Journal articles on the topic 'Third Church (Lynn, Mass.)'

Abstract This paper explores the material and representational politics that are catalyzed by Anti-Mass, an installation made by Cornelia Parker from the remains of a burned Black church located in the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, California. Applying an attention to religious materiality (the interpretive circuit between words, bodies, and things), semiotic ideology (an approach that explores competing and ascendant meanings), and an ethnographic sensibility, I argue that three hermeneutic fields coalesced around Anti-Mass in the museum. The first interpretation is a Killmonger hermeneutic that read Anti-Mass as a profaning of Black sacred matter. The second is an Anti- hermeneutic, which sought to preserve representational openness prized by abstract expressionism. The third is a resurrection hermeneutic, which reflected popular notions of US multicultural transcendence and a more melancholic meditation on anti-Black religious violence expressed by adjacent artwork and embodied by the ethnographer herself via a lump corpothetics.

The article analyses the active part and assignments of consecrate brothers in the teaching function of the Church. The problem is examined with reference to the third book of the Code of Canon Law 1983. The author considers assignments of consecrate brothers in the ministry of the divine word, the missionary action of the Church, the Catholic education and instruments of social communication. Consecrate brothers can fundamentally participate in all teaching functions. Small limitations e. g. the prohibition of the predication of the homily during the Holy Mass are derived from theological or legal reasons.

The Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) is a highly visible institution in Russia, and arguably the most prominent and influential religious or cultural body. The Orthodox Church figures prominently in various discussions as the driving force behind Russia's post-Soviet renewal and recovery. Surveys show that Russians trust the Orthodox Church more than any other public institution, including law courts, trade unions, mass media, the military, the police and the government. Estimates of the number of self-identified Orthodox adherents range from 50 million, which amounts to slightly more than one-third of Russia's population, to 70 million, or roughly one half of the population. A leading newspaper consistently ranks Patriarch Aleksii II, head of the Moscow Patriarchate, the governing body of the Orthodox Church, in the top 15 of the country's most influential political figures. These indicators confirm that the Orthodox Church has a significant role in Russia's post-Soviet development. This is widely accepted by commentators both within and without the Orthodox Church, and within and without Russia.

The potential for drawing tourists to the Philippines may be facilitated through religious tourism, the type of tourism that involves pilgrimage to sacred sites as act of worship. As the only largely Christian nation in Asia, the Philippine government hopes to increase tourist arrivals, particularly among Catholics worldwide to visit the multitudes of magnificent churches all through-out the islands and to marvel at the vibrancy of Filipino Catholicism. The present paper however argues that visiting these churches may show how deep-seated religiosity is among Filipinos but does not show the complete picture because some churches that Filipinos that frequent are inside malls, which traditionally do not pass as pilgrimage sites. The study intends to describe the experiences of Catholic Filipinos who attend mass and other church services in a mall church to ultimately delve on the possibility of considering these mall churches as part of pilgrimage in the Philippines. Using key informant interviews and survey, several findings are notable. First, church goers in a mallchurch believe that a space can be made sacred, and hence, the place where mass is celebrated does not matter so much. Second, there is ambivalence as to the notion of considering mall church as a pilgrimage destination because mall churches are devoid of religio-historical significance which regular churches have, but with the Filipinos‘ penchant for malling, church attendance is high in these mall churches. Third, despite the secularizing effect of globalization, church attendance among Filipinos remains high because churches are established where people flock such as the malls. The study concludes that it might be an oversight to simply dismiss mall churches as pitiable alternatives to the typical churchbecause Filipinos patronize it. It is recommended that future studies on religious tourism include a more thorough investigation of mall church-going to gain a more nuanced grasp of the uniqueness of Filipino religiosity.

In 1449, the records of the church of Our Lady at Antwerp mention a new singer, Petrus de Domaro (see Figure 1). He does not reappear in the accounts of 1450, and those of the subsequent years are all lost. Musical sources and treatises from the 1460s to 80s call him, with remarkable consistency, P[etrus] de Domarto, and reveal that he was an internationally famous composer in the third quarter of the fifteenth century.

It is of scientific interest to consider the monastic and monastic vision of church-religious, socio-political, ethno-religious problems of the pre-war era in Ukrainian lands. Interest is dictated by the following factors and reasons. First, monastic centers from the time of Kievan Rus remained one of the most stable in the society and in their mass created a fairly representative network of peculiar indicators of the spiritual state of the Russian (Ukrainian, Byelorussian) community in the regions. Secondly, through these spiritual centers there was a large-scale reproduction in the generations of the whole world-view complex, which included not only church-religious, but also ideological, socio-political orientations, moral and cultural values, ethno-national traditions, etc. Third, it was from monasticism that the higher clergy formed, which then determined the position and course of the church as a whole. Fourth, the monasteries, in the face of socio-political transience and uncertainty, actually became the gatherers, producers and guardians of the spiritual achievements of the Russian community.

The formation of students of higher theological seminaries embraces different problems. It is no possible to skip the mass-media problem in the seminarformation. The present research undertakes the problem of the seminar-formation in relation to using media in the mission of the Church, which are propositions of law and church-teaching in this field. Detailed norms of the education of seminarists bear upon three levels: first embraces the formation of seminarists as receivers, the next stage possesses the pastoral dimension, and the third (specialistic) is directed to those who will committing their future working on the field of media or will be lecturers in this sphere. The study of the documents of the church, instructions and propositions of law, confirms the urgent need of formation of the seminarists of theological seminaries, in the area of instruments of social communication. In the preparation of seminarists, one cannot only bring the separate lecture on the subject massmedia. Necessary is the general philosophical reference, and the theological formation to the present problems of social communication. In the present evangelization one ought to use mass-media. One ought today to ask after this, as to using instruments of social communication, which forms of the communication and which technologies are most useful in the concrete realization of the mission of the Church. One future priest, the conscious and critical receiver, should be a partner in the dialogue in the subject of present forms of the communication.

In the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from its establishment only days after the German attack on Yugoslavia in early April 1941 until its fall in May 1945 a genocide took place. The ultimate goal of the extreme ideology of the Ustasha regime was a new Croatian state cleansed of other ethnic groups, particularly the Serbs, Jews and Roma. The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), historically a mainstay of Serbian national identity, culture and tradition, was among its first targets. Most Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were demolished, heavily damaged or appropriated by the Roman Catholic Church or the state. More than 170 Serbian priests were killed and tortured by the Ustasha, and even more were exiled to occupied Serbia. The regime led by Ante Pavelic introduced numerous laws and regulations depriving the SPC of not only its property and spiritual jurisdiction but even of its right to existence. When mass killings stirred up a large-scale rebellion, a more political and seemingly non-violent approach was introduced: the Croatian regime unilaterally and non-canonically founded the so-called Croatian Orthodox Church in order to bring the forced assimilation of Serbs to completion. This paper provides an overview of the ordeal of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the NDH, based on the scholarly literature and documentary sources of Serbian, German and Croatian origin. It looks at legislation, propaganda, the killings and torture of Orthodox clergy and the destruction of church property, including medieval holy relics. The scale and viciousness of some atrocities will be looked at based on unused or less known sources, namely the statements of Serbian refugees recorded during the war by the SPC and the Commissariat for Refugees in Serbia, and documents from the Political Archive of the Third Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This article investigates a campaign by the French Catholic Church to bring men to Mass in the first decades of the Third Republic. Historians have long noted the gender imbalance in religious practice in France in this era. Less attention has been paid, however, to the mobilization on the part of leading clerics to tackle the problem of male religious indifference. This response took the form of a range of initiatives – pastoral visits, male-only Masses, study circles, missions and more. But the Church went further in order to overcome the obstacle of the ‘respect humain’, the fear of public mockery that kept so many men away from the Church doors. In order to inspire courage in laymen, it published narratives of Catholic heroes. Another means of encouraging piety was an association dedicated to the Sacred Heart which organized a male-only pilgrimage to Lourdes. An understanding of this campaign to evangelize men throws light on a neglected area of religious history, the relationship between religion and masculinity. It also offers a new dimension on the War of Two Frances which reached such a peak of intensity in the decade after 1900.

At the tum of the 19,h and 20th centuries lots of religious communities were founded in the St John Baptist parish in Sokołów Małopolski. One of the most important was the Third Order of St Francis. Its foundation was preceded by many years of endeavours. The very idea was propagated by the inhabitant of Sokołów, Katarzyna Koziarz, who became the member of the secular family of Franciscan family in Rzeszów in 1890. Since then morę and morę people from Sokołów had joined the Tertiary.At the beginning of the 20“’ century those who took steps to popularize the Third Order were Katarzyna Koziarz in Sokołów, Maria Ożóg and Małgorzata Maksym in Wólka Sokołowska and Katarzyna Bąk in Trzebuska while the parish priests, Franciszek Stankiewicz and Leon Szado did little for this matter. The members of the Third Order got involved in lots of activities such as sup- porting the building of the church, providing necessary things for the church and making mass of- ferings.Serious steps to found the Third Order in Sokołów were taken by the parish priest Ludwik Bukała. He organized monthly meetings for the Third Order members. He also established contact with the Bemardine Father, Wiktor Biegus, who 27 April 1936 came to Sokołów and became ac- ąuainted with the tertiaries in the parish. The permission for the canonical establishment of tertiary congregation was granted 4 May 1936 by the ordinary of Przemyśl, Bishop Franciszek Bard.The official foundation of the congregation in Sokołów took place 24 May 1936. The local tertiaries chose St Ludwik as their patron. The congregation govemment was constituted at the first meeting. The parish priest became the director of the community and Katarzyna Koziarz was ap- pointed the superior. On the day of the foundation there were about 100 members. In the first three years of the existence of the Third Order there were 30 people who received the habits and 28 who were admitted to the profession.After the canonical establishment of the congregation, the tertiaries became morę active. They provided the church with sacred appurtenances and fumishings, as well as organising public adora- tion of the Holy Sacrament. They would also wash liturgical linens and adom altars. In 1937 they bought a chasuble with the image of St Francis, and in 1939 they donated a banner with the images of Mother of God and St Francis. In addition, the tertiaries founded their own library with religious books and magazines.The congregation gathered for meetings in the parish church every month. Besides, they had occasional private gatherings. In the first years of the existence of the congregation there were 19 meetings of the Counsel. There were also two visitations of the Sokołów congregation held by Father Cyryl from Rzeszów 11 July 1937 and 6 August 1939. The activities of the tertiaries were hindered by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Ukraine for the third time in its history is experiencing a process of national revival, which not only intensified the activities of different faiths, but also raised the question of the place of religion in the life of the nation in general. That rehabilitation of religion, which took place in public opinion during the years of Ukraine's independence, changes in social assessments of its role in spiritual and national revival, Ukrainian state building, as we are, is more likely to be a response to propagation of religious spirituality by the mass media, a kind of illusion of the desired, rather than a reflection of the real processes in church and religious life.

abstract: A minor innovation of the 1970 Missale Romanum was its inclusion of two distinct Orders of Mass: the Ordo Missae cum populo and the Ordo Missae sine populo . Both of these ordines remain in the current Missale Romanum , with a few alterations. This duplication of ordines Missae was a novelty in three respects. First, the Consilium for the reform of the liturgy interpreted Sacrosanctum Concilium to call for a division of forms of Mass based on the presence or absence of the participation of the people, rather than on the presence or absence of singing, as had been the case previously. Second, the Missale Romanum as revised by Pope Pius V had used the same rubrics regardless of the size of the congregation, focusing rather on the role of the server. Third, the new Institutio generalis Missalis Romani lays out specific rubrics for the priest celebrating alone, something which previously had not been provided for in any substance. These rubrics do, however, still require further elaboration to be made practical, and this article applies the principles discerned from the revision process leading to the Ordo Missae sine populo to arrive at an interpretation of the current rubrics for a priest who celebrates Mass alone.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Catholic churches in Indonesia to conduct physical distancing, close their doors and move mass to online media or television. This situation is something extraordinary for the Catholic church which is known to adhere to tradition in the implementation of its worship. This study aims to determine the experience of Catholics in conducting mediated worship using Religious-Social Shaping of Technology examining and concepts, namely social affordance, religion-online/online-religion, and digital media law. This qualitative research is done by interviewing six informants using descriptive phenomenological approach. The results of the study indicate four main findings. First, informants have the freedom to choose the tools or channels to attend the mediated mass. Second, the interactivity in the mediated mass is lost. Third, the atmosphere of the mediated mass can have an impact on the solemnity of worship. Fourth, the use of technology for mediated mass cannot absolutely be paralleled with physical worship, but some informants still hope that the mediated mass will be held after this pandemic. This research concludes that mediated mass during a pandemic is not as ideal as a physical mass because the experience gained is not optimal, but it opens up wider opportunities to reach people who may not be physically present in church from anywhere. Academically, this research is expected to increase the wealth of knowledge about mediated worship during a pandemic. Meanwhile, in practical terms, this research can be a reference for the church to improve its overall quality. Pandemi COVID-19 membuat gereja Katolik di Indonesia melakukan physical distancing bahkan menutup pintunya dan mengalihkan misa ke media daring atau televisi. Keadaan ini merupakan sesuatu yang luar biasa bagi gereja Katolik yang terkenal memegang teguh tradisi dalam pelaksanaan ibadahnya. Penelitian ini memiliki tujuan yaitu ingin mengetahui pengalaman umat Katolik dalam melakukan ibadah termediasi dengan menggunakan Religious-Social Shaping of Technology serta beberapa konsep lain, yaitu social affordance, religion-online/online-religion, dan hukum media digital. Adapun pelaksanaan penelitian kualitatif ini adalah dengan mewawancarai enam informan menggunakan pendekatan fenomenologi deskriptif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan empat temuan utama. Pertama, informan memiliki kebebasan untuk memilih alat maupun kanal untuk mengikuti misa termediasi. Kedua, interaktivitas dalam misa termediasi menjadi hilang. Ketiga, suasana misa termediasi bisa berdampak pada kekhusyukan saat beribadah. Keempat, pemanfaatan teknologi untuk misa termediasi memang tidak bisa mutlak disejajarkan dengan ibadah fisik namun sebagian informan tetap mengharapkan misa termediasi dilakukan setelah masa pandemi ini. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa misa termediasi selama pandemi memang tidak seideal misa fisik karena pengalaman yang diraih tidaklah maksimal, namun membuka peluang lebih luas untuk menjangkau orang-orang yang tidak mungkin hadir secara fisik di gereja dari mana saja.Secara akademis penelitian ini diharapakan dapat meningkatkan khazanah pengetahuan tentang ibadah termediasi pada saat pandemi. Sementara secara praktis, penelitian ini dapat menjadi acuan bagi gereja untuk meningkatkan kualitas secara menyeluruh.

