Демократизация католической церкви в Испании в 1976–1978 годах

The article addresses the issue of the level of trust in the Catholic clergy in Poland among the youngest adult Catholics. The authors formulate their conclusions on the basis of a literature review and their own extensive research conducted among young adult Catholics born after 1995 (Generation Z). The research focused on the level of trust assessed with regard to the hierarchical division of the clergy in the Catholic Church as well as scandals involving priests exposed in recent years. The performed analyses took into account the level of religious commitment of young Catholics and their attitudes towards the role of the hierarchical Church in solving their problems. The research results indicate a significant level of trust in the Pope, a slightly lower level of trust in parish priests, and a very low level of trust in bishops and the institution of the Catholic Church in general. The decisive majority of those following religious observances and declaring compliance with the moral principles in line with Church teachings maintain trust in the institution of the Church. The final conclusions point to the need to manage the trust of the faithful as beneficiaries and clients of religious organisations such as the Church.

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Academic Dissent: An Original Ecclesiology

Much has been written in recent years about the religious attitudes and aspirations of young adults. It is clear that many Catholics are concerned about what they perceive to be the distancing of young adults from the institutional church. In a 2003 poll, more than half of Catholics surveyed said that the lack of participation by young adults is a serious problem for the church (D’Antonio et al., 77). They listed this concern as one of the three most serious problems faced by the U.S. Catholic Church, along with the clergy sexual abuse scandal and the decline in vocations to religious life and the priesthood. In his recent study of young adults from all religious backgrounds, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow compares them to young adults of the 1970s. He concludes that “young adults are less likely to participate in religious services than they were a generation ago” (Wuthnow, 214). He describes himself as “troubled” by his findings about the religious involvement of young U.S. Americans. It is evident that the challenges set before the Catholic Church with regard to eliciting young adult participation are also faced by other religious groups. I am currently involved with young adults in two settings: the theology classroom, where I teach systematic theology to graduate students, and through young

This study explores the functional impact of Christian cathedrals in Western Europe on medieval public consciousness. Utilizing a systemic analysis method and a values-based approach, cathedrals are examined as structural elements within the framework of religious communication, serving as key instruments for shaping public consciousness during the Middle Ages. Through these edifices, the core tenets of Christianity were disseminated to the masses. Special attention is given to the art of stone calendars, which are considered a significant factor in the formation of a Christian worldview during this period. The study identifies the value-laden, symbolic, and functional characteristics of medieval cathedrals as tools of religious communication. It outlines the overarching principles of architectural organization in Catholic churches in relation to their roles in influencing public consciousness. The influence of Romanesque cathedrals on the trajectory of public consciousness in medieval Western Europe is also examined. The author concludes that Christian cathedrals, as instruments of influence on medieval public conscious-ness, possessed a pronounced managerial and motivational effect, fulfilling a wide range of sociocultural functions that contributed to the stabilization and spiritual-moral development of medieval Western European society.

