This study is a reconsideration of Jan Hus, a late medieval Bohemian priest who was burned at the stake six hundred years ago. His death sparked a social revolution. This book considers his role as a priest and reformer in Prague, his martyrdom in Germany, and his legacy. It attempts to provide an evaluation of Hus in the context of the medieval world, especially by engaging in alternative perspectives of his life and work. The core themes and arguments are revisionist. These include seeing Hus properly as a heretic, exploring Hus as a medieval man interested in more than preaching, religious practice, and reform. The book sets out to challenge traditional assumptions and seeks less to contribute to monument-building than to challenge the prevailing views about Hus and the interpretation of his life and thought. A conscious effort has been undertaken to explore the historical relevancy of Hus and to assess his contemporary significance. The book also places Hus into a comparative context with the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

This book explores changing gender and religious roles for Catholic men and women in the British Isles from Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church in 1534 to full emancipation in 1829. Filled with richly detailed stories, such as the suppression of Mary Ward's Institute of English Ladies, it explores how Catholics created and tested new understandings of women's and men's roles in family life, ritual, religious leadership, and vocation through engaging personal narratives, letters, trial records, and other rich primary sources. Using an intersectional approach, it crafts a compelling narrative of three centuries of religious and social experimentation, adaptation, and change as traditional religious and gender norms became flexible during a period of crisis. The conclusions shed new light on the Catholic Church's long-term, ongoing process of balancing gendered and religious authority during this period while offering insights into the debates on those topics taking place worldwide today.

As a result of the publication of "Jesus. An Experiment in Christology" (volume 6) and "Christ. The Christian Experience in the Modern World "(volume 7), Schillebeeckx was accused of denying the divinity of Jesus and the resurrection as objective reality. In this 'interim report' he responds to these criticisms. Schillebeeckx argues that the interpretation of his publications depends to a large extent on what the reader takes as a starting point. This book, therefore, is about presuppositions and methods of interpretation. Schillebeeckx begins by looking once again at the nature of revelation, at the ways in which religious faith is experienced and expressed in the modern world, and at sources of authority. He then discusses specific criticisms. Can he be called a neo-liberal? Does he devalue the church's tradition? Is his Christology inadequate? What does he really believe concerning the resurrection? Then, towards the end, in some poetically powerful passages, he turns once again to the nature of the Kingdom of God, creation and salvation.

This is a unique selection of Edward Schillebeeckx' collection, translated into English here for the first time. This is a collection of essays from one of the most eminent Catholic theologians of the late 20th century. Edward Schillebeeckx Collected Works bring together the most important and influential works of the Dutch Dominican and theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) in a reliable edition. All translations have been carefully checked or revised, some texts are presented in English for the first time. The page numbers of earlier editions are included. Each volume carries a foreword by an internationally renowned Schillebeeckx expert. This edition makes Schillebeeckx available for a new generation of scholars and students.

This is the first biography in ninety years of Reginald Pole (1500SH1558), one of the most important international figures of the sixteenth century. Pole's career is followed as protégé and then harshest critic of Henry VIII, as cardinal and papal diplomat, legate of Viterbo, a nearly successful candidate for pope, and finally as legate to England, archbishop of Canterbury, architect of the English Counter-Reformation, and victim of both Pope Paul IV and of himself.

John Henry Newman (180190) was brought up in the Church of England in the Evangelical tradition. An Oxford graduate and Fellow of Oriel College, he was appointed Vicar of St Mary's Oxford in 1828; from 1839 onwards, he began to have doubts about the claims of the Anglican Church for Catholicity and in 1845 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was made a Cardinal in 1879. His influence on both the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and the advance of Catholic ideas in the Church of England was profound.
Volume XXXII contains a further 513 letters which have surfaced since the publication of the preceding volumes, spanning the years 1830 until virtually the eve of Newman's death on August 11, 1890. There are, for example, thirty-four letters to Thomas Arnold, Jr., following his conversion to Roman Catholicism on January 18, 1856, in Van Diemen's Land and his subsequent return to England with his wife and family; seven letters to Charles Marriott and seven letters from him dealing mainly with the sale of the Littlemore property following Newman's secession to Rome on October 9, 1845; and eighteen letters to various members of the Mozley family, including two letters to Jemima in the wake of the Achilli trial in 1853.
Other recipients include the Duke of Norfolk and his family; Charles Wellington Furse, Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, near Oxford, and future Archdeacon of Westminster; and Miss Maria Trench, who was preparing some of Keble's papers and reviews for publication. There are also two letters to Pope Leo XIII petitioning him for the canonization of John Fisher, Thomas More, and the English Martyrs.

