Catholic Movement Research Articles

Fulfillment, Salvation, and Mission: The Neo-Conservative Catholic Theology of Jewish–Christian Relations after Nostra Aetate

The neo-conservative Catholic movement, led by prominent figures like Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak, played a significant role in shaping Jewish–Christian relations in the United States following the Second Vatican Council. This article analyzes their theological understanding of Jews and Judaism, which combined an adoption of the Council’s conciliatory rhetoric with a relatively narrow interpretation of its teachings. By examining their views on key concepts such as “fulfillment”, salvation, and mission, the article highlights the complexities and tensions within the neo-conservative Catholic approach to interfaith dialogue and its relation to their broader goal of promoting religion in the American public sphere.

Strengthening partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals: engaging faith-based organizations and scientists in youth climate change learning and action

Collaborations with and among faith-based organizations (FBOs), natural scientists, development organizations, and youth offer untapped potential for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). FBOs are important cultural partners for achieving the SDGs globally in numbers of adherents (80% of humanity) and resources, owning 8% of habitable land, half the world’s schools, and many health and community development services; they provide assets for formal and informal education, forming youth leaders, and social justice action. Natural scientists are also critical to SDG achievement because the environmental components in many goals require specialized skills and background. We focus on Climate Action (SDG 13) as it links to other SDGs and because climate justice directly connects to human development - a major area of FBO work, and engages scientist outreach and youth action. We surveyed The UN Environmental Program (UNEP) Faith for Action and other major FBO networking initiatives that were formed to address the SDGs as well as literature covering other interfaces and partnerships between religion, sustainability, youth, SDGs, science, climate change, and education. We examined curriculum and guidebooks to identify best practices and identified gaps in partnership development. The Faith Pavilion and multifaith statements at COP28 and the international Catholic movements emerging from the SDGs-concurrent 2015 Laudato Si' encyclical and its follow-up 2023 Laudate Deum are exemplary in mobilizing educators, institutions, and organizations to integrate SDGs into activities through a faith and particular mission lens. International development FBOs and diverse religious groups worldwide support climate adaptation and mitigation by connecting their central mission to environmental care. Today’s youth are unprecedented in number, sense of urgency, experience of climate anxiety and grief, and engaged sustainability actions. Yet, youth, FBOs and scientists are often not included in SDGs work. We recommend developing partnership skills, cultural and religious literacy materials, programs, and toolkits for secular groups and scientists partnering with FBOs, and networking opportunities to form partnerships. Connecting FBOs, including youth organizations, to larger youth climate movements and other collaborative climate networks, and creating climate action materials connecting to faith backgrounds of particular youth, will better equip potential partners for achieving the SDGs.

Liturgical features of the Neocatechumenal Way movement in the context of integration into the structure of the Roman Catholic Church

The Neocatechumenal Way (Neocatechumenate) is a movement that emerged within the Roman Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council. Its main mission is to bring into the Church baptised persons who, for various reasons, are distant from the life of the Church. Because of its liturgical peculiarities, the Catholic movement has received mixed reviews from scholars. On the one hand, Western theologians have been positive about the activities of the Neocatechumenal Way, especially in terms of the results of ecclesialisation. On the other hand, some researchers and representatives of the church hierarchy and clergy reacted negatively to the closed nature of the church communities, the sacramentology and the practices of churching. The article attempts to identify and analyse the liturgical characteristics of the Neocatechumenal Way and their role in the process of integrating the movement into the structure of the Roman Catholic Church. In order to achieve this, the author has examined a number of sources that provide insights into the specifics of the Neocatechumenal worship. The central question addressed in the article is why the Catholic hierarchy refused to accept the liturgical particularities of the movement, despite its general recognition as a legitimate way of being church. The author suggests that the leaders of the movement based their liturgical practices on the theological concept of “communion” — a central ecclesiological idea of the Second Vatican Council — and sought to renew parish life. In the process of reform, however, the movement rejected a significant part of the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical heritage and challenged the institutional form of the Eucharistic community.

