Catholic Mass Research Articles

Fire-Faith and the Gnostic Neo-Templars

Abstract The article analyses the early development of Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) Gnostic Catholic Mass and its c. 1917 German translation by Theodor Reuss (1855–1923), the founder and first international head of the initiatory fraternity Ordo Templi Orientis. Crowley’s Gnostic Mass is an influential and important example of esoteric group ritual still celebrated across the globe today. Reuss’s translated ritual holds historical interest, being the first published version of the ritual (1918) and containing a number of editorial innovations. The article discusses Crowley’s and Reuss’s collaboration and their respective masses in context, suggesting Reuss’s innovations to the Gnostic Mass shed light on his own interests in phallicism and neo-Gnosticism as well as his wish to promote Crowley’s teachings to the continental European esoteric milieu.

An Acoustical Survey of a Catholic Chapel

The modern-day celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass places an increased emphasis on the speech, music, and participation of the congregation in these ministries. Thus, there is an increasing emphasis on ensuring churches provide acceptable experiences for speech and music. This paper presents the results of an empirical study of a Roman Catholic chapel. The acoustic metrics were determined from impulse response data gathered via microphones recording balloon pops. Sound pressure level measurements were gathered with a sound pressure meter recording a boombox noise source. The balloon pops and boombox noise source were placed in various locations indicative of sources during the celebration of the Mass. Findings include that the RT30 measurements of the chapel were consistent with the EDT values suggesting that early reflections should not provide a significant impact on the perceived reverberation of the chapel. Based on the results, we conclude that the chapel does not have any significant deficiencies in its ability to transmit speech and music. This provides a basis for the chapel administration to invest in a professional assessment as they begin a project to install a new organ and choir loft.

Milesian Rewritings of the Annunciation to the Virgin in ‘The Martyr’s Crown’ via Petronius, Dante, and Shakespeare

Reading ‘The Martyr’s Crown’ as a parody of the Biblical Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, this article presents a previously unrecognised intertextual source to which the title of Brian Nolan’s story alludes: the liturgy of the Roman Catholic mass celebrated on the memorial day of Our Lady of Sorrows. As will be shown, this liturgical source serves as a key for an additional cluster of three interrelated literary echoes in Nolan’s short story. First, ‘The Martyr’s Crown’ is discussed as an ironic rewriting of the Biblical Annunciation story via the Mock-Marian imagery featured in the Paolo and Francesca da Rimini episode of the Divina Commedia – an indecent story or fabliau inserted in Dante’s epic framework. Secondly, Nolan’s tale is examined as a rewriting of the Biblical Annunciation story via Ophelia-related passages from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Thirdly, the story is approached as a rewriting of the ancient tradition of the naughty Milesian tale, as reflected in the ‘Widow of Ephesus’ episode inserted in Petronius’s Satyricon. Within the frame of ‘The Martyr’s Crown,’ the fabliaux- and Milesian tale-inspired mockery of the Biblical Annunciation to the Virgin recurs in the embedded narrative of the widow Mrs Clougherty told by the unreliable narrator Mr Toole. Finally, the article shows how this intertextual cluster is queered in the narrative situation of ‘The Martyr’s Crown.’

Cultrure Acculturation among Vietnamese Catholics: A Survey of the Trắc Drum Set in Bắc Ninh Diocese

Cultural acculturation unfolds through a process of exchange, prolonged contact, reception, and transformation among diverse cultures. This phenomenon finds its most conspicuous manifestation in various forms of thought, culture, and art, particularly in the realm of musical performance. The symbiotic relationship between culture and religion is also an embodiment of acculturation, as the imperative to assimilate and innovate within distinct cultural and religious contexts consistently arises to align with the demands of each culture and religion within specific historical settings. A notable illustration of this phenomenon can be found in the realm of Catholicism, which serves as the focal point of certain research endeavors. Introduced to Vietnam during the early 16th century, Catholicism has exerted a substantial influence on Vietnamese culture, despite encountering resistance stemming from cultural and ideological disparities. In essence, the prolonged interaction with Vietnamese culture has engendered various unique art forms, including Catholic music, which have organically integrated into the fabric of Vietnamese Catholic cultural life. This article adopts a theoretical perspective on acculturation and the theory of cultural-religious relations to expound on pertinent subjects derived from investigations into the Trắc Drum instrument set employed in Catholic Masses within the Bắc Ninh Diocese of Vietnam. The analysis encompasses the instrument set’s origins, notational system, traditional aspects, and scholarly components. Furthermore, this study delves into the impact of this orchestra on the cultural and artistic landscape of the contemporary non-Catholic populace.

