This book explores the political dimension of Pope Francis' theology from a variety of perspectives and makes a unique contribution to the ongoing historiography of his pontificate. It defines the concept of political theology when applied to Pope Francis' discourse and reflects on the portrayal of him as the voice of Latin America, a great reformer and a revolutionary. The chapters offer a thorough investigation of core texts and key moments in Pope Francis' papacy (2013-), focusing in particular on their relation to canon theory, liberation theology, the rise of populism, and gender issues. As well as documenting some of the continuities between the ideas of Pope Francis and his predecessor Benedict XVI, the author asks what the Argentinian pontiff has brought from Latin America and considers the Latin American dimension to what has become known as the 'Francis effect'. Overall, the book demonstrates how the Pope's words and actions constitute a powerful political theology disseminated from a unique religious and institutional position. It will be of interest to scholars of theology, religion, and politics, particularly those with a focus on world Catholicism, political theology, and church history.

This collection attends to western women's struggles within Roman Catholicism by examining how women throughout the centuries have attempted to reconcile their unruliness with their Catholic backgrounds or conversions.

This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival materials and a remarkable set of eighty interviews to place Catholic sisters and nuns at the heart of the turbulent 1960s, integrating their story of social change into a larger British and international one. Shedding new light on how religious bodies engaged in modernisation, it addresses themes such as the Modern Girl and youth culture, '1968', generational discourse, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women's movement. Women religious were at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Church's movement of adaptation and renewal towards the world. This volume tells their stories in their own words. -- .

British Catholics and Fascism is a comprehensive study of the way in which British Catholic communities reacted to fascism both at home and abroad. Drawing on substantial primary research, Tom Villis sheds new light on religious identity and political extremism in early twentieth-century Britain. He examines the careers and thought of numerous prominent Catholic writers and cultural commentators as well as the role of the Catholic press more generally, the views of the hierarchy and the overtures which the British Union of Fascists made to the Catholic communities. Debates about fascism became symbolic of the wider difficulties in articulating a religious political critique in an increasingly secular political culture. For many Catholics, pro-fascism became a way of expressing their own distinct political and social identity in a society which largely held different views.

This volume explores the critical reactions and dissenting activism generated in the summer of 1968 when Pope Paul VI promulgated his much-anticipated and hugely divisive encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which banned the use of 'artificial contraception' by Catholics. Through comparative case studies of fourteen different European countries, it offers a wealth of new data about the lived religious beliefs and practices of ordinary people - as well as theologians interrogating 'traditional teachings' - in areas relating to love, marriage, family life, gender roles and marital intimacy. Key themes include the role of medical experts, the media, the strategies of progressive Catholic clergy and laity, and the critical part played by hugely differing Church-State relations. In demonstrating the Catholic Church's important (and overlooked) contribution to the refashioning of the sexual landscape of post-war Europe, it makes a critical intervention into a growing historiography exploring the 1960s and offers a close interrogation of one strand of religious change in this tumultuous decade.

The Two Babylons was an anti-Catholic religious pamphlet produced initially by the Scottish theologian and Protestant Presbyterian Alexander Hislop in 1853. It was later expanded in 1858 and finally published as a book in 1919. Its central theme is its allegation that the Roman Catholic Church is a veiled continuation of the pagan religion of Babylon, the veiled paganism being the product of a millennia old conspiracy.

Anti-Catholicism forms part of the dynamics to Northern Ireland's conflict and is critical to the self-defining identity of certain Protestants. However, anti-Catholicism is as much a sociology process as a theological dispute. It was given a Scriptural underpinning in the history of Protestant-Catholic relations in Ireland, and wider British-Irish relations, in order to reinforce social divisions between the religious communities and to offer a deterministic belief system to justify them. The book examines the socio-economic and political processes that have led to theology being used in social closure and stratification between the seventeenth century and the present day.