Devoted, Pious, Frivolous and Irreverent Women: The Representation of Female Religiosity in Spanish Painting, 1868–1917

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show how Spanish painting of the nineteenth century helped to construct the narrative of a female religiosity based on sentiment, which was specific to women. This narrative was not free from misogyny because women's piety was often diluted, converted into something superficial. It was brimming with exaggerated sentimentalism, the product of superstition and lacking in careful reflection, without an intellectual religious discourse – which women, by their nature, could never reach. Women's involvement in religion and catholic movements was not as insubstantial, sentimental or naïve as it has been presented or made out to be; but this reality was not reflected in painting.

Race Theory versus a Religious World-View: SS–Ustaša Relations and Islam in the Independent State of Croatia

Abstract This article analyses SS policy toward the Bosnian Muslims of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) within the context of the ideological and political relationship between the German Reich and the Ustaša regime. As part of its broader aim of mobilising Muslim support for Germany during the Second World War, the SS adopted and pursued a pan-Islamic policy in its effort to recruit Muslim soldiers for the Croatian-Bosnian Waffen-SS Handschar Division. Although the SS officially regarded the Bosnian Muslims as ‘Croats of the Islamic faith’ and Aryans, SS propaganda focused on the appeal to religious sentiments and treated them primarily as members of a global Islamic community. This unique pan-Islamic policy was the product not only of broader geopolitical aims that arose in reaction to wartime exigencies but also a widespread Nazi Islamophilic attitude that was combined with the anti-Catholic ideology characteristic of the SS leadership. The SS’s pro-Islamic policy actually undermined one of the main political-ideological aims of the Ustaša government, namely, the integration of the Bosnian Muslims into the Aryan-Croatian ‘national community’. Contrary to the widespread historiographical view that the Ustaše were a politically Catholic movement, this article highlights the fact that they adhered to a clearly secular racial-nationalist ideology, while the SS exaggerated the influence of clericalism in the NDH. Historiographical accounts of SS policy toward Islam in the Balkans have tended to play down the role of the Ustaše and Nazi anti-Catholicism, even though a more thorough analysis of SS-Ustaša relations can shed more light, as this article shows, on the precise nature of the relationship between race and religion in National Socialist ideology.

“I'm going to do battle… I'm going to do some good”. Biographical trajectories, moral politics, and public engagement among highly religious young Catholics in Spain and Mexico

AbstractPublic debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy‐related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed “moral entrepreneurs.” Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.

Italian occupation and the emergence of the Slovenian resistance movement in 1941

The article highlights the political situation in the Slovenian lands occupied by Italy during the Second World War, in the summer of 1941 – the first half of 1942. The focus of the study is the Slovenian resistance movement organized by the communists, whose center was first in Ljubljana, and then in the forests of Kočevje and other remote places. The author analyzes the features of its development in the province of Ljubljana: the creation of the Liberation Front, which managed to attract representatives of various ideological and political trends, the beginning of an armed uprising and partisan movement, the emergence of a liberated territory with the center in Kočevje. The positions and activities of representatives of the national forces that sided with the occupier are also considered: the Slovenian People’s Party (SNP), the Bishop of Ljubljana G. Rozhman, the leader of the ultra-right Catholic movement L. Erlich, etc. The policy of the Italian occupation authorities in the province of Ljubljana, repressive measures carried out by them in order to eliminate the Slovenian resistance movement are covered in detail

Człowiek w systemie totalitarnym. Życie i dzieło dr. Jerzego Matyjka (1926-2017)