The Catholic Church and the Nationalist Community in Northern Ireland since 1960 Oliver P. Rafferty, SJ (bio) No one can doubt the importance of religion as an ingredient in the history of conflict in Ireland. One explanation for this fact is that religion is a "surrogate for ethno-political identity."1 Furthermore, the politics of a divided society, within the Northern Ireland context, serves to keep religion alive. In their respective ways, Catholicism and Protestantism (in their various manifestations) have become symbols of ethnic conflict, and that conflict, even in the absence of direct sectarian violence, ensures that the symbols will continue to have meaning even when people no longer practice the faith they ostensibly profess. From the Catholic perspective, identity is inextricably bound up with the relationship between the institutional church and the nationalist community.2 Although at a theoretical level we can deny the identification of Catholicism with nationalism,3 for many Catholics in Northern Ireland, until at least fairly recently, it was perhaps true to say that their religion was also their political identity. The reasons for this were many and complex. One factor, however, was the tendency of institutional Catholicism to dominate the lives of its adherents in every [End Page 99] aspect. Given the peculiar circumstances of the Northern Ireland state and its official and implicit hostility to Catholicism, the community could rarely differentiate its life in separate religious and political terms,4 despite at times sustained criticism in the community of the institutional church. Hence the spectacle of priestly involvement in political activity, even to the role individual priests played in selecting parliamentary candidates, long after such activity was deemed suitable in any other modern democracy.5 With the advent of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, however, and more especially with the emergence of Provisional IRA violence in the 1970s, both the hierarchical church and the nationalist community began to reassess the nature of the relationship between institution and people, as lay Catholics became more assertive about their leadership roles,6 and the church became more hesitant about its historical identification with a by now violent and murderous nationalist ideology. In general terms the Catholic hierarchy is inclined to dismiss the notion that the institutional church poses any political threat to those who are not of its fold.7 The church maintains that it is not a political institution nor does it have specific political objectives in how it relates to Northern Ireland society as a whole. Indeed, by 1926 the robust nationalist and leader of Irish Catholicism Cardinal Patrick O'Donnell, archbishop of Armagh, could declare that the "area of the six counties is now fixed as the area of Northern Ireland . . . and we must work for the general good of the community."8 This would seem to indicate an acceptance by the hierarchy of the reality of the political facts of life in Northern Ireland, and it could be argued that this is how the church did in fact interact with the northern state. There was simply no alternative, and, for the most [End Page 100] part, the bishops taught Catholics to be obedient to the civil powers no matter how fearsome those powers in practice were from the perspective of the Catholic community. Viewed from the perspective of the majority community in the North, however, right from the era of the slogan "Home Rule is Rome Rule," the church has come to occupy the position of the great bogeyman in Protestant-Unionist imagination. Although Catholics do not take seriously the notion that their church is regarded as the enemy of civil and religious liberty,9 nevertheless this has been historically a deeply held conviction by many Irish Protestants. Protestants' fears in this regard were well summarized by the Presbyterian minister and former moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church,Dr. Robert Dickinson, at the Opsahl hearings in 1993. Dickson remarked that Protestants see every aspect of the political, cultural, educational, medical, and industrial life of the Republic of Ireland as dominated and often controlled by the power and influence of the Catholic Church.10 Regardless of whether or not this caricature bears much relationship with the reality...

This article takes a fresh look at the socio-religious history of modern Belgium and Catholic Netherlands, While the history of religion in modern western countries traditionally was framed into a discourse of secularization and of anti-modernist reactions of in particular the Catholic Church, this master narrative has been severely criticized since the 1980s. In this article a new approach incites to reconsider basic interpretations of 'what is Modernity?'. One of the new elements in here is the recognition of tradition and the need to anchor the present in the past as basic features of modernity.This article reconsiders the process of pillarization, of the role of men and women, and emphasizes the importance of different 'revivals' in the nineteenth en twentieth century. It also focuses on some tensions within the Catholic pillar in Low Countries, particularly between the perspectives of the hierarchy and the laity, and on the gradual 'democratization' of the Catholic pillar. It adopts a long term perspective and covers the whole 'modern' period, in order to assess the basic patterns of its modernization, including the fundamental transformations since the 1960. The contemporary end of the ability to keep the 'chain of memories' intact - to keep the tradition alive and to situate and anchor the present in an imagined past, notwithstanding some important continuities actually signals the end of pillarized Catholicism and indeed of modernity in the Low Countries.

Abstract- Sacred space is everywhere and has become the part of human’s life since thousand years ago. One manifestation of the sacred space is the Catholic Church. A sacred space in the Catholic Church should be able to accommodate liturgical activities in accordance with the rules and the order of their activities so the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy can run well. This study will attempt to understand the concept and the manifestation of the sacred space found in Romo Mangunwijaya’s churches in accordance to the concept and the manifestation of the Catholic Church’s sacred space.Research will be carried out based on a preliminary study conducted by studying the universal sacred space theory proposed by Eliade and the theory of the Catholic Church’s sacred space that refers to the principles of the liturgy space. Results of analysis of each object of the study will then be processed further through a comparison table so that it can be concluded the manifestation of a sacred space in Romo Mangunwijaya’s churches.From the results of research on the objects of the study, showed that the manifestation of the sacred space of the Romo Mangunwijaya’s Churches dominantly shown in terms of orientation, ornaments, and atmosphere. In addition, the case study that shows the most dominant manifestation of the sacred space is Theresia Salam Church.The benefits of this research are: for general public, this research can improve the knowledge of the importance of the sacred space within the Catholic Church and how to integrate local values and culture into the sacred space concept established in the Catholic Church's rules. Meanwhile, for the architects and institutions of the Catholic Church, this research can improve the knowledge of the concept of sacred space in the Catholic Church and how to manifest the concept of the sacred space into the architecture of the Catholic Church. Key Words: sacred space, church, Y.B. Mangunwijaya

