The fear of confession? High Catholic collective narcissism and low secure identification with Catholics predict increased pedophilia myth acceptance

Over the past 30 years, the Catholic Church has been rocked by a series of child sexual abuse scandals worldwide. Some of the religious officials suggested that the children are partly to blame for being sexually abused by priests. We assumed that such convictions (i.e., pedophilia myth acceptance) should be associated with a defensive commitment to one's religious group, captured by religious collective narcissism. In two studies conducted among Polish participants (Study 1, longitudinal, n = 719; Study 2, cross-sectional, n = 357), we found that pedophilia myth acceptance was positively predicted by Catholic narcissism but negatively by secure identification with Catholics. We additionally demonstrated that the effect of Catholic narcissism on pedophilia myth acceptance was mediated by a siege mentality with respect to the religious in-group. We discuss the role of different types of group commitment in predicting in-group criticism and prejudice against underaged victims of sexual abuse.     

The Role of Religion on the Health Practices of Mexican Americans

Twenty million Mexican Americans live in the U.S. (U.S. Census 2000 Summary File, 2000). It is vital that health care clinicians become familiar with and acknowledge the role of religion or religiosity on the health practices of Mexican Americans so that these needs may be addressed through holistic care. This paper reviews the origin and role that religion plays in the health practices of Mexican Americans. The potential benefits of addressing these client’s religious needs are examined and suggestions are offered on how health care clinicians may address these needs in a culturally sensitive manner.Josefina Lujan, MSN, RN is a first generation Mexican American who has been practicing nursing for 25 years in the Texas-Mexico border community of El Paso, Texas.Howard Campbell is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso. e-mails: jlujan1@utep.edu; hcampbel@utep.edu     

On the impermissibility of euthanasia in Catholic healthcare organizations.

Roman Catholic healthcare institutions in the United States face a number of threats to the integrity of their missions, including the increasing religious and moral pluralism of society and the financial crisis many organizations face. These organizations in the United States often have fought fervently to avoid being obligated to provide interventions they deem intrinsically immoral, such as abortion. Such institutions no doubt have made numerous accommodations and changes in how they operate in response to the growing pluralism of our society, but they have resisted crossing certain lines and providing particular interventions deemed objectively wrong. Catholic hospitals in Belgium have responded differently to pluralism. In response to a growing diversity of moral views and to the Belgian Act of Euthanasia of 2002, Catholic hospitals in Belgium now engage in euthanasia. This essay examines a defense that has been offered of this practice of euthanasia in Catholic hospitals and argues that it is misguided.     

Toynbee's Frantic Quest for Survival

ABSTRACT

Data from life review interviews with elder Catholic women religious show that through prayer they are able to experience solitude and to feel connected with others. Their experience is not completely explained by either the disengagement theory nor by the newer theory of gerotranscendence. Because prayer connects them to others, they do not experience complete social withdrawal; rather, prayer functions as a modified social activity connecting them to their past, to God, to the community in which they live, as well as to the wider world. They also do not develop a new transcendent meta-perspective, but deepen into cherished life beliefs and practices, accepting and becoming more fully who they are as individuals and as older women.     

Is It Still a Movement?

In this address from 1971, the second general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Eugene Carson Blake, sets out the challenges facing the WCC at the beginning of the 1970s, identifying three key changes within the ecumenical movement: a shift in power and decision making away from the Protestant churches of North America and Western Europe; an organization more representative of churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and of Orthodox churches; and the ecumenical involvement of the Roman Catholic Church. It goes on to set out how the WCC, particularly since its conference on Church and Society held in Geneva in 1966, has been attempting to make Christian faith and morals relevant to a world experiencing rapid social, economic, and political change.     

Introduction to Focus Issue on Laudato Si'

The encyclical Laudato si’ can be read as a religious ethic in several different ways. Contributors to this focus issue read it as magisterial teaching, as environmental thought, as Global South criticism, as Latinx theology, and as philosophy of religion. Foregrounding South American and Latinx receptions, the cumulative argument of this focus issue is that LS represents a cultural event that invites interpretations from contexts and disciplines beyond North Atlantic theological ethics.     

Reframing the Catholic Understanding of Just War: Two Contrasting Approaches in the Interwar Period

During the inter war period, European Catholic authors exhibited two different approaches to the question of just war. One approach was articulated at the “Fribourg Conventus,” a 1931 meeting of French, Swiss, and German theologians, whose subsequent declaration (Conventus de bello, published in 1932) called for a reformulation of Catholic teaching based on the premise that the traditional just‐war doctrine had been superseded by developments in international law. A competing approach was articulated by the Dutch Jesuit Robert Regout, who maintained that the just‐war doctrine could contribute to the formation of international law by providing a much‐needed normative foundation for the use of armed force by individual states in redress of their violated rights. After presenting these two approaches and explaining how they differ, this essay shows how the outlook of the Conventus de bello is reflected in subsequent papal statements on armed force—to the detriment of the traditional terminology of just war.     

The impact of Roman Catholic moral theology on end-of-life care under the Texas Advance Directives Act.

This essay reviews the Roman Catholic moral tradition surrounding treatments at the end of life together with the challenges presented to that tradition by the Texas Advance Directives Act. The impact on Catholic health care facilities and physicians, and the way in which the moral tradition should be applied under this statute, particularly with reference to the provision dealing with conflicts over end-of-life treatments, will be critically assessed. I will argue, based on the traditional treatment of end-of-life issues, that Catholic physicians and institutions should appeal to the conflict resolution process of the Advance Directives Act only under a limited number of circumstances. The implications, under the Texas statute, of varied interpretations of Pope John Paul II's recent allocution on artificial feeding and hydration in the persistent vegetative state will also be considered.     

Sin and suffering in a Catholic understanding of medical ethics.

Drawing chiefly on recent sources, in Part One I sketch an untraditional way of articulating what I claim to be central elements of traditional Catholic morality, treating it as based in virtues, focused on the recipients ("patients") of our attention and concern, and centered in certain person-to-person role-relationships. I show the limited and derivative places of "natural law," and therefore of sin, within that framework. I also sketch out some possible implications for medical ethics of this approach to moral theory, and briefly contrast these with the influential alternative offered by the "principlism" of Beauchamp and Childress. In Part Two, I turn to a Catholic understanding of the nature and meaning of human suffering, drawing especially on writings and addresses of the late Pope John Paul II. He reminds us that physical and mental suffering can provide an opportunity to share in Christ's salvific sacrifice, better to see the nature of our earthly vocation, and to reflect on the dependence that inheres in human existence. At various places, and especially in my conclusion, I suggest a few ways in which this can inform bioethical reflection on morally appropriate responses to those afflicted by physical or mental pain, disability, mental impairment, disease, illness, and poor health prospects. My general point is that mercy must be informed by appreciation of the person's dignity and status. Throughout, my approach is philosophical rather than theological.     

Stopping nutrition and hydration technologies: a conflict between traditional Catholic ethics and church authority.

This article focuses on the troubling effects of the secular values of individual freedom and autonomy and their impact on laws regarding suicide and euthanasia. The author argues that in an increasingly secularized culture, death and dying are losing their meaning and are not thought of within a moral framework. The debate regarding the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration is critically considered in light of the history of Catholic morality as well as within the modern healthcare context, and finally with new insight from the recent statements made by the late pope. Drane argues that the pope's insistence on providing artificial nutrition and hydration despite irreversible persistent vegetative states in unconvincing.