Search Results (1,107)

The image of the Virgin Mary appears with increasing frequency in written sources from the 12th and 13th centuries compared to earlier periods. Three major works produced by four eyewitness authors of the Albigensian Crusade (Historia Albigensis, Chronica, and Canso de la Crozada) reflect on and respond to this popular theme. These sources focus on the Albigensian Crusade against heretical groups, particularly the Cathars, and employ the Virgin Mary motif for various purposes. The Virgin Mary is presented as a Catholic model for women drawn to Catharism (a movement in which female spiritual leadership was also present) as a divine protector of the just side in war and as a means of legitimizing the authors’ claims. While Mary appears sporadically in Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis, she is extensively invoked in the Canso by both William and his anonymous successor. In contrast, the image of the Virgin Mary is scarcely mentioned in Chronica, likely due to the narrative’s intended audience and objectives. This article aims to provide a comparative analysis of how the image of the Virgin Mary is utilized in these primary sources from the Albigensian Crusade and to offer a new perspective on the relationship between historical events and authors’ intentions, laying the groundwork for further research. Full article

This essay expands the canon of sources for liberative theologies by examining the artwork of leading Caribbean muralist Sir Dunstan St. Omer. In conjunction with his close friend—Nobel Laureate Sir Derek Walcott—St. Omer pioneered a form of artistic expression which he used to great and imaginative effect as counter-narrative to dehumanizing colonial myth. The essay presents two of the artist’s best-known murals, discusses their significance in the arc of Caribbean religiosity, and extrapolates critical insight for a contemporary Black Catholic mysticism. Full article

This article examines the legal and practical dimensions of religious education (RE) in Austria with a particular focus on interreligious education as an emerging pedagogical and societal response to increasing religious and cultural diversity. It begins by situating the discussion within Austria’s historical and constitutional framework, in which RE is governed as a res mixta—a joint responsibility shared between the state and legally recognized churches and religious societies (CRSs). The analysis highlights how this model of power-sharing is enshrined in both constitutional and ordinary legislation, granting CRSs extensive autonomy in the organization, content, and supervision of denominational RE. Despite the absence of explicit legal provisions for interreligious education, the article demonstrates that interreligious teaching practices can be implemented through cooperative arrangements between CRSs, particularly when aligned with national educational goals and international commitments to tolerance, religious freedom, and other human rights. It further analyses curricular references to interreligiosity across various denominational RE programs and discusses the institutional potential for integrating interreligious competencies into teacher training and school practice. Drawing on the example of the project Integration through Interreligious Education at the University Graz, a cooperative initiative between the Catholic Church and the Islamic Religious Society in Austria (IGGÖ) from 2017 to 2023, the article outlines how interreligious education was legally contextualized and contractually formalized. The article concludes that interreligious education, though legally unregulated, is both feasible and desirable within Austria’s current legal and educational framework. It calls for greater normative clarity and policy support to ensure the sustainability and broader implementation of such models, which foster mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society. Full article

This study examines the evolution and current challenges of Catholic Higher Education (CHE) in South Korea within the context of globalization and neoliberal educational reform. It explores how Korean Catholic universities balance their distinctive mission with intensifying pressures for competitiveness, external validation, and adaptation to secular academic norms. Drawing on P. Boudieu’s field theory and H. Richard Niebuhr’s typology of Christian responses to culture, the analysis frames the ways institutions of Korean CHE navigate the sometimes contrary currents of their institutional aims—simultaneously striving for academic excellence and maintaining Catholic identity. Case studies of three major Korean Catholic universities illustrate how leadership and curricular programs reflect the ongoing negotiation between mission-driven imperatives and market demands. The paper contends that living within this tension is not a sign of deficiency. It can actually be a source of resilience and innovation. The Korean experience of CHE offers insights for Catholic universities facing similar dilemmas globally, suggesting that engaging proactively with the seemingly contrary paradoxical demands can sustain the integrity of mission while fostering adaptive capacity amid the rapidly changing landscape of higher education. Full article

