Global Catholicism and the Politics of Civil Society

A transformation of the politics of Catholicism worldwide has taken place. The final recognition of the modern principle of religious freedom at Vatican II, together with the assumption by the church of the modern doctrine of human rights, has altered the traditional dynamic of church state relations and the role of the church both nationally and transnationally.
National churches no longer aspire to become state compulsory institutions. It is this voluntary "disestablishment" that has permitted the church to play a key role in recent transitions to democracy throughout the Catholic world. Simultaneously, the papacy has assumed the vacant role of spokesperson for humanity, for the sacred dignity of the human person, for world peace, and for a more fair division of labor and power in the world system.
As the Catholic Church abandons the private sphere assigned to religion and enters the undifferentiated public sphere of civil society to take part in ongoing processes of normative contestation, a tension between catholic universality and Roman Catholic particularity becomes evident.     

The Politics of Migration,Church, and State: A Case Study of the Catholic Church in Ireland

This article investigates the ways in which a shift from post‐colonial nation building to neoliberal state restructuring has shaped church and Irish state relations regarding migrant welfare. It develops the extensive work of Bäckström and Davie (2010) and Bäckström et al. (2011) on how majority churches in European countries are reclaiming a social welfare role as the state relinquishes this responsibility: first, by examining the domain of migrant welfare which is not developed in their work; and second, by arguing that majority church pro‐migrant service provision, as it has evolved in recent decades, can be understood in relation to an emergent neoliberal mode of collective responsibility for migrant welfare. It suggests that in spite of other factors and forces that undermine Irish Catholic Church authority, the marketization of more domains of life in the first decades of the twenty‐first century has given new significance to Catholic Social Teaching and pro‐migrant church initiatives.     

Men of the Flesh: The Evaluation and Treatment of Sexually Abusing Priests

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States is experiencing a financial, psychological, public relations, theological, and spiritual crisis over priests who sexually abused minors or acted out sexually in a variety of ways and members of the church hierarchy who covered up their crimes in order to prevent scandal. In this chapter I discuss the problems of sexuality among errant clergy through my work at The Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital's Mental Health Network.

I argue that if change is to take place in the Roman Catholic Church, it must be systemic and Catholic moral theology needs to develop a more developmentally and scientifically sound narrative of human sexuality for parishioners and clergy.     

Hiding behind the cloth:child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church

The existence of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has shocked many. In this article, the authors review the history of child sexual abuse in the church, the recent events that brought this tragedy into societal consciousness, and the efforts by the church to conceal the abuse. Two sources of empirical literature, the general psychological writing on priest sex abuse and the psychoanalytic literature, on child sexual abuse are compared. Both sources of literature seek explanation for priests' child sexual abuse within the structure and culture of the church rather than viewing the priest as a "typical" sex predator. The authors argue that, in fact, the guilty priests are child predators who differ little from other child predators.     

Weathering the storm: Hauser's Vernacular Voices,public relations and the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal

Since 2002, the Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandal has had disastrous and far-reaching effects on both the church's ability to interact with its internal publics and its ability to pursue its public agenda. This paper blends the author's experience as a public relations practitioner in the Roman Catholic Church with Gerard Hauser's theory of publics and public spheres articulated in Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres to discover how organizations could improve their responses to crises.     

The Divorced Catholics Movement

A significant movement is developing in the American Roman Catholic church, offering education, support, and recovery to people going through divorce. Almost 500 support groups have emerged. This close attention to the experience of divorced Catholics is raising complex questions about the traditional attitudes and discipline of the Catholic church on this issue. A lessening of stigmatization and rejection of the divorced in the Catholic community is discernible already. The church is struggling to find ways to continue to value permanent marriage commitment, while being more sensitive to the personal need of many divorced persons for a new marriage.     

