Absolutely Null And Utterly Void

This book presents, for the first time, all the available information on the maneuvers which preceded the condemnation by the bull Apostolicae Curae. For Roman Catholics it is disturbing reading. -- Dust jacket

"Covers the key people, movements, institutions, practices, and doctrines of Roman Catholicism from its earliest origins."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

The publication of Pope Leo XI11's apostolic letter declaring Anglican priestly orders to be 'absolutely null and utterly void' sent shock waves throughout the Anglican church which continue to reverberate a century later. Today, as Anglicans and Roman Catholics renew their search for greater mutual understanding, all the documents in the debate which led to the issue of ,Apostolicae Curae are brought together in English translation for the first time. This unique and important book is published with two aims in mind. Firstly, to set out the evidence so that those concerned with the same questions today may better understand the limited context of the verdict reached in 1896 and secondly, in the hope of dispelling the frustration and resentment still provoked, to demonstrate the thoroughness, fairness and wide spectrum of opinion whih characterized the original debate.

Mandell Creighton was a historian and the first editor of the English Historical Review. His wife Louise, was an advocate of the Victorian women's movement. This text includes their writings and letters allowing us a glimpse into Victorian life.

This is a dictionary of the language of the law as used in America today. Most of this dictionary is written in ordinary English. Most of the words that lawyers use in writing and talking about the law are the ordinary words that fill the dictionaries of the English language. They have a place in this dictionary when the law gives them a specialized sense; or to emphasize that there is none. Too often an apparent change in sense results not from the law but from bad grammar or redundancy; or from an unsorted host of possible meanings jumbled together and left to the vagaries of interpretation. At the other extreme, individual cases, each walled in by its own distinctive facts and law, may give an immaculately narrowed sense, but neither generalized definition nor standards for the gradation of sense that is the essence of clear usage. A small number of citations to cases of special relevance to word usage are included in this dictionary. The citation count does not measure the indebtedness of this dictionary to old and current sources of American legal usage. The definitions and examples of usage in this dictionary have roots in the law reports of thousands of litigated cases; in law writings formal and informal, profound and trivial; in the talk of lawyers and judges in court and out--the formal and the informal--colloquial and slangy, talk that is precise and talk that is mush; in a long line of dictionaries past and present--law dictionaries, and dictionaries of English and its usage. Drawing from all those sources, the definitions and examples are shaped by more than a half-century of personal immersion in the oral and written language of the law, as law student, practicing lawyer, professor, and writer. And something has been added. This dictionary is designed to sort out the words used in the law, and to identify the different senses in which each is used, and can be used. With cross-reference, it tells how words are related to each other and separated for each other, so that discrimination and choice of usage are possible. Words are grouped together as identical, similar, disparate, departing from or paralleling the usages of ordinary English. Where usage is not uniform, the dictionary comments on what is better, best, and worst. The dictionary concentrates on general legal usage for a profession practicing in the American common law tradition . . . The dictionary does not detail the multitude of other jurisdictional variations, but calls attention to the fact of variation. Although the distinction is often difficult to make, this is a word dictionary, not a short legal encyclopedia. Technicalities in general legal usage are included, but not the intricacies of learning in specialized fields of the law. There is no standard legal pronunciation. Pronunciation is included here when it is unusual, exotic, controversial, or needed to prevent confusion. Pronunciation is rendered in simplified phonetics. American law dictionaries go back to 1839. This one is new and different. --David Mellinkoff, from the Preface

The divided church is withering on the vine. Crises of its own making--ranging from clergy sexual abuse and its cover-up to the church's complicity in colonialism, empire, and patriarchy--coupled with societal shifts beyond the church's control, have eroded its credibility. A much-deserved decline is well underway. And yet, churches remain content to continue with business as usual. The causes of this state of crisis are manifold and complex, and no one solution could resolve them all. But so long as the church remains in a state of division, no solutions will be forthcoming. Division is no mere regrettable shortcoming or inconvenience; it is a contradiction of the church's foundation. After all, Jesus prayed that his followers would be one so the world could believe he was sent by God. Faced with a crisis of credibility, the church finds no way forward because a divided church renders the gospel message not credible. Ruptured Bodies is a systematic theological account of the divided church. It argues that no adequate ecclesiology can ignore division, because in doing so, it will fail to describe the church that actually is. Such an understanding must integrate the reality of division, while also refusing to blunt its sharp edge--neither dismissing, excusing, nor minimizing it. What must the church be, given the fact of its division? Schlesinger presents a systematic ecclesiology of the divided church despite that idea's seeming impossibilty, because such an ecclesiology is precisely what we need.

The sensational story of the last two centuries of the papacy, its most influential pontiffs, troubling doctrines, and rise in global authority In 1799, the papacy was at rock bottom: The Papal States had been swept away and Rome seized by the revolutionary French armies. With cardinals scattered across Europe and the next papal election uncertain, even if Catholicism survived, it seemed the papacy was finished. In this gripping narrative of religious and political history, Paul Collins tells the improbable success story of the last 220 years of the papacy, from the unexalted death of Pope Pius VI in 1799 to the celebrity of Pope Francis today. In a strange contradiction, as the papacy has lost its physical power--its armies and states--and remained stubbornly opposed to the currents of social and scientific consensus, it has only increased its influence and political authority in the world.