Catholic Diocese Research Articles

Cannata v Catholic Diocese of Austin et al: (Docket no 11-51151): United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Dennis J for a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court: 24 October 2012

Employment – Unfair dismissal – Discrimination – Unordained music director employed by Catholic parish church to select music for religious services and provide piano accompaniment during services – Employee music director suing employer on grounds of unfair dismissal for violation of age discrimination legislation and disabilities legislation – Whether employee’s lawsuit barred by ‘ministerial exception’ doctrine of the First Amendment on grounds that claim concerned employment relationship between religious institution and its minister – Whether Catholic parish music director ‘minister’ falling within ‘ministerial exception’ doctrine – Whether Hosanna-Tabor decision obviated previous Fifth Circuit ministerial exception precedent set forth in Starkman v Evans – USCA Const Amend 1; Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 USC sec 12101ff; Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 USC sec 621ff

A “Catastrophic, Inept, Self-Serving” Church? Re-examining Three Reports on Child Abuse in the Republic of Ireland

Between 2005 and 2010, discussion of child abuse in the Republic of Ireland focused on abuse perpetrated by priests and members of religious orders. This attention is largely a consequence of three different and complex reports: (a) a 2005 report examining abuse in the Roman Catholic diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, (b) the Ryan Commission's mammoth report which, published in 2009, received coverage throughout the world, and (c) a report that was produced the same year and examined the handling of complaints of child sexual abuse by a “representative sample” of priests in the Dublin diocese during 1975 to 2004. This article seeks to furnish a brief, critical introduction to an international social work readership and concludes by focusing on two themes: the figure of the pedophile priest and the power of the Church in Irish society, and the centrality of poverty and social vulnerability in the lives of the victims of abuse.

JGE v Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocesan Trust

JGE v Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocesan Trust

Counting Catholics in the United States of America

Statistics about the Catholic population of the United States have frequently been used for political and ideological purposes, at the same time as they have figured prominently in discussions about the disaffiliation of Catholics from the institutional church. But how are the most commonly cited statistics generated, and to what extent are they reliable? This article reports the results of a new, qualitative study of the procedures by which a randomly selected group of Catholic dioceses and archdioceses in the U.S. obtain and publish their population statistics. In addition to assessing the reliability of the procedures used, this essay also reflects on the theological, ecclesial, and political dimensions of the processes of data collection and reporting. Despite the aspirations of the church workers interviewed, most do not believe that the methods at their disposal permit them to report with accuracy important statistics about the populations of their parishes and dioceses. Factors like the choice of statistical methods, unforeseen events in particular dioceses, and the presence of intra-ecclesial incentives to report both higher and lower statistics all reveal that to count the Catholic population is to engage, wittingly or unwittingly, in a theological and ecclesio-political act.

Discrimination and the Religious Workplace

Two cases in 2012 involved employment discrimination claims. In one, a Catholic diocese had refused to renew the contract of a teacher who had sought in vitro fertilization. In another, earlier case, a Lutheran elementary school had terminated the contract of a teacher for “damaging her working relationship” with the school by “threatening to take legal action” when she was not permitted to return to work after disability leave related to narcolepsy. In both cases, the employers have argued that the employee's discrimination claims should be dismissed solely because of the religious character of the employer organization. The specific legal defenses in each suit differ somewhat, but ultimately they both rely on the First Amendment to exempt religious employers from civic responsibilities imposed by law on other private employers.

Natural Family Planning Instruction as a Marriage Requirement a Retrospective Analysis of the First Two Years' Experience in the Diocese of Covington.

Beginning January 1, 2009, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington mandated that all engaged couples take a full course of NFP instruction as part of preparation for marriage within the Church. Using data from the Couple to Couple League and its Covington-based instructors, overall NFP instruction and characteristics of the couples attending classes before and after the mandate were examined. In the first two years, 66 percent and 77 percent of couples who married in the diocese, respectively, attended an NFP class. The mandate shifted the reasons for couples taking NFP instruction; prior to the mandate, 40 percent of engaged couples attended classes solely due to a pastor's requirement while 74 percent of engaged couples did so afterward (p < 0.001). Hormonal contraceptive use was common; 54 percent reported current use while another 23 percent reported former use. Current hormonal contraceptive use was significantly more common among those attending solely due to the mandate compared to those attending for multiple reasons (59 percent vs. 41 percent respectively, p = 0.004) and was significantly more common among engaged compared to married couples (53 percent vs. 8 percent respectively, p < 0.001). Cohabiting engaged couples were significantly more likely to have ever used hormonal contraceptives (91 percent vs. 71 percent, p < 0.0001), compared to engaged couples who were not cohabiting at the time of NFP instruction, and were significantly less likely to both be Catholic (55 percent vs. 70 percent, p = 0.002). Overall, implementation of mandatory NFP instruction as part of marriage preparation was successful; in post-class surveys, over 90 percent of couples acknowledged they had a better understanding of their fertility, and 83 percent would recommend the classes to a friend. Longer-term prospective follow-up is needed to evaluate the long-term impacts to couples exposed to such a requirement.

