bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Visions of Europe
Authors: O'Neill Aidan 
Published: July 2007

The church of San Miniato al Monte lies on a hill on the north side of the Arno, overlooking the city of Florence. It is dedicated to a deacon, reputedly the son of the king of Armenia, who was martyred in the city around 25 A.D. during one of the imperial persecutions. The church which presently stands on the site was begun in 1013. It is one of the oldest and certainly one of the most beautiful churches in Florence—a perfectly preserved Romanesque basilica with a striking facade of mosaics and green and white marble in geometric designs. The church is attached to a monastery of Olivetan monks and their services attract large congregations, both tourists and native Florentines.At Mass opening the Octave of prayer for Christian unity this year, the abbot of San Miniato preached a sermon on the Christian vision of Europe. He spoke of the two great scourges which had afflicted Europe in this century, Nazism and Stalinism. He talked of the post-War division of Europe at Yalta by the agreement of the triumvirate of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. He presented this division as a rending of Europe in two, as the creation of a dualism in the world which was antithetical to the Christian vision. However, he saw a Christian response to this division, to this freezing of Europe in a state of war, in the work of three other men: De Gasperi of Italy, Schumann of France and Adenauer of Germany. These men were responsible for the formulation of the idea of a European Community.
On Becoming a Cardinal
Authors: Swanston Hamish F.G. 
Published: July 2007

No commemoration is without its controversy, as the burghers of Genoa and Columbus, Ohio, have been discovering this year. And there may be some, in Lorenzo, Nebraska, or Lorenzo, Texas, to murmur about the sack of Volterra in 1472, or the revenge taken on the Pazzi conspirators in 1478, but in Florence they are confidently celebrating the five hundredth anniversary of the death of II Magnifico. Perhaps Lorenzo de’ Medici was not quite as finely magnificent as his grandfather, Cosimo II Vecchio, but it does seem largely right to recall a man who put his extraordinary energies into the seeking-after peace between the Italian states, the encouragement of artists, and the education of his children, in especial the graceful direction of his second son, Giovanni.Almost from his birth, on 11 December 1475, Giovanni had been dedicated to the cardinalate by his pious father. And from 1 June,1483, when he was confirmed and tonsured by the bishop of Arezzo in the Medici family chapel, Lorenzo insisted that the whole household, parents, brothers, sisters, address the youngster as ‘Messire’, even in those garden games at Careggi in which, as Machiavelli sneered, their father might roll with them on the grass. Tonsuring made Messire Giovanni capable of benefices and, ever forward-looking, Lorenzo had spent some time the previous year sounding out patrons of some conveniently vacant abbey or bishopric.
‘The Truth Looks Different From Here’ or On seeking the unity of truth from a diversity of perspectives
Authors: Soskice Janet Martin 
Published: July 2007

Gustavo Gutierrez, in a recent visit to Cambridge, told this story about the Medellin conference of 1968. (This is my recollection of his story and not an exact quotation.) Following that important gathering, the South American bishops received a letter from Rome. ‘We can see’, it read, ‘that your circumstances are very different from those we experience here in Europe. To enable us to help you, please send experts on South American economics, politics, sociology and anthropology to Rome. . . But don’t send any theologians because we have our own theologians here.’Despite the fashionable sound to the phrase, theology has always been done ‘in context’. Augustine was no less contextual a theologian than Bonhoeffer, with each page attesting to the writer’s particular education, formation as a Christian, pastoral concerns and so on. Does this alarm us? Should this alarm us? If we admit to, and even delight in, the diverse contexts for the doing of theology are we ‘going soft’ on any claim to a universally valid Christian message? How do we speak of the truth and yet speak from our particularity? These are the questions I wish to consider here, questions whose significance for contemporary theology, now a global and ecumenical enterprise, need not be underlined.I would like to begin, however, at a place seemingly remote from our own—Europe in the sixteenth century. I should like to look at one of those Reformation debates which, while distant in time and sensibility from those of our century, have repercussions which all Christians to a greater or lesser degree must still feel. For reasons which I hope will become clear, I should like to begin this discussion of ‘truth’ with a look at an exchange of letters in 1539 between Cardinal Sadoleto and John Calvin.
Self‐Transcendence and the Group: The Attitude to Life of Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Beguines
Authors: Bowie Fiona 
Published: July 2007

