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In its new charter, the Vatican calls on healthcare workers to be ministers of life. This is a challenging task and a most noble mission. The mission field itself is the vast, complex and mysterious field of suffering (Pope John Paul II). For Catholic healthcare professionals, it is not so much to have a mission, but to be a mission on this earth, as Pope Francis often reminds us. The daily mission needs to be nourished by a commensurate spirituality. Each deed can be offered to the Lord as part of our response. Healthcare professionals may feel called to specific mission fields too, such as working to reduce the culture of gun violence or to promote the culture of life. The ongoing formation of conscience is a vital prerequisite, so we can continually respond to the novel ethical challenges that progress in technology and medicine inevitably bring. May we each respond enthusiastically to the call to mission: “Here I am Lord, send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).

Antifeminist mobilisation is growing in the United Nations. It is led by a coalition of certain post-Soviet, Catholic, and Islamic states; the United States; the Vatican; conservative nongovernmental organisations, occasionally joined by the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States, the UN Africa Group, and the G77. Uniting them is the aim of restoring the ‘natural family’ and opposing ‘gender ideology’. The group has become increasingly strategic, and its impact can already be seen in a number of UN fora, including the Security Council. By surveying feminist notions of backlash and comparing them to Alter and Zürn’s definition of ‘backlash politics’, the article gauges whether the group’s activities can be characterised as such politics. The conclusion is that they can, suggesting that we are looking at a group with the potential to alter not only the global course of women’s rights but also how politics is done within the UN.

This article is a reasoned response to the article by Timothy F. Murphy, recently published in the prestigious journal Bioethics, on the supposed opposition between the views of the Catholic Church and what he calls “contemporary science” in relation to certain anthropological issues linked to the gender perspective. To point to “the Vatican” as anchored in an unscientific and anachronistic position, using the term contemporary science to which he attributes a unanimous representation of current scientific thinking on the subject is, in our view, unfounded and completely unacceptable. In his reflection, he does not adequately distinguish between intersex and transgenderism, two clearly different realities with different needs. The author defends the obsolescence of the binary sex/gender model that, in his view, “betrays human sexuality.” Furthermore, he does so without providing a plausible justification or a definition of human nature that is able to support the plurality and indeterminacy of sexual conditions, without falling back on untenable dualisms or relativism devoid of scientific objectivity. In our response, we highlight how the dialogue between Faith and Reason, as developed in the recent Magisterium of the Catholic Church, is essential to explain nature, the human being and, in general, all creations. Finally, contemporary science does not provide a monolithic and unquestionable view of the nature of human beings and their sexual identity, as the author claims, with many scientists confirming evidence of a binary human sexuality genetically and phenotypically determined. Summary: This paper is a reasoned response to the supposed opposition between the views of the Catholic Church and “contemporary science” in relation to certain anthropological issues linked to the gender perspective.The dialogue between Faith and Reason, as developed in the recent Magisterium of the Catholic Church, is essential to explain nature, the human being and, in general, all creation, against the opinion of those who defend the obsolescence of the binary sex/gender model that, in their view, “betrays human sexuality”.

‘Gender ideology’ is a term used by many, but especially the Vatican, to chastise the view that sexual difference is more than just male and female, sexuality more than desire of the opposite. Each of the three books discussed in this article defends some version of this supposed ideology; each argues—though in different ways—for the need to move beyond a dimorphic account of sexual difference. Their arguments are taken up and deployed against what is here presented as the ideology of sexual dimorphism, as it is seen in the body theology of John Paul II. It is argued that such a theology dehumanises intersexed people, along with homosexuals, and undermines Christian soteriology. The church needs to acknowledge as fully human all who don’t conform to heterosexual dimorphism; it needs to embrace a ‘third sex’ without reserve.

The widely publicized British case of Charlie Gard became an international cause célèbre when the treating physicians petitioned the British courts to prevent the parents from taking their dying child to America where a physician held out promise of an unproven experimental therapy. The case became more sensationalized when the press reported that Pope Francis had intervened in the case against the position of the Vatican’s Academy for Life on the appropriate response to a patient with a lethal genetic disorder for which there was no known treatment. A review of the centuries-long teaching of Catholic moral theology on care of the dying demonstrates that the pastoral concern of Pope Francis for the grieving parents did not signal a change in church teaching on the care of the dying patient or reveal a disagreement between Pope Francis and the Academy for Life’s position on the appropriate care of Charlie Gard.

