Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in History
Our Lady Of La Vang Journeys With The Nation: Marian Devotion And Pilgrimage In Vietnam, Dung Trang Ph.D., Lhc Khiet Tam
Our Lady Of La Vang Journeys With The Nation: Marian Devotion And Pilgrimage In Vietnam, Dung Trang Ph.D., Lhc Khiet Tam
Journal of Global Catholicism
The sanctuary of Our Lady of La Vang (OLLV) reveals the role of popular devotion in Vietnamese Catholicism. It manifests the recent strategy from Vietnamese Church leaders to maintain a public presence with an emphasis on reinforcing a sense of Catholic identity through popular devotion and liturgy. Devotion to OLLV then reflects the interaction of several factors: the promotion of the clergy, political influence, and the collaboration of the Vietnamese Catholic laity. Building on existing scholarship that focuses on the cultural inheritance and collective identity of Vietnamese Catholics around the world, this paper explores the case study of the basilica …
Theological Implications Of The Symbols And Signs In The Sacrament Of Matrimony Of The Syro-Malabar Church, Nelson Mathew O. Carm.
Theological Implications Of The Symbols And Signs In The Sacrament Of Matrimony Of The Syro-Malabar Church, Nelson Mathew O. Carm.
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article discusses the significance of the signs and symbols used in the sacrament of the marriage of the Syro-Malabar Church and the adaptations from different cultures, particularly the Hindu culture of India. It concentrates on the specific elements found in the marriage celebration of the St. Thomas Christians. The rituals that are unique to the Sacrament of Matrimony of the Syro-Malabar Church, mainly expressed through symbols and signs, remain a significant contribution to the liturgy, spirituality, and theology of the Sacrament of Matrimony, and to the theology of inculturation. In the Syro-Malabar liturgy, marriage rituals, and signs and symbols …
Rethinking The Panata To The Nazareno Of Quiapo, Wilson Espiritu Ph.D.
Rethinking The Panata To The Nazareno Of Quiapo, Wilson Espiritu Ph.D.
Journal of Global Catholicism
Filipino Catholicism’s hallmark is its festive and colorful celebrations of popular piety, which exhibit the Catholic faith’s embeddedness in people’s lives and culture. One of the most renowned Filipino devotions is rendered to Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno of Quiapo, Manila. The devotion of making a pledge to the Nazareno, known as panata, is commonly understood as a sacred promise that must be kept in return for a request that is granted. In this paper, I propose a theological reading of panata performance that unites devotion to the Nazareno and commitment to the wellbeing of others. This interpretation aims to …
Overview & Acknowledgments, Marc R. Loustau Ph.D.
Overview & Acknowledgments, Marc R. Loustau Ph.D.
Journal of Global Catholicism
An introduction to the current issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.
Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations In Brazilian Catholicism, Carlos Alberto Steil, Rodrigo Toniol
Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations In Brazilian Catholicism, Carlos Alberto Steil, Rodrigo Toniol
Journal of Global Catholicism
In this paper we explore data on Catholicism from the 2010 census in Brazil, as well as other data from the Center for Religious Statistics and Social Investigation. Using these statistics, we question those arguments that explain the reduction in the number of Catholics in Brazilian society as a problem in the institution’s adaptation in response to the challenges of evangelization, or as a lack of ministerial vocations to meet the religious demands of the people. Pursuing an alternative argument, we consider the weakening of the relationship between the Catholic institution and traditional popular Catholicism to be a fundamental aspect …
Catholics & Cultures: A Panoramic View In Search Of Greater Understanding, Stephanie M. Wong
Catholics & Cultures: A Panoramic View In Search Of Greater Understanding, Stephanie M. Wong
Journal of Global Catholicism
While internet-based technologies can open up greater awareness of the world or create self-perpetuating echo-chambers, the Catholics & Cultures project aspires to do the former. Aiming to ‘widen the lens’ on the variety of Catholic communities and practices, the site delivers on this goal by introducing viewers to a vast array of articles, pictures and videos from around the world. The organization of the site by country and by certain key features of lived Catholicism offers some interpretive guidance. However, the project could be strengthened as a pedagogical resource if it were more extensively thematized and hosted reflections on potential …
The Value Of Online Resources: Reflections On Teaching An Introduction To Global Christianity, Hillary Kaell
The Value Of Online Resources: Reflections On Teaching An Introduction To Global Christianity, Hillary Kaell
Journal of Global Catholicism
Reflecting on my experience teaching Introduction to Global Christianity, this essay ponders questions at the heart of undergraduate teaching: How can we encourage students to utilize online sources? How can we empower them to seek out answers to their questions? It offers practical examples of how I have used the Catholics & Cultures website in my classroom at a large public university. In particular, I reflect on my experience working with students who are mostly of Catholic heritage, but from many cultural and social contexts.
Teaching Sexuality On The Catholics & Cultures Website: A Refreshing Turn Toward The Longue Durée, Marc Roscoe Loustau
Teaching Sexuality On The Catholics & Cultures Website: A Refreshing Turn Toward The Longue Durée, Marc Roscoe Loustau
Journal of Global Catholicism
I present a close reading of the Catholics & Cultures (C&C) website’s treatment of sexuality-related issues and discuss this material in relation to debates about how to teach sexuality in religious studies and theology classrooms. The C&C website occasionally and intermittently uses a typical “contemporary issues” approach that considers sexuality in relation to legal and legislative decisions and government policies. In contrast, country profiles consistently situate sexuality in relation processes like nation building, urbanization, and lay Catholics’ growing authority. My interpretation highlights the site’s decision to emphasize the longue durée, long-term and deep structural processes driving cultural and religious changes. …
Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck
Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck
Journal of Global Catholicism
More than six decades after its publication, Horace Miner’s 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” remains a reliable pedagogical tool, remarkably successful in helping students see their own ethnocentric biases. Catholics & Cultures has potential to do similar work. The site lacks some of what makes Miner’s text so effective, in particular its capacity to bring about a sudden shift in perception. The site also shares some of the article’s limitations, particularly in focusing on ritual to the relative exclusion of other aspects of religion. That said, the site can help students gain the religious literacy and develop the …
Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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 …
Introduction: Consumer Contexts And Divine Presences In Hungarian Catholicism, Marc Roscoe Loustau
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
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.
Forgive, Forget Or Feign: Everyday Diplomacy In Local Communities Of Polish Subcarpathia, Iuliia Buyskykh
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
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
Authors' Introduction, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Magdalena Lubanska
Journal of Global Catholicism
No abstract provided.
Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven
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
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
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
Inculturation Of Liturgical Music In The Roman Catholic Church Of Igbo Land: A Compositional Study, Benedict Nwabugwu Agbo
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.