You should love what is notAnd flee what is.You should stand aloneAnd approach no one.You should strive alwaysTo be free from all things.You should free the boundAnd bind the free.You should comfort the sickAnd yet possess nothing.You should drink the water of sufferingAnd feed the fire of love with the fuel of virtue.Then you shall live in the true wilderness.Mechthild of Magdeburg: The Flowing Light of the Godhead. (35 1)This highly poetic, but deeply paradoxical passage from Mechthild of Magdeburg, the thirteenth century beguine and mystic, can stand as a paradigm for the themes of self-transcendence and communality as understood and experienced by religious women in the later middle ages, and in particular those belonging to the beguine movement.Mechthild advises her readers how to live in ‘the true wilderness’, a place located beyond our ordinary existence and geographical reality. This ‘true wilderness’ is reached by ‘loving what is not’ and ‘flee(ing) what is’. All that binds her to this world must be left behind, if the mystic is to rise above earthly ties and unite herself with God, her transcendent lover; a God who, like the Lady of the Courtly Lover, is a God of absence as well as presence, of pain as well as joy. Although Mechthild chose a communal form of spiritual life as a member of a monastic community, she realised that each of us must travel to God alone.
Out of the Greenhouse
Authors: Milbank John 
Published: July 2007

In the false Spring of our times, everything is painted green: it is the appointed liturgical colour for our post-historical sabbath. It’s to everyone’s taste, the guarantee of minimum respectability. There’s a Green party, but that doesn’t get very far, because it appears to appropriate for a particular cause the symbol that belongs to all. The colour has a utopian hint, or rather that of a puritan arcadia, but at the same time it soothes the passages of capitalist economic exchange. More than that: the guarantee of a ‘good’, ‘healthy’ relation to nature, as to one’s own body, increases surplus value. Capitalism has already incorporated, in the interests of profit, the new religiosity of our times, which takes the form of transcending one’s humanity in order to celebrate nature or animality as the ‘other’ with which one nonetheless seeks to become united.I don’t want to be misunderstood. The planetary structures which support life have been dangerously interfered with; much natural beauty, along with the delicate and long-developed harmonies of people’s everyday environments has been ruined or destroyed. Technology is employed indiscriminately and for the mere sake of size and complexity. However, ‘Green consciousness’ is not the complete answer to all this: in too many ways it may collude with precisely what it purports to oppose.
Utility, Understanding and Creativity in the Study of Religions
Authors: Arthur Chris 
Published: July 2007

At one point in Speculum Mentis, R G Collingwood remarks that
If thought were the mere discovery of interesting facts, its indulgence, in a world full of desperate evils and among men crushed beneath the burden of daily tasks too hard for their solitary strength, would be the act of a traitor.Given the distance that can separate academic inquiry from any humane application of its results, the thinking that is fostered within the universities is often accused of being useless. With images of famine, war, and ecological disaster appearing daily on our screens, the pursuit of many avenues of learning can easily seem like the sort of treachery which Collingwood condemned. ‘We try to understand ourselves and our world’, Collingwood argued, ‘only in order that we may learn how to live’. Often the connection between learning and living is so tenuous that it seems to have been lost altogether. On any map of knowledge drawn today there must, from the point of view of the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed, be many desert areas, arid zones which seem intellectually barren and morally bankrupt. The quality of the intellectual flora which flourish in such impoverished regions is pointedly identified in Lucky Jim when the book’s hero, honestly assessing the worth of an article he has written, talks about its ‘niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudolight it throws upon non-problems’.In a world so full of ‘desperate evils’, every academic must surely be faced with the question of whether there is any point in his or her work.
Creating Confusion: A Response to Markham
Authors: D'Costa Gavin 
Published: July 2007

Ian Markham makes two basic contentions in his article ‘Creating options: Shattering the “exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist” paradigm’. The first is that the threefold paradigm of approaches to the question of salvation outside explicit Christianity are flawed and therefore unhelpful. The second is that his own tentative proposal further indicates this point, for his own position does not fit neatly into any of the three approaches. I think that Markham’s arguments for his first contention are not entirely convincing and therefore his own proposal fails to fit the categories, not because it has created a new option, but because it leaves certain questions unanswered and introduces a certain amount of confusion. In fact I will suggest that the usefulness of the three categories of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism allows us to see more clearly what type of questions he leaves unanswered and thereby justify themselves heuristically in providing a basis for criticising those who question their viability. This brief reply has as its main purpose to defend the threefold paradigm in the theology of religions.This is not to say that these three categories are problem-free. It is simply the case that a sustained and convincing critique of them is yet to be produced. I agree with Markham that Michael Barnes develops a sophisticated Trinitarian inclusivism despite his claim to break the paradigm. Kenneth Surin’s critique of the paradigm is of an altogether different nature. Surin seems to redescribe the terrain so that there are no valid theological questions left, only political-sociological questions.
After Kuwait the Deluge
Authors: Wicker Brian 
Published: July 2007