After the First World War, which disrupted missions around the world, Pope Pius XI announced a Holy Year for 1925, a major focus of which was the creation of the Vatican Mission Exposition. After a description of the exposition, the work of four Catholic anthropologists on both sides of the North Atlantic illustrate some of the underlying anthropological and mission views encompassed in the exposition. The four anthropologists employed a pattern of close, empathic observation of people and an awareness of larger frameworks of religious meaning in relation to the whole of culture. This inductive methodology was a contrast to the deductive Thomist philosophical framework in place in many Catholic seminaries of the period.

The Fantasy of Reunion: Anglicans, Catholics, and Ecumenism, 18331882. By Mark D. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. ix + 352 pp. $99.00 (cloth).The "fantasy" of the title is the search for Christian unity. In the nineteenth century, some Anglicans and Roman Catholics began to ask if it was possible to find a common language on which Christian communities, long divided, might reach agreement. Chapman examines how this question was posed by discussing the different understandings of "catholicity" that emerged in the interactions between the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Roman Catholic Church and the Old Catholic Churches between 1833 and 1882.The great strength of the book is that it places church unity within the context of an even more important question: what should the Christian identity be amid the changing political and social structures created by democratic revolutions, the industrial revolution, rampant nationalism, and imperialism? These two themes, catholic unity and catholic identity, are brought together masterfully through a series of studies of nineteenth-century churchmen and theologians who sought to revive and reconstruct the churches through an encounter with the Christian past. No one questioned that history was key to the future. But could a common language be found in the past?Mark Chapman s background and scholarship prepare him to accomplish this complex task. He is Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon and Reader in Modem Theology at Oxford. He has published numerous articles and books on religion and public policy in Britain, Germany, and the United States, and this work is based on archival research and all the relevant literature, which he evaluates in the extensive and informative footnotes.Fantasy is divided into two parts. Part 1 takes us from the Oxford Movement in 1833 to the First Vatican Council in 1870. Part 2 extends from the Vatican Council to the Second Lambeth Conference in 1888. Part 1 in turn is divided into two topics. First, Chapman defines carefully the distinctive ecelesiology of two of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, E. B. Pusey and J. H. Newman, as their ecelesiology developed from Newmans conversion to the Roman Church in 1845 through the definition of papal infallibility in 1870.The Pusey/Newman exchange was the most important attempt in the nineteenth century to develop a common definition of "Catholicism" which could lead to reunion. The conversation reached a climax in the publication of Puseys three Eirenicons in 1865, 1869, and 1870, and Newmans published responses to them. However, the Pusey/Newman dialogue, though based on friendship, led to an impasse. Chapman sums up the failure succinctly: "A Catholicism of the Word, based on the explicit teachings of the apostolic past, rubbed up against a Catholicism of devotion" (p. …

Given the recent scholarly interest in the history of anti-communism, it is surprising that relatively little has been written on the ambitious transnational anti-communist campaign launched by the Vatican in the early 1930s. Drawing on new archival material, this article explores how the Vatican founded an organization known as the Secretariat on Atheism, which disseminated a form of anti-communism grounded in Catholic teachings. The Secretariat sought to buttress the position of the Roman Catholic church in international affairs and unite Catholic groups across Europe and the Americas, all the while maintaining its independence from other forms of anti-communism – particularly those espoused by Nazi and Fascist forces. However, the Secretariat was only partially successful in preserving its independence. For if the Vatican campaign avoided the antisemitic and nationalistic motifs that characterized Nazi-Fascist propaganda, the key protagonists of the movement cooperated with Nazi, Fascist and proto-Fascist forces on the ground. The Vatican campaign led to joint surveillance efforts, the toning down of the Pope's public denunciations of Nazi-Fascism, and the papal sanction of violence against purportedly communist enemies. Despite its potentially damning association with Nazi-Fascist forces, the Vatican anti-communist movement would outlive both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and leave a lasting mark on Cold War politics.

