bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Body Symbolism in the Book of Margery Kempe
Authors: Morgan Susan 
Published: July 2007

In her recent book Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, Caroline Walker Bynum once again delineates with consummate skill the profoundly and peculiarly bodily character of Christian medieval piety. The cult of relics with its veneration of the dismembered limbs of saintly people, the belief in the curative powers of bodily effluvia, the austere self-disciplinary practices of certain male and female ascetes — observances such as these are cited by Bynum as illustrating the medieval notion of the human body as a locus of sacrality. The concurrent theological development of the doctrine of transubstantiation, the conviction that behind the external accidents of bread and wine lay the actual flesh and blood of Christ, also laid emphasis upon the corporeal and led to an increasing sense of the eucharist as ‘symbolic cannibalism’ in which communicants ‘ate God’. Christian art and iconography of the period reflected a similarly literalist approach to the humanity of Christ, often drawing attention to his genitalia for example, or depicting the Passion scenes with a force of graphic detail quite repugnant to modem minds.According to Bynum each of these three strands, theology, piety and art, brought out the religious significance of the body in an unprecedented manner during the Middle Ages as a means of access to the divine, but whilst physicality was a theme which ran throughout all medieval spirituality, it was taken up with particular enthusiasm and intensity in women’s lives and writing. Women, it would appear, were unable to avoid being inculcated with contemporary androcentric articulations of their association with the body, weakness, lust and irrationality.
A Scholastic Universalist The Writings and Thought of Bernard Kelly (1907–1958)
Authors: Stoddart William 
Published: July 2007

Bernard Kelly was a regular contributor to Blackfriars and other Catholic periodicals over a lengthy period extending from the 1930s to the 1950s. Rayner Heppenstall, in his book on Léon Bloy, called him “a man of the purest genius”. In more recent times, however, he seems to have been strangely forgotten. If we speak of him now, it is because we believe that his insights, drawn from scholastic philosophy and especially from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, are of value not only for present-day Catholics, but for all Christians, and indeed for spiritual seekers of all faiths. Kelly once said: “There are some of us who can’t rightly pray without a pen in our hands.” Kelly was clearly no ordinary writer for him writing was prayer. He epitomized the view that prayer could only be accomplished on the basis of truth, and his writing was a means of determining and fixing the truth in his own mind and in the minds of others. A few years ago Barbara Wall published a moving account of Kelly’s life; here we shall concentrate chiefly on his writings and thought.Kelly’s inspiration was the writings of the Medieval philosophers and, in particular, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. For him, the Summa was a vehicle of truth and a paradigm of spirituality. Many are aware of St. Thomas’s declaration towards the end of his life that, in comparison with the Divine Reality Itself, his writings were as a heap of straw. A differing and more important evaluation is less well known; Christ Himself appeared to Aquinas in a vision and said to him: Bene scripsisti de Me, Thoma (“Thou hast written well concerning Me, Thomas”).
Beauty in Catholic Churches
Authors: Jones David 
Published: July 2007

Among those people who are conscious of and annoyed by the complete badness manifest in the building and decoration, in use in the Catholic Church in our days, there are very few who regard the matter as anything more than a superficial defect that can be, with care, remedied. There are few who realise the essentially malignant and even mortal nature of the infection that so ails us.Most of these people speak with varying degrees of confidence about ways and means of ‘improving the taste of the Faithful,’ of educating people up to this or that notion. Again, others propose the copying on a vast scale the works of certain respectable and accredited masters of the past centuries, thereby improving the ‘outward appearance’ of churches and images. By this manoeuvre they hope to get the unsuspecting worshipper used to the form and comeliness of the Italian primitives and other work of men who lived in more civilized periods than our own so leading them on until, after a very few years of this aesthetic welfare- work, the most suburban Catholic will revile the pink and white- Madonnas as supplied by the ‘church-furniture shop’ and have nothing less than exact reproductions of Giotto or sixth century Byzantine.Whatever may be said for these sincere attempts of pious people, the root of the matter is left untouched; it is not even approached. The issue is usually confused by a notion of ‘giving the best to God.’ I say confused because it creates in the mind the notion that there can be constructed a kind of scale of beauty, extending from the merely useful objects required for a church (like shelves or pipes or rubber door-mats) to the culminating point in the vestments and the sacred vessels.
Gnosticism and Contemporary Soteriology: Some Reflections
Authors: Weinandy Thomas 
Published: July 2007

