No digital copy at the request of the author - refer to citation field for details of published version. / The style of language at Vatican II made a break with the then-current scholastic language of Catholic theology. Less concerned to define, in scholastic mode, the language of Vatican II was more concerned to persuade, in a rhetorical mode that was identified as 'pastoral' at the time. This book takes the central word 'dialogue' as the important interface between these two modes of language, because 'dialogue' had a history in scholastic theology as the finding-the-end-result dialectic of Thomism, yet 'dialogue' in twentieth-century philosophical thought had acquired the Buberian sense of an ongoing relationship that did not lend itself to once-and-for-all definitions. Some of the difficulties that have arisen in implementing the teaching of Vatican II are shown to result from these two different understandings of dialogue, compounded for English-speaking readers by the fact that two different Latin words in the original documents were commonly translated as 'dialogue' in the five major English translations.

New Zealand Catholic lay women have actively participated in overseas missionary work for over forty years. From the 1960s, the Catholic Overseas Volunteer Organization (COVS), under the auspices of the New Zealand bishops, enabled lay women to respond to missionary bishops’ requests for assistance. Overseas, they worked in a range of mission stations with a variety of religious orders. Their experiences are the focus of this study. Their stories have not been told previously and part of the intent is to make their work visible, particularly, to add to the histories of New Zealand women, Catholic women and Christian missionary women more generally. This thesis contends that their overseas experiences were far from partnership and collaboration and have subsequently failed to provide opportunities for wider participation in the New Zealand Church. Vatican documents, archival material, interviews with fifty ex-volunteers and the two lay women directors of the organization provide the data for this thesis. Feminist theology forms the theoretical base and narrative analysis the interpretive tool. There were three volunteer cohorts: young, single volunteers, mothers with dependent children and older women. Most volunteers grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, came from Catholic homes, attended Catholic schools and were actively involved in New Zealand parishes. Overseas, the women continued lives of faith and service, contributing needed and valuable skills. Many younger women enjoyed professional opportunities and their missionary community. It was harder to fit in to a mission station as Catholic mothers or older women and many found it difficult to establish a missionary identity, to be accepted as part of the team. In all groups, there was great satisfaction when experiences matched expectations. The missionary insights and/or skills of these ex-volunteers have generally not been sought by their New Zealand parishes and they are, for the most part, an unappreciated and neglected resource. Lay women’s experiences of overseas mission point to a need for change – lay women seek not only to participate but to be valued partners in their Church. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

Inaug.-Diss.--Erlangen. / Bibliography: p. [89]-91.

This diploma thesis aims for broad issue religious conversion especially in the case of the Apostle Paul. It is psychological and theological reflection of his conversion to Christianity, as described by the canonical New Testament texts. The forepartof the thesis reports theoretically into the location of the conversion of the Apostle Paul in the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's epistles. For the purpose of this diploma thesis the author describes briefly hagiotherapy method, a technique that combines knowledge of psychology and theology. The author focuses on the psychological perspective on religious conversion, its history and current state of research. The closing section of the thesis combines views of psychology and theology. Special attention aims at Paul's personality, which is described with the help of psychological terminology. Keywords: Religious conversion, The Apostle Paul, psychology of religion, hagiotherapy.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate whether certain phenomena are connected to religion or to culture. This investigation is backed up by literature and four interviews with people with different religious backgrounds, thus coming to a conclusion about how the differences between religion and culture are viewed based on the participants background. The participants are Christian, Muslim, Jehovah's witnesses and an atheist. Among the answers from these people, we have discovered that almost all of the participants mentioned how ethnic Swedes (in the Swedish society) are most often the ones who do not understand the difference between religion and culture. The result we received from the interviews was that, unfortunately, ignorance is present among many people who do not understand the difference between religion and culture. The result from the literature gave us a clear answer on how the misunderstanding between religion and culture happened. According to Isak Svensson the misunderstanding many times is about ignorance and confusion.

The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 promoted regular and effective religious instruction for the parish laity. This was facilitated by the development of preaching and instructional texts – works known as pastoralia – which proliferated throughout Europe. This dissertation explores the phenomenon of vernacular pastoralia written in rhymed verse, works intended for oral performance to a lay audience. My focus is on the work of four writers of sacramental instruction in Anglo-Norman and Middle English. The earliest text considered is the Anglo-Norman Corset, written circa 1240-50 by Robert the Chaplain. The other three authors were more or less contemporary, all writing in the late-thirteenth or early-fourteenth centuries. I examine three penitential poems by the Franciscan friar, Nicholas Bozon: Pus ke homme deit morir, Tretys de la Passion and Le char d’Orgueil, and then Handlyng Synne by the Gilbertine, Robert Mannyng. I finally consider the religious poems of William of Shoreham, a vicar in rural Kent, concentrating on De septem sacramentis and On the Trinity, Creation, the Existence of Evil, Devils, Adam and Eve. While all these writers confronted the challenges of providing religious instruction for the laity, their efforts also reflected a concern with social issues and an awareness of the literary nature of their verse enterprises. The texts frequently employed poetic or fictive devices found in popular literary genres and, whilst these illuminated and entertained listeners, they sometimes rendered the teaching obscure. The meeting of sacramental exposition, social discourse and literary invention resulted in complex textual interplay and tension, as well as in memorable formulations of faith. This dissertation considers the content of verse pastoralia in their historical context and aims to assess how the texts may have been received and understood by parishioners in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England.

While considering the work of James McAuley, Francis Webb and Vincent Buckley, this thesis concentrates on the religious character of their poetry. Since it assumes that religious language is primarily metaphorical (as distinct from dogmatic), the thesis describes the poetry by way of its religio-imaginative relationships and structures. James McAuley's poetry is religious, not so much because it is Catholic, as because it voyages between despair and hope, believing always in the reasoned will. Francis Webb's poetry, continually discovering glory in dereliction, dramatises the revelatory and redeeming power of the rejected ones - and so works within the 'Suffering Servant' model of 'Isaiah'. While Vincent Buckley's poetry gradually abandons Catholic language in favour of its own 'idiom of sensation', the religious quality of that sensation is discovered more in liminal than in paradisal possibilities - in the way 'holy spaces' are always in some sense expatriate ones. Since each of these poets belongs in the period of Vatican II Catholicism, the thesis next relates their work to that context. Here, however, it searches for imaginative connections and disconnections by setting up its comparison on the basis, not of dogmas, but of models. Finally, the thesis interprets Webb's 'Eyre All Alone' as a search for renewed religious language, returning to its opening assumption that religious language is primarily metaphorical.

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