‘Reckless youth’. Cardinal Maffi and Fascism (1919–31)

The article focuses on Cardinal Pietro Maffi's attitude towards Fascism. As one of the mightiest princes of the Church and a well-known patriot, the Archbishop of Pisa enthusiastically supported the war effort in 1915–18. Concerned by the spread of strikes and social disorders after the victory, he saw Fascism as a bulwark against socialism and tried to make an alliance through celebrations of the ‘heroic’ memory of the Great War together with the Black Shirts. Maffi's strategy seemed to work: with a few exceptions the alliance remained effective and became official with signing of the Lateran Pacts of 1929. Consequently, Cardinal Maffi made a significant contribution to the success of the secular religion of the Fatherland preached by Fascism which shortly after his death in March 1931 would become a major source of tension between the regime and the Church.     

Catholic resistance theory: William Barclay versus Jean Boucher

ABSTRACT

This article examines William Barclay's response to Jean Boucher's De Justa Abdicatione Henrici Tertii (1589) in view of the complexities of Catholic political thought in this post-Tridentine period. It argues that Barclay's famous category of ‘monarchomach’ is problematic for its avoidance of the issue of confessional difference, and that on questions of the relationship between the respublica and the ecclesia Barclay struggled to find an adequate response to Boucher in his De Regno et Regali Potestate (1600). His De Potestate Papae (1609) is treated as the intellectual extension of his battle with Boucher, and more broadly his confrontation with the position of the Catholic League and Jesuits on indirect papal power. By considering Barclay's works in the context of French Gallicanism and the Catholic League in the French Wars of Religion, this discussion aims to reposition Barclay in relation to other Catholic political theorists and thereby re-evaluate the category of Catholic resistance theory.     

Silent Voices,Hidden Lives: Archaeology,Class and Gender in the CMS Missions,Bay of Islands,New Zealand, 1814–1845

This paper explores the themes and tensions of class and propriety at one of New Zealand’s early European settlements, a Church Missionary Society mission in the Bay of Islands. Archaeological investigations at the site of the Te Puna mission house revealed a cellar containing, among other articles, items connected with domesticity and feminine concerns, demonstrating the presence of women and their daily activities. The interweaving of the archaeological and historical record sheds light upon the replication of class and culture through themes such as the “cult of domesticity” at this remote location, a decade prior to British colonization.     

中国社会主义现代化与市场化有机耦合的历史分析

中国社会主义市场经济模式的创新,不仅在于社会主义基本制度与市场经济的结合,而且还在于社会主义现代化与市场经济的有机耦合,这一结合是通过两者的互动逐步实现的。决定这一互动演变过程的主要因素是由世界新科技革命引起的中国现代化双重使命与传统计划经济体制的矛盾和冲突的发展,实现社会主义初级阶段现代化的双重使命始终成为贯穿着这一矛盾运动过程中的主导方面。世界新科技革命引发的当代中国先进生产力的发展要求,则是中国社会主义现代化与市场化日益有机耦合的最深刻的根源和纽带。两者的有机结合,使我国终于找到了一条既符合本国国情又顺应世界潮流的现代化建设道路。     

Canada Once Again at the Oscars: Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle,the Tale of an African Girl Child Soldier

This article examines a little-known dimension to the Ku Klux Klan movement in the United States during the 1920s. As Anglo-Canadian Protestants supported the KKK to assert control over French-Canadian and other Catholics in the New England states, they undermined the Klan's emphasis on Americanism and illustrated an inherent contradiction in this avowedly nativist organization.     

Catholic Relief and the Political Awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1780–1830

