Church History and Religious Culture最新文献

In Turkey, the Roman Catholic Church faces an uncertain future as it lacks official recognition of its legal status. Thus, the survival of the small parishes signifies the survival of the Catholic Church in contemporary Turkey. This article focuses on the perseverance of the multicultural Roman Catholic community of Our Lady of Lourdes (Notre Dame de Lourdes) of Göztepe (in Izmir) after the arrival of Father Gabriel Ferone in 2008. The revival of Our Lady of Lourdes resulted from people of different backgrounds (i.e., Europeans, African students, Turks) moving to Izmir and joining this parish. The paper also explores the change in the demography of the parish during its transformation throughout the years.

Through an examination of the Nonconformist reception of Richard Baxter, this essay provides a window into theological transition within early modern Protestantism. I argue that, although Baxter excelled in knowledge of scholastic theology, integrated scholastic theology into his practical writings, and produced a great scholastic system of theology—the Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681)—over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scholastic and philosophical aspects within Baxter’s corpus were ignored, downplayed, and even excised by Nonconformists who otherwise strongly sympathized with his writings. The modern focus on Baxter’s practical works and neglect of Baxter’s scholastic theology is due in large part to this later reception. The story of Baxter’s reception is, moreover, illustrative of a general shift in philosophical and theological orientation in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nonconformity.

Recent scholarship has sought to reinterpret the French biblical scholar Richard Simon, viewing him less as the unwitting participant in an agenda of radical secularisation, and more as the culmination of centuries of humanistic learning. This article repositions this rehabilitated Simon within the contested theological landscape of late seventeenth century French Catholicism. Drawing upon Simon’s exchanges with the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld and the Jesuit Dominique Bouhours concerning the translation of the New Testament into French, it argues that Simon’s critical approach to scripture can be seen as—and Simon himself defined it as—representative of a tiers parti. This tiers parti stood outside of the structural divisions within seventeenth century Catholicism between Jansenists and Molinists, between advocates of efficacious and sufficient grace. It deployed historical criticism to bolster the authority of Tradition, to undermine rational and speculative theology, and to mollify intra-confessional division.

The charism of care inspired the foundation of various medieval religious orders, the Order of St John of Jerusalem being the most renowned of these. This article uses a case study of a female Hospitaller convent in Bargota in the kingdom of Navarre, to examine to what extent the charism of hospitality influenced the Order’s decision-making. By identifying the factors lying behind the foundation of the convent in the early fourteenth century and its dissolution a century later, it contributes to the discussion on the relevance of female Hospitaller monasticism in the Late Middle Ages and argues that the Order sustained the convent as long as the women’s care-worthiness outweighed the burden of cura monialium.