bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Memory, Sacrifice and War
Authors: Ruston Roger 
Published: July 2007

There are many reasons why Remembrance Day has to be taken seriously, especially by those among us who are wholly opposed to war. If we feel that we cannot join in the play as it is staged, we need to appreciate why others do, and why departures from the script—white poppies, public figures wearing duffel-coats—may seem to them like a desecration.One reason is that Remembrance Day is not simply an occasion for private grief. It is a ritual enactment of our national story about peace—how it was won at immense cost by a whole generation of young men in 1914-18; how it was snatched from the jaws of defeat in 1940 by the bravery of the few. It recalls the sacrifice of two generations of youth who gave their lives so that we could live in safety, especially the women and children. It is meant to recall the story of our salvation as a people, in the sense of our national liberation from tyranny and fear. It is meant to acknowledge the sacrifices that ensured it. It gives meaning to the bloodshed. Remembrance makes private grief tolerable by connecting it with national salvation.If war itself usually creates strong feelings of solidarity, the aftermath of wars is always a time of doubt and division. The Remembrance ceremony has been part of the apparatus for coping with this. After the Great War the nation was seriously divided, especially as between those who had experienced life in the trenches and those who had not.
Proleptic Recapitulation: Passover, Eucharist and God's saving acts
Authors: Paretsky Albert 
Published: July 2007

We may speak casually of ‘salvation history’ and look for patterns in the Bible which bear out a claim that the sacred writers saw a movement toward a particular goal, the fullness of revelation in Christ Jesus (cf. Heb 1:1—2). Such a view can influence how we interpret both the Old Testament itself and its relationship to the New Testament. These interpretations may range from a searching out of phrases and themes which may then be applied to the New Testament—giving the impression that the New Testament author created a patchwork of sources—to a searching for patterns of God’s grand design which is manifested in the sweep of the Bible, irrespective of the time, place, or particular interest of the biblical author. What is proposed here is an examination of a mode of relating the past to the present which can be found throughout the Old Testament and to see how this relationship in a cultic context has far-reaching implications for the understanding of both the Christian Eucharist and the Jewish Passover in relation to one another and to the memory of God’s saving acting.A frequent pattern in the Bible is the recapitulation of origins to explain new beginnings. This is reflected in various ways.One is to use the imagery of creation to describe a new creation. For example, the author of Gen 6—9 describes the punishment of the human race in terms of a return to chaos and a re-emergence of dry land from the waters as in Gen 1. One finds other references back to the days of creation throughout the Old Testament literature, where both the imagery of Gen 1—2 as well as extra-biblical myths (some unknown) are used.
A Threat to Due Process—The War Crimes Act 1991
Authors: O'Neill Aidan 
Published: July 2007

In Act One of ‘A Man for all Seasons’, Robert Bolt’s play about Thomas More’s pilgrimage to martyrdom, More’s impetuous son-in-law, William Roper, argues that the Devil does not deserve benefit of law. In the course of the discussion More pushes Roper into the stark claim that obstacle to the conviction of the Devil must be overcome, even if it meant failing to follow due process of law. Roper, in his hunger and thirst for justice, declares that he is prepared to tear down every law in England in so worthy a cause. More, with his finely-tuned jurisprudential mind, answers him:
And when the last law was down and the Devil turned on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—Man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it, d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake’. (Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, 1960, Act I)In this passage from Bolt’s play More focusses some of the issues raised by the recent War Crimes Act, which obtained the Royal Assent on 9 May 1991.’ The Act’s long title states that its purpose is ‘to confer jurisdiction on United Kingdom courts in respect of certain grave violations of the laws and customs of war in German-held territory during the Second World War.’
From Piety to Criticism and Back
Authors: Geraghty Denis 
Published: July 2007

Since the Second Vatican Council many developments have taken place which the Council itself did not and could not have anticipated. The Council did not foresee, for example, that the reform of the liturgy would cause the disintegration of popular Catholic piety and leave a fearful vacuum, providing nothing to put in its place. Neither did the Council anticipate that an increasingly educated Catholic laity would, in some way, radically alter its attitude to the clergy and to their ascendancy in the Church, demanding for themselves a place and authority of their own as ‘the People of God’. ‘From piety to criticism and back’ literally means looking back; it is a very difficult exercise. There are many reasons for this. We often absorb and integrate change in a semiconscious way and, once we have integrated it, there is a tendency to look back at the past in a hypercritical way through the lens of contemporary experience. Thus, we sometimes reach a distorted evaluation riddled with anachronisms, because we now live, move and breath in the air of a different world. However, despite the dangers, it is useful to look back, to engage in a process of recapitulation of the past, just as we do in old age, so that we can better understand the present.What is piety? A working definition might be: the dutiful observance of religious practice. Within the Catholic Church that I knew, 1 consider it to have been a concentration of devotional worship at the expense of systematic theology and the study of scripture. However, this understanding of piety needs to placed in a particular context. Such a contextualisation can only be the Catholic Church of my youth, that is of the Irish/Lancashire variety.
The Rise and Fall of Liberation Theology? An Evaluative Chronicle
Authors: Nichols Aidan 
Published: July 2007