Obesity Prevention in Young Schoolchildren: Results of a Pilot Study

Overweight and obesity occur in 17% of children in the United States. Complications of excess weight in Americans cause 216,000 to 300,000 deaths yearly and cost $147 billion. A convenience sample of 14 intervention and 15 control schools in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh was used. A program to improve lifestyle (Values Initiative Teaching About Lifestyle [VITAL®]), was implemented in young children to encourage healthy eating and appropriate physical activity. Students had annual evaluations of height and weight over a 2-year period, and teachers participating in VITAL completed questionnaires regarding the program. Changes in age- and sex-adjusted body mass index (BMI) percentiles in control and intervention groups were compared using linear mixed models regression. VITAL was highly rated by teachers and was popular with children. Over the 2-year period, adjusted mean BMI percentiles declined from 66.1 to 65.0 in control children and from 62.8 to 58.9 in intervention children. The rates of change in the 2 groups were significantly different (p = .015). VITAL improves lifestyle of young schoolchildren, is inexpensive, easy to implement, and should be expanded to improve health and reduce healthcare's financial burden.

Socioeconomic factors affecting the adoption of improved agricultural technologies among women in Marakwet County Kenya

Previous results from the developing countries show that men and women do not adopt new technologies at the same rate or benefit equally from their introduction. Authors note that women in Africa continue to adopt high yielding varieties and improved management systems at low rates (Doss 2001). Certain agricultural technologies can easily be adopted by women than others. However this varies widely based on context and culture. The premise of this research is that Women vary in adoption of technology or innovations at their disposal and those particular technologies were adopted at a higher rate comparatively to others, although the set of technologies were packaged and disseminated together. The sociological, myths and other economic factors surrounding the adoption of agricultural technologies among women are unearthed in Marakwet. The specific objectives of the study were to determine the socioeconomic characteristics, rate associated with the adoption of the agricultural technologies in Marakwet. This study has an important significance considering the fact that most women participate in agriculture in developing countries. This research on agricultural technology adoption is therefore critical. There is need to ensure that gender concerns and women participants are integrated in all relevant projects by planners' and policy makers. Stratified random sampling was used to conduct the survey. The survey obtained 160 women from two targeted groups by the Women in Agricultural projects (WIA) under the Catholic Diocese of Eldoret. This was done such that the sample represented all farmers targeted by the project giving information on socio-economic characteristics, age, education levels, extension services, education, household size and the number of the technologies adopted among others. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were used to analyze explanatory variables in this study such as education levels, household size, level of income, age, contacts with extension agents, Access to extension facilities, membership to groups or associations. The results show that such factors such as primary occupation, annual income, household size and membership of women's group showed a positive and very significant relationship with the women adoption of agricultural technologies. From the findings the women ranked such constraints as lack of access to land, lack of capital and credit facilities, non membership of women's group, non provision of information by the agricultural officers on agricultural production technologies, ineffective extension services and coverage among others, as major hindrances to effective achievement of the set objectives of improving the socioeconomic wellbeing of women farmers It is recommended that the agricultural technologies should increase its activities to include tasks and decisions where women played an active role which include; health care, agricultural production (food crop and livestock production), and family nutrition. Land tenure issue should be revisited and relevant laws made which allows women farmer's access to land for agricultural production.

The Making of a Leader: A Multi-Faceted Model of Leader Identity Development

In this paper, we intend to provide a fine-grained picture of the development of the leader identity. Through a qualitative study of emerging leaders and their mentors in a leadership development program in a Catholic diocese, we identified four facets that describe the changes leaders go through as they integrate the leader identity into their self-concept. We also identified seven facilitators that form levers for these four facets. We build a theory to explain how the developments along the four facets coalesce into a more salient leader identity and how the facilitators drive the leaders forward along the four facets. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral dari Sudut Pandang Konsep Perancangan

The Catholic diocese of Parramatta is well-known as the first established Catholic Church in Australia. It is the most recently completed Cathedral in Australia, designed by Romaldo Giurgola. As a foreigner, he was successfully applied the historical values and symbols of Catholic tradition shown on the design’s elements and forms throughout the Cathedral. This paper explores the design of the Cathedral Church of the Catholic diocese of Parramatta which is influenced by works of other architects such as Utzon and Van Eyck. The use of natural light and different materials’ quality in the interior and exterior of building are few of the design’s elements applied in the Saint Patrick Cathedral.

