A Unique Project of Mission: Forty Years on,a Personal Memoire

Fifty years ago, Call to the North was conceived against the background of sectarian terrorism. This was a unique occasion when all the traditional Christian churches of the North of England were engaged in unitedly presenting the Christian faith to the general population. The exercise was led by the Anglican Archbishop of York together with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool and Dr John Marsh representing the Free Churches.

The objectives of the exercise, the methods employed, the problems encountered and its eventual outcome in 1973 are outlined, together with an account of the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s strategy of seeking Pope Paul VI’s support to help his traditional dioceses come to terms with the new Vatican thinking of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II.

The account concludes with a reflection on the historic outcome of this unique exercise.     

Wissenschaft — Mathematik — Technik: Ihre Wechselwirkung in der Antike

The question whether there exists an interaction between ‘science’ (foreign text ignored) and ‘technology’ (foreign text ignored, esp. foreign text ignored) in Greek and Roman antiquity is discussed controversially until today. Especially representatives of the philologies strictly deny any form of relation, whereas modern scientists tend to take for granted that the current interaction between (exact) natural sciences and technology has always existed, at least since the beginning of real natural science founded by the ancient Greeks. This paper shows that both parties are right — at least in a certain way. Following current terminology and contents of ‘science’ and ‘technology’ there had been such an interaction — particularly with mathematics as linking element in so far as in antiquity especially foreign text ignored (mechanics) was regarded as applied mathematics and not as science. The strong interaction between pure mathematics and such fields of applied mathematics (namely mechanical technology) based on the fact that technological (mechanical) artefacts were properly constructed mathematically. Some of them are mentioned in this paper (astrolabes and sundials, waterclocks, tools and machines — especially lifting gears, bucket elevators, guns, pneumatic tools —, architecture of temples); in so far the supporters of an interaction between science and technology are right. However, the post-Aristotelian Greeks and Romans did not consider mathematics to be part of ‘science (of nature)’ as the post-kantian exact scientists do. Mathematics to them was a mere ‘art’ — consequently, in the mentioned cases there had been an interaction between ‘arts’ and of course not between ‘science’ and ‘art’ (technology); and in so far those are right who deny an interaction between natural science and technology. This shows that the contrariety of the answers to the question depends on the different terminology chosen. Following the current understanding of ‘exact natural science’ the answer is: yes; following the conception of ‘science’ in the self-understanding of Greek and Roman antiquity the answer is: no — and this is right as well! The reason for this apparent contrariety are just the different meanings and contents of ‘science (of nature)’ in antiquity and modern times.     

The Death of Beauty: Goya's Etchings and Black Paintings through the Eyes of André Malraux

Modern critics often regard Goya's etchings and black paintings as satirical observations on the social and political conditions of the time. In a study of Goya first published in 1950, which seldom receives the attention it merits, the French author and art theorist André Malraux contends that these works have a significance of a much deeper kind. The etchings and black paintings, Malraux argues, represent a fundamental challenge to the European artistic tradition that began with the Renaissance, an essentially humanist tradition founded on the pursuit of a transcendent world of nobility, harmony and beauty—an ideal world outside of which, as Malraux writes, ‘man did not fully merit the name man’. Following the illness that left him deaf for life—an encounter with ‘the irremediable’, to borrow Malraux's term—Goya developed an art of a fundamentally different kind—an art, Malraux writes, ruled by ‘the unity of the prison house’, which replaced transcendence with a pervasive ‘feeling of dependence’ and from which all trace of humanism has been erased. Foreshadowing modern art's abandonment of the Renaissance ideal, and created semi-clandestinely, the etchings and black paintings are an early announcement of the death of beauty in Western art.     

The Convertible Saint: Expeditus through Time and Space

Expeditus, a Roman soldier who was for centuries simply a name on a list of early Christian martyrs, took on new life in the late eighteenth century in a Catholic cult that expanded greatly in the late nineteenth century and has continued to spread since then. His name linked him with time and the answering of prayers for urgent causes in particularly modern ways, despite growing scholarly scepticism about him. His unforgettable image — a Roman soldier crushing a crow or raven underfoot — has been adopted by Italian fascists and practitioners of Haitian vodou, among many others. Expeditus?s popularity on the internet is only the latest version of this unusual devotion.     

The Vatican and Mussolini’s Italy

This essay reviews a new history by Lucia Ceci of Italo-Vatican relations during the Fascist period, and evaluates its contribution to the vast but often polemical literature on the subject of Church–state relations in modern Italy. Ceci offers a detailed, sophisticated analysis that focuses specifically on leadership and decision-making in the Fascist regime and the Vatican respectively. Her argument that the Vatican’s relations with Fascist Italy were conditioned by a strategic choice to maintain diplomatic relations in exchange for autonomy in the state and civil society, while compelling, makes some contradictory and unconvincing claims. Ultimately, what is needed is a conceptual framework that can account for the complex reality of a relationship characterized by points of mutual interest and complementarity but also fundamental disagreement and open conflict.     

