This study examines the communication habits of the pilgrim Church with focus upon Vatican documents on mass media and social communication. Attention is given to the historical context of Vatican Councils I and II. As the Church engaged modernity, it shifted ecclesial organization from closed to become open. This study documents the importance of sociology, especially communication theory and cybernetics for Catholicism today. / It is argued that the pivotal event in the Roman Catholic Church's self-exploration for self-awareness and realization was the Second Vatican Council. At that Council, the Church re-examined itself and its own identity to come to grips with the modern world. The teachings of the Council were concerned mainly with the pastoral dimension of the Church and its self-realization. Reflexivity is an important theme of this study as it speaks about understanding the very identity of the modern Church. It is explained that the process of communication within the Roman Catholic Church is itself linked to this insight of reflexivity. / The first chapter shows that behind the pilgrim Church lies an emerging vision of the threefold offices of priest, prophet, and king. The history behind the Roman Catholic Church's transition from the First to the Second Vatican Council is provided. John Henry Cardinal Newman influenced nineteenth-century Catholic theology with his own study of the threefold office. In chapter four we return to the threefold office and examine the contribution of John Paul II. It includes an analysis of how the politics of the magisterium shapes Catholic social teaching. Chapter two examines the text and context of the Second Vatican Council's pastoral decree "Inter Mirifica". Chapter three provides a documented history of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communication and its teachings. Chapter five develops major tenets of a critical analysis of the communication of the post-Vatican II Church: attention is given to the discursive aspects of religious authority, argumentation, bureaucratization, and market culture. Chapter six takes a step towards examining the pragmatics of contemporary Vatican teaching. / This study concludes that there are three basic sociological and theological aspects of the pilgrim Church. These include a ritual approach to communication, the generational experience of Catholics and their respective attitudes toward Church teaching, and the important link in the faith's praxis between reflexivity and forming habits of communication.

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This qualitative case study begins with the reasoning that a central concern and mission of the Catholic Church is social justice. Catholic schools, as institutions of the Church, are intentional in responding to this central concern and mission. This study attempted to explore how schools fulfill this mission, and in so doing, how students experience three identified principles of Catholic social teaching. This qualitative case study suggests that the school's response to mission will be found in the students' experience. This qualitative case study conducted a thorough review of the literature and research pertaining to Catholic social teaching, the history and purpose of inner city Catholic schools, and the Catholic school as a community. The researcher employed the use of observations, focus group interviews, and document review to investigate the research question: How do students in an inner city Catholic elementary school experience three essential principles of Catholic social teaching: Life and dignity of the person; Call to family, community, and participation; and Preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable? The methodology for this study was designed as socially committed research, to provide a way of knowing for both researcher and participants.

According to the comparison made, one may find that Xu did not intend to propose any argument deviated from the official positions. Although probably due to the particular situation of China at that time he actually adopted some ideas or positions which the official teachings of the Catholic Church had not yet accepted or mentioned, some of his ideas are actually quite similar to the positions adopted by the Catholic Church later. In other words, some of Xu's adjustments might be merely a little ahead of his time and are arguably in line with the spirit of Vatican II in the long run. This implies that the effort of inculturation made by the local church is not necessarily a challenge to the Papal authority or a departure from the official position of Vatican. On the contrary, inculturation can enrich the Catholic tradition and demonstrate the Catholicity of the Christian religion. / Based on a case study of the Catholic thought of Xu Zongze (1886--1947), a Jesuit and prolific Chinese theologian, this thesis attempts to demonstrate how Chinese Catholic scholars defended their religion in response to the challenges and issues facing Catholicism in modern China. Through making references to the models proposed by major theorist of contextual theology, this thesis also aims at arguing that "inculturation" concerns not only the encounter of cultures or philosophical ideas, but also the social, economic and political issues of a particular society. / Many research projects have been devoted to the "inculturation", "indigenization", "contextualization" or "localization" of Christianity in China. However, many of these basic terms, including "inculturation" particularly, are not well defined. Besides, among the academic studies of history of Catholicism in China, the history of Catholic thought of the Chinese Catholics in republican China (1911--1949) is probably one of the least studied areas. / The documents left by Xu Zongze indicates that he responded to various historical events taking place in modern China, such as woman liberation, labour movement, anti-Christian movement and anti-Japanese war. In all these cases, Xu Zongze attempted to give his responses, which assumed the Catholic doctrinal tradition as the basis, to defend the Catholic official positions. This can be shown through analyzing Xu's thought against the background of the historical development of Catholic Social Teachings. The case of Xu Zongze indicates that the inculturation of Catholicism involves inevitably the tension between the authority of Vatican and the adjustment made by the local church. It is because Vatican, which tends to focus on preserving the Catholic identity and the Papal authority, often emphasizes the continuity and consistency with the Catholic tradition. This tendency is particularly clear before Vatican II. / 李麗麗. / Adviser: Pan-Chiu Lai. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-240). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Li Lili.