Jerzy Matyjek was born on November 14, 1926 in Radziejowice near Żyrardów, in a family with strong patriotic traditions. Since 1942, he was a sworn soldier of Związek Walki Zbrojnej – Armia Krajowa (The Union of Armed Struggle – Home Army). In 1945–1951 he studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian University, and then at the Medical University of Warsaw. His marriage to Barbara Hanna Bodendorf in 1952 started a period of his dynamic activities aiming at popularisation of natural family planning methods. Together with his wife, he visited parishes in the Western Pomerania with lectures and talks explaining the woman’s biological cycle and rising awareness about harmfulness of abortion, very widespread in those days. At that time Jerzy Matyjek worked at the Neurology Ward at the Voivodship Hospital in Koszalin. Due to cumbersome harassment by the Security Service, in 1973 he moved to Toruń and was appointed a head of the Neurology Ward at the Health Care Centre No. 1. In 1974, he became an ordinary member of the Catholic Intelligentsia Club (KIK) in Toruń, and in 1978–1983 he was its president, establishing, for example, the social studies section focusing on studies on the Catholic social sciences. Due to his involvement with the ZNAK (The Sing) movement and close relationships with the Warsaw KIK, the President of the Toruń KIK was investigated under the intelligence operation bearing a code name “Doctor”. The preserved transcripts from talks conducted by the Security Service officers prove his unwavering position and critical perception of the Polish People’s Republic political system. In August 1980 he was a counsellor of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee at the Toruń Deck Equipment Production Plant “Towimor”, and in December 1980 he became a member of the Toruń Inter-Enterprise Founding Committee of NSZZ „Solidarność”. He was interned on the day on which the martial law was proclaimed, and initially imprisoned in Potulice. Despite the repeated pressure from the Security Service, he did not signed a declaration of loyalty offering to him a chance of release from the internment. Eventually, he was discharged from the camp in Jaworze on February 23, 1982. After he regained freedom, he was not able to restore activities of the Catholic Intelligentsia Club in Toruń which was disbanded in May 1983. In November 1984, Jerzy Matyjek became a confounder of Committee for commemorating the place of abduction of Priest Jerzy Popiełuszko in Górsk. In the 1980s, he actively supported the Diocese Centre of Assistance for Repressed at the Church of Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Toruń. After 1989, he was the MP during the first term of the RP Parliament (1991–1993) and was a Counsellor during the second term of the Toruń City Council (1994–1998). In the 1990s, he was involved in development of foundations for the new Toruń Diocese, actively participating in new secular Catholic movements (The Society of Catholics Families of the Toruń Diocese). Jerzy Matyjek died in Toruń after a long illness, on January 31, 2017.

Women and the Fight for Urban Change in Late Francoist Spain

Abstract This article explores how Spanish women formed grassroots groups to fight for the transformation of their neighbourhoods in the late 1950s and 1960s — the latter years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. In contrast to most histories of feminism, which focus on literate, secular groups in universities or the centres of cities, its subjects are activists based on the outskirts of Madrid and in the industrial areas of Asturias, many of whom were Catholic, came from rural areas and left school before the age of 14. Histories of feminism have tended to overlook completely movements in the southern European dictatorships, while accounts of modern Spain often see male politicians and experts as the driving forces shaping the built environment under Franco. But photographs, archival material and oral history interviews show that women demanded ‘cosas básicas’ (basic resources) on a widespread scale in Asturias and Madrid. They made these claims in the context of unprecedented internal migration, industrial unrest and the spread of social Catholic movements: factors often neglected in studies of social movements. The women involved have sometimes struggled, however, to take pride in their actions in later life. Patterns in their life stories suggest why, and offer insight into what agitating under Franco has meant for how they understand their lives, identities and relationships.

The Relations of the Antanas Smetona Regime with the Catholic Opposition, 1929–32

The article’s main objective is to present the relationship between the Antanas Smetona regime and the Catholic opposition in 1929–32, and an evaluation of the repressive measures applied during this period. An analysis of various sources revealed that the actions of the right-wing nationalist government toward the Catholic opposition – which included the clergy, Catholic social organisations, and the Christian Democrats – were extremely harsh, significantly since the Catholic movement did not threaten the state sovereignty, public order, or political doctrine carried out by the Lithuanian president. The 1929–32 timeframe refers to the period of the greatest tension in the conflict between the Lithuanian government and the Catholic Church. The conflict between the Republic of Lithuania and the Vatican divided society, thus disrupting the existing positive diplomatic relations, which were reflected in the signing of the concordat in 1927.