This study of the struggle between the government of the Polish People’s Republic and Solidarity in the years 1981-1984 discerns three key actors in Polish politics: the Communist party leadership and security apparatus, the arrested leaders of Solidarity, and the bishops and advisers of the Catholic Church. The PRL government made strategic decisions in this period regarding repression and liberalization. Following initial advanced preparation for the trial of eleven arrested leaders of Solidarity and KSS KOR, the government attempted to coerce the arrestees into leaving Poland, thus weakening the movement’s legitimacy. The article demonstrates how the interaction between the leaders of the two sides – mediated by bishops and advisers – produced a new dynamic and a shift in the existing political mechanism. What was once a mass movement transformed into a more regular, staffed organization with a greater role played by leaders, who symbolized the continuity of the movement and enabled Solidarity to weather the period of repression. The article shows the changes and tensions in the Solidarity movement, along with the changes that were occurring in parallel on the side of the government and the mediating third actor, i.e., the Catholic Church. This case study of the strategic clash that occurred at the beginning of the 1980s illustrates the transformations that took place within the government and Solidarity – transformations that would prove crucial to the transition process in 1988-1989.

To be presented is a two-phased historical-sociological study of “turning points” (Part I) and altered “trajectories” (Part II). In the mid-third century, two successive persecutions of Christians would be unleashed by the emperors Decius and Valerian. Those coercive efforts at suppressing the offending "superstitio" were empire-wide in scale, unprecedented in planned efficiency. Under Decius, a universally mandated requirement to offer sacrifices to the gods was backed by monitoring commissions and compliance certificates that featured confirmations of accomplishment and, most ominously, sworn, signed, and notarized declarations of lifelong religious orthopraxy. Great numbers of Christians complied with those directives—either by offering the demonic sacrifices outright or by securing fraudulent certificates attesting to having done so—actions that voided, through idolatrous trespass, the “celestial promise” of eternal life that had been gifted in the baptismal rite of spiritual rebirth. Efforts at resolving the ensuing crisis of mass apostasy split the mainstream Church into competing factions of disciplinary hardliners who resisted, and pragmatic reformers who endorsed the readmission of apostates. Drawing upon Schismogenesis and Sect-Church theories, I examine the course of this schism—doctrinally and demographically—to show how the socially induced and expedited trend towards penitential lenity, as adopted by the majority Catholic variant, facilitated the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire. The persecution and the schism it provoked carried greater world-historical significance than has hitherto been realized.

The increase in the number of poor people during the current COVID-19 pandemic is a serious challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed almost all of the living arrangements of most people. This can be seen from the increasing economic crisis in people's lives which is increasingly concerning. One of the causes is quite significant, because many companies do mass layoffs of employees due to the economic crisis in the company. This also affects many people who lose the only job that supports their daily needs. Therefore, to reduce the level of poverty among the people and assist the government in dealing with these problems, the church can take on its role. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview or concept of the role of the church in alleviating the problem of poverty in the midst of the congregation. The research method used is library research with a descriptive qualitative approach. The results of this research, namely: First, the church needs to make training that can develop the abilities (skills) of each congregation. Second, the church needs to be an example in terms of work and in building awareness to help the poor. Third, the church needs to build healthy congregational spiritual growth.AbstrakPeningkatan jumlah masyarakat miskin di masa pandemi covid 19 saat ini, menjadi sebuah tantangan yang cukup serius. Pandemi covid-19 merubah hampir semua tatanan hidup dari sebagian besar masyarakat. Hal ini dapat dilihat dari meningkatnya krisis ekonomi dalam kehidupan masyarakat yang semakin memprihatinkan. Salah satu penyebab yang cukup signifikan, karena banyak perusahaan melakukan pemecatan secara massal kepada karyawan akibat terjadinya krisis ekonomi di perusahaan tersebut. Hal ini pun berimbas kepada banyaknya orang yang kehilangan satu-satunya pekerjaan yang menghidupi kebutuhan mereka sehari-hari. Oleh sebab itu, untuk mengurangi tingkat kemiskinan di kalangan masyarakat dan membantu pemerintah dalam menghadapi persoalan tersebut, gereja dapat mengambil perannya. Untuk itu, tujuan dari penulisan ini adalah untuk memberikan gambaran atau konsep mengenai peran gereja dalam mengentaskan persoalan kemiskinan di tengah-tengah jemaat. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah penelitian pustaka dengan pendekatan kualitatif deskriptif. Adapun hasil dari penelitian ini, yakni: Pertama, gereja perlu membuat pelatihan yang dapat mengembangkan kemampuan setiap Jemaat. Kedua, gereja perlu menjadi teladan dalam hal bekerja dan dalam membangun kesadaran untuk menolong kaum miskin. Ketiga, gereja perlu membangun pertumbuhan spiritualitas jemaat yang sehat.

Síntese: A preocupação com a salvação das almas durante o século XVIII fazia parte da vivência dos católicos. Como outras instituições da época, a Ordem Terceira franciscana de São Paulo (SP/Brasil) inumava seus associados e possuía disposições a respeito dos ritos funerários, entre as quais, para garantir o bem morrer, destacavam-se: a utilização de mortalhas, a celebração de missas, o enterro no interior da igreja e a celebração anual em prol dos defuntos. Nesse sentido, a partir da documentação produzida no interior da associação são analisados os ritos fúnebres e os sepultamentos entre os irmãos terceiros, no intuito de lançar luz sobre alguns aspectos da vivência religiosa dos moradores de São Paulo, indicando também a relevância da Ordem Terceira franciscana no conjunto de associações da cidade.Palavras-chave: Ordem Terceira de São Francisco. Rituais fúnebres. Morte. São Paulo. Século XVIII.Abstract: Concern for the salvation of souls during the eighteenth century was part of the experience of Catholics. Like other institutions of the time, the Third Order of Saint Francis of São Paulo (Brazil), had provisions regarding funeral rites and buried its members. Among the provisions destined to ensure a good death stood out: the use of shrouds, the celebration of mass, burial inside the church and the annual celebration in favor of the deceased. In this sense, from the documentation produced within the association, we analyze the funeral rites and burials among the brothers of the Third Order of Saint Francis in order to shed light on some aspects of religious life of the inhabitants of São Paulo at that time, also indicating the importance of the Third Order of Saint Francis in the set of the city associations.Keywords: Third Order of Saint Francis. Funeral rites. Death. São Paulo-Brazil. Eighteenth century.

The topic of the article “The Pedagogical and Religious Dimensions of the Rites of the Sacrament of Baptism for Children” deals with the sacraments in the Catholic Church, particularly baptism as the first of the seven sacraments. As signs, sacraments are also meant to instruct, and indeed they do, for the meaning and grace of baptism are made clear in the rites of its celebration Union with Christ leads to confession of faith in the One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The profession of faith, closely related to baptism, is eminently Trinitarian. The Church baptises: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28,19), the Triune God to whom the Christian entrusts his life.The basis for analyzing the rites of baptism will be the Order of Baptism for Children during mass, which contains very important instructions that can be grouped into three points: (1) instructions about God the Father, (2) instructions about the essence of baptism and its importance for the parish and the baptized, (3) instructions about the duties of the baptized and their parents and godparents. In the sacraments God occupies the central place, and the sacrament of baptism, by instructing about God the Father, the first issue, brings closer three fundamental truths about God: (a) God’s initiative in the salvation for man, (b) God’s omnipotence (universal, loving and mysterious), and (c) God’s goodness. The second issue deals with: (a) the essence of baptism based on the terms given in the Rite of Receiving the Children (baptism, faith, the grace of Christ, admission to the Church, and eternal life); (b) the meaning of infant baptism for the parish community; and (c) the meaning of baptism for the child. Likewise, the third issue is also divided into two parts, with an instruction (a) on the duties of the baptized and (b) the duties of baptized children, parents and godparents.

Abstract Until relatively recently Peregrines have been regarded as a rural bird. As their populations have increased over the past 20 years, Peregrines have increasingly become urban birds. One of the earliest locations to be occupied by Peregrines in the UK was on a church in Exeter, in the county of Devon. Over the past 20 years we have studied their diet, collecting prey remains on a regular basis. The results reveal that Feral Pigeons Columba livia comprise one third of the diet by frequency and just over half of the diet when measured by mass. The remainder of the diet comprises a wealth of other species including wading birds, other doves and pigeons, ducks, gulls and terns, and rails. A selection of species eaten by the Peregrines reveal that they are hunting at night, taking certain wading birds, rails and grebes, that would be difficult to catch by day and are known to migrate at night. This study is the most comprehensive to date and reveals that while the Feral Pigeon is an important part of the diet, contrary to public opinion, it is by no means the only species that Peregrines eat. In fact, the remaining half of the diet, by mass, comprised 101 other species of bird and three species of mammal. Such dietary studies help dispel myths about peregrines feeding habits and ensure that their conservation and protection is based on evidence.

Anyone undertaking a task to describe an attitude of John Paul II towards scholars of antiquity faces two problems: the innumerable mass of people he met throughout his life carrier and his personal scholar path which was not primarily patristic. He went from John of the Cross, Thomas Aquinas, Max Scheller towards contemporary phenomenology. Yet, „the Polish Pope” was gradually getting more and more interested in patristic studies. This article is a short study in Wojtyla’s understanding of the work, the method and the tasks of contemporary patrologists. In an allocution to the representatives of the Institute Sources Chretiennes, John Paul II declared that the development of patristic studies stayed in the bottom of his heart, for a credible formation of Christian intelligentsia, must always appeal to the fathers of our faith. Consequently, he considered patristic scholars’ work, as a bridge between life giving sources of theological knowledge i.e. Holy Scripture, Tradition of the Fathers and still unknown bank of the third millennium. Holy Father appraised and highly estimated historical-critical method applied in patristic studies. To understand the meaning of dogmas, the relation between the Holy Scriptures, Tradition and Magisterium, the Church cannot withhold from studies in antiquity. Humility, patience and perseverance are the most distinguished Christian virtues that should characterize scholars of antiquity. To a certain degree, Pope’s esteem towards patristic scholars, was noticeably accentuated by numerous nominations of the most distinguished patristic scholars to the honor of episcopate. The main message that John Paul II implicitly directed towards contemporary scholars of antiquity seemed to concentrate on pastoral dimension and reduced to a one phrase. If there is anything that, in the deformed and chaotic world of contemporary theology and philosophy, could restitute harmony and balance, it is the teaching of the Fathers of the Church.

The sacrificial rites of the Old Testament are ‘neither dark nor dumb, but mystical and significant, and fit to stir up the dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty before God.’ So preached a nonconformist, Samuel Mather, in the 1660s, recalling with a deliberate or unconscious twist a phrase used in the Book of Common Prayer to defend contemporary rites of which he disapproved. The Reformation that set aside the ascetic ideal of monasticism also saw a revaluation of the place of sacrifice in the life of the Church. While its role in Protestant activity was diminished by the rejection of the Mass as a propitiatory act, teaching about the priesthood of all believers prepared for a new emphasis on the devotion and duty of Christians as ‘spiritual sacrifice’; an emphasis informed in puritanism by lessons from the types of the Old Testament. Much is known about puritan religious practice; and of puritan interest in typology, stimulated by Calvin’s conviction of the unity of the Old and New Testaments – the same covenant present in each, accommodated to the capacity of a ‘Church under age’ in Israel. But familiar themes combined can give fresh perspectives: here their combination illustrates one of the ways in which the ascetic ideal was being reformulated among protestants of the third and fourth generation in seventeenth-century England. Sacrifice was not often a dominant theme in their description of the Christian life, and yet, despite an untidiness of evidence, it is clear that certain allusions to Israelite sacrifice were conventional, part of a common rhetoric, a common and powerful imagery. Some representative examples of the conventions follow, organised around simple questions. What were ‘spiritual sacrifices’ and what practical exercises of devotion and discipline were associated with them? By what means and in what manner should they be offered?

