前《天主实义》的思想嬗变——利玛窦在粤书信阅读之管见

利玛窦在中国的所有活动都是以传教为宗旨的,推动中西方文化交流及其成果仅仅是围绕传教这个根本目标所达到的意外效果。因此,他的《天主实义》更应该成为研究利玛窦在中国所进行的文化活动时必须认真对待的文本。在利玛窦的思想历程中实际上存在着一个非常重要的转变,即由对与罗明坚合作的《天主实录》的满意到失望,《天主实义》的产生正是这种思想转变的结果。     

Critique of the Vatican’s Role in Recent Child Protection Practice: A Brief Report

The current report aims to clarify the practices and implicit intentions of the Holy See in addressing child sexual abuse (CSA) by clerics in the twenty-first century. Church investigation reports, United Nations reports, press coverage, and academic literature were explored to understand the relationship between Church intention and practice. Various types of literature highlight the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) as an organization that is self-referential and self-defensive, with the implicit aim of protecting the reputation of RCC at the expense of children. Organizational responses are seen as promoting the protection of perpetrating clerics, resulting in the spread of CSA by clergy nationally and globally. Recommendations are made for the introduction of modern-day management practices in RCC, filtered through a faithful understanding of gospel principles. The authors suggest that the United Nations may be an important vehicle for fostering leverage for change in RCC child protection practice.     

浅析北京天主教东堂的建立及其意义

1655年葡萄牙传教士安文思和意大利传教士利类思在北京创建了天主教东堂.自此,东堂成为北京葡萄牙传教士的主要传教基地,他们在这里培养了许多葡萄牙传教士,并且开展各种科技、文化活动.东堂在葡萄牙传教史上有着十分重要的作用,是葡萄牙传教士得以在中国继续打开传教局面的一个重要媒介.     

Building a Dignified Identity: An Ethnographic Case Study of LGBT Catholics

ABSTRACT

This ethnographic case study offers insight into religiously devout sexual minorities and the reasons behind their continued participation in an anti-gay religious institution, the Roman Catholic Church. I demonstrate how members of Dignity, an organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Catholics, strategically use their identity as gay Catholics to initiate action, to build community, and to destigmatize other religious sexual minorities. Members leverage this unique identity to push for change and equality within the Church. At the same time, this identity also allows members to see their continued participation in the anti-gay Roman Catholic Church as activism, a positive and affirming identity, thereby alleviating potential conflict and contradiction between their sexuality and their spirituality as Roman Catholics.     

Parental religiosity and daughters’ fertility: the case of Catholics in southern Europe

Preferences, including preferences for children, are shaped during the formative years of childhood. It is therefore essential to include exposure to religious practice during childhood in an attempt to establish a link between religiosity and fertility. This path has not been explored in the documented literature that looks at the relationship between current religiosity and fertility. The International Social Survey Programme: Religion II (ISSP) provides the data base. It includes information on maternal/paternal/own mass participation when the respondent was a child (nine levels each), as well as on his current churchgoing (six levels) and prayer habits (eleven levels). These variables are included as explanatory variables in ‘fertility equations’ that explain the number of children of Catholic women in Spain and Italy. The core findings are that exposure to religiosity during the formative years of childhood, has a pronounced effect on women’s ‘taste for children’ that later on translates into the number of her offspring. In Spain, the two parents have major opposite effects on women. Most striking is the negative effect of the mother’s intensity of church attendance on her daughter’s fertility: Women who were raised by an intensively practicing mother have on average one child less that their counterparts who were raised by a less religious mother. On the other hand, an intensively practicing father encourages the daughter to have more children (by about 0.8, on average). The Italian sample confirms the statistically significant negative effect of the mother’s religiosity. The father’s religious conduct has apparently no effect on Italian women’s birth rates. Current religiosity seems to be irrelevant, both in Spain and in Italy. It follows that religiosity and fertility are interrelated but the mechanism is probably different from the simplistic causality that is suggested in the literature.

