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by Alex McAuley
2021, Our Mythical Education: The Reception of Classical Myth Worldwide in Formal Education, 1900–2020
Until the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, the Catholic Church had an almost unchallenged monopoly on public education in French Canada. Generations of French Canadian children were taught at the primary and secondary levels by various male and female religious orders according to a curriculum that infused almost every element of education with the fundaments of the Catholic Faith. But there is something of an apparent paradox at work when we consider this curriculum: how can an educational system that is so fundamentally Catholic give such prominence to pre-Christian Greek and Latin authors, and why did ‘pagan’ mythology and religious traditions figure so prominently in studies of all levels? Why did a Catholic system spend so much time teaching non-Catholic literature and religious material? This chapter addresses this question by examining in detail the place of mythology in a variety of primary pedagogical materials used in French Canadian schools from the foundation of the colony until the publication of the Commission Parent’s report in 1964. The evolving place of classical mythology in French Canadian education is tracked from the establishment of the colony in the 17th century through to the vociferous debates among the clergy over the place of pre-Christian authors in Catholic education which erupted in France in the mid-19th century and then spilled into French Canadian in the 1860s. The perceived benefits and threats posed by such a mythological education are analysed through the assertions of a variety of contemporary commentators. By means of conclusion, the prominence of Classical mythology and ancient authors in the curriculum is viewed in relation to the evolving national mythology of French Canada itself, according to which the French Canadian Catholic establishment becomes the direct successor to the Classical past. Full volume is available open-access at this link: https://www.wuw.pl/product-pol-14887-Our-Mythical-Education-The-Reception-of-Classical-Myth-Worldwide-in-Formal-Education-1900-2020-PDF.html
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2021, Our Mythical Education: The Reception of Classical Myth Worldwide in Formal Education, 1900–2020
Katarzyna Marciniak and Barbara Strycharczyk, with Appendix by Witold Kaliński, “Macte animo! – or, The Polish Experiment with ‘Classics Profiles’ in Secondary School Education: The Warsaw Example”, in: “Our Mythical Education: The Reception of Classical Myth Worldwide in Formal Education, 1900–2020”, edited by Lisa Maurice, in the series “Our Mythical Childhood”, edited by Katarzyna Marciniak Gold Open Access of the whole volume: https://wuw.pl/data/include/cms//Our_Mythical_Maurice_Lisa_red_2021.pdf?v=1625046099219
2017, Press for Conversion! Fictive Canada: Indigenous Slaves and the Captivating Narratives of a Mythic Nation
1995, Études d'histoire religieuse
2009, International Journal of The Classical Tradition
2021, Our Mythical Education: The Reception of Classical Myth Worldwide in Formal Education, 1900–2020 (ed. Lisa Maurice)
Our survey of classical mythology courses in U.S. post-secondary education traces the presence and use of classical myths in college-level curricula — their scope, functions, and outcomes. Following Kitchell’s (2005) call for more data on mythology courses at U.S. colleges and universities, we collected syllabi for traditional survey courses, special-focus courses, and global mythology courses and assembled them into a database to track overall content and format. Our findings are discussed here, along with some current and emerging trends in twenty-first century mythology classrooms.
2000, Laval théologique et philosophique:
From St Augustine and St Denys to Olier and Bérulle's Spiritual Revolution: Patristic and Seventeenth-Century Foundations of the Relations between Church and State in Québec By way of statutes on the façade of L’Hôtel du Parlement de Québec (especially Marie de l'Incarnation, Jean-Jacques Olier, and François de Laval), we explore the Augustinian and Pseudo-Dionysian foundations of the spirituality of New France. By way of records of the life there, and the textbooks used in them, we investigate the kinds of Augustinianism taught and inculcated at the Séminaire de Québec and the Grand Séminaire de Montréal; particularly, we observe the passage from Gallican to Ultramontane ecclesiology. Olier’s surprising presence on the façade leads us to the Sulpicians and the political theology of the Cardinal de Bérulle. The Copernican revolution effected by this Dionysian hierarch brings a new interpretation of the sacrifice of Christ and the centrality of the priest. The institutional and ascetical implications of this new orientation in Christianity were worked out in New France far more completely than in the Hexagon. We conclude with a consideration of the character and role of the Catholic Church formed in this way in Post Conquest Québec and the consequences this had for the definitions of provincial and federal powers in the Canadian constitution. The Québec Church showed not only the enormous success modern clericalist and centralised Catholicism, with the seminary as its instrument, could achieve but also its limits.