Inscribed on the wall of the expiatory Basilica of Sacré Coeur, at Montmartre, the 1873 ‘national vow’ of France interprets the nation's recent misfortunes as divine chastisement of an errant and irreligious people. Since it was Napoleon III's withdrawal of French troops from Rome that had made it possible for the Italian forces to capture the papal city in September 1870, the ‘national vow’ reflects a strong sense of French responsibility for the pope's loss of his temporal power. The Catholic Right interpreted France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, and her subsequent loss of Alsace and Lorraine, as God's punishment on ‘the eldest daughter of the Church’ for her desertion of the Vicar of Christ, and the ‘national vow’ pledged prayer for the Roman pontiff's deliverance from his enemies. This study analyses the devotion of French Catholics to ‘the prisoner of the Vatican’ during the Third Republic through an exploration of some of the religious and political meanings of pilgrimage to visit ‘Peter in chains’. It also charts the process by which promotion in the Catholic press, rapid train transportation and cheaper package fares opened an era of mass pilgrimage to Rome and paved the way for a new popular papal style.

Abstract This essay addresses the relations between Pius XII and Germany at the beginning of his pontificate through the role of Vatican Media, especially Vatican Radio. During the interwar period, the Vatican media system (media ensemble) underwent major transformations, including the creation of a radio broadcasting station in 1931. Pacelli was one of the main agents of these improvements: as Secretary of State supporting Guglielmo Marconi’s project, as Pope through his extensive use of the mass media at his disposal, from radio to cinema. At the end of the 30s the difficult diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Third Reich also had an impact on mass media, as shown by the election of Pacelli in March 1939. The role of Vatican Radio in Vatican diplomacy towards Nazi Germany was already clear during the events surrounding the Anschluss in 1938 and it became a tool for unofficial communication to convey more explicit stances on the regime during World War II. The same strategy was employed during the Option in Südtirol in 1939, when Catholics were able to deliver anti-Nazi propaganda thanks in part to radio in the attempt to avoid the voluntary resettlement of German-speaking Italian citizens from the area. The Holy See maintained a neutral position throughout the events, but at the same time Vatican Radio broadcast programmes in German about the condition of the Catholic Church under the Nazi regime. These broadcasts supported the efforts especially of the Archbishop of Trento Celestino Endrici and his clergy, who opposed the resettlement. Once again Vatican Radio proved a crucial tool for conveying unofficial communications while maintaining the neutral stance typical of the Holy See‘s foreign policy.

The mass media in the modern world play an important role in forming public opinion. Interpretation of the problems associated with the introduction of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in the media discourse does not have a single vector. The ambiguity and inconsistency of the judgments of sociologists, economists, doctors, journalists, and the church contribute to the formation of a wary attitude towards the new methods of ART introduction in society. Objectives. To identify the special features of the presentation of assisted reproductive technologies in the materials of news Internet portals of the Republic of Belarus and Russia. Material and methods. The study analyzed the articles on the types of assisted reproductive technologies from three Belarusian (BelTA, Onliner.by, Sputnik.by) and three Russian Internet publications (Rambler, Lenta.ru, RBC). Results. For the period from 08.01.2020 to 08.01.2021, a content analysis of 97 news articles on the topic of ART was carried out. Conclusions. The most popular types of technologies mentioned in the articles are in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and cryopreservation. According to statistical data there are more positive publications that reveal ART issues than negative ones. In vitro fertilization (IVF) gets more loyal coverage on news sites compared to surrogacy. This is due to the fact that in surrogacy, a third party (a surrogate mother) is directly involved in the birth of a child, which violates the so-called «intimate» side of family life.

Queen Mary Tudor died on the night of 17 November 1558. A few hours later, across the river at Lambeth, her cousin, Reginald Pole, Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury, followed her, victim of the ague which he had contracted in the summer. England again had a change of monarch, the third in less than twelve years. What was not clear at the time was whether there would be another change in religion. With hindsight, it is clear that the programme of reform which sought to reunite the English Church with the see of Rome and to revivify it with the Tridentine reforms with which Pole had been so closely involved, had died also on that November night. Parliament was in session when Mary died, and immediately Elizabeth was proclaimed queen by Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, in his capacity as Lord Chancellor; there was no dissent such as had accompanied the accession of the new Queen's half-sister. It soon became clear, however, that the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn was unlikely to retain the settlement of religion in the precise form in which it had been left by the daughter of Katharine of Aragon. On Christmas Day, the Queen ordered that the elevation of the Blessed Sacrament was not to take place during the Mass to be celebrated in her chapel by the Bishop of Carlisle, Owen Oglethorpe. His refusal to obey this command led the Queen to leave the chapel after the gospel had been read. Two days later, a royal proclamation restored the first liturgical changes of Henry VIII, ordering that the epistle and gospel of the Mass were thenceforward to be read in English, along with the litany which usually preceded the service. The coronation of Elizabeth should have been conducted by the senior surviving churchman, Heath of York; he had resigned the Chancellorship before the end of 1558, and declined to conduct the service. It was Oglethorpe, as bishop of a suffragan see of the Northern Province, who crowned the new Queen, with no other diocesan bishops present. The coronation Mass was sung by one of the Reformers, Dr. George Carewe, who omitted the elevation, and another Reformer preached the sermon.

Among the ten celebrations of the Mass of St Basil in the Orthodox Church during the year are the conclusions to the three Vesper services immediately before the three major feasts of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter. Two of these Vesper services – those for Christmas Eve and the Eve of Epiphany – are of particular musical interest since they contain psalms with troparia or antiphons, for both of which the entire music can be transcribed from thirteenth-century manuscripts, so that these two services can be celebrated with what are, almost certainly, the oldest known complete examples of Byzantine psalm singing. From a recent paper of mine on these psalms, it can be gathered that they are examples of what is known as ‘responsorial psalmody’, the psalm itself being sung by a soloist, and the attached troparion by a choir of trained singers or psaltae. In both services they occur as punctuations of a series of readings, appearing in each case after the third and the sixth reading. On the Eve of Epiphany we should perhaps expect to find further psalms after the ninth and twelfth readings, since the series extends to thirteen readings in modern service books and to twelve in the early Middle Ages; yet no such psalms appear now or seem ever to have been sung at this point. And similarly, on Holy Saturday, when according to the ancient Jerusalem cursus twelve readings were given, to be extended in Constantinople to fifteen, no equivalents seem to have been performed at any point.

The periods of reforms of the 19th century, revolution, civil war and Soviet construction of the 1920s of the 20th century, unprecedented in the concentration of innovations in the Don enlightenment, are investigated. The author traces the formation of the legal statuses of the estate-Cossack and peasant schools of the Don region, the emergence of female and secondary education in the region. Changes in the educational space of the Region of the Don Army (RDA) are associated with the inclusion in 1878 of the Rostov region and the Taganrog city government in its composition. An analysis of various types of RDA schools showed that there were twice as many parish schools in military villages and farms as there were schools in peasant settlements. The primary school of the Synod, after growth in the 1880s, lost its position at the beginning of the twentieth century due to the low level of education. The peculiarities of secondary education in the region are the class-Cossack character of gymnasiums in the Cossack centers of the Department of Internal Affairs, the priority development of military Cossack educational institutions, the provision of benefits to specialists of Cossack origin. The establishment of the Don Polytechnic Institute in Novocherkassk meant that, in terms of the development of education, the RDA rose to a level comparable to the central regions of the country, at the same time, most school-age children did not have access to educational institutions. During the Civil War on the territory of the White Cossack quasi-state “The Great Army of the Don”, the learning process was not interrupted, and functioned according to the laws of the estate school. The Soviet Unified Labor School, separated from the church and representing equal rights to education for representatives of all social groups and nationalities, was formed after the end of the Civil War. The system-forming link was the state administration of education, acting in line with the decisions of the Communist Party. In the 1920s and the country made a leap from mass illiteracy of the population to the introduction of universal compulsory primary education, which stopped the constant reproduction of the illiterate when new generations entered life. Development of the Don regional educational space system in the 19th-20th centuries became a progressive civilizational process.

This article concentrates on the Russian reception history of the most famous church work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his Requiem mass in D minor, in the 19th–beginning of the 20th centuries, up to the Russian revolution. Taking as a premise some research methods outlined in current studies by Simon P. Keefe (Mozart’s Requiem, 2012) and Mark Everist (Mozart’s Ghosts, 2012), it shall propose its own research strategy that views the ʻRussian after-lifeʼ of this unfinished masterpiece from different angles. First, I shall contextualize the Requiem reception history within local editorial practices, scrutinising a number of editions, transcriptions, and arrangements, published in Russia in the period under consideration (e.g., a vocal score with A. Maykov’s Russian translation of the text printed in Saint Petersburg). Second, I will illustrate the process of Requiem’s integration into the repertoire of the most influential concert organisations (such as the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Society), using a sample of extant concert programs and announcements. Third, I will outline a wide range of approaches towards this composition and its performances in musicological studies, critical essays, and concert reviews (for instance, in the Russian version of A. Ulybyshev’s Mozart Biography, translated by M. Tchaikovsky and commented by H. Laroche). Finally, I shall shed some light on the way Mozart’s masterpiece was creatively used in the current compositional process, examining its incorporation into works written by Russian musicians (e.g., in N. Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera «Mozart and Salieri»). Viewing the reception history from all these analytical angles helps create a multifaceted portrait of the Requiem’s ‘after-life’ in Russia, one that shows a gradual change of its meaning and soundscape in the process of interaction between Russian and Austrian cultures.

The article highlights the general circumstances of the existence and transformation of the cult of the venerable hermit-ascetic Onufrii the Great in the national territory during the end of the 18th – 19th centuries. This historical period is characterized by the curtailment and certain changes in the forms of veneration of the named saint, and later, almost a century later, by the revitalization of the cult. The process of collapse was conditioned and triggered by both internal and external factors. Among the first, the main role was played by the administrative and organizational measures of the leadership of the national Churches (Orthodox and Union) in the first – third quarters of the 18th century, aimed at streamlining monastic service, as well as at consolidating monasteries in order to support their financial situation. As a result of these measures, a considerable number of small and medium-sized monastic settlements ceased to exist. Among the others are general church reforms introduced by the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, which included Ukrainian lands; reforms that caused, in particular, the mass closure of such monastic settlements. One of the specific consequences of the reduction of the monastic form of asceticism and veneration of Onufrii the Great (monasticism was the first and for a long time the only, at least the main, medium of veneration of the holy hermit) was the «exit» of the investigated cult outside the monastery walls and its spread among a much larger number of local believers, including the common people. The latter process led, on the one hand, to its stabilization, and on the other, to a certain popularisation (folklorization). The noticeable rise of the cult fell on the last two decades of the 19th century and concerned mainly the western lands of Ukraine. These processes were initiated by the reform of the Order of Saint Basil the Great, initiated by Pope Leo XIII and supported (mainly for political reasons) by the Austrian government of that time.

The article is devoted to fiction representation’s research influence of the fear’s, as part of the totalitarianism everyday practices 1930’s, on the creation «homo sovieticus» identity. The everyday history studies are important component of the memory and identity studies. The Ukrainian memory studies pay attention on the traumatic historical experience, while the west European scholars are fixed on the socio-cultural history of the everyday life. The benefit of this study is combine both research approaches. This provides an opportunity to explore social totalitarian everyday life from the view of the reconstruction outlook and identity of the «homo sovieticus». We used discourse-analysis’s methodology for this research, thethought about that our communication is reflection of our identity and the nature of social relations. As applied materials wechosen diaspora writers’ texts, the novel «The Fear» by Olena Zvychayna and memories by Dokiya Humenna and ValerianRevuc’ky. All these authors were witnessed Stalin’s repressions, and later they wrote about it. Olena Zvychayna described the fear as terrors’ instrument, which defined soviet peoples’ everyday life. For example, the practices of the night arrests. The thousands of people across the country were arrested between the first and third hours every night. Those systematic practices of intimidation became the part of the whole physical terror in 1930’. As a result, we can see «a faceless person» in fiction about that period. His main characteristics are depersonalization of personality, and unification of appearance according with sovieticus aesthetic. In contrast, fear is personified and has a face. Its connected with certain persons in collective imaginations of the soviet people, for example Stalin or Yezov, and otherі, who represented the totalitarianism system punitive practiceses of the system. The practice of collective meeting was another element Stalin’s intimidation tactic in the 1930’. The collective meetings were devoted to stigmatization particular persons with nonsovieticus outlook. As a consequence, it formation еру collective intimidation system. The aesthetics of pessimism and physical fall arosed in the everyday life of people in fear and was opposed to canons’ beauty and optimism tj socialist realism. Everyday life’s realistic showed many contrasts between normative aesthetic with the cult of the beautiful human body, optimistic socialism’s labor and gloomy totalitarian aesthetic. We can see some main oppositions in the novel «The Fear», such as: monumental forms collective life and man loneliness; mass Soviet celebrations and uncolored everyday life; party meeting with bravura marches and forbidden wedding in the church. At same time, the totalitarian reality’s aesthetic influenced on the personality’s moral degradation and value system of the person. As a result, it transformed soviet people in victim and executioner in one person. In conclusion we remark that the fears’ phenomenon was determinative in shaping «soviet man» Stalinist’s period. The systematic practices of intimidation formed the man depersonalized, identified with mass. Another definition such people – «faceless person». He or she needs appropriate aesthetic, which contrast with of the canon’s soviet realism aesthetic. The fear to stand out lays in the such Stalin’s system base.