Rebuilding Communities After Natural Disasters: The 2009 Bushfires in Southeastern Australia

ABSTRACT

Through nonrandom purposive sampling, this article examines the ways three Catholic agencies offered bushfire recovery assistance after the 2009 bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria. Participants from Catholic welfare agencies (29), local and state government (8), international recovery agencies (2), and others such as clergy, church, and medical (6) were selected, and senior managers, middle managers, and workers on the ground were interviewed up to 3 times during a 3-year period. The forty-five people were interviewed a total of 74 times. Study results illustrate the importance of adaptability, flexibility, and preplanning as the core of recovery assistance. Linking with local and state government disaster management plans and developing mechanisms to inform other groups as to the services that new agencies could provide were essential for filling gaps in services and establishing cooperative ventures. Recommendations are provided but more research is needed on how other agencies can benefit from the knowledge gained in this study.     

朋友伦理与中古社会风尚探析

朋友伦理是古代社会的重要伦理关系,是个人生存发展不可或缺的要素。考察中古朋友人伦的变化可知,先秦时期儒家人伦观潜藏着宗法等级观念;秦汉以后,因中央集权制的加强和君主专制的政治需要,血缘人伦被衍化成社会政治原则,社会交往中的朋友关系随政治等级观念的逐步渗透,使得忠孝观念被置于首位。儒家的朋友关系虽然被排除在"三纲"之外,较少受到等级差别的影响,但随后代选官制度的逐渐成熟化,朋友之谊已经偏离了"择善辅仁"的初衷,呈现出以利益为主导的现实。     

The Contraceptive Confidence Idea: An Empirical Investigation

In this paper the hypothesis that ‘contraceptive confidence’ promotes accelerated childbearing is presented and examined. Methodological difficulties in investigating the question empirically are discussed. Because of the absence of a direct measure, a proxy indicator of ‘contraceptive confidence’ is used in multivariate analyses of maternity history data. These give results consistent with the existence of a contraceptive confidence effect. Evidence is also presented (a) of shorter second birth intervals among women who were in higher status occupations before marriage and (b) of an inverse association between educational qualifications and length of intervals after the first. These findings are construed as supporting the basic thesis regarding contraceptive confidence. The contraceptive confidence idea is discussed in the context of related work on an acceleration effect associated with women's labour-force participation. Several difficulties in interpreting the findings are considered and some implications are discussed.     

Risk Management for Catholic Priests in the United States

Abstract

Following the disclosure of decades of Episcopal cover-ups of child sexual abuse, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) promulgated the Charter for the Protection of Children & Young People(USCCB, 2002). This document requires that all U.S. dioceses and eparchies identify a code of conduct for clergy, employees, and volunteers. The Virtus Model Code of Pastoral Conduct (National Catholic Risk Retention Group, Inc., 2002) has been selected by many dioceses/eparchies. Other dioceses and eparchies have used similar variants. While codes of conduct for priests may seem reasonable, current codes do not distinguish between the functions of mental health providers and priests. As a result significant ministerial implications may effect pastoral service delivery. This paper focuses on risk management strategies, similar to those used by social workers and other mental health practitioners, that will become increasingly necessary for priests who provide pastoral counseling, spiritual direction, or any clinical-type intervention to parishioners and those seeking pastoral services. Specifically, dual relationships, mandated reported, duty to warn/protect, and documentation will be addressed.     

Catholic Social Thought and the Caring Professions

Abstract

Catholic social teaching provides a developed and consistent body of principles, based on solidarity with the full potential of every person. Love, the personal aspect of solidarity, is an indispensable relational quality. These principles, an external framework for action, are close to core social work values as well as to the values of many clients. They acknowledge both the context of the helping relationship and the consciences of the helper and the person helped. This could contribute to a thickening and deepening of our understanding of social work practice and the consequent “formation of the heart.” doi:10.1300/J377v26n03_05