This thesis examines the development of cremation in England, the first Christian country to cremate, rather than bury, the majority of its dead. It offers the first full length account of cremation in England. The thesis first compares the social setting of funerals in simpler and industrial societies. It then examines successive developments in Roman Catholic policy towards cremation and compares contemporary modes of disposal in selected European countries, emphasising the differing role of specific social institutions. The history of cremation in England is traced from 1820, when the social problems of rapid urbanisation challenged the Churches' monopoly in the disposal of the dead. The development of local authority cemeteries after 1850 is presented as a critical point in the secularisation of death. After legalisation in 1884, the acceptance of cremation was slow, only 9% of funerals by 1945. Thereafter, local authorities rapidly and successfully promoted cremation which first outnumbered burial in 1967. The thesis examines the causes of this rapid change. It estimates the effects upon cremation practice of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Contemporary choice between burial and cremation is examined from the perspective of 58 families, bereaved in 1988-9. Fieldwork was conducted in a Fenland village and in an East Midlands city. Disposal decisions are revealed as taken on grounds meaningful in family terms and rarely with a religious referent. The funeral is a critical focus for social and conceptual attitudes to death. In developed societies, the traditional functions of the funeral have been reduced and the social threat of death mitigated, by such factors as greater longevity, the professionalisation of death work, the changing role of the family and the reduced salience of religion. Through its analysis of the replacement of burial by cremation, this thesis offers a further understanding of the relationship between death and social structure. -

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Interpreting culture as symbols, stories, rituals and values, the thesis explores the culture of a Jewish and a Catholic secondary school in a dialogical way. The survey of the literature in Chapter 1 identifies relevant school-based research and locates the chosen case-study schools within the context of the British 'dual system'. Chapter 2 draws on the theoretical and methodological literatures of inter-faith dialogue and ethnography to develop and defend a paradigm for the research defined as open-inclusivist and constructivist. The main body of the thesis (Chapters 3-5), based on field-work undertaken in 1996 and 1997, presents the two schools in parallel with each other. Chapter 3 describes the details of the case studies at 'St. Margaret's' and 'Mount Sinai' and my developing research relationship with each school. In Chapter 4 many different voices from each school are woven into two 'tales' about the schools' cultures. This central chapter has a deliberately narrative style. Chapter 5 amplifies the cultural tales through the analysis of broadly quantitative data gained from an extensive questionnaire administered to a sample of senior students in each school. It is the only place in the thesis where views and values from the two schools are directly compared. The final two chapters widen the horizon of the study. Chapter 6 presents voices which were not part of the original case studies but which relate, in different ways, to the culture of the two schools. Chapter 7, with theoretical ideas about Jewish schools and education, and Catholic schools and education, provides resources for further dialogue about culture within Judaism and Catholicism and for Jewish-Christian dialogue. The thesis ends with some reflections on possible implications of the two cultures for discussions about the common good in education.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The words felix culpa come from the Exultet hymn (ca. 500-700 A.D.) which is used in the Roman Catholic Easter Eve Vigil. The relevant passage, referring to Adam's sin, reads: "O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!" "O happy guilt which earned for us so great and glorious a Redeemer!" The words felix culpa have been used frequenty apart from the hymn. This dissertation seeks to discover how the idea developed, to show the different meanings which it has had, and to evaluate its place in doctrine. [TRUNCATED] / 2031-01-01

