{"id":1833,"date":"2012-10-10T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T14:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2012-10-10T10:59:09","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T14:59:09","slug":"april-may-compendium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/10\/10\/april-may-compendium\/","title":{"rendered":"April-May Compendium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re continuing to (retroactively) summarize posts to <em>The Catholic Conversation<\/em> in \u201ccompendium\u201d announcements to help readers navigate to earlier topics. As Brian has mentioned previously, the best way to track posts is to subscribe to <em>The Catholic Conversation\u2019s<\/em> free RSS feed or to receive e-mail updates (click \u201cE-mail Updates\u201d in the right side bar).\u00a0 This compendium begins where the last one left off, covering posts from April-May, 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Discourse on human sexuality remained a strong focus, with Lucas Sharma describing his <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/04\/06\/redefining-the-public-discourse-at-the-local-level-a-look-at-two-catholic-parishes-and-their-attempts-to-define-church-discourse\/\">ethnographic research on two Chicago parishes<\/a>.\u00a0While one parish focused on inclusivity and social justice and the other on respect life initiatives, both revealed an unexpected common objective: \u201credefining the discourse of the parish around human sexuality.\u201d Gary Adler considered how ongoing social change in the perception of homosexuality, connected with complex magisterial teaching on the issue, invites controversy in addressing <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/05\/22\/homosexuality-and-the-local-catholic-church-more-open-than-you-might-think\/\">issues of homosexuality in local Catholic parishes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Following the doctrinal assessment of the largest leadership organization of women religious in the United States, Linda Kawentel authored the Catholic Conversation&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/04\/23\/habits-in-the-news-the-power-of-image\/\">most viewed post to-date: \u00a0The Power of Image<\/a>. \u00a0Beginning a\u00a0thread that continued in the following months, Linda examined the sociological dynamics at play in media coverage of this controversy, especially highlighting both the\u00a0irony implicit in the media&#8217;s use of images of habited sisters from <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmswr.org\/\">CMSWR<\/a><\/span> congregations in lieu of images of (typically non-habited) <a href=\"https:\/\/lcwr.org\/\">LCWR<\/a> sisters but also what this says sociologically about the power of images to shape discourse.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Parish, school and diocesan office closures continued as a topic of interest. Carol Ann MacGregor considered the complex relation of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/05\/11\/parish-closures-new-scholarship-and-important-questions\/\">ethnic tensions, financial issues, and sexual abuse scandals to parish closures<\/a> and highlighted new scholarship on closures in the Archdiocese of Boston.\u00a0\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/05\/09\/cleveland-pastoral-planning-office-rip\/\">Finance-induced closures<\/a> were close to the heart to our contributor David DeLambo, who shared how diocesan budget reductions led to the closing of his former workplace, the Diocese of Cleveland\u2019s Pastoral Planning Office.<\/p>\n<p>Building on his previous discussion of the effectiveness of parish evangelization committees in the process of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/05\/07\/the-new-evangelization-and-its-institutionalization-in-the-catholic-church\/\">the<em> <\/em>institutionalization of the New Evangelization (NE)<\/a>,\u00a0Mike McCallion used Christian Smith\u2019s criteria for \u201cinstitutionalization\u201d to confirm this process\u2019 beginnings in the Archdiocese of Detroit.\u00a0 Mike later explored a particular facet of evangelization in his post on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/05\/17\/catholic-devotions\/\">theories of ritual and Catholic devotional practice<\/a>, especially how the sharing of Catholic devotions may be more imperative than religious education in the transmission of the Catholic faith.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Michael Cieslak explored a topic critical to discussion of sociology and American Catholicism, the methodology for determining the U.S. Catholic population.\u00a0 Mike explored an <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/05\/28\/the-best-way-to-estimate-the-catholic-population\/\">alternative method of estimating the U.S. Catholic population<\/a>, generated in the 1980s in consultation with both canon lawyers and the US Census Bureau, based on dioceses\u2019 sacramental data on infant baptisms and funerals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re continuing to (retroactively) summarize posts to The Catholic Conversation in \u201ccompendium\u201d announcements to help readers navigate to earlier topics. As Brian has mentioned previously, the best way to track posts is to subscribe to The Catholic Conversation\u2019s free RSS &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/10\/10\/april-may-compendium\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":858,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/858"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}