Catholic Practice Research Articles

To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683–1830

To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683–1830

Dialogical Intersections of Tamil and Chinese Ethnic Identity in the Catholic Church of Peninsular Malaysia

The contemporary Malaysian Catholic church bears witness to the many bridges that connect ecclesial and ethnic spaces, as liturgical practices and cultural materiality of the Malaysian Catholic community often reflect the dialogic interactions between ethnic diversity and the core of traditional Roman Catholic practices. This essay presents key ethnographic data gathered from fieldwork conducted at selected churches in peninsular Malaysia as part of a research project that aimed to investigate transcultural adaptation in the intersections between Roman Catholic culture and ethnic Chinese and Tamil cultural elements. The discussion presents details of data gathered from churches that were part of the sample and especially reveal how ceremonial practices and material culture in many of these Malaysian Catholic churches revealed a high level of adaptation of ethnic identity and that these in turn are indicative of dialogue and mutual exchange between the repertoire of ethnic cultural customs and Roman Catholic religious practices.

Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II by Stephen Bullivant

Reviewed by: Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II by Stephen Bullivant Tom Beaudoin Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II. By Stephen Bullivant . New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 336 pp. $32.95. Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II . By Stephen Bullivant. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 336 pp. $32.95. Roman Catholicism is in a difficult predicament, especially in Western countries where it once seemed solid and even powerful—if only the power of a robust minority. What seemed a self-sustaining world of shared faith, religious identity, and distinctive practices stands in deep crisis. In the United States and Britain, Catholic affiliation has trended substantially down, the moral authority of the Catholic Church has eroded considerably, and younger generations—when they choose to retain some involvement in the church—are hardly invested in maintaining the Catholic culture for which their elders sacrificed. This complicated, socially and spiritually profound shift in the fortunes of Roman Catholicism has been lived in families for several generations, even if it has been insufficiently acknowledged by church leadership for the ecclesial emergency that it is. Stephen Bullivant's Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II is a timely, data-rich foray into how this happened. Bullivant brings theology and social science to bear in constructing a lively narrative to account for the affiliation crisis as experienced in both countries. Although plenty of comparisons are made between the United States and Britain, Mass Exodus is not so much a comparative project as it is a complementary history of Catholic disaffiliation in both countries. Bullivant tells this history through a readable assemblage of quantitative, qualitative, and historical studies. Readers will gain access to a wealth, especially, of relevant social science literature. Bullivant's discussion of early studies of Catholic disaffiliation is particularly helpful, because it fills in the underappreciated history of longstanding attempts to study Catholic nonparticipation. Tracking the terminology by which scholars have tried to register less-than-active Catholic involvement usefully complicates contemporary assumptions about "Nones" and "Somes," "active" and "inactive" Catholics. [End Page 81] While the connection between Vatican II and the decline of Catholic fortunes is the conundrum at the heart of the book, Bullivant shows that Catholic practice was already changing (and measured by official standards, declining) during the Conciliar era. Bullivant is thus able to illustrate how affiliational decay had sources that both preceded and exceeded the changes introduced by the Council. Falling away from "normative" belief and practice, in other words, has not only impacted Catholicism, but has affected many established Christian denominations. (Indeed, Bullivant argues that Catholicism in the United States does much better than many other denominations in retaining members, although a competition to lose less than one's neighbor is not one in which any heritage denomination wants to be involved.) The heart of Bullivant's argument is that secular and postsecular developments since at least World War II in both countries are inherently opposed to Catholicism's essential truths and the necessity of its being different, and that Vatican II bears responsibility for making it considerably harder to muster the countercultural stances required of Catholics today. Making effective use of core concepts from recent social science, Bullivant takes the Council to task for participating in the undoing of what made Catholicism a dense culture of shared and sacrifice-inspiring practices that stood apart from the world. In his reading, Vatican II was too permissive in its liturgical reforms because it was too eager to be "relevant" to a world that was ultimately indifferent to Catholic relevance. This is a serious argument that joins a heady cluster of academic interventions over the last decade into the meaning and legacy of Vatican II in light of what looks like the considerable ecclesial fragmentation that followed. I read this book as someone raised Catholic after the Council, formed deeply by 1970s and 1980s suburban middle-class white Catholicism—the subject of considerable attention in Mass Exodus. I wondered where were the voices of those noble sisters, deacons, priests, and lay religious educators of that era in these pages...