O artigo apresenta o atual carisma palotino no apostolado com os migrantes em conexão com a Sagrada Escritura e o Magistério da Igreja, bem como a história vivida por São Vicente Pallotti. São quatro aspectos que se relacionam entre si, mas sistematicamente estudados: antes de tudo a experiência da migração no Antigo Testamento e o mandamento de Deus ao povo judeu para amar os migrantes, porque também eles foram migrantes no Egito. No Novo Testamento, Jesus Cristo foi identificado como migrante, quando a primeira comunidade cristã foi enviada a anunciar o Evangelho a todos os povos e recomendou a acolhida e a hospitalidade aos estrangeiros. O segundo ponto é a ação apostólica de Pallotti com os migrantes devido ao deslocamento em massa no século XIX e o cuidado necessário aos migrantes italianos, seja pela necessidade espiritual seja pela solidariedade social. Os primeiros Palotinos foram também para os Estados Unidos, Brasil, Argentina, Uruguai, entre outros países. A terceira parte é sobre o ensinamento da Igreja a respeito da migração, começando por Pio XII, passando pelo Vaticano II e alcançando o atual pontificado de Francisco. Em conclusão, há uma proposta para o apostolado universal e sinodal realizado pela família Palotina. The article presents the current Pallottine charism on the apostolate with migrants in connection with Holy Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church, as well as the history lived by St. Vincent Pallotti. There are four aspects that relate to each other but are systematically studied: first of all the experience of migration in the Old Testament and God's commandment to the Jewish people to love the migrant because he too was a migrant in Egypt. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is identified as a migrant, while the first Christian community was sent to proclaim the Gospel to all peoples and recommended welcoming and hospitality to foreigners. The second point is Pallotti's apostolic action with migrants due to the mass displacement in the nineteenth century and the necessary care for Italian migrants both for spiritual necessity and social solidarity. The first Pallottines also went to the United States of America, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, etc. The third part is on the ecclesial teaching on migrations beginning with Pius XII, passing through Vatican II and achieving the current pontificate of Francis. In conclusion there is a proposal for the universal and synodal apostolate carried out by the Pallottine Family.

Currently, there is an increased interest in church history. Special attention is paid to the history of the spread of Orthodoxy among the peoples of Russia. The article reveals the peculiarities of the development of the project of the organization of the Orthodox mission in the Vyatka diocese. The project was created by the diocesan leadership in the early 1830s and was called "Instruction to Vyatka missionaries". In the second third of the XIX century, missions appeared in various regions of Russia to establish and spread Christianity among the non-Russian peoples of the empire. After the ban at the end of the XVIII century. For diocesan preachers to carry out missionary activities, the duty of spreading the Christian faith and affirming the newly baptized in it was transferred to the parish clergy. The mass apostasy of the newly baptized into paganism and Islam in a number of dioceses, including Vyatka, led to the establishment of full-time missionaries. Various instructions for keeping newly baptized in the Christian faith began to appear. In this context, the "Instruction to Vyatka missionaries" appears. Its peculiarity was that it was aimed more at retaining the newly baptized in the Christian faith than at attracting new adherents. The article attempts to consider the practical implementation of the project, as well as to compare the points of the project with the plans developed at different times in the dioceses of Russia. В настоящее время наблюдается повышенный интерес к церковной истории. Особое внимание уделяется истории распространения православия среди народов России. В статье выявляются особенности разработки проекта организации православной миссии в Вятской епархии. Проект создавался епархиальным руководством в начале 1830-х гг. и получил название «Наставление вятским миссионерам». Во второй трети XIX в. в различных регионах России появились миссии для утверждения и распространения христианства среди нерусских народов империи. После запрета в конце XVIII в. епархиальным проповедникам осуществлять миссионерскую деятельность обязанность распространения христианской веры и утверждения в ней новокрещеных была переложена на приходское духовенство. Массовые отпадения новокрещеных в язычество и мусульманство в ряде епархий, в том числе и Вятской, привели к учреждению штатных миссионеров. Стали появляться различные инструкции по удержанию новокрещеных в христианской вере. В этом контексте и появляется «Наставление вятским миссионерам». Его особенность заключалась в том, что он был нацелен больше на удержание новокрещеных в христианской вере, нежели на привлечение новых адептов. В статье предпринята попытка рассмотреть практическую реализацию проекта, а также сравнить пункты проекта с планами, разработанными в разное время в епархиях России.

Following Germany’s unification in 1871, Gdansk was a major municipal centre and a port on the Empire’s map, however it was well past its heyday. In the Gründerzeit, it could not reach as quick a pace of development as other cities of the Reich, and by the late 19th century it did not boast any university. The attempt to catch up on the substantial delay in creating modern public architecture in Gdansk was only made after the fortifications had been dismantled (1895–97). A triangular plot close to St James’s Gate was reserved for the purpose of education and science. It was there that a seat of the city archive and the building of the Secondary School of SS Peter and Paul (Oberrealschule St. Petri und Pauli) were raised. The third edifice was planned as the new home for the Gdansk Library. The precious book collection, whose core was formed by the collection bequeathed by Joannes Bernardinus Bonifacius d’Oria of Naples in 1596, was kept in a former Franciscan monastery, and later in St James’s Church. Attempts to raise a new building to house the collection in the 1820s as designed by Carl Samuel Held failed. Neither was the plan to erect the new library building as an extension of the Dungeon and Prison Gate Complex implemented. It was only Karl Kleefeld’s design from 1901–1902 planning to raise an impressive Gothic Revival complex that finally came to life. Completed in January 1905, the Library welcomed the first readers already on 16 February. Kleefeld designed the building’s mass on the L -plan layout with a truncated corner and wings. The main reading room boasted elegant, sumptuous, and coherent wooden furnishing, and the gallery’s centrepiece was a ledge decorated with 14 panels featuring bas -relief cartouches with the emblems of the cities of West Prussia. Differing in size, the edifices, were given red -brick elevations with plastered details and glazed green filling, with a sgraffito frieze on the reading room elevation between the ground and first floors. It was the Gdansk Renaissance that dominated in public buildings’ architecture of the city in the last quarter of the 19th century. The resumed popularity of Gothic Revival in its local forms in Gdansk public buildings’ architecture, such as those in the afore - -described Kleefeld’s designs, resulted undoubtedly from a rapid growth of research into historic structures, yet on the other hand it reflected the return to the local tradition (Heimatschutz), which could be observed in the architecture of the German Reich at the time. Judged in the context of an extremely modest programme of public projects in Gdansk of the period, the creation of the Bildungsdreick with the edifices of the archive, library, and secondary school is to be regarded as a major event in the history of creating public architecture of the city. As seen against other projects of the time in other Reich cities, the Gdansk City Library stood out neither with its scale, nor innovatory character of the layout solutions. What, however, makes it a special facility are architectural forms that reveal its contribution to the search for the expression of the local tradition. This kind of an archaeological approach to the past and a compilatory additive method of juxtaposing quotes from various buildings, which may have also arisen from the lack of talent of the architect, were undoubtedly in decline in the early 20th century.

WHO TO TRUST? Christian Belief in Conspiracy Theories by Nigel Chapman et al. Victoria, Australia: ISCAST, 2022. 164 pages. Paperback; $12.99. ISBN: 9780645067156. ebook/discussion paper. https://iscast.org/conspiracy/. *Conspiracy theories (CTs) have existed for as long as humans have been able to record them for posterity; however, due to the exponential growth of electronic media, the proliferation and popularity of CTs have made them ubiquitous. Western societies have been particularly affected by CTs in recent decades through our ability to communicate unfiltered diatribes at the speed of light, by the seductive influence of CTs as a form of mass entertainment, and by unabashed populists who use them to tar their political rivals. Though they still frequently draw ridicule, conspiracy claims are now a mainstream form of grievance, spread by people--rich, poor, weak, and powerful--across the political spectrum. This is largely why academics in the behavioral and social sciences, concerned by the harmful impact of CTs on public discourse and social behavior, have begun to treat them and the people who promote them as objects of serious study. *Sadly, committed Christians are no strangers to the conspiracy mindset, and not only those who belong to fringe communities obsessed with end-times prophecy and creeping authoritarianism. Hence, learning to identify the common elements of conspiracist thinking and guarding themselves, their relationships, and their faith communities against its corrosive influence, is a timely and urgent issue for those who claim to be followers of Christ. *This short book (or long "discussion paper," as its authors describe it) is the product of fifteen science and theology authors who are committed Christians and associates of the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology (ISCAST), an Australian organization that promotes dialogue on the intersection of faith and science. The central goal of this work is to harmonize the academic research on conspiracy thinking with biblical ethics in order to help Christian leaders and their communities address the phenomenon of conspiracism in a socially constructive and spiritually uplifting manner. *The book contains five main chapters--two of a theoretical nature and three of a practical nature. The first two summarize the ideas of leading academics (Barkun, Brotherton, Douglas, Dyrendal, Uscinski and Parent, van Prooijen, etc.), with a special focus on political polarization and populism, and the ways these shape, or are shaped by, conspiracy theories. The third chapter examines popular vaccine and COVID-19-themed conspiracy theories in Australia, North America, and Europe, and it highlights the exaggerated suspicions many Christians harbor toward government, media, academia, and other mainstream epistemic authorities. The last two chapters discuss the ethical, psycho-social, and organizational challenges that conspiracism poses on the way Christians live and think, admonishing them--as individuals and faith communities--to examine conspiracy claims in an epistemically responsible, socially constructive, and biblically grounded manner. *This book presents several strong arguments. First, because some conspiracy claims turn out to be true (Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc.), there is need to exercise careful discernment, engage in charitable exchanges, and consult appropriate expert sources when considering the credibility of specific CT claims. Real conspiracies generally turn out to be less ambitious in scope than the more elaborate theories that flourish in alternative media (JFK, "deep state," flat earth, deadly vaccines, etc.) and are usually the product of organized criminal networks, political graft, or fraudulent business deals. *Second, implausible CTs are often promoted by fringe media, non-experts, and subversive political movements, all of whom habitually traffic in speculation rather than hard evidence, blame vague or invisible enemies who cannot be prosecuted, berate official narratives rather than present a consistent counter-theory, ask rhetorical questions that invite the hearer to distrust experts, and make bombastic claims that reinforce anxieties of impending doom, furtive enemies, secret patterns hiding in plain sight, social marginalization, and political alienation. *Third, CTs negatively affect social relations by "building isolation, paranoia, anxiety, or depression in some individuals, [...] splitting friends, families, churches," disrupting communities, and "undermining [legal, political, and academic] institutions through cynicism and mistrust" (p. 6). Not only is the impact of strong conspiracy beliefs detrimental to healthy social relationships and responsible citizenship, CTs also undermine the New Testament's instructions not to slander, not to proffer angry judgments and insults, nor to engage in strife and partiality but rather to live in harmony, love, respect, patience, and forbearance in accordance with Christ's example. *Fourth, these considerations should lead Christians who feel drawn to conspiracist explanations to exercise humility in their search for truth, and to nurture a predisposition to healing rather than attacking relationships and institutions. "A Christian conspiracy theorist should understand themselves to be seeking truth and justice" (p. 6), cultivating awareness of the biases and self-victimizing tendencies that especially affect Christians (e.g., through divisive biblical and pseudo-biblical doctrines), and fostering dialogue rather than fractious debate. "Conspiracy theories may be true or false. But if we want to avoid spreading untruths, injustices, and strife, then we must cultivate a reasonable and peaceable impartiality in the way that we assess or discuss them" (p. 114). *Finally, "inoculation is better than cure" (p. 131). By sensitizing believers to the challenges of cognitive biases and disinformation, we can help them guard their hearts and minds against disruptive CTs and the unhealthy behaviors they elicit. "We should train Christians to hear diverse views; have good conversations; debate ideas; hear from Christians who work as experts or authorities in public life; demand consistent democratic values in public life; and have the emotional maturity to be generous in spirit toward their opponents (p. 6)." *This book/discussion paper serves as a useful and well-rounded survey of academic literature on conspiracism and as a primer for practical discussions on trust, responsible research, and Christian ethics. It contains useful definitions, summaries, and suggestions for further reading that make the text easy to read and to follow. Its language is accessible to most, though its content is less balanced in its accessibility to a mass audience. The information presented in the first two chapters may be complex to those with little knowledge of psychology and political science, while the second half, strong in biblical references, requires the reader to have some level of familiarity with the scriptures and (it goes without saying) a belief in their moral authority. Inversely, well-versed readers may find that the overview presented in the first half of the work lacks depth of analysis. Readers will also notice a lack of cohesion (and some repetition) between chapters, but this is unsurprising in a 163-page discussion paper written by fifteen authors divided into four working groups. Like the old adage that a giraffe is a racehorse designed by a committee, so too does this work end up lacking some unity. Nevertheless, it still serves as a useful guide for church leaders seeking greater theoretical and/or practical understanding of conspiracy thinking, and for small groups wishing to improve communications, counselling services, and ministry to the politically and socially disaffected within their church or wider community. *If we reformulate the title of this text to "Whom Should Christians Trust?," and distill it through the clichéd but effective rhetorical question "What would Jesus do?," we might then ask ourselves, "Whom would Jesus fear?" The answer to this question, of course, is "no one," because his kingdom is not of this world. This maxim encapsulates the central message of this discussion paper, which admonishes its readers not to fall prey to worldly anxieties but to have--and to guide others toward--the confidence that Christ has already won the battle against all evil plots. His followers need only guard their hearts against despair and pursue the truth with love. *Reviewed by Michel Jacques Gagné, a historian, podcaster, and the author of Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories (Routledge, 2022). He teaches courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, and ethics at Champlain College, St. Lambert, QC.