In light of the Vatican’s recent doctrinal investigation of American Catholic nuns, this paper considers gender inequality in the Catholic Church immediately before, during and after the Second Vatican Council. Using Weber’s frameworks of authority construction and literature on corporate structures that reify inequality and gendered workplaces, the author argues that viewing the Church as a complex social organization allows for a fuller understanding of the ways in which its structures of power are constructed and reproduced. Ultimately, the author contends that religious sisters are stakeholders in a hierarchical organization that has prevented them from assuming leadership roles and from developing official Church teaching. Finally, he identifies several hegemonic forces that perpetuate gender barriers in the Catholic Church, specifically the obligatory wearing of the religious habit and the ban on women’s ordination.

Modern liturgy in all churches has been influenced by the Vatican II document, Sacrosanctum Concilium, which is fifty years old in December 2013. Many regard these changes as positive, but they have also received criticism not only from conservative forces within the Catholic Chuch who seek to return to earlier values in liturgy, but also from those who see them as products of a particular time and generation within Western Christianity, not relevant to postmodern culture. Although the context and worshipping needs of the contemporary Church may be very different from those of 1963, there are still lessons to be learned from that document and the Liturgical Movement that gave rise to it, as Christians draw on the liturgical tradition to develop new forms of worship in twenty-first century Britain.

The author argues that a closer and fresh reading of the Vatican II documents with an eye to the theme of mission might suggest that it is closer to the heart of the council's original intention than a cursory and dated reading might indicate. Indeed the church's mission is more urgent today than ever, given the shift of Christianity's center of gravity to the Global South, massive migration to the Global North, and widespread secularism. Revisiting the council's documents can offer substantial help for developing a theology and practice for today's missionary church.

Religious life has consistently played a prophetic role in the church; its post-Vatican II era is no exception. The failure of dialogue between those leaders whose ecclesiology is described as traditionalist and those labeled progressive continues to wound the Body of Christ. This article argues that it is in and through the dialogical living of their charism in service of the global church and society of the 21st century that religious offer healing and hope in and through their prophetic, ecclesial witness.

The article reviews the impact of Nostra aetate on Christian-Jewish relations and offers a Jewish perspective, including consideration of the Jewishness of Jesus as well as proposing a covenantal theology that grapples with supersessionism. It also explores the implications of the Holy See's assertion in 1974 that “Christians must strive to learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience” and suggests that the church did not know then, nor yet knows, the challenges this raises.

In his recent interview published as the book Light of the World, Pope Benedict XVI noted that the Vatican has repeatedly stated that men with a homosexual orientation should not be admitted to the priesthood even if they performed no homosexual acts. He stated that he did not want celibacy to be an excuse to attract people with a homosexual orientation. There are several reasons for this stance. The priesthood is not a denial of the spousal meaning of the body which underlies marriage. This spousal meaning entails the fact that since man is a composite of body and spirit, the body is the physical self by which the gift of the soul which characterizes married love is finally ratified. The giving and receiving of sperm and ova expresses physically the prior giving and receiving of soul. This gift of self to another, for those who are called to it, can also be realized by the gift of self to God as is the case with virgins and religious. Though celibacy is a discipline, because of the all-encompassing concentration of forces necessary for the priesthood, realized especially in the consecration of the Eucharist, it is a fit means for carrying out this spousal meaning of the body. As a result, a priest must have the same ability to give the gift of himself totally as a married man does; only his gift is to the whole Church. There is an argument as to whether homosexuality is a result of nurture or nature. In either case, as long as this condition remains, the total dedication of self required of the priest would not be possible. If this is the result of nature, this cannot be changed; and the person could not contemplate a priestly vocation. If this results from nurture, then it could be changed; in which case after a person has changed it, he could pursue the priesthood.

A letter was sent on October 13, 2007 by Muslim leaders to Christian leaders to join with them in affirming and practicing the two love commandments: to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. “A Common Word Between Us and You” has been widely circulated and well received by the Christian community. There have been several thoughtful responses, including ones from the Vatican and from ecumenical bodies. The article speaks to the centrality of love in both religious traditions and addresses two doctrines within the Christian faith that need further discussion—the trinity and christology—arguing that these two articles of faith are central to the Christian understanding of love and may be understood in ways that do not radically differ from the teaching of Islam on the unity of the one God. The article also suggests ways to continue the dialogue and to practice jointly the love commandments.