The abundant variations of Gnosticism in the second and third centuries A.D. testify both to its popularity and to the threat that it posed to the early Christian church. This threat is all the more evident in that some forms of Gnosticism were espoused by men, for example Valentinus and Basilides, who considered themselves faithful Christians. Yet, as is well known, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and other Church Fathers believed that Gnosticism was radically inimical to the authentic Christian gospel as professed by “the Great Church”. I wish to argue here that many contemporary theologians, who equally profess to be Christians, have proposed soteriological theories which are at their heart Gnostic, and constitute an equally grave threat to the integrity of the gospel today.Before examining instances of what I consider contemporary variants of Gnostic soteriology, I will briefly state what I believe to be at the heart of the ancient Gnostic systems. I am not so much interested in the particular details of the various Gnostic Schools, but rather I want to highlight what exactly it is that gnosis consisted of for the Gnostics. What is it that the Pneumatikoi knew which brought them salvation?The various Gnostic Schools taught elaborate cosmological systems or schemes. These were normally composed of the utterly transcendent and, often, unknowable good God, followed by the assorted lesser aeons of spirits (such as, Sige, Ennoia, Nous, Logos, Zoe, Pneuma, Sophia, angels, etc., depending on the Gnostic school). These made up the Pleroma and filled the infinite void between the transcendent God and the world of matter.
Nuclear Radiation: Facts and Fears
Authors: Hodgson Peter E. 
Published: July 2007

There is widespread public anxiety about the effects of nuclear radiations, particularly concerning the cases of childhood leukaemia near nuclear plants. Seven cases occurred in Seascale in Cumbria near the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield from 1955 to 1983. This number seemed to be much greater than would be expected by chance, and received much publicity. It was, however, very difficult to understand how these cases could be blamed on Sellafield, since the amount of nuclear radiation released is far smaller than the natural background.A possible mechanism was suggested in 1987 by Gardner, who postulated that the children developed leukaemia as a result of their father’s exposure to nuclear radiation. He collected statistics that showed a significant correlation between paternal radiation dose and leukaemic children. This led to several Court cases in which families sought compensation from British Nuclear Fuels, the company operating the plant.The Gardner hypothesis has such serious implications for the nuclear industry that many further investigations were made. These were on the actual process whereby paternal irradiation could lead to childhood leukaemia, the observations of leukaemia in the children of survivors of the atomic bombing of Japan, and more extensive studies of leukaemia around nuclear plants. The results of these studies have now been summarised by Sir Richard Doll, Dr H.J.Evans and Dr S.C.Darby in Nature (367.678.1994). They conclude that the Gardner hypothesis is wrong.The possibility that nuclear irradiation could cause a gonadal mutation leading to childhood leukaemia can be studied using data on genetically-determined leukaemia. The detailed statistical knowledge shows that there may be a recessive mutation that could contribute to a number of observed cases.
American Art Cultural Crisis
Authors: Navone John 
Published: July 2007

Art inevitably reflects the virtues and vices of the culture that produces it. This article treats of the American cultural crisis as reflected in American art and then discusses the moral and religious implications of this crisis.Martha Bayles, in her Atlantic Monthly article ‘The Shock Art Fallacy’ (Feb., 1994, p. 20), affirms that “Obscenity as art is everywhere. ... Never before in the history of culture has obscenity been so pervasive.” She calls attention to a Spin magazine jeans advertisement in which a young man brandishes a handgun over the caption “Teaching kids to KILL helps them to deal directly with reality.” In the Whitney Museum Bayles finds a photographic display of penises in one room and a row of video monitors showing “transgressive” sexual practices in another. The compulsion to shock dominates popular music, movies, television, publishing, talk-shows, stand-up comedy, and video games. Whatever the cultural bomb-throwers seem to think, Bayles avers that this does not mean we cannot be shocked. Obscenity, she affirms, is shocking. The Supreme Court defined obscenity as the depiction of “sexual conduct” in a “patently offensive way” lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” This definition, because it focuses exclusively on sex while exempting material possessing “serious artistic value,” is irrelevant to our present situation.
A Just Defence of Just Prices
Authors: Wicker Brian 
Published: July 2007

The row over exorbitant salaries for the bosses of private monopolies has resurrected an ancient belief: namely that we can distinguish just from unjust prices. ‘Just prices’ — as distinct from prices set by market forces and the profit motive — once formed part of the ‘moral economy’. A just price for some article had to be proportionate to the amount of work that went into making it and to the contribution it made to the common good.The great enemies of justice in fixing prices were (and are) ‘damnable avarice, sensuality and pride’ (as the fourteenth century writer Henry of Langenstein rightly remarked). His views resonate loudly today in the columns of the newspapers and on the tops of Clapham omnibuses. But they can hardly be squared with the economics of Adam Smith or his modem disciples. For the tradition which Smith initiated put things asunder which the earlier tradition regarded as having been joined together by natural law and ultimately by God: in particular, ethics and politics (and therefore economics).A commentary by an eighteenth-century Spanish scholastic on Adam Smith’s political economy may seem an unlikely place in which to find a sharp and telling critique of ‘the state we’re in’ (to use Will Hutton’s punning phrase). Yet (as Scott Meikle’s recent article in the February 1995 New Blackfriars shows) Fray Antonio de la Santisma Trinidad, who was appointed in 1791 by the Spanish Inquisition to examine The Wealth of Nations, was able to reveal something fundamentally amoral with the ideology which afflicts contemporary Britain.
Celebration and Sacrament: Holy Place and Holy People
Authors: Gibbons Robin 
Published: July 2007