<p>The aim of the paper is to characterize pilgrimage as a significant concept in Latgalian culture by emphasizing pilgrimage’s dialectic comprehension and most essential manifestations in culture. The study use a linguistically culturological approach and reviews pilgrimage as a global and multilevel structure, that consists of conceptual, emotively evaluated, historical and etymological layers (Степанов 2001: 84). For this purpose there were used mainly such written sources as vocabularies, periodicals and fiction, that refer to pilgrimage.</p><p>While gathering various interpretations of sacredness and journeys, paper deals with four main comprehensions of pilgrimage in Latgale: firstly, pilgrimage as a religious activity, that means walking to a sacred place along with the prayers, secondly, pilgrimage as a social campaign for the affirmation of ideological efforts, thirdly, pilgrimage as an individual and sensitive search for the eternal values and, lastly, pilgrimage as a type of a religious tourism in contemporary post-modern society.</p><p>The beginning of Catholic pilgrimage tradition in Latgale usually tends to be associated with Aglona, when Dominicans or the so called White Fathers Order began their activities in the region in 1699. Today, within the Rēzekne–Aglona diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, there are several sites, which have been officially acknowledged as sacred on the basis of the corresponding features they possess. Primarily, it’s the altarpiece of the Virgin miracle-worker and other relics, that are special for the Christianity and where pilgrims may pray for health or any other mercy. Secondly, in the territory of the sacred place there may be located objects of nature, that bring health and blessing, for example, sacred spring.</p><p>The appreciation of religious pilgrimage in Latgalian culture has been also affected by the historical context. From 1918 to 1940 pilgrimage activity experienced especially strong prosperity, but it changed during the Soviet-era, when pilgrimage subject in mass media was forbidden and lost its official support, but it still continued to proceed. Organized pilgrimages to Aglona recurred only in 1989 along with the so called Third Latvian National Awakening.</p><p>Pilgrimage in Latgalian culture appears also as a social campaign for the affirmation of ideological efforts, where comprehension of sacredness from the scope of the Christian Religion transfers into secular every-day lifestyle and subjects to ideological dogmas of era. Such interpretation of pilgrimage especially activates during 1920s–1930s, as well as in 1940s and 1990s. The aspiration for such pilgrimage usually is a place, person or monument, but all pilgrimages that are distinctive to the affirmation of ideological efforts possess fragmentation feature. With the alterations within the ideological emphasis the idea of the ideological pilgrimage either disappears either transforms into ceremonial procession or simple memorial tribute.</p><p>Comprehension of the pilgrimage as an individual and sensitive search for the eternal values is more related to the individualized pilgrim’s motive, that is connected to emotional experience, namely, search for the deprecated and irreversible values. This motive is especially noticeable within the exiled Latgalians’ literature, where such personages as motherland, home, mother and mother’s tomb are united and related to the Virgin’s archetype. The pilgrimage process, that Latgalian exiled writers live through in their imagination, shows, that it is one of the most essential values, that is evaluated during the immense influence of foreign countries, that helps to preserve Latgalian identity at times while far away from home.</p><p>One of the most popular type of tourism today is religious tourism. In Latgale it began in the 20th century through periodicals of 1920s–1930s. Now it is an integral part of the global tourism industry, including both national and international projects.</p><p>Meaning diversification in the contextual semantics of the pilgrimage shows its deep roots in the Latgalian culture and how it merges universal, national, ethnic and denominational characteristic marks in cultural traditions.</p>

WHY SCIENCE AND FAITH BELONG TOGETHER: Stories of Mutual Enrichment by Malcolm A. Jeeves. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021. 294 pages. Paperback; $35.00. ISBN: 9781725286191. *Many sense tension between modern science and Christian faith. Malcolm Jeeves, however, intends to show how the two are quite complementary. As Emeritus Professor (University of St. Andrews), past-President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellow of both the Academy of Medical Sciences and the British Psychological Society, and a prolific author in the arena of science and faith, he is supremely qualified to write this book. *The Preface reveals his motives: emails from distraught students despairing over a faith that seems incompatible with modern science, and polls showing the mass exodus of young people from faith for the same reason. The emails come from those appealing desperately to believing experts for help to hang on to faith, while the polls represent those making the opposite choice by voting with their feet. Scripture has much longer roots than modern science: the written texts go back two or three millennia, and the oral traditions underlying them another several millennia, whereas modern science is very new. So, when these two divinely inspired searches for truth seem to come into conflict, the tendency for some is to favor the tried-and-true, whereas others feel it necessary to favor what is seen as the "new-and-improved." Jeeves's goal is to show how these two books actually complement one another even when they appear to conflict. *The book is divided into three sections. The first looks at how science and cultural changes seem to keep shrinking and changing God, while introducing new alternative gods. God had long been the explanation for many previously unanswerable questions (the origin of the universe and of life, for example), but as modern science made more and more discoveries and filled in knowledge gaps, God grew smaller and smaller. At the same time, changes in societal values prompted some to re-define God to conform to more modern thinking. Essentially, we started making God in our own image using insights gleaned through science (psychology, psychoanalysis [pp. 35–38]) and theology (Augustine, Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards, Karl Rahner [pp. 38–41]). A plethora of substitute gods came into view, chief of which is technology. Social media and the internet seemed to facilitate the erosion of belief. However, Jeeves closes out this section looking at how science and technology can also expand our view of God. From studies of the very small (including DNA and the genetic code) to the very large (the known universe expanding from an estimated radius of 100,000 light years in 1917 to the present day estimate of 46 billion light years), there is now greater reason to be in awe of the Creator God. *The second section explores five major questions: (1) human origins; (2) human nature; (3) miracles of nature; (4) healing miracles; and (5) the nature of faith. For each, there is a pair of chapters: one subtitled "evidence from scripture," and a complementary chapter subtitled "evidence from science." Those subtitles might be misconstrued to imply that evidence would be proffered to explain or answer the question. Sometimes, that is the case. More often, distinct lines of evidence are cited to raise thought-provoking questions, provide divergent perspectives, add a bit of color or fill gaps, and call for more careful nuancing of the data. They serve more to stimulate questions and reflection than to provide an overview or explanation. I eventually came to see that the two sources of human evidence, when brought together within the mind of the reader, become a three-dimensional stereoscopic hologram. *In chapters 4 and 5, on human origins, Jeeves opens with the challenge, voiced by other secular scientists, that genetics does not explain everything about humanity, such as the emergence of personhood and consciousness, our moral values and ethical sense, and language. Therefore, standard evolutionary theory is too limited in scope and needs a "re-think." Equally true, however, theological explanations of these also need a "re-think." The scientific data clearly shows that humans are not starkly different from other animals, and in fact that it is almost certain that we evolved from them. We humans are, though, much more than genes, tissues, and organs. *In chapters 6 and 7, on human nature, nonscholars (both believing and not) are in nearly unanimous agreement that Christianity is critically tied to substance dualism--the idea that humans comprise a material body and an immaterial soul/spirit. In contrast, many scholars, across the spectra of belief (belief/nonbelief) and knowledge (science/theology/philosophy), see major problems with such dualism. Can science explain the soul? Is the case of a child with nearly normal cognitive abilities but lacking a major proportion of brain mass, evidence for a nonmaterial soul (p. 101)? Does Libet's experiment say anything about free will (p. 102)? If humans do not exhibit categorical differences from animals, how are we created in the image of God? *In chapters 8 and 9 (on miracles of nature), Jeeves asks a number of questions. Do miracle claims constitute proof of God? Is God a divine upholder, or occasional gap filler? Do attempts to explain miracles "[explain] them away" (pp. 140–41)? What exactly do we mean by words such as "miracle" and "supernatural"? What does the Bible mean by "signs" and "wonders"? Is there merit in trying to normalize biblical phenomena that appear to be miraculous, using modern scientific explanations? Or do such attempts only raise other problems? *Chapter 10 addresses healing miracles. If someone claims an experience/event which can be shown to have a probability of one-in-a-million, is that a miracle ... given that those odds predict that roughly 7,500 such events will occur within the present global human population? Do religious people tend to live healthier or longer lives than their secular counterparts? Studies that look at cognitive variables (depression; optimism) might suggest "yes," while those that look at biological variables (cancers; cardiovascular events) say "no" (p. 171). Do prayers become cosmic-vending machines? Do miracle claims stand up to medical/scientific scrutiny? Do they need to? *Chapters 11 and 12 concern the multifaceted nature of faith. Jeeves describes faith as involving "credulity," "intellectual assent," and "the psychological processes involved in the act of believing" (p. 178), and then compares faith with belief, doubt, trust, certainty, action, and discipleship (pp. 178–82). Jeeves recounts fascinating evidence from patients suffering various forms of brain disease (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's), discussing how such biological injuries degrade their enjoyment of faith because they rob them of the ability to focus attention, feel emotion, or keep track of a sermon or a passage of scripture (which, Jeeves points out, is another argument against substance dualism). He also looks at how brain dysfunction affected many well-known people of faith, including Martin Luther, John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Lord Shaftesbury, and Christina Rossetti. *The third section focusses on a central theme in this book: that of God interacting with creation in general, and humans in particular. God does this by creating all things, including humans, in his image (as the divine creator), by constantly upholding that creation through natural laws which he has set in place to maintain it (as the divine sustainer), and by putting off his divinity and embodying himself within creation (divine self-emptying or kenosis). Here, Jeeves unpacks divine kenosis, as well as the evolutionary origins and emergence of kenotic behavior in his creatures (otherwise commonly known as altruism, love, compassion, and empathy). *The book concludes with a valuable resource for self-reflection and group study. For each of the thirteen chapters, he provides a few relevant scripture passages, a variety of short paragraphs to review and reflect upon, a number of specific questions for discussion, and suggestions for further readings (books, articles, web-links). *The book is written at the level of a well-read and informed lay-person. No formal training in science or religion is needed, although a keen interest in both is essential. Overall, I found the book very useful, and I highly recommend it. But actions speak louder than words. My first thought upon reading it was to suggest it to my own church pastor for a small group book study; he read the book, then promptly and convincingly made the sales pitch to our church leaders. *Reviewed by Luke Janssen, Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON.