Making Magic in Elizabethan England: Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic ed. by Frank Klaassen

Reviewed by: Making Magic in Elizabethan England: Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic ed. by Frank Klaassen László Sándor Chardonnens Elizabethan England, Early Modern England, books of magic, sixteenth century, seventeenth century, primary sources, Antiphoner Notebook, Boxgrove Manual, Cornelius Agrippa, Protestantism, Reginald Scot frank klaassen, ed. Making Magic in Elizabethan England: Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 147. Modern practitioners of magic who are interested in older sources can turn to a range of editions by occult presses that cater to their needs. Scholars and students of magic studies, on the other hand, are less well served by these same publications; with some positive exceptions, that is, such as the work of Joseph Peterson. Yet since Peterson cannot be expected to edit all surviving medieval and early modern source texts, it is fortunate that one of the leading scholars in the field of early modern ritual magic, Frank Klaassen, has now turned his attention from merely studying to also editing books of magic from early modern England, starting with the publication of two concise manuals in an effort to expand "our understanding of sixteenth-century magic" (2). Having studied Making Magic in Elizabethan England in detail alongside facsimiles of the two books of magic in question, it is my firm conviction that Klaassen has succeeded in this aim. Making Magic has a general introduction followed by separate introductions to, and editions of, both books of magic; it also includes a set of appendices, a bibliography, and an index. The general introduction outlines the conditions under which magic transitioned from the Middle Ages into Early Modernity, with a focus on ritual magic and charms—two quite distinct forms of magic that were increasingly found side by side in early modern books of magic. The central argument of the general introduction is that early modern magical practices are rooted in medieval customs, but that they evolved under the influence of cultural, religious, and legislative changes in sixteenth-century England. The social backgrounds of the practitioners were, furthermore, more varied than the medieval clerical underworld as a result of social and religious turmoil in the early modern period. Part III of Klaassen's 2013 study The Transformations of Magic devotes attention to the same period, but I find that Making Magic presents the social and cultural dynamics of early modern ritual magic more effectively. [End Page 277] The first book of magic introduced and edited in Making Magic is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Add. B. 1. Introduced as the Antiphoner Notebook, this text was copied in the late sixteenth century onto cuttings from the wide margins of a large fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript. The Antiphoner Notebook innovatively combines charms with conjurations and experiments. Perhaps the work of a cunning man, the Antiphoner Notebook focuses "on the three common areas of activity in this group: healing, thief identification, and treasure hunting" (19). A notable feature of the Antiphoner Notebook is its frequent use of materials from Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), a study of "the irrationality of belief in magic and witchcraft" and Catholicism (24). Scot presented many examples of magical and Catholic practices, which were subsequently reused without the anti-magical and anti-Catholic rhetoric by practicing magicians, such as the scribe of the Antiphoner Notebook, in "a self-conscious process of re-enchantment" (25, emphasis Klaassen's). Another noteworthy component of the Antiphoner Notebook is an experiment with a wax puppet to punish a thief (item 1 in the edition). Klaassen opines that "the use of wax images for harm in necromantic (i.e., demon conjuring) collections is curiously uncommon" (23), in contrast to its frequent appearance in legal contexts and astral magic. Yet the use of wax puppets is anything but uncommon in early modern necromancy. Cursory reading of the surviving sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English necromantic manuscripts yields about twenty texts on the construction of wax puppets for compelling thieves, harming people, and even constraining rebellious spirits. Half of these are analogues to the experiment in the Antiphoner Notebook (London, British Library, Add. MS 36674, fols. 88r, 88v, and 164r–165r (three separate texts), Sloane...

Utopian Literality: Thomas More and the Faith of Catholic Reading

In his writings on the Eucharist, Thomas More defends the literal interpretation of scripture and berates Protestants for their inordinate allegorizing. While literal reading may seem more characteristic of a Protestant hermeneutic, More's writings suggest that, when it came to the Eucharist, literal reading was no less a Catholic practice, though differently motivated. In his discussion of the Eucharist, More embraces literal reading so as to reclaim the faith, mystery, and transcendence he believes Protestants had discarded when they relied too heavily on allegorical interpretations. The dangers and limitations he ascribes to allegory shape Utopia, a fictional text whose eponymous world is defined by the absence of restrictive figuration. Reading Utopia in this light reclaims More's theological writings as pertinent to his literary contributions. As such, his work helps us renegotiate the lines between literal and allegorical reading and demonstrates the vitality of the Eucharist in shaping early modern literature.

