Official Church Research Articles

Dimensi Kemanusiaan Seorang Imam: Tinjauan Etika Kebajikan Kristian

The reality of scandals involving priests in the Catholic Church has recently caused deep wounds to the Church. This fact also requires the Church to pay serious attention to the human formation of her priests. This study aims to retrace the human qualities of a priest that can contribute to the development of virtues necessary in his vocation and priestly ministry. By utilizing an analytical study of texts and various official Church documents, the authors seek to bring to the fore the main qualities that the Church requires and expects from a priest. As a result, firstly, the author finds that there is a correlation between the personal qualities of a priest and the development of the virtues required in the vocation and ministry of the priesthood. Secondly, the study also found that it is important for these human qualities to be shaped during the process of formation throughout life, so that they become virtues that are deeply rooted in a priest and his ministry.

Rationalistic Sects of Doukhobors and Molokans in Tobolsk Province in 19th — Early 20th Centuries: Distribution, Numerical Composition, and Religious Culture

This article focuses on studying the peculiarities of the beliefs, religious cults of Doukhobors and Molokans, the specifics of community formation of these rationalistic sects, and the numerical composition of their religious followers in the territory of Tobolsk Province. Materials from the Tobolsk State Archive, the newspaper “Tobolskie Eparkhialnye Vedomosti,” as well as works of pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and contemporary researchers were utilized. Among the rationalistic sects, Doukhobors, Molokans, and Nemolyaks (sectarians who don’t pray) were identified as the main religious movements of sectarians in the studied territory. The article analyzes the formation of religious communities, the residential areas of sectarians of different denominations in Tobolsk Province, the peculiarities of their self-organization, and the functioning of sects. It is noted that people joined these sects seeking to understand the Bible and searching for a just social order, placing them in opposition to the official church and state. The social base of rationalistic sects consisted of peasants and townspeople (burgher class). Statistical analysis showed a slight increase in the number of sectarians in Tobolsk Province during the second half of the 19th century and a significant surge in the early 20th century. From 1855 to 1913, the number of sectarians increased from 182 individuals to 1473 individuals.

Vernacular Catholicism in Ireland: The Keening Woman

The relationship between popular vernacular Catholicism and the more official liturgical variety has varied over centuries. Following the subjugation of Ireland by the late 17th century, and the institution of anti-Catholic proscriptions, the number of priests available became more restricted. Religious observation subsequently centered on holy days and local sacred sites including healing wells, many of them dedicated to saints. Always central figures in death rituals, women who mourned the dead—“keening women”—were so called because they lamented the dead through a combination of voice and song. We will show how the songs relate to a deep liminal spirituality that existed semi-independently of official Church norms, and how the voice served to establish their position. In the Catholic revival of the late nineteenth century, such forms were ousted by European modes of worship, but persisted at the margins, allowing us insight into their previous vigor.

The Creative Heritage of Maksim Grek and the Formation of Spiritually Significant Texts for the Old Believers

This article deals with the formation of the canon of sacred texts among the Old Believers, which determined their system of book authorities. The relevance of the topic is connected with the need to get a more comprehensive idea of the formation of the religious and social movement that received the name “Old Believers”. The author pays attention to an important aspect of the study of the Old Believer ideology, which was determined by the system of book authorities. The defenders of Old Belief followed the traditions of the scribes of Old Rus and maintained a special attitude to the text, bordering on its sacralisation. From the first steps of the reform, they turned to manuscripts and early printed books to find evidence of the illegality of introducing innovations into the liturgical practice of the Russian Church. The Story of How to Make the Sign of the Cross by Maksim Grek was cited by opponents of the church reform as an argument in defence of the negative view of the introduction of the three-fingered sign of the cross by Patriarch Nikon. It is shown that the Solovetsky monks largely determined the attitude to this work. They not only copied it, but also began to defend the authority of Maksim Grek when the representatives of the official Church expressed doubts about the sincerity of the author’s opinion on the twofingered sign of the cross. The next generations of the Old Believers continued to search for evidence of the veneration of this Athos monk by the Patriarchs and the Russian Church, in order to convince readers of his holiness. The analysis of the collections of the Old Believers helps get an idea of a completely scholarly approach to the search, which allowed the Old Believers already at the beginning of the eighteenth century to gain access to a fairly complete circle of sources on the life and work of Maksim Grek in Russia, even according to the ideas of researchers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to copy them and make them known to other Old Believers. The works of Maksim Grek were of particular importance, and their study made it possible to include them in the canon of sacred texts. It is concluded that the authors of the essays and the compilers of the collections did a lot of work to strengthen the authority of Maksim Grek among the Old Believers, and the writings of the Athos monk were included in their system of book authorities.