This dissertation’s aim is to evaluate the Hegelian and Catholic foundations of Carl Schmitt’s National Socialist theory of law. In 1934 Schmitt called his theory “concrete order thinking,” in contrast to both normative and decisionist theories of law. On the one hand, Schmitt positively described Hegel’s state as a “concrete order of orders” where corporations mediated between state and civil society. Despite the incompatibility of the National Socialist concepts of the Führer principle and racial identity with Hegel’s theory, Schmitt saw in the National Socialist triadic structure (State, Movement, People) a common Hegelian heritage that overcomes the dualistic principles of state vs. civil society found in liberalism. On the other hand, going beyond this Hegelian heritage, Schmitt affirmed that a defense of concrete orders requires maintaining the proper distinction between a pluralism of concrete orders and a universalist divine order. After examining the Hegelian National Socialist jurist Karl Larenz’ view that Schmitt’s concrete order theory is made more coherent by rejecting an eternal divine order, I entertain the alternative hypothesis that the Catholic perspective makes concrete order theory more coherent. Under this hypothesis, I explore the political theology in Schmitt’s earlier writings and those of his Catholic contemporaries, where appeal is made to an analogy of proportionality between church and state as “perfect societies” to uphold the distinction between divine order and plural human “concrete orders.” I argue that this appeal excessively separates divine and concrete orders and fails to see them as united through an analogy of image and archetype. At this juncture I turn to corrective supplements by Schmitt’s contemporaries who explicitly emphasized the need to conjoin church and state more intrinsically. The most promising such avenue emphasizes the paradigm of Christ as a model for the relation of church and state. Once this Christological framework is affirmed, the immanence of the Führer principle and Hegelian state personality, as well as the separation entailed in analogy of proportionality, must fall away as incompatible with concrete order thinking. To some extent Schmitt recognizes this framework himself, but it is, I argue, insufficiently articulated and leaves his thought incomplete.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-17T15:02:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1806734 bytes, checksum: 17c3c8e044983a785b9f0cd910ae4fc3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-06-22 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Religion as an object of study is constituted by providing an endless universe of knowledge, in which the religious phenomenon becomes open to a scientific look. Within this scenario we place the death that comes in its universal aspect. This way, our research is based on a comparative study in which we intend to analyze the structures that comprise the phenomenon of death in two traditions, the Roman Catholicism and the Tibetan Buddhism, both inserted in Christianity and Buddhism, two of the five major religions of the world. We will hold on to expose conceptions and visions of death in the historical development, the ritualization of death and its transformation, the funerary practices that give meaning to death and beliefs in the afterlife in both doctrines. In these two very broad and complex religious systems, we will deal specifically with the topic of death, aiming to analyze them in relation to their distinct and similar elements, from scientific and theological presuppositions, using religious and philosophical conceptions based on reliable sources of both traditions. Concerning to the Roman Catholicism, we will use the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the book of funerals, and referring to the Tibetan Buddhism, we will use as the main source, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. We will use as bibliographic source, the thinking of various scholars about the knowledge of death and its implications for society / A religião enquanto objeto de estudo se constitui por proporcionar um universo inesgotável de conhecimento, onde o fenômeno religioso torna-se passível ao olhar científico. Dentro deste cenário situamos a morte, que surge no seu aspecto universal. Nestes termos, nossa pesquisa se baseia em um estudo comparado, na qual pretendemos analisar as estruturas que comportam o fenômeno da morte em duas tradições, o Catolicismo Romano e o Budismo Tibetano, ambas inseridas no Cristianismo e no Budismo, duas das cinco maiores religiões do mundo. Deter-nos-emos em expor às concepções e visões de morte no devir histórico, a ritualização da morte e sua transformação, as práticas funerárias que conferem sentido à morte e as crenças no pós-morte em ambas as doutrinas. Nestes dois sistemas religiosos tão amplos e complexos, trataremos especificamente da temática da morte, visando analisá-las quanto aos elementos distintos e análogos, a partir de pressupostos científicos e teológicos, utilizando concepções religiosas e filosóficas embasadas em fontes fidedignas de ambas as tradições. Quanto ao Catolicismo Romano, faremos uso do Catecismo da Igreja Católica e do livro das exéquias, e no que se refere ao budismo tibetano, utilizaremos como fonte principal, o Livro Tibetano dos Mortos. Utilizaremos como suporte bibliográfico, o pensamento de vários estudiosos acerca do conhecimento da morte e suas implicações na sociedade

Master of Arts / Department of Speech Communication, Theatre, and Dance / Charles J. Griffin / This thesis is a response to a contemporary debate over the nature of rhetoric. Specifically, it has recently been declared that rhetoric is aesthetic. This move is known as the "aesthetic turn" and it has been both praised and denounced by rhetoric scholars. An aesthetic rhetoric is concerned not with the content of a message, but rather with the presentation of the message. In this thesis, I argue that an aesthetic turn is a good turn to make in theory, but that the actual turn taken by a number of prominent rhetorical scholars has been misguided. A Catholic theory of beauty is developed within this thesis as an alternative to the postmodern aesthetic. The Catholic theory posits that beauty flows from three forms: the accidental, the substantial, and the transcendental. Accidental beauty is concerned with physical traits and can be judged through integrity, proportion, and splendor. Substantial beauty deals with an object's telos or end and is judged according to the actualization of telos. Transcendental beauty is a trait of all beings and can be judged hierarchically according to participation in Being. Finally, a methodology for analyzing beauty is developed within the thesis. In order to reify the Catholic theory of beauty and its methodology the Roman Catholic Mass of 1962, also known as the Tridentine Mass, is analyzed as a case study. This artifact was chosen in particular because it was recently liberated from bureaucratic imprisonment by Pope Benedict XVI. In addition to analyzing the traditional Roman rite, several changes that were made to the Mass after the Second Vatican Council are examined. This study is important for several reasons. First, it provides rhetorical scholars with a clear understanding of beauty with which rhetoric can be analyzed. Also, the aesthetic theory offered by this study transcends the differences between rhetoric-as-epistemic and rhetoric-as-aesthetic scholarship. Most importantly though, view of beauty that is advanced implies an ethic from which rhetoric can be evaluated. Finally, the study has important implications for the development of the Roman Catholic liturgy.

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This thesis explores the history of Christianity and conversion to it in 16th and 17th Century Japan. It argues that conversion is a complex phenomenon which happened for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, it argues that due to the political context and limitations acting upon the mission, the majority of conversions in 16th and 17th Century Japan lacked an element of epistemological change (classically understood). The first chapter explores theories of conversion suggesting that conversion in 16th and 17th Century Japan included sorts of religious change not usually encapsulated in the term conversion including adhesion, communal and forced conversion. Moreover, it argues that contextual factors are the most important factors in religious change. The second chapter explores political context contending that it was the political environment of Japan that ultimately decided whether conversion was possible. This chapter charts the evolution of the Japanese context as it became more hostile toward Christianity. In the third chapter, the context of the mission is explored. It is argued that limitations acting upon the mission shaped post-conversion faith, so that changes to practice and ritual rather than belief became the mark of a successful conversion. The fourth chapter explores methods of conversion, the factors influencing it, and post-conversion faith more directly. It argues that Christianity spread primarily through social networks, but that conversion was also influenced by economic incentive, other realworld benefits, and Christianity's perceived efficacy. Building on Chapter Three, the final chapter also seeks to illustrate that the missionaries were not successful in their attempts to spur epistemological change or instil a detailed knowledge of theology or doctrine amongst their converts.