bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Objections to Lonergan's Method
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

Looking at Lonergan’s Method is a collection of thirteen papers issuing from a conference held at Maynooth in the spring of 1973 at which scholars from differing traditions and disciplines gathered to assess the significance of the recent work of Bernard Lonergan.These are not the papers written for the meeting; they represent the authors’ reflections after it, in the light of the discussions that took place. Perhaps the momentum for the book was the convergence of fundamental doubts about the viability of Lonergan’s method. At any rate, for all the respect and gratitude that some of the Catholic contributors voice for what Lonergan has done over the years to loosen the hold of a certain way of doing theology, it is very striking that all but one or two of these papers make what seem such irreparably damaging criticisms of his recent work that it becomes very difficut to regard it any longer as a promising trail in the reconstruction of Catholic theology which is now so urgent a task. The book thus marks a watershed in the history of Lonergan congresses.That Bernard Lonergan is the only figure in the English-speaking world whose achievement in Catholic theology ranks, in influence and reputation, with that of the leading theologians of our time, cannot be disputed. The years he spent lecturing at the Gregorian University in Rome (1953-1965) afforded him a unique opportunity to reach the minds of a whole generation of candidates for the priesthood—either directly or through the countless future seminary professors whom he must have taught (he sometimes had classes of 650 students!).
Theology and Class
Authors: Macpherson Duncan 
Published: July 2007

‘In a higher world it may be otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to perfect is to change often’.‘The history of all existing society is the history of class struggles’.The first of these quotations was written by Newman in 1845 in his famous Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. The second was written by Marx and Engels three years later in The Communist Manifesto.Newman’s essay can be seen as the beginning of a genuine sense of history in the world of Catholic Theology. The Communist Manifesto can be seen as having a similar role for the history of ideas. Catholic Theology could never be the same again after Newman’s essay and secular history could never be the same again after the Communist Manifesto.It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore more than a few of the implications of the Marxist view of history as class struggle for Newman’s view of doctrinal development. I am not aware that anyone has ever given a Marxist analysis of Newman’s famous essay. There are, however, a number of Marxist treatments of the history of the Church and of Christian doctrine—notably by Engels and Karl Kautsky. These treatments are all written from the point of view of a rejection of belief, both in God and in any meaningful degree of historical certainty about the existence of Jesus Christ.The reasons for Marxist atheism are well known and can be found in the philosophical background of the young Marx. The reasons for the extreme scepticism over New Testament origins can be traced to early nineteenth century biblical criticism and to the work of the bosom friend of the young Marx at Berlin in the 1830s, Bruno Bauer.
The Contribution of Sociology to the Catholic Church
Authors: Hornsby‐Smith Michael , Dann Graham 
Published: July 2007

Attitudes towards sociology displayed by some leading authorities in the Catholic church today are, to put it mildly, ambivalent. They vary from suspicion and sometimes overt hostility to feelings of relative pleasure depending on whether or not the findings of sociological research can be used to support their pastoral intuitions. Pope Paul, for instance, has been reported as claiming that the turbulence and dissent in the Roman Catholic church today ‘tends to be produced with a new method, that of the sociological survey’. At the same time that he made this remark he was sponsoring one of the largest socio-religious surveys to date within his own diocese of Rome. In England, in his address to the Church Leaders’ Conference in 1972, Cardinal Heenan viewed with alarm the number of university students now opting for courses in sociology and what he saw as the almost certain consequence of requests for fresh surveys. He continued by doubting the value in planning future pastoral strategy of such surveys as that recently completed for the Church in West Germany. In the same year he was accepting one of the ‘findings’ of an extremely unrepresentative survey carried out by the Laity Commission on behalf of the hierarchy, that priests working in parishes should make themselves more available to their parishioners. Yet he was not reported as welcoming another ‘finding’ in the same survey that the laity accepted the principle of optional celibacy for priests. Thus it would appear that some church leaders are selective in their acceptance of sociological findings.We would now like to suggest there are at least four reasons for the suspicion of sociology. In the first place it is quite possible that sociology is connected in the minds of many with revolutionary social change. The student unrest of the late 1960s which was thought to be seeking such change occurred in universities such as Berkeley, Nanterre and tlw London School of Economics, all with strong faculties of sociology.
Form and Continuity: Lovell's latest problems
Authors: Wall Alan 
Published: July 2007