Thanh Lao Công [Young Christian Workers] in Tonkin, 1935–1945

This article focuses on the emergence of the youth Christian workers movement in Tonkin during the decisive decade before the Vietnamese Revolution (1935–1945). It explores the spread of the social doctrines and associational forms of the global Catholic Action movement among Vietnamese Catholics in a colonial context. How were these new forms of militancy disseminated among the Vietnamese Catholic communities, both clergy and laity? To what extent were Catholic youth mobilized by these perspectives of living their faith beyond the borders of their parish and its “good deeds”? An analysis of the Thanh Lao Công (TLC) or Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC) [Young Christian Workers] in the three major northern cities—Hà Nội, Hải Phòng, and Nam Định—illustrates the adaptation of global Catholic ideas and organizations in a Vietnamese context. It shows the attempts of major figures to enact reforms within the Vietnamese church regarding economic and social transformations at the end of the 1930s. It highlights the initiative of the TLC’s young Vietnamese leaders who seized the opportunity of the promotion of youth movements during the Vichy period and participated in social and political debates in a context of nationalist turmoil.

Találkozások, inspirációk és a közös szolgálat. A KALOT református kapcsolatai

"Encounters, Inspirations, and Approaches to Social Service. The Relationship of the Catholic Youth Movement of Agricultural Workers (KALOT) with the Reformed Church. The Catholic Youth Movement of Agricultural Workers (KALOT) was established in 1935 owing to the initiatives of Jesuit father Jenő Kerkai. In a couple of years, it became the most successful Catholic corporative movement in Hungary with 500,000 members. KALOT was engaged in the Hungarian social question and struggled for an agrarian reform policy. During World War II, its members and leadership also took part in the illegal, anti-fascist resistance movement. In 1945, KALOT started its post-war reorganization, but among the new political circumstances, it fought for its survival in vain: in 1946, it was banned by the communist Ministry of the Interior. The study examines KALOT’s relationship with the exponents of the Reformed Church and its movements. Based on archival research, a mutual cooperation between the denominational movements is proven, which also shows the first results of an ecumenical dialogue and practice. Keywords: interwar Hungarian history, social issue, Christian youth organizations, social movements, ecumenism "

IV. LGBTQ+ Lay Catholics Co-Creating the Church

As the other articles in this roundtable suggest, Catholics in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century were able to draw upon a long tradition of lay involvement in various lay apostolates, the renewed teaching on the role of the laity proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council, and the worldwide presence of forms of international lay organizations, including Pax Romana and Catholic student movements. Additional contributions to this discussion could easily include some of the other official and institutionalized forms of lay involvement that proliferated in the twentieth century—the rise of various new ecclesial movements such as Opus Dei, Focolare, and the Communità Sant'Egidio; the Catholic Family movement and other forms of lay-led renewal at the national and parish level that pursued the conciliar vision of the universal call to holiness with enthusiasm and persistence; the entry of thousands of laypeople into ministries and teaching roles previously restricted, in practice if not always in statute, to the ordained and to members of religious communities; and the particular roles of lay Catholics with historically oppressed or marginalized racial and ethnic identities in finding a voice in postconciliar Catholicism.

III. Pre-Conciliar Specialized Catholic Action and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in the United States

Eileen Fagan's and Janice Thompson's thoughtful and provocative call for papers in the Mysticism and Politics section of the 2021 College Theology Society (CTS) Annual Meeting prompted me to think anew about the complex legacy of the Friendship House (FH) movement in the United States. Fagan and Thompson invited papers that would help CTS members reflect on how we might “approach our world with a ‘mysticism of open eyes’ and an ‘attitude of encounter’” and to “think of and act on behalf of a future that shows Christianity embracing human dignity and common good for all God's people.” A look to the past can help us work more effectively in the present for that kind of future. The history of Friendship House, a mid-twentieth-century Catholic interracial movement, combined spirituality and action for justice in ways that merit a closer look. More specifically, the archival and published material from the Friendship House movement in the 1940s illustrates the legacy of one Catholic action initiative centered on racial justice that combined spirituality and political action for the common good. This history can help contemporaries track ways that Catholics have been involved in such movements and might be engaged in similar efforts today.

Catholic Civil Servants and Social Services: State and Subsidiarity in Italy and France, 1945–1958

Abstract After World War ii, in France and in Italy, a new generation of civil servants in charge of public assistance policies – all coming from Catholic movements – sought to transform the ways in which roles and responsibilities were allocated between State, local councils, private actors, and families. This article focuses on the Italian Amministrazione per gli aiuti internazionali, established in 1945 and headed by deputy Lodovico Montini (brother of the future pope Paul vi), and on the French Direction de la population at the Ministère de la Santé et de la population, created in 1946 and managed by Emmanuel Rain. The analysis will contribute to an explanation of how public assistance, which was deemed to disappear in the face of the emergence of social security, underwent an expansion and how a new welfare regime characterized by a novel form of mixed economy emerged.

