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This article discusses the theme of redemption in Hildemar's Commentary on the Rule of Benedict. Hildemar's commentary delves into the topic of redemption, even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the Rule. The author suggests that Hildemar's focus on redemption may be influenced by the theological context of his time, particularly the controversy surrounding Gottschalk's teaching on predestination. Hildemar's emphasis on redemption and salvation seems to contradict Gottschalk's belief that Christ only died for the elect. The article analyzes specific texts in Hildemar's commentary to support this interpretation. Hildemar's views on redemption have implications for understanding one's monastic calling and the significance of daily choices in embracing redemption. [Extracted from the article]

Marie Hiroüin, a nun at the Hôtel-Dieu in Québec, was identified as a Scottish noblewoman in the margin of one of her community's records. An examination of how she came to be in New France, then an analysis of why the nuns at the hospital chose to emphasise her Scottishness and her nobility, offer new insights into migration, national identity, and religion in the seventeenth century. Hiroüin's family, the Irvines of Hilton, remained Catholic through Scotland's Protestant Reformation. Some family members stayed in Scotland, while others went to France, Italy, and North America. In New France, nuns commemorated the commitment of Hiroüin's family to Catholicism and alliance to Mary, Queen of Scots. This commemoration shows the long reach over both space and time of early modern British politics and religion. At a hospital in a small settlement on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, far from the centres of power in either Britain or France, nuns were using the Scottishness and nobility of Marie Hiroüin to demonstrate to themselves and their successors the virtues of their religious vocation in colonial North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Thomas Merton's deep connection to the Rule of St. Benedict, highlighting his immersion in the monastery and the influence of Benedict's teachings on his life. Merton's emphasis on humility, obedience, and prayer, as outlined in the Rule, shaped his spiritual journey and his role in forming novices at Gethsemani. The text explores Merton's interpretation of Benedict's teachings, emphasizing themes of hospitality, mercy, and seeking God, offering insights into Merton's profound understanding and application of the Rule in his life and teachings. [Extracted from the article]

"God's Call Is Everywhere: A Global Analysis of Contemporary Religious Vocations for Women" is a book that provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of religious vocations for women around the world. It highlights the challenges faced by women religious, such as demographic shifts and the impact of secularism. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the experiences and perspectives of newer members and suggests remedies for obstacles to vocation discernment and entrance. It also emphasizes the need for the whole community to be invested in fostering vocations and offers hope and encouragement for communities supporting women in answering God's call. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Specula is the property of SPECULA UCV and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article explores the theological and practical dimensions of monastic vocation, focusing on the relationship between vocation and mission, and how contemporary monastic communities respond to the demands of modernity while maintaining their religious calling. It reflects on the evolving nature of monastic life, the challenges of living a contemplative lifestyle in a changing world, and the critical question of how monastic communities can express their mission to attract new recruits.