The Bo (meaning ‘ox’ in the Venetian dialect) is the historic seat of the University of Padua, founded in 1222. A full-length portrait of Thomas Linacre stands in its prestigious Sala dei Quaranta (Hall of the Forty), so called because of the portraits of forty great foreign scholars of the University, painted by Giacomo dal Forno in 1942. Thomas Linacre came to Italy in 1485, following an embassy by Henry VII to the Vatican. Linacre visited Bologna, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vicenza and Padua, where he took his degree in medicine in 1496 with great distinction. During his stay in Italy he met illustrious humanists and physicians, including Poliziano, Hermolaus Barbarus and Aldus Manutius Romanus, and Nicolaus Leonicenus who further stimulated him to the translation of classic works by Hippocrates and Galen. In 1518 Linacre played a pivotal role in the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians in London which, as first President, he organized on the basis of Italian models. With his portrait, the University of Padua celebrates the life and work of an astonishing figure linking the Italian and English medical cultures.

As Pope Benedict XVI prepares to visit Britain in mid-September, Paul Donovan considers the impact of the Vatican’s many PR disasters under his leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. He analyses the changes made by the church in Britain to its communications strategy since the child abuse scandal broke. Though it has adopted a more professional approach he believes the attempt to win the hearts and minds of the media could well prove to be a PR disaster.

Between Easter 1933 and Easter 1934, Rome was the venue for two major and potentially rival efforts to seize history for popular use. The Roman Catholic Church, under the rule of Pope Pius XI, held a supernumerary Anno Santo, Holy Year or Jubilee, the first since the signature of the Lateran pacts with the Fascist regime in 1929. That agreement had formally ended the Pope’s ‘imprisonment in the Vatican’, permitting the Church publicly to deploy a greater array of Rome’s religious pasts than had been possible since the Risorgimento. Meanwhile, in October 1932, Mussolini’s dictatorship had opened its Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, there making with stridently modernist dynamism its own claims to carry Rome’s histories in its hands. Many ‘pilgrims’ in 1933—34 attended both Catholic and Fascist events. What, then, does this coincidence illustrate of the Fascist version of totalitarianism, to some historians a ‘political religion’ of span and depth, but one that was never able fully to master a Church that was at least as determined to claim that it best expressed transcendence and eternity?

Catholic and Protestant religious responses to the emergence of the late nineteenth-century concept of a more or less fixed sexual orientation have taken three different directions: some have largely abandoned doctrinal hostility to homosexuality (“Mainline” Protestants, roughly speaking); some have conjoined the belief that homoerotic relationships are sinful with the conviction that homosexuality is a product of malleable individual choice, curable through reparative therapy (Evangelical Protestants, roughly speaking); while others contend that, although still potentially sinful, homoerotic dispositions are typically innate and immutable (chiefly the Vatican and other clerical authorities among Roman Catholics). This article offers a theological analysis of the dramatic divergence of opinion between the second and third groups. It is suggested that the differences depend on divergent theological commitments to the disparate accounts of human nature and sexual ethics implicit in Paul, Pelagius, and (more explicitly) Augustine. It is argued that both the Evangelical and Catholic positions on the morality of homoerotic relationships are internally incoherent.

The U.S. bishops and the Vatican have reacted critically to Peter Phan's recent book, Being Religious Interreligiously. This article attempts to address the contended issues from a trinitarian perspective. It argues that the traditional trinitarian theology of East and West, which is largely based on the Fourth Gospel, is unable to handle these issues satisfactorily, and that a new approach, inspired equally by the Synoptics, is needed. This approach, Rahnerian in character, emphasizes Pneumatology and climaxes in Spirit Christology.

The Holy See's new instruction on homosexuality and the priesthood has been sensationalized in some places in the media as if it represented some kind of radical new departure for the Catholic Church. However, only someone ignorant of the Church's constant teaching against homosexual acts—or persuaded that this teaching could somehow be changed in accordance with modern ideas—could ever have seriously imagined that the new instruction would turn out to be anything other than a solemn reiteration of the Church's traditional teaching and practice with regard to homosexuality.