This article examines how the issues regarding the role of women in the life and mission of the Catholic Church are addressed, chronologically and geographically, in the various documents of the synodal process For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission, 2021–2024. A detailed outline of the discussion of women in each of the documents is presented, including the documents which emerged from the seven continental meetings of Africa and Madagascar, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. It also includes a close examination of the document which emerged from the unique and important Maronite Special Synod for Women (2022–2023). The aim is to record the breadth and complexity of the discussion, identifying common concerns, key theological themes, and issues of divergence, including the contested issues of the female diaconate and the ordination of women to the priesthood. Concerns about the role of women in the Church have often been dismissed as solely the concerns of the Global North or of a liberal elite, but the results of the global consultation show that this is not the case. Addressing the lack of full and equal participation of women in the Catholic Church will be one of the core issues upon which the credibility of the Church in the world hinges. Full article

This study analyzes confessionally conditioned self-image and mutual perception of the Catholic and Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Upper Hungary in the context of the second confessionalization process. Based on comparative research of the contemporary press, including either the printed or handwritten homiletic and catechetical literature, predominantly from the area of Upper Hungary, the study examines which phenomena and processes taking place since the 1830s until the end of the 1850s signaled a renewal in confessional identities in both the Catholic and Evangelical Churches. A particular emphasis has been placed on indicators of the second confessionalization, such as the debate on mixed marriages, a rising number of conversions, or legislative interventions in the freedom of religion. Through discourse analysis, the study explores how the image and self-image of the Catholic and Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession evolved as a result of the expansion of the catechetical literature and apologetic works and identifies the narrative strategies employed in their respective confessional discourses. The Catholic discourse stressed maintaining dogmatic integrity and Church authority in particular, whereas the Evangelicals more frequently accentuated a thorough biblicality and rationality as a counterposition to Catholic piety. Both traditions claimed exclusive access to “true religion” and used apologetic genres to defend and enhance their identity. Polemical texts also served as tools to form confessionally conditioned collective consciousness, as well as a part of contemporary cultural and political debates. Full article

Background: Undernutrition is a major public health concern, accounting for nearly half of global under-five mortalities and leading to serious long-term consequences for those who survive. Most nutritional screening programs give priority to acute undernutrition (wasting). The co-presence of chronic undernutrition (stunting) has been shown to have the highest risk of mortality. To date, few studies have assessed outpatient treatment outcomes of children with wasting + stunting (WaSt), with some inconsistencies in results and only one study having investigated the outcome of patients requiring hospitalization. The aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of stunting on the outcomes of severely wasted children admitted for inpatient treatment in an Ethiopian referral hospital. Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted to compare treatment outcomes (length of hospital stay, weight gain, recovery rate, readmission rate) of wasted and WaSt children admitted to “St. Luke Catholic Hospital and College of Nursing and Midwifery” between January 2018 and February 2023. Results: The analysis comprised 616 children aged 6–60 months and stunting was diagnosed in 559 children (90.7%). Children with stunting had a longer length of stay (median difference 3 days, 95% confidence interval 0 to 5; p = 0.03) and improved weight gain (median difference 4 g/kg/day, 95% confidence interval 0 to 4; p = 0.002) compared to children without stunting. Discharge rate (p = 0.99) and readmission rate (p = 0.25) were not statistically different between children with or without stunting. Conclusions: Stunting was found to be present in most children admitted for severe wasting to the Stabilization Centers in a sub-Saharan setting. Stunting was associated with longer hospitalization and greater weight gain, but discharge and readmission rate were comparable between children with or without stunting. Full article

