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Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder Mar 2021

Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder

Journal of Global Catholicism

The dynamics of religious resurgence reveal the important ways that religious ritual and performance are meaning making spaces which are not self-contained or cut off from the rest of culture, but rather are a key locus of cultural change. A renewed emphasis on the busy intersections of meaning making – as rituals are connected, disconnected, and reconnected to other domains of social life – would improve the utility of the Catholics & Cultures website for understanding global cultural change. And a renewed emphasis on cultural change would also provide a better means for exploring reflexively by seeking to understand both …


A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht Mar 2021

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …


Introducing Catholics & Cultures: Ethnography, Encyclopedia, Cyborg, Mathew N. Schmalz Mar 2021

Introducing Catholics & Cultures: Ethnography, Encyclopedia, Cyborg, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In introducing the Catholics & Cultures site and the articles in this special issue, this essay initially locates the overall Catholic & Cultures project within the traditions of ethnography and encyclopedia. Drawing extensively on the work of J. Z. Smith, this essay reflects upon the theoretical implications of emphasizing the diversity of Catholicism in and through a web-based platform that facilitates comparative study and pedagogy. This essay then more specifically considers the web-based aspects of Catholics & Cultures by identifying a nascent cyborgian aesthetic in the site and considering how the site might eventually engage post-modern themes and concerns.


Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass Jul 2020

Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass

Journal of Global Catholicism

Radna is the sacral heart of the Banat region in Romania. The shrine has united the Catholics for centuries in veneration of Virgin Mary regardless of their nationality and native language. Roman Catholic Bulgarians, Croatians (called Krashovani), Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Romanians, and Slovakians venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary together, but believers of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church also visit the sacred venue. Until the borders changed after the First World War, a great number of pilgrims had visited Radna every year from the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. The pilgrimage may be considered a rite of passage connecting …


Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating The Tradition Of Shared Worship In North Macedonia, Ksenia Trofimova Jul 2020

Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating The Tradition Of Shared Worship In North Macedonia, Ksenia Trofimova

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper addresses trajectories of historical and devotional continuity of the annual pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. It analyzes the ways in which traditional worship of the Catholic Church in Letnica (Kosovo)—a major regional sanctuary of the former Yugoslavia—is relocated and replicated in a small chapel of St. Joseph in Skopje (North Macedonia). Both sites have been for a long period of time institutionally connected and shared by followers of different religious traditions (Catholic and Orthodox devotees, and especially by Muslims). Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Macedonia and Serbia between 2014-2019, I focus on the processes of social construction …


“Give Me Some Beautiful Holy Images That Are Colorful, Play Music, And Flash!” The Roma Pilgrimage To Csatka, Hungary, István Povedák Jul 2020

“Give Me Some Beautiful Holy Images That Are Colorful, Play Music, And Flash!” The Roma Pilgrimage To Csatka, Hungary, István Povedák

Journal of Global Catholicism

This study introduces the Csatka pilgrimage, which is one of the most significant festive events for Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Csatka, a small and secluded village, became one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Roma since the mid-20th century. Tens of thousands of Roma, entire families from Hungary and the surrounding countries arrive to the feast on Nativity Day at the beginning of September. For them, however, the rite is not only about religious actions, but also about their powerful role in strengthening Roma ethnic identity. Through the analysis of the rite, we can gain a good …


Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei Jul 2020

Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how a Marian shrine in Csíksomlyó, Transylvania acts as a Foucauldian heterotopia for Magyar speaking individuals, residing in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond in the diaspora most especially during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. Following introductory remarks on the site and my stance, I turn to methodology, and Hungarian scholarship on the topic. Afterwards, I provide a “thick description” of fieldwork I conducted on-site in May of 2015. I then turn to various theoretical ties, which I support with emic analysis. Lastly, I turn to ideas of heterotopias, and provide a brief formal analysis. My main incentive is …


Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau Jul 2020

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.


