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Full-Text Articles in Gender and Sexuality
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 …
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. …
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 …