In 2005, 58,000 adults and children died in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa from AIDS-related illnesses (UNAIDS 2005). Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA and the co-chair of the Global HIV Prevention Working Group, has been quoted by UNAIDS as saying: We have a critical window of opportunity over the next 10 years to dramatically slow the rate of new infections, and ultimately reverse the epidemic in the MENA region (UNAIDS 2007a). The purpose of this project is to examine a relatively understudied factor of HIV/AIDS transmission in the region, low levels of condom use. This study aims to determine if there is a relationship between the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East and North Africa and the low prevalence of condom usage across the region. It is this studys hypothesis that the majority of the infections in the region are being transmitted through sexual contact either heterosexual or men having sex with men -- and therefore, the prevalence rate of condom use bears particular weight on how people are becoming infected. It is the goal of this study to serve as a stepping stone towards further investigations into other underlying aspects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. If this study is successful in linking a low frequency of condom use to the spread of HIV/AIDS, critical insight will be provided into an additional element that needs to be addressed in order to increase the effectiveness of prevention and educational measures. Several different public use data sets will be used to show the relationship between HIV/AIDS prevalence, condom use, and religiosity through the creation of linear regression models. The regression models for this study were in the expected directions to support the hypothesis; however they are not statistically significant at the p < 0.05 level of significance. Due to the limited availability of data for religiosity, religion was used for comparative purposes. There does not appear to be a significant relationship between religiosity/religion and condom use or between condom use and HIV/AIDS prevalence. While the initial hypothesis of this study stated that it is religiosity, not religion, which was the fundamental social cause of HIV/AIDS in this region, it seems that neither measure of Islam yield statistically significant results. Therefore, strong confirmation of the theoretical model is not possible at this time, but there is evidence to support that the model is correct, just not statistically significant. The results tend to be in the direction expected, and there are strong qualitative reasons that religion, especially religiosity, is important, even if it cannot be statistically demonstrated in this study. Qualitatively the model still makes a strong argument. It has been previously argued that religion in general is a protective factor against HIV/AIDS, but this does not seem to be the case for Islam. This study indicates that

This thesis argues that in crafting a nuanced stance on 2008 Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama's "pro-choice" position, and by bringing to attention other key issues in his platform which coincided with important ethical concerns of Catholic thought, Pittsburgh Catholics for Obama (PCO) made various interventions into a public sphere where positions of progressive Catholics had not been prominently featured during the last decade. In order to understand the phenomenon of PCO both within and beyond its immediate political contexts, this project pursues three frames of inquiry which correspond to the thesis chapters. The first chapter situates PCO within the context of the theoretical issues raised by the debates that have ensued in the last thirty years on the question of religion and the public sphere, and secularism. The second offers a socio-historical perspective that places PCO within the post-Vatican II history of American Catholic political participation, thought and activism. Finally, the third chapter undertakes an ethnographic account of PCO's activism in order to provide a description and analysis of the group's engagement with the public sphere. The thesis shows that PCO positioned itself at the edge between a separatist Catholic culture and a political culture of the "common good" that seeks alliances and compromises with other political and cultural groups with whom it can share Catholic-informed but not restrictive principles of Catholic social teaching. By bringing together refined methods of grassroots activism in combination with the crafting of thoughtful public arguments that amplify particular tenants of Catholic social teaching, PCO carved out a space in the public sphere where its members could support a "pro-choice" presidential candidate while remaining loyal to Catholic ethical traditions. This thesis contributes to present-day scholarly discussions on the tension between exclusivist secularism and public religions in American political discourse. It analyzes the changing reality of the recent political positions of American Catholics from "single-issue voting" (abortion) to a search for common ground. Furthermore, it contributes to the study of the conflicted relationship between religion and politics as it has taken place in the American public sphere during last decade.