Improving Spiritual Care at the End of Life by Reclaiming the Ars moriendi

Ars moriendi, or The Art of Dying, was a highly influential fifteenth-century text designed to guide dying persons and their loved ones in Catholic religious practices at a time when access to priests and the sacraments was limited. Given recent challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic, there is a heightened need to offer additional forms of guidance related to death and dying. This essay examines the content of the Ars moriendi and considers how key principles from the work apply to the current context. The Ars moriendi, in its direct approach to the salvation of souls and thoughtful treatment of struggles faced by dying persons, offers a much-needed supplement to typical approaches to death and dying today.

Synergism between Catholicism and Indigenous Spirituality within the Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Program of Takiwasi, a Therapeutic Community in the Peruvian High-Amazon

The association between spirituality and medicine is unfolding as a research theme that may have increasing practical implications in healthcare systems. Both spiritual and scientific dimensions are present within the treatment protocol for addiction applied at the Takiwasi Center, a pioneer therapeutic community that combines western approaches, including psychotherapy, biomedicine, and Catholic practices, with traditional Amazonian medicine. Through a series of open-ended and semi-structured interviews conducted on nine workers of the center during fieldwork research and comparison with the information obtained from literature review, the present article aims at testing the existence of an effective synergy between Catholic religiosity and indigenous-mestizo spirituality within the therapeutic process performed at the Takiwasi Center and puts in evidence some stimulating and problematic issues that arise from this synergy.

The voice of minority faith and worldview students in post-primary schools with a Catholic ethos in Ireland

This article gives voice to students of minority faith and worldview regarding their lived experiences of attending Irish post-primary schools with a Catholic ethos. The importance of listening to students’ voice is supported by Article 12 of the United Nations Charter on the Rights of the Child (1992). The research methodology was qualitative, involving interviews with 18 post-primary students of minority faith or worldview. Gramsci’s writings on cultural hegemony were then used as a theoretical lens to understand the emergent themes. The results suggest an operational Catholic hegemony in the participating schools, which is evidenced by Catholic-centric practices. Resultant inequalities exist in the facilitation for minority faith and worldview students to manifest their faith compared with Catholic students. Opting out of religion class is problematic, and the findings raise concerns, as it is evident that students’ human right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is not a reality in their schools (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article18, 1948). It appears that a tacit arrangement exists whereby non-Catholic students resign themselves to conforming to Catholic school practices. On the other hand, students expressed positivity about their schools’ ethos and wish to be educated together.

Making Congregational Music Local, edited by Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian

By providing a comparison of congregational music-making in Christian communities worldwide, editors Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian offer a compelling account of music production through the interplay among structure, agency, change, and continuity. The book is a part of Routledge’s Congregational Music Series and offers snapshots of the vibrant process of making Christian congregational music local. As a more accurate description of the complex processes of making music, the authors opt for the term “localization” rather than the more common and contested terms “indigenization” or “inculturation.” As such, they argue that “localization” captures the processes by which Christian communities adapt, adopt, create, perform, and share congregational music.The volume’s twelve ethnographic case studies on six continents integrate disciplinary insights of ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural geography, mission studies, and practical theology. They define congregational music-making broadly: “Congregational music-making is a multidimensional social activity encompassing a wide range of materials to interpret, including creative practices, social processes, institutional dynamics, beliefs, and values, and elements of material culture” (15). This definition might be too broad for some. But it does give the authors ample room to explore the multidimensional aspects of the processes of the localization of congregational music. Throughout the volume, significant attention is directed to how Christian assemblies use musical practices to position themselves relative to other groups, Christian and otherwise, with some authors relying on the insights from the architects of world Christianity: Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, and Kwame Bediako.Part 1, “Engaging Musical Pasts: Continuity and Change in Congregational Song Practices,” focuses on how Christian communities employ past musical materials to create a distinct sense of the local. Here we learn about the role of subjunctive visions with vernacular Catholic practice (Brazil), the ways in which song leaders have transformed older hymns to become mechanisms of the supernatural (Navajo, USA), and the mainline Protestant adoption of evangelical hymns in a retro turn that creates a usable past in order to reposition themselves in response to their declining numbers (USA).Part 2, “Congregational Music and the Politics of Indigeneity,” highlights what are oftentimes competing powers of different sorts. This section looks at the creation of new forms of creativity and productivity that bridge the indigenous and cosmopolitan (Northern Territory of Australia), the challenge of utilizing hybrid musical forms to engage top-down inculturation (East Africa), and attempts at constructing religious repertoire that elevates local cultures with an aim of creating overarching unity for all Catholics (Indonesia).Part 3, “Rifts, Reconciliation, and Coexistence: Congregational Music-making in the Diverse Locale,” conveys how social interactions impact the localization of congregational music. This section explores different kinds of sustained localization, even in the face of the domination of English and Western hymnody in Anglican church music (South Africa), a government’s involvement to translate the Christian songs of an ethnic minority farmer’s chorus into usable, nationalistic songs to meet the government’s political demands (China), and the shifting performative relationships between Christian and Hindu music to create emergent religious pluralism (Indonesia).Part 4, “Christian Musical Cosmopolitanisms: Producing the Local Across Racial and National Lines,” underscores the positioning of local congregational music-making vis-à-vis other communities. This set of case studies presents a snapshot of longer processes of the integration of diverse racial groups and the emerging common ground centered on musical and linguistic accommodation (South Africa), and, among other interesting topics, the role that baptism plays in the experience of religious belonging, with singing as the primary conduit of the ritual (Ireland).While the case studies are regional in scope, some reflection on the near unidirectionality of global flows of congregational music from Global North to Global South, and urban to rural, would have been welcomed. While the volume focused on congregations, it would seem important to investigate the phenomenological site of transformations of the individual, thus to feature the experiences of ontological change that might suggest more is happening than just enhancing the experience of community. Rupture and discontinuity may well result in ontological change. An inclusion of not only the social and cultural dimension but also the spiritual and ontological might have unearthed more of what is unique about Christian congregational music in relationship to other forms of music.The volume is to be commended for filling a lacuna left by studies that overlook the contextual nature of congregational music making. This highly attractive collection makes a significant contribution to the study of congregational music.

