Catholic Church 
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
9/9/19
How Africa is transforming the Catholic Church
by Elizabeth A. Foster
Pope Francis’s visit to Africa highlights the growing trend toward decolonizing Catholicism
-
SOURCE: New York Times
8/2/2019
The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings
America’s nuns are beginning to confront their ties to slavery, but it’s still a long road to repentance.
-
SOURCE: The Daily Beast
July 5, 2019
Did the Vatican Hide Art That Depicted Female Priests?
A historian finds Catholic iconography with women performing acts that only men are allowed to do today—and that the works were covered up. Others aren’t convinced.
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
2/27/19
What Catholic Church records tell us about America’s earliest black history
by Jane Landers
These records date back to the 1590s and document some of the earliest black history of the U.S.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
2/13/19
When the Catholic Church’s prohibition on scandal helped women
by Sara McDougall
But why has scandal been systematically silenced in the church for so long? One answer lies in the medieval church's doctrine on scandal.
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
1/20/19
The Catholic Church’s shameful history of Native American abuses
by William S. Cossen
Colonizing indigenous land and constructing walls, both figurative and literal, to win public influence and political power is not a new story in American Catholic history.
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
9-5-18
How views on priestly celibacy changed in Christian history
by Kim Haines-Eitzen
The fact is for a long time the Catholic Church struggled with its interpretation of Scriptures on priestly celibacy. It wasn’t until the 12th century that priestly celibacy became mandatory.
-
SOURCE: NYT
8-17-18
Kathleen Sprows Cummings says the Catholic Church needs wholesale radical transformation
by Kathleen Sprows Cummings
In an op ed in the NYT she says she can nom longer advocate piecemeal reforms.
-
SOURCE: NYT
11-9-17
Art historian Jaime Lara’s dark secret as a child abuser has been disclosed by the Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn revealed that 25 years ago, Mr. Lara, then known as the Rev. James Lara, was laicized by the Vatican for sexually abusing children.
-
10-28-17
500 Years Ago Christianity Changed. It Changed Again in the 1960s.
by Patrick Lacroix
How the Reformation looks now.
-
9-18-16
Congratulations Georgetown. Now It’s Time to Own Up to the Racist History of the Catholic Church.
by Shannen Dee Williams
The Catholic Church was the largest corporate slaveholder in the Americas. But this history is barely acknowledged.
-
SOURCE: AP
5-27-15
Climate of Change: The Catholic Church's Dance With Science
From Galileo to genetics, the Roman Catholic Church has danced with science, sometimes in a high-tension tango but more often in a supportive waltz. Pope Francis is about to introduce a new twist: global warming.
-
SOURCE: Aeon
5-22-15
The war on Rome
by Maura Jane Farrelly
For centuries, Americans saw the Catholic Church as a dangerous foreign enemy. Not any more. What changed?
-
SOURCE: Contrary Perspective
3-13-14
The Catholic Church's Other Moral Blind Spot
by Michael Gallagher
The Catholic establishment and the Y-2 nuclear protest.
-
12-17-13
Santa Clara University to Deny "Elective" Abortion Coverage to Employees
by Nancy C. Unger
Santa Clara University does not generally impose religious doctrine on its staff, faculty or students... except in this case.
-
SOURCE: National Review
10-23-13
Making Sense of Pope Francis
by Conrad Black
The pope focuses on the basics.
-
SOURCE: Illinois Times
7-13-13
Historians in battle to safeguard Catholic archives
A GROUP of leading academics is calling on the Scottish Government to intervene in a controversy over the Catholic Archives in Edinburgh.Historians Professor Dauvit Broun, Professor Thomas Owen Clancy, Dr Jenny Wormald, and Professor Ewen Cameron have already attempted to force the issue on the Parliament's Public Petitions Committee, calling for the Church to reverse plans to split the archives, dating back to Mary, Queen of Scots, and move on claims they are deteriorating.Although the committee has responded claiming the bid was outside its remit, it has advised those behind it to enrol the support of sympathetic politicians if they want a debate on the issue in Parliament....
-
SOURCE: NY Review of Books
7-9-13
Garry Wills: Popes Making Popes Saints
Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His study of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. His latest book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, was published in February 2013.On September 3, 2000, Pope John Paul II beatified Pope Pius IX. (Beatification is the third and penultimate rung on the ladder to sainthood—it certifies that a genuine miracle was worked through a dead person’s intercession, establishes a liturgical feast day for that person, and authorizes church prayer to him or her.) Pius IX was a polarizing figure. He wrested from the Vatican Council a declaration of his own infallibility; he condemned such modern heresies as democratic government; he took a Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara, from his family—on the grounds that Edgardo’s Christian nurse had baptized him as an infant, making him belong to the church, not to his infidel parents.
-
SOURCE: NYT
7-5-13
John XXIII, John Paul II to be made saints
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis sped two of his predecessors toward sainthood on Friday: John Paul II, who guided the Roman Catholic Church during the end of the cold war, and John XXIII, who assembled the liberalizing Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.In approving the sainthood of John XXIII even without a second miracle attributable to the pontiff, Francis took the rare step of bypassing the Vatican bureaucracy. Francis also said a Vatican committee had accepted the validity of a second miracle attributed to the intercession of John Paul.The canonization cause for John Paul began almost immediately after his death in 2005. At his funeral, crowds in St. Peter’s Square began shouting “Santo subito,” or “Sainthood now,” for the beloved pontiff....
-
SOURCE: NYT
6-19-13
Audit finds sexual abuse was topic in 1930s
A regional province of the Capuchin religious order that had fought allegations of sexual abuse for decades decided last year to open its files dating to the 19th century to three independent auditors, in what the order claimed to be a first in the long-running Roman Catholic Church abuse scandal in the United States.The auditors’ report, released on Tuesday, found that sexual abuse by friars in the St. Joseph Province of the Capuchin Order was discussed at meetings as far back as 1932, the first year for which minutes of meetings were available.After more than a dozen students at the province’s St. Lawrence Seminary in Wisconsin accused nine friars of abuse in 1992, it cost the province’s insurer nearly a million dollars — but 89 percent of that went to lawyers to defend the Capuchins and only 11 percent to victims for settlements and therapy, the report said....
News
- Brexit will ultimately destabilise Europe, historians fear
- The Justinianic Plague's Devastating Impact Was Likely Exaggerated
- 'Human, vulnerable and perfect': New Rosa Parks exhibit shines light on civil rights legend
- How Charlottesville’s Echoes Forced New Zealand to Confront Its History
- Mary Thompson Featured in Article on George Washington's Dog Breeding
- China Releases History Professor, But Travel Concerns Persist
- Gordon Wood Interviewed on the New York Times’ 1619 Project
- Books by Garret Martin, Balazs Martonffy, Ronald Suny, and Kelly McFarland Featured in Article on NATO at 50
- The secret history of women in America, told through their belongings
- Irish Archive Recreates Documents Lost in in 1922 fire