The former Portuguese colony of East Timor was occupied by the Indonesian armed forces from 1975 to 1999. During that time, a profound religious transformation saw the majority of the population become Catholics. Suffering massive human rights violations, they called on Catholics outside the country for support. Slowly at first, but with growing effect, many Canadian Catholics began to work in support of human rights in East Timor. Their efforts played a significant role in shifting the policies of the government of Canada from one of silence and complicity to one of acting in support of human rights and self-determination.
2018, The Many Faces of Camille Saint-Saëns
An inner turmoil over the use of Christian subjects as a source of artistic inspiration informed Camille Saint-Saens’s professional appointments, compositions, critical essays, and private correspondence. His early life was shaped by religious experiences tying music and Catholicism together, while in later years he rejected the Church altogether. But despite his about-face, Saint-Saëns still occasionally composed music on religious subjects, notably his forgotten setting of Psalm 150, “Praise Ye the Lord!” This motet for double-choir, orchestra, and organ with text in English, was a souvenir of his first US tour in 1906. In the absence of a reception history or Saint-Saëns’s own remarks on this immense composition, the piece constitutes a challenge to the accepted trajectory of the composer’s religious identity. It is a testament to religious inspiration as source of aesthetic conflict chez Saint-Saëns. On the one hand, the composer thought religion distracted society from useful discourse, but on the other, he was inspired by the power of belief and positive thinking. By considering Saint-Saëns’s attitudes about religious music as an aesthetic debate, one that carried on throughout most of his life, we can gain a new appreciation for the reciprocal influence between the composer’s essays and his music. Religious discourse was tumultuous and uneasy during Saint-Saëns’s lifetime. Although he tried to remain above the fray by aligning himself with scientists and free-thinkers, he was not immune to the religious question. In this paper, I provide a careful reading of newly-published letters between Saint-Saëns and a country priest, Abbé Gabriel Renoud, as well as a stylistic analysis of “Praise ye the Lord!”. I argue that spiritual inspiration and the relationship between music and religion were topics of aesthetic debate for Saint-Saëns. Knowing the stakes of this debate can introduce us more deeply to the man and his music.
Northrup Frye (U of Toronto † 1991) “Trends in Modern Culture,” The Heritage of Western Culture (1952), 110: on “Contemporary [American] Deism” “Wisdom is the human capacity to apply knowledge, and since knowledge is progressive, wisdom must be progressive too, so that the wisdom of the past derives its validity from its relevance to the present.” George Grant (Dalhousie and McMaster † 1988) from Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (1969). Charles Taylor (McGill & Oxford, born 1931) from The Malaise of Modernity (1991). Kant († 1801), Hegel († 1831), Marx († 1883), Nietzsche († 1900), & Heidegger († 1976). James Doull (Dalhousie † 2001), “Would Hegel Today Be a Hegelian?” (1970): “In antiquity Prometheus could be subdued and taught to live under the power of Zeus. But now he has captured the citadel of Zeus and founded technology on the sovereign right of the individual. The principle of the modern age is the unity of theoretical and practical. A more dangerous principle there could not be.” Frye writes: “liberal education, the pursuit of truth for its own sake … is an act of faith, a kind of potential or tentative vision of an end in human life.” (114) B. WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS: AN ALTERNATIVE STORY In 1997, we first started lectures on Plotinus († 270) and Neoplatonism. The lectures included not only blacks like St Augustine († 430; his mother, St Monica, was a Berber), but Persians: Al-Farabi († 950) & Ibn Sina († 1037); Syrians: Iamblichus († 330) & Dionysius (6th century); Jews and Moslems writing in Arabic in Spain: Moses Maimonides († 1204), Ibn Tufayl (12th century), Ibn Rushd (12th century); the greatest Neoplatonic syncretizing philosopher, Proclus († 485), was from Asia Minor, a religious and racial melting pot. As the Odyssey begins, Poseidon is visiting the pious Aethiopians for relief from the ever quarrelling Greeks. In the 4th century, Iamblichus used the Homeric types to mutually characterize Hellenes and barbarians. The old ‘pristine’ Eastern cultures give weight and wisdom. The Hellenes are “experimental by nature and eagerly propelled in all directions, having no proper balance,” they endlessly alter “according to [their] inventiveness and illegality.” Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, VII.5. I Hellenism in Arabic and Persian, our Forgotten Heritage. II. Jewish and Christian Hellenisms in Greek and Their Successors III. Bringing in the Latins IV. The modern western civilization of secularised Protestantism George Grant from Technology and Empire: “The absence of natural theology and liturgical comforts left the lonely soul face to face with the transcendent (and therefore elusive) will of God. This had to be sought and served not through our contemplations but directly through our practice. From the solitude and uncertainty of that position came the responsibility which could find no rest. That unappeasable responsibility gave an extraordinary sense of the self as radical freedom so paradoxically experienced within the predestinarian theological context. The external world was unimportant and indeterminate stuff (even when it was our own bodies) as compared with the soul’s ambiguous encounter with the transcendent.” Dr Eli Diamond on “Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age” (2007) in 2010: The ‘buffered self’, “is defined by its sense of self-completeness, invulnerability, being author of our own laws and master of the meaning of things. On the side of the self, through a gradual discipline, there emerges a rationality disengaged from powerful feeling and bodily processes, a narrowing of our sphere of intimacy and the emergence of an ideal of polite and civilized behaviour. On the side of the world, there is disenchantment of the world, a mechanized view of the universe, a view of time as homogeneous, and a leaving behind of a Platonic world of hierarchical complementarity. The result of this buffered self is the modern sense of power, an ability to self-govern, a feeling of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.” C. HOPE WITHIN AND WITHOUT I. Prince as the “Dionysian Christian”: an Itinerarium corporis in deum In “Prince as a Dionysian Christian” Dr Diamond says: “Dionysus is the God of the transgression of boundaries. And you see in Prince, embodied in his lyrics and his music and his person, the transgression of every single boundary imaginable. Between the sacred and the secular, and the body and the spirit, man, woman, racial divides and especially every single musical genre. … Prince, from the beginning, is intensely spiritual. But there’s a sense with him that you’re blocked from God if you’re living in the political, if you’re living in the social according to conventions, according to all these repressive binaries, and that it’s really by entering into and listening to our corporeal bodily nature that you actually have a feeling of self-transcendence through sexuality into the divine. II. The old west and Indigenous spiritualities Five aspects:1) Story and myth are essential and contain what reason cannot find or say on its own. 2) Philosophical or scientific reason is absolutely necessary and has its own laws, but it is not the highest form of knowing because inspired theologians tell the stories of spirit. Thus, reason and religion are different, but mutually necessary. 3) Effective healing and union with divinity comes through practices that cooperate with the natural rhythms, sacred places and times of the cosmic order, implanted by the Creator. Theory is not enough. The one who discerns and can invoke these realities is demanded, be she, or he, called priest, theurge or medicine man. 4) The cosmic mediating and animating spirits are manifold: saints, heroes, and daimonic beings. 