In my researches in the field of media religion and culture, I have made extensive comparative analyses of the Catholic and Pentecostal churches in Nigeria and their different communication strategies. This paper highlights the appropriation of the new information and communication technologies by these two Christian denominations in Nigeria. Special attention is paid to the Catholic Church, because, unlike the Pentecostal denominations which see media technologies as an extension of the church pulpit, the Catholic Church has generally exhibited a somewhat cold attitude towards these instruments of mass communication. This attitude goes back to the advent of cinema which the Church’s hierarchy then saw as having the potential of corrupting faith and moral. The Catholic Church has remained largely a print-based Church, investing most of her communication energy in the print media and in oral catechism. But in recent years, this negative attitude of the Church has started to change. Of all the technologies of mass communication, none has been so instantly accepted and embraced by the Catholic Church as the new information and communication technologies. Using the Mater Cyberworld, (a cyber-café founded by the Ahiara Mbaise Catholic Diocese in Eastern Nigeria), as a case, this paper highlights some distinctive characteristics of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the new information and communication technologies. The analysis shows that this media appropriation is one of the means through which the Catholic Church establishes a strong presence in the Nigerian socio-political sphere.

A good way to describe the situation in Eastern Europe today is to say that yesterday's dreams have turned into today's nightmares.' This holds true not only in politics and economy but also in church life. One need not be an expert in Eastern European Christianity to know that at the very center of the religious turmoil are the issues of mission and proselytism. What precisely is the problem? One way to put it is to say that what Protestants (mainly of the evangelical kind) consider to be legitimate mission Catholics and Orthodox (whom I will refer to as established churches) consider to be illegitimate and culturally damaging proselytism. For all churches in Eastern Europe the peaceful revolution of 1989 seemed a dawn of a new era. They had been discriminated against and even persecuted under Communist totalitarianism; now under democracy they were hoping for unhindered flourishing. Instead, new conflicts emerged, this time not with the government, but with each other. Churches were now politically free to pursue their respective goals, but they became trapped in the battle over their own colliding goals. Catholics and Orthodox were hoping that some of the significant social influence they had before the Communists came into power would be regained. After all, for centuries they served as guardians of various Eastern European cultures, preserving the identity of their peoples. Hence to be Croatian was to be a Catholic Christian, to be Serbian was to be an Orthodox Christian, and so forth. Yet the years of Communist domination had partly de-Christianized Eastern European cultures. Moreover, the new democratic order has brought a wide variety of other cultural shapers (both Christian and non-Christian) into play and indeed guarantees them the right of existence. The same historical change that freed established churches to exert themselves again as a major cultural force has provided space for a wide variety of other forces that compete with the established churches. Conflict was preprogrammed. Itwas only a question of how it would be carried out: within the bounds set by the new democratic order, or using the skills honed in the totalitarian past; through civil dialogue, or through brute force; with regard and love for one another, or with indifference and even hate. Evangelical Protestants, always a small minority in Eastern European countries, also had great hopes for democracy. Above all, they wanted freedom to worship God and proclaim the Good News to non-Christians. The trouble was that their definition of who were non-Christians included most members of the established churches. What compounded the trouble, however, was the zeal of various Christian groups from abroad who saw the lifting of the iron curtain as the unique opportunity to proclaim Jesus Christ within what they used to call an evil empire. In a 1993stud y, the Centerfor Civil Society in Seattle determined tha t

