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Proselytism is the sine qua non of the Roman Catholic Church. Americans, wrote minister George Higgins in the June 1944 issue of the journal "Catholic Action," the official organ of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, "would be foolish indeed, however, to think that this nation, or any other nation, can continue to escape the horrors of internal class warfare unless the full body of Catholic social teaching is given practical, concrete application as quickly as possible." In spite of an attempt to Catholicize the United States as a patriotic duty, the Catholic Church, according to the 1946 "National Catholic Almanac," is not making "satisfactory progress in winning non-members to the true faith. Though in the year 1944 almost 85,000 converts were recorded, this number is an insignificant proportion of the 110 million outside the fold." Moreover, there is a considerable Catholic "leakage." Birth control, intermarriage, the disintegrating effects of urban life on the family, about eighty per cent of American Catholics live in cities, and higher education in public schools, have been important factors in desertions from the Catholic Church.

Due to the expedited production of the COVID-19 vaccines and other issues related to it, many Filipinos are hesitant to receive the inoculation program set by the government. Because of this, it is crucial to gain public trust for the COVID-19 vaccines. This paper argues that the Catholic Church, being an influential institution in the Philippines, can help in building public trust in COVID-19 vaccines in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the abundant research on liberation theology and religious change in Latin America, there is little agreement regarding how to assess the political orientation of national churches. This paper reviews previous strategies and proposes that any new approach should do three things. First, the strength of liberation theology should be assessed holistically, that is, by focusing on the official statements and organizational practices of bishops, priests, nuns, and laity. Second, liberation theology should be approached as a “family resemblance concept” and not a “classic concept.” Third, while most scholars identify national churches in nominal terms, I argue liberation theology varies along a continuum, from strong to weak and that its strength varies over time. The cases of Chile, Mexico, and Colombia are presented. The paper closes with a call for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Catholic Church in America is deeply divided, and gender issues (especially reproductive choice and women's ordination) have become a symptom of this division. This paper examines the language used by liberal and conservative Catholic women to talk about gender. It is argued that although similar divisions over gender exist within Protestantism and Judaism, Catholic women are in a unique position to confront them, Unlike conservative Protestants and Jews who have separated themselves from their more liberal counterparts by forming independent Evangelical and Orthodox denominations, conservative Catholics co-exist with liberals in the mine church. The paper shows that being forced to confront those divisions has resulted in a tendency towards polarization on the one hand, and towards moderation on the other, both of which have important implications for the future of the Catholic Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent correspondence suggested that taking home ashes and launching digital Lenten ashes filters are non-traditional yet creative ways for the Catholic Church to perform the ritual practice in celebrating Ash Wednesday. These creative practices are deemed as necessary so that the Catholic community can celebrate the liturgical celebration while ensuring public health. With this, we propose in this paper practices that can be done during the holy week so that the spread of the coronavirus will be mitigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a