Local Parish Research Articles

Two Orthodox Churches (the Old and the New) of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Kalisz

The Kalisz Orthodox church from the 1870s (Fig. 1) was demolished in the interwar period and quickly replaced by a “new” Orthodox church by the same name (Fig. 6). The surviving official correspondence reveals a specific set of arguments for the dismantling of the “old” church, e.g. that it was becoming dilapidated, was a threat to public safety and constituted an alien addition to the architectural landscape of the city. The demolition of the Orthodox church was to provide jobs for the unemployed and to open up the possibility of erecting a post office in that spot. The municipal authorities convinced the Ministry of Culture and Art that the local Orthodox parish was not interested in reclaiming the church for their own needs, even though this was not the case. The community ultimately conceded to having the church dismantled but demanded that a new temple be erected as compensation. The example of Kalisz aptly illustrates the attitude the authorities of the Second Republic of Poland had towards Russian Orthodox churches that had been erected in the partition period. The situation mirrored the controversies around the fate of the Orthodox church in Saski Square in Warsaw, if in a more provincial environment. The architectural style of the “new” Orthodox church in Kalisz puzzles many authors – the building, clearly representative of Russian historicism, is associated with Rundbogenstil and Latin- and Occidental-style Orthodox churches, which were spared by the interwar Polish authorities who wished to convert Orthodox citizens to Catholicism within the framework of the so-called neo-Union.

Towards a public health approach for palliative care: an action-research study focused on engaging a local community and educating teenagers

BackgroundEducation sessions about palliative care among teenagers are uncommon in developed countries. However, very little is known either about the impact of this type of intervention or about how this age-group perceives its impact. The purpose of this study was therefore to (i) implement an education program about palliative care among teenagers and (ii) to investigate the impact of the program on the participants.MethodsAn action-research study was conducted at a local community parish in Portugal in November 2015. An education programme was purposively built about palliative care, using active educational strategies adapted for teenagers. Quantitative and qualitative techniques and instruments were used for data collection: questionnaire; reflective diaries; interviews and written testimony. The program had three stages: preparation; intervention; and evaluation. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic content analysis; quantitative data were analysed descriptively.Results69 people (47 teenagers) participated in the education program. Findings show that the education program contributed to creating awareness about palliative care. Both the teenagers and other participants assessed the education program positively. At the end of the program, teenagers had a constructive message about palliative care.ConclusionsThe education-intervention contributed to create awareness about palliative care among the participant teenagers, who ended the program with a positive message about palliative care. Based on our findings, the following policy implications can be drawn: (1) Further research is needed to evaluate the effect of education programs about palliative care among younger age groups (teenagers and children), particularly in relation to the changing of attitudes toward palliative care. (2) Education about palliative care should be promoted to local communities, involving all age groups, to foster involvement, participation and empowerment. (3) Compassionate communities should be promoted to enhance the health and wellbeing of all citizens at the end of their life.

Obituary: Professor John Alfred Catt (1939–2017)

Born in Maidstone, Kent, on 10th April 1939, John Catt was the son of a professional gardener who worked at the local Parish Church and Vicarage, so it was not surprising that he grew up with a life-long interest in nature, gardening and soils, and as a quiet but devoted member of the Anglican Church. He was educated in the county at the Ashford Grammar School, at the time one of the few in the country teaching Geology at A-level.

Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth by Mark William (review)