5) Finally, the modern Disenchantment of the material cosmos is blindness. The cosmos is, as Thales, the first philosopher, said, “full of gods”. It is the living appearance of divinity, theophany, not dead matter. III. Jean Trouillard: Authentic Neoplatonism in a French Seminary Augustine, Confessions: “The three aspects I mean are being, knowing, willing. … Knowing and willing I am. I know that I am and I will. I will to be and to know. In these three … contemplate how inseparable in life they are: one life, one mind, and one essence, yet ultimately there is distinction, for they are inseparable, yet distinct. The fact is certain to anyone by introspection.” Jean Trouillard (Sulpicien † 1984) judged: “The danger is … to reduplicate the distinctions inherent in created spirit in order to found them in the Absolute. One of the weaknesses of the Augustinian tradition is … not to have understood that the requirements of criticism and the necessities of religious life converge in order to liberate Transcendence from all that would draw it back within what we can know. Without this transcendence we perpetually risk the quiproquo [exchange], as it results in the Hegelian dialectic where no one is able to say if this is of God, or this is of man, and which plays upon this ambiguity.” Stanislas Breton (Passionist † 2005), De Rome à Paris. Itinéraire philosophique (1992), 154: “What they inaugurated under the appearance of a return to the past was well and truly a new manner of seeing the world and of intervening in it, of practicing philosophy, of comprehending the givenness of religion, both in its Christian form and in its mystical excess; since, and I hasten to add, they reconnected the old West to its Far Eastern beyond.” IV. Eriugena’s Neoplatonism: A cultural miracle Philosophy turned from seeking rest and security above change and fate to the most radical creativity and humanism. What is before thought and being, the Nothing by Excess, Uncreated Creating, founds reality by creating itself in the human as its workshop. All things were created in the human. This optimistic unity, of physics, psychology, and theology, & of East and West, became the underlying assumption of every future western total system. A freedom within Neoplatonic western civilization opens it to the spirituality of the indigenous in this land where we can only live if both live in harmony. The Middle Ages seemed to be an end of civilization, in fact, there contemplation built a new one. Silence is the place where hope opens.
Tthe sources on immigration and the American Catholic dioceses found in the archives of the Holy See originate from two different processes: responses to a routine call for diocesan reports or for “lettere di stato”; or reactions to a local crisis (but, in more than one way, all the documentation about immigrants in these files is a reaction to a major crisis). Therefore, these documents privilege, on one hand, a diocesan perspective (the reports), or a personal one (the “lettere di stato”). While they present concrete cases (as in files on immigration), it is quite impossible to find out anything about the daily life of parishes and ecclesiastical institutions.
2012, Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800, edited by Peter N. Miller and François Louis
Studies in Philosophical Theology (Leuven/Paris/Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2006) ISBN-10 90-429-1766-0 & ISBN-13 9789042917668.
In the 20th century France replaced Germany as the first home of creative contemporary scholarship, philosophy and spirituality. My essay originated when I was working on what would become my God in Himself, a study of Aquinas' doctrine of God. I desired to understand the reasons for a reversal I was discovering, one which enabled my particular treatment of St Thomas. It had become apparent to me that the " Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy " had largely given way within the French Catholic Church to more Platonic forms of philosophy, theology, and spirituality and that Aquinas had now been relocated within these.
Contemporary Paganism, including Wicca, is a new religious movement that has taken root in the worldwide Anglophone diaspora, including Canada. Due to the fact that the majority of the population within Quebec is Francophone, several researchers of Paganism have cast doubts as to whether the Pagan movement could ever take root in the province. This research is an ethnographic study of Paganism in Montreal, Quebec’s largest city and sole metropolis, using participant-observation, survey questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews in both English and French. This research aims to determine whether there are any significant differences between Anglophone and Francophone Pagans in Montreal, the degree to which Quebec culture has influenced the development of the religion within the province, and how the unique and distinct forms of Paganism in Quebec challenge the hegemony of the American model of Paganism. This research also explores the ways the development of a Pagan identity can be likened to the process of ethnogenesis.