Maltese ‘gallarija’: a gender and space perspective

In Malta, there are hundreds of balconies, especially in Valletta. However, the most fascinating ones are boxed-balconies known as ‘Gallarijia’ in Maltese. The Knights, an ultra religious Roman Catholic military Order who ruled Malta for over 260 years, adopted covered-balconies designed and used in Muslim countries; in the hope that it would ensure their segregated life style as well as; concealing their illicit sexual activities with Maltese women. The Grand Master de la Cassiere built the first covered-balcony in his palace in Valletta; soon it found affinity with the Maltese well-to-do families who called it their own. Although, cultural and technological transfers between Muslim and Christian worlds have always been a way of life in the Mediterranean region, successfully adopting an innovation from another culture requires suitable social, economic and cultural environment in the host country. The objective of this article is to explain how and why a Christian military order has successfully adopted a Muslim inspired design for their balconies. We suggest the key to understand this phenomenon and the paradox it poses is the status of women in Malta during the Knights' rule.     

Pangs of nascent nationalism from the nationless state? Euro coins and undocumented migrants in Malta since 2004†

ABSTRACT. This paper examines recent manifestations of the emergence of national identity amongst the citizens of Malta, now the smallest member state of the European Union. In this search, discrete events and ‘things’ are examined as symbolic paraphernalia, empirical phenomena that provide insights to overarching narratives about identity, nationalism and integration. The discussion and eventual decision on the choice of euro coin faces in Malta is proposed as one that illustrates a process of ‘nascent nationalism’. Meanwhile, the arrival of boatloads of undocumented migrants on Malta's shores has also encouraged the evolution of a secular, national character in Malta. Such episodes, and others, ultimately reflect a need for symbols of national unity that remain largely absent in this ‘nationless state’ which continues to be gripped by a bipolar partisanship that spares almost no one.     

“Sailing in Stormy Waters”: Archbishop Matthew Beovich and the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide in the 1960s

In comparison with the modest religious revival of the 1950s, the 1960s was a time of change and turbulence. This article focuses on Archbishop Matthew Beovich (1896–1981) and the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Adelaide in South Australia. It briefly considers Beovich's involvement in the Second Vatican Council before turning to the implementation of conciliar reforms in his diocese. Other areas examined include the reaction in Adelaide to the papal encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae; discontent among some clergy in the late 1960s; and the controversial Vietnam War. The challenges of the decade brought out the best and worst of Beovich's leadership qualities: his wisdom and compassion were sometimes obscured by a brusque manner and an inability to cope effectively with dissent. As the problems that faced Beovich were not unique to the archdiocese of Adelaide, this article sheds lights on the strengths and weaknesses of institutional Catholicism in this period.     

A Father,a Daughter and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage

The prison narrative attributed to the early third‐century Christian martyr Perpetua of Carthage has long attracted attention because of its dramatic portrayal of a Roman father's failure to extract obedience from his adult daughter as he tries to dissuade her from allowing herself to be punished as an enemy of the Roman state. This study explores the alignment between paternal authority and the authority of the Roman procurator Hilarianus in Perpetua's narrative, considering how the civic spaces of forum and arena became theatres for both filial and civil disobedience.     

‘To Save a Soul’: Catholic Mission Schools,Apartheid, and the 1953 Bantu Education Act

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 was enacted by the government of South Africa to bring about the election promise of apartheid (separateness) among the races. For the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa, the Education Act was a direct attack on its apostolic work in the country as the church was responsible for educating 15 per cent of the black student population by 1953. Regardless of the Catholic contribution to South Africa’s educational system, the church was viewed as a threat — die Roomse gevaar — to its architects of apartheid. Catholic precepts regarding the unity of the human race under “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man” and the belief in the equality of all people as children of God challenged the apartheid ideology of racial separateness and differentiation. Eliminating Catholic control of Bantu education would neutralise the Roman threat. Passage of the Education Act left church leaders with two choices: fight or surrender. They chose to fight, launching the “Catholic Bishops’ Campaign for Mission Schools and Seminaries” in 1955. Although overlooked by most scholars, the campaign was an important part of a larger resistance movement that challenged the legitimacy of the apartheid regime in the 1950s.     

Justices and Injustices: the Order of St John,the Holy See,and the Appeals Tribunal in Rome

In the early seventeenth century it became customary for knights of Malta who committed crimes to appeal to the tribunal of the Apostolic Chamber (Audentia Camera) in Rome. The Grand Masters of the Order of St John in Malta blamed this practice on the advent of the Apostolic Visitor and Roman Inquisitor in 1574 and saw its activities as a direct infringement of their authority over members of the Order and their subjects in Malta. Therefore on occasions successive Grand Masters found ways to “protest” with the Holy See claiming that the activities of the Apostolic Chamber were a threat to their rule, but the Grand Masters could not go beyond protesting because the Order of St John was above all a Catholic religious institution and the Pope in Rome was its ultimate head.     