Reviewed by: Building A Bridge dir. by Evan Mascagni and Shannon Post Elsie M. Miranda Building A Bridge. Directed by Evan Mascagni and Shannon Post. USA: Player Piano Productions, 2021. 1 hour, 36 minutes. The documentary film Building a Bridge, produced by Martin Scorsese, does a good job of telling the story of Jesuit priest and editor of America Magazine, Father James Martin. Father Jim represents one of the first publicly identifiable Catholic priests who has come out in support of LGBT Catholics and their families at a time when the Catholic Church is deeply divided on matters of sexual ethics. Intrinsic to the Jesuit charism, "All for the Glory of God" requires that Jesuits recognize the inherent value of all human beings, including showing respect, compassion, and sensitivity to LGBT persons. For Father Jim, this is not a matter of contextually interpreting Catholic sexual ethics but rather a consequence of the foundational Catholic principle of respect for the human person. In 2018, days after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida (the largest mass shooting in American history), Father Jim recalls his grief and deep disappointment by the silent apathy of many priests and bishops who in essence turned their backs on these victims and their families, even at the moment of their death, because they were gay. Indignant at the clerical cowardice to do what was right, just, and merciful, Father Jim set out to write a book he titled: Building a Bridge, How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity. The film, by the same name, tells the story of Father Jim's emergence as an advocate for LGBT Catholics and their families and raises questions about the willingness and capacity of the Roman Catholic Church to engage in the process of bridge-building with the LGBT community. What is refreshing about the film is the joyful sincerity of Father Jim. This is on display as he tends to his garden, celebrates Eucharist, prays, shares the love of his family, and speaks to communities across the globe. Throughout the film, his demeanor is one of sincerity, born of a deep commitment to love and care for others in [End Page 67] the name of Jesus. Father Jim's humility empowers him to offer a legitimate, pastoral message of inclusion, hope, and mercy to LGBT Catholics. He listens to personal stories, recognizes people's struggles, celebrates their victories, and shows respect, compassion, and sensitivity, born out of his love of Jesus, which is just what many need to hear. At the same time, his message falls short of calling the church to real systemic change, which the institutional church has been reluctant even to consider. The film highlights these social and ecclesial tensions by giving considerable airtime to alt-right conservative Michael Voris. Founder of "Church Militant," Voris confesses to being an "ex-gay" man who "lived in sin for 13 years." He lashes out against Catholic clergy who are "not more vocal against condemning LGBT Catholics." His focused attack on homosexual behavior as grounds for damnation is enhanced with the idea that obedience to the orthodox teachings of the church and the willingness to enter into corporal suffering are what provide the path to redemption and salvation. Curiously, Voris's demeanor exhibits overt homophobia and expresses his disgust of male homosexual behavior with rage. He says, "If you do not carry that cross, you do not get into the kingdom of heaven"—Voris wears a cross around his neck that may very well be emblematic of other crosses he carries. Nevertheless, the film juxtaposes these two celibate, Catholic men as representing two faces of the Catholic Church in the United States and proposes that a reconciliatory process of bridge building be undertaken between the church and the LGBT community; however, a practical approach for how to begin this project remains ambiguous. What the film fails to do is to provide a rationale for the impasse. In the process of embarking on a narrative of "bridge-building" between the church and the LGBT community, it is necessary to understand the basic theological premise that informs the notion of...

The Policy of King Ladislaus II Jagiello towards the Catholic Church on the Ruthenian territories of the Polish Kingdom and the territories of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy The author analyzes the policy of King Ladislaus Jagiello towards the Catholic Church on Ruthenian territories of the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Lithuanian Duchy. It concerned almost exclusively the territory controlled by the Lvov Archdiocese as right up until Jagiello’s death in 1434, the area of north-eastern Ruthenia was almost entirely derived of Catholic infrastructure. An absolute predominance of the indiginous Orthodox Church population could be observed there. The monarch’s strong material support for the Catholic Church (for bishoprics, diocese institutions and parishes) had contributed to civilizational transformations (including political ones) of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy; it had also contributed to social reorganization and a comprehensive integration of the Ruthenian territories that had been incorporated into the Polish Kingdom. On the Ruthenian territories of the Crown and Lithuania, the church institutions had embarked on different tasks than on the ethnically Lithuanian territories of the Vilnius and Zmudz dioceses; this was the result of the different religious and social structure of the local population.

Historical accounts of the Progressive Era in the United States generally lack any discussion of the nation’s Catholic laywomen. Yet Catholic laywomen played key roles in Progressive Era history. Some, for example, were active in suffrage reform, and one necessary step in that struggle was the bridging of the problematic divide between supporters of suffrage and the Catholic Church – more specifically, between suffrage advocates and the votes of the Catholic faithful, which were greatly influenced by the church establishment, and which became critical in the years leading up to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment. One Catholic laywoman in particular, Jane Campbell (1845–1928), maintained leadership roles in both the Catholic community and the suffrage community (specifically the National American Woman Suffrage Association). This article provides some necessary historical context regarding the Catholic Church’s history in the Progressive Era United States and discusses Campbell’s influence in both the suffrage and Catholic communities during the two-year span of 1913–1915, which was a critical period of growth and change for both the church’s identity and the suffrage cause.