With Whom Should One Worship? A Fresh Perspective on John Calvin’s Liturgical Theology of Physical Proximity and Spiritual Epidemic

COVID-19 has taught us that whom one surrounds oneself with has a profound influence on one’s well-being. In that light, does whom we worship with matter as well? John Calvin would in fact argue that the people we physically worship with have a great impact on our spiritual life. According to Calvin, if you simply worship with (who he deemed to be) the unrighteous group of people, you will lose your spiritual health or even endanger salvation. This is why he was so insistent on asking the French Protestants to leave France and join him in Geneva. What is striking is that worshipping with the right kind of people does not have that automatic effect. Rather, they have to actively engage in many beneficial activities together, encouraging and empowering one another. This is because, for Calvin, while unrighteousness itself is highly contagious, growing in a nurturing community takes conscious and purposeful effort. In this sense, Calvin explains that idolatry and unrighteousness were a spiritual epidemic that is spread physically, while true piety is acquired through a communal practice of many forms of spiritual exercises. This article will have many important contributions to the field of worship and faith formation. Most notably, while scholars have long been addressing Calvin’s view of active practices during worship which help faith formation, I will show that that is not all there is. Instead, I will demonstrate how even simple physical proximity in worship can have an impact on one’s spiritual growth in Calvin’s thought. Another important contribution of this article would be offering a clearer presentation of Calvin’s sacramental theology of body and soul. Scholars have long been arguing that, for Calvin, the bodily participation in a Roman Catholic mass while believing in (what was for him) the true gospel was a serious sin of idolatry and hypocrisy. My article will further develop this idea by noting that, according to Calvin, not only is it wrong to do one thing with one’s body and another with one’s soul but having one’s body in a negative environment is harmful to one’s soul. If one’s body is surrounded by other people who do not believe in the true gospel, it would have a devastating impact on one’s soul. In other words, for Calvin, the body and soul influence each other in a way that has sacramental and developmental implications.

Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age by James L. Nolan Jr

Reviewed by: Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age by James L. Nolan Jr Abena Dove Osseo-Asare (bio) Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age By James L. Nolan Jr. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 294. In this gripping book, James L. Nolan Jr. narrates the involvement of his grandfather James F. Nolan (hereafter Nolan) in the creation of the first nuclear bombs, while working as a physician at Los Alamos in the 1940s. The author, who is a highly regarded sociologist of technology, creates academic and personal distance from his subject in order to develop a critical analysis of Nolan's participation in early radiation research designed to cover up the risks of nuclear bombs (pp. 139, 184). The result is a compelling commentary on not only the ethics of atomic warfare but also the technological experiments of our own age, including artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. The author, who inherited his grandfather's mementos, letters, and photographs after his father's passing, peppers descriptions of the establishment of the Los Alamos laboratories community with childhood memories gleaned from his family. His father played with building sets with the sons of nuclear physicists. His grandmother remembered how phone calls and trips to the grocery store might be intercepted by secret service officers concerned that anyone could leak nuclear secrets. Above all, the author details the pleasures of the frequent parties of the nuclear settlers and his grandfather's [End Page 620] extraordinary ability to deliver hundreds of babies as people coupled and procreated. After honing his skills as an obstetrician delivering babies, Grandpa Nolan was to deliver "Little Boy," the uranium required to complete the bomb to be dropped over Hiroshima. Nolan rode the USS Indianapolis from San Francisco to Tinian Island, escorting the stash of uranium. Nolan was not able to disclose the contents of his cargo and had trouble passing as an artillery officer, wearing his mock military insignia upside down and at a loss for basic terminology surrounding armaments. Nolan retreated to Catholic masses on board the ship, officiated by his new friend Thomas Conay, who was among the 870 men who perished after a Japanese submarine torpedoed the ship shortly after Nolan and the uranium came off-board. The book does not detail exactly what happened on the days of the bombings in Japan from the perspective of either those in the planes or those on the ground. The author's grandfather was witness to neither. Rather, the book describes Nolan's days whiling away time on Tinian Island, waiting for news of the "success" of the Trinity Test and subsequent Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks. An entire chapter covers the Trinity Test and the radiation poisoning and deaths that followed a group of girl scouts who were camping nearby and unknowingly played in the ashy "snow" that fell from the sky and wafted their way. Nolan's journey did lead him to conduct medical examinations in the wake of the attacks on Japan. U.S. medical teams faced pressure from military officials to suppress early reports by an Australian journalist of the "atomic plague" that followed the bombings. They measured radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their observations of patients led to official reports stating that radiation dissipated to tolerable levels and any injuries were from burns in the actual bombing. Nolan then further papered over the effects of radiation on people as a researcher in the Marshall Islands after subsequent bomb tests there. Nolan did make small remarks about the real risks, but the military covered them up, even in congressional hearings. In his later years, Nolan arguably retooled his expertise on radiation and bombs for good, serving as a gynecological oncologist in Los Angeles and developing new techniques to target cancer cells. He also grappled with possible effects of radiation exposure himself, including presumably infertility. A major tension in the book is the extent to which Nolan was a whistleblower on atomic radiation and his perspective on the necessity of nuclear warfare. The author highlights his grandfather's liminal place as an observer of the Los Alamos scene...

Reader, I

Reader, I Corey Van Landingham (bio) had grown skeptical of line. Of stern procession down a page's blue rule. Malmaison's perfumed rows the Empress marched down—Rosa Centifolia, Rosa Lucida—while her husband's flotilla lapped toward Trafalgar. Of the jealous descent. I had cast off such impossible realms—near Diamond Head, on an unseasonably cool August morning, Gloria, great-aunt, finally let go the material world forty minutes after father was lifted from his last bed. Then I shared the blood of three still-breathings. Lone quatrain, us. Who mostly didn't speak, or write. All to say—when I attended the teeming wedding feasts, the high school graduations of yet another Cleveland cousin, the austere Catholic masses full of him, I softened, a bit, my stance. Signed my name inside his family Bible, though I didn't believe. Seventeen casseroles sent post-surgery, reliable piles of Christmas cards. In the frozen cemetery, enough small talk to cancel out a whole sad self. When I glanced, after, the sprawling hand-drawn tree from which he came, I thought of shallow [End Page 217] roots. And the women of Greece mourning, each year, mortal Adonis. Reader, some say they were a simple people, who believed in mere symbols, gods of corn. They planted—in the quick, festive flush of summer heat—fennel and barley in terracotta shards. "Gardens of Adonis" they called these small, short-flourishing graves, and when on the eighth day the false flowers withered, the women flung them to the sea. Imagine—their dead that present. Listening. So when I make the small cut, insert the orange-flowering Arizona into our disease-resistant, winter-sturdy Wife of Bath, I say a little prayer. Beautiful, brief Adonis—forgive me my hubris, this dreamy cultivar, this mingled seed. We wrap grafting tape around the rose's wound. Wife now, I see it. The fresh lesion of two. Tender twinning. We know not what will come after—peach petals, scent of myrrh? A tusked beast rushing from the forest to gut us, four months in hell? But we know what came before. Which ship held which man before he lay down in which new country with which wife. The log they sawed, the plates they stacked. The children they buried and the children that buried them in deep family plots. It astonishes me still how many shared the same name. How his people will gather in the same church gymnasium, in Bucyrus, after the funeral, the baptism, after the wedding for the same creamed chicken. That they stand in the longest lines for that. Reader, I found belief outside belief when for the first time the cicadas weren't screaming, all evening outside our bedroom, me me me me. [End Page 218] Corey Van Landingham Corey Van Landingham is the author of Antidote, Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, and Reader, I, which is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2024. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois. Copyright © 2023 The University of the South

