Catholic Perspective Research Articles

Diffused Religion and Civil Society in Italy

“Diffused religion” is to be understood in at least a double sense. First of all, it is diffused in that it comprises vast sections of the population and goes beyond the simple limits of church religion. Besides, it has become widespread, since it has been shown to be a historical and cultural result of the almost bi-millennial presence of the Catholic institution in Italy and of its socializing and legitimizing action. However values diffused in the Italian civil society can be considered as a form of conflict with the established institution of Catholic Church. Civil society shows a peculiar trend towards civic freedoms and ethical pluralism. Although the Catholic perspective is dominant, the civil society prefers a different system of values, even though not so much different from ecclesiastical social doctrine. This way there is a public space where religion is not the reference point and other perspectives take place.

The Invisible Church: People with Profound Intellectual Disabilities and the Eucharist – A Catholic Perspective

The author’s aim is to address the issue of the participation (or lack thereof) of people with profound intellectual disabilities in the Eucharistic liturgy in the Catholic Church. The starting point for the analysis is the prevalent, as it seems, absence of those affected by profound intellectual disabilities at the celebration of the Eucharist. Drawing from the contemporary Church teaching, the text shows people with intellectual disabilities as full members of the Church, endowed with both an inalienable right, as well as an obligation to partake in the Eucharistic celebration. The Biblical idea of the Church as the Body of Christ, present also in the most recent teaching of the Magisterium, serves as an especially helpful perspective here, highlighting the Church’s identity as a community of members bound with one another and having an essential need of one another, who, by sustaining themselves with the Lord’s Body, are to grow in their communion both with one another and with Christ. The author also points out a misconception of liturgy and misguided ways of perceiving people with intellectual disabilities, which are largely to be blamed for the affected people’s practical exclusion from the most essential aspect of the life of the Church.

Catholic Perspectives on Human Biotechnological Enhancement

Although there is some consonance in the language of transcendence between proponents of the Catholic faith and of human biotechnological enhancement (HBE), their goals are incommensurate. Nevertheless, consistent with the valuation of the body as integral to the human person, Catholic culture has in fact proven to be a fruitful context for developing external therapeutic HBEs. Catholic perspectives on internal HBEs, especially in the context of ‘transhumanism’, are, by contrast, neither clear-cut nor easy to establish. A prerequisite for progress is to understand what is meant by flourishing in a Catholic worldview, the root metaphor of which is second-person relatedness to God, culminating in divine friendship. Hence important measures of success of internal HBEs will include sustaining, or at least not impeding, thoughtful attention and the capacity to receive experiences that can sanctify the mind.

A Catholic Perspective on Homoerotic Desire

A Catholic Perspective on Homoerotic Desire Christopher Damian (bio) Introduction In recent years, homosexuality has become one of the most contested cultural issues, at both a national and international level. Even the question of language is hotly debated, especially in Christian circles, with some rejecting "homosexuality" because of its relationship with clinical psychology in past years, and some insisting upon its use because of the associations of the term "gay" with certain political and cultural movements. This article will take a step back from those particular questions and will seek to give an account of a more fundamental question: that of desire, particularly same-sex desire. It will give a historical and philosophical account of the nature of erotic love and then apply this account to the question of homosexuality and homoerotic desire. While maintaining an adherence to Catholic teaching, especially the teaching laid out in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church," this article will seek to move the conversation forward, in giving a positive account of homoerotic desire and reframing the current discussion of homosexuality and Catholicism. [End Page 51] I. On Erotic Desire I will begin a discussion of erotic desire, before moving to the question of homosexuality, homoerotic desire, and Catholicism. As will be examined in section four, "homosexuality" is a narrow category in the catechism. Homoerotic desire, and erotic desire more generally, considers something much broader. "Homoerotic desire" should not be confused with "homosexuality," and "eros" should not be confused with "sexuality." In his Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Pope St. John Paul II gestures toward an expansive view of erotic desire. He writes, "According to Plato, 'eros' represents the inner power that draws man toward all that is good, true, and beautiful. This 'attraction' indicates, in this case, the intensity of a subjective act of the human spirit. By contrast, in the common meaning—as also in literature—this 'attraction' seems to be above all of a sensual nature."1 Likewise, Christopher Dawson argues for a broader understanding of "the erotic" than simply sensual considerations. Drawing on the work of Werner Sombart, Dawson identifies "the erotic type par excellence as 'the religious mystic,' the 'man of desire,' like St. Augustine or St. Francis."2 Consider the feeling of having your breath taken away by a beautiful painting, or a sunset, or a striking line of poetry, or by a lovely face, that feeling of being drawn out of yourself by something or someone so beautiful that it awakens something within you, that feeling of transcendence when you encounter something incredibly good. Plato calls that the "erotic," the experience of being drawn out of yourself by the beautiful. The "erotic" does not simply concern the "sexual," but every experience of beauty, such that the "sexual" may be one way of experiencing the erotic, but is not the only way. John Paul criticizes the common limitation of the erotic "mainly to a naturalistic, 'somatic,' and sensualistic interpretation of human eroticism."3 He looks, rather, to Plato for a fuller understanding of eros. Such an understanding of eros, in its broadest sense, includes [End Page 52] every inclination drawing man out of himself. The experience of having one's breath taken away by a beautiful painting is an erotic experience. The same is true for having one's breath taken away by a sunset, or a line of poetry, or a beautiful man or woman. The same is said of a delicious-looking cake that captures your attention and incites longing, or the longing for God in the Eucharist. Eros should not simply end with that "feeling" of transcendence, however. The highest forms of eros call us to something more. In The Symposium, Diotima discusses the concept of "spiritual pregnancy." In one example of such a pregnancy, Diotima says that a soul bears within itself wisdom. When a man comes upon a friend who is worthy and whom he loves, he gives birth to this wisdom in argument and discussion, and the two nurture it together as their spiritual child. According to Diotima, "all human natures … are pregnant, yearning to reproduce both physically and psychically." Pregnancy is innate to humans, and...