stigma and hesitancy regarding COVID-19 vaccination in the Philippines. Many Filipinos are still hesitant to be vaccinated. This paper highlights the role of the Catholic Church as a powerful institution which can influence the people not only in spiritual aspect but also in promoting public health by motivating locals to get vaccinated. This task can be specifically done through the efforts of Catholic Higher Education Institutions (HEI) that place prominence and priority on social work and mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates anticommunism in Ireland during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It focuses in particular on the campaigns waged by the right-wing Catholic organisations, Maria Duce and the Catholic Cinema and Theatre Patrons’ Association, opposing the influence of American cinema, which it was alleged was dominated by Communists. The central argument is that Ireland's ‘red scare’ was an ephemeral phenomenon, fuelled by American anticommunism, which was then at its height, and the cultural Cold War in Europe. Combined with these broader fears it reveal how anticommunism was shaped by domestic political and cultural contexts, especially concerns about the impact of external influences on Irish minds, in the omnipresent form of American cinema. Hollywood films offered visions of modernity that undermined traditional Irish nationalist values of simple living, an innate distaste of materialism, and an unflinching moral code, informed by Catholic teachings. In independent Ireland, far from the front line of confrontation with the red menace, the ideological dimensions made themselves felt, but were not perceived to be a sufficient threat as to dominate public life, as was the case in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on the beliefs that human life and pregnancy begin at conception, that human life has equal moral value regardless of its development stage or form, and that emergency contraception (EC) has mechanisms of action that may induce abortion, Catholic health care facilities are not permitted to provide EC to rape victims if any possibility exists that a woman may have conceived due to her rape, even if that possibility is unverifiable. The Catholic Church claims that the mechanism of action of EC is uncertain and that some studies have concluded that disruption of implantation, which the Church considers to be abortion, may occur. Drawing on insights from feminist epistemology (e.g. work by Helen Longino) and arguments at the intersection of bioethics and philosophy of science (including work by Robert Veatch and Grant Gillett), we argue that the Church's position on this matter is based on uncertain (and misinterpreted) scientific claims and that particular normative (moral and theological) commitments on the part of those wielding power over Church Law lead to a weighing of probabilities in a manner consonant with the preservation of that power. In this paper, we examine how normative commitments infuse or infect the assessment of probability and influence ethical policy. We also examine how probabilism, a moral method that operates within the constraints of Catholic normative commitments, offers an alternative approach which respects, acknowledges, and maximizes an individual's ability to determine probable reason for moral action in the face of irreducible uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on Michael J. Boyle, a salaried employee with a St. Paul, Minnesota's most prestigious dry goods firm. Boyle settled his debts, but he never attained the wealth and status that he had envisioned when he embarked upon his business "career." Socialized as an American go-getter, Michael J. Boyle learned to equate manhood with economic independence and social mobility. He considered himself a devout Catholic, and defended his beliefs on several occasions, but his diaries do not constitute the autobiographical reflections of a man seeking to reconcile his faith with the vicissitudes of capitalist culture.