"It Isn't Just Us": The Korean Catholic Church's Responses to Corona-19 as Seen in Diocesan Bulletins

The ceasing of public Catholic Masses just before Ash Wednesday 2020 in response to Corona-19 posed a significant problem as it meant Catholics could no longer easily receive Holy Communion, the center of Catholic faith life. Thus, one might have expected the Korean Catholic Church to oppose the limitation or cancellation of religious gatherings. But in fact, the opposite happened, with the Catholic Church being singled out for its support of such policies. This paper explores this response of Catholic leaders to Corona-19 and the theology that undergirded it through an examination of the bulletins of two archdioceses, Seoul and Daegu. It argues that the bulletins promoted a particular Catholic theology that understood adherence to public health measures as analogous to love of neighbor, and that such acts of love would bring a triumph over the virus. However, for such efforts to succeed they had to extend from Korea to embrace the entire world, particularly disadvantaged countries. Moreover, this study also argues that rather than being treated as a singular event, Corona-19 was understood as akin to issues like climate change, which were presented as sharing the same root cause of human selfishness.

Religion in the Twenty-First Century

Religion in the Twenty-First Century

현상학적 관점에서 습관적 여가 행동의 의미

A phenomenological study of habitual leisure behaviors is used in this study to elucidate the nature of freedom. The conventional habit theory views the body as a passive object under a dualistic approach where the mind is separate from the body. The body is construed as a meaningful condition that is required for a human being to exist and participate in the world from a phenomenological perspective. Habit, which is construed as inseparable from the body in the phenomenology, has an essential role in connection between human beings and the world. The data were gathered through SRHI, in-depth individual interviews, and long-term observation of eight Catholic Mass accompanists. It is proposed that the situational cues of “Mass” that normally precede the activity of playing the organ can automatically activate a habit of playing the organ. Habitual behaviors, such as those performed in leisure, are automatically triggered by predictable circumstances without a conscious effort. The findings show that the process of habit formation is linked to three emerging themes: (a) from thinking to behaviors, (b) embodied consciousness, and (c) body-subject freedom. According to this study, habit formation process cannot be construed only as mechanical or psychological rewards, but rather as a process in which the body connects the world and consciousness. The findings also show that habit is formed through motility of the body, and eventually, human beings exist in and is connected with the world through the embodied consciousness. In conclusion, freedom is not a fixed emotion or imaginary experience but rather something that can be lived during the habit formation process, and hinges on embodied consciousness through which human constantly establish a meaningful connection with the world.

Liberationist Perspectives on the Misa Criolla by Ariél Ramírez

The Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramirez is a symbol of liberation theology in South America. Written between 1963–1964, this musical work is the result of the decisions made on the sacred liturgy at Vatican II and the Indigenous Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It became popular around the world and helped bring attention to the indigenous poor of South America through its indigenization of the Roman Catholic Mass text and music directly after the Second Vatican Council. The Misa Criolla, however, can only be fully appreciated by understanding its process of localization, from its historical context, theological underpinnings to its musical attributes. From a liberationist perspective, it represents the compromise of the openness, liturgically and theologically, of Vatican II and more conservative movements afterwards through the localization of the Catholic Mass liturgy.

The Traditional Use of “Incensi” among the Annang People: Liturgical Opportunities and Challenges in Ikot Ekpene Catholic Diocese, Nigeria

