White Ecclesiology: The Identity of the Church in the Statements on Racism by United States Catholic Bishops

The latest United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document on racism, Open Wide Our Hearts, prompted numerous criticisms. This article argues that US Catholic bishops’ statements on racism from 1958 to 2018 all too often present an image of the church in which Black, Latinx, Asian, and American Indian identities are spatially and socially the exterior, thereby constructing a white ecclesiology.

Intercessory Rote Prayer, Life Longevity and the Mortality of Roman Catholic Bishops: An Exploratory Study

Based on a computational analysis of a large dataset, this study explores if there is a significant longevity effect of intercessory prayer for a named individual’s well-being, if he receives a very high number of prayers per annum for an extended period. We relied on an observational cohort study, based on data from 1988 to 2018, including 857 Roman Catholic bishops, 500 Catholic priests, and 3038 male academics from six countries. We measured the covariance of the mean length of life, controlled for nationality. It was found that there is a main effect for occupation F(2, 4391) = 4.07, p = 0.017, ηp2 = 0.002, with pairwise comparisons indicating significant differences between the mean life duration of bishops (M = 30,489) and of priests (M = 29,894), but none between the academic teachers (M = 30,147) and either of the other groups. A comparison analysis between bishops from the largest and the smallest dioceses showed no significant difference t(67.31) = 1.61, p = 0.11. The first analysis proved that bishops live longer than priests, but due to a marginal effect size this result should be treated with caution. No difference was found between the mean length of life of bishops from the largest and the smallest dioceses.

McCarrick, the Kingmaker?

The former Cardinal McCarrick was often dubbed as the “Kingmaker” for his power to influence episcopal promotion in the United States and even in the Vatican. However, most of the information to support this argument is often lacking in context, making the claim easy to downplay. The purpose of this study is to look at one of the networks of Catholic bishops in the United States and to provide empirical evidence of McCarrick as the “Kingmaker” using social network analysis. The result of this study supports the claim that McCarrick was indeed the “Kingmaker” in his appointments of his former subordinates.

BISHOP NIKODIM BUSOVIĆ AND UNIATISM IN LATE 17TH AND EARLY 18TH CENTURY DALMATIA AND BOKA

This article deals with the role and activities of Bishop of Dalmatia Nikodim Busović at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. For Dalmatia and Boka, these were tumultuous times caused by the Morean War (1683–1699), with increased population migrations and increased Uniate pressures on the local Serbian population. During this turmoil, the Uniate archbishop of Philadelphia, Meletius Tipaldi, attempted to expand his influence and bring the Serbian Orthodox population in Dalmatia under his jurisdiction. At the same time, Catholic bishops in Dalmatia and Boka, protégés of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, were pressuring Serbs to embrace Uniatism. Under these circumstances, Bishop Nikodim Busović managed for more than a decade to skillfully maintain the Serbian ecclesiastical organization under Venetian rule. After his suspension, Serbs in the coastal area of Dalmatia and Boka did not have a bishop until late eighteenth century.

Law and Disorder: Ontario Catholic Bishops’ Opposition to Gay-Straight Alliances

Originating in the United States, a Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) is an in-school student club whose focus is on making the school a safe space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students and their straight allies by raising awareness about, and hopefully reducing, school-based homophobia. The ongoing struggle for GSAs in Canadian Catholic schools is one example of how clashes continue to be played out between Catholic canonical law and Canadian common law regarding sexual minorities. This paper draws upon Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction to analyze one particularly influential curricular and policy document entitled Pastoral Guidelines to Assist Students of Same-Sex Orientation from the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops. This paper posits that Catholic doctrine about non-heterosexuality functions as a Foucaultian Panopticon enabling Catholic education leaders to observe and correct the behaviour of non-heterosexual teachers and students that they deem runs counter to the values of the Vatican. This paper argues that successful resistance to the powerful disciplining regime of the Catholic school is possible.