The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor Mar 2020

The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor

Journal of Global Catholicism

During the last five years I have been doing field research in a Transylvanian Hungarian village, Sânsimion (Hu: Csíkszentsimon). I present my research on this religiously homogenous, Catholic community’s worldview. Based on interviews conducted with members of the village’s various age groups, I map religious and magical knowledge passed down through the generations, using the theoretical frame of collective memory and religious transmission. Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inextricably interwoven …


Rockin' The Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices, Kinga Povedak Mar 2020

Rockin' The Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices, Kinga Povedak

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article focuses on the unique dimensions of lived or vernacular Catholicism through the analysis of contemporary congregational music in Hungary. Looking at the musical lives of Hungarian Roman Catholics from the late 1960s to contemporary times can provide us with new understandings of the theological contents and aesthetics, as well as the vernacular religiosity of the community. Christian popular music appeared behind the Iron Curtain relatively early, in 1967 when the first “beat mass” was created and introduced at Budapest. The early Christian popular music sounded astonishingly similar to the songs of the American Folk Mass Movement of the …


Longings, Letters And Prayers: Visitor's Books At Hungarian Marian Shrines, Krisztina Frauhammer Mar 2020

Longings, Letters And Prayers: Visitor's Books At Hungarian Marian Shrines, Krisztina Frauhammer

Journal of Global Catholicism

The following study seeks to show the flow of contemporary rituals associated with pilgrimage shrines. I will consider how visitor’s books placed on display at shrine churches are being utilized in the modern context by pilgrims and tourists alike. Requests, words of thanksgiving, and testimony are coupled with an honest, reflexive style that lends to the formation of these individualized prayers. These prayers are original, specific and peculiar as they follow patterns that are informal in nature. These prayers allow pilgrims to initiate contact with the Transcendent through the act and practice of writing. An idiosyncratic form of sacred communication …


Introduction: Consumer Contexts And Divine Presences In Hungarian Catholicism, Marc Roscoe Loustau Mar 2020

Introduction: Consumer Contexts And Divine Presences In Hungarian Catholicism, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction to Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Contexts, highlighting both the specific contributions of the articles to the study of Hungarian Catholicism and situating them within the broad sweep of Hungarian and Catholic Studies.


Overview And Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz Mar 2020

Overview And Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Overview of Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Context, highlighting the articles' contribution to the study of Global Catholicism.


Radio Maria Transylvania: National Representation, Prayer, And Intersubjectivity In A Growing Catholic Media Network, Marc Roscoe Loustau Sep 2019

Radio Maria Transylvania: National Representation, Prayer, And Intersubjectivity In A Growing Catholic Media Network, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines the public discourse of a Radio Maria Transylvania, a growing Catholic media network for members of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Romania. I look at two primary narratives: first, accounts about how the network was founded in the mid-2000s. And second, listeners’ prayers to the Virgin Mary published on the media network’s web site. Acts of petitioning powerful others for assistance on behalf of a family are central features of Radio Maria Transylvania’s storytelling–on behalf of a national family in the case of the network’s origin narratives and a natal family in the case of prayers to …


The Promises And Perils Of Radio As A Medium Of Faith In A Q’Eqchi’-Maya Catholic Community, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal Sep 2019

The Promises And Perils Of Radio As A Medium Of Faith In A Q’Eqchi’-Maya Catholic Community, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal

Journal of Global Catholicism

Because their parish is large, dispersed, and overwhelmingly rural, FM radio is one of the few reliable means through which the Q’eqchi’-Maya Catholics of San Felipe in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, can communicate with each other en masse. Yet, because it is a one-way medium, it is also impossible to gauge how its intended audience is responding, or if is even there to receive broadcasted messages. Drawing on ethnographic material collected in 2005 (on the use of radio broadcasting to call together ritual participants) and 2016 (on an ultimately failed attempt to launch a radio station to serve rural parishioners), …


Introduction: Mediating Catholicisms: Studies In Aesthetics, Authority, And Identity, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal, Marc Roscoe Loustau, Kristin Norget Sep 2019

Introduction: Mediating Catholicisms: Studies In Aesthetics, Authority, And Identity, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal, Marc Roscoe Loustau, Kristin Norget

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.