Almost every major world religion and tribal spiritualities light plant parts in worship to seek greater connection to the divine. Incense is defined as a material that is burned to produce an odour which is also referred to as the perfume itself that is produced from the burning of plant. Many people light incense sticks in their homes just for the sweet smell and the ability it has to transform space. Others too in our world today may have a stigma connecting incense sticks and illegal drug use. Many of us who have been Catholics may have witnessed the swinging of censers, filling the Church with sweet-smelling resins. The tradition of using incense in the liturgy goes back to ancient Hebrew worship, as recorded in the Psalms: “Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight as the incense” (Ps 141:2). Incense as often used as part of a purification ritual seems to have lost its symbolisms and proper use of it in the Church as well as the decline of its use. The real problem here is that many faithful hardly know the real reason and purpose why incense is an important part of the Catholic Mass. Do people fully understand the use and symbolism of incense during the liturgical celebrations? Do the traditional use of incense offers some opportunities or challenges in the Church liturgical rites? The purpose of this study is to investigate, stimulate and sensitize the Church and all the Christian faithful of the symbolism of incense which have become optional or none use and to take effective action in reclaiming the lost symbolism and proper use of incense. Perhaps a better understanding of the traditional use of incense may help or enhance the use and importance of the symbolism of incense in our liturgical celebrations. Maybe some elements found in the traditional use of incense, the Sacred Scripture and the Church’s practice may enrich and recover the lost symbolism of incense. And may be by organizing Liturgical Seminars/workshops to seminarians and young religious in formation houses it may address the essential elements in the way incense is use.

Mediated Catholic Mass During the COVID-19 Pandemic: On Communication, Technology and Spiritual Experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Catholic churches in Indonesia to conduct physical distancing, close their doors and move mass to online media or television. This situation is something extraordinary for the Catholic church which is known to adhere to tradition in the implementation of its worship. This study aims to determine the experience of Catholics in conducting mediated worship using Religious-Social Shaping of Technology examining and concepts, namely social affordance, religion-online/online-religion, and digital media law. This qualitative research is done by interviewing six informants using descriptive phenomenological approach. The results of the study indicate four main findings. First, informants have the freedom to choose the tools or channels to attend the mediated mass. Second, the interactivity in the mediated mass is lost. Third, the atmosphere of the mediated mass can have an impact on the solemnity of worship. Fourth, the use of technology for mediated mass cannot absolutely be paralleled with physical worship, but some informants still hope that the mediated mass will be held after this pandemic. This research concludes that mediated mass during a pandemic is not as ideal as a physical mass because the experience gained is not optimal, but it opens up wider opportunities to reach people who may not be physically present in church from anywhere. Academically, this research is expected to increase the wealth of knowledge about mediated worship during a pandemic. Meanwhile, in practical terms, this research can be a reference for the church to improve its overall quality. Pandemi COVID-19 membuat gereja Katolik di Indonesia melakukan physical distancing bahkan menutup pintunya dan mengalihkan misa ke media daring atau televisi. Keadaan ini merupakan sesuatu yang luar biasa bagi gereja Katolik yang terkenal memegang teguh tradisi dalam pelaksanaan ibadahnya. Penelitian ini memiliki tujuan yaitu ingin mengetahui pengalaman umat Katolik dalam melakukan ibadah termediasi dengan menggunakan Religious-Social Shaping of Technology serta beberapa konsep lain, yaitu social affordance, religion-online/online-religion, dan hukum media digital. Adapun pelaksanaan penelitian kualitatif ini adalah dengan mewawancarai enam informan menggunakan pendekatan fenomenologi deskriptif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan empat temuan utama. Pertama, informan memiliki kebebasan untuk memilih alat maupun kanal untuk mengikuti misa termediasi. Kedua, interaktivitas dalam misa termediasi menjadi hilang. Ketiga, suasana misa termediasi bisa berdampak pada kekhusyukan saat beribadah. Keempat, pemanfaatan teknologi untuk misa termediasi memang tidak bisa mutlak disejajarkan dengan ibadah fisik namun sebagian informan tetap mengharapkan misa termediasi dilakukan setelah masa pandemi ini. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa misa termediasi selama pandemi memang tidak seideal misa fisik karena pengalaman yang diraih tidaklah maksimal, namun membuka peluang lebih luas untuk menjangkau orang-orang yang tidak mungkin hadir secara fisik di gereja dari mana saja.Secara akademis penelitian ini diharapakan dapat meningkatkan khazanah pengetahuan tentang ibadah termediasi pada saat pandemi. Sementara secara praktis, penelitian ini dapat menjadi acuan bagi gereja untuk meningkatkan kualitas secara menyeluruh.