Die begrippe ‘gemeen akkoord’ en ‘buite kerkverband plaas’ in kerkregtelike perspektief

The concepts ‘mutual concensus’ and ‘exclusion from the church community’ in Church Polity: Ecclesiastical decisions about the calling and ordination of women in the offices in local congregations became a burning issue in Reformed Churches world-wide and even resulted in divisions and schisms. This is currently also the case in the community of the Reformed Churches in South Africa (RCA) (Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika [GKSA]). The 2009 General Synod of the RCA resolved that women may not be ordained in the offices of ministers and elders. Subsequent Synods re-affirmed this decisions by a mere majority of votes according to Article 31 of the Church Order of the RCA. Despite these resolutions of various Synods, some local churches proceeded with the ordination of women in the applicable offices. Two of these local churches were subsequently excluded from the community of Reformed Churches within the RCA, by two classes with the argument that they disregarded the ‘common concent’ underlying the official synodical decisions. This study focuses on the question: what is ‘common consent’ within the context of Reformed Church polity and does this polity enable major assemblies to exclude local churches form the church community merely by way of a motion, just because they cannot reach concensus about a synodical resolution? The central-theoretical argument of the study is that the concepts ‘mutual consent’, as well as ‘exclusion from the church community’, should be revisited, because the current ‘application of these ideas in the RCA results in irresponsible collective church discipline, leads to schism in the church community, the binding of consciences and the violation of the rights of called church officials’.Contribution: This article proposes a responsible code of conduct in the RCA regarding the matter of local congregations that cannot, as a matter of conscience and after many petitions of protest, adhere to the synodical decisions about the prohibiting of the ordination of women in local churches. ‘Mutual consent’ cannot be understood in an absolute sense and ‘exclusion of the church community’ is a hierarchical action that runs against the core principles of Presbyterial church polity. A more responsible code is of the utmost importance.

Reimagining Subversive Masculinities in J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and John Broderick's The Pilgrimage

This article investigates two banned novels, J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man (1955) and John Broderick's The Pilgrimage (1961), to explore how the mid-century Irish novel explored themes of masculinity in opposition to official Church and State teachings on postcolonial Irish masculinity. In its analysis, the article focuses on each novel’s use of narrative and style to articulate thematic concerns over the rigidity of the expectations of mid-twentieth-century Irish manhood. Moreover, it demonstrates how both authors construct models of masculinity that reject contemporaneous teachings on an idealised masculinity and expose the contradictions that are inherent in such teachings. The article's examination of these works showcases how both novels sought to complicate these dogmatic images of masculinity, and were ultimately banned by the Censorship Board as a result.

Evidence for Slavic lead mining and trade: Early Rus’ lead seals from Czermno and Gródek on the Polish Rus’ border

Both in Byzantium and by the Kievan Rus’, lead seals were used to signify ownership. Their stamped inscriptions and symbols are analogous to coinage and are a rich source of information on interaction and commerce. The Rus’ used them in the 11th-13th century CE as regular seals issued by rulers and church officials but also for sealing a specified number of furs exported from East European forests (creating ‘approved’ pelt bundles; so-called Drohiczyn seals). The latter are concentrated at Kievan Rus’-Polish border settlements, signalling cross-border exchange. Fourteen seals were analysed (Pb-isotope / trace elements) to investigate lead source and the direction of trade. The results of eleven suggest a connection to the nearby Olkusz lead mines in southern Poland (west of Cracow). This new evidence for lead transport from southern Poland to the Kievan Rus’ is of great significance for further research into reconstructing trade routes connecting Latin and Orthodox (Rus’) Europe. It show that trade routes ran not only through Scandinavia via Novgorod and from the Black Sea via Kiev but also laterally, linking Poland and Rus’.

