Clerical Function Research Articles

Curricular Commons

Curricular Commons

The Priesthood of all Believers at the Council of Trent

THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS AT THE COUNCIL OF TRENT Nelson H. Minnich* In its Constitution on the Church and Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Vatican II attributed to the laity a sharing in the one priesthood of Christ whereby they join in the offering of the Eucharist and in the mission of consecrating the world to God by their apostolic labors.1 Although deservedly hailed for making a major step toward the development of a theology of the universal priesthood of all believers, Vatican II was not the first ecumenical council to speak on this subject. Almost exactly four-hundred years earlier on July 13, 1563, the fathers of Trent touched upon this topic in their decree on the sacrament of orders. Although its teaching was in the form of a condemnation of Luther’s assertion that all Christians are equally priests, Trent did not deny the existence of a universal priesthood of all believers. As will be seen from a study of the council’s documents, the theologians and bishops of Trent The Jurist 67 (2007) 341–363 341 * School of Theology and Religious Studies, Catholic University of America. 1 Lumen gentium, 9, 10, 30–31, 34, and Apostolicam actuositatem, 2, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 2 vols. (London and Washington, D.C.: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990) 2:855–857, 874–875, 877, 982— hereafter cited as Alberigo-Tanner. For an analysis of Vatican II’s teaching on the priesthood of the faithful, see John F. Hotchkin, “The Christian Priesthood: Episcopate, Presbyterate and People in the Light of Vatican II,” in Eucharist and Ministry [Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue, IV] (NewYork: U.S.A. National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation, and Washington, D.C.: the Bishops’Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, 1970) 189–208, here 202–206. For the judgment of the scripture scholar John H. Elliott that Vatican II’s espousal of the universal priesthood of all believers is not properly based on exegesis and that its echoing of Luther’s teachings is “nothing short of ironic;” see his “Detailed Comment: 1 Peter 2:5, 9 and the Doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers,” in 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [TheAnchor Bible, 37B] (NewYork: TheAnchor Bible, Doubleday, 2000) 449–455, here 454. Elliott seems to assume that the Tridentine Church rejected outright Luther’s ideas; but, as this paper will show, the fathers at the Council of Trent accepted a qualified priesthood of the faithful. Despite Elliott’s assertions that biblical texts do not mention baptismal ordination or a sharing in the unique priesthood of Christ (452), prayerful reflections on a variety of biblical texts allowed the fathers of Vatican II to develop further these ideas regarding the priestly nature of the Christian community, e.g., Jean-Marie-Roger Tillard, Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion, trans. R. C. De Peaux (Collegeville , Minnesota: The Liturgical Press/A Michael Glazier Book, 1992) 169–175. 342 the jurist held that the faithful are in a certain sense truly priests.2 The formulations they used in describing it, though, reveal that their understanding of this universal priesthood of all Christians had progressed but little beyond the level of citing related scriptural texts and lacked the important Eucharistic and missionary dimensions developed at Vatican II. Pre-tridentine Teaching on the Priesthood of the Faithful Over the centuries the Church has consistently taught that there is a priesthood of all believers.3 A new understanding of this priesthood, however, emerged during the Reformation in the writings of Martin Luther. He claimed that all Christians are equally priests, that there is no distinction other than one of function between clergy and laity, and that the power to preach and administer the sacraments lies with the whole Christian community which chooses certain persons for the service of the Word. To exercise this clerical function, one needs the consent of the congregation or the appointment by a Christian magistrate. 4 Luther was challenged on various points by a number of Catholic controversialist theologians. Almost all of them acknowledged a priesthood of the faithful , but they feared it might...

War, women and accounting: Female staff in the UK Army Pay Department offices, 1914–1920

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the pioneering role of women who were officially employed (albeit on a temporary basis) in accounting, clerical and management positions in the Army Pay Department (APD) offices in the UK from 1914 to 1920. The role of the APD offices was to manage the pay and allowances of soldiers of the British Army, using the ‘Dover’ system of military finance and accounting which had been introduced in 1905 along with the command structure of the Army Finance Branch. The flexible ‘Dover’ system coped with the unprecedented increase in bureaucracy as the strength of the army rose from 140,000 in 1914 to over 5 million by 1918. The mainstay of the survival and efficiency of the ‘Dover’ system was the employment of women in the APD establishments.Previous research involving the role of women in wartime has mainly focused on working-class women who worked within the munitions industry (Marwick, 1977; Braybon, 1981; Thom, 2000), although Zimmeck (1986: pp. 145–172) has previously researched into women who were employed by the General Post Office (GPO) and its Savings Bank Department from 1870 to 1914. No research has previously been conducted into the role of women employed in an accounting or clerical function within the army pay offices during the Great War. The wartime role of female staff employed in APD establishments, as with their women colleagues who worked in the munitions industry, relates to the concept of the Reserve Army of Labour. The ‘feminisation’ of accounting and bookkeeping (Anderson, 1986; Walker, 2003), did not occur until after the Great War.