Civic Rhetoric-Meeting the Communal Interplay of the Provincial and the Cosmopolitan: Barack Obama’s Notre Dame Speech, May 17, 2009

Abstract President Obama’s commencement address on the University of Notre Dame campus evoked substantial controversy, providing public demonstration of rhetorical differences and demands generated by differing provincial and cosmopolitan positions. Icontend that public civic rhetoric, in an era of narrative and virtue contention, must address the creative interplay of both provincial and cosmopolitan perspectives. In this essay I examine reactions to the Obama address from news sources connected with the local Catholic diocese, as well as the South Bend and University of Notre Dame newspapers. I argue that Obamas address is an example of a public civic speech that openly engaged the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan understandings of a controversial communal common center. Obamas Notre Dame speech framed discourse that walks within a world of tension and difference on the public stage, highlighting the communal rhetorical constitution of a speech moment shaped through the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan commitments.

Civic Rhetoric—Meeting the Communal Interplay of the Provincial and the Cosmopolitan: Barack Obama's Notre Dame Speech, May 17, 2009

President Obama's commencement address on the University of Notre Dame campus evoked substantial controversy, providing public demonstration of rhetorical differences and demands generated by differing provincial and cosmopolitan positions. I contend that public civic rhetoric, in an era of narrative and virtue contention, must address the creative interplay of both provincial and cosmopolitan perspectives. In this essay I examine reactions to the Obama address from news sources connected with the local Catholic diocese, as well as the South Bend and University of Notre Dame newspapers. I argue that Obama's address is an example of a public civic speech that openly engaged the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan understandings of a controversial communal common center. Obama's Notre Dame speech framed discourse that walks within a world of tension and difference on the public stage, highlighting the communal rhetorical constitution of a speech moment shaped through the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan commitments.

Teachers' Attitudes Towards Overt and Covert Bullying, and Perceived Efficacy to Intervene

Covert bullying has become a serious problem in Australian schools. Past research has focused on overt bullying, especially physical forms. This study explores teacher characteristics that influence their attitudes and responses to covert bullying. Responses to three scales measuring teacher attitudes towards bullying, perceived self-efficacy and preferred style of handling bullying incidents, as well as background questions were sought from 62 teachers from a Catholic Diocese in Queensland. Overt bullying incidents were taken more seriously than covert bullying; victims were shown empathy and intervention was likely. All teachers showed high levels of self-efficacy and were likely to intervene in overt bullying incidents. The most predominant style for handling bullying was one that focused on punishing the bully. Ongoing professional development is warranted to help ease this insidious problem in schools.

Two definitions of collegiality and their inter-relation: The case of a Roman Catholic diocese

Against the backdrop of the conflict observed between managers and professionals, two definitions of collegiality emerge: on one hand, a specific organizational form (bottom up) and, on the other, a procedure of bureaucratic management (top down). A study of networks of priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in France is used to explore how those two definitions are related. Questions are raised as to the effects of a too narrow organizational rationalization that uses collegiality only as a top down, bureaucratic, managerial procedure. This always entails the risk of making the work done by experts sterile because it overlooks the first type of collegiality, which is based on the nature of non-routine tasks that members perform together thanks to an endogenous organizational structure of a bottom up type.

The Relationship Between Personality, Burnout, and Engagement Among the Indian Clergy

This study examined the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions, burnout, and engagement among 511 Indian Catholic diocesan priests. We expected that Neuroticism would be positively associated with burnout and negatively associated with engagement. Moreover, we expected Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness to be negatively associated with burnout and positively associated with engagement. Hierarchical regression analyses largely confirmed these expectations. Results are discussed in the context of the broader literature on burnout and engagement, as well as the literature on priesthood.

Community, Spiritual Traditions, and Disasters in Collective Societies

This article posits a deeply contextual and communal therapy as the best path to a victim's reconstruction of a sense of ‘home.’ The authors take seriously the recent call of Zhang Kan, chairperson of the Chinese Psychological Society, to consider the localities and heritage of China in the construction of psychotherapy for Chinese. The article follows Walsh's four ways by which reconstructed communities are a resource for detoxifying the effects of trauma and disaster: shared acknowledgement of the traumatic events, shared experience of loss and survivorship, reorganization of the community, and reinvestment in relationships. It is argued that spirituality can also play a positive role in the recovery of meaning and community after disaster when honored rather than instrumentalized. Examples will be drawn from the communal/religious reconstructive efforts of Ukrainian Mennonites in communist Russia, the ways in which Chinese responded to the 5.12 earthquake, and the work of the Catholic diocese with Guatemalan indigenous peoples in honoring the dead in rebuilding communities.