Liberation theology emerged gradually in the period following the Second Vatican Council. At that Council there were present, as influences on the conciliar process, a wide variety of theologies- Neo-Scholastic, Neopatristic, anthropologico-transcendental (alias Karl Rahner), as well as the inter-related theologies of the ‘signs of the times’ and of ‘earthly realities’, the latter soon to be dubbed ‘secularisation-theology’ and chiefly worked out, like its brother movement, by the French. As succeeding events have demonstrated, the resultant compound was unstable. So far as the Americas were concerned although ‘CELAM’, the Latin American Episcopal Council, had functioned since 19S6, the Latin American influence at Vatican II, whether of bishops or theologians was negligible, with the exception of one or two individual voices like the Brazilian Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife, who contributed to the making of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World.Very different, during the Council’s closing sessions, was the state of affairs in Latin America itself. There a veritable theological ferment was brewing, as became clear from four meetings of theologians held at, successively, Petrdpolis (Brazil), Havana (Cuba), Bogota (Colombia) and Cuernavaca (Mexico) in the course of 1964-1965. What transpired from these pan-Latin American theological assemblies was the need for a new theology whose nature would be determined by, first, the conciliar ‘renewal’, but also by, secondly, confrontation with the often cruel human reality of that continent.
1492 And All That
Authors: Alison James 
Published: July 2007

In 19821 drove with friends from the city of Puebla to Mexico City by the rather hazardous route between the volcanoes Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. That is the route which Cortés and his followers travelled in 1519. From the top, they caught Europe’s first glimpse of the Aztec capital, glistening below. Bernal Diaz, in his eyewitness chronicle, describes their amazement at its size and beauty. Now you cannot see the city, but only the pulsating orange-brown glow of its pollution. What was more interesting to me was that in order to find the right track to the pass, we had stopped in a village to ask the way, and had been guided by indians speaking the Spanish of Cervantes, rich in forms and courtesies quite unused in modem Spanish.In 1990 I spent a weekend in Sucre, the historical capital of Bolivia, a beautiful university city in the Andes. I was attending a national charismatic conference, which had borrowed a military academy during the summer holiday. In the evening there was a big Mass in the Cathedral, presided over by the newly appointed Bishop, a Spaniard. The next morning the Feast of the Epiphany, I stumbled out of bed to celebrate Mass at six with the (enclosed) Carmelite sisters in their 17th century Carmel. To my amazement, the church was full, mostly of indians , in multi-coloured costume; the sisters in their choir made sprightly song with the help of a number of Spanish and Andean instruments, and every time they did so, a small indian girl, quite unprompted, danced with delight in front of the image of Our Lady.
What Future for Liberation Theology?
Authors: Márkus Gilbert 
Published: July 2007

When Gustavo Gutik published his Teologia de Liberation. Perspectivas in 1971, he can hardly have imagined the significance his work would take on in the following decades. The very title has become embedded in the language of a whole generation of theology students as a rough description of a school of thought, or a movement, that reaches from the Philippines and Korea, through Asia and Africa, to Latin America. For some people, the question of liberation theology has become the yardstick against which all other theological approaches are to be measured, and the movement to which one’s response is the indicator of the seriousness of one’s Christian commitment.As a university chaplain, I have found that the appeal of liberation theology to students has contributed greatly to the formation of the community I save. Its prophetic voice appeals strongly to compassionate men and women who are trying to give a Christian expression to their own concerns about poverty, violence and exptaitation.In my own ten years of involvement with British solidarity organisations and human rights groups focussed on Central America, particularly Nicaragua and El Salvador, I have seen the flood of books by liberation theologians since 1971 eagerly read by colleagues, Christian and non-Christian alike.
How to Think About Hell
Authors: Flannery Kevin L. 
Published: July 2007