If you are keen to visit old buildings, some of the best examples of medieval ecclesiastical remains are to be found in East Anglia. On a recent visit I had occasion to spend some time church crawling and stumbled across Binham Priory, the remains of a Benedictine monastic settlement 4 or 5 miles from Walsingham. Why this place sticks firmly in my mind is the stark contrast between what now exists and what had been. Apart from the monastic ruins, the only utilised building (apart from a farm) is the nave of the church. The poignancy of juxtaposition makes the place special, a holy place in the sense that it has a continuity with the past and also a sense of dramatic personal history; it seems to have been a building that moved with the times as the different styles of architecture and furnishing show, but its truncated nave and aisles, gives the impression of a magnificent church built for monks and people in a remote place. Its setting is typically East Anglia, the rear approach is through a gatehouse, ruined, and then a paved way, into the door to face a magnificent medieval seven sacrament font, benches with carved figures on the poppy heads, the old holy water stoop, and a fine tapestry behind the Jacobean table altar.I use Binham as an example of what one could call the ‘sacrament of building’, a place which engaged and still engages people with a transformative presence. This might be fanciful language but it hints at the importance of place and ritual in the context of human life.
Whispering Galleries: the small magazines
Authors: Mills John Orme 
Published: July 2007

According to George Steiner, commentary is without end. No, strictly that is not quite accurate. What he said was that it was without end “in the worlds of interpretative and critical discourse”, where there are no final conclusions. “Essay speaks to essay, article chatters to article in an endless gallery of querulous echo,” he said in his book Real Presences'.Functioning as whispering galleries is one of the things that small magazines can do very well. Inevitably, writing in the special number marking the 70th birthday of Herbert McCabe, the small magazine which jumps first to my mind is New Blackfriars, which Herbert edited so memorably for eleven years. However, another ex-editor, Allan White, is writing in this number about New Blackfriars in particular. It is all magazines with circulations of under 5,000—frequently well under 5,000—which I am writing about here (though not, I should add, house magazines or parish magazines or any magazines written entirely by the editor and his staff.) Of course, the echoes which Steiner speaks about come far faster in clashes between opposing pontificators on TV and in the newspapers than in these small magazines, but on TV and in the newspapers the echoes can get distorted out of all recognition.>What sort of future, though, have the small magazines got? Unless your name is Rupert Murdoch, if you are working in any of the communications media you are beset from time to time with fear for the future—fear of being frozen out or eaten up. It is something that goes with the job.
Kyssegyrlan Vuched or Ymborth yr Eneit
Authors: Ryan John 
Published: July 2007

Sir John Morris Jones, the most distinguished pupil of Sir John Rhys, collaborated with the latter in editing a Jesus College manuscript. This work appeared in 1894 in the Medieval and Modem Series of Anecdota Oxoniensia under the title of The Elucidarium and other tracts in Welsh from Llyuyr Agkyr Llandewivrevi, A.D. 1346 (Jesus College Ms. 119) (The Book of the Anchorite of Llanddewifrefi). A note added to the translation of the preface to the Elucidarium says:
Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ap Phylip ap Trahaearn of Cantref Mawr caused this book to be written by the hand of a friend, namely a man who was an anchorite at that time at Llanddewifrefi: whose souls may God hold in His mercy. Amen.There are seventeen stories in the book, beginning with ‘Hystoria Lucidar’ and ending with ‘Hystoria o uuched beuno ae wyrtheu’ (The story of Beuno's life and of his miracles). One might say that the contents of this book give some idea of the nature of the religious teaching of the Church in Wales in the Middle Ages. Practically all the works included in this book are translations from Latin except for one which is our special interest on this occasion. It is known as ‘Kyssegyrlan Vuched’ or ‘Ymborth yr Eneit’ (The Holy Life or The Food of the Soul) ff. 78v - 92r. It begins on f. 78 with the words ('we now deal with divine love which joins the Creator God and the creature Man ...'). On f 80r there is the sentence ‘and so ends the second part of this book, namely, of Divine Love'.
Socialism of the Gift, Socialism by Grace
Authors: Milbank John 
Published: July 2007

