Church Personnel Research Articles

Forging New Instruments of Mass Social Control from Traditional Materials: The Disciplinary Role of Catholic Church Personnel in Franco's State Prison System of the 1940s and 1950s

Francoism's repression of its civilian population was based on a massified prison system and parallel system of punitive parole. At their core were religious personnel who fulfilled key disciplinary functions for the new state. By the latter stages of the civil war (1936–1939), church and lay Catholic personnel had already produced the legal justifications to underpin the repression. They blended older quasi-theocratic and anti-egalitarian philosophy to meet the disciplinary needs of the new moment where a politically mobilized society was challenging older forms of traditional order and hierarchy (before and during the war). This church–state symbiosis in Spain was already explicit by the early-twentieth century. After World War Two, as before it, Franco's ‘National-Catholic’ dictatorship deployed religious personnel speaking an antiquated language of ‘re-Christianization’ and ‘religious conversion’ to impose a modern, state disciplinary project – i.e., the sculpting and close surveillance of its population. Given the Church's full participation in this ‘divine totalitarianism’, it was paradoxical that by the time of Cold War ascendancy in the mid-1950s, it would be the same Church providing an alibi for Franco's state – in which judicial and penal systems remained militarized, and the everyday lives of its population closely controlled – to reassure Western interlocutors, who were themselves mostly socially conservative and/or Christian-Democratic, of Francoism's ‘non-totalitarian’ nature.

Personnel Files, Confidentiality and the Right to Privacy

This study, which focuses on the Roman Catholic Church, explores the concepts of confidentiality and the right to privacy in contemporary moral and legal thought. The management of church personnel files presents the challenge of observing and maintaining confidentiality and privacy. In most cases, the information contained in personnel files of the clergy, members of religious institutes, and others holding ecclesiastical offices is confidential, which should safeguard the reputation of all persons involved. From a juridical viewpoint, the Church's innate duty to respect the dignity of the person, as well as the natural right of privacy and good name, forms the foundation of this study. Certain practices in the Church entail the collection, use, or retention of confidential information about individuals for internal purposes, the administration of justice, and the management of archives and documents in the diocesan curia. In the final analysis, the Church has the responsibility to both protect the privacy of all the faithful and to transmit the Gospel message transparently.

Articulating the Church's story as legal defendant in abuse claims: Can the Magisterium help?

Catholic entities are being sued for personal injury compensation arising from sexual abuse perpetrated by church personnel. In some jurisdictions, the situation has deteriorated because of changes to the statute of limitations, the naming of an entity to sue, the setting aside of previous settlements, and abuse compensation law firms. Oftentimes there are overstated, doubtful or apparently false claims, and disturbing decisions. There is a feeling of being cornered with minimal prospects for change. How and what does the Church communicate when its predicament is frequently not ‘right and just?’ This article scrutinizes such powerlessness using the Magisterium of the Catholic Church on the truth of social communications. The Church insists on a proper understanding of truth and its uses. Despite the new adverse realities, the Church’s responses should communicate the truth in love. The article begins an analysis of various factors and recent changes causing the Church to find itself in a no-win situation. Next, several significant yet alternative perspectives are presented. Finally, there is an investigation of the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church on the truth of social communications which offer a theological context to rethink the Church’s current circumstances.

Erotomania: A Rare Psychiatric Condition- A Case Series

Erotomania is a rare psychiatric condition which is characterised by the delusion that a person who is of a higher social status is in love with them. Three cases of secondary erotomania have been discussed which includes a 26-year-old female patient who had a delusion that a well-known actor was in love with her. The second patient was a 23-year-old female patient who harbored a delusion that a popular guy from her school was in love with her. Another patient was a 38-year-old female patient who was deluded that a church personnel was in love with her. All three patients shared similar features that they all developed symptoms of schizophrenia during the course of the illness following the delusion, had poor insight, had poor compliance to treatment and follow-up. Management was resorted to pharmacotherapy and psychosocial rehabilitation in all cases, which yielded improvement although there was no complete remission of the delusion in a two year follow-up in either of the cases. Since erotomania is a rare and unique phenomenon, discussion about the presentation of erotomania in association with schizophrenia, provides a knowledge regarding the condition and management.