Christians and Jews generally agree that confessional attitudes played a role in the unfolding of the Holocaust. The Vatican's “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” while admitting to a painful history, distinguishes between “anti-Semitism,” based on racial theories contrary to the constant teaching of the church, and theological sentiments of mistrust and hostility called “anti-Judaism.” Such a dichotomy has been questioned. Adolf Schlatter offers an influential source for Christian attitudes toward Judaism on the eve of the Holocaust. His work provided a rationale and concrete example of the bridging of negative religious views and accusations of the Jews as an immediate social danger. In the process of carrying out his will, God bears vessels of wrath, prepared to perish, with great and often enduring longsuffering…. That they [the Jews] came to exist through wrath is made evident in that the loss of life is their end. Adolf Schlatter, 1935

[The recent “Letter on the Collaboration of Men and Women” (2004) published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith continues Pope John Paul II's strong affirmation of women in church teaching, but also unfairly critiques two forms of feminism. Contemporary philosophical and theological feminist reflection on both equality and difference suggests a better, dialectical approach that requires women's full participation in Church and society, encourages what is special to the “genius of women,” and overcomes what is unacceptable in “complementarity.”]

THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR REFORM Die Gregorianische Kalenderreform von 1582: Korrektur der christlichen Zeitrechnung in der Fruhen Neuzeit. Dirk Steinmetz (Verlag Dirk Steinmetz, Offersheim, 2011). Pp. 502. euro65. ISBN 978-3-943051-00-1.Since the seminal studies of Schmid and especially Kaltenbrunner towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Gregorian calendar reform has generally received little attention. A noteworthy exception is the proceedings of the Vatican conference commemorating the 400th anniversary of the event in 1982, which, however, is not widely available. This lack of interest is the more surprising, since the calendar reform had serious cultural, political, religious, and social implications, many of which remain to be thoroughly investigated.Dirk Steinmetz's monumental Heidelberg Ph.D. dissertation is therefore a very welcome publication, one that will hopefully stimulate renewed interest in what must be considered as one of the most important cultural events of the early modern period. It seeks to survey the Gregorian calendar reform, covering its mathematicalastronomical, political, theological, and cultural aspects. It starts with a brief outline of the history of the calendar before the reform and a basic description of its most relevant features (pp. 22-71). It then discusses all texts relevant to the reform proper and its immediate reception in Europe (pp. 72-360), Protestant struggles to come to terms with it and their attempts to provide alternatives up to the nineteenth century (pp 361-414), as well as later attempts at reform (pp. 415-24). At the end, we find a glossary (pp. 427-33), miscellaneous tabular materials (pp. 434-59), a computer program for calculating Easter (pp. 459-65), a list of territories and the dates of their introduction of the Gregorian calendar (pp. 466-70), a graphical illustration of the relation between selected texts (pp. 470-1), and finally common lists of illustrations, abbreviations, and bibliography (pp. 472-502). There are no indices.The foreword states that this handsome production is written for the novice as well as the scholar. However, novices not trained in other languages may find it difficult to follow the argument, as the extensively cited sources appear only in the original, primarily Latin and Italian. Also, why provide a computer program in outdated Turbo Pascal, when excellent calculators and converters of Easter dates and calendrical features are readily available on the web (e.g., the extremely useful www.nabkal.de)? References to such online tools surely would have been more welcomed by novices.For the scholar, the strongest part of the book is the core, dealing with the Gregorian calendar reform proper and the immediate reactions caused by it. Here, Steinmetz presents a wealth of material, conveniently Usted in two excellent tables (pp. 99-105, 348-60). Most noteworthy is his identification of previously unknown copies of the Compendium novae rationis restituendi Kalendarium, one of which (Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, 71.2.D.35) is Clavius's own copy. The general perspective on this material is principally that of the historian of science, although some interesting cultural aspects such as logistical problems of introducing the reform in Spain (pp. 133-8) are noted. In the end, Steinmetz only scratches the surface of the many fascinating aspects of the Gregorian calendar reform, its preparation and implementation, and it can only be hoped, as the author stresses himself (p. 15), that cultural, social, political, ecclesiastical, and intellectual historians will dig deeper.Beyond this core period, Steinmetz is less at home, due principally to his tendency not to consult the original sources and to rely on outdated general literature. Thus, certain important sources and details are overlooked, others are described misleadingly or are simply wrong. A few examples may serve to illustrate this, as we turn first to the reception of the Gregorian calendar and other attempts of reform triggered by it. …

IN COUNTRIES WHERE CATHOLIC BELIEF COUNTS, THE VATICAN'S TEACHING CAN BE A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH - PARTICULARLY WHERE IT ENCOUNTERS HIV/AIDS

The case against advertising is easy to make. In 1994, the Vatican's Pontifical Council on Social Communications published a thoughtful, balanced document on “Ethics in Advertising,” presenting both positive and negative aspects of the practice. The Vatican focused on rational product selection based on a comparison of product qualities. The author, as a practitioner of advertising in the United States, offers an alternative view of advertising as a brand-building, relationship-building enterprise. Advertising can help initiate and sustain healthy commercial exchanges. A career in advertising can be pursued with good conscience when the good internal to the practice of advertising is creating these positive exchanges.