This article examines the extent to which the secularisation of Parisian society during the eighteenth century led to an automisation of aesthetic discourse on art. By focusing on contemporary reports and visual representations of the sacrilegious treatment of Catholic objects, this paper argues that the non-aesthetic values and functions of such objects continued to be privileged by many, if not most, eighteenth-century Parisians, despite the resistance of religious and secular critics. The article discusses thefts and destructions of Catholic objects before the French Revolution, during the controversies over nationalisation of Church property (1793-1794). The paper concludes by suggesting that an appreciation of the limits of autonomised discourse on art allows us to understand iconoclasm during the French Revolution in terms of the contested meanings, values and normative modes of treating Catholic representational objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Catholic effect," or the religious vitality of Catholic areas compared to areas where other religions dominate, has been observed by various scholars but not completely explained. Italy, where a Catholic religious monopoly dominates, also shows this effect. Indicators of vitality from clerical recruitment to mass attendance have remained relatively high and largely stable in recent decades. Yet the principal theoretical paradigms -- secularization and religious market theory -- both would predict a crisis, although for different reasons. This paper addresses the vitality of Italian Catholicism by applying religious market theory and introducing the possibility of internal competition. The policies and polity of Italian Catholicism tolerate and support internal competition; this appears to counteract the decline predicted not only by the old but also by the new paradigm. The Italian case is thus revealed to be not an exceptional event, as often considered in Italian sociology of religion. The Catholic effect could be analyzed and perhaps explained using religious market theory once internal competition is accounted for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent correspondence highlighted the need to change the COVID-19 vaccine narrative to combat vaccine hesitancy by stressing that vaccination is a moral act. The said article was in response to another correspondence which said that science and religion must work together for vaccine promotion. This article presents a fundamental Christian argument for vaccine promotion by saying that God may have provided an answer to the pandemic through the COVID-19 vaccine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent correspondence claimed that the establishment of community pantries across the Philippines embodies a spirituality of "Alay Kapwa" as it connects people, especially in a time of crisis such as the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, to be persons for others. 1 This article highlights that the rise of community pantries was primarily aided by social media. It claims that if social media is utilized ethically and with positive disposition and perspective, it can be a powerful tool in the Church's mission of evangelization, and in its response to this pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has caused innumerable damages to the total well-being of the people. In previous studies, spirituality has shown positive effect to the well-being of the people. As the Catholic Church continuously provide religious and spiritual nourishment through online or virtual celebration of the liturgy, the ideal and lived experience of the select Catholic faithful shows no dissonance. The online and virtual celebrations give hope and to the people post-pandemic, as we enter to the new normal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among manuscripts originating from Stanford Hall, two belonging to George Iliffe have been known for some time, but not studied. The emergence of two more prompts an examination of the part played by Iliffe in their compilation and copying, and of their contents. In two partbooks, the survivors of a set of three, he incorporated several mid-sixteenth-century pieces copied somewhat earlier, some of them entirely unknown, others supplementing previous knowledge. Elsewhere there is a heavily crossed-part attributed to Byrd from a presumably four-part setting of a prayer by Luther. Authentic or not, it serves as a reminder of the complexity of Byrd's position patriotic convert to Roman Catholicism from a Protestant family, and the possible effects of his musical upbringing on the output of his maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a macro-level explanation of the way in which Roman Catholicism, as an organization or social system, has changed during the twentieth century. Rejecting a primary focus on secularization, rationalization, and delegitimation theses, the term, "contested accommodation" is introduced. Catholicism has accommodated to its surrounding milieu, largely by incorporating contemporary structures and principles and by building on the advances of science. But the accommodation has not been complete, automatic, or peaceful Instead, it has been partial and conflict-laden, arising in conflict, progressing through power struggles, and continuing in conflict. "Contested accommodation" implies a set of processes whereby the changes occurred These include evolutions ary updating, religious reconstruction, and power contention. Yet given all these factors, I suggest that such radical change as that undergone by Catholicism will only occur if accident, luck, or the force of key personailities tips the balance in favor of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data collected through a postal survey of 121 gay and lesbian Catholics in Britain. It aims to examine the respondents' assessment of the official Catholic positions on sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. The Catholic Church labels the homosexual inclination an "objective disorder" and the engagement in homosexual genital acts "intrinsically disordered." A vast majority of respondents, however, found the Church's arguments against homosexuality and other sexuality issues unconvincing. Most respondents considered genital acts within a same-sex relationship entirely compatible with their Catholic faith. The respondents demonstrate the ability as social actors rise above the "deviant" circumstances imposed on them. This is the outcome of their having developed a positive self identity, constructed primarily in opposition to the Church's teachings, that successfully incorporates their sexuality and religious beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Base Christian Communities (CEBs) represented a key element in progressive Catholicism in Latin America, particularly in Brazil where they attained a high level of development. This article examines the evolution of a CEB in the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, exploring the obstacles to the production, circulation, and reception of the progressive Catholic message. While tensions and contradictions within the CEB contributed to its decline, they had deleterious effects only when they were conditioned by external processes such as the Vatican restoration and the economic crisis Brazil faced beginning in the mid-1980s. These macro processes exacerbated tensions between the pastoral agent and lay people and among different lay factions. They also disempowered the core of activists in the CEB. The paper concludes by challenging recent readings of the 'crisis' of Brazilian CEBs and by arguing for the need to place local religious dynamics in their proper institutional and structural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims toward a better integration of the sociology of culture and the sociology of religion in the study of American Catholicism. It discusses Catholicism as a cultural discourse, the concept of ideological structures, and the implications of a cultural approach for Warner's "new paradigm" and rational choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces a series of articles on the consequences of decline in population of priests in U.S. Catholic Church.

