<p> This research focused on women leadership within the Catholic Church and the women leaders&rsquo; perceptions of their leadership effectiveness. The problem is that there is a lack of research that investigated perceptions of women and leadership within the Catholic Church. The purpose of the phenomenological qualitative study was to explore how women perceive themselves as leaders in the Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and how they see others&rsquo; perceptions of them as leaders in the Catholic Church in the greater Los Angeles area. A qualitative methodology with a phenomenological research design was used because there was a need to explore the lived experiences of individuals to understand the phenomenon under investigation. The researcher addressed this purpose by conducting long interviews with 30 purposefully selected participants who currently work in ministry or administrative roles in the Catholic Church in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. The researcher used the feminist theory as a guide in conducting the data collection and analysis for the study. Analysis through the modified van Kaam method revealed themes of effectiveness, dedication, acceptance, servant leadership, calling, and a lack of resources. All participants reported perceiving gender-based barriers and a gender divide between them and male colleagues. Despite these obstacles, women accepted their roles as servants and leaders. Further study should be conducted to explore additional roles for women in the Church and to examine how gender-based obstacles and barriers might be effectively resolved both in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and elsewhere. Moreover, practical implication or recommendation for the study will be for the archdiocese to develop a formal mentorship program to prepare women to enter the leadership positions within the church. Also, the policy-based recommendation would be for representatives from the church, including women members, to write to the Archdiocese to promote awareness about the gender inequality that exists in the church leadership. These interactions with governing body of the church can help promote policy reforms to make leadership more accessible to women. Through policy reforms, women can be trained to be involved in tasks of high-level positions in the church.</p><p>

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communications, 2007. / Colored illustrations on electronic copy only. Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Technology, Sydney, 2007. / "The official short working title of this dissertation is "A better definition of religion for legal purposes in Australia."--Preface.

Thesis (M. Th.)--Capital Bible Seminary, 1973. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-72).

Thesis (M. Th.)--Capital Bible Seminary, 1973. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-72).

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 66-75.

This dissertation considers the changes the chaplaincy underwent during the period between the Vietnam and Gulf wars. It begins with an exposition of the Protestant history in American understandings of religion, and how this legacy had informed earlier iterations of religious inclusion in the U.S. military and the work of its chaplains. With this history in mind, the dissertation focuses in on a Department of the Army publication, the Military Chaplains’ Review, a professional journal that published essays by active chaplains and civilian academics and professionals from 1972-1992. The dissertation uses the Military Chaplains’ Review to explore the ways these changes were institutionalized in the language and culture of the military chaplaincy. These changes coalesced around the Katcoff v Marsh case (1985) in which the chaplaincy was brought to court with allegations that it violated the constitutional protection of the separation of church and state. This dissertation shows how this case helped solidify the changes the chaplaincy was already undergoing, which included an emphasis on the importance of the religiosity of those in the armed forces as a form of personal spirituality. The case was also part of a larger legal shift in U.S. courts toward an emphasis on the free exercise of religion over the separation of religion from public life. This dissertation makes clear that the Katcoff case crystallizes these changes within the chaplaincy and contributes to this shift in first amendment jurisprudence. / Religion

The thesis begins by asking why American tax policy is both attracted to and repelled by the idea of justice. Accepting the invitation of mid-twentieth-century economist Henry Simons to acknowledge that tax justice is a theological concept, the thesis seeks to excavate theological doctrines of taxation throughout Christian history in a way that can answer the presenting question. After analyzing the confusions in contemporary American tax policy (Chapter One), the thesis argues that Christian theology relativized property interests (the moral category most closely related to taxation). Taxation came to express different interests simultaneously and balanced them, while the idea of necessitas (need) emerged as the fulcrum of that balance (Chapter Two). The thesis develops the themes incipient in the early history by highlighting three salient theological moments. Thomas Aquinas clarified his predecessors' doctrines of property, resolving the tension between communal and private property through the interplay of natural and positive law (Chapter Three). In Thomas' account, the positive law of private ownership yields to the natural law substrate of communal property at the boundary between need and superabundance. Taxation can serve to implement that balance. The redistributive logic of Martin Luther's thinking extended to his political theology, as most clearly expressed in his "Preface to the Ordinance of a Common Chest" (Chapter Four), while John Calvin invoked the idea that economic inequality puts in motion both the circulation of goods and the need for redistribution of resources (Chapter Five). By way of conclusion, the thesis suggests a possible narrative connecting early modern to contemporary views on taxation. In the theological account, taxation's balancing function "legitimates" it. Modern tax theory, on the other hand, represents in some ways a return to the Greco-Roman model of tax "justification" instead of legitimacy.

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006. / Page [57] blank/missing. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [58]-63).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, 2000. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-213).