Robert Lowell was born in Boston in 1917. He was descended from early New England colonists, and after a childhood on Beacon Hll, he went to St. Mark’s School and then on to Harvard, where he matriculated, but transferred after a year to Kenyon College. There he majored in classics and became a pupil of John Crowe Ransom. In 1940 he became a Catholic convert. Although Lowell attempted to enlist in the navy after the beginning of World War II he later protested against the Allied bombing of the civilian population of European cities and as a result of his failure to obey the Selective Service Act he was sentenced to a year and a day in a Federal prison. He was released after five months and in the following year, 1944, there appeared his first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness.Since that time Lowell’s status as a poet and a public spokesman (the two became undistinguishable) has never ceased to grow. Lowell has acquired an extraordinary power as the private man made public, the tormented citizen whose personal struggles and griefs seem fatally enmeshed with the course of twentieth century history. When the poet turned down L. B. Johnson’s White House invitation as a protest against American policy in S.E. Asia it was not only the President who expressed concern. Lowell has made himself into an archetype, living through the contradictions inherent in his society, tom between the need for a domestic and artistic privacy, and the forces that impel him to a public commitment.
Rome Rule Okay?
Authors: McKay John 
Published: July 2007

‘By virtue of its very purpose, while it cultivates the intellect with unremitting attention, the school ripens the capacity for right judgment, provides an introduction into the cultural heritage won by past generations, promotes a sense of values, and readies for professional life’.THE DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN 11Just before nine o’clock I dragged my tired frame in through the school doors and on towards the staff room.‘Good morning’ . . . ‘Good morning’Like that frustrated character Billy Liar I would like to machine-gun down that irritating cheerful face in the comer. I pour out my tea and sip it quietly, consulting my timetable. On the wall across the road a painted slogan reinforces the image of my first class, 4F.BING BOOT BOYS ROOLAt the first piercing sound of the bell Mr. C. rises sharply and makes off in the direction of the Technical rooms. I would like to bomb that bell for ever but instead make my way wearily upstairs to room 5, open the door, and walk over to the desk. I am soon followed by a few lads who make towards the desks at the window.‘D’ye catch that cunt last night, Joey’?‘Aye an’ a kicked fuck oot the bastirt’.‘Whit di dae’?‘Try i get aff wi Mary Maloney’.‘Yi bin gawn wi hur, eh’ ?‘Aye a fancy hur—-yi shid see ‘ur tits, sur. A hivnae hud it aff fur ages—an a fancy mu chances wi yon burd’.I pick up a book, Your Life of Our Lord, and try to think of 2c’s R.K. lesson while a few more boys come trickling in the door. I acknowledge them with a casual look and they join their mates. I have given up struggling with these lads. They resist all efforts to get them to read or to write.
Thoughts on Bartolomé de las Casas OP
Authors: Ruiz Ronald Cueto , Paul Pope 
Published: July 2007

‘He this evening again recommended to me to perambulate Spain. I said it would amuse him to get a letter from me dated at Salamancha. Johnson. “I love the University of Salamancha; for when the Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering America, the University of Salamancha gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful”. He spoke with great emotion, and with the generous warmth which dictated the lines in his “London”, against Spanish encroachment’.Boswell never got round to explaining precisely why it would have been so amusing for the Doctor to receive the letter from Salamanca, and Johnson never explained exactly what he meant by the University of Salamanca. Still, I suppose, not many Spaniards are very bothered about Boswell and Johnson, but they can still get mighty hot and bothered about the discovery and conquest of America; and they are not particularly happy about Wasps telling them where they went wrong. With all the logic of passionate indignation—which, of course, tends to brush aside the mere facts of history and geography—many is the irate Spaniard who has triumphantly produced in the form of a supposedly unanswerable question, what he thinks is to be the coup de grâce of any discussion on the relative merits of different brands of European imperialism, viz.: Where are the Indians in Protestant North America and why are they so numerous in Ibero-America? (And, by the way, that’s another thing you’ve got to be very careful about; none of your Latin America; our prickly, patriotic Spaniard, when aroused, admits of no contribution from the Italians and French in the Southern Hemisphere!)
Polygamy and Tyre Pressures: the Sacramentality of Customary Marriage
Authors: Singleton Michael 
Published: July 2007

