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Augustin Bea war nicht nur das ökumenische Gesicht des Zweiten Vatikanums, sondern eine der prägenden Gestalten der katholischen Bibelwissenschaft seiner Zeit. Das wissenschaftliche und kirchenpolitische Handeln des deutschen Jesuiten ermöglicht Einblicke in die wechselvolle Geschichte römischer Bibelexegese im Schatten des Vatikans. Beas Ringen mit Tradition und Moderne bestimmte den kirchlichen Kurs: Wie begegnete der Alttestamentler historischer und naturwissenschaftlicher Kritik an der Bibel? Welche Rolle spielte er bei der kirchlichen Buchzensur? Ermöglichte ihm seine Tätigkeit Kontakte über den katholischen Binnenraum hinaus? Und was verleitete Pius XII. dazu, mitten im Krieg die Bibelenzyklika „Divino afflante Spiritu“ zu veröffentlichen? Diesen Fragen geht Michael Pfister auf der Grundlage bisher unbekannter Dokumente nach und wirft ein neues Licht auf den späteren „Kardinal der Einheit“.

This book explores the role of Catholic peacebuilding in addressing the global mining industry. Mining is intimately linked to issues of conflict, human rights, sustainable development, governance, and environmental justice. As an institution of significant scope and scale with a large network of actors at all levels and substantial theoretical and ethical resources, the Catholic Church is well positioned to acknowledge the essential role of mining, while challenging unethical and harmful practices, and promoting integral peace, development, and ecology. Drawing together theology, ethics, and praxis, the volume reflects the diversity of Catholic action on mining and the importance of an integrated approach. It includes contributions by an international and interdisciplinary range of scholars and practitioners. They examine Catholic action on mining in El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Philippines. They also address general issues of corporate social responsibility, human rights, development, ecology, and peacebuilding. The book will be of interest to scholars of theology, social ethics, and Catholic studies as well as those specializing in development, ecology, human rights, and peace studies.

This chapter argues that to fulfil the interests of both the spouses and their original family, Maria projected herself as a Castilian infanta while Leonor built up the image of an Aragonese princess. The construction of the political identity of queens consort was a long and complex process, paramount to the subsequent performance and relevance in the configuration of monarchical power. In May 1428 Leonor of Aragon, while en route to Portugal to meet her husband, travelled to Valladolid to visit the king of Castile. In his last will and testament, he had entrusted her with the guardianship of their children and the regency of the realm. While the circumstances of their marriages were quite different and led them to assume distinctive identities from the very outset of their reigns, during their life as consorts Maria and Leonor adhered to a similar model of queenship, one they had learned from their mother.

The book is based on long-term ethnographic research in the Polish-Belarusian borderland. It examines the dynamics of symbolic boundaries between the Catholic and Orthodox believers in their everyday lives. By analyzing the space of local cemeteries, rituals, and attitudes related to death, eating practices, and food sharing, the author points to the changing sense of ethnic identity and the feeling of familiarity and otherness. Confessionally mixed neighborhoods and families enable different forms of religious bivalency and become a crucial factor in bridging and crossing ethnic boundaries. Socio-cultural norms and social relations shape the ethnic identity of the borderland’s residents more than the institutional frames of both churches.

This sensitive account of Spanish Benedictine women at an Aboriginal mission in Western Australia is poignant and disturbing. Notable for its ecumenical spirit, depth of research and deep engagement with the subject, A Bridge Between is a model of how religious history, in its broader bearings, can be written. — Graeme Davison, Monash University With great insight and care, A Bridge Between presents a sympathetic but not uncritical history of the lives of individuals who have often been invisible. The story of the nuns at New Norcia is a timely contribution to Australia's religious history. Given the findings of the Royal Commission, it will be widely read both within and beyond the academy. History is, here, a spiritual discipline, and an exercise in hope and reconciliation. — Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University A Bridge Between is the first account of the Benedictine women who worked at New Norcia and the first book-length exploration of twentieth-century life in the Western Australian mission town. From the founding of a grand school intended for 'nativas’, through links to Mexico and Paraguay then Ireland, India and Belgium, as well as to their house in the Kimberley, and a network of villages near Burgos in the north of Spain, this is a complex international history. A Bridge Between gathers a powerful, fragmented story from the margins of the archive, recalling the Aboriginal women who joined the community in the 1950s and the compelling reunion of missionaries and former students in 2001. By tracing the all-but-forgotten story of the community of Benedictine women who were central to the experience of the mission for many Aboriginal families in the twentieth century, this book lays a foundation for further work.

Four hundred years since its publication, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote continues to inspire and to challenge its readers. The universal and timeless appeal of the novel, however, has distanced its hero from its author and its author from his own life and the time in which he lived. The discussion of the novel’s Catholic identity, therefore, is based on a reading that returns Cervantes’s hero to Cervantes’s text and Cervantes to the events that most shaped his life. The authors and texts McGrath cites, as well as his arguments and interpretations, are mediated by his religious sensibility. Consequently, he proposes that his study represents one way of interpreting Don Quixote and acts as a complement to other approaches. It is McGrath’s assertion that the religiosity and spirituality of Cervantes’s masterpiece illustrate that Don Quixote is inseparable from the teachings of Catholic orthodoxy. Furthermore, he argues that Cervantes’s spirituality is as diverse as early modern Catholicism. McGrath does not believe that the novel is primarily a religious or even a serious text, and he considers his arguments through the lens of Cervantine irony, satire, and multiperspectivism. As a Roman Catholic who is a Hispanist, McGrath proposes to reclaim Cervantes’s Catholicity from the interpretive tradition that ascribes a predominantly Erasmian reading of the novel. When the totality of biographical and sociohistorical events and influences that shaped Cervantes’s religiosity are considered, the result is a new appreciation of the novel’s moral didactic and spiritual orientation.