Theatre and Knowledge by David Kornhaber

Reviewed by: Theatre and Knowledge by David Kornhaber Paul A. Kottman (bio) David Kornhaber. Theatre and Knowledge. London: Red Globe Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 82. $9.99 paper, $7.99 e-book. David Kornhaber's Theatre and Knowledge is about as long, in terms of word count, as a typical academic essay, though it is published in the series 'Small Books on Theatre and Everything Else.' I mention this upfront to distinguish Kornhaber's book from typical, lengthier academic monographs. Kornhaber's "book" (paper? essay?) is—as the series Preface puts it—eminently "readable in one sitting by anyone with a curiosity about the subject." Theatre and Knowledge offers an enjoyable, breezy survey of questions that animate a variety of philosophical and theatrical traditions around the world: What does the theatre allow us to know? What is the relationship between philosophical knowledge ("justified true belief") and the knowledge claims made in theatrical presentations? Kornhaber does an admirable job of introducing students to a range of key texts and traditions in which such questions take center stage. (Advanced undergraduate or post-graduate students—or the curious reader—seem to be the target audience of this book.) One of the most admirable aspects of Theatre and Knowledge is the range of its references—from Plato to the Sanskrit drama Sakuntalā (c. 400 CE), from medieval morality plays to Goethe and Stoppard, from Confucius to Deleuze. Kornhaber's examples are mostly, but by no means exclusively, 'Western'—and he provides his readers a keen sense of the sheer pervasiveness of the problems he raises, in a variety of religious, artistic, and philosophical registers. Students of comparative literature and drama would do well to note his example. Because the book is a survey, it does not need to advance any groundbreaking new thesis about its topic. Nothing Kornhaber says is beyond question, and nothing he says—to this reader, at least—sounds any wildly false notes, either. The book succinctly and very ably recounts "ways in which merely entering a theater always ushers us into a direct encounter with knowledge," and it provides readers with many opportunities to further pursue this encounter in other works (5). Kornhaber does slip in one claim which I found intriguing—he promises that his book will ask "what it is that the theater alone allows us to know" (19, my emphasis). By this he means: how the theatre "unsettle[s] and expand[s] the idea of knowing in ways that no other practice can achieve" (19). No other practice? Given that Kornhaber turns—in the next sentence—to a religious drama (The Play of Adam in 1150 CE Normandy), one wonders whether or how the theatre manages to distinguish itself, as an allowance of knowing, from the historical development of religious rituals. Kornhaber's own examples, in fact, remind us of the way in which the theatre might arouse our "justified true belief" in ways or venues or occasions which can be very hard to [End Page 538] distinguish from, say, the Catholic mass or a Hindu festival or a social-religious processions in which suspended disbelief might be at play. Kornhaber wants to say something about the specificity of the theatre's relation to the allowance of knowing—yet, at almost every turn, that relation is shot through with religious (and, in this sense, with extra-theatrical) claims upon that relation. Kornhaber is well-aware of this, of course, which makes his promise to say something about what "the theater alone allows us to know" even more revealing. What is "the theater alone"? In short—to pose the question that is begged by Kornhaber's book throughout—what could make the theatre itself into an object of knowledge (whose relation to knowledge as such could then be scrutinized)? How to say, with any confidence at all, that we know something about the "theater alone"? Let us try this question one other way, slipping in a suggestion: if, as Kornhaber notes, Plato was the first to try to authorize philosophy by distinguishing philosophy from the theatre, then perhaps this was because Plato sensed that the achievement of any philosophical knowledge (well, of any knowledge whatsoever) somehow depended—at...

The Holy See and the Mobilization of the Faithful (1859-1870)

In the middle of the 19 th century, the papacy saw its temporal power threatened. In 1849, faced with the Roman Revolution, Pius IX benefited from the help of the powers, that intervened militarily to restore the pope to his throne. It is however in a very different situation that the papacy finds itself about ten years later, in 1859, when the war in Italy ends. The disinterest of the powers pushes the Holy See to develop a diplomatic strategy based in part on seeking support from the Catholic masses. The papacy seeks to organize the mobilization of the faithful in order to constrain governments to defend the Holy See. This support of the masses gave rise to a vast transnational mobilization that took multiple forms. This article will pay particular attention to its financial and military dimensions. Thus, the article highlights the paradoxically modernizing character of the intransigent turning point for the Church. It led her to adapt her repertoire of action to this «modern civilization» that she intended to fight and to take advantage of some of the new means of action that characterized it. While denouncing liberal modernity, the papacy was entering the era of the masses.