The average car-owner is usually unaware that he could safely put twice as much pressure in his tyres than that stipulated as ideal in the manufacturer’s manual, without having them explode in his face. What would happen where he to be appraised of this possibility? He would probably be less apprehensive of his tyres bursting when he sees a lackadaisical garage boy nonchalantly filling them. He would certainly not exceed the specified norm each time he had occasion to put some air in his tyres.What they (mis)take for the Maker’s absolute norm regarding Christian marriage, fascinates many Churchmen as fearfully as the tyre manufacturer’s presumed upper limit. The average pastor assumes that one cannot sacramentalise beyond monolithic monogamy without destroying dogma if not the natural ideal of the family itself. Yet too neat a notion of what the Natural Law allows, coupled with a naive understanding of Revealed Truth, can block an adequate and adapted pastoral approach to marriage in the same way that a literal reading of the maker’s instructions can prevent a suitably supple attitude towards tyre filling. In both instances a perspective is urgently needed which will liberate people’s minds. Both the pastor worried about polygamy and the car-owner concerned with his tyres would benefit from a point of view which would free them from false fears. But in neither case would these new horizons automatically entail practical excesses. The car-owner’s new-found knowledge would not lead him to put twice as much air in his tyres at the first opportunity. Likewise a priest’s new awareness that customary marriage is perhaps already really sacramental, and therefore sacramentalisable, would not normally lead him to impose his insight regardless of pastoral common sense.
Theology and Needs
Authors: Castle Tony 
Published: July 2007

Evidence abounds of the continuing disenchantment of very many young people with institutional Christianity, while they retain an interest in religion and spirituality. Beyond the Vatican’s Secretariat for non-believers recently announced study, there is little evidence of the Church grasping this fact and examining it in any depth.Two events in the space of one week recently caused me to dig out of my files material that I prepared some time ago on the religious psychology of mid and late adolescence. The first was a visit to a Christian contemplative community, only loosely connected to an established religious Order, in Sussex. There is nothing fixed or final about the numbers residing there, as they are free to come or go at will, but there are generally between nine and twelve in community. On the day of my visit and participation in their life together, there were ten young men in residence, all between 19 and 30 years of age. This community is under the direction of and revolves around the elderly Anglican priest who set it up some years ago.The community atmosphere, very noticeable to a visitor, was impressive and seemed to be an ‘overflow’ from the morning and evening hour of movement and meditation together. Later conversation revealed that the majority of these young men, caught up in this contemplative way of life, had no interest in institutional Christianity and no desire to take part in a normal church service.Two or three days later, as a stimulus for class-room discussion, I conducted a simple survey among the forty-nine fifth formers of the very ordinary County Secondary School in which I teach.
Marxists and Christians: Questions for Denys Turner
Authors: Wicker Brian 
Published: July 2007

Denys Turner’s attractive argument for the compatibility, nay the virtual identity, of Marxism and Christianity (New Blackfriars, June 1975) is excellent as far as it goes, and I have little to quarrel with in it. But this is because it doesn’t go very far. So I’d like to press him to go on to the next step.Marxism and Christianity are at one—indeed, are one—because each affirms that it is only by means of revolutionary socialist praxis that a community of human love can be attained, through the overturning of the capitalist system of human exploitation which for us in the present era is the incarnation of everything which is opposed to such love. All right: but then I have to ask myself am I a practising Marxist or only a sham Marxist? A practising Christian or only a sham Christian? Until some objective criteria have been established by which I can judge my own praxis, nothing has been done to help me except to juggle with words. Now it is at just this point, it seems to me, that Marxism fails because, unlike Christianity, it refuses to take the metaphysical basis of ethics seriously. Or, to put the point the other way round, it is at this point that Christianity, in going beyond Marxism, ceases to be wholly compatible with it.
Racism and Sexism: a False Analogy
Authors: Dummett Ann 
Published: July 2007

Anyone who cares about getting rid of racism in Britain is accustomed to massive difficulties. The disastrous immigration policies of governments of both parties since 1962, the institutionalised racial discrimination built into public and private organisations, the tragedy of human potential lost and destroyed in our educational system, the insensitivity and ignorance of many people in the news industry, racism in entertainment and cartoons, public indifference and private malice, are all too bitterly familiar. But the anti-racist, as if he had not trouble enough with enemies, needs more and more protection from his friends. Government money for ‘community relations’ has recently become more plentiful, but practised hands are holding the purse-strings and know just how and when to draw them tight. Job opportunities brighten a little for specialised social workers, charged with containing the discontents of the young and black : their job opportunities are less than ever. Various groups on the Left are eager to help in the racial struggle, but usually on their own terms. And now we have Women’s Lib as well.‘Women’s Lib’ is a vague and disputed term; it is more usual to hear of ‘the women’s movement’ now in this country. This includes some formal organisations, some informal groups and some individuals, all in some way or another concerned with women’s rights. These groups and individuals vary in beliefs and in action. Some are old-established reforming organisations, some new community action groups, and so on; their work often overlaps, but there is a marked difference, all the same, between the new ideology of liberation and the old ideology of equal rights for women. The difference is in mood and style rather than in a set programme; the new mood and style can conveniently be called ‘anti-sexism’.
The Catholic Homosexual
Authors: Poole Lee 
Published: July 2007