Since the world today is so significantly shaped by media technologies, it has become crucial for organizations, institutions and political parties to embrace this phenomenon in order for them to be able to communicate their message and programmes effectively. If they fail to do so, they in effect fail to exist in the public consciousness. Mass media hugely influence how culture is created: intelligence, artistic talent and technological innovation become visible through the media. The Roman Catholic Church, the world’s largest religious organization has, for the longest time, on the one hand denied the influence of the media, while on the other hand calling it ‘the work of evil’. When the Church eventually came to acknowledge the media as a powerful force, it proceeded to use this power as a mouthpiece for its authorities. The Catholic Church is still not wholly at ease with the media. The question is whether the Catholic Church has sufficiently familiarized itself with how the media function, in order to utilise the media to communicate the Church’s message to a large public audience. Against the background of ecclesial documents this article investigates the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the media as it has developed over the past 50 years.

In the last decade, a number of studies have explored state building in Mexico during the crucial period of the 1930s, giving us a much better idea of the fragility of the central government and the continuing significance of regional and local leaders as well as diverse forces in opposition to revolutionary projects. By exploring several regional cases of the relationship between the reinstitutionalizing Mexican state and the embattled Roman Catholic Church in the 1930s, Ben Fallaw shows us how tenuous the reach of the central government into the countryside actually was, how central state projects were greeted and resisted in different ways in different places, and how weak, ultimately, was the state’s centralized power. He presents us with a sophisticated and nuanced view of the ways in which revolutionary goals such as agrarian reform, government schools, and the Psychological Revolution against the Roman Catholic Church were negotiated and often thwarted. Geographically, he ranges from heavily Catholic areas to those that were not, in his terms, “levitical,” from both coasts to the interior of the country.Within a single state, some areas were more strongly religious than others or were more defiant of the central government’s project of land reform; the alliances and forms that resistance took differed significantly from place to place. Basically, however, Fallaw finds that in 1940, at the end of the period that he considers, the central state “was much feebler, and its social support was much shallower, than the current scholarly consensus represents” (p. 223). According to him, the Mexican central government, in the decades after the revolution, had established not hegemony but rather what Antonio Gramsci had called “dominance without hegemony” (p. 223), which is certainly a reasonable corrective to the existing historiography. Revolutionary goals, in particular land reform and the elimination of the Roman Catholic Church’s cultural and institutional power, were repeatedly thwarted by some natural but also some quite unexpected alliances between church supporters and others in a given community or region.Fallaw focuses on socialist education and agrarian reform, with the teachers and regional supervisors from the Secretaría de Educación Pública acting as the principal representatives of the central government. He documents the sometimes subtle but not infrequently violent action against these agents to prevent either one or both of these goals. Though the institutional church was usually not actively—or at least not visibly— engaged in resisting the postrevolutionary government, a “radial strategy” of defiance linked Catholic women and men, local and regional officials, business leaders, groups of students, and sometimes even ostensibly revolutionary parties to some clergy and more formal lay leaders (p. 6). A second Cristero War of guerilla attacks continued in many locations throughout the country, making the jobs of schoolteachers not only difficult but also dangerous. President Lázaro Cárdenas, in order to save his presidency and calm the continuing violence in the late 1930s, was forced by this opposition to slow down efforts against Catholic practice and institutions.Still, a larger religiopolitical uprising in 1938 led by Saturnino Cedillo failed, according to Fallaw, not because of any Catholic acquiescence to postrevolutionary projects but because of exhaustion with civil strife. He thinks that Cárdenas, rather than reconciling the Mexican countryside to the central state, calmed the waters sufficiently to pass the presidency on to an avowed Catholic from his own party. This hold on power, Fallaw asserts, was possible not because the countryside had been seriously changed but because new political elites tacitly admitted “defeat on the religious question” and even on land distribution, shifting their commitments to “urbanization and industrialization” (p. 225). Perhaps these conclusions are too strong; a great deal of land had been distributed and the parameters of religious power had changed. Yet whether or not one agrees with Fallaw that these were major revolutionary failures, his careful marshaling of evidence and his sound analysis make clear why agrarian reform and changing religious practice and devotion were extremely difficult to achieve.