2019
There is a silence of approximately nine to eight hundred years between the last initiated Druids of late Antiquity and the resurgent modern neo-Druids of Freemasonry and of the Welsh bardic schools. As remarked the French experts of Celtic studies, Guyonvarc’h and Le Roux, a fact rarely aforementioned in any study is the immutable character of the Celtic tradition.1 The Celts of the better known medieval manuscript period passed down less of a religious experience than that of mythological plots. This because the Christian proselytizers never tolerated the presence of the pagan philosophical schools in its proximity. No matter how intensive its conversion effort, this imperial religion could only be but an alien offshoot grafted on a larger and more rustic Indo-European cultural trunk. In other words, the persistent mythological mindset of the past permeated the newly imposed dogmatic religion. This explains why medieval literature is rather more mythic and legendary than ideological and religious.
2016, Holy See’s Archives as Sources for American history ed. by Kathleen Cummings and Matteo Sanfilippo
2015
This document provides teachers with an opportunity to learn about historical antisemitism in order to understand its various manifestations in Canada during the Holocaust (1933-1945). A particular emphasis is placed on the Quebec context – including a brief history of the Quebec Jewish community - while examining how antisemitism influenced Canadian governmental policy, media, public discourse, and action regarding the situation of Jews in Europe and in Canada.
2010
Developed across Europe in the middle and late nineteenth century, and characterized by the use of medieval architectural forms, Gothic Revival, also known as Neo-Gothic, was an architectural reaction to the Classic Revival that had taken hold over the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Britain promptly took the lead in the spread of this style, making it “perhaps one of the most purely English movements in the plastic arts.” It was used almost exclusively for ecclesiastical purposes since it was often the style chosen for rural churches in England. In the 1850s, the Early Gothic Revival style developed into the High Victorian Gothic Revival. This style aimed to be monumental and more authentic by examining in more depth medieval architectural features. In this paper I intend to examine the implications of the British Empire’s ostensible dominance over its colonized nations, manifested through institutional buildings such as churches, built in a new architectural style considered proper to the English Western culture: the Gothic Revival. How is a Gothic Revival church building an index of its cultural identity and history in a British imperial colonial context? To answer this question, three Gothic Revival churches situated in former British colonies will be studied and discussed in order to demonstrate how their particular architecture reflected both English and colonial cultures as well as their implications in a cross-cultural colonial context. The following churches will be examined: Christ Church (1844-1857), an Anglican church in Shimla, India; St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church (1868- 1900) in Sydney, Australia; and Notre-Dame-de-Montréal (1824-1829), the Roman Catholic Basilica of Montreal, Canada.
2020, Continental Philosophy and Catholicism in French Canada
Published in G. Floyd and S. Rumpza (ed.), The Catholic Reception of Continental Philosophy in North America, University of Toronto Press, 2020, p. 127-145.
2017
2013, Theory and Society
Based on archival and ethnographic data, this article analyzes the iconicmaking, iconoclastic unmaking, and iconographic remaking of national identifications. The window into these processes is the career of Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of French Canadians and national icon from the mid-nineteenth century until 1969, when his statue was destroyed by protesters during the annual parade in his honor in Montréal. Relying on literatures on visuality and materiality, I analyze how the saint and his attending symbols were deployed in processions, parades, and protests. From this analysis, I develop the sociological concept of aesthetic revolt, a process whereby social actors rework iconic symbols, redefining national identity in the process. The article offers a theoretical articulation and an empirical demonstration of how the context, content, and the form of specific cultural objects and symbols—national icons—are intertwined in public performance to produce eventful change, and shows why and how the internal material logic and the social life of these icons shape the articulation of new national identities.