Overview & Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz Sep 2019

Overview & Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.


In Pursuit Of Healing And Memories: Cross-Border Ukrainian Pilgrimage To A Polish Shrine, Iuliia Buyskykh May 2019

In Pursuit Of Healing And Memories: Cross-Border Ukrainian Pilgrimage To A Polish Shrine, Iuliia Buyskykh

Journal of Global Catholicism

I present an analysis of Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Orthodox pilgrimages to Kalwaria Pacławska in south-east Poland near the Polish-Ukrainian border. Before World War II, there were two pilgrimage sites in Kalwaria Pacławska, one Roman Catholic and the other Greek Catholic. Today, Ukrainian pilgrimage is quite a diverse phenomenon, consisting of people of both Ukrainian and Polish origin, and the three Christian denominations. The approach to pilgrimage as a palimpsest can broaden the research perspective of mobile religiosities and reconsider the interactions between religious motivations, sacred sites, memories, experiences, and storytelling through space and time. In my research case, …


Religious Imageries Of Pilgrims From Przeworsk: Making Pilgrimage To The Shrine Of Our Lady Of Consolation At Jodłówka, Magdalena Lubanska Jun 2018

Religious Imageries Of Pilgrims From Przeworsk: Making Pilgrimage To The Shrine Of Our Lady Of Consolation At Jodłówka, Magdalena Lubanska

Journal of Global Catholicism

My paper will provide an account of the religious imageries (T. Csordas) and practices of Catholic devotees from the Basilica of the Holy Spirit with whom I made pilgrimage on foot to the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation at Jodłówka in August 2017. My account positions those imaginaries and practices within a broader contextual spectrum in order to move beyond events or conversations which were directly connected with the pilgrimage. To gain a better understanding of the religious needs of the pilgrims I spent time with some of them afterwards. Among other things, I attended masses involving healing services …


Forgive, Forget Or Feign: Everyday Diplomacy In Local Communities Of Polish Subcarpathia, Iuliia Buyskykh Jun 2018

Forgive, Forget Or Feign: Everyday Diplomacy In Local Communities Of Polish Subcarpathia, Iuliia Buyskykh

Journal of Global Catholicism

The paper is based on my ethnographic fieldwork in Przemyśl, Poland and several surrounding villages in 2015-2017. While conducting my research on a set of religious practices and pilgrimages in confessionally and ethnically mixed localities, I faced many challenges that changed the main course of my initial research plan. During my interaction with people here themes came to light that seemed little related to religiousness. My status as a researcher from Ukraine and even more so, my being a young single woman from Ukraine, gave rise to a number of other topics that my interlocutors, both of Polish and Ukrainian …


Natura Sanat: On Ecological Aspects Of Healing Miracles In Kalwaria Pacławska, Poland, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska Jun 2018

Natura Sanat: On Ecological Aspects Of Healing Miracles In Kalwaria Pacławska, Poland, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska

Journal of Global Catholicism

The subject-matter of my article is a change affecting the discourse on miraculous healings in a Catholic Marian sanctuary – Kalwaria Pacławska – run by Franciscan friars in the South-Eastern Poland and a way in which those changes affect pilgrims’ bodies. In Kalwaria Pacławska there meet, intersect and compete various religious and secular discourses and they all influence emotions and bodily sensations accompanying pilgrimage to this sacred site. One of those discourses has been introduced to Kalwaria just recently. The central element of the sanctuary is the miraculous image of Virgin Mary which is the goal of numerous pilgrimages from …


Authors' Introduction, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Magdalena Lubanska Jun 2018

Authors' Introduction, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Magdalena Lubanska

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.


Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven Dec 2017

Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

When Christians in Zambia struggle with witchcraft, they also struggle with African cultural and religious concepts that deal with life’s ambiguities and that require discernment. It is not by working against the cultural and religious heritage, but by working with it, as far as possible, that the pastor can identify the broken relationships towards which many witchcraft discourses point. However, before we place the concepts of witchcraft into the realm of superstition (as are the trends of mission Christianity) or the demonic (as are the trends of charismatic Christianity), the Church has the duty to look at the concepts, stay …


The Devil Of The Missionary Church: The White Fathers And Catholic Evangelization In Zambia, Bernhard Udelhoven Dec 2017

The Devil Of The Missionary Church: The White Fathers And Catholic Evangelization In Zambia, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how Western Catholic missionaries in Zambia dealt with claims of witchcraft and Satanism. Within an analytic frame that draws upon cultural history, theology, and anthropology the article also considers how African Christians appropriated missionary notions of the devil.


The Ecclesiology Of Pope Francis And The Future Of The Church In Africa, Bradford E. Hinze Dec 2017

The Ecclesiology Of Pope Francis And The Future Of The Church In Africa, Bradford E. Hinze

Journal of Global Catholicism

A consideration of the future of African Catholicism in light of the ecclesiology of Pope Francis. The article explores how themes in Francis's ecclesiology work together to challenge centralization, clericalism, and triumphalism in the church by promoting practices of synodality and how these elements support the church’s mission to work against forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the most fundamental matrix of colonial power by advancing radical democracy in society


Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz Dec 2017

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview of African Catholicism. Part Two: Retrospect and Prospect, third issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism. A summary of the work of Bradford Hinze, Mary Gloria Njoku, Matthias Scharer, Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu, and Bernhard Udelhoven. Among the topics considered: African ecclesiology, African wellness and quality of life in Africa, interreligious dialogue in Africa, African Biblical scholarship, witchcraft and the Catholic Church.


Stewards Of God’S Mercy: Vocation And Priestly Ministry In Africa, Jordan Nyenyembe Jul 2017

Stewards Of God’S Mercy: Vocation And Priestly Ministry In Africa, Jordan Nyenyembe

Journal of Global Catholicism

A reflection on the tasks of priestly ministry in Africa with specific reference to the example and exhortation of Pope Francis. Among the issues addressed and critiqued are Western “cultic” understandings of the priest and the, the “Igwe Syndrome" which likens the priest to a chief.


Contested Moral Issues In Contemporary African Catholicism: Theological Proposals For A Hermeneutics Of Multiplicity And Inclusion, Stan Chu Ilo Jul 2017

Contested Moral Issues In Contemporary African Catholicism: Theological Proposals For A Hermeneutics Of Multiplicity And Inclusion, Stan Chu Ilo

Journal of Global Catholicism

Drawing upon the broad work of Vatican II and Pope Francis’ Evangelicum Gaudium the article proposes how a hermeneutic of multiplicity and inclusion could help hold in balance the tension between tradition and innovation, universal principles and specific contextual application for Catholicism in Africa. Among the issues addressed are cultural relativism, natural law theory, and polygamy.


Communicating The Justice And Peace Of God In Africa Today, Walter Ihejirika Jul 2017

Communicating The Justice And Peace Of God In Africa Today, Walter Ihejirika

Journal of Global Catholicism

Engaging with the work and theories of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, the article charts out a spirituality of communication within Nigerian Catholicism. Discussing the intersection between various forms of media and community, the article argues for the utilization of media in the pursuit of social justice and the dismantling of inequalities.


Inculturation Of Liturgical Music In The Roman Catholic Church Of Igbo Land: A Compositional Study, Benedict Nwabugwu Agbo Jul 2017

Inculturation Of Liturgical Music In The Roman Catholic Church Of Igbo Land: A Compositional Study, Benedict Nwabugwu Agbo

Journal of Global Catholicism

A study of inculturation, composition and music among Catholics in Igboland, Nigeria. The article insects with contemporary discussions of inculturation/enculturation after Vatican II and the recommendation of St. John Paul II in his Ecclesia in Africa.