Catholic Environment Research Articles

How Effective is the Diocesan Educational Leadership in Enhancing a Denominational Education Philosophy in Uganda? Reflections from Roman Catholic Schools in Greater Kampala (Uganda)

This study investigated the effectiveness of the Diocesan educational leadership in enhancing a denominational education philosophy in view of learners’ holistic growth and development. Its aim was to find out if there was a “Catholic environment” in these Church founded schools – both in principle and in practice. The study took a case study of Catholic schools in the Greater Kampala District of Uganda. The study discovered that although in principle the Catholic Church highly espouses its denominational education philosophy, the practice is different. In this, the Church is especially betrayed by an apparent ineffectiveness of its Diocesan educational leadership in supervising its schools. Implications for both denominationalism and nationals’ integral growth and development are discussed.

The vow of Ivan Crnojevic to the Virgin Mary in Loreto under the shadow of the ottoman conquest

This paper looks at the circumstances in which Ivan Crnojevic, a fifteenth-century ruler of Zeta (historic region in present-day Montenegro), made a vow to the Virgin in a famous pilgrimage shrine, the Santa Casa in Loreto (Italy), where he was in exile fleeing another Ottoman offensive. The focus of the paper is on a few issues which need to be re-examined in order to understand Ivan?s vow against a broader background. His act is analyzed in the context of the symbolic role that the Virgin of Loreto played as a powerful antiturca protectress. On the other hand, much attention is paid to the institutional organization of Slavs (Schiavoni) who found refuge in Loreto and nearby towns, which may serve as a basis for a more comprehensive understanding of the process of religious and social adjustment of Orthodox Slav refugees to their new Catholic environment.

Spectral Narration and the Houses of Desire in Charlotte Brontë's Villette

The narrative complexities of Villette derive from the positing of Lucy as a ghost that hovers between absence and presence, interiority and exteriority, private and public. The claim that Lucy is a ghost projects a somewhat different light on the novel which may then be viewed as the spectral narration of a spectral quest for a spectral identity, and this insistent aspect of spectrality, which is frequently encountered in the novel's resourceful use of gothic elements, must be thought to problematize any notion of narration, quest, or identity that grounds itself on presence. Being uprooted from her native environment, in which she seems hardly ever to have taken root, Lucy often seems to stick vehemently to her Protestantism, defending it against the incursions of the Catholic environment in which she lives and works. But this is ultimately a surface opposition which has more to do with the public performance of identity and which is largely at odds with the much more fluid field of identity determined by processes of varying and unstable identifications and speculations, in which Lucy enters as a speculating and spying ghost. What underlies the surface opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism are the various desires and fears that Lucy experiences in the project of finding a home for her own ghostly self. Therefore, the question of Lucy's national or religious identity in Villette must be understood as her ghostly quest to find an adequate home or haunt.

A Reforma de Lutero, 500 anos depois: a perspectiva da sua catolicidade a partir do documento “Do Conflito à Comunhão”, da Comissão Internacional Católica-Luterana

<p>O artigo reflete sobre a Reforma de Lutero (1517), com o objetivo de compreender nela a dimensão da catolicidade da fé cristã. Por séculos, nos meios católicos romanos é comum a afirmação da Reforma apenas como causa e expressão de divisões na Igreja, e que à tradição eclesial luterana não cabe a nota da catolicidade, admitida à tradição eclesial vinculada à Igreja de Roma. Contudo, estudos de teólogos católicos sobre Lutero e o progresso das relações ecumênicas entre católicos e luteranos na atualidade, convergem na compreensão que Lutero não queria dividir a Igreja, e que ele não se distanciou em tudo da tradição católica na afirmação da fé cristã. Então o diálogo ecumênico propõe hoje o desafio: podem cristãos católicos e luteranos comemorarem juntos os 500 anos da Reforma? Relacionando o documento do diálogo internacional católico-luterano, <em>Do Conflito à Comunhão, </em>e estudos recentes sobre Lutero, conclui-se que essa comemoração conjunta só será possível se as duas tradições eclesiais forem situadas num horizonte comum de catolicidade. A base é o reconhecimento de elementos comuns na fé de católicos e luteranos. A comemoração tem tom penitencial pelo que pode significar de falta de comunhão; e tom de esperança pelos elementos que a Reforma apresenta para o crescimento da comunhão entre as duas tradições eclesiais.</p>