Preliminary Research on the Social Attitudes toward AI’s Involvement in Christian Education in Vietnam: Promoting AI Technology for Religious Education

Artificial intelligence innovations, such as chatbots and specialized education suggestion tools, provide potential interactive and on-demand pedagogical engagement between non-Christians and Christians with Christianity. However, there is little empirical research on the readiness, acceptance, and adoption of religious education involvement of AI in a secular state such as Vietnam. This research addresses the literature gap by providing an entrepreneurial analysis and customer perspectives on the ideas of AI involvement in religious education. Specifically, the study explores whether the Vietnamese across different ages accept and have enough skills to adopt AI in Christian education innovation. The interview sample is 32 participants, selected based on their religious orientation (Christians and non-Christians) and age (Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z). Most respondents are open to AI application in religious education except for Church personnel. However, only Generation Z are fully prepared to adopt this innovation. Theoretically, the research customizes the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model into religious innovation context. Practically, this research acts as market research on the demand for AI’s religious innovation in Vietnam, an insight for future religious tech entrepreneurs.

Where Has Cardinal Pell's Case Brought Us in the Australian Church?

Where Has Cardinal Pell’s Case Brought Us in the Australian Church? Frank Brennan SJ Pope John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel, writing the Introduction to Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal, describes this writer as one who ‘had previously held no brief for Cardinal Pell’ and as ‘one who was a severe critic’.1 I plead guilty to both charges. Nevertheless, having attended parts of his two criminal trials and having studied all the publicly available transcript, I am convinced of Pell’s innocence of the criminal charges he faced, and I am further convinced that the Australian Royal Commission failed to accord him natural justice in their pursuit of a necessary big scalp for media delectation. Pell is a culture warrior inside and outside the church. In this role, he has triumphed; and in this role, he has suffered. I am a Jesuit who has adopted positions at odds with him inside and outside the church, and I probably will again. I am happy to respond to the question from the editor of Studies: ‘Where has Cardinal Pell’s case brought us in the Australian church?’ The Australian church, whether this means Pell supporters or Pell critics within it, is trying to move on from the trauma and publicity of trials and media titillation about all but impossible criminal sexual activity in a cathedral sacristy immediately after solemn Mass. The trauma and titillation have been fuelled by incompetent policing, improper prosecution, shoddy journalism, judicial failure and nefarious Vatican financial transactions. Since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, there have been some necessary reforms. Laws have been enacted making it easier for complainants to bring civil proceedings claiming damages against the church for child sexual abuse by clergy and church personnel. The civil law now guarantees that a plaintiff has access to an entity capable of being sued. The usual limitation period of six years after attainment of adulthood has been removed. And deeds of release from liability can be overridden if a court thinks it just and reasonable to do so. These are welcome legal reforms. Victims not wanting to sue can access a government-administered national redress scheme similar to those set up Studies • volume 110 • number 437 36 by the church in the last thirty years, but with no church involvement in the administration or determination of claims. The Royal Commission trumpeted this reform, but victims are finding government bureaucrats no better than church bureaucrats in processing their claims. Since the Royal Commission and Pell trials, the church has lost most of its public standing and credibility when agitating for justice and the common good. Thus church leaders tend to confine their advocacy to matters relevant only to the church’s own self-interest over against the state. Secularists welcome this development, but it probably means reduced advocacy for the poorest and most marginalised members of society. There are times when a church voice can help. Or at least it did in the past. Pell faced criminal trials that were conducted under suppression orders. This meant the public was not able to follow the evidence in the trials day by day. The public was simply presented with a final verdict followed by an internationally-televised, live public sentencing, at which the trial judge had to operate on the basis that the jury had made the right decision. Once the suppression orders were lifted, three books with popular appeal were published, all critical of Pell and the church.2 Only now are books more attentive to the evidence and therefore supportive of Pell starting to appear.3 Pell has published his Prison Journal and conducted an international media campaign aimed at restoring his standing, particularly with the more conservative Catholics in the USA and the UK. Cardinal Pell: some background Cardinal Pell is the Australian who has been most highly promoted in the Catholic church. We Australians are noted for our egalitarianism and our irreverence towards those in authority. It’s known as the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. Any poppy that grows too tall is cut down to the size of others in the field. Pell has long been a divisive figure in the...