a general readership and appealing to readers who will bring their own gifts of desire and commitment to be in some way active parts of the church’s response to the Spirit-inspired gift that is the Second Vatican Council, readers who will be lighters of candles, not cursers of the enveloping darkness. Our response does matter. These essays direct us in a quite practical way to some of the reasons why the Council remains important, even indispensable, to the present day. My own response, having read some of the essays several times, is to pick out a small selection and follow up the attached bibliographies for further delving, and then to work out with some friends how we might in our own modest way share the fruits of our reading, with a keen awareness that there is work to be done. If we can harness some of the spirit of that parish in Kaikorai and the gritty gumption of Flannery O’Connor, and show that the church does matter to us in a profound way in our daily lives, we can be part of the change that is so badly needed in our Irish church. Those of us who are settled in the faith can be all too comfortable with the status quo. A fruitful first step might be, Augustine-like, to ‘take and read’ this provocative book. What happens after that is up to each of us. But it really does matter. James Sexton is a notary public and a retired solicitor, living in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, where he is actively involved in his local parish pastoral council. Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth, Mark William, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 578 pages. Mark Williams combines a Fitzjames Fellowship in Medieval English at Merton College, Oxford, with the Departmental Lectureship in Celtic in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. He has written a book that attempts a difficult task, that of sorting through the various layers of understanding regarding Ireland’s ‘Gods’ who, at different times, have been taken to be deities, demigods, ‘angelic’ supernatural beings, superhumans , distressingly ‘normal’ human beings and mystical archetypes (Irish manifestations of undefinable entities first encountered in distant cultures, particularly India). That he succeeds as well as he has is a credit both to his Studies • volume 107 • number 425 118 Spring 2018: Book Reviews erudition and prudent judgment concerning the material he has chosen to consider. This is a text which scholars of Irish pre-Christian and medieval Christian religion, medieval literature, folk-lore and modern nationalist literature will undoubtedly consider for some time hereafter. Paradoxically, thebookmightultimatelybefoundmostusefulbythosewhoaren’tspecialists, since it brings concise coherence to a subject that from the outside sometimes appears as chaotic, nearly to the point of incomprehensibility. The extant texts in which these different understandings are embedded (many have been lost, but sometimes are referenced in those that still exist) date broadly from the early Middle Ages through to the beginnings of the Early Modern period, although they are most often found in compositional flux in any given period and now exist without definitive or primordial incarnations. Williams examines in particular fifteen of these texts, ranging chronologically from The Scholars Primer (Auraicept na n-Éces, ca. 650 – a grammatical and linguistic handbook) to The Tragic Deaths of the Children of Tuireann (Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann, ca. 1500 – a narrative of internecine conflict within the Túatha Dé Danann – the main familygrouping within the Irish supernatural pantheon). He also considers at length The Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabála Érenn, ca. 1075, probably ‘the single most complex text to have come down to us from medieval Ireland … the story of Ireland and its various waves of settlers and invaders from the time of Noah’s Flood down to the era of the Gaels or “Milesians”, meaning the ethnic Irish themselves’) (p.512), and The Tragic Deaths of the Children of Lir (Oidheadh Chloinne Lir, ca. 1450 – the ‘best known of Irish mythological talks … really a religious fable which uses native supernatural beings to exalt the Christian virtue of fortitude’) (p.515). The subjects of the texts that have survived include (among other things) Irish and...

“To Sey or Thinke Otherwise”: Ordinary Theology and Facing Death in Late Medieval Norfolk

This article explores how Jeff Astley’s work on ordinary theology can enrich historical study of late medieval lay religion. Ordinary theology provides scholars with a new set of vocabulary and methodological approaches for accessing the religious discourses of “everyday” Christians and allows medievalists in particular to reach beyond contested labels for lay belief. The article begins with a discussion of the promises and limitations of Astley’s theories for historians of religion and concludes with a test case of how they might guide future research, through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 152 wills from fifteenth-century Norfolk. The results highlight the diversity of beliefs about the afterlife and associated doctrines among medieval laypeople even as they demonstrated commitment to orthodox Christianity and their local parishes.

Re-membering missiology: An invitation to an activist agenda

In this article, I will argue that US mission practitioners, more than at anytime in the last century, need missiologists to bring research, writing, and teaching to bear on mission as practiced by US Christians, local parishes and congregations, and mission agencies, in part because of the profound changes in the nature and composition of what constitutes mission leadership today and the methodologies employed by those leaders. This need is rendered all the more urgent by what I will describe as the crisis in US mission practice which I will outline in detail. To respond to this sobering description of our engagement with God’s mission, I will propose the adoption of an “activist missiology,” along the lines of the growing school of activist anthropology pioneered by Charles Hale, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, and others.