Catwalk Catholicism: On the Ongoing Significance of Federico Fellini’s Ecclesiastical Fashion Show

In Fellini-Roma (1972), the film director Federico Fellini includes a sequence about an imaginary ecclesiastical fashion show, a display of ever more outlandish clerical clothing designs. Fellini brought together various elements that, in conventional cultural coding, do not seem to fit together: secular fashion design and catwalks, and Catholic practice and ceremonial. The sequence juxtaposes and intermingles these apparent incompatibles. Surprisingly little scholarly attention has been paid to the nature and significance of this sequence. Yet it is complex, being simultaneously satirical and empathetic, as well as camp and carnivalesque. The paper reaches back in time, reviewing the history of Catholic vestments, to show that the sequence also dramatizes the fact that sartorial fashion and Church garb have overlapped and informed each other historically. The appeal of the sequence for various types of audience has been enhanced in the internet age, and the paper considers how it has become an increasingly ubiquitous reference-point for the fashion industry, bloggers, and cultural critics, especially when the latter want to thematize controversies about male homosexuality in the Church today. Fellini’s presentation of catwalk Catholicism is both a rich object of scholarship, and a multivalent vehicle used by actors for various contemporary purposes.

Du Baptême à la Tombe: Afro-Catholicisme et Réseaux Familiaux dans les Communautés Esclaves Louisianaises (From baptism to the grave: Afro-Catholicism and family network in Louisiana slave communities)

In Du Baptême à la Tombe Geneviève Piché explores Louisiana, unique in its French, Spanish, and American heritages, and the challenging subject of African Catholicism in slave communities in the early American period (1803–1845). She uses church documents, comparing the urban New Orleans Parish with the rural Saint John the Baptist Parish, but also published sources, travel literature, directories, and registers, in English but mostly in French. Her theoretical stand includes slave agency and cultural negotiation, macrohistory and microhistory, history from below, and the search for the excluded. It also includes female protagonists, and discussions of creolization, hybridity, transculturation, and multicultural processes. She views religiosity as a key socializing practice, including for the subaltern, and considers plurality important in society and in historical interpretation. In local and global approaches, she stresses how slavery in Louisiana has an Atlantic context (American, Iberian, Caribbean, African, and Latin American). Piché deals first with the life of urban slaves in the New Orleans parish, including demographics and stressing a heterogeneous servile population, with the preponderance of female slaves as domestics and merchants. Leisure and amusement play important roles in slave urban life, most of it in tandem with religiosity, officially Catholic yet mixed with African mores. She then turns to the countryside of the Saint John the Baptist Parish, emphasizing the prevalence of males, the growing U.S.-born slave population's use of English, and Protestant features opposed by French Catholic missionary zeal. As most slaves were Catholics, she deals at length with the Church and the slaves in Louisiana. Slaves were active agents in Catholic practice; women, in particular, and some within the clergy opposed slavery. The Church was split and the clergy itself owned slaves. Catholic slave owners often opposed conversion. In any case, most slaves were Catholics, and Sunday was a resting day; priests opposed family split, as the thorny issue of marriage led to common slave church unions. Free black women volunteered to spread the Catholic faith. Piché concludes that voluntary adherence to Catholicism comforted the material and spiritual lives of slaves and free blacks. Even if that is impossible to prove, her arguments are convincing and contribute to understanding the past as inspiring, as even the most destitute can forge their own destinies.