TIME Magazine's Person of the Year: Pope Francis
Learn about the First Jesuit Pope from America's Leading Jesuit Publisher""Pope Francis" by Chris Lowney is that rare and splendid work that leaves you keenly excited and spiritually moved. The writing is lucid, vivid, inviting, and rich. It's a major achievement. I strongly recommend it to any Christian in a leadership role."
- Joseph Tetlow, SJFrom choosing to live in a simple apartment instead of the papal palace to washing the feet of men and women in a youth detention center, Pope Francis's actions contradict behaviors expected of a modern leader. Chris Lowney, a former Jesuit seminarian turned Managing Director for JP Morgan & Co., shows how the pope's words and deeds reveal spiritual principles that have prepared him to lead the Church and influence our world--a rapidly-changing world that requires leaders who value the human need for love, inspiration, and meaning.
Drawing on interviews with people who knew him as Father Jorge Bergoglio, SJ, Lowney challenges assumptions about what it takes to be a great leader. In so doing, he reveals the "other-centered" leadership style of a man whose passion is to be with people rather than set apart. Lowney offers a stirring vision of leadership to which we can all aspire in our communities, churches, companies, and families.

'Time and again she pierces the veil of complacency and brings the reader face to face with the deepest levels of existence.' - Church Times

'At the twilight of a century whose accelerated history has led to the rise and fall of so many idols, this book increasingly appears like a message from eternity.' - Gustave Thibon

'One of the most profound religious thinkers of modern times.' - The Twentieth Century, 1961

'We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.' - T. S. Eliot

'The light Simone shines makes everything seem, at once, reasurringly recognizable and so luminous as to be heavenly.' - Malcom Muggeridge

'In France she is ranked with Pascal by some, condemned as a dangerous heretic by others, and recognized as a genius by all.' - New York Times Book Review

'The best spiritual writer of this century ... she said it was her vocation to stand at the intersection of Christians and non-Christians. She thus becomes the patron saint of all "outsiders".' - André Gide

Catholic polemical works, and their portrayal of Protestants in print in particular, are the central focus of this work. In contrast with Germany, French Catholics used printing effectively and agressively to promote the Catholic cause. In seeking to explain why France remained a Catholic country, the French Catholic response must be taken into account. Rather than confront the Reformation on its own terms, the Catholic reaction concentrated on discrediting the Protestant cause in the eyes of the Catholic majority. This book aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over the nature of the French Wars of Religion, to explain why they were so violent and why they engaged the loyalities of such a large portion of the population. This study also provides an example of the successful defence of catholicism developed independently and in advance of Tridentine reform which is of wider significance for the history of the Reformation in Europe.

Women, Reform, and Resistance documents the challenges faced by Irish women from 1850 to 1950 and their complex reactions. By investigating prisons, and hospitals; interrogating court records and memoirs; and exploring the 'imaginative resistance' women expressed through folk tales; authors illuminate previously obscured experiences of Irish women.

This book introduces Catholic social teaching (CST) and its teaching on the common good to the reader and applies them in the realm of public health to critically analyze the major global issues of COVID-19 that undermine public interest. It uses the sociotheological approach that combines the moral principles of CST and the holistic analysis of modern sociology and also utilizes the secondary literature as the main source of textual data. Specifically, it investigates the corporate moral irresponsibility and some unethical business practices of Big Pharma in the sale and distribution of its anti-COVID vaccines and medicines, the injustice in the inequitable global vaccine distribution, the weakening of the United States Congress's legislative regulation against the pharmaceutical industry's overpricing and profiteering, the inadequacy of the World Health Organization's (WHO) law enforcement system against corruption, and the lack of social monitoring in the current public health surveillance system to safeguard the public good from corporate fraud and white-collar crime. This book highlights the contribution of sociology in providing the empirical foundation of CST's moral analysis and in crafting appropriate Catholic social action during the pandemic. It is hoped that through this book, secular scholars, social scientists, religious leaders, moral theologians, religious educators, and Catholic lay leaders would be more appreciative of the sociotheological approach to understanding religion and COVID-19. "This book brings into dialogue two bodies of literature: documents of Catholic social teaching, and modern sociology and its core thinkers and texts...The author does especially well to describe how taking 'the sociotheological turn'...will benefit the credibility and dissemination of Catholic social thought." - Rev. Fr. Thomas Massaro, S.J., Professor of Moral Theology, Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, Berkeley, California.