The Parish as the “Missing Middle” Unit of Analysis in Catholic Studies

The Parish as the “Missing Middle” Unit of Analysis in Catholic Studies Carol Ann MacGregor45 Why should someone who studies Catholic schools study parishes? On the surface the answer seems obvious. Historically, schools, and particularly elementary schools, have been organizationally linked with local parishes. And, yet, as an early career scholar of contemporary Catholic schools, parishes have not played the prominent role in my own scholarship that they might have. Why? As background, my research on contemporary Catholicism focuses primarily on K-12 schools. I wrote a dissertation on the causes and potential consequences of Catholic school closures. In addition, for much of the last two years I’ve been in the field interviewing teachers, administrators, students, and parents at eight high schools around the country for a large comparative study of moral and citizenship formation across school sectors.46 As a starting point for this essay, I begin by considering whether the ways parishes have been absent from most of my work to date could provide a useful starting point for thinking about where we are in the study of parishes and where we might go in an alternate world where data availability was not a concern. I argue that, at present, it is much easier to find data on individuals or dioceses and as a result the parish remains the “missing middle” unit of analysis in the study of contemporary Catholicism. While there are some excellent ethnographic and interview based accounts of parish life in the social sciences, recent quantitative work is more difficult to find and there are cultural and methodological reasons this is the case.47 One notable exception is the recent work of Charles Zech and colleagues.48 I conclude by noting some of the ways in which having better data on parishes might inform our understanding of a host of other social and political phenomena including academic [End Page 21] achievement and volunteering and civic engagement as well as help clergy better serve those in the pews. Why We No Longer Study Catholic Parishes and Schools One of the foundational works in the sociology of Catholicism is Father Joseph Fichter’s Parochial School which is an ethnographic account of life at an elementary school that also gives some quantitative attention to the beliefs and behaviors of students at the school.49 It was one of the first things I read when I began my dissertation research. If my experience is any indication, other scholars will find it easy to cite respectfully in many contexts but will find the data itself is no longer all that relevant beyond its historical value. Much has changed in the sixty years since the data was collected. Fichter wrote about a tightly coupled, nearly inseparable, set of institutions with a shared mission and shared leadership and staff and a large overlap in the population served. In the contemporary era, school closures and consolidations mean that the dominant organizational form for most schools today is management by a diocese, religious order, or network of feeder parishes, not a single parish located in close proximity and governed by a single priest. Fichter also wrote at a time when parishes were still territorially bound and when many Catholics lived their lives via a cradle-to-grave system of institutions often just blocks from where they lived. Schools today are often not “neighborhood schools” in this traditional sense—something that raises questions about how we study them as part of a larger organizational ecology and about the nature of school community in a time of school choice. The parish school now draws students from many parishes to say nothing of the fact that it also increasingly draws many of its students from Protestant congregations, synagogues, and mosques and from families who do not practice any religion. In many ways, then, parishes and schools in the contemporary era seem to be separate organizations. This idea is also born out in some of my own recent interviews with parents at eight Catholic high schools around the country. In the school communities where I have spent time, parish life largely seems confined to Sundays and is separate and distinct from the Monday to Friday grind...

Mariánske kongregácie a Katolícka akcia v prvej polovici 20. storočia na Slovensku

The Catholic Church in Slovakia experienced a period of intensive development, boosted by the activities of Marian Congregations and Catholic Action, in the first half of the twentieth century. There were only 15 Congregations as of 1919, with their number increasing rapidly. It rose to 219 by 1948, the year of the forcible crackdown by the Communist regime against Catholic associations. In accordance with Ignatian spirituality, the Marian Congregations were aimed at personal sanctification, the sanctification of others and community life. Not one of these components was neglected and the emphasis was placed on the apostolate of personal example as well as on the organized apostolate. Catholic Action had a solid organizational structure which mirrored the arrangement of dioceses and parishes. The local parish priest had the main responsibility for Catholic Action as well as for Marian Congregations established by the bishop in his parish. This cooperation was characterized by five principles: personal growth in faith, participation in the life of a small community, lay apostolate, the formation of priests for cooperation with the laity and the support of bishops for both ordained and lay apostles.

Transformation of mortality in a remote Australian Aboriginal community: a retrospective observational study

ObjectivesTo describe trends in ages and causes of death in a remote-living Australian Aboriginal group over a recent 50-year period.DesignA retrospective observational study, from 1960 to 2010, of deaths and...

Integrity in the public life of the Church from Acts 4:15–20

The purpose of this expository word is to demonstrate the need for churches to participate in public theology with integrity as partners in the dialog about societal issues. Within the framework of authority and responsibility, the author attempts to establish the Church’s unique position as a truth-teller, using her experience as a local parish pastor and community leader. Looking at Scripture as a role model for policy and action, this work lifts up the conviction of the primitive Church in its role as both witness and hero. Within the concert of voices in the world, the Church has to find its own voice to speak truth to power, and honor its calling by expressing its beliefs and behaving accordingly. Some of the main emerging themes in this article include secular vs divinely inspired authority, integrity as the quality of having only one identity and position, which is both private and public, and truth-telling as the ultimate action of faith and hope. This article will contribute to the extensive amount of literature that addresses the role of the Church in public life and encourage leaders to exert their authority based on the integrity of their convictions, actions, and words.