Historically, the philosophical literature on the ontological argument has primarily been concerned with the assessment of the argument in terms of its validity or lack thereof. Rarely have the logical foundations of validity itself been investigated in their relation to the argument. My thesis seeks to remedy this omission by investigating the correlation between changing conceptions of logic and ontological argumentation. To do so, I discuss the conceptions of logic employed by three of the most notable modern expositors of the ontological argument: Leibniz, Kant and Frege. I characterize their conceptions of logic in terms of formality and modality and subsequently relate these characterizations to their respective critiques of the ontological argument, establishing that an important correlation exists between ones conception of logic and ones assessment of ontological argumentation. In conclusion, I argue for the importance of understanding ontological argumentation not only in terms of its validity within a given conception of logic, but also in terms of the validity of the conception of logic itself.

The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) traces its origin to the establishment of Saint Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr Parish, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1897, under the leadership of the Rev. Francis Hodur. It is the only surviving institution to emerge from Independentism (a religious movement among immigrant Catholics in the United States and Canada around the turn of the twentieth century who moved away from the Roman Catholic Church in America and formed and joined separate, yet still self-described Catholic, religious institutions) and as such is the only extant schism of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The founding of the PNCC and its parishes reflects widespread conflicts in immigrant communities, not only between the Irish-dominated hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and non-Irish immigrant Roman Catholic laypeople, but also among members of individual Roman Catholic parishes. The Roman Catholic parish was a place where immigrants struggled not only with priests and bishops, but also with each other over church property ownership and their role in church governance. PNCC recruiters were able to gain converts from Roman Catholicism by appealing to their new sense of Polish nationalism, which many immigrants developed in the United States. Polish nationalist feelings also motivated many Roman Catholics to break away from Roman Catholic parishes and form independent Catholic churches, many of which later joined the PNCC. Although many Polish immigrants came to equate their Polish identity with their Catholic identity, PNCC recruiters were able to convince many Roman Catholics that the PNCC was not only a legitimate Catholic church, but also more Catholic than the Roman Catholic Church itself. The PNCC appealed to immigrants sense of nationalism and Catholicism to convince Roman Catholics and members of independent Catholic churches to join the PNCC at a time when immigrants thoughts turned from returning home to staying in the United States.

SHARED VISIONS IN SHARED SPACE: LATINO AND EURO-AMERICAN IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION AT ST. REGIS CATHOLIC CHURCH David Givens, MA University of Pittsburgh, 2010 Throughout the history of the United States, the religious beliefs, traditions, and organizations of immigrant groups have often played important roles in establishing and redefining personal, interpersonal, and cultural identities. In contemporary society, a particularly relevant example of how religion influences processes of identity transformation can be seen within Latino communities in America. As Latinos now make up one third of all Catholics in America (Stevens-Arroyo 2008, 59), American Catholics of all racial and ethnic backgrounds increasingly find themselves confronted with what it means to be Catholic in relation to both religious and ethnic identity. This is the situation confronting church leaders at St. Regis Catholic Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Similar to many other parishes in the United States, St. Regis faces the difficult task of serving several distinct ethnic groups within the congregation in this case, predominantly older Italian-American parishioners and parishioners of Central and South American descent with unique religious heritages and expectations. Interacting in this shared religious space, however, has caused subtle but significant changes in parishioners perceptions of the church community and their place within it. The experiences and perceptions of Latino and non-Latino Catholics in Pittsburgh suggest that sociological forces other than cultural retention or assimilation may be possible within parishes comprised of multiple ethnic groups. I demonstrate that the current, predominating model of cultural retention is not an accurate description of the internal social dynamics and cultural transformation that is occurring at St. Regis; the cultural retention model cannot accommodate parishioners inclusion and expansion of diverse national holidays, the creative reimagining of traditions and festival Masses, or a pervasive sense of confusion surrounding formerly stable community linguistic identifiers and stereotypes. I offer the concept of localized transculturation as an alternative lens through which to view these cultural negotiations, and I support this argument by highlighting the St. Regis communitys interwoven use of three languages, the incorporation of culturally different foods at community meals, and similar descriptions of community and a sense of belonging articulated by wide cross-sections of the congregation. This paper concludes by addressing possible theoretical and methodological challenges to these conclusions.