The Catholic Perspective on Death with Dignity

Given the momentum in favor of legalizing physician-assisted suicide, Diane Rehm’s recent article in the New York Times provides an opportunity to assess the arguments and assumptions used to justify and promote physician-assisted suicide, in light of Church teaching. Supporters often share the impassioned pleas of those who have personally experienced devastating suffering at the end of life. Rehm’s article is no exception, recounting both her husband’s and her close friend’s deaths. These deeply personal and intense emotions cannot be ignored by anyone arguing against physician-assisted suicide.

Philosophical Posthumanism, by Francesca Ferrando; Human Dignity in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition: Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant Perspectives, edited by John Loughlin

Philosophical Posthumanism, by Francesca Ferrando; Human Dignity in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition: Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant Perspectives, edited by John Loughlin

The Magdalene in the Reformation by Margaret Arnold

Reviewed by: The Magdalene in the Reformation by Margaret Arnold Beth Kreitzer The Magdalene in the Reformation. By Margaret Arnold. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. 300 pp. An object of seemingly endless fascination and opinion, Mary Magdalene is the focus of this book. While Mary—the “apostle to the apostles” for her role in first witnessing and then announcing the risen Jesus—has been more thoroughly studied by historians of the medieval period, less is known of her image in the early modern era, despite the fact that the increasing skepticism toward saintly legend and veneration of the period is well known. In her wide-ranging study, Arnold portrays the transformation of the dramatic image of the medieval Magdalene—a composite figure of three women in the gospels, Mary of Bethany (who had famously chosen the “better portion” than her sister Martha), the “sinful” woman of Luke 7, usually assumed to be a repentant prostitute, and the Mary from Magdala most known for being the first to encounter Jesus after his resurrection (the medieval Magdalene also incorporated a number of legendary accretions that appear to have been less significant in early modern texts). Arnold notes that the discovery or thesis that the medieval figure of Mary of Magdala was in fact a composite of three separate women, first proposed by the humanist and biblical scholar Lefèvre d’Étaples in 1517, had less impact than one might have thought. Most interpreters continued to accept the traditional image of the composite Mary. Arnold helpfully surveys a large amount of material by a wide variety of authors, and organizes her text by religious community, with chapters on Lutheran, Reformed, Radical, and Evangelical perspectives on the Magdalene, as well as two chapters (one focusing particularly on female authors) on Roman Catholic perspectives. She tackles the assumption that Mary Magdalene would have [End Page 440] been dismissed from Protestant attention in its general critique and discontinuation of the cult of the saints. Arnold discovers that not only does Mary survive among Protestants, she even thrives as an important role model. Interestingly her image is also transformed among Catholic audiences, reflecting broader changes in the transition from medieval to modern European culture. The Magdalene figured frequently in debates surrounding issues central to reform: justification by faith, the priesthood of all believers, preaching by lay people, and questions surrounding appropriate roles and vocations for women. Her image, one that Arnold notes has less “flexibility [than] it had in medieval piety” (240), is still flexible enough that Christians on all sides of the confessional divides could continue to embrace and use it. For Protestants, Mary Magdalene was a model of the redeemed sinner saved by grace alone, while for Catholics she participated in her own redemption through serving Christ. As witness of the resurrection and apostola apostolorum, Protestants could champion Mary’s role as a pious and faithful lay Christian witnessing publicly to her own faith. While Catholics (even female religious such as Teresa of Ávila) avoided references to female preaching, which was already closely associated with certain Protestant—and heretical— communities, they stressed Mary’s intimate relationship with Christ, one available particularly to religious women in convents. But although Mary of Bethany, as opposed to her sister Martha, was once seen as the foremost exemplar for nuns, in the writings of Teresa and later female Catholic authors the religious life was now seen as one combining aspects of both Mary and Martha—the active and the contemplative. Arnold brings a sensitive analysis to the many texts and contexts that she investigates, presenting a thorough and complex image of a transformed Mary Magdalene. The book will be useful to scholars of this period, but also accessible to a general audience interested in how people of the past read and interpreted the Bible. [End Page 441] Beth Kreitzer Marymount California University Rancho Palos Verdes, California Copyright © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