Das besondere Profil der Stellvertretenden auf der Mittleren Ebene

Deputies in their understanding of their work as well as their suggestions for improvement typically feel closer to the local parishes and further away from the level of church leadership above the district level. Thus they represent some interesting differences in practices and ideals compared to the district church leaders.

Długie trwanie staropruskich struktur plemiennych na przykładzie organizacji parafialnej na Sambi

This paper seeks to present some tribal institutions that survived the conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic Knights as part of the parish structure in Sambia (Samland). This was the most populous tribal area in pagan Prussia. After its conquest in 1255, the Knights decided to build the local parish network on the basis of native territorial communities (so-called territoria). Thus, ultimately, the parish network in Sambia – with the exception of a sparse towns – was connected with so-called Kammerämter set up since the end of the 13th c. which, in turn, were based on the above territoria from the pagan period. In the early 15th c. there were 18 such local government units there managed by the Order or the local bishop. Parish churches were mostly built there in the seats of local clerks called Kämmereren. As a result, the parish network in the Bishopric of Sambia was relatively sparse. Pastoral work was also made difficult by that fact that most German parish priests did not know Old Prussian and that there were often problems with completing parish staff. Right before the Teutonic conquest of Sambia there were 15 territoria there. They were characterised by a high degree of external autonomy, but preserved loyalty towards the interests of the higher-order territorial community, i.e. the Sambian tribe. The political-territorial unit even smaller than the Prussian territorium was the moter (moter, muter, motor). It was probably a stronghold unit. There could be two or more such units in each territorium. The moter can also be called a community of local groups, since it embraced 5-10 villages. Georg Gerullis pointed out that even as early as church acts from the mid-17th century (1652 or 1665) there are records of 4 moters (e.g. Suppliten Moter) in the Sambian parish of Pobethen (today’s Romanovo), each of which had a Kirchenvater, i.e. a representative of the parish community from whom it derived its name. In the opinion of Hans and Gertrud Mortensens, what we deal with here are areas of a size similar to the medieval moters in Sambia. What is more, the area of the Pobethen parish probably roughly corresponded to that of the former Kammeramt of Pobethen, and the earlier Pobeten or Bethen territorium mentioned under the year 1260 in the Teutonic chronicle of Peter of Dusburg. Reinhard Wenskus claimed that the name Suppliten Moter may be connected with the name of Valtin Supplit, who, according to Lucas David’s chronicle, was the chief official during the ceremony of two pagan sacrifices that took place in the 1520s at Rantau (today’s Zaostrovye) in the parish of Pobethen. In the opinion of this scholar, the 17th-century office of the moter Kirchenvater could be a continuation of the office of a pagan cult functionary, evidently associated with this old Prussian territorial unit. In this paper this thesis has been corroborated. A hypothesis was also proposed that what could serve as a diffusion channel here was the institution of one- or a few-person representation of a village at mass, popular in medieval Prussian dioceses. Using the Pobethen parish as an example, it was also shown that in the pagan times moters enjoyed a much wider ceremonial autonomy in the higher-order territoria than in the later official parish-Kammeramt structures.

The Second Girl

The Second Girl

The Second Girl

The Second Girl

Heritage, home and heredity: Performing English cultural identity in The Last Ship

Abstract This article considers the performance of English cultural identity through a reading of Sting’s semi-autobiographical musical, The Last Ship, seen on Broadway in 2014. Drawing on historical concepts of English identity and studies of regional social identity in Wallsend – the north-east English town where The Last Ship is set, I suggest that the musical presents an English identity that is uneasy with its present, and a songwriter uneasy with his past. Specifically, I consider the three iterations of the title song, considering the intrinsic relationship between myth and material environment. First, in a sermon by the local parish priest, Jim O’Brien, ‘the last ship’ offers a metaphor that locates the northern shipbuilding industry as a global bastion of British heritage. In a version by shipyard foreman Jackie White, the display of quixotism evidences a parochialism and localism that configures a specific version of ‘home’ and community—one which did not find resonance with a Broadway audience. Finally, the third iteration is read as a performance of heredity and familial reconciliation, the song of a writer – and a nation – at sea, struggling to find harbour.