This paper is an ethnographic case study of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based chiropractor Daniel Pompas use of Christianity to market his company, Pompa Health Solutions. In addition to interviews and participant observation, this paper employs narrative ethnography to bridge the gap between Pompas rhetoric and the circumstances in which he shares it. This paper explores his use of Christian rhetoric to sell his services, legitimize his practice, and establish a trusting relationship with his patients. Pompa uses biblical references, his own illness/conversion narrative, and an evangelical worldview to promote his company to a Christian audience. In interactions with patients and advertisements, Pompa makes explicit and implicit Christian references in relation to current cultural issues (e.g. swine flu, vaccines, and weight loss) as a means of marketing. Pompa promotes his company by using the existing evangelical brand and adjusts his message to address the concerns of his audience. I argue that he positions himself as a supplement to evangelicalism as a means for his patients to practice their faith, and in doing so effectively attracts and maintains his audience. I conclude that Pompa successfully markets his secular services by using the evangelical brand. While this is a study of only one person, his affiliation with many like-minded evangelical entrepreneurs and his efforts to spread these marketing methods to other entrepreneurs indicates that more scholarship is warranted to determine the implications of this approach on business and evangelicalism.

The Victorian era in the United States saw significant changes in the social, domestic and religious roles of women. This period, from shortly after the Civil War until the First World War, marked a shift for women from traditional middle-class female responsibilities to more domestically challenging ones. This study examines late Victorian Protestant church community cookbooks as moral and cultural guides written by women for women, documenting the domestic roles and Christian practices of women in the years before and after the turn of the twentieth century. This paper first defines the American Victorian period. It considers the relationship between women and Protestant Christianity during the era in relation to female social roles. It then examines church community cookbooks as uniquely viable and valuable historical and autobiographical sources through which to better understand Christian domestic practice in Victorian America. Protestant Victorian female ideals and gendered piety reveal the role of women as moral matriarchs, and how men factored into the domestic equation during the period. Eleven American Protestant Christian cookbooks published from 1881 to 1913 serve as case studies throughout. These texts illuminate the late Victorian period through the words and recipes of the women who wrote them. They also present recipes for food and life in broader terms as domestic and religious guides, and advertisements from the texts offer additional information about the connection between domesticity and religion during the era. This argument concludes with an analysis of the lasting influences of the church community cookbooks on domestic manuals through the mid-twentieth century, reflecting on the relevance of the texts to the generations of women who have shared them.

This essay is a project aimed primarily at mapping certain philosophical and theological ontologies onto psychology; in particular, existential psychology. The existential psychology is strongly inspired by Sartre, and the ontologies which are investigated are those of the pre-Socratic Parmenides, Sartre himself, the Neoplatonist Plotinus, and early Christian representations of the relationship between the divine and human natures of Christ as well as the persons of the Trinity. Early (primarily Eastern) Christian doctrines of deification are also treated as significant expressions of a similar, latent existential psychology. The nature of this psychology, brought out by Sartre, is a reaction to tension between conscious and non-conscious being. Consciousness reveals that being can be other to itself: it is the hole in the heart of being, as Sartre calls it. I argue that Parmenides regards being as whole and unified in part because he does not or can not find a place for the gap in being which is the nothingness of consciousness. For similar reasons, both Plotinus and Sartre describe conscious being as a denigration of sorts in being. Because of the othering of being to itself in the form of human consciousness, man is always other to himself, and can never fully be what he aims to be. Sartre describes this failed effort as the attempt to become self-caused, that which can give itself its own essence. It is suggested that Sartres description of non-conscious being as well as Plotinus description of the One sometimes appear to contradict themselves insofar as they imply self-causation within non-conscious being, and I argue that this is due to the inability or refusal of either to imagine consciousness as a failed project. Similarly, I argue that the early Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the Christian church as well as some early Christian conceptions of deification (particularly Eastern conceptions) can be seen as representative of attempts to reconcile conscious being with non-conscious being; either in the form of the self-cause or in something approaching it.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1913. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [98]-101).

Thesis--Dropsie College.