El naciente derecho laboral mexicano: 1891-1928

This essay shows the ideological and doctrinal sources that prepared the way for the so-called social constitutionalism in Mexico since the end of the 19th century. Very close to the current European social issue, the Mexican liberals discussed the protection of workers and the dignity of work, disclosing free recruitment and free exercise of the profession enacted at the old article 5 of the Constitution of 1857, from subordinated and salaried work of the new article 123 of the Constitution of 1917. A mixture of libertarian and Catholic ideas and some other external influences led to the foundational and controversial debate of registering as a constitutional norm, the protection of the social and economic rights of the manufacturing and agricultural workers, which snatched judicial control, in civil matters, (which was common in other countries of America) of lawsuits arising from the recruitment, permanence and dismissal of workers, which passed to the scope of the Conciliation and Arbitration Boards under the control of the revolutionary executive of 1917. The essay shows, with original and little consulted sources, that the ideological and doctrinal influences that were behind the writing of the article of work in Mexico were in some times against the attribution of judicial law, the Amparo, in hands of the Mexican Supreme Court, despite the fact that the executive power maintained until the current reforms of 2018-2019, the control of those conciliation and arbitration boards. With the reforms of 1928 and the first Federal Labor Law of 1931, labor matters became a norm of political control of the executive power, inaugurating a kind of mass politics and unions control managed by General Cardenas government (1934-1940).It also highlights the strong influence of the libertarian and anarchist ideas of the political newspaper Regeneration of Ricardo Flores Magon in the doctrinal body of section VI of the new article 123, which the literature known until today tends to insinuate more from the Catholic perspective of Rerum Novarum.

Perseverance in the Parish? Religious Attitudes from a Black Catholic Perspective. By Darren W. Davis and Donald B. Pope-Davis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv+184. $99.99.

<i>Perseverance in the Parish? Religious Attitudes from a Black Catholic Perspective</i>. By Darren W. Davis and Donald B. Pope-Davis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv+184. $99.99.

U kresu drogi do państwa niewolniczego. Krytyka socjalizmu w twórczości Hilaire Belloca i Gilberta Keitha Chestertona

Socjalizm zapisał się w historii jako obietnica remedium na niepożądane cechy ustroju kapitalistycznego. System ten spotykał się jednak od samego początku z negatywną oceną wielu badaczy, którzy opisywali niebezpieczeństwa wynikające z takiego rozwiązania. Wśród nich byli H. Belloc oraz G.K. Chesterton, dwóch angielskich autorów działających w pierwszej połowie XX w., którzy powołali do życia oryginalną koncepcję społeczno-ekonomiczną, znaną jako dystrybucjonizm. Pisząc z perspektywy rzymskiego katolicyzmu i cywilizacji chrześcijańskiej, byli oni głęboko rozgoryczeni znanym im z doświadczenia industrialnym kapitalizmem. Jednocześnie odrzucali socjalizm jako alternatywę, powołując się na naturalny charakter instytucji własności prywatnej oraz wrodzoną człowiekowi potrzebę wolności. W niniejszym artykule autor argumentuje, iż socjalizm nie stanowi słusznej odpowiedzi na bolączki kapitalizmu, będąc ustrojem w istocie swojej sprzecznym z ludzką naturą, wszelkie zaś próby wprowadzenia w życie jego założeń kończą się nie postulowanym kolektywizmem i uspołecznieniem środków produkcji, lecz dalszym pogwałceniem praw ludzkich, a ostatecznie przywróceniem pogańskiego w swoim charakterze państwa niewolniczego.

The Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina ed. by Robert Emmett Curran

Reviewed by: The Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina ed. by Robert Emmett Curran Adam L. Tate The Church and Confederacy: The Lynches of South Carolina. Edited by Robert Emmett Curran. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019. 456 pp. $69.99. In 1972, Yale University Press published The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, a massive collection of wartime letters from the family of Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, a chief promoter of the religious mission to the slaves. Robert Manson Myers, the editor of the collection, arranged the correspondence to tell the story of the Civil War through the experiences of one large family. The effect was stunning as readers gained both multiple and intensely personal perspectives on the war. Robert Emmett Curran, professor emeritus at Georgetown University, credits The Children of Pride for inspiring his project on the correspondence of the Lynch family of South Carolina, the most prominent and influential Catholic family in the state during the nineteenth century (xi). Their letters, skillfully edited and introduced by Curran, provide a Catholic perspective on the fall of the Old South. In many ways, the Lynches were a nineteenth-century southern success story. They acquired education, land, and slaves, markers of economic success in the antebellum South. Conlaw and Eleanor Lynch left Ireland in 1818, eventually settling in the small upcountry town of Cheraw, South Carolina. There they raised twelve children. The eldest, Patrick, served as the bishop of the Diocese of Charleston, which included the states of North and South Carolina, from 1858 until his death in 1882. Two of the Lynch daughters joined the convent. Ellen (1825–1887) joined the Ursuline order and became Mother Superior of their convent in Columbia, South Carolina in 1858. Other Lynches worked as physicians, entrepreneurs, and farmers. Curran, using letters from 1858 to 1865, allows the Lynches to illustrate the many challenges Catholics experienced in the Deep South. Diseases such as yellow fever made South Carolina a dangerous place in the nineteenth century. Several of the Lynch siblings succumbed to tuberculosis as well. In addition, as a distrusted religious [End Page 88] minority, Catholics had to fight for respect from their neighbors and possessed few institutions of their own to support Catholic communities. Ellen—Sister Baptista—perceived this problem acutely as she built her convent and school in the midst of the war. The Lynch letters also demonstrate that southern Catholics, spread throughout the vast rural expanse of the region, networked with each other constantly. A number of letters served to introduce Catholics who had arrived in South Carolina to their local coreligionists. Sister Baptista often asked her brother Patrick about information on various Catholic families when vetting potential nuns for her convent. Building institutions in the Deep South, especially for the Lynches, was part of a program of converting their neighbors and anchoring Catholicism in the region. Baptista, for example, welcomed Episcopalian young women to her school and expressed hopes of converting them to Catholicism. Moreover, the Lynches’ commitment to place made them patriotic South Carolinians. While their family letters rarely discussed politics, most of the political sentiments expressed in the volume demonstrated support for the Confederacy, slavery, and the war. The gem of the volume is Sister Baptista, who deserves a biography of her own. A prolific writer, she constantly pressed her brother, the Bishop, for news. Patrick’s letters were rare, and few seem to have survived. Sherman’s troops, in burning Columbia, South Carolina, destroyed Baptista’s Ursuline convent and school. Combined with Patrick’s unsuccessful voyage to Rome to solicit official recognition from Pope Pius IX for the Confederacy, the burning of the convent demonstrated the tragedy of the war for the Lynches. All they had tried to build had been destroyed. Curran notes that after the war, Sister Baptista wished to rebuild, but her brother the bishop seemed enervated by the vast destruction the war brought (364–365). Curran has done students of American Catholicism and nineteenth-century South Carolina a tremendous service by publishing this volume. It deserves a wide readership among those interested in southern religion and southern Catholicism in particular. Thankfully, it is much...

A Catholic Perspective on Law School Diversity Requirements

“Diversity” is a polarizing concept in American politics. I argue that under current legal education guidelines and policies, it is a concept that is Ill-defined, clumsily implemented, and often justified on grounds that have been rejected by the US Supreme Court. My quarrel is not with the underlying perception that cultural pluralism is increasing both here and abroad, nor with the idea that such pluralism can be the entry point to a more just and peaceful world. My quarrel is with the legal academy’s embrace of what others have called “check-the-box diversity” with little to no attention to viewpoint diversity and authentic dialogue. This is evidenced by both the development of a grievance culture on campus as well as a dangerous refusal to engage ideas and arguments that differ from the dominate liberal worldview. Sadly there is little to no evidence that Catholic law schools differ from their secular counterparts in this area. This should not be so, given the guidance of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education on multicultural dialogue. By embracing the Church’s approach to educating students in a multi-cultural society, I argue that Catholic law schools could and should become places of authentic dialogue, cultural appreciation and reform, and a more universal understanding of justice and the role law can play in responding to the challenges of our time.

Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba

Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba

Catholic Theological Perspectives on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations since Vatican II until today

This article contains the theme of catholic theological perspectives on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations since Vatican II until today. The article presents some negative opinions on Islam and some positive appreciations of Islam. Further the article looks at the Vatican II and its approach to the Islam. This is author´s theological framework of thinking about Islam. Next part emphasizes the teaching of Vatican II on Islam. Finally author presents some of the consequences of respect for Islam as a religion and the developments since the Vatican Council.

Book Review: Manual of Catholic Medical Ethics: Responsible Healthcare from a Catholic Perspective

Book Review: Manual of Catholic Medical Ethics: Responsible Healthcare from a Catholic Perspective

„Jak ktoś uwierzy, to wtedy jest jemu łatwiej”. Koncepcja pomocy dla kobiet rezygnujących ze sprzedaży usług seksualnych na przykładzie katolickiego Ośrodka dla dziewcząt i kobiet zagrożonych prostytucją i chcących porzucić jej uprawianie

Literatura przedmiotu w niewielkim stopniu dotyczy pomocy instytucjonalnej kobietom porzucającym prostytucję. Szczególnie brakuje omówienia perspektywy katolickiej, która bywa – jak w przypadku badań Sharon Oselin i Ronalda Weitzera – łączona z perspektywą radykalnego feminizmu. W artykule rekonstruuję koncepcję pomocy dla byłych pracownic seksualnych na przykładzie katolickiego Ośrodka dla dziewcząt i kobiet zagrożonych prostytucją i chcących porzucić jej uprawianie. Analizuję również poglądy jego personelu odnośnie prostytucji, prostytutek i tego, jak powinny one funkcjonować po rezygnacji ze świadczenia usług seksualnych. Swoje rozważania opieram na badaniach etnograficznych, które prowadziłam (z przerwami) w latach 2005–2016.

Making The Most of It, Counting the Cost: Some Catholic Perspectives on Luther's Revolution

AbstractAgainst the background of greatly improved ecumenical relations between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches, this article discusses Catholic scholarship on Martin Luther, from the four centuries after the reformation, when Luther was subject to consistently hostile distortions of his character, to more positive twentieth century approaches by Joseph Lortz and his followers, who saw Luther as a reluctant dissenter, essentially orthodox on the contested issue of Justification, but forced by circumstances to call for the reform of a corrupt and theologically decadent Church. But more recent reformation scholarship has called into question Lortz's negative view of pre‐reformation Catholicism, while some post‐Lortzian Catholic Luther scholarship has highlighted the reformer's radical departures from Catholic orthodoxy, consequently entailing a less optimistic reading of the doctrinal divisions between Lutherans and Catholics.

Michael A. FAHEY (Ed.), Catholic Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist, and ministry. A Study Commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America, University Press of America, Lanham - New York - London 1986, XIII + 190 pp., 13,5 x 21,5.

Michael A. FAHEY (Ed.), Catholic Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist, and ministry. A Study Commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America, University Press of America, Lanham - New York - London 1986, XIII + 190 pp., 13,5 x 21,5.

Repeat Valve Replacement in Substance-Addicted Patients

An emerging ethical dilemma in light of the opioid crisis, repeat cardiac valve replacements for patients diagnosed with endocarditis from intravenous drug use presents specific challenges to Catholic health care organizations. While secular health care is tasked with the allocation of scarce resources, Catholic institutions must address additional considerations when balancing stewardship of scarce resources, human dignity, and patient accountability. A recent ethics consultation illustrates the issues involved in multiple valve replacements for substance-addicted patients from a Catholic ethical perspective. The discussion includes policy recommendations and ethical reflections.

Christians and The State: A Catholic Perspective for the 21st Century by John Duddington, foreword by Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Gracewing, Leominster, 2016, pp. x + 225, £ 12.99, pbk

Christians and The State: A Catholic Perspective for the 21st Century by John Duddington, foreword by Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Gracewing, Leominster, 2016, pp. x + 225, £ 12.99, pbk