The Unperceived Continuity of Isaiah

The Unperceived Continuity of Isaiah

Eucharistic devotion and textual appropriation in post-reformation England

ABSTRACT This essay explores the forms of sacrament centred piety that developed in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart church. It does so by utilising Christopher Sutton’s “Godly Meditations”, first published in 1601. The text’s movement from Catholic mass book to Protestant communion guide, and Sutton’s amendments to later editions, are used to examine the ways texts were altered to fit different theological and pastoral requirements. Attention is paid to the ambiguous and flexible rhetoric of the “Meditations” and of avant-garde conformists more generally. It is shown that this ambiguity allowed such texts to be appropriated by Laudians who cast them as precedents for their innovations. In doing so, Laudians recast avant-garde conformity as something much narrower than it had been. Ultimately, it is suggested that a more nuanced approach to avant-garde conformity is required; one which recognises that anti-Calvinism was not an inherent part, or necessary consequence, of sacramental piety.

El XXXII Congreso Eucarístico Internacional de 1934 en las páginas de la revista Para Ti

For four days in October, 1934, The 32 nd International Eucharistic Congress was celebrated and organized in honor of Jesus in the Bless Sacrament. For the first time, the South American continent was distinguished to hold the religious encounter, choosing Buenos Aires as venue. This was considered an honor by the local Catholic Church. The Congress caused an eucharistic fever and it demonstrated the popular Christian fervour of the Argentinian society, after decades of secularist progress from the State and the civil institutions. The event revealed the popular catholic mass pressure to occupy increasingly prominent spaces in the public and social life, fact manifested in the massive support for each Congress act throughout the country. The magnitude of the Congress was reflected by the graphic media, which increasingly widened their field of penetration towards the different professional sectors. Among the long-standing massive publications in the 30s of the 20 th century, the weekly women´s magazine Para Ti, by Editorial Atlantida, represented a sample of the women´s readings of the rising middle and popular urban areas. From its sections dedicated to topical issues, the magazine covers the development of the Eucharistic Congress and it reveals the role of women in the religious manifestation.

"He Who Sings, Prays Twice"? Singing in Roman Catholic Mass Leads to Spiritual and Social Experiences That Are Predicted by Religious and Musical Attitudes.

Singing is an essential element in every religion. In the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, theologians expect congregational singing to have several clear-cut effects which can be translated into psychological hypotheses. This study is the first to approach these quantitatively. N = 1603 Catholics from German-speaking countries answered an exhaustive questionnaire that asked whether and to what degree these putative effects were actually experienced by churchgoers. We found that people do, to a large degree, associate feelings of community and spiritual experiences with congregational singing. We also identified relevant intraindividual factors that contribute to the frequency of these experiences, most importantly, religious and musical attitudes. These results are discussed in the light of psychological literature on the effects of group singing on social bonding and wellbeing, but also in the context of theological, ethnomusicological, and sociological research on singing, songs, and spiritual and social experiences.

Expiation in Levinas and His Understanding of Judaism, and in the Catholic Mass

The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas describes ethical substitution as a suffering for another’s suffering. Levinas’s phenomenology would make of the act of substitution a universal calling, a calling regardless of race, culture, and ethnicity, that makes one truly human. Levinas’s ethical phenomenology, imbued with his Jewish faith tradition, provides philosophical illumination on the Christian and specifically Catholic understanding of Jesus Christ as the Suffering Servant of God, as found in the New Testament and in the Liturgy of the Mass. These connections and illuminations return us to our Christian roots and re-emphasize the primordially ethical basis of Christian spirituality and worship, an ethics of vicarious substitution and expiation celebrated in the Holy Eucharist.