Over the course of the eighteenth and early-to-mid-nineteenth centuries the Irish, who moved throughout the British Empire, helped to build the social, political and economic structures that would enable the success of countless colonial settlements. They were merchants, traders, fishers and labourers, and a significant proportion of them were Catholic. While many would go on to play pivotal roles in the development of Catholicism in the colonies, the Irish were not alone and often joined or were joined by other Catholic groups such as the French, Spanish and Scottish Highlanders. That the Irish achieved greater political and economic success, though, had a knock-on effect for the other Catholic groups could then use the foundation that the Irish established for their own progress and development. This article considers the place of Catholics on Britain’s expanding colonial landscapes by examining the political awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, two of Britain’s north Atlantic colonies, between 1780 and 1830. These two colonies, like many others, witnessed the growth of an Irish Catholic laity that was ambitious, pragmatic and adept at using the political structures available to reframe their legal status. The election of Laurence Kavanagh, a second-generation Irish Catholic merchant from a tiny fishing outpost on Cape Breton Island, to Nova Scotia’s legislative assembly in 1820, is offered as an example of how this process actually worked on the ground and opens up a broader discussion about the importance of minority populations like Catholics to Britain’s imperial programme.     

Orleanist Diplomacy and the French Colony in Uruguay

Traditional and historic relations between France and Ireland have been the object of numerous fine studies at historic, cultural, and literary levels. They have also been much celebrated. However, the darker side of Franco-Irish relations has received far less attention. The present article aims to act as a corrective and shows that between 1870 and 1970, relations between the two countries were rather distant, strained on occasion even, and that much depended on the political and strategic evolution in Europe and as well on the Catholic question. The scope of the article ranges from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 until Ireland's negotiations to enter the European Communities (EC) in 1970.     

Santo Domingo de Talaje: resurrecting a seventeenth-century Spanish mission at Darien Bluff,Georgia

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an overview of archaeological investigations conducted at Darien Bluff, McIntosh County, Georgia, over the past 75 years. The discovery of lost artifacts, missing excavation records, and several draft reports provided an opportunity to obtain a comprehensive overview of Spanish Mission period activity at the site of Mission Santo Domingo de Talaje, a primarily seventeenth-century mission that once stood on the banks of the Altamaha River. Included are archaeological and historical perspectives of the researchers who excavated the site and new interpretations by the authors that draw on recently relocated artifacts and excavation records.     

‘Heritage talks. Heritage calls’: some instances of the canonisation policy of John Paul II in Italy

During his long pontificate, John Paul II pursued a wide and carefully articulated policy of canonisations whose aim was to underwrite his magisterium by presenting hagiographical models that would convey well-defined pastoral teaching and contain both ecclesiastical and ecclesiological messages for the faithful. The high number of Italians declared blessed and/or made saints analysed in the present article is proof of the special interest the Pope showed in Italy and specifically in the sanctity of the country. The high concentration of beatifications and canonisations of hagiographical figures from Italy can be explained only in part by the canonical system, which regulates the process of canonisation and which makes it easier to open and support a cause, above all from a financial point of view, if the pressure group behind the candidate for sainthood is located near the Vatican. More precisely, what emerges is both the attempt to create a specific public image of Italy as a nation which has been a historic stronghold of Catholicism and is still capable of reacting to secularisation, and the objective of laying down more effective guidelines and robust directives for civil society. In other words, by proposing Italian hagiographical models, John Paul II was striving to mould Italy's national identity in a Christian form, conferring on the country the role of model for other European states.     

Ruinismo: the Catholic Church in Italy from ‘mediation culture’ to the Cultural Project

It is only seven years since Monsignor Camillo Ruini resigned from his role as President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), yet it feels much longer. The tempestuous events that marked Silvio Berlusconi's decline, on one hand, and the election of Pope Francis to the Holy See, on the other, have made such an impression on recent Italian history that seems to leave no time for reflection on what has happened over the last twenty years. This article explores how, during this time, Cardinal Ruini has re-fashioned the relations between the Catholic Church and Italian politics, following a pattern that has come to be known as ‘ruinismo’. The essay follows the development of the theological-political line of the Conference, from the “mediation” of the “Catholic Party”, the Christian Democrats (DC), to the “policy of presence” of politically committed Catholics, defined in these terms by the ecclesiastical congress in Loreto in 1985 and fully carried out under Ruini's management, with the backing of Berlusconi's governments. The aim is to establish whether and to what extent the “Ruinian” rule may be regarded as the consequence of mainstream Catholic politics of the 1980s and, equally, as a response to the cultural and political transformation brought about by the upheavals of the corruption scandals of 1989–91. Only from this long-term perspective is it possible to determine whether Ruini's exit has brought an end to ruinismo.