“To build bridges and break the walls”

Abstract This article provides a picture of the role the Church of Sweden plays in relation to the present refugee situation. As the largest civil society organization in Sweden, Church of Sweden plays an important role at the local and the national level when it comes to various integration projects in relation to the newly arrived. The article raises one such local example that shows how Church of Sweden is cooperating with other local actors in order to manage the large number of refugees arriving. At the same time the local parish is challenged by some of the Christian refugees that come to Church of Sweden and want to practice their faith. At the national level Church of Sweden is in various ways working so as to support the local parishes in their work with refugees. The Church of Sweden is also involved with affecting the general opinion, emphasizing the responsibility of Sweden as a rich nation to welcome the refugees that are arriving. With the practical examples as a starting point, the article ...

Pięć lat internowania. Biskup lubelski Marian Leon Fulman na plebanii kościoła kolegiackiego pw. św. Małgorzaty w Nowym Sączu (1940–1945)

Marian Leon Fulman był biskupem diecezji lubelskiej w latach 1918–1945. Gdy wybuchła druga wojna światowa został aresztowany przez Niemców pod fałszywym zarzutem posiadania broni. 27 listopada 1939 roku został skazany przez nazistowskie władze okupacyjne na karę śmierci. Karę tę zamieniono na ciężkie więzienie w Oranienburgu-Sachsenhausen. Biskup przebywał tam od 4 grudnia 1939 roku. Zapewne na skutek interwencji nuncjusza papieskiego w Berlinie bp Fulman został zwolniony z więzienia, ale nie pozwolono mu wrócić do Lublina. Został internowany w Nowym Sączu, gdzie od 25 lutego 1940 roku mieszkał na plebanii kościoła kolegiackiego pw. św. Małgorzaty. Miejscowy proboszcz ks. Roman Mazur przyjął go bardzo gościnnie. Biskup Fulman przez pięć lat kierował na odległość diecezją lubelską. Na plebanii miał do dyspozycji dwa pokoje. W jednym z nich została urządzona prywatna kaplica, gdzie biskup wyświęcił sekretnie 37 księży dla diecezji lubelskiej. W czasie internowania, 17 listopada 1943 roku, biskup obchodził jubileusz 25-lecia przyjęcia święceń biskupich. Z tej okazji otrzymał list gratulacyjny od papieża Piusa XII. W maju 1944 roku biskup uzyskał zgodę na powrót do swojej diecezji. Ze względu na podeszły wiek i zły stan zdrowia nie zdołał od razu rozpocząć powrotnej podróży. Wkrótce możliwość tę zablokowały działania na froncie wojennym. Opuścił Nowy Sącz dopiero 9 lutego 1945 roku. Umarł w Lublinie kilka miesięcy później. W 70. rocznicę tego wydarzenia odbyły się w Nowym Sączu uroczystości z udziałem arcybiskupa lubelskiego Stanisława Budzika i biskupa tarnowskiego Andrzeja Jeża. Na świadectwo pobytu bp. Fulmana w Nowym Sączu 9 lutego 2015 roku umieszczono wewnątrz budynku plebanii kościoła pw. św. Małgorzaty specjalną pamiątkową tablicę.

The ‘stormy latitude of the law’: Chancery Lane and street improvement in late Georgian London

Using newspapers, plans, London guides and parish records, this article describes the arguments concerning improvement of the street environment in Chancery Lane, from around 1760 to 1815. This area of London was marginal to the great centres of Westminster and the City and, therefore, analysing its development challenges the standard binary model of the metropolis, generally used by historians of the late eighteenth century. The importance of local political conditions to the success of street improvement is examined, including the fragmented jurisdictions of local parishes and the popular association of Chancery Lane with the legal profession.

Implementing Godly Play in educational settings: a cautionary tale

At the heart of all curriculum decision-making is the learner. Contemporary early childhood education theory and practice emphasises young children’s agency and voice in their learning paying particular attention to valuing each child’s sociocultural contexts. As learners, children are considered capable and active participants rather than as deficit and passive recipients. How does the implementation of godly play in prior-to-school and school early years settings sit within a contemporary view of childhood? To what extent does this programme align with early childhood theory and practice? This paper seeks to evaluate the presence and place of godly play (which is not a curriculum and nor does it claim to be a curriculum) in the religiously affiliated early childhood education context in either prior-to-school or school settings. It is to be emphasised that this paper is not evaluating the presence and place of godly play in the faith community of the local parish where all who participate are believers coming together to share that faith and to have that faith strengthened. However, its presence and place in formal educational settings outside of parish faith communities is questionable and requires closer critique.

David Stoddart OBE

David Stoddart <scp>OBE</scp>