Młodzież i rodzina w świetle obrad Powszechnego Zjazdu Katolickiego w Warszawie i obchodów 200. rocznicy kanonizacji św. Stanisława Kostki w 1926 roku

Dwa święta zorganizowane w 1926 roku: Pierwszy Powszechny Zjazd Katolicki w Warszawie oraz jubileusz kanonizacji św. Stanisława Kostki poświęcono sprawom młodzieży i rodziny. Środowiska katolickie dostrzegały szereg zagrożeń dotyczących kwestii wychowywania młodych ludzi w duchu społecznej nauki Kościoła. Uroczyste obchody niniejszych świąt miały wpływać na odnowę moralną społeczeństwa polskiego.

The Interplay between Religiosity and Horizontal and Vertical Individualism-Collectivism among Polish Catholic Students

AbstractIndividualism-collectivism has emerged as one of the most important constructs to depict cultural differences and similarities. It is typical to examine individualism and collectivism through comparison between the cultures of the West and those of the East or comparison between various religious traditions, e.g. Christianity has been seen as the source of Western individualistic understanding whilst Buddhism as the source of Eastern collectivist understanding. The research presented in this paper explored the connections between individualism-collectivism and religiosity in Polish Catholic culture. Although Poland is an orthodox Catholic environment, gradually intensified secularization processes have been observed there. In two separate studies we examined relationships between individualism-collectivism and religiosity defined in a traditional (study 1) and secularized context (study 2).

Prítomnosť češtiny na Slovensku a aspekt spisovnosti

Abstract The paper aims at giving a retrospective view of the presence of Czech in Slovakia through prism of the concepts language situation, communication situations and standardness. Within the conditions of the feudal heterogeneity of the Hungarian Monarchy and without any distinct cultural and political centre of the Slovaks, in a situation of considerable dialectal variety, the Czech language fulfilled the role of a comprehensible and within the whole society (among educated Slovaks) valid and relatively unified written form of the “local language” (lingua vernacula). In the 14th and the 15th centuries this Czech got only relatively little Slovakized. During the 16th and the 17th centuries two mutually overlapping tendencies of the development of the written language of the Slovaks were being formed: 1. Slovakized Czech, or a Slovak-version Czech, and 2. Regional Variants of Cultural Slovak. Both tendencies found their place in the Catholic as well as in the Protestant environment. In the 2nd half of the 18th century, with continuation into the beginnings of the 19th century, two directions that started to be formed already in the previous period, became crystalized: 1. Under the influence of the progressing re-Catholicization, the Slovakized Czech of the Protestants undertook the direction from diglossia towards “pure” Czech (at least in the sense of an intention), and the Protestant circles unequivocally accepted it as their standard language, sometimes denoting it as reč československá (Czechoslovak language) or českoslovenčina (the Czechoslovak); 2. In the Catholic environment, the cultural Western Slovak of the southern type and called bernolákovčina (Bernolák‘s Slovak) was codified, with the status of an autonomous standard language – a development away form diglossia towards Slovak. It was a period of two standard languages to which Štúr’s codification of Slovak put an end. His codification was based on the northern Central Slovak dialects, and after its modification in the so called opravená slovenčina (“corrected Slovak”) it was accepted by the representatives of both confessions.

Examining the Role of the Catholic Environment in Students’ Search for Meaning

Emerging research illustrates that undergraduate students are searching for meaning in their lives, yet postsecondary institutions generally do little to support them in exploring such issues (Astin et al., 2005b). We speculated that religiously affiliated institutions might offer guidance on supporting students’ spiritual development, and thus examined students in the context of Catholic postsecondary environments, focusing on whether the students’ religious affiliations and perceptions of their institution as supporting their spiritual development affected their search for meaning. Further, we examined the aspects of the environment that strengthened students’ perceptions of their college environment as closely aligned with the Catholic mission, and thus supportive of their spiritual development. We discuss implications for secular and religious institutions.

