Book Review: Paul Collins, \u3cem\u3eBelievers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?\u3c/em\u3e, University of New South Wales Press, 2008

The text Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future? explores the historical, contemporary, and present role of Roman Catholicism within Australian society. Central to six engaging, challenging, and perhaps controversial chapters is the question: “Is the Church in a state of decline within Australia?” In his book Paul Collins highlights certain aspects of Australian culture and society that have flourished due to the influence of the Church, and critically examines some factors attributed to the apparent “failure” of Catholicism to permeate this same culture fully. Despite his criticism of the localized Church, the author remains optimistic for the future of Roman Catholicism in Australia

Vatican II: Aggiornamento as Healing

Vatican II began to heal three major divisions: the division within Roman Catholicism itself, the division between Roman Catholicism and other religions, and the division between Roman Catholicism and the world. Following John XXIII\u27s vision, the council opened the windows for some fresh air

Roman Catholicism Un-American

https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/1267/thumbnail.jp

Afterword

Today many books appear regarding Vatican II. Yet, only very few of them manage to locate this crucial event in the life of the twentieth century Roman Catholic Church against the broad horizon of both its prehistory and its aftermath. This book does just that. In seven chapters, this volume offers a survey of the evolution of Post-Enlightenment Catholicism, in the period spanning from ca. 1830 to the present, tying together the renewals proposed by the first and the Second Vatican Councils. Each phase in this evolution is discussed from a double angle: on the hand from the viewpoint of theological developments and milieu’s, and on the other hand from an institutional and Church historical perspective, thus binding together these two perspectives and tracing the evolutions within Catholicism in all their pluriformity

Womanpriest

"This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. Womanpriest is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, Womanpriest analyzes the womenpriests’ actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change. In order to understand how womenpriests navigate tradition and transgression, this study situates RCWP within post–Vatican II Catholicism, apostolic succession, sacraments, ministerial action, and questions of embodiment. Womanpriest reveals RCWP to be a discrete religious movement in a distinct religious moment, with a small group of tenacious women defying the Catholic patriarchy, taking on the priestly role, and demanding reconsideration of Roman Catholic tradition. Doing so, the women inhabit and re-create the central tensions in Catholicism today.

The Decline of Black Catholicism: What’s Racial Slavery To Do With It?

This essay links the current decline of black Catholicism to the racial slavery practiced in Roman Catholicism at its settlement in the USA. Employing missiological anthropological analysis, Assenyoh, S.V.D., argues that the racism that characterized the beginning of New World slavery remains in the Church and accounts for the decline of black Catholicism. Assenyoh calls for persistent critiques of racial slavery in the Church’s history if there must be transformation rather than reformation

MANNING\u27S ULTRAMONTANISM AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN BRITISH POLITICS

During the 1860\u27s Henry Edward Manning, who had recently converted to Roman Catholicism, advanced a polemical rationale for the doctrine of papal infallibility and justified the Roman pontiff\u27s right to address contemporary political, economic, and social issues

Roman Catholicism in Ukraine: The Contemporary Situation, Social Acceptance, and Social Service

This article investigates the historical peculiarities of the formation and specificity of the current stage of development of Catholicism in Ukraine. It considers the spiritual, socio-cultural, economic, and political prerequisites for the resumption of the activity of the Roman Catholic Church during the revival of Ukraine\u27s independence in the 1990s. A quantitative comparison of dioceses since the end of the last century has been undertaken and their patterns of growth have been identified. The main achievements of the largest Catholic churches in the country since Ukrainian independence have consisted in building its ecclesiastical structures and expanding its community networks and active social service. This has resulted in a positive trend of increasing awareness and confidence among the Ukrainian citizens in Catholic institutions, their leaders, and Catholicism in general. Various aspects of the “Vatican\u27s Eastern Policy” and its implications for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church are also examined, as well as problems and prospects for further integration of the Roman Catholic identity into the spiritual space of Ukrainian society. The main contours of the institutional Catholic response to the current crisis situations in Ukrainian society are outlined, including the war in the East of the country, family problems, poverty, existence of socially vulnerable groups of people, despair, and so forth