I want to discuss in this essay the possible interrelations between socialism, Christianity and community.For one strange moment in the summer of 1994, it seemed as if the people of this country had become a community, united, like so many communities, perhaps all communities, around a death. The death of a Scottish Christian socialist, John Smith. But they became a community it seemed, perhaps again like every community, around a mourning for lost community, lost solidarity, lost hope of a religiously-tinged socialist ideal (which many more sympathise with than believe in).And we are still just about within the echo of this moment, which determines that the new public visibility of Christian Socialism, concentrated around the Elisha figure of Tony Blair, has an elegiac, melancholy feel to it. There is nothing here for anyone to triumph in; least of all Christian Socialists. For if a surprising number of still remaining socialists are Christians, or indeed Jews, Muslims or Buddhists, then this may be precisely because socialism, like religion, now assumes a merely spectral reality in the modern secularised world. It has ceased to appear either plausible or rational, and has instead been consigned to the realm of faith. Yet, as with Christianity in the west, we remain haunted by its excellence, because nothing has emerged to replace it; we sense that just as the story of a compassionate God who became man was the ‘final religion’, so also, the hope of a universal fraternity based on sharing was ‘the final politics’. With its demise, we are delivered over to something somehow more secular than politics—to a future of infinite utilitarian calculation by individuals, states and transnational companies, of the possible gains and losses, the greater and the lesser risks.
Traveller of Culture: Michel de Certeau
Authors: Moingt Joseph 
Published: July 2007

‘I am a traveller’, Michel de Certeau liked to say. This he was literally, ploughing Europe from one university to another, or America, from north to south, from campus to conference; and even more, figuratively, moving from one place of knowledge to another, using in turns different modes of writing, or mingling several disciplines in order to explore one and the same subject more deeply. Thus, he was disturbing. He was never where one sought to catch him. He appeared all the more a stranger to any classification inasmuch as he had the art, in every thing he approached, to make something strange emerge from the reassuringly familiar, where the very ones who call themselves ‘researchers’ willingly stop. He moved rapidly, sometimes a little feverishly, from one place to another, always departing and in transit, as if he guessed that his days were already numbered. He never travelled, literally or figuratively, out of mere curiosity, still less by incapacity to settle in one place, but to learn something new and, much more, to share other experiences, the experience of others, out of passion for the human and the other. And what he questioned relentlessly, in human experience at its deepest and most ordinary, was the passion for believing. In this passion he perceived the very place of otherness and of the search for the meaning of existence and of history. This questioning was his own quest for God.Michel de Certeau was bom in 1925, of an old Savoyard family. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1950, and followed the usual course of training until ordination as a priest in Lyons in 1956 and solemn profession in Paris in 1963.
The disenchantment of postmodernity
Authors: Beckford James A. 
Published: July 2007

IntroductionSocial scientists show a surprising lack of interest in the influence of climate on social and cultural life. Montesquieu’s claim that climate influences social life usually falls on deaf ears these days. Can anyone seriously believe that the Economic and Social Research Council would fund a research project to test the hypothesis that “in cold countries the nervous glands are less expanded: they sink deeper into their sheaths, or they are sheltered from the action of external objects; consequently they have not such lively sensations”? Yet, I know that my mood is affected by weather conditions. It is difficult, however, to know exactly what the effect is and whether the same conditions are invariably associated with the same effects. My responses to The Enchantment of Sociology are a good case in point. I read it in proof in bleak midwinter; I read the published volume under a blazing Umbrian sun. The responses were quite different, but, as I shall explain, it is not easy to see why my responses to the book’s arguments varied with these different climatic conditions. In fact, the results were counter-intuitive in some respects, so perhaps this is why Montesquieu’s climatic thesis is regarded as problematic.
Culture, Ethics and the Ends of Sociology
Authors: Tester Keith 
Published: July 2007

With the publication of The Enchantment of Sociology, Kieran Flanagan becomes one of the contemporary sociologists whose work is shaped by the devastating indifference which dominates so many social and cultural relationships. This is an indifference of apathy and unconcern in the face of the sense of the emptiness of so much of what passes as the good life in our commodified and media-saturated culture. It means that all the things and qualities which could once be taken to make a difference to what it means to be a human being in the world have been thrown into the flux of the quest for perpetual newness. Indifference has emerged to the extent that there has been a collapse of the chance that some quality, some ideal, or some value, might possess the abilities to make a difference.In itself there is little new about this sociological care about the absence and lack of care. It bears some comparison with Hannah Arendt’s portrayal of dark times as those in which outrages can be perpetrated without a murmur of outrage (Arendt 1973). Meanwhile, and perhaps more pertinently for the purposes of this discussion, C. Wright Mills noted the prevalence of indifference in the late 1950s in The Sociological Imagination (Mills 1959). Mills looked at the situation which had emerged out of the settlement of the Second World War and saw people who had been left lost and alone by the erosion of their ability to accept readily the time-honoured ways of making sense of the world. He identified the outlines of what amounted to an existential and hermeneutic vacuum.