There has been a long tradition of clerical celibacy within Roman Catholicism. It is argued, using several biblical texts and traditional statements, that celibacy is the better choice for the clergy because it frees the person from concerns of marriage and children and enables a person to be more devoted to God and to have a more mature spiritual life. However, this argument has never been tested empirically. A data base consisting of 1294 evangelical ministers (most of whom are married) and 80 Roman Catholic priests in Canada was utilized to test this argument. It was theorized and verified that being a celibate did not make a significant difference to this spiritual life. A discussion ensues and a pastoral recommendation follows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on best selling articles during the 1940s that focused on Catholicism, with reference to Paul Blanshard's book `American Freedom and Catholic Power.' Information on other journals which focused on this topic; Indepth look at Professor John Dewey's perceptions of Blanshard's journal; Discussion on Catholicism from 1928-1960.

Characteristics of the localities in which Jews lived have received little attention in research on Holocaust-related deaths. We examined associations between locality-level and individual-level characteristics with the odds of being deported by applying multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression models to data for about 118,000 Jews in 102 Dutch municipalities listed in 1941–1942 and linked to postwar victims and returnees lists. We examined associations between individual-level characteristics and risk of death of deported Jews in multilevel mixed-effects Weibull regression models. Locality-level characteristics, per standard deviation increase, associated with higher deportation chance were more collaborating policemen (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.12), strongest segregation mentality (OR = 2.01, 95% CI: 1.15, 3.50), and less employment in agriculture (OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.88, 1.01). Higher percentage of Catholics (OR = 0.81, 95% CI: 0.70, 0.94) and stronger electoral support for the National Socialist Movement (OR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.85, 0.97) unexpectedly reduced deportation chance. Individual-level characteristics associated with lower deportation chance were female sex, ages 0–5 or 15–30 years, and being immigrants, intermarried, or converts to Christianity. Deported males aged 15–30 years had reduced risk of death between July 1942 and July 1943 but increased risk thereafter, consistent with young adult men being selected for work after deportation but this selection not offering long-term protection. Holocaust survival chances were influenced by both locality-level and individual-level characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the European Youth Campaign (EYC), an international anti-communist youth organization aimed to promote European unification, to illustrate the intersection of anti-communism during the Cold War in 1950-1959 with the concerns of the Catholic hierarchy over the vulnerability of youth in Ireland. It looks at the U.S. influence of Ireland. It examines the various ways in which Ireland's foreign policy has been circumscribed by the war. It also discusses the opportunities presented by the war to Ireland.