Using interpretive sociology to explore workplace skill and knowledge

Drawing on original research, this paper considers the value of interpretive sociology for exploring clerical skill and knowledge and the role of the clerical function in organizations. It offers a critique of both the received view on clerical skill and knowledge and the epistemology generating such a view, and presents an examination of the notion of ‘common sense’. The paper draws to a close by demonstrating how an interpretive methodology can generate fresh insights to clerical work, skill and knowledge and to the clerical function.

Enhancing Purchasing's Strategic Reputation: Evidence and Recommendations for Future Research

SUMMARYPast research in the supply chain management literature has rightfully claimed that purchasing is a strategic function of the business. In contrast, other research has found that the level of involvement by members of the supply function in strategic activities is rather low. In particular, the perception of purchasing by members of one particular group within the firm, marketing, often appears to be similar to that of a clerical function performing low‐value‐adding activities. Thus, a dichotomy exists regarding what is often claimed (being a strategic function of the business) and the apparent reality (little participation in strategic corporate activities; conflict with members of other organizational functions). In this article, a model predicting purchasing's strategic reputation within the firm is proposed and tested. The results, which are obtained from a survey of purchasing executives, indicate a role forback‐and‐forth communications and a cooperative relational history to enhance purchasing's reputation within the firm. Implications are discussed for such reputation enhancement of purchasing as a strategic, value‐adding function and recommendations are made for future research.

The Christian Clergy in the Early Modern Holy Roman Empire: A Comparative Social Study

This study attempts to compare Catholic and Protestant confessions with respect to the temporal function allocated to the clergy from outside its ranks. This basically secular question cannot be separated from the issue of the religious self-awareness of the priests and other clergy. This study proposes to approach the subject via the concept of social biography (Sozialbiographie), which attempts to combine the concept of ecclesiastical self-awareness with the temporal definition of clerical function. Social backgrounds, education, and training of the clergies is compared as well as their understandings of family and marriage and the ways in which these affected their concepts of the state and their place in it.

Data Processing and Technological Change: The Post Office Savings Bank, 1861–1930

Data Processing and Technological Change: The Post Office Savings Bank, 1861-1930 MARTIN CAMPBELL-KELLY In 1861 the British government established a national savings bank, using its network of post offices as feeder branches. The Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) provided high-security, nationwide sav­ ings facilities for a relatively affluent and mobile working class, for whom local savings banks and thrift clubs were no longer practical. By 1890, a large centralized data-processing operation had been es­ tablished in which more than sixteen hundred clerks maintained nearly five million accounts opened in more than ten thousand post offices. The bank remained completely unmechanized until the 1920s, by which time it had a head office with four thousand clerks, still processing transactions entirely by hand using Victorian fixedleafledgers . Large-scale mechanization was finally achieved between 1926 and 1930, using card-based records and bookkeeping ma­ chines. This article describes the evolution of the savings bank’s informa­ tion system and discusses the reasons for the slow adoption of the new information technologies. There were both rational and irratio­ nal motives for the resistance to office machinery, embedded in a culture of institutional fossilization and hostility to newfangled in­ ventions. Victorian Data Processing In England, several large-scale offices employing hundreds of clerks were established during the period 1840-70. Victorian data processing in England had two defining characteristics: specializa­ tion of clerical function and the absence of mechanization. Unlike Dr. Campbell-Kelly is reader in computer science at the University of Warwick, England. The research described in this article was undertaken while he was Simon Senior Research Fellow in the Center for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Manchester, 1993-94. It was first presented at the SHOT Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., October 1993.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3901-0001$02.00 1 2 Martin Campbell-Kelly TABLE 1 Commercial Occupations, 1841-1901 Male Female 1841 ..................... +94,000 1,000 1851 .................. 91,000 — 1861 .................. 130,000 2,000 1871 ..................... 212,000 5,000 1881 ..................... 352,000 15,000 1891 ..................... 449,000 20,000 1901 ..................... 597,000 27,000 Source.—B. R. Mitchell and P. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge 1962), p. 60. (■Includes railway clerks, classified under transport in later censuses. the clerk in the small office, who could perform a wide range of tasks, workers in the large-scale office were specialists—ledger clerks, casting clerks, correspondence clerks, writers, copyists, and so on. The workers were unsupported by any significant mechaniza­ tion, because the offices were established long before the availability of office machines, such as typewriters and adding machines, and predated the invention of loose-leaf and card ledgers. Information processing was achieved solely by means of handwritten entries in ledgers, hand copying of documents, the filling out of forms, and handwritten correspondence. The only important data-processing innovations of the period were rudimentary carbon copying and the use of preprinted forms. The rapid growth of office work in the United Kingdom in the 19th century is indicated in table 1. Between 1861 and 1881 the num­ ber of people in “commercial occupations” increased by 180 per­ cent, and the proportion of the workforce employed in these occu­ pations more than doubled.1 By contrast, in the same period in the United States the proportion of the labor force in the information sector grew by only 12 percent; it was not until the period 1880-1900 that the first twenty-year doubling of information workers occurred, when the information sector grew by 96 percent.2 In the United States, the rapid growth of office work from 1880 to 1900 coincided with the office machine boom, and it has been assumed generally ’There is no separate census tabulation for clerks, but workers in commercial occupations included about 70 percent clerks, the remainder being shop workers, salesclerks, and miscellaneous nonmanual workers. 2J. R. Beniger, The Control Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), p. 24. See also M. U. Porat, The Information Economy: Definition and Measurement (Washington, D.C., 1977). The Post Office Savings Bank, 1861-1930 3 that the one could not have...