Career Guidance shapes the labour market by providing advice to school leavers, jobseekers and career changers. While there are a vast variety of approaches within Career Guidance, arguably there are central ideas within the discourse about the labour market reflecting cultural understandings of transition and transformation. To illustrate how Career Guidance understands the labour market, this article traces a genealogy from 19th century cultural ideas about careers from Smiles and Parsons to psychologised accounts from Maslow and Rogers. These imagine career transitions as personal transformations and recommend intensive interviewing to overcome internal barriers and unleash potential. Drawing from 15 interviews with Guidance Counsellors, the contemporary presence of this understanding of the labour market is traced. This emphasis on transformation variously reflects neo-liberal enterprise culture, religious ideas of vocation and modern experiments of the self, all of which emphasise internal potential over structural forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme is the property of Iter Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the wills of bishops in late medieval Britain and Ireland who were members of religious orders, and attempts to answer two questions: to what extent can these wills be distinguished from those made by their secular counterparts; and did these monks, canons and friars refer or allude to their status as regular clergy in the wills? The wills of 47 regular bishops have been identified, dating between 1350 and 1535, from England, Wales and Ireland, and are compared with those of 111 secular prelates for the same period. While only a handful of the monastic and mendicant bishops explicitly mention their status as regulars, the vast majority – and friars in particular – do appear to have made decisions when drawing up their wills that were a result of their religious vocations. Only seven wills make no allusion to their testators' regular status at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 27 September 1943, Hans-Georg Gadamer published a brief but significant article in the conservative newspaper Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten und Handels-Zeitung , entitled 'Wissenschaft als Beruf. Über den Ruf und Beruf der Wissenschaft in unserer Zeit' (Science as Vocation: On the Calling and Profession of Science in Our Time). The article, which addressed the problem of the value and status of science and philosophy in the midst of the Second World War, was never reprinted in Gadamer's work, neither in the ten volumes of his collected writings published by Mohr Siebeck, nor separately in books or journals. I offer here a critical introduction to the context and main contents of this text due to its philosophical, political, and historical relevance. In particular, the introduction analyses Gadamer's confrontation with his own time through explicit and implicit references to Max Weber's 1917 lecture, 'Wissenschaft als Beruf' (Science as Vocation), and traces echoes in Gadamer's later works that bear on contemporary challenges. Following that, I present the first English translation of Gadamer's original German text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "The wounds of Sor Patrocinio" by Javier Paredes highlights the life of this Spanish nun and mystic from the 19th century. It emphasizes her beauty and religious vocation, as well as the accusations and persecutions she suffered, especially from Salustiano Gózaga. The article mentions the war between Carlists and Isabelists, and highlights the seriousness and intellectual integrity of the author in basing his works on solid information. [Extracted from the article]

