In the monthly event designed for students seeking to learn more about faith and religion in an inviting social environment, Kenneth Himes, O.F.M., raised questions regarding religion and public life. He spoke to the question of ethics and religious faith and its effect on the public and political spheres. / with Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M. / Hillside Cafe

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This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between the religious and the secular as it pertains to Australian Catholics. The main line of enquiry takes the form of investigating the proposition that sociological approaches to religion that are based on the assumption of secular-religious dualism cannot adequately account for the way practising Australian Catholics live and hold their faith. The central theoretical concern of the thesis relates to the sociological construction of the religious and the secular as derived from a “this world-other world” dichotomy. The classical sociological argument that rationalism underpins the binary distinction between “this world” and the “other world” is challenged in terms of its applicability to Catholicism. Any assumption that a religious sensibility precludes rationality is also challenged. The thesis adopts the perspective of symbolic rationality which is regarded as inclusive of instrumental rationality. From this perspective, there is exploration of the extent to which the Catholic incarnational symbol system can accommodate both this-worldly and other-worldly tendencies. More specifically, there is examination of the proposition that a sacramental sensibility can be associated with the co-existence of apparent opposites – faith / reason, grace / nature, transcendence / immanence. The thesis propositions are tested by analysis of data from the 1996 Catholic Church Life Survey and the 2001 National Church Life Survey. The findings indicate that, for Australian Catholics, orthodoxy of belief is compatible with a sense of paradox and contextuality. Australian Catholics are found to have a tendency to engage humanity in both its “grace” and its “sin”. There is no evidence to support any hypothesis of mutual exclusiveness between Catholic religious commitment and openness to the wider “secular” society. Indeed, it is found that Catholic openness to the “secular” appears to be associated with openness to the “Other” – a central element of the “Catholic ethic”. Catholicism is presented as an organic religion that has the capacity to engage the multiplicities of the socio-cultural environment. Moreover, it is argued that the organic nature of Catholic engagement in secular society can be inclusive of engagement at the structural level of society. Overall, it is argued that many practising Australian Catholics have the ability to hold apparent opposites together and that the classical sociological construction of the religious and the secular in terms of dichotomy does not fit the reality of their lived faith. The thesis concludes that, in the case of Australian Catholics, there is an overarching organic relationship between the religious and the secular that can be inclusive of instrumental relationships on the institutional level.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1946. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 403-425).

The subject of this study is the attempt to establish a press amid the Irish immigrants in mid-Victorian England. There had long been a notable Irish contribution to English journalism, and the first Irish papers to be printed in England had been founded soon after the Act of Union. The press of the 1860s was to be different, however. Earlier papers had been aimed at a small, political elite but the massive immigration following the Famine meant that there was now, potentially, a large reading public. It was a public which was defined to a great extent by two ideas, nationality and religion-in the parlance of the time, faith and fatherland. These two elements crucially shaped the responses of both the migrants and of the wider English society to each other. Where Irish life in England was organised, it was Catholic and the secular, nationalist journalists of this study, wrote for a community and within a social organisation which was confessional. They were also operating at this time, against a political background of increasing turbulence-which led as the decade progressed, to rebellion and repression and which saw both the last public execution in Britain and the deaths of civilians on the streets of London. The central question for the press of the migrants was how to produce and sustain newspapers in a hostile political environment, which were at the same time secular but operated within a system of distribution particularly sensitive to clerical control.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Glasgow, 2004. / Electronic thesis available via Glasgow University DSpace service. Includes bibliographical references.

This event is a part of an ongoing conversation series in which women's issues and concerns are addressed in regards to religion and the church. Colleen Griffith acknowledged women's presence in the church as a gift, challenge and necessity, while offering reflections on women and Catholicism today. The spiritual lives of women, women in theology and ministry and the basis for women's hope were also addressed. / with Colleen Griffith, Faculty Director of Spirituality Studies, IREPM / Fulton 511

with Prof. John McGreevy, University of Notre Dame / McGuinn Hall 121

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