Gestärktes Personal für die Kirche in einer Gesellschaft der Singularitäten

Church personnel development is currently taking place on the horizon of dynamic processes of change in society as a whole, which are summarized under the term “singularization” (Andreas Reckwitz). Against this background, it is asked what resources the Church has in order to deal productively with these dynamics and their inherent ambivalences.

The problem of higher education in Russia in the second half of the XVII century

This article reviews the known facts on the work and concepts of Russian higher educational institutions of the 1650s-1700s. The author analyzes the polemics that unfolded in the XVII century and continues until today around higher education in Russia from Fyodor Rtishchev's School to Zaikonospassky Greek Schools created by Likhud brothers. It is noted that the idea of autonomous estate-inclusive university in Moscow, which was conceived by the Tsar Feodor III Alexeyevich and received privileges in the Grant Letter of 1682, was never brought to life. The author reveals the motives of resistance to introduction of regular education and recognition of rules of the rational science. It is demonstrated that breaking with the Russian traditional church rituals by Patriarch Nikon on the basis of false Greek scholarship caused doubts of the society on the utility of foreign regular science; and the desire of the devotees of Greek scholarship to prove that Latin education, unlike Greek, is harmful for the faith, nullified the attempt of Tsar Feodor III Alexeyevich to create a Moscow university for preparing secular and church personnel. Such struggle for the Academy resulted in the clash between rationalism of the enlighteners and authority of the church, which destroyed and suppressed the enlighteners, and discredited the church. In the XVII century, no Higher educational institutions were established in Russia; moreover, the Moscow academic staff was annihilated. In the context of the reforms of Peter the Great, the humanities education in Russia of the XVIII century was implemented Little Russian scholars, while natural scientific education – by Western scholars.

The Sexual Abuse Scandal and a New Ethical Horizon: A Perspective from India

Despite recent signs of change, the Indian church was rather reluctant to acknowledge the clerical sexual abuse scandal as its own problem. In the Indian context, the scandal entails not only the abuse of minors, but also the abuse of women and other vulnerable adults by church personnel. The hierarchical structure of Indian society, gender relations based on patriarchy, and postcolonial attitudes provide a fertile ground for abuse. Clericalism, centralization of power in the church, and continuing negative attitudes to sexuality are further contributing factors. The clerical sexual abuse scandal calls for developing new ethical horizons based on a theology of a participatory church, and a reconsideration of the church’s attitude to sexuality and gender relations.

NP28 Childhood Obesity Prevention with Church, Extension and Academic Partners in an Integrated Randomized Control Trial

Objective Long-term goals: prevent childhood obesity through improved parenting practices along with home and church environments related to obesity; expand Extension capacity for community-engaged research and collaborative programming with faith-based organizations; enhance Extension strategies for recruiting and training community volunteers; and train future health professionals to provide culturally appropriate, collaborative, community-based health programs. Research, Extension and Education objectives support each of these goals. Description In a group-randomized design, 24 black churches will host nine-week Extension childhood obesity prevention and family financial literacy programs, in random order one year apart. Parents/caregivers and their children age six to ten participate in separate, complementary evidence-based programs offered by Extension and hosted by churches. Extension personnel teach adults and train congregation members to teach children. A committee of congregation members is supported to implement policy, systems and environmental changes. University students are involved in all aspects of the project. Evaluation Primary research outcomes include: parental self-efficacy for obesity-prevention behaviors; child self-efficacy for healthy food and physical activity behaviors, parenting practices related to food and physical activity; and the home food and physical activity environment. Primary Extension outcomes include Extension personnel self-efficacy and perceived partnership synergy related to collaborating with faith-based organizations. Education outcomes include: perceived student competence related to addressing health disparities, health education planning and implementation, and program evaluation; and student perception of the value of Extension for collaborative community-based health education and future career potential. Standard Extension program evaluation tools provide additional data. Conclusion and Implications Four churches (37 families) participated in the first year of the project and provided baseline data. The randomized control design presented challenges for Extension personnel who deliver the programs. Strategies for randomization were revised to inform Extension personnel of which program their church will receive earlier, prior to baseline data collection, to allow more time for preparation and scheduling. Research and church personnel are blinded to condition prior to baseline data collection.