Colonial collaborators: Britain and the Catholic Church in Trinidad,c. 1820–1840

Trinidad, a predominantly Catholic and Francophone island, became a British colony in 1802. The lynchpin of the Catholic Church’s authority and influence in the region, Trinidad’s religious culture was defined by powerful racial tensions. Francis de Ridder, a Roman Catholic priest, was born in 1800 to a slave mother and a Belgian-born planter father. As a priest and free person of colour in Trinidad between 1825 and the early 1830s, his experience reveals much about the complex, yet collaborative relationship that existed between the Catholic Church and Britain’s colonial office. This relationship, which expanded significantly between 1820 and the early 1840s, was informed by demographic change and the reorganization of ecclesiastical structures. The de Ridder case is used here as a springboard for exploring some of the ways that slaves and free people of colour were excluded from religious practice and Church authority structures. In working closely with colonial officials on the ground in Trinidad, these Catholic leaders, who were often bishops or their coadjutors, embedded the Church within the governing structures of elite white society. What emerges is a picture of a Church whose missionary leadership actively pushed non-whites to the periphery of the story of its global spread.     

The Effective Use of New Media in Disseminating Evangelical Messages Among Catholic College Students

Religious life of American youth has received little attention from social scientists, but this is changing as research underscores the importance of religious identity. The Catholic Church has historically employed new forms of communication to reach its followers. This article examines Catholic college students’ use of new media and the impact on their faith. To explore this, a qualitative method was used. Five major themes emerging from the study were: (a) positive effects of Christian media content, (b) everyday use of new media, (c) the Catholic Church is buried in tradition, (d) importance of credible sources, and (e) failure to program toward youth. Data collected from these qualitative interviews suggest the Catholic Church must become aggressive in utilizing new media and programming messages of faith and education about the Church to this younger generation as their values are being shaped.     

The Roman Catholic Church: A Centuries Old History of Awareness of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (from the First to the 19th Century)

Debates in international forums and in mainstream media on the role, responsibility, liability, and response of ecclesiastical authorities of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) toward clerical child sexual abuse (cCSA) fail to take into account the historical roots and awareness of the problem. Reports also fail to mention the historic organizational laws RCC developed over centuries. In contrast, RCC documents evidence that the Catholic Church not only carried century’s old history of cCSA, but also repeatedly condemned cCSA by successive papal authorities, organizational laws, and institutional management mechanisms. During the first millennium, however, church laws remained confined to the bookshelves and were not converted into appropriate management policies and infrastructural models. This was largely due to the absence of a central administrative organizational structure, which developed later in the 12th century, following the Second Council of Lateran (1139) when the Papacy asserted its authority to establish administrative control over the organizational church. It was only then that management policies started to be framed and institutional structures enacted to deal more appropriately with cCSA from the 14th to 20th centuries. Despite this, RCC developed a culture of secrecy using clandestine organizational management models and institutional laws prescribed in 1568, 1622, 1741, 1866, 1922, and 1962 which aimed to manage cCSA. The current study traces reported cCSA as far back as the first century and critically examines the organizational laws, and institutional policies developed by RCC to address clerical sexual misconduct up to the end of the 19th century.     

The struggle of Batak Simalungun for their identity in Church organization in Simalungun,Medan, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This research aims to find out the struggle of Batak Simalungun for their identity in church organization in Simalungun. This research uses a qualitative research approach, This qualitative research also uses an ethnographic approach. The qualitative research has at least five approaches and therefore can choose one of the five approaches. The results show about three demands of the Simalungun Batak movement over a special identity of Simalungun also include the church organization environment, where the entire Batak Church led by RMG touches on the original structures of Batak society and culture.     

The Kingdom of Kongo and Palo Mayombe: Reflections on an African-American Religion

Historical scholarship on Afro-Cuban religions has long recognized that one of its salient characteristics is the union of African (Yoruba) gods with Catholic Saints. But in so doing, it has usually considered the Cuban Catholic church as the source of the saints and the syncretism to be the result of the worshippers hiding worship of the gods behind the saints. This article argues that the source of the saints was more likely to be from Catholics from the Kingdom of Kongo which had been Catholic for 300 years and had made its own form of Christianity in the interim.     