Status and Recognition of the Purchasing Function in the Electronics Industry

This article examines the status and recognition of the purchasing function in the electronics industry. Issues also investigated are the perception of purchasing as a strategic or a clerical function; recognition as an equal partner on the top management team; access to information and participation in decision making; and the nature of other functions’ reporting relationships to purchasing. The results confirm previous research that indicates purchasing is viewed increasingly as a strategic contributor to the firm. Further, there appears to be evidence that purchasing participates as a team member in many decision‐making processes of the firm. However, the purchasing function still lacks the status and recognition that should be accorded to a critical strategic function.

Fonctions du profane et du « ridiculum » dans l’enluminure médiévale

Recent studies by Randall and Camille have thrown new light on the meaning of the medieval illuminations «at the bottom of the page ». The present article follows on from these studies to look at several examples taken from fourteenth-century religious manuscripts. It attempts to measure how autonomous these illuminations are and to analyse their humour. The first two examples examined act as «visual annotations », offering an ironic reversal of the text to serve as a foreword, a clerical vituperatio. The satire resides in a scene taken from daily life, put in the place of a traditional allegorical representation. Two other examples establish a thematic link between the illustration and the text of a psalm ; representations of loving couples create a relationship between the religious world and the world of profane love. This transposition of verses of the psalm into a profane register opens up an interpretative system of the religious text, based on humour. Another example suggests how to interpret a visual circumlocution based on the distinctio. It is a play on words which reverses the original meaning. The analogies between religious theatre and these «footnote » illustrations confirm our hypothesis on the clerical function in this iconographical tradition. In both fields it is a question of legitimating the ridiculum in the service of the per suas w : the church’s intentions are translated by means of humour and amusement and in a mixture of stylistic registers that medieval literature inherited from late Antiquity.

The Introduction of Information and Office Technologies: The Great Divide?'

Using four case studies, the paper considers the effect of office technologies on clerical skill. This familiar theme is widened by asking to what extent resultant employment practices, e.g., staff rationalization, demise of the `office junior' system, etc., have contributed to the appearance that less skill, experience and training are now required in clerical work; and by questioning the accuracy of that impression. The issues of reducing job opportunities, changing work values and attempts at `corrective' measures through training initiatives are addressed. It is argued that these inter-related developments have created a `divide', between clerks experienced in pre-or partially-computerized systems and those with only post-computerization experience. The role played by clerical sector research in perpetuating the image of clerical work as low-status, low-skill, is considered. The current and potential implications for the effectiveness of the clerical function and, as a consequence, for employing organizations are discussed.