De ‘reizen’ van Ruusbroec naar Polen: Over de vertalingen van het werk van Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381) naar het Pools

The treaties of Jan van Ruusbroec have been translated several times into Polish. The first known translation was published in 1874 and the last one in 2006. This article analyses the mediators responsible for the Polish editions — translators and publishing houses. The article seeks to answer the questions of why they chose to bring the thoughts of this medieval Flemish mystic to Poland, what general choices they made (the source text, the presentation) and what the reception of it was. It appears that most of the translations were prepared and published in a conservative catholic environment. This was the probable reason for little interest in the works of Ruusbroec outside this circle. Between 2000 and 2006, the complete works were translated using the modern Dutch edition of the treaties as the source text. This Polish publication consisting of four parts does not only provide the translation of the works of Ruusbroec but it also gives a comprehensive analysis of his life and presence in the world mystic literature. It could be a start to a wave of new interest in those great medieval writings

Jan Hus v proměnách šesti století

According to the Hussite approach, and also according to the approach of the Reformation streams, the death of Jan Hus represented a turning point in history, a return to the binding road to salvation. This is demonstrated in the Hussite chronicles, and also the depictions of Jan Hus as a witness to the first day and a Saint comparable to the early Christian martyrs. Although the Catholic environment viewed Jan Hus and the Hussites as heretics doomed to eternal torment in the flames of Hell, the preacher of Bethlehem Chapel was considered both a savvy and dangerous opponent. These two basic and extremely different approaches continued into the last quarter of the 18th century, when the Enlightenment began to present Jan Hus as a victim of conscience and the proclaimer of the primacy of state power. This interpretation, which viewed the current issues of the day in connection with Hus' struggle, continued up until the last days of the 20th century. There is a lack of understanding of the true essence of Hus' efforts in the contemporary Post-modern perception of the world, however. The logical results of this misunderstanding are recurrent, outdated explanations involving stereotypes, simplification and a tabloid approach.

Editorial: Biblical and Non-Biblical Sources of Popular Religiosity in World Christianity

Christianity, as our first contributor to this issue reminds us, is supremely a religion of the Book. The narratives, symbols and doctrinal content of the biblical writings supply the constituent texture of the religion. Nevertheless, as the same contributor, Ole Jakob Loland, points out, for much of Christian history the great majority of Christian believers did not have direct access to the text of the bible: its teaching was mediated and refracted through their participation in, or observation of, a nonvernacular liturgy, and through religious art, music, drama and the communal observance of pilgrimages and festivals in honour of the saints. In traditionally Catholic societies, such as those of Brazil and Mexico (the subjects of our first two articles), Christian motifs and ideas suffused the structure of community life, but they did so as part of a miscellany of inherited social values and practices, some of which had very little to do with the bible. As our second article by Toomas Gross makes clear with reference to the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, deference or respect (respeto) to the traditional hierarchical pattern of social relations and communal observance became an integral element in what it meant to be a faithful Christian. Later Protestant incursions into this Catholic cultural environment have had to negotiate the terms and extent of their accommodation or non-accommodation to the demands of respeto. These Protestant expressions of the faith have, of course, been more explicit in their appeal to the bible as the criterion determining the evaluation of social and religious custom, but Protestants have brought their own set of

Central European Connections of Six Manuscript Organ Tablature Books of the Reformation Era from the Region of Zips (Szepes, Spiš)

Tablature notations that developed in the sixteenth century in the field of secular European instrumental music had an impact also on the dissemination of purely vocal and vocal-instrumental church music. In this function, the so-called new German organ tablature notation (also known as Ammerbach’s notation) became the most prominent, enabling organists to produce intabulations from the vocal and vocal-instrumental parts of sacred compositions. On the choir of the Lutheran church in Levoča, as parts of the Leutschau/Lőcse/Levoča Music Collection, six tablature books written in Ammerbach’s notation have been preserved. They are associated with Johann Plotz, Ján Šimbracký, and Samuel Marckfelner, local organists active in Zips during the seventeenth century. The tablature books contain a repertoire which shows that the scribes had a good knowledge of contemporaneous Protestant church music performed in Central Europe, as well as works by Renaissance masters active in Catholic environment during the second half of the sixteenth century. The books contain intabulations of the works by local seventeenth-century musicians, as well as several pieces by Jacob Regnart, Matthäus von Löwenstern, Fabianus Ripanus, etc. The tablatures are often the only usable source for the reconstruction of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphonic compositions transmitted incompletely.