Ecclesiastical populism in contemporary Russia? ‘the people’ in the political discourse of the orthodox church

ABSTRACT The image of ‘the people’ has occupied a central place in the discourse of the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) for many years. However, the ROC’s ecclesiastical ‘populism’ has not been systematically analyzed. The study at hand aims to fill this gap by examining the representations of ‘the people’ articulated at the Bishops’ Council of the ROC in the last three decades. Following and modifying Ernesto Laclau and his followers’ approach to studying populism, the analysis of the Council’s documents shows that the official Church plays a dual language game, simultaneously constructing a hegemonic order in Russia and its alleged ‘civilizational space’ and promoting a seemingly counter-hegemonic project in global politics. However, the role of ‘the people’ in this setting is far from Laclau’s conception of radical popular agency. Instead, the Bishops’ Council calls for the preservation of traditional identities and local hierarchies in order to ensure Russia’s continuity and greatness. Thus, the official Church has been contributing to the elitist, statist, and great-power nationalist hegemony in Russia.

The "Sound Social Base of Every Great Civilization": Family Farm, Catholic Priorities, Farmworkers, and the Bracero Program

ABSTRACT: Buried in the Stanford University Archives is an undated anonymous pamphlet entitled "The Legend of Pancho Sanchez," which offers a Catholic critique of the Bracero Program. This article puts "Legend" and its vision of the program in conversation with the church's late 1950s/early-1960s position on agriculture and its longstanding advocacy for family-based, owner-operated farms as the centerpiece of morally healthy agricultural production. I contend that the church's deep commitment to small farms as key to a healthy society shaped its hesitancy to rethink this priority, despite shifting migration patterns and increased prevalence of migrant farmworkers, domestic and non-. "Legend" suggests that official church priority could not see how the structural underpinnings of industrial agriculture affected in interrelated ways domestic farmworkers and Mexican braceros alike, exacerbating the precarity of all farmworkers.

Protesting Too Much: Baptized Jews’ Appeals to the Vatican for Aid in Attaining Aryan Status in Fascist Italy, 1938–1943

Abstract: Many of the people categorized as members of the “Jewish race” under Italy’s draconian antisemitic racial laws of 1938–1943 sought relief through recategorization as “Aryans.” This required the collaboration of Church officials to certify the individual’s Catholic credentials, as race categorization depended heavily on one’s religion, having little to do with biology. The newly available Ebrei (Jews) series from the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State, Section for Relations with States and International Organizations (ASRS) offers a rich trove of materials that illuminate how a large number of those categorized as Jews sought to attain Aryan status. Here we take a first look at the impassioned pleas to the Vatican by offering examples of how the petitioners sought to distance themselves from the Jewish “racial” identity assigned to them by the Italian state. As a result of this research, the key role played by the Roman Catholic Church in the administration of Italy’s racial laws comes into clearer focus.

THE CREMATION OF CORPSES IN THE CURRENT CANON CODIFICATION AND ITS PASTORALITY

This article, The Cremation of Corpses in the Current Canonical Codification and Its Pastoral Care: A Study Based on § 3 of Canon 1176 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, derived from a master's thesis in Canon Law, is a detailed study on the acceptance of cremation within the context of the Catholic Church, marking a significant evolution from traditional burial norms. Employing a bibliographic research methodology, the article analyzes a wide range of sources, including books, scientific articles, and official Church documents, to outline a historical, theological, and legal panorama on the subject. The research highlights the transformation in the perception of death and funeral practices over time, examining the development of ecclesiastical norms from the initial prohibition of cremation in the 1917 Code to its conditional acceptance in subsequent legislations, culminating in the 2016 instruction Ad resurgendum cum Christo. This evolution reflects an adaptive response to social and cultural changes, maintaining consistency with the principles of the Christian faith. The historical and legal understanding of cremation in light of Vatican II provides a clearer and truer comprehension of funerals and cremation in the canonical and pastoral context of the Church. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of pastoral care in funerals, highlighting cremation as a viable option that, while not preferred, is permitted as long as it does not oppose the doctrine of resurrection, reiterating the message of hope in eternal life.

The Descent of Ireland’s ‘Fallen Women:’ The Relationship Between the Catholic Church, Irish Nationalism, and the Control of Women’s Reproduction through Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalen Laundries

In recent decades, Ireland has grappled with its relationship with the Catholic Church, which has long exerted social, political, and moral authority over the young nation. Scandals of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of clergy have surfaced, distorting the Church's legacy in Ireland. Mother and baby homes and Magdalen laundries are just two of the many institutions operated by Church officials where individuals endured severe abuse at the hands of religious orders. Mother and baby homes and Magdalen Laundries serve as a yet another historical manifestation of authorities' control of women's reproductive behavior. These two institutions penalized illegitimate births by incarcerating thousands of young women – some pregnant, some not – throughout the 20th century in Ireland. This paper analyzes how the historical framework under which these systems developed, as well as the relationship between the Church's control of women's reproductive behavior and national identity in post-Independence Ireland. 

