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[German Version] (Jun 25, 1881, Rome – Apr 20, 1946, Rome), Italian theologian, was ordained as a priest in 1903 and subsequently taught church history at the Roman Seminary. He was compelled to abandon his teaching by order of Pope Pius X after the publication of his eassay on M. Blondel ( La filosofia dell'azione, 1905). Buonaiuti was repeatedly harshly sanctioned as a “modernist” without being given the opportunity to defend himself before his ecclesial judges (1926 “excommunicatio maior”). In 1915, he was appointed by the state University of Rome as professor for the history of ¶ Christ…

[German Version] (born Thérèse Martin; religious name Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus et de la Sainte-Face; Jan 2, 1873, Alençon – Sep 30, 1897, Lisieux). In 1888 Thérèse entered the cloistered Carmelite community at Lisieux; an extremely sensitive person since the death of her mother in 1877, she initially experienced very severe treatment and suffered from the “dryness” of her prayer life. The mental breakdown of her father (who died in 1894) was also a severe burden. In 1896 she contracted tuberculosis, of which she died the next year. In her autobiographical L’histoire d’une âme (ET: Story…

[German Version] (May 27, 1651, Castle Peynière near Aurillac – May 4, 1729, Paris), Dr.theol., Sorbonne (1676); archbishop of Paris (1681); cardinal (1700). Thanks to royal favor, Noailles’s ecclesiastical career rose rapidly (1679, bishop of Cahors; 1681, of Chalons-sur-Marne), yet he proved remarkably ambivalent in the theological controversies of his time (Quietism, Jansenism). He agreed to the destruction of the (former) Jansenist center of Port-Royal Abbey (1711), but opposed the condemnatio…

[German Version] (Dec 26, 1751, Tasswitz [Tasovice], Moravia – Mar 15, 1820, Vienna). Apprenticed as a baker, he studied theology as a “late vocation” in Vienna, joining the Redemptorists in 1784. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1785. In 1788 he became vicar general of his order for northern Europe. From 1808 he served as a pastor in Vienna, with a strong commitment to social and charitable work; not least because of his rustic manner, he was an engaging preacher. His charismatic personality made him the focus of a Romantic circle (including F. Schlegel, Z. ¶ Werner, A. Günther, and Jo…

[German Version] When the Reformation put an end to the Catholic episcopal sees in the northern lands of the Old Empire, the remaining Catholic population (and immigrant Catholic craftsmen, merchants, artists, and soldiers) came initially under the jurisdiction of the Cologne nuncio, then of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, established in 1622, and it pastoral representatives “on the ground,” the nuncios in Cologne, Brussels, and Warsaw. In 1667 the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, wh…

[German Version] (Oct 19, 1625, Chartres – Nov 16, 1695, Paris), Jansenist theologian. Nicole taught at the abbey of Port-Royal (1646), in Flanders and France (1679), and in Paris (from 1683). A close friend of Antoine Arnauld, Nicole wrote several, sometimes pseudonymous, writings defending the orthodoxy of Jansenism, and with regard to the condemnation of the teachings of C. Jansen by Innocent X (1653) he distinguished the quaestio iuris from the quaestio facti ( Innocentii papae brevissima quinque propositionum in varios sensus distinctio, 1653). Nicole was involved in the…

[German Version] (Apr 1, 1800, Strasbourg – Nov 8, 1871, Maria Laach), a catechist, Jesuit (1817), and priest (1828), worked 1830–1841 as professor of rhetoric in Brig and Fribourg, Switzerland, and 1845–1847 as professor of pastoral theology in Lucerne. In his apologetic Katholisches Katechismus oder Lehrbegriff, nebst einem kurzen Abriß der Religionsgeschichte von Anbeginn der Welt bis auf unsere Zeit (1847, anonymous; ET: A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion, 1924), he attempted to grasp doctrinal content in rational terms.…

[German Version] I. City and Archbishopric – II. University I. City and Archbishopric Munich is the capital of Bavaria (in 1999, approx. 1.38 million inhabitants, 45.5% Catholic, 16.4% Protestant), with two universities (see II below), seat of the archbishop of Munich and Freising (cardinal) and of the Protestant regional bishop of Bavaria. The first documented reference to Munich appeared in 1158, in connection with the dispute between Bishop Otto of Freising and Duke Henry the Lion about market, bridge t…

[German Version] I. General Church History – II. Europe – III. Latin America I. General Church History Laicism (from Gk λαος/ laós, “people”; Laity) originated in 19th-century France ( laïcisme) as an aggressively anticlerical concept; originally it proposed absolute separation of the state, secular culture, and the church (esp. the Catholic Church; Church and state), opposing all public influence on the part of the church. Its intellectual roots were in the Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution – although it r…

[German Version] I. Definition The expression papal primacy denotes the juridical supremacy in the universal church of the pope as bishop of Rome, i.e. his supreme and immediate administrative authority as head of the College of Bishops, pastor of the universal church, and vicar of Christ on earth ( CIC/1983, c. 331: “The Bishop of the Church of Rome . . . is the head of the College of Bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the Pastor of the universal Church here on earth; consequently, by virtue of his office, he has supreme, full, immediate, and…

[German Version] I. Early Church – II. Middle Ages – III. Reformation – IV. Modern Period – V. Present – VI. Practical Theology I. Early Church The church polity projected and in part realized in early Christianity is one of the most significant institutional inventions of Late Antiquity. Since it has survived into the present, with many modifications and variations, it also represents an element of continuity between the ancient world and the modern world. Church polity as used here means all the institutions affecting the external organization of early Ch…