This article offers a re-examination of the international legal status of what is here termed the Vatican/Holy See complex (VHS), focusing on claims to statehood. The problematic 'effect' of Vatican City, of the Holy See, of the papacy and of associated entities is interrogated at the level of international law, entering as little as possible into administrative or theological distinctions. The various grounds cited as supporting status amounting to statehood are argued to be inadequate. The continuing exchange of representatives with states by the VHS is missionary and hierarchical in character and is reflective neither of the reciprocity of peers nor of customary obligation going to law. Agreements entered into by the papacy with the Kingdom of Italy (the Lateran Pacts) in 1929, relating to the status of the geographical territory known as Vatican City, cannot be determinative of international status. Nor can membership of international agreements and organizations confer a status amounting to statehood. Events and practices since 1929 have not substantially altered international status as of 1870. The Roman Catholic Church is but one of many faith-based international movements, and since the eclipse of the papal state nearly one-and-a-half centuries ago, the status in international law of its temporal headquarters in Rome should not be privileged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on digital Lenten ashes filter have changed the landscape of faith-based practices, and this implied trans-local participation of the Catholic community as witnesses of faith while upkeeping public health. Topics include the regular online celebration of Masses was held in place of the face-to-face setup is relaxed, the usual well attended annual procession during the feast of the Black Nazarene, and the creative ritual practices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, previous research cautioned that complex and meaningful quotidian rituals involving intimate touch need re-evaluation as these pose a hygienic concern in pandemic culture. Faith-based practices entail human-to-human contact that could inevitably cause the virus infection contagion if not appropriately addressed. In a World Health Organization document, the crucial role of inter-faith collaboration and sharing of best practices to combat the spread of the virus are encouraged. In this correspondence, we assert that taking home ashes and launching digital Lenten ashes filter are non-traditional yet creative ways for the Catholic Church to perform the ritual practice in celebrating Ash Wednesday. We argued that such creative ritual practices changed the landscape of faith-based practices and implied trans-local participation of the Catholic community as witnesses of faith while upkeeping public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I hypothesize that against mainstream secularization accounts concerning the 19th-century development of modern international law, especially within the Anglo-American experience, the discipline was significantly influenced by liberal Protestantism. My argument is that a liberal Protestant cultural elite, to which the first generation of international jurists belonged, drew inspiration from the theological doctrine of divine immanence to solidify their socio-political authority against a diverse series of internal and external threats. In an attempt to demonstrate the evangelical foundations of modern international law and the importance played by Anglo-American legal scholars within the tradition, the article is organized into three sections. First, I examine traditional 19th-century narratives of international law, particularly in relation to Christianity. Second, I trace out how the doctrine of divine immanence was formulated in Liberal Protestant theology and how this influenced international legal scholarship within the period in relation to doctrines of the nation-state. Third, I examine how divine immanence shaped three anxieties shared by liberal Protestant theologians and international jurists, including former colonized people and institutions, Roman Catholic beliefs and immigrant populations, and the nascent industrial working-class and radical political ideologies. The article concludes with some brief reflections on the implications of this study and potential directions for future research in the field of religion and international legal history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an alternative interpretation of the relationship between two social movement organizations (SMOs) with roots in the Catholic Church of Chicago: Catholic Action (CA), specifically the form that began in the 1940s and expanded as the Christian Family Movement, and Call to Action (CTA), an SMO that emerged during the 1970s. Using social movement theories combined with the sociology of place, this article analyzes periodicals, archival data, and interviews arguing that (1) the SMOs are closely related, (2) that the relationship between them is an excellent example of movement-to-movement transmission, and (3) that the role of “place”—in this case, Chicago—is significant in the movement-to-movement transmission process. This article adds to our awareness of social movements within religious organizations, by demonstrating CA's continuing influence and its relationship to the mobilization of CTA. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pentecostal membership and born-again conversion have been growing in popularity across Africa. Yet despite the many explanations posited for their growth, few studies have attended to the local meanings attached to the born-again identity specifically. In this study, I compare narratives of born-again conversion among a sample of Pentecostal and Catholic young people in Malawi, in order to better understand its meaning and appeal as a religious identity. I argue that the born-again identity is highly salient for those who claim it; and that although its roots are in Pentecostalism, it has diffused widely into other denominations. I also argue that for these young people, it is described not primarily as a conversion of belief but as a conversion to a new moral lifestyle; and that the major difference between Pentecostals and Catholics is in their expressed sense of the attainability of this conversion, not of its desirability. The connection between the born-again lifestyle and the impact of modernity in the development context is also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the conversion of Christian sarcophagi into altars in Provence, France between the period of the Counter Reformation and the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. It describes how ancient sarcophagi were clustered in the pilgrimage complexes and resued as reliquaries and altars. It discusses how such displays as part of ritual activities during this period reflected the need of the Roman Catholic Church to resist the Protestant reformation. It also discusses how the display of ancient sarcophagi in a church can shift the viewer's primary response to the object away from historical, antiquarian or aesthetic concerns to issues that are liturgical, which is to focus history, antiquarianism and aesthetics through a ritual.

The article discusses the role of gesture in the rituals carried out by the Nationalist government of Spain under the dictator Francisco Franco following the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, including in parades, liturgies and public rallies. The Nationalist government of Spain's use of Catholicism, including Holy Week celebrations, to assert control over Spain is discussed. Madrid, Spain's occupation by the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War is described. The Nationalist government's use of religion to create conformity is also discussed.

