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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church > General
Catholicism is generally over-institutionalized and
over-centralized in comparison to other religions. However, it
finds itself in an increasingly interrelated and globalized world
and is therefore immersed in a great plurality of social realities.
The Changing Faces of Catholicism assembles an international cast
of contributors to explore the consequent decline of powerful
Catholic organisations as well as to address the responses and
resistance efforts that specific countries have taken to counteract
the secularization crisis in both Europe and the Americas. It
reveals some of the strategies of the Catholic Church as a whole,
and of the Vatican centre in particular, to address problems of the
global era through the dissemination of spiritually progressive
writing, World Youth Days, and the transformation of Catholic
education to become a forum for intercultural and interreligious
dialogue. The volume also reflects on the adaptation of Catholic
institutions and missions as sponsored by religious communities and
monastic orders.
In Jesuit Art, Mia Mochizuki considers the artistic production of
the pre-suppression Society of Jesus (1540-1773) from a global
perspective. Geographic and medial expansion of the standard corpus
changes not only the objects under analysis, it also affects the
kinds of queries that arise. Mochizuki draws upon masterpieces and
material culture from around the world to assess the signature
structural innovations pioneered by Jesuits in the history of the
image. When the question of a 'Jesuit style' is rehabilitated as an
inquiry into sources for a spectrum of works, the Society's
investment in the functional potential of illustrated books reveals
the traits that would come to define the modern image as internally
networked, technologically defined, and innately subjective.
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