scholarly journals Obedience as Belonging: Catholic Guilt and Frequent Confession in America

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 370
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stotts

From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, the practice of private confession to a priest was a mainstay of Catholic parish life in the United States. By the 1970s, Catholics had largely abandoned the practice of private confession. One dominant narrative among Catholic theologians and clergy, identified chiefly with the papacy of John Paul II, attributes the decline in confession to the loss of healthy guilt that took place during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. In conversation with the work of psychologist and philosopher Antoine Vergote, the present article challenges this narrative, arguing that a collective and unhealthy Catholic guilt existed among American Catholics well before the 1960s and in fact characterized the period in which private confession was practiced most frequently. I contend that obedience to moral prescriptions was not, for ordinary Catholics, part of an ethical program of self-reform but the condition for belonging to a church body that emphasized obedience. Finally, examining the relationship between weekly reception of communion and confession, I suggest that private confession emerged to support frequent communion, persisting only until the latter became standard practice among Catholics in the United States.

Author(s):  
Pedro Francisco Ramos Josa

El presente artículo tiene por objeto analizar la finalidad y utilidad de la institución del Colegio Electoral en el sistema político de Estados Unidos. Para dicho propósito haré un repaso histórico de los orígenes constitucionales del Colegio Electoral, seguido de una descripción de su evolución a lo largo de más de 200 años de existencia, finalizando con un análisis de su influencia en el resultado de las últimas elecciones presidenciales del pasado 8 de noviembre de 2016. Por último, y teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, valoraré la relación entre el Colegio Electoral y la democracia estadounidense.It is the object of the present article to analyze the purpose and usefulness of the institution of the Electoral College in the United States political system. For that purpose I will make a historical review of the Electoral College constitutional origins, followed by a description of its evolution throughout more than 200 years of existence, to conclude with a review of the main arguments for and against the Electoral College. Finally, and bearing in mind the aforementioned, I will assess the relationship between the Electoral College and the American democracy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vania Markarian

In the 1960s, a generation of Latin American youth entered political life inspired by a heroic view of activism tiiat coincided, often contentiously, with the spread of new cultural trends from youth movements in Europe and the United States. This study focuses on how the notions of “being young” in circulation at the time affected the construction of political identities in Uruguay, particularly among the different branches of the Uruguayan left. I am especially interested in analyzing the relationship between the cultural representations of youth and the requirements for activism as conceived by these Uruguayan leftist groups.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Koch

This article investigates the changing justifications of one of the hallmarks of orthodox psychoanalytic practice, the neutral and abstinent stance of the psychoanalyst, during the middle decades of the 20th century. To call attention to the shifting rationales behind a supposedly cold, detached style of treatment still today associated with psychoanalysis, explanations of the clinical utility of neutrality and abstinence by ‘classical’ psychoanalysts in the United States are contrasted with how intellectuals and cultural critics understood the significance of psychoanalytic abstinence. As early as the 1930s, members of the Frankfurt School discussed the cultural and social implications of psychoanalytic practices. Only in the 1960s and 1970s, however, did psychoanalytic abstinence become a topic within broader intellectual debates about American social character and the burgeoning ‘therapy culture’ in the USA. The shift from professional and epistemological concerns to cultural and political ones is indicative of the changing appreciation of psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline: for psychoanalysts as well as cultural critics, I argue, changing social mores and the professional decline of psychoanalysis infused the image of the abstinent psychoanalyst with nostalgic longing, making it a symbol of resistance against a culture seen to be in decline.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1005-1033
Author(s):  
Tara Gonsalves

In this article, I argue that the medical conceptualization of gender identity in the United States has entered a “new regime of truth.” Drawing from a mixed-methods analysis of medical journals, I illuminate a shift in the locus of gender identity from external genitalia and pathologization of families to genes and brain structure and individualized self-conception. The sexed body itself has also undergone a transformation: Sex no longer resides solely in genitalia but has traveled to more visible parts of the body, implicating racialized aesthetic ideals in its new formulation. The re-imagining of gender identity as genetically and neurologically inscribed and the expanding locus of sex correspond to an inversion of the relationship between gender identity and the sexed body as well as shifts in medical jurisdiction. Whereas psychiatrists in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s understood gender as stemming from genital sex, the less popular idea that gender identity precedes the sexed body has gained traction in recent decades. If gender identity once derived from the sexed body, the sexed body must now be brought into alignment with gender identity. The increasing legitimacy of self-defined gender identity, the expanding definition of racialized sex, and the inversion of the sex–gender identity relationship elevates the role of surgeons in producing racialized and sexed bodies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1208
Author(s):  
Haiting Chen ◽  
Jingjing Lu

Law and Interdisciplinary research (“Law-and”) has flourished since the 1960s. “Law and literature” is an academic movement under such a background in the United States. The author uses Tomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Lu Xun's The New-Year Sacrifice to analyze and compare the legal system in British Victorian and Chinese semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and explores the root causes of the tragic fate of Tess and Xianglin’s Wife. Meanwhile, the paper reveals the predicament of women in the East and West around the 20th century.


Author(s):  
Jane H. Hong

The epilogue considers how the relationship between Asian migration and U.S. empire, exclusion, and power began changing in the 1960s through discussion of a “brain drain” from Asia to the United States. Some of the same Asian powers that had once critiqued America for excluding Asians on racial grounds now accused the United States and other Western countries of luring away the most educated and skilled members of developing societies in order to ensure their own economic hegemony for years to come.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa L. Beeble ◽  
Deborah Bybee ◽  
Cris M. Sullivan

While research has found that millions of children in the United States are exposed to their mothers being battered, and that many are themselves abused as well, little is known about the ways in which children are used by abusers to manipulate or harm their mothers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that perpetrators use children in a variety of ways to control and harm women; however, no studies to date have empirically examined the extent of this occurring. Therefore, the current study examined the extent to which survivors of abuse experienced this, as well as the conditions under which it occurred. Interviews were conducted with 156 women who had experienced recent intimate partner violence. Each of these women had at least one child between the ages of 5 and 12. Most women (88%) reported that their assailants had used their children against them in varying ways. Multiple variables were found to be related to this occurring, including the relationship between the assailant and the children, the extent of physical and emotional abuse used by the abuser against the woman, and the assailant's court-ordered visitation status. Findings point toward the complex situational conditions by which assailants use the children of their partners or ex-partners to continue the abuse, and the need for a great deal more research in this area.


Author(s):  
Steven Hurst

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.


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