During the parliamentary elections in Italy after World War II, rumours spread in the public sphere about the occurrence of “miracles.” These “miracles” were interpreted as warning messages from the divine about the danger posed by the Communist Party. This was considered part of a strategy to promote Christian Democrats by representatives of the Catholic Church and was viewed with concern by communist countries in Eastern Europe as the phenomenon began to spread. In the second half of 1948, the Romanian authorities initiated measures to abolish the Greek Catholic Church and persecute the Roman Catholic Church. In this context, rumours spread in Catholic circles about “miracles” intended to stimulate the resistance of believers in the face of persecution. The phenomenon of “miracles” also spread among Orthodox believers, who were dissatisfied with the elimination of religious education in schools and the beginning of the collectivization of agriculture. For this reason, this phenomenon was considered a danger by the communist authorities in Romania. In this study, we aim to examine how the authorities dealt with the issue of “miracles,” what measures were taken, which institutions were involved, and what the consequences were for long-term religious policy in communist Romania. Full article

On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) without a single dissenting vote. The term “human rights” coalesced rapidly and unexpectedly. Samuel Moyn, a leading intellectual historian of human rights, observes that people now view universal human rights as part of a set of “conventional and enduring truths.” To the contrary, he asserts that “it was all rather new at the time.” Although historical and philosophical roots exist for the notion of rights, the early twentieth century witnessed little “human rights” discourse. Thus, this paper illuminates two evolutions—one political and the other religious—that helped set the stage for the birth of human rights in the aftermath of World War II. Politically, the failure of the “Westphalian order” to prevent the unimaginable suffering of “total war” broadened transnationalism beyond the quest for a balance of power between sovereign nation-states. On the religious side, rights advocates adapted principles drawn from prior debates to the mid-twentieth-century context, thereby contributing to the development and widespread embrace of the concept of inherent human dignity and the corresponding notion of inviolable and universal “human rights.” Full article

The relationship between Confucianism and Catholicism in contemporary Chinese Catholic educational settings is marked not only by significant cultural and philosophical differences, but also by profound analogies that open promising avenues for dialogue and mutual enrichment. Drawing on dialogical-interpretive methodology grounded in hermeneutic philosophy, the study explores core ontological and pedagogical concepts in both traditions. Confucianism conceives education as the ethical cultivation of virtue in alignment with cosmic and relational harmony, while Catholic pedagogy emphasizes the integral formation of the person in freedom, responsibility, and relationship with a personal God. Despite theological differences, both systems prioritize moral development, teacher exemplarity, and holistic human growth. The analysis proposes a critical pathway for creative inculturation, whereby Confucian relational ethics, contemplative practices, and communal sensibilities enrich Catholic educational practice without compromising doctrinal integrity. Such engagement contributes to the construction of a spiritually grounded, interculturally aware pedagogy responsive to pluralistic religious contexts. Full article

In Hungary, a particular form of state church developed during the Middle Ages. The legal nature of royal power was ensured by the crowning with the state and church founder Saint Stephen’s crown. Following the example of the apostolic succession of rights ensured by the laying on of hands at the consecration of bishops, we can, in fact, speak of a similarly sacral ‘successio regia’ in Hungarian terms. This sacral succession was created by the cultic relationship with the first holy king. In parallel, along the same ideology, the Hungarian kings took full control of the country’s church organization by the 15th century. However, while this control was linked to the person of the king, the Holy Crown also became, from the 15th century onwards, a symbol of state power independent of the king’s personal authority (Sacra Corona Regni Hungariae). This crown, however, was not merely an abstract idea, as in England, but an ideology tied to a concrete, sacred object that had developed. After the end of the reign of the foreign Habsburg dynasty from 1526 to 1918, the dignity of ‘apostolic king’, recognized by the Holy See in 1758, was no longer a realistic option. State control over the Catholic Church organization had disappeared. In contrast, the idea of the Holy Crown proved to be virulent, thanks to its independence from the person of the monarch. This explains why, after the fall of state socialism and the disappearance of the Soviet-Russian sphere of interest in Central Europe, the ancient crowned coat of arms was chosen in 1990 by the first freely elected parliament as the coat of arms of the Republic of Hungary, which had been proclaimed the previous year. This originally sacral symbol and the historicity and ideality it represented became the cornerstone of Hungarian statehood and the constitution in the third millennium, which, not incidentally, separated the state from all denominations. Full article