The influence of the Gospel lectionary (evangelistarion) on the iconography of medieval wall painting was rather sporadic. One of the rare testimonies that it did exist, nevertheless, is the specific iconographic formula for the scene of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, preserved in a number of King Milutin's foundations - Gracanica (ca. 1320), Chilandar katholikon (1321) and St. Nicetas near Skopje (ca. 1324). In all three churches, the iconographic formula corresponds for the most part to the description in the Gospel (Lk 10, 38-42). A large number of figures were painted against an architectural background, intimating that the action in the event was taking place indoors (draw. 1, figs. 1, 2). Among the figures, only Christ is marked by a halo. He is sitting on a small wooden bench, and addressing a woman, who is standing in front of him. This is certainly Martha. Her sister Mary is sitting at the feet of Christ. Next to Christ is Peter, and one or two more disciples, while numerous onlookers, men and women, are depicted behind Martha. There is no mention of either them or the apostles in the Gospel of Luke. The appearance of the disciples' figures, however, is easy to explain because they appear usually in greater or lesser numbers with Christ, in the scenes from the cycle of Christ's Public Ministry. In addition to this, this passage from the Gospel intimates that Christ entered the village in the company of his disciples. As for the figures behind Martha, at a first glimpse, one would assume that they are Judeans, the same ones that sometimes, according to the Gospel of John (11:19-31), appear in the house of Martha and Mary in the episodes painted next to the Raising of Lazarus. Still, such an assumption is not plausible because among the mentioned figures in the depictions in Gracanica, Chilandar and St. Nicetas, one can distinguish a woman above the other figures, her right arm raised, addressing Christ. This figure enables an explanation for the unusual iconographic formula and indicates its connection with the evangelistarion. The section of the Gospel that speaks of Christ's visit to Martha and Mary (Lk 10:38-42) is read out during the liturgy of the feasts of the Birth and the Dormition of the Virgin and, in the lectionary, these five verses are accompanied by a reading of two another verses the Gospel of Luke (Lk 11:27-28). The two verses recount the conversation of Christ and a woman during the Saviour's address to the assembled crowd who tempted him, demanding a sign from Heaven. Recognizing the Lord, the woman raised her voice so as to be heard above the crowd and said: 'Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you'. Two different events and two separated passages from Luke are joined in the lectionary in such a way that from the combination of the readings, it proceeds that the mentioned woman is addressing Christ while he is speaking to Martha. As a result, an iconographic formula emerged that was applied in Gracanica, the Chilandar katholikon and in St. Nicetas near Skopje. Judging by the preserved examples, this formula was characteristic only of the painting in the foundations of King Milutin. None of the other known depictions of Christ's visit to Martha and Mary, Byzantine or Serbian included the figure of a third woman, singled out from the mass of onlookers speaking to Christ. With minor variations, the text of the closing verses of Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Luke was, in the main, almost literally illustrated. The origin of this unique iconographic formula in several of King Milutin's foundations remains unknown. The most logical thing would be that the combined illustration of the two separate passages from Luke's Gospel came from an illuminated lectionary of Byzantine origin. However, the quests for such a manuscript so far have not confirmed this assumption. In the only lectionary, known to us, which depicts Christ in the house of Martha and Mary - the Dionysiou cod. 587 - the iconographic formula is the pictorial expression of the last verses of Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Luke. The two verses of Chapter 11 in Luke's Gospel, which are also included in the text of the lection, read out during the liturgy of the Birth and of the Dormition of the Virgin, had no effect on the iconography of the scene of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary in the famous Dionysiou lectionary, even though in it, the mentioned scene illustrate this very lection. The scene is located in the place where the said lection appears for the first time in the lectionary, within the framework of the readings envisaged for the feast of the Birth of the Virgin (September 8). The second part of the lectionary which refers to the same lection, i.e. to its reading for the feast of the Dormition (August 15), is illuminated with the representation of the death of the Virgin. The Dormition of the Virgin is painted in the corresponding place in several more lectionaries, while beside the pericope that is read during the liturgy of the feast of the Birth of the Theotokos, sometimes there was an appropriate depiction of the Birth of the Virgin, or simply a single figure of the Virgin. Most often, however, that part of the lectionary was left without an illustration, which can be explained by the fact that the vast majority of illuminated Byzantine lectionaries either did not have any figural ornamentation or merely contained the portraits of the evangelists. The absence of narrative illustrations is particularly characteristic of the Byzantine lectionaries that originate from the Palaeologan era. The illumination of Serbian lectionaries from that epoch is also reduced to ornamental headpieces, initials, and, in some cases, the evangelist portraits. Nevertheless, one should not altogether exclude the possibility that in some unknown or unpublished Byzantine or Serbian manuscripts of the evangelistarion, there was an iconographic formula that was applied in the painting of King Milutin's foundations. In any case, it does not seem plausible that this unusual iconographic formula may have arrived from the West. The scene of Christ's visit to Martha and Mary was also presented in the Latin lectionaries based on the five Gospel verses in which it was described (Lk 10:38-42) even though, in the appropriate pericope of the lectionaries of the Roman Church, these five verses are also accompanied by a reading of two another verses the Gospel of Luke (Lk 11:27-28). The influence of the lectionaries is not visible even in the presentations of Christ's visit to Martha and Mary that are preserved in the medieval wall painting of the western European countries.

Forfeiture of property is one of the oldest penalties in Polish law. Its origins can be traced in pre-state law, in the penalty of exclusion from tribe. Anybody could kill a person thus punished and destroy his property, and would suffer no penalty for such acts. Later on, in early Middle Ages, the penalty of plunder was introduced: the offender’s possessions were looted, and his house burned. Destruction of the offender’s property as a penal sanction resulted from the conception of crime and punishment of that time. Crime was an offence against God, and punishment was seen as God’s revenge for crime – that offender’s house was destroyed as the place that had become unchaste, inhabited by an enemy of God. The penalties imposed in Poland in the 12th and 13th centuries were personal, material, and mixed penalties. There were two material penalties: forfeiture of the whole or part of property and pecuniary penalties. The utmost penalty was being outlawed which consisted of banishment of the convicted person from the country and forfeiture of his property by the ruler. Being outlawed was imposed for the most serious offences; with time, it became an exceptional penalty. In those days, forfeiture of property was a self-standing, as well as an additional penalty, imposed together with death, banishment, or imprisonment. As shown by the sources of law, forfeiture of property (as an additional penalty) could be imposed for “conspiracy against state” rape of a nun forgery of coins, cheating at games, and profiteering. Other offences punishable in this way included murder, raid with armed troops and theft of Church property, murder of a Jew committed by a Christian, and raid of a Jewish cemetery. Data on the extent of the imposition of that penalty in the early feudal period are scarce; as follows from available sources, it was applied but seldom. The consequences of forfeiture were serious in those days. Deprived of property, the convicted person and his family inevitably lost their social and political status which made forfeiture one of the most severe penalties. From the viewpoint of the punishing authority (duke), forfeiture was clearly advantageous due to its universal feasibility; to the duke’s officials, it was profitable as they were entitled to plunder the convicted persons’s movables. In the laws of the 16th and 17th centuries, forfeiture was provided for: serious political crimes (crimen leaesae maiestatis – laese-majesty; perduelio – desertion to the enemy), offences against currency and against the armed forces. As an additional penalty, it accompanied capital punishment and being outlawed. The law also provided for situations where forfeiture could be imposed as a self-standing penalty. In 1573, the Warsaw Confederacy Act which guaranteed equality to confessors of different religions banned the inposition of forfeiture for conversion to another faith. Initially absolute – the whole of property being forfeited and taken over by the Treasury where it was at the king’s free disposal – forfeiture of property was limited already in the 14th century. To begin with, in consideration of the rights of the family and third to forfeited property, the wife’s dowry was excluded from forfeiture. Later on, in the 16th century, the limitations concerned the king’s freedom of disposal of forfeited property. A nobleman’s property could no longer remain in the king’s hands but had to be granted to another nobleman. Forfeiture of property can also be found in the practice of Polish village courts; as follows from court registers, though, it was actually seldom imposed. European Enlightenment was the period of emergence of ideas which radically changed the conceptions of the essence and aims of punishment, types of penalties, and the policy of their imposition. In their writings, penologists of those days formulated the principle of the offender’s individual responsibility. This standpoint led to a declaration against forfeiture of property as a penalty which affected not only the offender but also his family and therefore expressed collective responsibility. The above ideas were known in Poland as well. They are reflected in the numerous drafts of penal law reform, prepared in 18th century Poland. The first such draft, so-called Collection of Jidicial Laws by Andrzej Zamojski, still provided for forfeiture. A later one (draft code of King Stanislaw August of the late 18th century) no longer contained this penalty. The athors argued that, affecting not only the offender, that penalty was at variance with the principles of justice. The drafts were never to become the law. In 1794, after the second partition of Poland, an insurrection broke out commanded by Tadeusz Kościuszko. The rebel authorities repealed the former legal system and created a new system of provisions regulating the structure of state authorities, administration of justice, and law applied in courts. In the sphere of substantive penal law and the law of criminal proceedings, an insurgent code was introduced, with severe sanctions included in the catalog of penalties. Forfeiture of property was restored which had a double purpose: first, acutely to punish traitors, and second – to replenish the insurgent funds. When imposing forfeiture, property rights of the convicted person’s spouse and his children’s right to inheritance were taken into account. Yet compared to the administration of justice of the French Revolution with its mass imposition of forfeiture, the Polish insurgent courts were humane and indeed lenient in their practice of sentencing. After the fall of the Kościuszko Insurrection, Poland became a subjugated country, divided between three partitioning powers: Prussia, Russia, and Austria. The Duchy of Warsaw, made of the territories regained from the invaders, survived but a short time. In the sphere of penal law and the present subject of forfeiture of property, that penalty was abolished by a separate parliamentary statute of 1809. After the fall of the Duchy of Warsaw, Poland lost sovereignty and the law of the partitioning powers entered into force on its territories. In the Prussian sector, a succession of laws were introduced: the Common Criminal Law of Prussian States of 1794, followed by the 1851 penal code and the penal code of the German Reich of 1871. Only the first of them still provided for forfeiture: it was abolished in the Prussian State by a law of March 11, 1850. Much earlier, forfeiture disappeared from the legislation of Austria. lt was already absent from the Cpllection of Laws on Penalties for West Galicia of June 17,1796, valid on the Polish territories under Austrian administration. Nor was forfeiture provided for by the two Austrian penal codes of 1803 and 1852. Forfeiture survived the longest in the penal legisation of Russia. In 1815, the Kingdom of Poland was formed of the Polish territories under Russian administration. In its Constitution, conferred by the Tsar of Russia, a provision was included that abolished forfeiture of property. It was also left in the subsequent Penal Code of the Kingdom of Poland, passed in 1818. Forfeiture only returned as a penal sanction applied to participants of the anti-Russian November insurrection of 1831. The Organic Statute of 1832, conferred to the Kingdom of Poland by the Tsar, reintroduced the penalty of forfeiture of property. Moreover, it was to be imposed for offences committed before Organic Statute had entered into force which was an infringement of the ban on retroactive force of law. Of those sentenced to forfeiture in the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia as participants of the November insurrection, few had estates and capital. A part of forfeited estates were donated, the rest were sold to persons of Russian origin. The proces of forfeiting the property of the 1830–1831 insurgents only ended in 1860 (the Tsar’s decree of February 2/March 2,1860). After November insurrection, the Russian authorities aimed at making the penal legislation of the Kingdom of Poland similar to that of the Russian Empire. The code of Main Corrective Penalties of 1847 aimed first of all at a legal unification. It preserved the penalty of “forfeiture of the whole or part of the convicted persons’ possessions and property” as an additional penalty imposed in cases clearly specified by law. It was imposed for offences against the state: attempts against the life, health, freedom or dignity of the Emperor and the supreme rights of the heir to the throne, the Emperor’s wife or other members of the Royal House, and rebellion against the supreme authority. Forfeiture was preserved in the amended code of 1866; in 1876, its application was extended to include offences against official enactments. The penalty could soon be applied – towards the participants of January insurrection of 1863 which broke out in the Russian Partition. The insurgents were tried by Russian military courts. After the January insurrection, 6,491 persons were convicted in the Kingdom of Poland; 6,186 of tchem were sentenced to forfeiture of property. Of that group, as few as 28 owned the whole or a part of real estate; 60 owned mortgage capital and real estate. The imposition of forfeiture on January insurgents stopped in 1867 in the Kingdom of Poland and as late as 1873 in Lithuania. The penalty was only removed from the Russian penal legislation with the introduction a new penal code in 1903. As can be seen, the Russian penal law – as opposed to the law of Prussia and Austria retained forfeiture of property the longest. It was designet to perform special political and deterrent functions as the penalty imposed on opponents of the system for crimes against state. It was severe enough to annihilate the offender’s material existence. It was also intended to deter others, any future dare-devils who might plan to resist authority. It was an fitted element of the repressive criminal policy of the Russian Empire of those days. Forfeiture of the whole of property of the convicted person can be found once again in the Polish legislation, of independent Poland this time: in the Act of July 2, 1920 on controlling war usury where forfeiture was an optional additional penalty. At the same time, the act prohibited cumulation of repression affecting property (fine and forfeiture could not be imposed simultaneously). It originated from the special war conditions in Poland at the time. The ban on cumulation of repression affecting property is interesting from the viewpoint of criminal policy. The Polish penal code of 1932 did not provide for the penalty of forfeiture, and the Act on controlling war usury was quashed by that code’s introductory provisions. In the legislation of People’s Poland after World War II, forfeiture of property was re-established and had extensive application.

The Council reopened on 14 September 1964 and the Pope concelebrated mass with twenty-four others from nineteen different countries. The next day the Council returned to the revised text of Lumen Gentium. The bishops confirmed the Church as a ‘divine mystery’ going beyond comprehension and therefore it could not be precisely defined. The document now stressed the important role of local and provincial councils throughout history and held up the model bishop as one who collaborated with the priests and the laity. Although the bishop was still in charge, the document stressed the horizontal dimension of the relationship between bishop, priest, and layman.

James Sloam, The European Policy of the German Social Democrats: Interpreting a Changing World (Houndmills, England: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005)Reviewed by Gerard BraunthalJoel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Reviewed by Patrick IrelandMichael Gorra, The Bells in Their Silence. Travels Through Germany (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004)Reviewed by Peter C. PfeifferJay Howard Geller, Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany, 1945-1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Reviewed by Lynn RapaportHope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets up the Wall. Soviet – East German Relations, 1953-1961. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Reviewed by Bernd SchaeferShelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Reviewed by Jeff Schutts

ABSTRACT We present case studies on three objects of high importance for cultural heritage in southern Poland, dated in years 2018–2022 at the Gliwice 14C and Mass Spectrometry Laboratory with radiocarbon (14C) and dendrochronology methods. The first was a richly ornamented wooden cane, discovered during excavations on the market in Bytom city. The cane can be associated with medieval court proceedings. The archaeological context indicates the 13th century AD, and the 14C result corresponds perfectly with this time, confirming that it is the oldest object of this type in Poland. The second was a 4-m-tall oak column from St. Leonard Church in Lipnica Murowana, a UNESCO heritage site. The local story said it was previously devoted to Światowid, a pagan deity. Our analysis excluded the pre-Christian age, as the tree was felled no earlier than the late 15th century, which is in agreement with historical records. The third was a wooden Saint Lawrence Church in Bobrowniki. The presbytery was covered with up to five layers of polychromic paintings, some of high artistic value. We dated three samples from the original wooden board, and by wiggle-matching, the calibrated age interval was narrowed to 1731–1754 cal AD.