The article takes an in-depth look at the origins and development of the Vatican Library, and its collections of manuscripts, acknowledging their significance for today: the future of yesterday and the past of tomorrow. The determined will of Pope Nicholas V opened the doors of the Vatican Library around 1451; his successors, up to today, have heeded his founding maxim: ‘for the common convenience of learned men’, through the centuries of organization, re-organization, and development. Today the Vatican Library is one of the greatest and most important repositories of manuscripts in the world. As we are confronted with the responsibility to preserve, to keep alive and to pass on that which we have received, we have to find the right balance between use and preservation. In this search, modern technologies can provide a pursuable path which would render a ‘sustainable development’ possible. The article considers the manuscripts from the point of view of new electronic technology, which allows for better access to information, for better scientific study and for better preservation of the manuscripts. The combination of computer programs and human ingenuity provide opportunity, as well as ample challenge to distinguish valuable from unfounded information, for present and future generations to experience, anywhere in the world, a library as a place to interact with others of different regions and times, a place to grow, to participate and contribute to the cultural growth of humanity, a place, ultimately, of freedom.

Francesco Rutelli’s period as mayor of Rome was marked by controversy over his relationship with the Vatican, and with the use of the 2000 Holy Year for the replanning and modernization of Rome. His high profile in the 2001 general election demonstrates the growing importance of mayors in Italian political life.

This article examines the dynamics that have turned a recent Marian apparition on the window of a bank in Clearwater, Florida, from a local into a global phenomenon. Drawing from theories of globalization, we show how the apparition exemplifies what sociologist Roland Robertson refers to as the mutually implicative `universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism'. Among the factors analyzed are global pilgrimage, transnational migration, mediascapes (particularly through the Internet) and the Vatican's New Evangelization initiative. On the basis of this case study, the article argues for the need to go beyond secularization theory - the dominant modernist approach to religion and social change - and to adopt a flexible, polymethodological framework that takes into account the complex, and often contradictory, relations between the local and the global and the mediating roles religion plays.

'It is the first law of history not to say anything false,' wrote Pope Leo XIII upon opening the Vatican Archive to scholars for the first time in 1883, 'or to refrain from saying something which is true'

Over the past decade, the United Nations conference has become an increasingly important site for contesting views on social relations. Although UN conferences cover a broad range of topics, from the environment to development, a recurrent focus of international debate has been on gender, and particularly, women's sexual and reproductive autonomy. The Beijing Conference on Women (1995) represented, in some respects, a culmination of international positioning around gender and women's rights. As such, it attracted the participation of not only a large contingent of women's organizations, but also a significant number of fundamentalist and conservative religious groups. In this article, I explore the participation of the Vatican in the Beijing process. The Vatican has a long history of involvement in international population issues which has positioned it as a leading international actor in opposing women's rights to reproductive freedom. This article focuses on the rhetorical and discursive strategies used by the Vatican at Beijing. By focusing on how the Vatican has responded to a women's human rights agenda, the paper explores some of the ten sions and contradictions not only in the Vatican's position, but also in the campaign for women's rights. Through an examination of the Vatican's position at Beijing, the article offers some insight into the internationalization of rights debates and the sig nificance this has for those on the religious right.

A special synod of Catholic bishops from the Western hemisphere was held at the Vatican in 1997 to explore ways of effectively fostering the Church's mission. The author describes its preparatory stages, the meeting's format, various points of convergence and contention, and the anticipated longrange impact. What, he asks, can we learn from the synod about the Church's globalization and contextualization in the Americas?

In February 1997, the Vatican Pontifical Council for Social Communications issued a 35-page pamphlet, which provides a religion-based commentary on the ethics of advertising. This document is composed of five sections that endeavor to treat the economic, political, cultural, and moral dimensions of advertising as they affect society. Although the thematic tone of the writing is difficult to capture by excerpting a few paragraphs, the following quotations sample the rhetorical sense of the essay