The Christian Meditation Movement: A Critical Perspective

The Christian Meditation Movement: A Critical Perspective Alexandra Slaby Introduction Lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer determines the law of faith.1 In other words, how you pray determines how you believe, and how you pray can modify what you believe. Since the end of the Second Vatican Council, which steered the Catholic Church in the direction of ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, and in the postmodern context of an interiorisation of faith, Catholics have been led to ‘ask themselves what value non-Christian forms of meditation might have for [them]. Above all, the question concerns Eastern methods’.2 Fascination for Eastern forms of prayer among Catholic laity and clergy is not new and predates the 1960s. As early as 1943, German JesuitHugoLassallesawthatthemeditationtaughtbyJapaneseZenBuddhism helped him deepen his Catholic faith, and his work has been carried on by Belfast-born fellow Jesuit William Johnston.3 Benedictine monks also have a long history of interest in bridging Eastern and Western contemplative prayer practices – from John Cassian who inspired the Benedictine Rule to Henri Le Saux (aka swami Abhishiktananda)4 to Jean-Marie Déchanet (aka the father of Christian yoga)5 to John Main, the founder of the Christian Meditation Movement to Laurence Freeman, his disciple. It has never been easier to travel East, physically or culturally. At the same time, however, Christians are less well equipped for this spiritual encounter than in the past, when the contents of their Christian faith were transmitted with a reliable continuity in time and space. Meanwhile, Eastern spiritual traditions are valued in a postmodern, New Age synthesis of cultures and spiritualities where ecclesial authority has been challenged and where elements of different faiths and spiritualities can be combined (‘Buddhist and Catholic’) if they offer a new hope of receiving affirmation and healing. Eastern meditation has gained a growing attraction in the Western Catholic world, to the point where it has become a mainstream practice taking place in spiritual and lay settings. In Ireland, it is not uncommon to find The Christian Meditation Movement: A Critical Perspective Studies • volume 108 • number 431 313 Studies_layout_AUTUMN-2019.indd 81 21/08/2019 09:14 Irish Catholics saying that such a form of meditation helps them in their Catholic practice. The Dominican retreat centre in Tallaght offered a Holy Week session in 2018 called ‘Zen and the self-emptying of Christ’. Louis Hughes OP in Kilkenny writes and preaches about body-mind spirituality, yoga and Christian meditation.6 The Jesuit Centre for Spirituality and Culture in Galway has recently been organising sessions called ‘Dive Deeper: Exploring spirituality and ways of prayer’ in a ‘contemplative approach drawing on Christian spirituality and Eastern practices such as mindfulness’.7 The newsletters of Christian Meditation Ireland, Irish chapter of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) show that the group holds sessions in various parishes throughout the country. These developments unfold at a time when, the Vatican notes, ‘it must unfortunately be admitted that there are too many cases where Catholic centres of spirituality are actively involved in diffusing New Age religiosity in the Church’.8 New Age religiosity is animated by the aspiration to create a global spirituality transcending boundaries between faiths, in search of a common global spiritual core which will unite mankind among itself and with the cosmos. So, when we hear the phrase ‘Christian mantra’, as proposed by WCCM, not only the Tibetan meditation bell, but alarm bells may ring as well. Can such a word and a practice as ‘mantra’be imported into the Christian prayer tradition without modifying the contents of the faith? It is in the light of these questions that I would like to offer an attempt at discernment on Christian Meditation Movement, understood as the prayer practice taught by WCCM. John Main’s Christian Meditation movement The Christian Meditation Movement, led by Anglo-Irish Benedictine monks, is embraced and established in Irish Catholic life, judging by the frequency of visits to the island by Fr Laurence Freeman and by the invitation of Mary McAleese as speaker at the 1997 John Main Seminar which was held in Dublin. Beyond Ireland, the movement is relatively marginal, but has not been condemned, and its members have...

The Generational Ties That Bind American Roman Catholics

Abstract Roman Catholic Studies has had little interest in or sources on Catholics marginalized by region or age or both. Challenging this assumed wisdom calls for a new orientation to the study of Catholicism, an orientation found in Anthropology. In this paper, I question why scholars have failed to ask questions about how age—different stations in life and varying generational contexts, across space, time and within one historical moment—shapes Roman Catholic practice on the individual as well as communal level? To attempt to answer this question, I use examples from my work; two ethnographic studies with Southern Catholics of all ages to explore how an interdisciplinary, anthropological approach provides scholars with a new set of questions, draws their attention to new arenas of religious action, and broadens the cast of characters who play key roles in religious communities.