本文嘗試分析馬克斯·舍勒在現象學視野之下對於天主教神學和社會思想的詮釋來探索天主教會在資本主義和世界大戰等現代性文化的壓力之下真正有效的自我更新方式。舍勒運用現象學的思維方法，通過強調經驗的自身性特徵，論述發生式的意義生成和反應-對抗式的意義生成之間的差別，恢復了天主教在批判精神和確證精神之間的平衡，這與新經院體系、圖賓根天主教學派、新托馬斯主義等流派在純然適應或純然對抗的極端思維中理解天主教會與現代社會關係的做法非常不同，也幫助天主教會克服了"保守-激進"的二元論思維的束縛。具體而言，本文將從以下四個方面論述舍勒的天主教思想：1）從知識社會學的角度分析舍勒對宗教更新的本質、宗教知識的文化學特徵以及宗教世界觀的情感結構的論述，總結出公教精神以自身性的原初性思維對抗實證性思維的過程，以及天主教的整體性文化特徵和貴族主義的情感基調；2）從政治現象學的角度分析舍勒的基督教民主、基督教社會主義、基督教自由等理念，尤其是他以態度民主代替情緒民主、以先知性論述社會主義的原始精神、以意志自由和能力自由的區分來論述宗教自由絶對意義的做法，從而用天主教的宗教視角審視了現代政治文化的弊端；3）從社會學的角度分析舍勒以共感而不是以同情為基礎的宗教集體主義，並將之作為天主教在一戰之後乃至於整個現代社會中帶有尖銳批判性的社會學貢獻，並依此建構天主教會戰後理想的和平理念和社會建設的任務；4）從倫理學的角度分析舍勒如何從時常被鄙棄的情感性、身體性等直觀生命經驗中找出先驗的價值奠基力量，並以之作為與在禁慾和縱慾的極端力量牽引之下的現代資本主義倫理殊為不同的自然倫理學的基礎。最後，本文還將比較舍勒與二十世紀中期的天主教新神學運動和梵二神學的論述，指出舍勒的現象學方法中所體現出來的現實主義和人類學轉向，是與天主教神學從梵一會議到梵二會議的歷史演變邏輯一致的，因而會為天主教會未來的發展帶來更多潛在的借鑒意義。 / This thesis mainly focuses on how German philosopher Max Scheler applied his special phenomenological perspective to penetrate into the self-renewal of the Catholic Church and its social teachings under modern society context, including capitalism and World War etc. Scheler, who emphasized the self-given and realistic characters of experience, distinguished the original-given mode from the counter-react mode in the process of constructing meanings, and rehabilitated the balance of introspective self-criticism and extrovertly instructive confirming of catholic spirit. This phenomenological perspective of Scheler is regarded as a sharp distinction from other Catholic schools like the Catholic Tübingen School, the Scholasticism in the 19th century and later, the Neo-Thomism, as their understandings of the self-renewal of the Catholic Church were somehow guided under the extremism-oriented romantic idealism or authoritarian ideology. To some sense, Scheler’s method actually gave an end to the ongoing historical debate of the "conservatism-liberalism" or "nominalism-realism" dualism, and widened the horizon to approach the understating of real "one": ecumenism. For details, this thesis will analyze Scheler’s phenomenological method in understanding the self-renewal of the Catholic Church with four sections: 1 ) from the dimension of sociology of knowledge, an analysis of Scheler’s interpretation of the essence of the evolution of religious knowledge, its social cultural characters and "its inherent emotional structure as well; an comparing study of religious self-givenness with positivism, and also an comparing study of Ganzheit knowledge and Sammlung knowledge, with which the Christian aristocratism will be drawn and discussed; 2) from the dimension of political phenomenology, an analysis of Scheler’s conceptions of Christian democracy, Christian socialism and Christian freedom, from which the difference with electoral democracy, Marxist socialism, and left-wing liberalism and the special religious narratives of the Catholic Church in political fields will be given; 3) from the dimension of sociology, an analysis of Scheler’s religious collectivism on the basis of empathy rather than sympathy, this kind of collectivism was saturated with phenomenological intentional theory and was carried forward in the proposing the after-WWI re-construction tasks for the Catholic Church by Scheler; 4) from the dimension of ethics, an analysis of Scheler’s percipient contentions on the a-priori ethical value of some long-disdained conception, like body and emotion, by giving a laudatory reconsideration to which, Scheler criticized asceticism or the erotic-individualism-oriented capitalistic ethics. In total, Scheler concentrated the unique value of the Catholic Church in breeding the personal and social ethos with its special religious spirit which is quite similar to the orient wisdom from China. Lastly, this thesis will also draw a comparison between Scheler and the theologians in the Nouvelle Théologie Movement in the middle of the 20th century in order to conclude that the realistic and anthropological turn in Scheler’s phenomenological method was actually identical with the theological development from the Vatican I council to the Vatican II council, so Scheler’s phenomenological understanding of self-renewal of the Catholic Church and its social teaching would potentially shed more light on its future development. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 李晶. / Parallel title from added title page. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2016. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-210). / Abstracts also in English. / Li Jing.