The Diocese of Lafayette's Crusade to Save Catholicism: Nationalizing Creole Communities in Southwest Louisiana in the Interwar Period

Events between 1916 and 1926 disrupted the flow of Francophone clergy from Europe to Creole communities in Louisiana. New industries supplanting sugar cane cultivation prompted in-migration of Anglophones and out-migrations of Creoles. English-speakers established diverse Protestant denominations in Creole communities and hired Creoles to assist in their evangelization efforts. In the Diocese of Lafayette, many Creoles apostatized. In response Church officials launched a crusade to save Catholicism and the Church's authority in the region. Severed after World War I from sources of Church personnel in Francophone Europe, the Lafayette diocese looked to Anglophone Catholics with no commitment to local identity and traditions, to expand and bolster Catholicism in Creole communities.

Starość w kręgu ludzi Kościoła. Dwa przykłady z epoki przedrozbiorowej

The purpose of this article is to discus the problem of senility in medieval and modern Poland. There were examined two groups of people. The first one are clergy from Uniejow chapter, who lived during 14th–16th century. Among them were men, who were above 60 and 70 years old. The evaluation of the lenght of their life and characteristics of their old age was based an the analysis of their professional activity. The second group: parish priests and the church personnel were connected with 17th-century parish. In written sources we could sometimes find straight information about their old age. In case of church personnel senility started over 40–50 years of age and in case of parish priests it was above 60 years of age. We also read information about their diseases and infirmity.

Exceptional Sexual Harms

Questioning of Catholic Church leaders in the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has revealed a distinct sense of immunity and lack of responsibility for the crimes of church personnel, which has resulted in stymied justice for complainants in sexual abuse lawsuits. In this article, I explore this immunity by examining it in the context of treatments of sexual harms in other areas of private law, particularly religious exceptions to discrimination law, by which religious organizations are granted immunity from the modern rationale of the harms of discrimination on the grounds of sex and sexual orientation. In situating child sexual abuse claims in the broader sphere of private law, I aim to reveal law’s incoherent logic of sexual harms, and its implications for justice. The example of religious exceptions illustrates an incoherent problematization of sexual harm and responsibility in contemporary legal and political systems that aim to uphold modern values of equality and dignity while sustaining incompatible doctrines of religious autonomy.

“My children feel rejected by their Church”: “Managed Integration” at St. Philip Neri Parish, Chicago

Some white Catholics in the mid-twentieth century saw “managed integration” as a potential solution to both white flight and segregation. While appearing in a variety of forms, a managed integration strategy accepted, and even promoted, gradual integration by reaching out to, retaining, and appeasing white residents. This approach to race relations was employed in the middle of the 1960s at St. Philip Neri, a parish located in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. In an effort to help South Shore become a stable, integrated community, church personnel implemented a racial quota in order to limit the number of black Catholic students at the parish school, forbidding enrollment beyond the third grade. While parish personnel hoped to facilitate the gradual integration of their neighborhood, St. Philip Neri’s use of managed integration revealed the potential dangers of an integration strategy that focused primarily on white residents’ concerns. The school’s quota created additional burdens for African American families and undermined the relationship between these Catholics and their Church. Not until February of 1965, after pressure from African American families, the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago, and the local hierarchy, would a small group of black Catholic students enter the upper grade levels of the parish’s school.

Diabetes and Hypertension in Congolese Church Personnel: An Emerging Epidemic?