This article explores the concepts, means, and objectives of spiritual growth across four strands of Christianity. Based on focus group interviews and congregational observations within four congregations (conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and an emerging church), we assess the ways in which regular attenders articulate concepts of spiritual growth, the practices that contribute to their sense of growth, and how a commonly shared vision about what spiritual growth is and how it takes place contributes to a sense of congregational community. We find both expected variation across strands of tradition, as well as similarities (particularly within Protestant groups) in framing spiritual growth as an open ended and somewhat ambiguous process in which the personal and emotional resources of the community support a sense of personal growth and well-being. Our findings also suggest some support for the notion that churches with strong and clear core messages of spiritual growth cultivate stronger congregational commitments—a topic we argue should be further explored in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Various historical accounts have suggested that the Ottomans' rise helped the Protestant Reformation as well as its offshoots, such as Zwinglianism, Anabaptism, and Calvinism, survive their infancy and mature. Utilizing a comprehensive data set on violent confrontations for the interval between 1401 and 1700 CE, I show that the incidence of military engagements between the Protestant Reformers and the Counter-Reformation forces between the 1520s and 1650s depended negatively on the Ottomans' military activities in Europe. Furthermore, I document that the impact of the Ottomans on Europe went beyond suppressing ecclesiastical conflicts only: at the turn of the sixteenth century, Ottoman conquests lowered the number of all newly initiated conflicts among the Europeans roughly by 25 percent, while they dampened all longer-running feuds by more than 15 percent. The Ottomans' military activities influenced the length of intra-European feuds too, with each Ottoman-European military engagement shortening the duration of intra-European conflicts by more than 50 percent. Thus, while the Protestant Reformation might have benefited from — and perhaps even capitalized on — the Ottoman advances in Europe, the latter seems to have played some role in reducing conflicts within Europe more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relationship between Catholics and the post reformation state under the regimes of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary and James Stuart in England. It reflects on the monarchial authority over the Catholic church, creating a godly and protestant patterns of worship and ecclesiastical propriety. In the historiography of the Catholicism in England, the nature of the sovereign power of the church, the catholic loyalism and disloyalty issues, and debates between the Catholics and protestants were examined. An overview of the discourse on catholic loyalty is offered, along with the oath of allegiance created by King James Stuart. Meanwhile, the royal discourse about the relationship of religion and politics offered a good deal for the oath of allegiance of King James.

In this article, I analyze support for religiously orthodox teachings among U.S. Catholic laity. I find orthodoxy to be positively correlated with religious experience. While most Catholics disagree with official teachings regarding contraception and the celibate priesthood, a significant minority endorse these orthodox positions. In analyses of a national sample of U.S. Catholics, orthodox attitudes are found to be more common among those who have been on a religious pilgrimage. The finding is interpreted using concepts from Durkheim's sociology of religion, Stark and Finke's claims about the relationship between religious ritual and acceptance of religious explanations, and Wildavsky's theory that preferences are endogenous to institutions. Building on these analyses, I address a question about the structural consequences of pilgrimage, and conclude with a call for further quantitative research about pilgrims' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the details of the relationship of Andrea Mora and Anzola Davide to highlight the attitude of the Venetian society towards marriage in the 14th century. Anzola Davide, a pretty young woman from Lovadina, had a relationship with Andrea Mora. Andrea and Anzola lived happily with their children for ten years until Andrea met and married Cattarina di Gratiani in 1577. Andrea's marriage to Cattarina was unsuccessful so Andrea left Cattarina and moved back to his former concubine. This action by Andrea, angered the di Gratiani family. The di Gratiani family then used their influence in the Catholic Church to run after Andrea. The Holy Office in Venice investigated and recorded the concubinal relationship between Andre and Anzola, and Andrea's unhappy marriage to Cattarina.

The article discusses church acquisition of urban property in late medieval England. Largely through a study of mortmain licenses, the author investigates the investment practices of church landlords as a means to understand the relationship between feudal lordship and urban development during this time period. He explains the relatively high rents associated with urban property and details the involvement of monasteries in urban property acquisition. It is noted that the income of most church landowners still came from the rents of their rural manors as opposed to their urban holdings.

A recent literature argues that ‘hierarchical religions’ such as Catholicism hamper the formation of trust, thus reducing the propensity to cooperate and damaging economic performance. This article looks for a link between Catholicism and the propensity to cooperate in the pre-1914 Irish dairy industry. Although the propensity to cooperate was higher in Denmark than in Ireland, and in Ulster than elsewhere in Ireland, Catholicism did not make cooperation more difficult in Ireland. Political conflict over land reforms and constitutional matters was to blame, not religion. Denmark's homogeneity, not its Protestantism, led to the success of cooperation there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the confessional relationship between François de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal towards the establishment of active female apostolate through the Order of the Visitation in France. It explores the dynamics of their relationship and approaches on the contributions toward the historical collaboration on the beginnings on the development of social Catholicism. It reveals the value of relationship in forming innovative works in French society.

The article features a discussion on Waldensianism. Waldensianism denotes one of the two great heretical sects of the high Middle Ages, the other being Catharism. It was founded by Valdes, a Lyon merchant who was converted to the religious life in the early 1170s and formed a movement which was excommunicated in 1184. The movement bifurcated into the full Waldensians, whose followers lived within the Catholic Church while receiving some Waldensian instruction in secrecy.