‘The catechism will save society, without the catechism there is no salvation’: Secularization and Catholic Educational Practice in an Italian Diocese, 1905–14

Compulsory public education in Italy came into being almost simultaneously with the process of national unification. From the outset, the liberal ruling class was faced with the old-established educational tradition of the church, and historians of education have explored the process of the secularization of education. This article sheds light on how decisions of the hierarchy and the pope, especially during the early twentieth century, were translated into practical pastoral action, noteworthy in some cases for a surprising modernity in the means used. The article focuses on the dioceses of northern Italy and in particular that of Bergamo, a populous agricultural centre then undergoing rapid industrialization. Using diocesan archive materials and the press of the period, it focuses on new forms of pastoral work, particularly those directed at teaching the catechism by means of societies for children and young people, catechism competitions and slide shows. The results obtained using this approach challenge the perception of Catholicism as intransigent on this issue.

Los boletines eclesiásticos como fuente para la historia de la enseñanza primaria en España (1851-1931)

Recurrir a publicaciones periódicas en la investigación histórica es habitual desde las últimas décadas; sin embargo, la información proporcionada por los boletines eclesiásticos —órganos de difusión de las directrices oficiales de la Iglesia católica— no ha sido suficientemente utilizada para conocer las conexiones y relaciones entre la Iglesia católica y el estado en torno a la enseñanza. Este artículo tiene el objetivo de señalar las potencialidades de estos boletines para los historiadores de la educación. En este sentido sintetizamos, en primer lugar, el marco legal y la doctrina de dicha iglesia —desde el nacimiento de esta publicación periódica a mediados del siglo XIX hasta la tercera década del siglo XX— y esbozamos la relación que mantuvieron iglesia y estado durante este periodo. A continuación, caracterizamos los boletines eclesiásticos y apuntamos aquellas cuestiones educativas relativas a la enseñanza primaria que tratan y que servirían, en unos casos, para contrastar y comparar informaciones procedentes de otras fuentes —el control que la Iglesia católica y el estado ejercieron sobre el magisterio en relación a las prácticas religiosas que debían realizar con los escolares, por ejemplo— y, en otros, para investigar aspectos poco conocidos —el asociacionismo del magisterio católico, es otro ejemplo—, contribuyendo, así, a la construcción de una historia de la educación primaria oficial más completa.

The Chinese Catholic Church

Both the Chinese state and the Vatican have an interest in maintaining more regular control over local Catholic community life. Their interests partially converge in seeking a regularized process for selecting Catholic bishops in the officially recognized part of the Chinese Church. This overlapping of interests is the basis for the “provisional agreement” between the Vatican and China on the selection of bishops signed on September 22, 2018. The agreement fails to address the area where Sino-Vatican interests diverge, i.e., the status of the thirty-six “underground” bishops, recognized by the Vatican but not by the Chinese government. Meanwhile, grassroots Catholic communities in China are deeply embedded in local social structures and their leaders have long exercised a considerable degree of agency in managing local affairs and adapting Catholic practices to local culture. The interaction between local communities and the long-term development of the Chinese Catholic church will depend, on the one hand, on the complex cooperative and competitive arrangements between the Vatican and the Chinese state and, on the other hand, on the interaction between the agency of local communities and the forces of control from above.

Семиотическая бдительность и культивация искренности в католической практике распознавания призвания

Семиотическая бдительность и культивация искренности в католической практике распознавания призвания

Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War by Julia G. Young

Reviewed by: Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War by Julia G. Young Anne M. Martínez Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War. By Julia G. Young. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. Pp. xii, 271. $82.00. ISBN 978-0-19-020500-3.) My nonagenarian father has vivid memories of going to a “bootleg” Catholic kindergarten in the early 1930s, trying to avoid soldiers in Pénjamo, Guanajuato on his way to the house of the week, where Catholic nuns offered elicit lessons on the faith to young Mexicans in the aftermath of the Cristero War. My American-born father, whose family fled to Chicago during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, grew up in his mother’s hometown in the Catholic heartland of Mexico. His story, like those recounted in Julia Young’s Mexico Exodus, reveals the transnational nature of Mexican communities, and the ways Catholicism permeated the journeys abroad and returns home for many Mexicans across multiple generations. Dr. Young writes that her primary argument is that the Cristero War had a much wider geographic impact than previously understood. Indeed, this is her [End Page 179] intervention in Mexican historiography. For American Catholic historians, “the transnational forms of popular activism and resistance that occurred within the Mexican emigrant diaspora” (13) are much more significant. The book describes countless failed attempts by Cristeros in exile in the United States to overthrow their government. These failures do not reduce the impact of Cristero exiles; rather they illustrate the abiding commitment to the Cristero cause despite the overwhelming odds when two governments and many of their own emigrant countrymen were against them. Chapter 1 details the long history of Church-State conflict in Mexico. Chapter 2 brings Cristero migrants—both lay and clerical—into focus, highlighting their journeys to cities across the U.S. Southwest and Midwest. Young centers the work among Cristeros in the United States to keep pressure on the Mexican government to repeal the Calles Law in the third chapter, creating tensions within local communities and building networks of Cristero exiles across the United States. In the fourth chapter, Young considers largely unsuccessful efforts to mobilize the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and lay communities in support of the Cristero resistance. Chapter 5 outlines the lasting influence of the Cristeros in the Catholic patriotism of Mexicans like my father in the decade following the 1929 settlement between Church and state. The final chapter features the lasting resonance of the Cristero era and its martyrs for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. In the epilogue, Young displays contemporary commemorations of the Cristero era by American Catholic groups and Mexican American Catholics. The strength of Mexican Exodus is the unearthing of countless stories of Mexicans in exile rallying around their faith and against their government from the United States. Though occasional glimpses of Catholic practice among early twentieth-century Mexican American communities have been captured in previous texts, they rarely mention Cristeros or political dissension around issues of religion. Young describes the tensions the Cristero War brought to these communities in vivid detail and shows that Cristeros in the United States did not just bide their time until they could return to Mexico, or settle in to established Mexican communities in the United States. They continued the fight for their faith within local communities and kept their focus—emotional, political, and financial—on removing the Calles regime from power. The book would benefit from a thorough copy edit. In addition to wording issues here and there, for example, Francis Kelley’s surname is misspelled twice in a paragraph in which it appears three times (48). These kinds of errors detract from the narrative and make the reader wonder what other oversights there might be. Mexican Exodus is a significant contribution to the growing historical literature on Mexican American Catholicism. Julia Young’s vital history illustrates the lived religion of Cristeros and their descendants in the United States. [End Page 180] Anne M. Martínez University of Groningen Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England ed. by Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Reviewed by: Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England ed. by Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler Chelsey Belt Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England. Edited by Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. [xiv, 317 p. ISBN 9780253024794 (hardback), $80; ISBN 9780253024824 (paperback), $18; ISBN 9780253024978 (e-book), $17.99.] Music examples, illustrations, selected bibliography, index. The boundaries called into question by these fifteen essays range from societal constructs (class, gender, religion, profession, genre) to concepts of media (aural/oral, manuscript, print) and space (home, stage, court, church, street). As a collection, the book provides a broad survey of ways in which music and musicians in England negotiated these boundaries circa 1550–1800. In their introduction, Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler discuss how this project developed partly out of frustration with the application of anachronistic dichotomies, such as public/private and professional/amateur, in historical narratives of early modern English music. These and other categorical dichotomies become specific boundaries that the contributing scholars collaboratively blur. This volume draws another aspect of its unity from a metamethodology of systematically testing and adjusting scholarly definitions; in this vein, the editors devote part of their commentary to a series of themes—chiefly space (residential and theatrical), community (in acts of musicking), and the musical work (written/unwritten/oral/aural)— treated in various and complementary ways by the contributors. Essays appear in chronological order, which precludes thematic or boundary-specific grouping, but the editors' larger sense of purpose has produced a selection of chapters that complement each other interchangeably. Read selectively or in full, Beyond Boundaries equips scholars of sixteenth-through eighteenth-century English music to question their field's established categories. Perhaps more importantly, this work will encourage any scholar of Western early modernity to rethink the capabilities of binary language to adequately represent historical trends. In the first chapter, Katherine Steele Brokaw positions the music of Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, a 1553 play in which choirboy-actors parody a variety of church music practices, as one playwright's plea for a "hybridized musical liturgy" (p. 14) while Mary Tudor, Queen of England, reestablished Catholicism at the state level. Jane Flynn's chapter 2 also addresses Catholic practice but from the perspective of clandestine Jesuit evangelism following Elisabeth I's return to public Protestantism. Brokaw considers the interaction of theatrical and sacred spaces, while Flynn highlights that of residential and sacred spaces. In both cases, music enables spatial transformation and reinforces politico-religious identity. In chapter 5, John Milsom discusses the "Cries of London" repertory as a dramatic genre that demands believable acting of its performers. Whereas such works are often characterized as learned parodies of street society, Milsom's assessment is that the essential art of the "Cries" lies in their facilitation of boundary crossing: "Noise becomes art; outdoors becomes indoors; social classes are traversed; and the genres of consort song and verse anthem, conventionally sites for serious thoughts, are quite literally dragged down to the level of the streets" (p. 76). [End Page 253] The fishwife and boatman cannot emerge from their polyphonic backdrops if the singer does not make an adequate transformation, and so their characters are represented rather than patronized. Beyond the categories that the works themselves juxtapose, Milsom uses the repertory to challenge the historiographic dichotomy of high and low culture. Several essays evaluate boundaries of gender. Flynn's study of music in recusant Catholic communities pays special attention to the participation of women. Chapter 6 contains Katherine R. Larson's analysis of a later musical-theater example: Richard Brome's The Northern Lasse (1629). While song plays a structural role in the drama, it also acts as "a powerful mechanism for spatial and sociocultural meditation" (p. 80) for the female protagonists, whose final "positioning" eludes boundaries of "spatial or social containment" (p. 93). In the final chapter, "Education, Entertainment, Embellishment: Music Publication in the Lady's Magazine," Bonny H. Miller considers the public packaging of music for female consumption in Georgian residential spaces. The diverse origins of repertoire disseminated by this periodical complicate assumptions of...

Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States by David J. Endres

Reviewed by: Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States by David J. Endres Kyle Haden OFM Many Tongues, One Faith: A History of Franciscan Parish Life in the United States. By David J. Endres. Oceanside, CA: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2018. 210 pp. $25.00. A common trope in immigration histories of the United States is the profound effect U.S. culture has had on the many different ethnic and religious groups settling in America. While many coming to the United States had intentions of maintaining cultural and religious traditions as practiced in the Old World, the desire to fit into the American cultural majority was, in many cases, too strong a temptation. For many Catholics, a means for holding onto Old World devotions and practices [End Page 86] was through the local parish. The parish became an oasis among a majority Protestant culture, a means of maintaining Catholic practice and identity. The centrality of the parish in American Catholic life would profoundly reshape Franciscan life and ministry. In his study of Franciscan ministry in the United States, David J. Endres offers an intriguing and well narrated story of 16 representative parishes in which Franciscan priests, brothers, and sisters ministered to the needs of a variety of ethnic communities, from the early nineteenth century to the present. Endres primarily focuses on the three first-order male Franciscan communities: the Order of Friars Minor, Capuchins, and Conventuals. He also notes the important contributions offered by various Franciscan sisters working alongside their Franciscan brothers. In conjunction with Franciscan parish ministry, Endres narrates the creation of several Franciscan provinces formed due to ministerial needs in an expanding national and ethnic demography. From the acquisition of established parishes to the founding and building of new structures, parish ministry became a central ministerial reality for the majority of American friars. As a major theme running through his study, Endres demonstrates how traditional Franciscan life as practiced in the Old World was transformed by the centrality of the parish in American Catholic life. In the Old World, friars did not have a tradition of parish ministry. Franciscan life was much more centered on the monastery, with a defined regiment of daily prayer. Such a commitment to the horarium was not practical for life in America, especially when dealing with the demands of parish ministry. While early Franciscan immigrants resisted change to their traditional religious lifestyle, many bishops put pressure on Franciscan superiors to encourage friars to accept parish assignments. In doing so, Franciscan life was noticeably changed. While narrating Franciscan ministry in the United States, Endres also examines the changing reality of American life and how Franciscan parish ministry kept apace of these social and cultural changes. In many cases friars had to deal with the negative social realities of [End Page 87] American life, especially in terms of racial and ethnic bigotry, as well as economic disparities. Advocacy for the rights of minorities is highlighted in the lives of such friars as Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM, who advocated for the rights of Native Americans in Arizona; Stephen Eckert, OFM Cap, who championed the rights of African Americans in Milwaukee; and Oliver Lynch, OFM, who sought economic and social equity for farm workers and Latinos in California. The establishment of parish schools, especially for the needs of minorities, highlights the dedication of Franciscan sisters who labored alongside their male counterparts, in some cases under difficult and challenging circumstances. Many Tongues, One Faith is the first in the projected series United States Franciscan History Project by the Academy of American Franciscan History. It is an excellent study to begin such a series of historical research. Endres offers a well-written, well-researched history of Franciscan life and ministry in the United States. It is highly recommended to historians, and others, interested in American Catholic history. [End Page 88] Kyle Haden OFM St. Bonaventure University Copyright © 2019 American Catholic Historical Society