CALIFORNIA'S SITES OF CONSCIENCE: An Analysis of the State's Historic Mission Museums

AbstractInCalifornia,Franciscan mission “museums” are used to supplementK–12 curricula aboutNativeAmerican history and the settlement of the state. Heavily influenced by the localCatholic diocese, many of these sites offer a slanted view of history and a distorted version of native life in the missions and erase the presence of native people today. I critically analyzed visual representations at the 19 operating mission museums, with in‐depth research at six, and explored what emerged as the dominant narratives. I argue that as important sites of conscience, the mission museums miss valuable opportunities to educate the public and potentially heal past wrongs. Finally, I offer insights and suggestions for addressing misrepresentations, through sustained community engagement, for mission museum directors and staff who expressed a desire to do so.

The Mobile Care Health Project Providing Dental Care in Rural Hawai'i Communities

By Kaye Lundburg, Carol R. Ignacio, Cheryl M. Ramos (USA) Peer Reviewed This paper reports on the Mobile♥Care Health Project (MCHP), a project of the Office for Social Ministry (OSM) of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu (referred to subsequently as “Diocese”), which aimed to increase access to dental care for the underserved on the Island of Hawai'i. This paper describes the history of the project, challenges encountered in its development, short and long term goals set and accomplished, and the community-based dental care programs that were established as a result of the MCHP initiative.

Jan Paweł II i Benedykt XVI a dialog katolicko-prawosławny. Przyczynek do dyskusji

For centuries the dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox churches has been marked by disputes and conflicts. It was impossible, and still remains troublesome, to clearly identify the reasons for this. Some tend to blame the Vatican for its excessively ‘obtrusive’ intention to establish its hierarchy in the East. Others tend to claim that it is the Russian Orthodox Church that has triggered conflicts in its pursuit to unify the Orthodox churches and ‘dethrone’ the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic and Orthodox denominations have mainly been clashing in Central and Eastern Europe, where new factors generating conflicts are constantly emerging, whether religious or – more frequently – political (e.g. the historical conflict between Catholic Poland and Lithuania and Orthodox Russia; or the establishment of Catholic dioceses in the Russian Federation, which the Moscow Patriarchate considers to be the canonical territory of the Eastern Church). Sometimes it may even seem that the dissenting denominations do not even try to communicate. The pontificate of John Paul II was ecumenical, but it did not produce the results the Vatican would consider desirable with respect to the Orthodox Church. At present we can observe slow changes in the behavior of religious leaders – Benedict XVI and the Patriarchs of Moscow (Alexii II, followed by Cyril I). The authors of the paper present selected issues in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue during the pontificate of John Paul II and the present Pope – Benedict XVI, and they attempt to answer the question of what changes have recently taken place in the mutual relations of the two denominations, and whether the steps taken stand a chance of resulting in a permanent conciliation.

Konflikt polsko-litewski w diecezji wileńskiej na początku XX wieku

At the beginning of 20th century religion was one of the main spheres of the Polish-Lithuanian conflict. In the Catholic diocese of Vilnius, the clash between believers of two nations was occurring mainly in the language of additional service and religious singing in churches, the catechesis of pupils in schools, assigning Polish or Lithuanian clergy to the church posts, as well as the problem of knowledge of both languages by the priests. The dispute was intensive in parishes with mixed Polish and Lithuanian population and in Vilnius, where at the earliest were established organizations whose goal was to broaden the Lithuanian language in the pastoral ministry. Among the others development of press and involvement of clergy in political activities increased the scale of conflict. The governor of the diocese, Bishop Edward Ropp (1904–1907), and after 1908 Apostolic Administrator Fr. Kazimierz Michalkiewicz, in its regulations, appeals to the worshipers, conferences of clergy, during personal visits were appealing to the both sides to agree. In the parishes with mixed nationalities they recommended order of services, in which the two nations could have the opportunity, in fixed time, to listen to the sermons and to use mother tongue. To solve the disputes they recommended to prepare the census of parishioners of both nationalities and were sending special commissions or were considering the question by themselves. Those policies were not always satisfying the sides of conflict, who were seeking support for their national aspirations by sending petitions to the Vatican and Petersburg. This only intensified mutual distrust and the perception in negative light. Only the outbreak of the First World War temporarily reduced the Polish- -Lithuanian conflict in the diocese of Vilnius.