This article has been written as a contribution to a study, by Pax Christi International, of the relevance of the ‘just war’ tradition to the world situation after the Kuwait war. Brian Wicker is engaged with others in editing this study, which it is hoped will appear during 1993, the thirtieth anniversary of Pacem in Terris.We have been invited to discuss the justice of war because of the Kuwait case and its aftermath. But, I believe this is not the best place to begin. Let me start by saying why.Whether the Kuwait War was a ‘just war’ is still controversial. The ad bellum case for using force against Saddam was strong. The cause—a plain case of invasion by one sovereign state of another—was surely just by the traditional standards. Furthermore it is unlikely that sanctions alone could have got Saddam out of Kuwait (though I accept that they were not given enough time and that this meant that the ‘last resort’ criterion was not fully met). The force to be used was assembled under the authority of UN resolutions (although some have argued that these were themselves unconstitutional). The intention was at least partly to restore peace (even though putting the Sabah family back into Kuwait hardly amounted to justice and peace for the Kuwaitis). On the other hand, the in bello criterion of proportionality was always in danger of being breached. The Pope’s warning that such a war was likely to do more harm than good was timely and valid.
Seeking Others in their Otherness
Authors: Lipner Julius J. 
Published: July 2007

That we live in a world of all manner of racial, cultural and ideological difference, of profound specificities and contingencies, is a trite fact of existence. Such awareness is nothing new. Indeed it was a containing feature of Aquinas’ intellectual perspective. The title of one of his major works—Summa Contra Gentiles—indicates as much. What is new in our time is a growing if still somewhat grudging appreciation of this fact of difference, and the realisation, still halting on the whole, that there is an important sense in which difference is creative and so must be celebrated. In the role of theologian and scholar of religion, and as a tribute to Aquinas’ comprehensive philosophical-theological vision, I propose in this article to inquire into this sign of our times (Mt. 16.3), to assess its significance, and to indicate, with special reference to the study of religion, how it might orient our lives.Just over 25 years ago, on the last day of October 1967, John Hick, on assuming the H G Wood Chair in the University of Birmingham, gave his inaugural lecture, entitled ‘Theology’s Central Problem’. ‘Today. . . theology’s central problem,’ he declared, ‘is not so much one within theology as around theology, enfolding it entirely and calling into question its nature and status as a whole.’ ‘This issue,’ he continued, ‘at once central and all-embracing, presents itself... as a problem concerning religious language. In a sentence the issue is whether distinctively religious utterances are instances of the cognitive or of the noncognitive uses of language.’
New Age Spiritualities: How are we to Talk of God?
Authors: Woods Richard 
Published: July 2007

Two autobiographical accounts by American Jesuit priests of their New Age involvement have gained considerable attention recently—David Toolan’s Facing West from California’s Shores: A Jesuit’s Journey into New Age Consciousness published in 1987, and Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s Catholics and the New Age, published last year and already reprinted.David Toolan does not, so far as I am aware, attempt to define the New Age movement. But his encounters reveal this ‘epistemological revolution’ to be an amalgam of Asian mysticism, modem physics, and transpersonal psychologies. Its major proponents are the Esalen Institute, Jean Houston’s ‘Ritual Theater,’ and a host of physicists, psychologists, and naturalists, including Ernest Becker, Stanislaus Grof, Loren Eisley, David Bohm, and Ilya Prigogine, among others.According to Pacwa’s descriptive (and to my way of thinking very limited) definition, the New Age Movement ‘is a loosely structured, eclectic movement based on experiences of monism that lead people to believe in pantheism, with a tendency to hold millennarian views of history’ (p. 13). (No one, of course, with the possible exception of some professional philosophers, experiences monism or believes in pantheism or even holds millennarian views of history. What Pacwa means is that some people have experiences that he considers monistic rather than dualistic, or entertain ideas about God that he considers insufficiently distinct from ideas about the world, and who tend to think the world might end soon.)
Anthony Ross OP 1917–1993
Authors: AJW  
Published: July 2007

Oscar Wilde is alleged to have said that there is only one thing worse
than being talked about and that is not being talked about Fr Anthony spent
a great deal of his life being talked about Many people have commented on
his list of achievements: Catholic Chaplain at Edinburgh University, Deputy
Chairman of the Scottish Parole Board, Chairman of the Scottish Catholic
Historical Association, Provincial of the English Dominicans, Rector of the
University of Edinburgh and many other distinctions. But like many priests,
his most valuable work as pastor and counsellor was hidden. During his long
career he was an instrument through which many were brought to glimpse the
edge of the mystery of God, and through whom many came to hope in
God&rsquo;s goodness and to trust in his mercy.
It was often said of Fr Anthony that he was a man ahead of his time. In
many ways he was precisely a man of his time, but in an age which could not
make space for prophets. Like many of his generation, his experience was
indelibly marked by economic depression and by war. He said himself that in
the thirties he, &ldquo;lost faith in bullets and ballots as a way of
re-shaping society, and thought some kind of spiritual revolution was the
only hope for the future.&rdquo; It was this conviction which led him to
the Church and to the Order. At the same time a group of theologians in
France were stressing the need for a re-centring in the person of Christ and
in his paschal mystery.
Opera: The Creative Expression of Italy
Authors: Navone John 
Published: July 2007