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions

Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions

The Eucharist as a Source of Political Action: Dorothy Day as a living example of Johann Baptist Metz’s “Dangerous Memory”

Attending Mass and helping the suffering are not two separate things. In Christian life, the former should directly lead to the latter. In order to clarify this deep connection, first I will turn to Johann Baptist Metz, especially the centrality of the concept of anamnesis in his theology and hence how his political theology is deeply linked with or actually grounded in the Eucharist and liturgy, for which anamnesis is an essential concept. Metz points out the centrality of the “dangerous” memory of the crucified Lord for the Christian faith and suggests that when we remember the suffering of Christ we also remember all of the victims of history. Further, this memory of accumulated suffering should prepare us for socially emancipatory action. Thus, through the concept of anamnesis, we can see how participating in Mass should directly lead to political action on behalf of the suffering. As a concrete example of this connection realized, I will look at Dorothy Day in the second half of the paper. The Eucharist was central to her conversion, her spirituality, and her Catholic Worker Movement. In her, we can see a concrete example of the living memory of the suffering constantly nourished by the Eucharist and realized as a socially emancipatory action. Thus, by looking at Day through the lens provided by Metz with a focus on the living memory of suffering, I will stress that the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life,” is the key to bring theology into action.

Catholic Church and Conservative-Traditionalist Groups: the Struggle for the Monopoly of Brazilian Catholicism in Contemporary Times

The Roman Catholic Church in Latin America was crossed by numerous currents of political thought in the mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first century. A pivotal moment for the reconfiguration of the Catholic structure took place in the 1960s, with the movement of distension with modern values carried out by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). From then onwards, we see the resurgence of movements more to the right, anti-modern in value, although they are present in modernity. What ideas and values are the symbolic vertebrae of these Catholic movements that see Catholic tradition as a stronghold under attack? The article intends to explore the hypothesis that these traditionalist movements and groups that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, especially in conflict with the directives of Vatican II, have values and ideas loaded with religious pessimism and political reactionarism and reflect the complex relationships between Catholicism and modernity. Based on research in primary and secondary documental sources located in the historical-sociological epistemological horizon, it is intended to present an overview of these groups, some of them more institutionalized, others more diffuse, their distinct origins, and their convergence towards a religiously traditionalist perspective while it is politically reactionary.

The fatherland and religion in Spanish Catholicism: from turn-of-the-century decline to the Rif War (c.1898–1923)

ABSTRACT The present article analyses both the discourse as well as actions and policies through which non-Carlist Catholic movement promoted and socialised the Catholic image of Spain, from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the 1920s. The anticlerical fervour of the first decade of the twentieth century served to mobilise Catholics who called for the re-Catholicisation of Spanish society for the benefit of religion and the fatherland. Recourse to the fatherland and its identity as exclusively Catholic were significantly reinforced during the insecurity unleashed by the crisis of 1917 and the threat of revolution. Finally, the present paper also analyses the repercussions of the Catalan nationalist movement in 1918–1919 and the Rif War, two events that only augmented the centrality of the fatherland for the Catholic discourse of the period.

A „Katolikus Akció” néven társult szervezkedés Marosvásárhelyen és Ágotha Endre papi életútja

With the available archival resources and through exploring the life, work and political actions of Endre Ágotha, the dean and parish priest of Nyárádselye I trace the unfolding and failing of the schismatic catholic peace movement legitimated in Marosvásárhely in the period 1950-1956. The state backed “Catholic Action” did not succeed in severing the Catholic Church in Romania from Rome by settling the “pending cases” between the church and the state and only a small portion of the clergy joined the movement, yet it has made significant moral damages by dividing the believers and the clergy. The Holy See condemned the movement and it’s key figure Endre Ágotha has brought upon himself the harshest punishment of the Catholic Church: excommunicates vitandus. He received absolution only on his deathbed.