The Professionalization of an Elite: The Nineteenth Century Episcopate

A number of Victorian writers identified a change in the episcopate in the nineteenth century: Dean Burgon, for example, believed that a remodeled episcopacy emerged at this time. Historians have advanced the view that the changes were generated by the Whig ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s. Indeed it is part of the schemata of ecclesiastical history that bishops in the eighteenth century were fundamentally different from those in the nineteenth century. Yet, as C. K. Francis Brown admitted, there has been no attempt to establish a pattern of this in the career and social history of the nineteenth century episcopate. This is all the more surprising since a structuralist analysis of the Caroline and Hanoverian episcopate has existed for some years. The traditional view of Church history, that the ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s and 1840s were the principal engine of change, have tended to overlook the structural changes in bishops' career patterns and that there was a change in the concept of the episcopal function. The context of this changed concept of episcopal duty is important. Recent work on the professionalization of the clergy has focused on the immediate impact of the Reformation and the development of the Church as a profession up to the early eighteenth century. Rosemary O'Day and Geoffrey Holmes have demonstrated that between 1580 and 1730 the clerical profession became increasingly stratified. The overpopulation of the clergy in the eighteenth century accelerated this trend, establishing a Church in which there were extremes of wealth and poverty. At the same time the clergy were subject to greater lay control than any other emergent profession. This tension between professionalization and institutions of the state has been examined in other occupations, but throughout the nineteenth century it grew stronger in the Church. From patronage of a living to nomination to a see, laity dominated the Church. In spite of Whig reforms of the 1830s and 1840s lay control established strict parameters within which the professionalization of the episcopate occurred. The effect of control from outside the Church was that the paths to the bench of bishops remained more numerous and varied than the limited paths to the elite of other professions like the judiciary. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also saw functional trends that brought about the professionalization of the clergy. These changes have been thoroughly analyzed by Anthony Russell. The self-conscious spirituality of the Tractarian movement also effected changes in the popular view of the clerical function, and the episcopate was not immune to these changes. By the closing decades of the nineteenth-century bishops were appointed whose careers had been touched by these trends. Equally important were developments within the episcopate that altered the bishops' roles.

Enterprise information analysis: Cost-benefit analysis and the data-managed system

A gradual evolution of systems design has occurred concurrently with the introduction of each new computer generation. The initial systems design was batch-oriented, largely a replacement of clerical functions supporting operational management, which lent itself well to a financial justification using classical cost-benefit analysis and which had virtually no intangible costs or benefits to consider. With the development of the facilities to support on-line systems came the development of “management information systems” and “management inquiry systems,” providing information and data as input to functional management for tactical planning. The intangible benefits of “better management decisions” were generally noted but not assigned a value in the cost-benefit analysis. The development of data-managed management information systems and decision support systems has extended information systems capabilities that provide the potential for integrated support of the strategic planning efforts of the enterprise. These systems cannot be cost-justified on the same basis as the “clerical function replacement” systems. From an accounting perspective, the costs (investments) should be treated differently. The benefits are intangible and, therefore, difficult to assess (1) in dollar terms and (2) in probability of occurrence; however, “hard” dollars will ultimately appear on the Profit and Loss Statement of the enterprise. (Table 1 provides a summary of the differences in the financial aspects of the systems.)

Implications of mass automated instruments on medical practice.

The clinical laboratory is in a stage of change which has been the direct result of an influx of technology and the current demand for lower costs and increased productivity. There is no significant trend anticipated in the future which would forestall this particular process. The practicing physician can anticipate a fairly marked reduction in the cost of individual tests and, likewise, a marked increase in the amount of available information. There will be a larger clerical function involved in the review of such information along with a series of relevant problems related to the actual size of the new data base. One of the most significant problems related to this increase in numerical reporting will be the statistical problem of the "abnormal-normal." Statistical misclassification must be considered with each abnormal test and a specific approach must be taken to these tests to minimize the inconvenience to the patient. It is recommended that any unsuspected abnormal test(s) that is discovered be repeated as a single test(s) through a reference method. Reordering of the test battery or screen will only offer another possibility for statistical misinterpretation. If the test on isolated evaluation does appear abnormal, then this should call for the routine evaluation of this particular condition. Multivariate statistical analysis could eliminate this probability dilemma, yet is presently experimental and is not in routine use within any clinical setting. We can look forward to the evolution of such a process through the mechanism of a hospital and laboratory communication system which will allow the physician to work with an evaluation process capable of handling these large volumes of numbers (22). Such programs are on the horizon and should be anticipated within the next five years in some of the larger centers that have this new instrumentation.