Archbishop Romero and Spiritual Leadership in the Modern World presents a contemporary and integrated understanding of one of the most remarkable pastoral leaders of our time. This bishop, Oscar Romero of El Salvador, experienced deeply the overwhelming sufferings of the Salvadoran people, as well as those within himself. He cried out in vain to Presidents Carter and Reagan, "no more arms to El Salvador," but his pleas were not heard at that time. Knowing that he would soon be murdered, Romero promised that he would rise again in the Salvadoran people. This book illustrates how this is happening and conclusively demonstrates that by respecting transparency and with dogged perseverance, a nonviolent public leader can become an influential leader, even in times of the most savage repression and marginalization. Archbishop Romero accomplished precisely that through determination, courage, and honing his public skills, while simultaneously conducting himself in deeply spiritual ways.

Is it possible to capture, in brief, the fundamental changes that affected the role of religion within modern Western society? For a long time, many scholars would have answered that question in the positive; most of them would certainly have counted increasingly tolerant attitudes towards forms of religion that were once been regarded as unacceptable, as being one of those central features. In the light of the current revision of the established 'truths' concerning modern religion, it is now possible to once again address the wide-spread belief that modernity meant the gradual victory of more 'liberal' religious attitudes without running the risk of being accused of only dealing with commonplaces. Was modernity only dominated by growing tolerance? And if so, what were the forces that prompted that development? What was the nature of that sentiment? This book approaches these questions by studying the popular Protestant British view of John Henry Newman between the time of his secession 1845 and his death in 1890. It draws on a wide range of sources with a particular focus on the newspaper and periodical press. It argues that changes in popular attitudes were integral parts of the internecine religious disputes of, above all, the 1850s and 1860s. A tolerant discourse came henceforth to live side by side with traditional Protestant rhetoric. Nevertheless, and in spite of expanding horizons, accepting attitudes became an effective vehicle for expressing a sense of Protestant superiority.

Twenty-nine years old, newly married, and fresh from the Society of Jesus, where he had spent ten years as a novice and scholastic, Bob Kaiser was picked for one of the most exciting jobs in journalism of his era: Time's reporter at the Second Vatican Council. In the words of Michael Novak: "No reporter knew more about the Council; had talked with more of the personalities, prominent or minor; had more sources of information to tap. Sunday evening dinner parties at his apartment became a rendezvous of stimulating and informed persons. In the English-speaking world, at least, perhaps no source was to have quite the catalytic effect as Time on opinion outside the Council and even to an extent within it." Much of inner story of the Council-its personalities, machinations, maneuverings between progressive forces and the old guard-was told in Bob Kaiser's bestseller of the early sixties Pope, Council, and World. This is a different story, one so raw and personal that it could only be told some forty years later in a very different church and by a much matured Bob Kaiser. The heart of the story is how Bob's wife was seduced by his friend, the Jesuit priest Malachy Martin, and how Martin ("a man who could make people laugh in seven languages)" persuaded Kaiser's other clerical friends (including notable bishops and prominent theologians) to send him to a sanitorium. The story is at once hilarious (Martin was one of the great clerical con men of all time) and sobering. The "clerical error"--the refusal to see what Martin was up to--was as much Kaiser's as that of his older clerical friends who defended their fellow priest simply because he was a member of the club. Their naivete and their blindness only mirrors the church's inability to deal realistically with any issue touched by sex: birth control, remarriage after divorce, priestly celibacy, clerical child abuse, or the ordination of women. Bob Kaiser did eventually grow up. He knows the official church has a long way to go.

This is a study of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI) between 1925 and 1943, the organisation of Catholic Action for the university sector. The FUCI is highly significant to the study of Catholic politics and intellectual ideas, as a large proportion of the future Christian Democrats who ruled the country after World War II were formed within the ranks of the federation. In broader terms, this is a contribution to the historiography of Fascist Italy and of Catholic politics and mentalities in Europe in the mid- twentieth century. It sets out to prove the fundamental ideological, political, social and cultural influences of Catholicism on the making of modern Italy and how it was inextricably linked to more secular forces in the shaping of the nation and the challenges faced by an emerging mass society. Furthermore, the book explores the influence exercised by Catholicism on European attitudes towards modernisation and modernity, and how Catholicism has often led the way in the search for a religious alternative modernity that could countervail the perceived deleterious effects of the Western liberal version of modernity.

From a Church that once enjoyed devotional loyalty, political influence, and institutional power unrivaled in Europe, the Catholic Church in Ireland now faces collapse. Devastated by a series of reports on clerical sexual abuse, challenged publicly during several political battles, and painfully aware of plunging Mass attendance, the Irish Church today is confronted with the loss of its institutional legitimacy. This study is the first international and interdisciplinary attempt to consider the scope of the problem, analyze issues that are crucial to the Irish context, and identify signs of both resilience and renewal. In addition to an overview of the current status and future directions of Irish Catholicism, The Catholic Church in Ireland Today examines specific issues such as growing secularism, the changing image of Irish bishops, generational divides, Catholic migrants to Ireland, the abuse crisis and responses in Ireland and the United States, Irish missionaries, the political role of Irish priests, the 2012 Dublin Eucharistic Congress, and contemplative strands in Irish identity. This book identifies the key issues that students of Irish society and others interested in Catholic culture must examine in order to understand the changing roles of religion in the contemporary world.