PENTINGNYA SAKRAMEN BAPTIS BAGI KESELAMATAN MENURUT KATEKISMUS GEREJA KATOLIK

This article discusses the Catholic Church's view of the Sacrament of Baptism as a sign and means of salvation for the faithful. The author developed his writing based on the theological ideas contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. So, based on official Church documents, the author attempts to explain that the sacrament of baptism is not only an entry point for Church membership but also that baptism offers spiritual fruits that are useful for the salvation of believers. By baptism, the people are united to Christ both in death and also in His resurrection. This is why the sacrament of Baptism still plays such an important role in the Catholic Church.

Geography and philosophy – space, time and being: the symbolism of the ideal man in the religious being from Athanasio of Alexandria in Vita Antoni

The philosophy of Western monasticism was born on the fringes of the official Church, especially when the Church had just become imperial. The search for a lived space referenced in the symbolism of the desert and for an ideal Christianity was also influenced by the hagiography of St. Anthony, in a broad space-time relationship. Athanasius of Alexandria, the Coptic bishop, when faced with the embryonic counterfeits of the friction between Church and State, projects in Vita Antoni an ideal presupposition of being Christian as humanity. This anthropological symbolism will crystallize in a trajectory of lived space and time, directly influencing Western civilization from an idealism that develops as a materiality and phenomenon in the deserts: the monasteries and the fuga mundi lifestyle. In the late period of the history of religions, a "father of the church" emerges who boldly describes the nuances of the pious character of the one who will one day be considered the father of monks, St. Anthony. This proposal analyzes the phenomenon of fuga mundi and its articulation with the locality of the monastery, from the perspective of Athanasius of Alexandria, with reference to the biography of Saint Anthony, observing its practical manifestations and how this enunciation occurred in the geohistory of Western Christianity, as well as identifying how this symbolic perspective influenced the Christian religious tradition. The methodology used in this work was applied research, using as a method the systematic analysis of the work of Athanasius of Alexandria and the hagiography present on St. Anthony, considering the evidence of socio-anthropological and symbolic aspects and the scientific convergence of geography, philosophy and the science of religion as an analytical proposal that unites categories such as space, time and being.

The Fraying of the “Ecumenical Consensus” or a New Stage of Liturgical Renewal: A Case Study

Feminist, LGBTQIA+, and postcolonial critiques over the past decades have questioned the so-called “ecumenical consensus” in liturgical matters ranging from language about God to lectionaries to liturgical time. These developments have affected liturgical development across churches, with some (most recently, the Presbyterian Church, USA) revising their resources to address these critiques. Others are pursuing a different approach: This article will provide a case study of ongoing liturgical development in The Episcopal Church, which has chosen not to redraft its 1979 Book of Common Prayer but, instead, encourage the development of supplemental resources housed at an official church website governed by its triennial General Convention and church law. The use of such resources will be regulated primarily by local bishops and pastors; already some bishops have authorized the use of different lectionary patterns and, anecdotally, variances in the baptismal formula. This article seeks to uncover the opportunities and the risks of such an approach to liturgical reform in one church, with a view to the effect it may have on that treasured “ecumenical consensus” among the churches.

Missionary activity of Orthodox brotherhoods in Greece and Serbia in 1918‒1941

The article is devoted to the study of the response of Greek and Serbian societies to the challenges of modernity faced by the Orthodox Church in the Balkans. Despite the fact that the reasons for the response in the form of the formation of non–church religious movements in the first half of the twentieth century had the same basis, both organizations – the Greek brotherhood of theologians “Zoi” and the Serbian worshipper movement – chose different methods of missionary activity. Their activities were aimed at reviving the Christian norms of morality in society. The purpose of this article is to conduct a comparative analysis between these methods, identify differences in relations with the official Church and characterize the consequences of the chosen course from a historical perspective. The missionary activity of both Orthodox organizations (“brotherhoods”) gradually faded away after World War II for similar reasons but left behind an important positive trace in the church history of the two Balkan states – Greece and Serbia. In Russian historiography these themes have not been studied sufficiently. This article is intended to shed light on the main milestones in the development of the movements the World Wars.