Easter is the most important of all the seasons in the liturgical calendar. A prolonged celebration of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday constitutes one great feast. As the Church celebrates this annual feast, it honors with special love and devotion, Mary, the Mother of God, who is inseparably connected with her Son, Jesus Christ. In her, the Church holds up and admires the most excellent fruit of redemption and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image, that which she herself desires and hopes wholly to be. In recent years, as mentioned in the Pastoral Letter entitled, “Ang Mahal na Birhen” of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, one aspect that calls for renewal is liturgical instruction on the role of Mary in the history of salvation, for there is a lack of its doctrinal instruction. As a response, this paper seeks to discourse on the importance of Mary in the Liturgy of the Easter Season through the textual analysis of a Mass Formulary for Easter found in the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In presenting the said theme, the following topics are discussed: first Mary in the Liturgy by explaining her connection with the public worship of the Church, second is the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary by having an overview of the liturgical book and its significance, and third is Mary in the Liturgy of the Easter Season by analyzing one of the four-mass text under the said season focusing on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Resurrection of Our Lord.

AbstractIn late antiquity and the middle ages, many expositors compare the liturgy of the Eucharist (or the mass/the Divine Liturgy) with the accounts of Jesus’ Last supper claiming continuity and identity for a tradition in whose early phases diversity and change were abound. This essay departs from five issues regarding aspects of change between the early Christian sympotic celebrations of the Eucharist and the state of affairs in the middle ages: first, the quantity and quality of food to be consumed; second, the combined (as against separate) blessing or consecration of bread and wine; third, the timing of the celebration in the afternoon and evening versus the early morning; fourth, its compulsory combination with a liturgy of the word that is, moreover, performed preceding the Eucharist and not following the meal as it would be customary in ancient Greece and Rome; fifth, the later reservation of the presidency to clerics of the church. At least these five aspects of change in Eucharistic celebrations can be explained with recourse to the Roman custom of patrons receiving their clients almost every morning in the framework of the morning salutatio. Thus, it is indicated how the churches of Carthage moved from Eucharistic celebrations in the style of dinner parties and communal meals towards distributions of gifts to clients at a meeting with their bishop as patron of the church. This thesis explains why the loss of prandial Eucharists began long before Constantine. It explains when and why Christian churches in the Roman Empire abandoned a celebration that lent itself to the spontaneous interpretation as a mimetic celebration of the Last Supper thus creating the need to emphasize-eventually as part of the ritual itself in the form of the recitation of institution narratives-that the Eucharist is still the same, although it lost most of its mimetic allusions to its alleged pattern in the first century. The gradual adoption of the social institution of the morning salutatio also explains the parallel existence of different forms of Eucharistic celebrations: Its adoption and adaptation is an answer to the growth of the churches in certain places which could remain unimportant for others.

It is estimated that the Spanish flu pandemic, which affected the entire planet from 1918 to 1919, affected about five hundred million people, or one-third of the world's population at the time, and killed about fifty million people. The disease was noticed among Serbian soldiers in Corfu in April 1918, and in May among soldiers on the Salonika Front, but without fatal consequences. During the summer, fatalities were also reported, mainly due to lung compaction. Then the epidemic was reported in occupied Serbia as well. Just at the time of the breakthrough of Salonika Front on the 15th of September, a new wave of the epidemic started, this time fatal. Many soldiers remained lying and dying in military hospitals set up along the way. Some soldiers made it home but then passed away, and some found their homes empty. In occupied Serbia, mass dying began before liberation. In the region of Valjevo, the first deaths occurred in early October, but mass deaths started in late October. This lasted less than two months. Then, by the beginning of the spring of 1919, sporadic deaths due to "pneumonia" were seen as a common complication of Spanish flu, which does not necessarily mean that the epidemic had stopped, but that its end did not have any fatal consequences. In the lowlands of the Valjevo region, mortality was relatively low (in the parish of the church in Rabrovica - 0,44%), in the hilly area the mortality rate was slightly higher (in the parish of the church in Brankovina - 1,32%), and in the high mountain areas, it was very high. An analysis of the number of recorded deaths in the books of the church in Krčmar indicates that over these two months 141 people (4.47% of the population) died in seven villages that belong to the parish of this church. That number is almost equal to the number of deaths from all possible causes over a 33month period: throughout 1917, the first 9 months of 1918, and throughout 1919. The highest mortality rate , 9,38% of the population, was recorded in the village of Mratišić, and the lowest, 1,61% in the village of Gornji Lajkovac. A higher number of deaths were recorded among the female population, but this can be attributed to the decrease in the number of males due to previous years of war.

The Easter Triduum has become the high point of the liturgical year for communities throughout the Roman Church thanks to the reforms of Pope Pius XII and those following the Second Vatican Council. Sometimes forgotten, however, is the establishment of a three-day Triduum of Easter rather than the previous Triduum before Easter, now beginning with evening Mass on Holy Thursday and comprising Good Friday, Holy Saturday and all of Easter Sunday. The post-conciliar reform of the liturgy of Easter Sunday is overlooked, especially the changes to Lauds and Vespers, which have made of Easter Sunday a full third day of the Paschal Triduum in three distinct parts reflecting three moments in the day of the Lord's resurrection. The articulated liturgical celebrations of Easter Sunday, especially due to the revised offices of Lauds and Vespers, are presented here. Considerations regarding future changes in the Triduum are also suggested such as restoring distinct elements of Tenebrae for Friday and Saturday, Baptismal Vespers, and emphasizing the ambo as the empty tomb.

SUMMARYIt is essential to know the history of Catholic Church in Poland during German occupation when it comes to exploration of aggregate history of Polish nation in this difficult time. The issue of repression against Polish clergy from Lublin diocese by German authorities in years 1939-1944 and powers of Third Reich, was presents in various aspects, in many scholarly articles, monographs and group works. However, the aforementioned publications do not exhaust basics to educate foil and fair-minded view on this problem.German army went in to Lublin on 18 September 1939, after dramatic defense of the citizens.After the short time of reign of Wehrmacht units, on 26 October 1939, Führer proclaimed his decree on creating administrational entity called Generalna Gubernia, which involved four regions, including lubelski region with Lublin as its capital. This decree embraced the area of pre-war Lubelskie Voivodeship. The occupation authority’s division of administration did not violate the structure of deanery in the diocese. However, under the new circumstances, deans and rectors had difficulties executing administrational functions. When the Lubelski District was created. Bishop Marian Leon Fulman and suffragan, Bishop Władysław' Goral wielded authority in this area.It is necessary to mention that bloody operations of the police and SS are especially remembered in the history of Church in Lublin and the whole area. These two bodies were executing the most important strategic tasks within the scope of ‘maintaining order’, prevention, requital, or even genocide and extermination. This group was led by SS- Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik (till September 1943) and SS-Gruppenführer Jacob Sporrenberg.The most significant German operations, when it comes to repression of catholic clergy in, the Lubelski District are repressive or intimidating actions.In the Lubelski District, occupation authorities applied the same methods of repression and extermination both to all citizens and clergy. Lublin’s clergymen were dying in executions, they were taken as hostages, arrested and send to concentration camps. Hie repression involved priests on every level of church hierarchy. What is more, it must be said that only Polish bishops out of all occupied countries were arrested and taken to concentration camps.In the Lubelski District, the main place where the people were arrested was Lublin and prison of Security Police and Security Service. Prison on the Castle, as it was called, was subdued to the leader of SS and the police in the district. The prison m Lublin was without undoubtedly a place of terror and attrition of prisoners held in it on the mass scale. This prison became the place of direct extermination where executions were done by firing squad, hanging, or even by gassing. Executions had unitary or mass character, they were sometimes done in a company of eyewitnesses, but usually they were confidential, performed at night or in the morning.The first ‘purifying’ action of intelligentsia, which started with arrests in November and was follow ed by verdicts of executions for bishops and the execution itself on 23 December, was perceived by the leaders of SS and the police, Odilo Globocnik, as fight with leading layer of society, who could potentially organize actions against German authorities, they could give signal to ruthless fight with ‘unwanted elements’. Repressions took place on the local scale, because they involved only people from Lublin or from area around Lublin. The way in which this action was prosecuted indicates that it was chaotic strike, because the enforcement authority which held power at the beginning of the November did not have full records of the intelligentsia.Globocnik considered Catholic Church an important monument of Polish national spirit, so he began the purging of the district by first destroying the Church. It can be validated by the three mass arrests of clergy on 9 Nov, 11. Nov and 17 Nov 1939.The effect of the policy realized by Odilo Globocnik is presented in statistics relating to repressing of clergy in years 1939-1945. 200 out of 459 priests from Lublin diocese in 1939 fell victim to German terror.

Holy Communion is one of the seven sacraments in the Catholic Church. With Baptism and Confirmation, they constitute the sacraments of Initiation. Similarly, with the Word of God, they constitute the two indispensable pillars upon which the Church is built. It is the “fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (LG 11). It is named Holy Eucharist because it is an action of thanksgiving to God. It recalls God’s work of creation, redemption, and sanctification. The Eucharistic elements, bread and wine become, by the prayer of consecration and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, Christ's Body and Blood through an act appropriately known as transubstantiation. The term emphasizes the conversion of the total substance of bread and wine into the entire substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. When the bread and wine are consecrated at Mass, they are no longer bread and wine; they have become instead the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the words of Christ. The empirical appearances and attributes remain the same, but the underlying reality changes. Therefore, the doctrine of transubstantiation teaches without ambiguity that in the Holy Communion, the Body and Blood, together with the soul and divinity, of the Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained. How is this understood and what is its implication theologically? In an attempt to elucidate this problem, this work seeks first to highlight the theology of the Holy Eucharist within the context of the ecclesiology of Communion, and second, through some theological themes: sacred memorial and sacrificial banquet; eschatological meal. The third and final part treats the theme of real presence under the rubrics of Transubstantiation. Keywords: Transubstantiation, Eschatological Meal, Memorial, Real Presence, Communion, Eucharistic conversion.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to describe the understanding of the Catholic Young People's group about the eucharist, the Catholic Youth's appreciation and the efforts that need to be made to increase the Catholic Young People's understanding and appreciation of the Eucharist. The type of research used is descriptive research with a qualitative approach. Data collection techniques were carried out in three ways, namely: Observation, Interview and Documentation Study. In this study, the research actors and informants were selected by the authors using a purposive procedure, namely the determination of informants by selecting key people who match the criteria and research problems. The conclusion of this study consists of three parts. First: Young Catholics in the Parish of Santa Ursula Watutumou already understand quite well about the Eucharist as the source and peak of the Christian faith, where in the Eucharist a direct encounter with God occurs through the event of transubstantiation. Second: OMK in Santa Ursula Watutumou Parish is able to appreciate the meaning of the Eucharist as an important celebration in the Church, so that because of the basis of the Eucharist itself, OMK seeks to realize the Eucharist as a necessity, not just a meaningless routine, and tries to be actively involved by increasing the role of the Eucharist. and OMK in the celebration of the Eucharist. Third: Efforts that can be made to increase understanding and appreciation of OMK in Santa Ursula Watutumou Parish, among others by participating in worship, diligently attending Sunday Mass and daily Mass and being actively involved in them, following the example of parents who provide examples and motivation in interpreting the Eucharist, and participating in faith deepening activities such as socialization and catechesis on the Eucharist.

In 2019, just one-half of Americans received their influenza vaccine, despite it being safe, effective, and important in preventing serious infection, hospitalization, and death. Black children receive fewer influenza vaccines than their White counterparts. Vaccine hesitancy can hinder influenza vaccine uptake and is partially fueled by ongoing systemic racism and historical abuse leading to medical mistrust in communities of color. Building trust may enhance the transfer of reliable vaccine information and may move people along the spectrum of vaccine intention. We sought to partner with faith-based organizations through a community influenza vaccination event to increase vaccination rates. By leveraging the reach and expertise of trusted voices, such as church “first ladies” and local community leaders, we were able to administer 600 pediatric influenza vaccines between 2016 and 2019. In addition, this event served as a platform to assess whether youth attendees had a place for regular medical care (“medical home”) (&gt;80% did in each year assessed) and to conduct preventive screenings. Most children, as reported by their caregivers, had recent medical check-ups (85% in 2016, 84% in 2017, and 82% in 2018). Of the children screened, more than one-third had an abnormal body mass index and one-half had abnormal dentition. By partnering with organizations that are well-embedded in the local community, such as faith-based organizations, health care groups may be able to maximize the impact of their health promotion campaigns.