Cool nothing: Dom Sylvester Houédard’s coexistentialist concrete poetics

ABSTRACT

This article concerns the concrete poetics of Dom Sylvester Houédard, which I define using a term from his 1963 article ‘Concrete Poetry & Ian Hamilton Finlay’, ‘coexistentialist’. Houédard's concrete poetry has sometimes been criticized for an anachronistic avant-garde quality, because of its non-semantic use of written language, and its associated air of intermedia experiment. But the term ‘coexistentialist’ has various connotations which allow us to interpret Houédard's work as highly responsive to its cultural moment, and to the unique theological tradition from which it emerged. These connotations include: the relationship between early and mid-twentieth-century modern art and literature; existentialist philosophy, especially the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre; Marshall McLuhan's theories on modern communication and ecumenical dialogue within the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council. After presenting an outline of Houédard's poetics related to these themes, I analyse some of his concrete poems or ‘typestracts’, produced between 1967 and 1972.     

Translating the Vatican: Paul Cullen,power and language in nineteenth-century Ireland

This paper examines how one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century Ireland, Cardinal Paul Cullen, used language and translation to further his career and his vision for the Catholic Church in this period. It shows how Cullen's language skills served him throughout his life in his role as an agent and liaison, a linking figure between different worlds. The paper demonstrates how Cullen's linguistic abilities and translations gave an early jump-start to his career and subsequently expanded his sphere of influence from the confines of the Vatican to the vast expanses of the Catholic English-speaking world. Through language, Cullen positioned himself as a vital conduit for Irish–Vatican relations and came to be the dominant force in Irish Catholicism for almost thirty years, connecting Ireland to Rome and translating his ambitions and those of the Vatican into reality in Ireland. The paper will demonstrate how language was a forceful tool for change and an instrument of power when wielded by Cullen.     

The Royal Councils of Worcester

The possible existence of a Roman signal station at Whitby has a significant impact upon the study of the Roman defensive system of the North Yorkshire coast and our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical topography of the area. Whitby lies at the mouth of the River Esk and its associated harbour on the North Yorkshire coast, amidst an intervisible chain of five known signal stations, but is perhaps best known for its Anglo-Saxon monastery founded by the Northumbrian king Oswy in A.D. 657. No absolute archaeological evidence of a signal station at Whitby exists, but the toponym suggests that the site had an association with a signal station or watchtower. It is clear that the existing stations were designed to function as a cohesive system, given their similar form and contemporary dates: communication and intervisibility were therefore essential aspects of this defensive network. Despite this, the stations to the north and south of Whitby—those at Goldsborough and Ravenscar respectively—are not intervisible. A station positioned at Whitby would effectively close this gap in the system.

Attempting to reconcile the near complete absence of archaeological remains with the place-name and geographical evidence, this paper uses geologically determined erosion rates to examine the possibility that such a station existed on the more than three hundred metres of coastal land that has eroded since the Roman period. In doing so it addresses the extent to which archaeologists can reconstruct and work with an ancient coastline on a local scale. Having established the probability of a ‘lost’ station, the paper discusses the results of a GIS viewshed application which address the feasibility of such a station's intervisibility from its neighbouring station to the south. The concluding sections investigate the stations' possible form.     

THE COMPLEMENTARY USE OF NEUTRONS AND X‐RAYS FOR THE NON‐DESTRUCTIVE INVESTIGATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTS FROM SWISS COLLECTIONS*

This paper shows the possibilities offered by the combined use of non‐destructive neutron and X‐ray beams in archaeological research on metallic finds. The following five artefacts from Swiss excavations were submitted to investigation, each with dedicated aims: a Roman sword, a Roman dagger, an Iron Age bucket, Iron Age spearheads and a Roman finger ring. The images obtained with both methods—neutrons and X‐rays—are discussed in length in this paper. The investigations took place at the Paul Scherrer Institute and the archaeologists who studied the objects come from the Universities of Lausanne and Zurich.     

The Cross or the Double-Cross: Roman Catholicism,Anti-Communism,and the Political Theology of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

The Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen was an advocate of American Catholic patriotism and opponent to the spread of totalitarianism, especially communism. He grounded the two positions in what I call the “ecclesial foundation” in which he defined American citizenship in terms of membership in religious institutions. In Sheen's view, religious institutions provided the ultimate, spiritual ends for humankind. Therefore, the American government had to protect, above all, religious liberties at home and abroad. Totalitarian regimes, which Sheen believed sought to replace spiritual with material ends of the state, violently deprived their subjects of religious liberty and, therefore, embodied the spirit of the anti-Christ. Only the Vatican had the spiritual and moral authority to identify this spirit, and—especially after the Second World War—only America had the military and economic power to confront it. Ironically, this argument was an appropriation of the old Nativist arguments against the Vatican itself. The Nativist argument was that religious liberty of Protestant churches was the source for political authority of the American state to use against the absolute, arbitrary, foreign dictator in Rome. Sheen's appropriation and redeployment of the old narrative persuaded millions of Americans to oppose totalitarian ideologies and view, after centuries of distrust, American Catholics as loyal citizens.