According to our research of USC-CB statements: o 17% of sentences that criticized Trump did so by name while 36% of sentences that criticized Obama named him. o 15% of sentences praised Obama did so ...by name while 31% of sentences that praised Trump named him. o And 56% of sentences that criticized Obama did not do so by name while 80% of sentences that criticized Trump did not do so by name. According to the original viral tweets, "This is because many in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy seek good relations and influence with members of the Trump Administration/the GOP in the hopes of receiving pro-life judicial appointments and Executive Orders on things like conscience protections for healthcare workers." Since the 1970s, Catholic individuals and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has shifted toward the Republican Party. The U.S. bishops' shift toward the Republican Party can also be attributed to several related dynamics: shared prioritization of abortion as the "preeminent" social problem and a corresponding judiciary-focused strategy to address this issue; "the rise of neocon-servative Catholics" that current USC-CB staff member Todd Scriber recognizes in A Partisan Church and who shape Catholic discourse; wealthy political conservatives who support bishops' activities and advocate a "uniquely American version of Catholicism;" the influence of organizations like the Knights of Columbus that fund the bishops' conference along with politically conservative initiatives; the increasing political partisanship of conservative Catholic media like EWTN that provide platforms for "neoconservative Catholics" and has been described as having become the " 'Fox News' of religious broadcasting;" and increasing numbers of U.S. bishops' conference staff coming from conservative colleges and institutions, as John Gehring - himself a former USCCB staffer - describes in The Francis Effect. ...praise was overall rarer than criticism, so differences there were less stark.
This study aimed through a comprehensive survey to identify and list all the Catholic churches in Hong Kong, which existed during the period from 1841 to the early 1940s. The criteria to analyze are ...“use,” “existence of space solely reserved for religious activities,” and “building owner,” which signify traits of the churches in Hong Kong rather than architectural style and structure. The study revealed that the majority of churches were “mission stations” whereas proper churches were also built. The chapels of convents, schools, and hospitals were utilized for public worship. Many churches were accompanied by educational and/or welfare facilities.
This study aimed through a comprehensive survey to identify and list all the Catholic churches in Hong Kong, which existed during the period from 1841 to the early 1940s. The criteria to analyze are ...“use,” “existence of space solely reserved for religious activities,” and “building owner,” which signify traits of the churches in Hong Kong rather than architectural style and structure. The study revealed that the majority of churches were “mission stations” whereas proper churches were also built. The chapels of convents, schools, and hospitals were utilized for public worship. Many churches were accompanied by educational and/or welfare facilities.
Drawing on in-depth, narrative interviews with 24 self-identified Otherkin, Therianthropes, and Vampires, we explore how members of these communities navigate Bamberg’s three “dilemmatic spaces” or ...tensions of continuity/change, similarity/difference, and person-to-world/world-to-person fit. With regard to the first, we identify four aetiological narratives (walk-ins, reincarnation, trapped soul, and evolutionary soul), and discuss stories of shifts and awakening. For the second, we discuss how participants manage the similarity/difference tension with regard to themselves and humans, and explore categorical and renunciatory othering within the communities. Finally, we explore the ways in which members of the communities experience a barren narrative environment, and ways they seek to construct storyworlds and narrative resources as frames for establishing their identities.
Inheritance language is striking in Hebrews, beginning with the identification of the Son as the heir of all things (1:2), who is later understood as the mediator of a new covenant that enables ...reception of the eternal inheritance (9:15). This use of inheritance language is deeply rooted in the OT inheritance motif. Thus this dissertation seeks to explain the hermeneutical worldview that accounts for the Author of Hebrews's understanding and appropriation of the OT inheritance motif. The term hermeneutical worldview indicates the integrated way of viewing reality that informs the Author's appropriation of the OT that enables him to understand God's redemptive actions as both occurring within history on earth and transcending history to point to a heavenly, eternal reality. The pivot of this worldview is God's final Word, Jesus Christ, now seated in heaven at God's right hand. Inheritance language in Hebrews, however, also raises certain problems if understood along testamentary, legal lines. For example, why must the heir die to receive the inheritance? Thus a further goal of this dissertation is to explain why the Author uses inheritance language at all. It is argued that the inheritance motif in Hebrews must be understood in terms of the Abrahamic promises, which became interwoven with a rich cluster of related themes, such as covenant, the tabernacle, and God's holy mountain. Inheritance language thus enables the Author to access both the Abrahamic promises and these related themes. Moreover, inheritance is an inherently future-oriented concept, which is indicated by several typological trajectories, such as the Sabbath rest and God's presence in Zion, that are developed significantly within the OT. Inheritance language enables the Author to appropriate these trajectories and to extend them to their eschatological fulfillment. The Author thus shows that obtaining the eternal inheritance can be understood as entering aspects of the same ultimate reality: the Sabbath rest and the heavenly Zion, which are both associated with worship in God's presence through Jesus Christ. Some aspects of the eternal inheritance are enjoyed now through worship, although ultimate attainment of the eternal inheritance awaits the eschaton.
Hebrew poetry has long proven itself an elusive and enticing object of study. It has been the purpose of this study to explore the potentialities of poetic expression and to provide an adequate model ...for capturing the profundities of the syntax of Hebrew poetry. Proverbs 10-15 was chosen as the corpus because of the atomistic and independent character of each of its bi-cola allowing one to study the bi-colon qua bi-colon. The settings of Proverbs in the wisdom tradition of the ancient Near Eastern literary and intellectual milieu helped provide a broad framework for understanding the sage's manner of expression and message. His mode and meaning conformed to the literary patterns established for over a millennia prior to the Israelite collection in Proverbs. The historical Sitz im Leben and rhetorical/literary forms characteristic of Israelite wisdom were isolated and exampled. The canonical setting of wisdom traced the influence of the wisdom tradition through the Old Testament canon. Having treated the historical, literary, canonical, and conceptual settings of wisdom, the study moved toward the development of an approach to Hebrew poetry. It was shown that the rhythmical equivalences and creative variations of Hebrew poetic expression should not be limited to phonetic features (meter, alliteration, paronomasia et al.); nor should one myopically employ a method which merely observes semantic parallelism without semantically specifying precisely what the components of the parallel relationships are. This study went on to develop a method for exposing the poetic craftsmanship of the syntax. The studies of Collins, and especially, O'Connor (also Berlin, Geller, and Greenstein) were used as comparative benchmarks in terms of grammatical parallelism. Various linguistic approaches were examined and a six-box tagmemic approach opted for. The study then demonstrated and explicitly specified the syntactically parallel mappings between the cola (homomorphic and isomorphic), in terms of both surface and deep grammar. It was shown that proverbial genre is a function of poetic syntactic constraints. It was also discovered that Proverbs 10 manifests a large degree of literary cohesion--contrary to most studies and Skehar's approach.
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