The objectives of this study were (1) to examine the prevalence of diabetes and hypertension among church personnel in North-Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and (2) to identify socio-demographic factors and health behaviors that are associated with these outcomes. Data for this study were obtained from a sample of 670 pastors and their wives, and other church workers in North-Eastern Congo in 2014/2015. Pearson chi square and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted with diabetes status and hypertension as outcome variables. A little over one in ten respondents (11.3 %; n = 76) were diabetic. Of the 76 respondents with diabetes, 49, or approximately two-thirds (64 %) were aged 50 and over. Of the respondents aged 70 and above, 85.5 % were found to be hypertensive. Adjusting for all other predictors, respondents who were older, market women/homemakers, and those who used vehicles as opposed to walking or biking as their means of transport were more likely to be diabetic. Also, respondents who were older or overweight were more likely to have hypertension. The paper discusses the results and their implication for public health policy on diabetes prevention, particularly among older individuals who are religious workers in Africa.

Abstract A42: A community of cancer communicators: The influence of a collaborative faith-based social marketing project to address CRC risk and prevention among African American church populations

Abstract African Americans have the highest colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality and morbidity rates when compared to all other racial and ethnic groups in the United States (ACS, 2014). Faith-based health promotion interventions and programs targeting this population have shown effective however cancer disparities remain; in some cases the cancer mortality gap is widening among African American men (Jemal et. al, 2010). Strategic health communication programs that engage and include the consumer in a collaborative communication process can help to address and eventually break down barriers that contribute to health disparities (Kreps, 2006). The present study aimed to investigate the influence of socially marketed cancer communication materials in predominately African American churches in the Midwest and how these materials impacted colorectal cancer screening with a FIT (fecal immunochemical test) kit. African Americans between the ages of 45 and 79 (n=163) from six churches participated in the study. Churches were randomized as clusters in a 2-arm design. Cluster randomization was based on location in the metropolitan area and also the congregation size. Intervention churches (3) received culturally and religiously targeted communication materials from church personnel who were either a registered nurse, other medical professional (e.g. CNA) or who were affiliated with health initiatives at the church. Control/comparison churches received standard CRC screening education by non-church personnel. The pilot intervention occurred at intervention churches over a 5-6 week period that began with a workshop presented by the church to educate and inform participants about CRC risk, prevention and screening with a FIT kit. In subsequent weeks the church marketed additional materials to participants that were sponsored, created and disseminated by both the church and university researches. Comparison churches received standard CRC communication materials (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) that were available via a brief informational session. Other communication materials included general health information about diet, exercise and heart disease. Preliminary results suggest there is no significant difference of impact between standard vs. targeted CRC communication on screening with a FIT kit. Participants in this sample perceived the church and university researchers as important communicators of colorectal cancer risk and prevention. Participants in both arms trusted the information and perceived that communication materials were created and delivered by either the church and/or researchers even in the case they were not. In addition, those who had little knowledge about CRC screening completed the FIT kit for the first time or were willing to screen again if they were not up to date. The trust in the church and also its affiliation to trusted researchers suggests that individuals in this sample have positive perceptions and attitudes toward CRC screening. The lack of knowledge about CRC risk and also tests were modified following church-led workshops and informational sessions. Participants, particularly males, were also more willing to screen for CRC if their pastor or church leader screened for the disease. The partnership and thus delivery of any type of education by Faith Based Organizations and researchers has the potential to impact screening rates and also screening behavior. Citation Format: Crystal Lumpkins, Daniel Nwachokor, Adam Blackstock, Adrinne Blackstock, Broderick Crawford, Lynn Miller, Israel B. S. Groves, Jr., K. Allen Greiner, Chris Daley. A community of cancer communicators: The influence of a collaborative faith-based social marketing project to address CRC risk and prevention among African American church populations. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eighth AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 13-16, 2015; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2016;25(3 Suppl):Abstract nr A42.