Hans Urs von Balthasar is correctly perceived within the contemporary Catholic Church as an exponent of an orthodox, even conservative, understanding of the faith. His nomination to the rank of cardinal just before his death is evidence of this, as was his friendship with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Nonetheless, one aspect of his theology, that dealing with the possibility of the salvation of all souls, drew upon him ‘fire from the right.’ He was taken to task by, among others, Gerhard Hermes and Heribert Schauf. In reaction to such criticism, Balthasar wrote a book entitled Was dürfen wir hoffen? (‘What may we hope for?’), recently published in translation by Ignatius Press under the title, Dare we hope ‘That all men be saved’? One of the purposes of this article is to examine this answer by Balthasar to his critics. I believe that certain aspects of his argument are, indeed, inadequate and have been justly criticised. Nonetheless, the major question raised in the book (and, indeed, by the entire controversy) is a legitimate one—and precisely in the sense that Balthasar asks it. A second purpose of the present essay, therefore, is to suggest the parameters within which we might hope ‘that all men be saved.’My First point is one of agreement with Balthasar. Balthasar rejects those criticisms of his own work that suggest that, in so far as we know that at least some souls are damned to eternal perdition, we may not in any sense hope for the salvation of all souls.
What is the Holocaust?
Authors: Grondelski John M 
Published: July 2007

The controversy which arose in the summer of 1989 over the presence of a Carmelite convent adjacent to the former Nazi deathcamp at Auschwitz in Poland momentarily brought to world attention the entire field of Holocaust studies, including the theology of the Holocaust. In America, for example, various colleges and universities have established institutes for study of the Holocaust. These centres usually sponsor conferences and scholarly meetings, offer courses on various aspects of the Holocaust, and often do the important work of recording oral and video testimonies from the shrinking pool of concentration camp survivors, thereby documenting the brutality of those years. Some American states have introduced Holocaust studies components into the social studies curricula of their primary and secondary schools. In both Jewish and Christian theological circles, the Holocaust has raised anew such questions as the meaning of suffering and the existence of God, Providence and the vicissitudes of human history, and the entire Christian perspective on Jews and Judaism (including what role Christianity may have played in aiding and/or abetting anti-Semitism).The Auschwitz convent controversy focused attention on the entire realm of Holocaust studies. But what the controversy did not do was to foster discussion about the central issue upon which the controversy turned: what is the Holocaust?It is the ambiguity of the definition of “Holocaust” which provided fertile soil not just for the debate over the Carmelite cloister at Auschwitz but also for other disputes. During his June 1991 pilgrimage to Poland, Pope John Paul II was criticised by some Jewish organisations for speaking of abortion on demand as a “Holocaust” of the unborn.
Solidarity‐Beyond the Clichés A Theological Perspective
Authors: MacLaren Duncan 
Published: July 2007

The term ‘solidarity’ is in danger of developing into a clich?. It has been employed so often as a kind of ‘compassion football’ between a guilt-ridden (for some) oppressor ‘First’ World and an indignant (for some) oppressed ‘Third’ that its significance has become opaque. That lack of precision undermines its value for clarifying the relevant Christian response to the divisions between North and South, powerful and powerless, in our world. Solidarity shows us a way which eschews both a patronising attitude and a sense of guilt on the part of the North, and a feeling of being alone in the struggle on the part of the South. Solidarity empowers both and leads to a deeper understanding of what Jon Sobrino, recalling St Paul’s injunction, calls ‘bearing with one another in faith’.In this article I wish to explore the theological roots of solidarity in an attempt to recapture the flavour of its deeper meaning in a belief that solidarity is a key concept for those who ‘hunger and thirst for what is right’ (Mt 5:6). I follow Albert Nolan’s argument that its roots are found in the Old Testament, but that it broadens its scope when Jesus begins his mission. The new theology of neighbour then becomes the model of solidarity for later thinkers, theologians and activists (‘militantes’ to the Latin Americans) in both the Third World and the West, in their struggle to live an authentically human, and therefore authentically Christian life. Lying at the core of solidarity is co-responsibility for the planet, and the humanisation of life for every being on it, by ridding the world of the structures of widespread injustice and deep-seated division which disfigure the created oneness of humanity.
The Greatest Christian Hero, Philosopher, and Poet: Christopher Dawson's Italian Trinity
Authors: Navone John 
Published: July 2007

