, its ideology became entrenched and was not dependent upon Guzmán. The organization was thus able to withstand the 1992 capture of Guzmán and other leaders. By 1999, when Óscar Ramírez Durand was arrested, the organization was already in a state of decline. It had lost a considerable number of its members and its bureaucratic structure was severely weakened.

Conclusion

The book concludes with a discussion of the overall findings and theoretical arguments regarding the efficacy of leadership targeting. It then examines 198 instances of targeting efforts against ISIS leaders. The theory suggests that targeting is not likely to result in the demise or even a significant weakening of ISIS. It is an Islamist organization, bureaucratized, and with considerable amounts of communal support, albeit decentralized and in many cases coerced. Even if Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is captured or killed and the organization undergoes a brief period of disruption, given the group’s hierarchy of authority and chain of command, it should ultimately choose a successor easily and recover quickly. Furthermore, the statistical results regarding the resilience of large and Islamist organization is consistent with ISIS’s resilience. The chapter concludes with policy recommendations regarding the use and impact of leadership decapitation as a counterterrorism policy.