The Sacred in Bits and Pixels: An Analysis of the Interactional Interface in Brazilian Catholic Online Rituals

Through digital technologies, a new form of communicational interaction between the user and the sacred occurs in an online religious experience. This phenomenon is illustrated in practice by numerous religious services present in the online Catholic environment, which manifest new modes of discourse and religious practices, beyond the scope of the traditional church – what I term here “online rituals” – marked by a process of mediatization of religion. In this paper, from a corpus of four Brazilian websites, I analyze key concepts for the understanding of this phenomenon, including digital mediatization and interface. I examine, in these Brazilian Catholic websites, the communicational configurations of the religious experience from five areas of the interactional interface: the screen; peripherals; the organizational structure of content on websites; the graphic composition of the webpages; and possible interface failures. Finally, I examine a shift in the communicational dynamics of religion today, marked by new materialities present in online religious rituals.

Huguenot Belief and Practice in Eighteenth-Century Paris

Protestantism was illegal in eighteenth-century France, yet many French Reformed Protestants, better known as Huguenots, managed to maintain their religion and identity until the French Revolution granted religious freedom. Several thousand of them lived in Paris, but remained a tiny minority in a very Catholic city. Given this context, and little access to pastors or collective worship, what kind of Protestantism did they observe? This article suggests that, like other minority groups, their religious practice and thinking were influenced both by the Catholic environment in which they lived and by the culture of the late eighteenth-century city. By 1789 they had moved away from certain Calvinist traditions, and some of them had adopted a surprising ecumenism.

Religion and returns in Europe

Drawing on social identity and social impact theory, this paper is the first to investigate the impact of religious preferences on share prices and expected returns at the country level. Using data from 12 European countries, our findings suggest that religion has a significant effect on the share price of companies whose activities are considered unethical, i.e., tobacco manufacturers and alcohol producers. The share price of these companies (called sin stocks) is depressed when they are located in a predominantly Protestant environment (relative to a Catholic environment). With investors in Protestant countries being more sin averse than in Catholic countries, they insist upon higher expected returns on sin stocks. Conversely, religious preferences do not have the same impact on the performance of other companies, e.g. socially responsible companies. Our results are robust to various methodologies and controlling for several firm-specific, industry-specific and country-specific characteristics.

Wokół idei stronnictwa katolickiego w Królestwie Polskim

After 1905 political sympathies amongst Catholics in the Kingdom of Poland were divided between two parties: the National Democracy and the Party of the Realistic Policy (SPR), which was a group with conservative-amicable direction. Despite the fact that “realists”, how members of SPR were being named, had contacts and support from representatives of the polish episcopacy, the political dominance amongst lay and clerical Catholics belonged to the National Democracy. The ideology of the National Democracy in religious-church issues was not accepted by some members of the Catholic environment, even by priests who until than were supporting the National Democracy. The biggest critic of this party was the “group of Czestochowa” – a main part of the ultraconservative environment in the Kingdom of Poland. This group demanded from leaders of the National Democracy program changes. In case of the failure of this undertaking they have a plan of establishing a new, alternative political party for Catholics. This idea became more and more popular in the Catholic environment. Some of them believed that neither the National Democracy, nor SPR were able to represent businesses of Catholics sufficiently. It was supported by some of the priests and representatives of the episcopacy. The biggest supporter of this idea became Roger Lubieński, a historian, a writer, a community worker and an editor of the catholic newspaper – “Faith”. The matter of forming the catholic party became current especially in 1908. The idea of Lubieński was supported by environment of the catholic “Daily Newspaper Universal” and his editor priest – Hipolit Skimborowicz. In this newspaper well-known catholic journalists took part in the big discussion about forming the catholic party and also about project of the program. The conclusion of this discussions was, that „catholic camp” should be more active and should aspire to create own national-catholic party. But there was one problem – an absence of unanimity in the “catholic camp”. Some of the catholic priests who belonged to the National Democracy or sympathizing with this party opposed. Debate on the project and different positions showed that it was not the appropriate time for realizing a political plan. It also showed that Catholics in the Kingdom of Poland were too divided. The fiasco of the idea of establishing the national-catholic party suited national democrats but they had to consider the fact that in the future in more favorable circumstances catholic community might execute their own idea of political party competitive to the National Democracy.