Christopher Dawson (born 1889), a Catholic scholar and renowned philosophical historian, spent his academic life exploring the relationship of religion, sociology and culture. He believed that without an understanding of religion it is impossible to comprehend the culture of humanity or peoples. His magisterial work, Religion and Culture, established him as an historian’s historian. He ended his days as Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard Divinity School, the first Catholic to occupy a chair there.To follow the history of Italy through the centuries is to penetrate to the very heart of western civilization. The artists, thinkers and statesmen of this small, but complex and vital country are part of our own past and have helped to make the present world what it is. What was achieved by the legions of Rome more than two thousand years ago has remained a powerful influence on history ever since. The cultures of ancient Greece and Israel took their dominant position in our western heritage through the medium of an Italian translation. Christianity was propagated from Rome, the fifteenth century Renaissance from Florence, and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in great part from Padua. European history would have been very different without the work of Columbus and Galileo in discovery, Raphael and Michelangelo in art, Aquinas and Vico in philosophy, St Francis and a long list of Popes from Gregory the Great to John XXIII in religion. Italian museums and churches contain what must seem a disproportionate number of the greatest masterpieces of human creativity.
Wittgenstein, World and Wonder
Authors: Tsang Lap‐Chuen 
Published: July 2007

This paper offers an account of Wittgenstein’s treatment of ‘the world’. As will be seen, this requires explanation of his view of religious attitudes in general, and of wonder at the world in particular. His religious position may appear to be unsystematic, or even inconsistent. Contrary to this impression, this paper will show that the same view of the world underlies his religious position, which manifests itself in different forms at different stages of his philosophy. For the world, as the logical limit to the expression of the human will, is a unifying idea in his philosophy. We shall be concerned with his early endeavour to express himself to the limit of the world and then with his later analysis of religious thought and action which construe as real that which lies beyond the world.The world has always been a limiting concept in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. According to him, the world as reality presents itself to us as an unquestioned and necessary experiential fact. All of us believe in the world that has been handed down to us. It is the condition that makes possible every questioning and doubting. It is the background against which we judge in general between true and false. Its existence is so selfevident that it is even unnoticed, and its nonexistence is inconceivable. Language means only the world and can mean only it. In his endeavour to understand the world and man in it, Wittgenstein always holds on to the view that we should be concerned with things and events and situations in the world, and investigate it from within, taking the world as unquestioned and necessary.
Greenness in the New Testament
Authors: Echlin Edward P. 
Published: July 2007

The Jewish thought-world which influenced Christ and the first Christians was holistic. The Bible and extra-biblical literature picture God as rejoicing in His creation. If we are properly to understand Jesus and his first followers it is necessary to understand that thought-world, including ancient mythologies which predate the Exile and were still current.It is now commonly accepted that during Jesus’s lifetime there was, even in Palestine, a varied spectrum of Jewishness, including different degrees of adherence to the Jerusalem establishment. Not everybody acclaimed Jesus’s execution, and the conduct of persons like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus’s own Galilean disciples (the women particularly) suggests pluralism. It has been suggested that it may have been not the gentiles but disaffected Galileans who first accused Jews of deicide or Christicide.'According to the gospels Jesus understood his mission in terms of a cosmic conflict with fallen angels who tormented human beings. There is a remnant of this ancient mythology in Genesis 6:2 ‘The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose.’ Christ and his contemporaries still lived in a world peopled by angels—good as well as bad. This mythology also included memories of ancient Jewish kingship. The good king moved between heaven and earth, maintained cosmic order, and was in conflict with the fallen angels and their monstrous offspring. The king, God’s holy one, preserved the integrity of creation: humans, animals, plants, their habitats and the elements. Our best account of this mythology, so important for understanding Christ and his ecology, is almost certainly in 1 Enoch.
Religion and Secularism in Britain today
Authors: Roberts Colin 
Published: July 2007

A Newman Association day conference at Warwick University on the 9th March brought together nearly seventy delegates from different parts of the country to debate the rights of religious minorities in our society and to examine the potential for conflict between religious fundamentalism and secularism. Three specialists working in the field of inter-faith and intercommunity relations addressed the complex nature of these issues. They were the Reverend Dr. Clinton Bennett, the Reverend Dr. Christopher Lamb and Professor Edward Hulmes. Dr. Bennett is Executive Secretary for Inter-Faith Relations at the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, Dr. Lamb is Community Relations Advisor for the Diocese of Coventry and Professor Hulmes is Spalding Professorial Fellow in World Religions in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham and Fellow of the Centre of Theological Enquiry at Princeton in the USA.Against the background of the Rushdie affair and the community tensions generated by the Gulf War the conference focussed on the contrasting attitudes of Islam and Christianity towards secularism. It also examined the different ways in which Christians respond to religious pluralism. Does the decade of evangelisation which all the churches have endorsed conflict with inter-faith dialogue? Should evangelism be directed at those in our society who have no religious belief rather than at theists like Muslims and Jews? What lessons has the Church learned from the gradual process of secularisation of British society and how should Catholics communicate those insights to their fellow citizens of other faiths whose culture and background make it difficult for them to engage positively with secular culture?