Decriminalizing Abortion in Uruguay: Women’s Movements,Secularism, and Political Allies

In 2012 Uruguay became the second country in Latin America to decriminalize abortion during the first trimester. Drawing on original field research, this article explains the success of abortion reform based on the existence of a strong campaign for decriminalization. The women’s movement used frames that resonated within civil society, gathered support from key social actors, and collaborated closely with sympathetic legislators. In addition, three contextual factors ensured both the availability and success of these strategies: a weak presence of the Catholic Church, a president not opposed to abortion reform, and a highly institutionalized party system with a strong leftist coalition.     

Efficiency in religious organizations

Churches must realize that the management of their human resources is critical. The U.S. Catholic Church in recent years has been this problem take on even more significance with the apparent shortage of priests. This article considers this problem in light of a relatively new methodology, data envelopment analysis, which compares organizations to comparable best-practice units. The authors conclude that the Church would benefit from a better distribution of priests, both within and across dioceses. They also conclude that the use of deacons and priestless parishes can be effective in some circumstances.     

Sexual Misconduct by Clergy in the Episcopal Church

This article discusses the ordination selection process in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church. Exploring the current sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Church, it focuses on possible roots of that crisis in f laws in the selection process and its theological underpinnings. It also explores what constitutes healthy priestly functioning and how misconduct occurs when healthy functioning breaks down.     

NEGATIVE PUBLICITY AND CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

Between 1990 and 2007, the number of Catholic schools in the United States decreased by 14% and enrollment diminished by 7%. We generate two measures of publicity of sexual abuse at the diocesan level—public disclosure and news coverage. Dioceses with higher rates of negative publicity had a larger decline in both the number of Catholic schools and overall Catholic school enrollment. We estimate that publicity arising from sexual offenders within the Church explains 5% of the decline in the availability of Catholic schooling. (JEL I21, H52, H44)     

The Dean Pike Show: An Examination and Comparative Analysis of Bishop James A. Pike's 1950s Television Program

During the religious revival and television revolution of the 1950s, future Episcopal Bishop James Pike broadcast a live religious television program to a national audience from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where he was then serving as Dean. By so doing, he joined evangelist Billy Graham and Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen as prominent church leaders of the day hosting their own TV shows. Together, these programs reflected varied strands of the American religious landscape in the 1950s. The article examines Pike's show, which focused on a discussion with guests of critical political, social and ethical issues facing the nation and church. It examines how the program reflected Pike's life-long ministry and identity as a High Church liberal, as well as Reinhold Niebuhr's theology. Further, the article compares the format, approach and content of Pike's show with those of Graham and Sheen, examining how each program's format derived from its featured cleric's theology and approach. It finds that Pike's show was distinctly more political, pragmatic and introspective than those of his fellow TV clerics.     

Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

Qualitative Sociology - This article examines a recent controversy over the Catholic Church’s registration of Cordoba’s iconic Mosque-Cathedral as official Church property in 2006. In...     

Violence in the Black Church

Abstract

Violence in the Black Church is an issue that is frequently discussed in quiet corners, mainly among church devotees. This article argues that the Black Church is the backbone of the Black community. Moreover, if it becomes secularized, and ensnared with disruptive factionalism, its role may be significantly diminished. Faith-based programs, school vouchers, the role of women in the church, and ministerial behaviors are among the structural issues giving rise to violence in the Black Church. The paper draws on many sources of data, and is interpreted within the theoretical framework of a systems perspective.     

Colonial Oppression, Gender, and Women in the Irish Diaspora

This paper explores the relationship between colonial oppression in pre-famine Ireland and the development of gender patterns that fostered uncommon social and familial roles for women. In post-famine Ireland women's traditional family roles illustrate cultural empowerment that combined with the pull factors of employment opportunities to spawn higher female than male emigration at the same time that patriarchal oppression restricted women's full social participation in Ireland and limited their authority to specific domains of family life. Cultural changes in post-famine Ireland, including increased power for the Catholic Church, mothers' socialization of children to the moral teachings of the Church, delayed marriage, and permanent celibacy among large segments of the population, intersected to produce unique patterns of migration. For women who immigrated to the United States, the cultural background of colonial oppression instilled values that respected independence and employment. In the case of the Irish, colonial oppression initiated gender patterns that pushed women to greater familial power and occupational independence than was typical of other ethnic groups.