In describing Christianity in France, history and sociology have had lasting difficulties escaping from the "sect-church" dichotomy. The heavy dominance of Catholicism is one possible explanation. In contrast to the American situation, which may be characterized by a competitive religious market in which religions are structured in various "denominations ," the French religious economy seems to be defined as a religiously dry and very secularized context. Today, with the decline of churches, the dominant trend would be the disintegration of religion, instead of its revitalization. This process is said to take two forms: "religious bricolage" or narrow sectarian belonging. The experience of French evangelical Protestantism, however, invites us to question this interpretative scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a religious confrontation between Italy and the United States that existed alongside the Cold War. Arrival in Cold War Italy of American evangelicals intent on luring Catholics from their faith; Evangelist Cline Paden's war with the Italian government which illustrated cultural and religious tensions that separated Italy and the United States during the height of, and in spite of, their anti-Communist alliance.

During a frustrating custody battle for his niece, a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church (Francesco Barberini Junior [1662-1738]) successfully plotted her kidnapping, nearly lost custody of her because of his dramatic tirades before the pope, and in calmer but no less bitter moments, lamented what he saw as the dangerous link between public sympathy for the child's mother and the legal decisions of papal magistrates in the 1720s. This article analyzes the issues at stake in this aristocratic controversy, demonstrating that as was the case in France, such legal cases showed the impact of women's effective use of the law courts to address their grievances in the family. Of particular interest in this case is the central place the cardinal assigned to public emotion for the mother as the deciding factor, limiting his "victories," and overturning legal precedents. The case suggests that the increasing support in the mid-eighteenth century for celebrating human sentiment and for overturning laws that violate it may trace its origins to the proliferation of litigation by women for their interests in the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catholic missionaries accompanied the first French colonial ventures into the Antilles in the seventeenth century and reported on their experiences in manuscript and published accounts. The first generation of these accounts, from the 1640s and 1650s, focused primarily on Carib Indians; where African slaves were mentioned, it was in the most denigrating terms. As the plantation system took hold and the number of forced African immigrants increased and as Caribs made their resistance to Catholic conversion clear in prolonged warfare, missionaries shifted their attention to the increasingly creolized slave population. Later missionary accounts, from the 1660s-1680s, portray African descended slaves in much more positive, if paternalistic, terms. For the missionaries, religious conformity remained the overriding evaluative measure; black slaves could be "whitened" through conversion to the Catholic faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic globalization has always required ideological legitimation. In the first instance this legitimation was explicitly theological; today in Roman Catholic circles it continues to be. The first modern legitimations of what would become economic globalization were made on the universalist bases of the "law of nations," a derivation from "natural law" as it was conceptualized in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas and interpreted by his sixteenth-century Scholastic successors, the Spanish Dominican and Jesuit jurists of the so-called School of Salamanca. The work of the Spanish jurists was both continued a century later and adapted to Protestant theological exigencies by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius and others. These early, theologically informed justifications of economic globalization are the bases for what has come to be known as "the law of nations" and hence our traditions of international law. Even today under conditions of the so-called secularization of international law, legitimations of globalization retain traces of reliance on natural law and, thus, of their original religious bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the reformation of the Catholic Church in Scotland. Effort of Archbishop John Hamilton to summon several provincial councils of the Scottish Church; Components of the reform movements; Pattern of doctrinal agenda used by Scottish Catholic reformers.

This essay examines several current issues facing the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil and the Russian Orthodox Church in the post-Soviet, multi-ethnic republic that is today called the Russian Federation. To the extent possible, I shall treat both the issues and institutions comparatively, even if selectively and almost solely out of a concern for contemporary "transnational" religions, a subject I have explored since the mid-nineteen eighties and do so again here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the ritual of marriage as a Catholic sacrament in medieval England. Changes to the status of marriage as part of a broader attack on the nature of the sacraments and the process of salvation; Gender message embodied in the liturgy; Decline of spousals; Development of a Protestant vision of the meaning of marriage and of gender roles.