2010, Silpakorn University
The aims of this study are to review (1) historical and spiritual backgrounds and their cultural heritage significance of French Catholic mission in Thailand, contributed by Catholic churches and their Catholic communities between the late of Ayutthaya period and the early of Bangkok period (1662 - 1862 A.D.), for development as cultural tourism destinations by linking them into pilgrimage routes, (2) general relevance of the cultural route concept into the pilgrimage routes to ensure cross-cultural significance to be interpreted and presented for cultural heritage conservation and cultural tourism development of the routes, accompanied by guidelines for sustainable management respecting their authenticity and integrity, and (3) establishment of standard guidelines of cultural tourism for a cultural route in Thailand. The research provides a critical review of the literature in the following areas: concepts related to the intersection of tourism and religion, religion and spirituality are still among the most common motivations for travel, religious tourism and pilgrimage, sacred motivations for pilgrimage, development of tourism destination for pilgrimage route, challenges for pilgrimage route in cultural tourism, postmodernism, challenges of postmodernism in cultural tourism development, cultural route concept, pilgrimage route as a form of cultural route, and cultural route and cultural heritage management approach. The researcher used qualitative study through documentary research and interview for this review. Saint Joseph Church in Ayutthaya; Wat San Paulo in Lopburi; Immaculate Conception Church, Saint Francis Xavier Church, Santa Cruz Church, Holy Rosary Church, and Assumption Cathedral in Bangkok; Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Chanthaburi; and their surrounding Catholic communities and associations are the main study boundaries. Historically, the first group of French missionaries began their hazardous journeys from Marseilles in France to Siam for their Catholic mission in the reign of King Narai; however, they could not make success on the mission against Thai people but created some cultural gaps between each other until the reign of King Rama IV. The study found that success and failure of the French Catholic mission in Thailand has established many sacred areas in forms of the pilgrimage routes accompanied by a mosaic of different ethnic groups who have, overtime, learned to co-exist spiritually. These religious spaces provide cultural and cross-cultural significance and represent a Catholic church as main part of the social, tradition, and culture with significant inter-relationship with Thai society in the national history. Finally, the routes have high potentials to be developed as tourist destinations for cultural tourism. The application of the cultural heritage management on the pilgrimage routes was presented with appropriate guidelines for community involvement in terms of cultural heritage conservation and cultural tourism development and management. Standard guidelines of cultural tourism for a cultural route in Thailand were proposed. Transfers of know-how and best practices on the cultural route concept in wider scales were recommended, particularly between Thailand and other foreign territories, permitting cultural linkages of people, countries, regions, and continents in the macro-structure of heritage on different levels.
Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914
“W. E. B. DuBois”; “Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.” In Derek Blakeley; John Powell; and Tessa Powell, eds., Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914 (New York: Greenwood, 2000). Pp. 138-140, 440-441. Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2001.
At the core of culture is the idea that it is intended to make life easier for people by " teaching " them how to adapt to their surroundings. As Triandis notes, culture " functions to improve the adaptation of members of the culture to a particular ecology, and it includes the knowledge that people need to have in order to function effectively in their social environment. " A more detailed explanation as to the functions of culture is offered by Sowell: Cultures exist to serve the vital, practical requirements of human life—to structure a society so as to perpetuate the species, to pass on the hard-learned knowledge and experience of generations past and centuries past to the young and inexperienced in order to spare the next generation the costly and dangerous process of learning everything all over again from scratch through trial and error—including fatal errors. The deep structure of culture The people of different civilizations have different views on the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy. (Samuel Huntington) The three institutions of family, state and religion carry the messages that matter most to people. Our parents, community, and religion are given the task of teaching us what is important and what we should strive for. Whether we seek material possessions to attain happiness or choose instead to seek spiritual fulfillment, the three deep structure institutions help us make major decisions and choices regarding how to live our life. (Samovar, Porter, McDaniel). The content generated by these institutions, and the institutions themselves, arouse deep and emotional feelings. – both positive and negative ones. The Dominant Culture When we refer to a group of people as a culture, we are applying the term to the dominant culture found in most societies. In discussions of the United States, many terms have been employed to represent this group. In the past, terms such as umbrella culture, mainstream culture, U.S. Americans, or European Americans have been used. We prefer the term dominant culture because it clearly indicates that the group we are talking about is the one in power. This is the group that usually has the greatest amount of control over how the culture carries out its business. This group possesses the power that allows it to speak for the entire culture while setting the tone and agenda that others will usually follow. The power is not necessarily found in numbers, but in control. The people in power are those who historically
1980, Vincentian Heritage Journal