Non-institutionalised Lay Religious Communities in the Czech Republic and the Care for the Ill Strategy

The objective of this study is to focus on how two non-institutionalised lay religious communities in the Czech Republic, selected for this research, apply an adaptation strategy called the care for the ill strategy. The aim is to demonstrate the way these communities view the phenomenon of health/illness and how it is reflected in their relationship to the Catholic Church. This paper is part of a larger ethnographic study that analyses activities carried out by non-institutionalised religious communities active in the Catholic environment.

When Oyono's “Boy” Speaks Dutch: Two Readings in One Language

De Huisjongen, The dutch translation of ferdinand oyono's une vie de boy, was published in 1980 by kosmos and released in two cities: Amsterdam, where the publisher had its headquarters, and Antwerp, the site of its Belgian branch. For Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgian) readers, the Catholic and French colonial environment described in the novel represented a world that in many ways felt familiar. In the once deeply Catholic Flanders, where French used to be the language spoken by the elite and where the memories of the former colony Belgian Congo are still vivid, people could easily identify with Oyono's main character, Toundi.In the Netherlands, however, the memories of the nation's colonial history are characterized by a predominantly Protestant world-view that primarily evokes images from Southeast Asia. There, in the former Dutch East Indies, it was not the masculine “boy” but the feminine babu who took care of the household. This explains the decision by the then twenty-seven-year-old Dutch translator of Oyono's novel, today's best-selling author Herman Koch, not to use boy in the title but to opt for huisjongen (lit., “house youth”). The idea of having a “boy” as housekeeper clearly sounded strange to this Dutch translator.In view of the different associations the novel must have evoked among Dutch and Flemish readers, this article presents two separate analyses of the same translation. One reflects a Dutch perspective on De huisjongen and interprets Toundi, a child diarist doomed to die at the hands of oppressors, as an African Anne Frank. The other reads the novel from a Flemish perspective and interprets Toundi as an African variant of Manneken Pis, the roguish street boy from Brussels who derides the authorities.

The Puzzle of Corporate Control

In this research paper the main forces that influence different kinds of corporate control of the largest firms by country are evaluated. Firms controlled by individuals, Government, miscellaneous investors or widely held, exist under different circumstances. While firms controlled by individuals are small, proliferate on civil-law based countries with low levels of economic freedom, firms controlled by Governments multiply under low standards of disclosure, undeveloped financial markets and non catholic environments. On the other hand, the presence of miscellaneous investors is more frequent when stocks are glamorous and small wherein the smaller shareholder can easily use their limited resources and monitoring the management/larger shareholder. Finally, widely held firms are large and are stimulated by an economic freedom behavior.

Mesnice: Eating meat: A middle age name for winter big fat eating cycle

This paper discusses the usage and meaning of the expression mesnice, based on the source from the 15th century. This term is related to the period in between Christmas and big fat eating cycle, when it is allowed to consume animal products, especially meat. The research shows an existence of a concept different than those of the Church one, expressed in terms mesopust (meat) and siropust (cheese) which imply restraint in consuming meat and cheese in a diet. The testimony about the existence of the unique term mesnice, which included the whole period of meat consuming, points out to a significance of the winter big fat eating cycle preceding Great fasting, and which has a special place in the cyclical change of season errands in an agrarian based society. In turn, this allows us to assume the existence of certain behavior and activities such as carnival forms of celebration similar to those in the Catholic environments in the late middle age Europe or much later, in the documented folk inheritance of the 19th and 20th century, which, in turn, could point out to new fields of research in poorly documented folklore of the middle age Serbia. The term mesnice (and meat weeks), much more than the term mesopust, points out to a social significance of the period preceding the Great fasting and its interpretation within a laic culture, folk rituals, celebrations and fun.