Timed Work Steps During Diagnostic Radiography

If radiologists are to meet the rising medical demands of a growing population, it appears that increased efficiency for their departments must be sought through the development of automatic filming stations and the use of computer-aided information systems (1, 2, 5, 6). Both of these approaches demand well defined operational analyses of radiographic work situations. Unfortunately, little material is found in our literature that describes the elapsed time experiences of a diagnostic x-ray department. The available figures either appear to be based on old data or statistically small samples, or they are inaccessible to most interested parties. This paper lists the results of time measurements recorded during diagnostic radiography of 9,200 patients examined in a medium-size military radiology service over the first four months of 1967. The results have been studied from the point of view of a practicing radiologist in an effort to find which technical or clerical function within the department might be best mechanically automated or electronically assisted. Time parameters are then suggested within which automatic filming devices for standard radiography or computer-aided information systems must work before they may be considered practical for ordinary use. The Situation Measured The radiology service studied between August 1965 and July 1967 was the only one supplying first-level diagnostic radiography for 35,000 people. These were active servicemen, their dependents, and elderly retirees living on and around a mid-western army post. The x-ray department was located in a 250-bed multistory hospital recording 7,000 admissions and 218,-000 out-patient visits yearly. Fifty-five physicians, the majority with specialty training, staffed the hospital (3). A profile of examinations performed for this relatively young and healthy population showed that 45 per cent of the radiographs were of the chest. Six per cent of the examinations were positive contrast surveys of the stomach, colon, gallbladder, and kidneys. The remaining 49 per cent included the usual spectrum of customary roentgen examinations. In-patients accounted for 20 per cent of the total exposures. It is estimated that 85 to 90 per cent of the 9,200 patients were processed during the regular day shifts of the five and a half-day work weeks. In the radiology suite, four standard examination rooms were served by one automatic processor for film development and drying. Two of the diagnostic x-ray machines had image-amplified fluoroscopes. A fifth room contained an adjustable urological x-ray table. No radiation therapy or radionuclide work was carried out. Eighteen persons were regularly employed in the department. Two board-certified radiologists, a medical typist, a receptionist, and a file clerk supported the activities of four registered civilian x-ray technologists and nine military assignees.

Secularism as the Common Religion of a Free Society

NOT so long ago, the clergy of all cults and denominations tended to write or speak the word Secularism in a manner eloquent of discomfort or anxiety or anger or hatred. There was nothing in dictionary definitions of the word to account for the emotional disturbance. Webster, for instance, identifies the secular as belonging to the State as distinguished from the Church and again non-ecclesiatical, not religious in character nor devoted to religious ends or uses. The secular is thus the concern of the laity as against the clergy, and Secularism is the lay frame of mind. Since the clerical vocation depends for its social role and status on its relationships with the laity, the passions stirred by the word secularism would seem to have another object than the laity as laity. Clerics anxious or angry or hateful toward Secularism must needs conceive what it signifies not only as a concern of the souls in their cure, but also as an infidel way of life and thought tending to atrophy the clerical function in society and ultimately to dispense altogether with the priestly vocation and its many and diverse occupational organizations I Because the latter, severally and jointly, identify themselves with religion, they charge that Secularism is necessarily inimical to religion, although as a rule religion means to them their own particular creed and code and no other.' If they include

The Clerical Function in a Public Authority

The Clerical Function in a Public Authority

The Clerical Function

The Clerical Function

The Clerical Function

The Clerical Function

A lawyer's viewpoint of compensation problems of the cardiac

T HE PROBLEMS involved -in providing workmen’s compensation payments for employees who suffer disability or death as a result of heart disease are manifold and multiplying. In the opinion of many knowledgeable observers, the problems are rapidly building to a crisis situation. An explosion is inevitable unless the trend of recent developments in this area can be arrested and actually reversed. Until the phenomenon of Aggravation appeared on the medico-legal scene, defense of workmen’s compensation claims was deemed a routine chore. It was regarded and often treated as a clerical function. Competition naturally developed among managements clearly dedicated to saving industry tangible dollars in claims handling costs. Viewing the nation’s amazing business, commercial and manufacturing growth, the insurance industry lost little time in proving itself equal to the task of furnishing needed coverages never before envisioned. But while weaving this vital and ever-spreading blanket of protective coverage, claims management found itself faced with increasingly inadequate manpower pools. It found available too few young men and women to fill its increasing personnel needs. Into this situation of business expansion and paper-thin spreading of available talent there came an unheralded visitor. He was not entirely unwanted-he accomplished the righting of some grave injustices which had been wrought by inadequate medical awareness of the incidental but catastrophic effect of an untoward outside influence on latent, or even patent, lesions whose etiology was known to be non-occupational. This visitor, however, was quickly embraced by those administrators whose trusted position as judge and jury is twisted beyond recognition by their belief that votes accrue in equal ratio to the size of compensation awards handed out indiscriminately. Our visitor was welcomed warmly also by segments of the medical profession whose medical concepts have become web-like, chameleon-like and increasingly sensitive to the monetary rewards which easy medical conscience can yield. Our visitor received an equally warm welcome from groups within the legal profession who parlayed these facets into a most lucrative, specialized practice and naturally encouraged and abetted the further development of this beneficent climate. Aggravation was our visitor and he came accompanied by his kin : Activation and Acceleration.