This article explores an interreligious educational initiative jointly developed by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) and the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), the “Sixteen Sheets on Judaism,” created to support Catholic religious education in Italian schools. Using a dialogical-hermeneutic methodology within a constructivist qualitative framework, the study applies Hermeneutic Content Analysis to thematically code and interpret the corpus. The analysis shows how the sheets seek to dismantle long-standing stereotypes and theological distortions about Judaism—often still present in educational settings—and to prevent forms of antisemitism by fostering accurate knowledge and mutual respect. Key themes include the Hebrew Scriptures, the Written and Oral Torah, and the Jewish identity of Jesus and Paul. The materials promote mutual recognition and religious literacy through dialogical engagement and the affirmation of Judaism as a living and autonomous tradition. By enabling Jewish self-representation and encouraging theological reciprocity, the sheets exemplify a model of transformative non-formal education. The article positions this case within broader debates on interreligious pedagogy and presents it as a valuable tool for inclusive curriculum design and intercultural citizenship. Full article

The aim of the study described in this article is to analyse and compare the opinions of high school graduates and this year’s leavers of the schools run by the Polish sisters. The Congregation was founded by Marcelina Darowska, who also created a deeply personalistic pedagogical system, which is, however, unknown and not well described in the scientific literature. The participants had the opportunity to express their opinion on the contemporary relevance of Darowska’s educational system. The main research question was: How do the participants assess the consistency between the approach to students in the sisters’ schools and Darowska’s concept? The data were analysed using mixed methods. Most of the participants (who were researched using the survey method) confirmed that the role of the teacher and the student at the sisters’ school corresponds to Marcelina Darowska’s views in this area. Full article

As the cathedral serving Zuoyun and parts of Inner Mongolia, the Batayizi Church in Datong, Shanxi is the largest surviving Italian Gothic-style Catholic church in the region. The church features a rigorous layout and refined details, making it a significant case study for the dissemination and development of Western architecture in China. Previous studies have focused on local chronicles, aesthetic analyses, and the indigenization of Catholic churches in Shanxi. Due to the scarcity of archival materials, research on the architecture itself has not yet been conducted. The article first summarizes the construction rules of local form and order of Italian Gothic churches based on related church remains and literature. Next, it establishes the architectural form of the church by combining construction rules and field surveys. Finally, the reconstruction design of the church is completed. As the first reconstruction study of the Batayizi Church, this paper attempts to explore a Reconstruction path based on the construction of local form and order of the church and systematically restores the main facade, floor plan, and structural form of the church. The results not only provide insights for the reconstruction of modern Catholic churches in Shanxi but also offer new ideas and methods for the study of the localization of Western architecture in China. Full article

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 recognizes the fundamental right of freedom of conscience and religion, the principle of equality and non-discrimination on religious grounds, and the principle of secularism and neutrality of the state. However, the legislative development of these principles is strongly stratified, and different levels of rights can be distinguished, depending on whether we are speaking about confessions with an agreement (Catholic Church, evangelicals, Jews, and Muslims), those with a mere declaration of well-known roots (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Buddhists, Orthodox, and Bahá’ís), and the rest of the confessions merely registered in the Register of Religious Entities (Hinduism, Taoism, Sikhism, Church of Scientology, etc.). Only the Catholic Church has access to the income tax allocation, and only denominations with an agreement enjoy the main tax benefits, or religious teaching in schools. The declaration of notorious rootedness has very limited effects at present (recognition of marriage and the mere expectation of signing a cooperation agreement with the state, provided there is political will to do so). It is, therefore, necessary to opt for a model of common law, which is more neutral and applies equally to all religious groups. Full article