In many ways, computers are becoming invisible and will continue to do so. When we reach into our pockets and pull out our cell phones to find a place to eat or message a friend on Facebook, we are no longer consciously aware that we are interacting with a user experience that has been consciously designed for our computer or device screen—but we are.— Andy Pratt and Jason Nunes, Interactive Design In theory, cell phones and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are just a means for us to interact with people, businesses, and data sources. They have interfaces and, in a larger sense, are interfaces between their users and the networked world. Every day, people spend more time using them to perform more different tasks and find them more indispensable (Smith). As the epigraph above suggests, however, their omnipresence makes them practically invisible and has all but erased any feelings of awe or mystery that their power once generated. There is both a historical and functional dimension to this situation. In the historical advance of technology, it is part of what Kevin Kelly calls the “technium,” the ever-more complex interactions between advancing technology, our cognitive processes, and the cultural forces in which they are enmeshed; ICTs are measurably getting more powerful as time goes on and are, in this sense, worthy of our admiration (Kelly 11-17). In the functional dimension, on the other hand, many scholars and designers have observed how hard it is to hold on to this feeling of enchantment in our digital devices (Nye 185-226; McCarthy and Wright 192-97). As one study of human-computer interfaces observes “when people let the enchanting object [ICTs] do the emotional work of experience for them . . . what could be enchanting interactivity becomes a paradoxically detached interpassivity” (McCarthy et al. 377). ICTs can be ever more powerful, then, but this power will not necessarily be appreciated by their users. This paper analyzes recent narrative representations of ICT use in spy thrillers, with a particular focus on the canon of James Bond films (a sub-genre with a long-standing and overt fascination with advanced technology, especially ICTs), in order to explore how the banality of ICT technology has become the inescapable accompaniment of its power (Willis; Britton 99-123; 195-219). Among many possible recent examples: recall how Bond uses his ordinary cell phone camera to reveal the membership of the sinister Quantum group at an opera performance in Quantum of Solace; how world-wide video surveillance is depicted as inescapable (and amoral) in The Bourne Legacy; and how the anonymous protagonist of Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer discovers the vital piece of top secret information that explains the entire film—by searching for it on his laptop via Google. In each of these cases, ICTs are represented as both incredibly powerful and tediously quotidian. More precisely, in each case human users are represented as interfaces between ICTs and their stored knowledge, rather than the reverse. Beginning with an account of how the naturalization of ICTs has changed the perceived relations between technology and its users, this essay argues that the promotional rhetoric of human empowerment and augmentation surrounding ICTs is opposed by a persistent cinematic theme of human subordination to technological needs. The question it seeks to open is why—why do the mainstream cinematic narratives of our culture depict the ICTs that enhance our capacities to know and communicate as something that diminishes rather than augments us? One answer (which can only be provisionally sketched here) is the loss of pleasure. It does not matter whether or not technology augments our capacities if it cannot sustain the fantasy of pleasure and/or enhancement at the same time. Without this fantasy, ICTs are represented as usurping position as the knowing subject and users, in turn, become the media connecting them– even when that user is James Bond. The Rhetoric of Augmentation Until the past five years or so, the technologization of the human mind was almost always represented in popular culture as a threat to humanity—whether it be Ira Levin’s robotic Stepford Wives as the debased expression of male wish-fulfillment (Levin), or Jonathan Demme’s brainwashed assassins with computer chip implants in his remake of The Manchurian Candidate. When Captain Picard, the leader and moral centre of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, is taken over by the Borg (an alien machine race that seeks to absorb other species into its technologized collective mind) in an episode from 1990, it is described as “assimilation” rather than an augmentation. The Borg version of Picard says to his former comrades that “we only wish to raise quality of life, for all species,” and it is a chilling, completely unemotional threat to the survival of our species (“Best of Both Worlds”). By 2012, on the other hand, the very same imagery is being used to sell smart phones by celebrating the technological enhancements that allegedly make us better human beings. In Verizon’s Droid DNA phone promotions, the product is depicted as an artificial heart for its user, one that enhances memory, “neural speed,” and “predictive intelligence” (thanks to Google Now). The tagline for the Verizon ad claims that “It’s not an upgrade to your phone; it’s an upgrade to yourself”, echoing Borg-Picard’s threat but this time as an aspirational promise (“Verizon Commercial”). The same technologization of the mind that was anathema just a few years ago, is now presented as both a desirable consumer goal and a professional necessity—the final close-up of the Verizon artificial heart shows that this 21st century cyborg has to be at his job in 26 minutes; the omnipresence of work in a networked world is here literally taken to heart. There is, notably, no promise of pleasure or liberation anywhere in this advertisement. We are meant to desire this product very much, but solely because it allows us to do more and better work. Not coincidentally, the period that witnessed this inversion in popular culture also saw an exponential increase in the quantity and variety of digitally networked devices in our lives (“Mobile Cellular”) and the emergence of serious cultural, scientific, and philosophical movements exploring the idea of “enhanced” human beings, whether through digital tool use, biomedical prostheses, drugs, or genetic modifications (Buchanan; Savulescu and Bostrom; “Humanity +”). As the material boundaries of the “human” have become more permeable and malleable, and as the technologies that make this possible become everyday objects, our resistance to this possibility has receded. The discourse of the transhuman and extropian is now firmly established as a philosophical possibility (Lilley). Personal augmentation with the promise of pleasure is still, of course, very much present in the presentation of ICTs. Launching the iPad 2 in 2011, the late Steve Jobs described his new product as a “magical and revolutionary device” with an “incredible magical user interface on a much larger canvas with more resources” and gushing that “it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing” (“Apple Special Event”). This is the rhetoric of augmentation through technology and, as in the Verizon ad, it is very careful to position the consumer/user at the centre of the experience. The technology is described as wonderful not just in itself, but also precisely because it gives users “a larger canvas” with which to create. Likewise, the lifelogging movement (which encourages people to use small cameras to record every event of daily life) is at great pains to stress that “you, not your desktop’s hard drive, are the hub of your digital belongings” (Bell and Gemmell 10). But do users experience life with these devices as augmented? Is either the Verizon work cyborg or the iPad user’s singing heart representative of how these devices make us feel? It depends upon the context in which the question is asked. Extensive survey data on cell phone use shows that we are more attached than ever to our phones, that they allow us to be “productive” in otherwise dead times (such as while waiting in queues), and that only a minority of users worry about the negative effects of being “permanently connected” (Smith 9-10). Representations of technological augmentation in 21st century popular cinema, however, offer a very different perspective. Even in James Bond films, which (since Goldfinger in 1964) have been enraptured with technological devices as augmentations for its protagonists and as lures for audiences, digital devices have (in the three most recent films) lost their magic and become banal in the same way as they have in the lives of audience members (Nitins 2010; Nitins 2011; “List of James Bond Gadgets”). Rather than focusing on technological empowerment, the post 2006 Bond films emphasize (1) that ICTs “know” things and that human agents are just the media that connect them together; and (2) that the reciprocal nature of networked ICTs means that we are always visible when we use them; like Verizon phone users, our on-screen heroes have to learn that the same technology that empowers them simultaneously empowers others to know and/or control them. Using examples from the James Bond franchise, the remainder of this paper discusses the simultaneous disenchantment and power of ICT technology in the films as a representative sample of the cultural status of ICTs as a whole. “We don’t go in for that sort of thing any more...” From Goldfinger until the end of Pierce Brosnan’s tenure in 2002, technological devices were an important part of the audience’s pleasure in a Bond film (Willis; Nitins 2011). James Bond’s jetpack in Thunderball, to give one of many examples, is a quasi-magical aid for the hero with literary precursors going back to Aeneas’s golden bough; it is utterly enchanting and, equally importantly, fun. In the most recent Bond film, Skyfall, however, Q, the character who has historically made Bond’s technology, reappears after a two-film hiatus, but in the guise of a computer nerd who openly disdains the pleasures and possibilities of technological augmentation. When Bond complains about receiving only a gun and a radio from him, Q replies: “What did you expect? An exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that sort of thing any more.” Technology is henceforth to be banal and invisible albeit (as the film’s computer hacker villain Silva demonstrates) still incredibly powerful. The film’s pleasures must come from elsewhere. The post-credit sequence in Casino Royale, which involves the pursuit and eventual death of a terrorist bomb-maker, perfectly embodies the diminished importance of human agents as bearers of knowledge. It is bracketed at the beginning by the bomber looking at a text message while under surveillance by Bond and a colleague and at the end by Bond looking at the same message after having killed him. Significantly, the camera angle and setup of both shots make it impossible to distinguish between Bond’s hand and the bomber’s as they see the same piece of information on the same phone. The ideological, legal, racial, and other differences between the two men are erased in pursuit of the data (the name “Ellipsis” and a phone number) that they both covet. As digitally-transmitted data, it is there for anyone, completely unaffected by the moral or legal value attached to its users. Cell phones in these films are, in many ways, better sources of information than their owners—after killing a phone’s owner, his or her network traces can show exactly where s/he has been and to whom s/he has been talking, and this is how Bond proceeds. The bomber’s phone contacts lead Bond to the Bahamas, to the next villain in the chain, whom Bond kills and from whom he obtains another cell phone, which allows the next narrative location to be established (Miami Airport) and the next villain to be located (by calling his cell phone in a crowded room and seeing who answers) (Demetrios). There are no conventional interrogations needed here, because it is the digital devices that are the locus of knowledge rather than people. Even Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd sends her most important message to him (the name and cell phone number of the film’s arch villain) in a posthumous text, rather than in an actual conversation. Cell phones do not enable communication between people; people connect the important information that cell phones hold together. The second manifestation of the disenchantment of ICT technology is the disempowering omnipresence of surveillance. Bond and his colleague are noticed by the bomber when the colleague touches his supposedly invisible communication earpiece. With the audience’s point of view conflated with that of the secret agent, the technology of concealment becomes precisely what reveals the secret agent’s identity in the midst of a chaotic scene in which staying anonymous should be the easiest thing in the world; other villains identify Bond by the same means in a hotel hallway later in the film. While chasing the bomber, Bond is recorded by a surveillance camera in the act of killing him on the grounds of a foreign embassy. The secret agent is, as a result, made into an object of knowledge for the international media, prompting M (Bond’s boss) to exclaim that their political masters “don’t care what we do, they care what we get photographed doing.” Bond is henceforth part of the mediascape, so well known as a spy that he refuses to use the alias that MI6 provides for his climactic encounter with the main villain LeChiffre on the grounds that any well-connected master criminal will know who he is anyway. This can, of course, go both ways: Bond uses the omnipresence of surveillance to find another of his targets by using the security cameras of a casino. This one image contains many layers of reference—Bond the character has found his man; he has also found an iconic image from his own cultural past (the Aston Martin DB V car that is the only clearly delineated object in the frame) that he cannot understand as such because Casino Royale is a “reboot” and he has only just become 007. But the audience knows what it means and can insert this incarnation of James Bond in its historical sequence and enjoy the allusion to a past of which Bond is oblivious. The point is that surveillance is omnipresent, anonymity is impossible, and we are always being watched and interpreted by someone. This is true in the film’s narrative and also in the cultural/historical contexts in which the Bond films operate. It may be better to be the watcher rather than the watched, but we are always already both. By the end of the film, Bond is literally being framed by technological devices and becomes the organic connection between different pieces of technology. The literal centrality of the human agent in these images is not, in this disenchanted landscape, an indication of his importance. The cell phones to which Bond listens in these images connect him (and us) to the past, the back story or context provided by his masters that permits the audience to understand the complex plot that is unfolding before them. The devices at which he looks represent the future, the next situation or person that he must contain. He does not fully understand what is happening, but he is not there to understand – he is there to join the information held in the various devices together, which (in this film) usually means to kill someone. The third image in this sequence is from the final scene of the film, and the assault rifle marks this end—the chain of cell phone messages (direct and indirect) that has driven Casino Royale from its outset has been stopped. The narrative stops with it. Bond’s centrality amid these ICTS and their messages is simultaneously what allows him to complete his mission and what subjects him to their needs. This kind of technological power can be so banal precisely because it has been stripped of pleasure and of any kind of mystique. The conclusion of Skyfall reinforces this by inverting all of the norms that Bond films have created about their climaxes: instead of the technologically-empowered villain’s lair being destroyed, it is Bond’s childhood home that is blown up. Rather than beating the computer hacker at his own game, Bond kills him with a knife in a medieval Scottish church. It could hardly be less hi-tech if it tried, which is precisely the point. What the Bond franchise and the other films mentioned above have shown us, is that we do not rely on ICTs for enchantment any more because they are so powerfully connected to the everyday reality of work and to the loss of privacy that our digital devices exact as the price of their use. The advertising materials that sell them to us have to rely on the rhetoric of augmentation, but these films are signs that we do not experience them as empowering devices any more. The deeper irony is that (for once) the ICT consumer products being advertised to us today really do what their promotional materials claim: they are faster, more powerful, and more widely applicable in our lives than ever before. Without the user fantasy of augmentation, however, this truth has very little power to move us. We depict ourselves as the medium, and it is our digital devices that bear the message.References“Apple Special Event. March 2, 2011.” Apple Events. 21 Sep. 2013 ‹http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html›. Bell, Gordon, and Jim Gemmell. Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. New York: Dutton, 2009.“The Best of Both Worlds: Part Two.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Cliff Bole. Paramount, 2013. The Bourne Legacy. Dir. 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