In his recent article ‘Where are the Simple Faithful’? Fr Anthony Archer wrote recently (May 1975) for New Blackfriars : ‘Opening the Church has allowed all sorts of groups to find their inspiration within the Church, for the gospel is a very potent source of new ideas’ (p. 203).Anyone sufficiently in touch with the actual range of such post- Vatican II Catholic pluralism is aware of the fact that a growing Catholic gay movement is finding its place too on the scene. Impulses of the past few years have been particularly strong in Holland but perhaps even more so in America and Australia, where dignity and acceptance movements have recently joined hands to form an international fellowship of self-accepting gay women and men who profess openly their homosexuality and their Catholicism.These groups are not so much interested in debate with what they refer to as straight-society. Primarily they are interested in reaching other Catholic homosexuals with their message of self-acceptance and their positive evaluation of responsible sexual relations between gay persons. The very label ‘gay’ is preferred to ‘homosexual’ since it implies explicit awareness of and positive willingness to accept oneself thankfully for what one is, rather than to go on bemoaning one’s fate as second-class citizens in a world of straight values and oppression.
Christian Relationships
Authors: Woodhouse H F 
Published: July 2007

This article is an attempt to sketch some salient features of the relationship between Christians. The Christian church is not a crowd, not even a crowd made up of devotees of a particular football club to take an example. It is a community and yet the persons who compose it are persons, because of their interrelationship, and individuals, because often their particular qualities or gifts are intensified.They are a community ‘in Christ’, the body of Christ and this fellowship is not so much horizontal between the different members as vertical because they are ‘in Christ’ or alternatively we could say they share a common life, that imparted by the Holy Spirit the Life Giver. This viewpoint, while not provable from the New Testament, receives support from it.The members who share this common life remain persons, indeed their individuality is developed and enhanced. In relationship lies the differentia of being person; this has vertical and horizontal links, with the Holy Spirit and with other people, especially often Christians. Personality, growth to mature persons, is realised in response to Him, and in fellowship with life in all its varied aspects. Aspirations can be met, self-realisation achieved, self-expression maintained. For the Christian, becoming a person is the practice of divine sonship.
The Road to Psmith
Authors: Edwards Owen Dudley 
Published: July 2007

The literary career of Wodehouse almost exactly covered the first three quarters of the present century. Eighty of his titles are in print in these islands today in hard covers published by Barrie & Jenkins, and Penguins usually have about twenty of them in paperback at any given time. ‘It is a striking example of the patience and loyalty of the British public’, as his great master, Conan Doyle, observed of the unflagging popularity of Sherlock Holmes.It is also a striking example of the power and endurance of Wodehouse’s rapport with his readers. The achievement is in its way more remarkable than that of his master. When Conan Doyle wrote those words at the end of the 1920s, over half of his own literary output had vanished from the bookshops, and Holmes has carried on his lean shoulders anything to have survived in addition to his own cycle. Wodehouse, on the other hand, has never had to depend on Jeeves to sell his other titles. Jeeves and Bertie have been the favourites, but Lord Emsworth, Mr Mulliner, the Oldest Member, Ukridge, the Drones Club, and Psmith—and the vast range of characters limited to one or two novels—have consistently retained their public. There is a story that Evelyn Waugh once asked Graham Greene what he proposed to write next, The End of the Affair having recently appeared. ‘Something about God, I suppose, Greene’?
Professions
Authors: Williams Michael E 
Published: July 2007

The news that in France not only have prostitutes occupied churches as part of their campaign for a better treatment under the law, but that priests have taken their part against the police, could be interpreted as one of the more bizarre aspects of life in the common market. Yet this incident can provide food for thought about the style of life of the clergy themselves. When society is stable, vocations to the priesthood can be fostered by drawing attention to the status of the priest in society and the points of likeness between him and the schoolmaster, doctor, and other professional classes. It is only in these days of uncertainty and change that we can begin to entertain the thought that there might be a parallel with the oldest profession of all.Religion like sex cuts right across society and class. It stands for basic forces in mankind that neither cold logic nor social pressures can adequately control or express. No wonder then that anyone whose way of life calls attention to the inadequacies of society in these matters will be regarded with suspicion and hostility. One has to proceed with prudence and caution. Quite apart from whether it infringes the citizen’s right to be unmolested, door to door evangelism can be counter productive. Soliciting is a crime. The customer has to make the first move. Part of the skill of the game is to elicit that initial request and to do this all manner of artistry is needed. The wares one is hawking have to be desirable, one has to create curiosity and interest, to dress up, to know human nature so as to play on natural instincts, to practise a few mincing liturgical steps, to give an ecumenical glad-eye.