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American Catholic women rarely surface as protagonists in histories of the United States. Offering a new perspective, Kathleen Sprows Cummings places Catholic women at the forefront of two defining developments of the Progressive Era: the emergence of the \"New Woman\" and Catholics' struggle to define their place in American culture. Cummings highlights four women: Chicago-based journalist Margaret Buchanan Sullivan; Sister Julia McGroarty, SND, founder of Trinity College in Washington, D.C., one of the first Catholic women's colleges; Philadelphia educator Sister Assisium McEvoy, SSJ; and Katherine Eleanor Conway, a Boston editor, public figure, and antisuffragist. Cummings uses each woman's story to explore how debates over Catholic identity were intertwined with the renegotiation of American gender roles.

The Southern Cone has been at the forefront of the fight for abortion rights in Latin America. Due to the legacies of Hispanic legal traditions and the overwhelming political influence of the Catholic Church, the region historically has been known for its restrictive policies on abortion and reproductive rights more broadly.1 However, in the past 15 years, Southern Cone countries began to challenge those restrictions and embarked on a feminist revolution that led to what is now widely known as the “Green Wave” because of the color embraced by abortion-rights activists. Uruguay began this trend of legalizing abortion on demand in 2012, followed by Argentina in 2020. Chile experienced a moderate reform in 2017 when it moved from a total ban to a system of exceptions. Feminists have been trying ever since to pass abortion on demand through both legislative and constitutional reforms, which have not yet yielded the expected results.

The starting point for many analyses of European state development is the historical fragmentation of territorial authority. The dominant bellicist explanation for state formation argues that this fragmentation was an unintended consequence of imperial collapse, and that warfare in the early modern era overcame fragmentation by winnowing out small polities and consolidating strong states. Using new data on papal conflict and religious institutions, I show instead that political fragmentation was the outcome of deliberate choices, that it is closely associated with papal conflict, and that political fragmentation persisted for longer than the bellicist explanations would predict. The medieval Catholic Church deliberately and effectively splintered political power in Europe by forming temporal alliances, funding proxy wars, launching crusades, and advancing ideology to ensure its autonomy and power. The roots of European state formation are thus more religious, older, and intentional than often assumed.

Religiosity and spirituality are influential experiences that buffer adverse effects of stressors. Spirituality typically declines during adolescence, although not universally. Using Latent Class Growth Analysis, we examined changes in spiritual connectedness among 188 early (52% female; M age = 10.77, SD = 0.65 years) and 167 middle (56% female; M age = 13.68, SD = 0.82 years) predominantly African American adolescents participating in a 4-year longitudinal study. Three distinct profiles of spiritual connectedness emerged: low and steady, moderate with declines over the study period, and high and steady. Profile distributions varied across developmental level: there were more early adolescents in the high and steady profile and more middle adolescents in the decliner profile. Youth in the high and steady profile evidenced more goal-directedness and life satisfaction and more effective emotion management and coping strategies than youth in other profiles. Contributions to the positive development literature are discussed.

The Second Vatican Council and its hermeneutical dynamics of a progressively secularized modern world had a profound impact on the lives of millions. Drawing upon Juri Lotman's theory of cultural semiotics, this article aims first to examine Vatican II as an attempt to incorporate frontier discourses into the centrality of the Catholic Church semiosphere, i.e., the Vatican, mainly regarding moral theology and social doctrine. Within this context, I will analyze the impact of the Council on Graham Greene's Catholic imagination. Through the study of Greene's correspondence to editors of different publications concerning such controversial topics as birth control, the right to die, and the role of the Church in the political upheavals in Central and Latin America, I will argue that Greene identified himself with Vatican II's desire to articulate Catholicism in new ways. Additionally, the analysis of his correspondence to the press will offer further insights into how Greene weaves these topics into his literary work. In this sense, Greene embodies the theological issues of the Council in his own religious and literary imagination and illustrates its reception by Roman Catholics in the 1970s and 1980s.

Asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are significant health problems that have disparate effects on many Americans. Misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis are common and lead to ineffective treatment and management. This study assessed the feasibility of applying a two-step case-finding technique to identify both COPD and adult asthma cases in urban African American churches. We established a community-based partnership, administered a cross-sectional survey in step one of the case-finding technique and performed spirometry testing in step two. A total of 219 surveys were completed. Provider-diagnosed asthma and COPD were reported in 26% (50/193) and 9.6% (18/187) of the sample. Probable asthma (13.9%), probable COPD (23.1%), and COPD high-risk groups (31.9%) were reported. It is feasible to establish active case-finding within the African American church community using a two-step approach to successfully identify adult asthma and COPD probable cases for early detection and treatment to reduce disparate respiratory health outcomes.

There has been growing attention to spirituality, religiosity, and the Black Church in relation to African Americans’ mental health. As such, scholars are increasingly recognizing the influence Black churches have in the lives of African Americans and call for collaborative partnerships between mental health professionals and predominantly Black churches. Although research is also surfacing with respect to African American children and adolescents’ religiosity, spirituality, and connection to the Black Church, limited scholarship outlining implications for school mental health services have emerged. With an emphasis on culturally responsive services, the purpose of this article is to discuss how school mental health providers could collaborate with predominantly Black churches to support African American students’ social, emotional, and behavioral well-being.

There is limited empirical literature on the study of LGBTQ books, and even less on the perspective of early childhood center administrators on these books. Hence, a mixed methods study surveying the administrators of high-quality early childhood centers across the state of North Carolina was implemented. Sixty-five participants completed the survey, and both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and analyzed. The findings indicated that the majority (64%) of the administrators had read at least one book from the listed LGBTQ books, while the rest had never read a single book from the listing. Their familiarity with the book content was based on reading the book only once, and they only “somewhat” recalled the content of the book. These findings indicate a lack of regular use of LGBTQ books in the centers. The administrators made both negative and positive comments on the survey administered and the books in general. The results indicate a need for education and training to focus on the connection of LGBTQ topics and how they are developmentally appropriate, as well as the connection to the NAEYC Code of Ethics.