...so long as people keep getting born Greek or French or Italian their culture-production will bear the unmistakable signature of the place.Lawrence DurrellA map of Italy showing the birthplaces of its principal composers reveals that nine of its twenty regions can boast of no one: Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Umbria, Abruzzi, Molise, Basilicata, and Sardinia. Four of the nine are border regions; most are mountainous. Two regions have produced one composer: Calabria, Cilea (1866-1950); Liguria, Paganini (1782-1840) .Three regions have produced two: Sicily, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) and Bellini (1801-1835); Puglia, Paisiello (1740-1816) and Giordano (1867-1948); Latium, Palestrina (1525-1594) and Clementi (1752-1832). Two regions have produced three: Marche, Pergolesi (1710-1736), Spontini (1774-1851), Rossini (1792-1868); Campania, Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Cimarosa (1749-1801), Leoncavallo 1857-1919). Emilia-Romagna produced four, Frescobaldi (1583-1643), Corelli (1653-1713), Verdi (1813-1901), Respighi (1879-1936). Two regions have produced five: Veneto, Gabrieli (1557-1612), Vivaldi (1678-1741), Salieri (1750-1825), Boito (1842-1918), Wolf-Ferrari (1876- 1948); Lombardy, Monteverdi (1567-1643), Cavalli (1602-1676), Donizetti (1797-1848), Ponchielli (1834-1886), Menotti (1911- ). Tuscany is in first place with seven: Lully (1632-1687), Cherubini (1760-1842), Boccherini (1743-1805), Puccini (1858-1924), Mascagni (1863-1945), Busoni (1866-1924), Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968).In terms of the Italian boundaries fixed by the Congress of Vienna (1815), eight of the above composers would come from both the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; one would come from the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The Elusive Life of a Modern Pope
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

One of the pleasures of reading resides in the flourishing condition of biography. According to publishing statistics, biographies sell better than any other genre of serious literature. Some, such as Leon Edel’s five-volume life of Henry James or Michael Holroyd’s three-volume biography of George Bernard Shaw, not to mention Martin Gilbert’s monumental series on Winston Churchill, may seem so overwhelming as to tax even the most devoted student of other people’s stories. Really great biographies, however, such as these all plainly are, only hold their readers in thrall to the next instalment. It was a long wait from Edel’s first volume (1953), which got James to the age of twenty seven, to the final instalment (1972), but no reader once under Edel’s spell would easily have lost patience. Even then, Edel’s one-volume abridgment (1985), no doubt all that any reader but a fanatical Jamesian would now tackle, is arguably better still than the original work. But one could easily list a dozen other superb modem biographies H Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, by Robert Bernard Martin (1980), for example, to mention only the one that has most recently come my way.Peter Hebblethwaite records that, when he submitted one chapter of his new book, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (Harper Collins, London, 1993, £35), to Archbishop Luigi Barbarito, Pro-Nuncio to Great Britain, for comment, he was told that it would not be possible to write a ‘true and objective life of a Pontiff’
Travellers' Tales and After‐dinner speeches: The Shape of Acts of the Apostles
Authors: Cook Cornelia 
Published: July 2007

Acts is a good story. But what kind of a good story it is has exercised scholars. For a long time Luke was regarded as an historian, but he was an historian who reported unhistorical speeches and constructed unlikely journeys. Theologians have tended-to sum up Acts as (I quote from the New Oxford Annotated RSV) ‘the triumphant narrative of the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome’. More recently, scholars with literary interests have begun to argue that Acts is not meant to be historiography. Richard Pervo argues in Profit with Delight, that Acts is like ancient novels in its conventions and structures; therefore its fictionality is legitimate, and not a little bit of its agenda is to entertain.Brian Reardon points out many elements of ancient romance in Acts: its setting in a near-contemporary familiar world, travel with the aspect of purposeful journey (quest) which generates plot, adventure with trials and successes, rescue or salvation. Richard Pervo finds in the ancient world a sizeable body of prose fictions which he calls ‘novels’ and which display numerous conventions easily discoverable in Acts: adventures (including arrests, persecutions, plots, trials, shipwreck and snakes), miracles, riots and rowdy scenes, exotic and utopian elements, an active providence, a robust hero, an episodic plot. We may assume, then, that ‘Luke’ was a fiction-addict, also steeped in Biblical narrative and prophetic literature, who employed received conventions of historiography and fiction-writing to make Acts a readable story with recognizable features. He structures his story through a progress which gets Christianity—largely in the briefcase of the apostle Paul—from Jerusalem to Rome.