God's call can be surprising and unexpected. This article evaluates theologies of vocation in light of this potential for surprise. Contemporary Protestant theological interpretations of vocation are critiqued as incomplete due to their tendency to present vocation as the expression and utilisation of innate abilities without giving sufficient account of how an individual might be called to something totally new and surprising. It will be suggested that this arises from a focus on creation as the dominant theological lens for interpreting vocation. An alternative focused on eschatology and pneumatology will be proposed in which both natural talents and new abilities are recognised as gifts of the Spirit given for the purpose of anticipatory proleptic participation in the coming Kingdom of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines Catholic Benedictine sisters who majored in sciences and taught science for over 100 years at the College of Saint Benedict in Saint Joseph, Minnesota, USA. In 1913, the College of Saint Benedict began as a women's college, expanding Saint Benedict's Academy, a boarding high school for women. This historical organizational case study analyzed archived data to understand the benefits and challenges of women who lived religious lives and studied science. Although women, in general, are still underrepresented in the sciences, the data collected provides information on how the sisters obtained advanced degrees as early as 1923, well before women were widely accepted in the sciences in colleges. Over time, the need for training scientists declined. The academic cooperation with the male college, Saint John's University, allowed coeducational courses, merging departments, and decreasing the need for faculty. The demand for teachers in K-12 schools also fell as choices increased for public education and some Catholic high schools closed. The sisters, however, contributed to scientific research and collaborated with scientists worldwide while living religious lives, despite the long duration of academic studies. In addition, they were role models that taught and developed science curricula at all levels and served in many leadership roles at the college and in the monastery. The legacy of the sisters in science continues, as 1800 lay women have graduated with degrees in the sciences since the start of college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article bridges the fields of Catholic history, Women's history, and American religious history to propose a new perspective for studying the development of the American Catholic Church, termed by me as the consolidation controversies. Previous historians have focused on the development of the local parishes and the dioceses, focusing on the power conflicts between the lay trustees and the local bishops that accompanied this institutional growth. However, an often‐forgotten aspect of Catholic history is the simultaneous rise of religious congregations and orders. As these communities developed, their leaders clashed with the local bishops over questions of property and authority over members of the communities. Often at the centre of these power struggles were the women religious. Rather than allowing themselves to be manipulated, women religioudemonstrated their own autonomy, navigating larger institutional politics. Should these women fail, they faced losing their place in the diocese as well as their position and vocation as women religious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A "biography of place" is presented as a means for parsing the relationship between missionization and place at the Catholic Mission of Saint Joseph, Ngasobil, Senegal (1863–1930). The traditional biographical approach is a potent mode of thinking through missionary landscapes that allows the gleaning of more information about the materiality of missionization; however, here, an additional understanding of biography—one focused on the act of writing itself—is explored in order to understand the ways in which missionaries themselves thought about making the mission place. A biography of St. Joseph's is already occurring in the archives, which are read as metaphorically hagiographic in their attribution of divine agency to the mission place as a means of producing conversion and vocation. Through these two lines of evidence, it becomes clear that mission leadership thought explicitly about how being in Ngasobil served to cultivate faithfulness and to produce religious vocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many contemporary studies approach Mahdism from a political-science orientation or historical perspective, as the evidence is marshalled from the influential Mahdist movement in Islamic history—Abbasids, Fatimids, Muwahhids, Sudanese Mahdists, and so on. As such, it can be seen that there has been a lack of discourse as regards abstraction, particularly concerning the literary structure of Mahdī ḥadīth. This paper explores a panoramic view of ḥadīth commentaries in order to understand their commentarial production on apocalyptic questions, specifically focusing on the subject of Mahdī within this trend of Sunni ḥadīth scholarship. Ḥadīth commentaries are meant to bridge the gap in space and time between Prophetic words or teachings and the actual world of the reader. Hence, this study provides a brief survey of the documentation of Mahdī ḥadīth, starting with the classical Sunnite ḥadīth compendia of the second century of Hijrah. The material has been drawn from ḥadīth compendia, topical ḥadīth works, sīrah literature, classical-to-modern ḥadīth commentaries, and other theological writings and has been balanced when feasible with details (or lack thereof) contained in the Quran. Advocators have always adopted and adjusted their hermeneutics in order to answer challenges posed by deniers of Mahdī ḥadīth. Regardless of how exactly these strategies, attitudes, and uses arose, it is safe to assume that these scholars undertook their work out of professional vocation in addition to religious devotion. Eventually, ḥadīth commentaries found their place in the theological discourse according to orientations and operations of eschatology, which to a certain extent reflect classical, medieval, or contemporary attitudes toward the meaning and relevance of Mahdī ḥadīth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congreve could be described as the saviour of SSJE having persuaded Benson to resign as Superior-General. Congreve was certainly a man of the moment and this book highlights a number of Congreve's views on friendship, living together, nature, growing old and facing one's own death. Luke Miller has produced a detailed account of the life and teaching of Father George Congreve who spent more than forty years as a Mission Priest of the Society of St John the Evangelist (SSJE). [Extracted from the article]

"Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle" by Shannen Dee Williams is a groundbreaking book that explores the history of Black Catholic women and their contributions to the Black freedom struggles in the United States. The author uses a wide range of sources, including oral histories with Black nuns, to shed light on the experiences, ministry, and activism of these women. The book also examines the racism within the Catholic Church and the challenges Black nuns faced in their pursuit of religious vocations. Overall, this work highlights the often overlooked role of Black Catholics in the fight for racial justice. [Extracted from the article]

Charismatic Buddhist monks are instrumental in modernising Buddhism as they have been entrusted with an important role of resurrecting religion and Sinhala society throughout the course of Sri Lankan history. Ven. Pitaduwe Siridhamma, later known as Siri Samanthabhadra Arahat Thero, is known as a cosmopolitan modernist monk figure who envisions a modernised form of Buddhism in recent times, which is derived creatively from the discourses and practical ideals in traditional Buddhism. He went further by founding his style initiatives to address Buddhist transformations in modern Sri Lanka. Samanthabhadra revolutionised the monastery space, allowing his supporters to embrace ideals and incorporate them into their everyday life. His project includes a wide range of such activities, expanding opportunities for Buddhist women to pursue their religious vocations, favouring traditional forms of meditation over farming and similar activities. The mission to reform Buddhism in Sri Lanka is not entirely modern, as it also incorporates elements of tradition, as shown in the case study at Umandawa. The modernist ideals and societal demands that define contemporary Buddhism are reflected in the transformation of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]