Partnership and Race in Mission Encounters in Tanzania

Abstract I examine racial and ethnic dynamics in encounters between Tanzanian church personnel, and visiting American partners or short-term missionaries. Contemporary mission work in Tanzania is situated within a historical context that includes, but is not ultimately determined by, race or ethnicity. Several kinds of engagements and partnerships exist between American religious organisations and the Tanzanian church, which I describe ethnographically, and discuss how encounters between Tanzanian Christians and American visitors become ethnically inflected. Two cases—encounters with Maasai and Chagga people respectively—provide a comparative illustration. Finally, I address the role played by new types of partnership between Tanzanian and American religious organisations, and how themes of hospitality and identities as guests and hosts contribute to encounters between American and Tanzanian Christians. In these encounters, multiple areas of shifting meanings of race come together, resulting in disjunctures of understanding. I suggest that these disjunctures, coupled with the guest-host dynamic and the lack of in-depth knowledge characteristic of short-term mission in general, reveal patterns of social inequality and tensions inherent in the changing context of Christian mission.

Feminist Contributions to Justice for Survivors of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse

The scandal of systemic institutionalised child abuse by clergy and other church personnel continues to unfold across the globe with unremitting effect. Northern Ireland is the latest among a numbe...

Crutched Friars and Croisiers: The Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross in England and France, by J. Michael Hayden

Crutched Friars and Croisiers: The Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross in England and France, by J. Michael Hayden. Rome, Crosier Generalate, 2013. 326 pp. $16.99 US (paper). The medieval western Church was a great corporate body, larger and more powerful than any European kingdom. The basic division of Church personnel was between the secular priests and the monastic clergy. In this wide-ranging book brimming with new research, Michael Hayden examines a little known group of monastic churchmen: the Crosiers. Hayden focuses on their northwest European heartlands of England and France, and on their medieval heyday, but he enlarges his story to include the origins of the Order, as well as the great changes that they experienced in the early modern and modern periods. He thus begins his story in the thirteenth century in the diocese of Liege (modern Belgium) and ends up in North America in 2010. Hayden's first task--not as simple as it might sound--is to define who the Crosiers were. In the twenty-first century Crosiers are canons, men living under the ecclesiastical rule of their Order, The Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross, with their headquarters in Rome (the Crosier Generalate, the publisher of Hayden's book). In the thirteenth century the definition was not so clear. Hayden therefore devotes the roughly fifty pages of chapter one to establishing the origins and early identity of the Order. The problem for historians is the lack of surviving documentary evidence for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a situation in part created by the fifteenth-century canons' attempts to reinvent the Order and its past. Hayden does a remarkable job of piecing together the evidence, beginning with a small and mixed religious community of canons, laymen, and laywomen in the early thirteenth century at Clairlieu in the diocese of Liege. This group lived a communal religious life offering hospitality, and the men would probably have preached and heard confession. As the group gradually solidified into a more formal (and male) religious order during the first half of the thirteenth century, they (like many other small religious orders) were not specifically identifiable as friars or canons. They broadly followed Dominican statutes but they did not adopt the strict mendicant ideal of poverty. When these preacher-canons started setting up new houses, they were given various labels. Arriving in England in the 1240s, they were considered friars. Their Latin names fratres sanete crucis (brethren of the Holy Cross) or fratres cruciferi (Crossed brethren) were presumably based on an image of the cross on their outer apron. This reviewer suggests that Englishmen, pronouncing the Latin cruciferi with a proper British accent (crutchy-furry), naturally called them the Crutched friars. Arriving in France at about the same time, the fratres became the Croizies or the Croisiers--the Crossed canons. …

Religious institutions and sexual scandals: A comparative study of Catholicism in Ireland, South Africa, and the United States

Using a comparative-historical framework, this article examines how religious organizational responses to a shared stigmatizing scandal, arising from the sexual abuse of children by church personnel, differ across diverse locales – Ireland, South Africa, and the United States – of a single religious tradition, in this case the Roman Catholic Church. Drawing on previous literature, I identify three perspectives related to responses to sexual scandal in organized religious institutions: strategic self-presentation, lay activism, and church–media relations. Focusing on the Catholic episcopal conferences in the three settings and relying on an analysis of national-level bishops’ discourses and practices in the 1988–2013 time span, I find that Catholic legitimations predominate, but appeals to Catholic discourses are more frequent in South Africa than in Ireland and the United States; lay mobilization exerts a partial influence on scandal responses even in contexts providing sociopolitical space for activism from below; and external accountability is influenced by media organizations, but differently so, in all three contexts. Implications for religion and society in general are discussed.