Graham Greene: His Faith, Civic Position and His ‘Quiet’ Americans

Graham Green is regarded as the greatest figure in the history of the 20th century British novel, a master of psychological portrait and unforgettable plot. The Catholicism he declared contradicted the dogmas of official church Catholicism, because it was always a complex fusion of belief in God, ideological and political aspirations, and real psychological states of people in certain social situations. Green’s creative and journalistic heritage is huge and worthy of the largest volume of research. The purpose of this anniversary article is to characterise the main stages of Green’s spiritual and creative evolution as a novelist during the most fruitful decades of his life (1930–1960s), to highlight those of his works that most clearly express his civic position, the study of which, especially in terms of his attitude to the United States, seems so relevant today. The author’s task is to analyse the evolution of the hero of Green’s novels from “England Made Me” to “The Comedians” against the background of contemporary socio-political changes on the planet. Elements of the method of historical-comparative analysis are used, as well as the memoirs of the author of the article.

Indigenous Visual History: Remembering “Us” in Indian Residential School Hockey Photographs

Photography was a potent settler colonial technology that was employed — and contested — in the residential school system. In one photographic campaign, the Canadian government marshalled images of Indigenous children on a once-in-a-lifetime hockey excursion to publicly convey it was successfully assimilating them into Euro-Canadian society. The 1951 Sioux Lookout Black Hawks, a residential school hockey team from the Pelican Lake Indian Residential School (Anglican) in northwestern Ontario, were taken on a whirlwind exhibition tour to Ottawa and Toronto. They were celebrated by high-ranking governmental and Anglican church officials who posed alongside them in a series of professional photographs taken by a National Film Board’s Still Photography Division photographer and commissioned by the Department of Indian Affairs. These photographs suggested that hockey fostered appropriate masculinity and citizenship values, in line with the government’s assimilationist agenda. The responses of three hockey players shown in these images some seventy years after they were taken, and our exploration of how the survivors interpellated the colonial knowledge embedded in the photographs to reconstitute their own subjectivities, extends the small-but-growing canon of visual repatriation, where archival photographs are “returned” to Indigenous communities who were the subjects of the colonizers’ lenses. Ultimately, we demonstrate how the survivors’ responses to the photographs (and their implied meanings) comprise technologies of Indigenous memory that re-centre themselves and their communities as authors of their own stories, and, thus, their epistemic futures.

A kötelességteljesítő protestáns etika, a szolgáló lelkület életpéldája. Balogh Jenő (1864–1953) jogászprofesszor személyes adatai és életútja

A Protestant Ethic of Duty, a Living Example of a Serving Spirit Biography of Law Professor Jenő Balogh (1864–1953). Our publication is part of a larger prosopographical study of the careers of Calvinist university professors belonging to the Hungarian knowledge elite in the bourgeois era (1848–1944). Jenő Balogh, a professor of law, was an academic researcher, a ministerial legislator seeking new paths, a teacher of modern disciplines, a minister in difficult times, and the General Secretary of the Academy. For decades, he held leading positions in the Calvinist Church of Hungary. His way of life and his work were determined by a Puritan Christian worldview brought from his family and by a dutiful Protestant ethic. Keywords: knowledge elite, university professor, legislation, political role, science policy, church offices, Protestant ethics

Magic and Law at the Border. The Early Medieval Leges

This article focuses on the concerns of the authorities as shown in the provisions on witchcraft and magic contained in the Romano-Germanic laws enacted from the sixth century (leges). These provisions shed light on what was prohibited and what was designated as magic; however, the attitude of the authorities towards magic and witchcraft was not univocal, mainly because of the religious and ethnic bipolarism underlying early European legislation on magic. Early medieval laws allow observing the formal expression of areas through which public concerns over the practice of magic operated. In most leges the use of magic was not punished as a religious offence, but rather for its destabilizing aspect regarding the social order. Moreover, the Church’s attitude towards magic was not monolithic: the official Church coexisted with local magical customs. The early medieval leges confirm that magic is a category dependent on the perceiver, encompassing practices and beliefs that border on other features of human experience, such as religion and law itself.