Peter Mcdonough – författare

The Jesuits have been the carriers of a culture borne along by a fruitful & often frustrating tension between their dual commitment to ancient virtues & to the pursuit of the free play of ideas. This book explains developments among the Jesuits and sets them in the larger context of the sea-changes that shook the world and the Catholic Church in the world during the mid-20th century.

The sexual abuse scandals that exploded in 2002 shook a church already under stress in the U.S. Since the 1960s the number of priests and nuns has fallen, as has attendance at religious services. While more lay people have assumed leadership positions in the church's educational and health care operations, many parishes and parochial schools have been consolidated or closed. Through all this, conservatives have increasingly dominated the Catholic hierarchy in the United States. Why? Popular reaction against the cultural upheavals of the sixties played into the church's endorsement of traditional sexual values, and disenchantment with welfare programs helped turn Catholics once sympathetic to New Deal progressivism toward less liberal policies. Retrenchment has also prevailed in the internal politics of the church, despite growing popular support for optional celibacy among priests, the ordination of women, and similar changes. Though many have left the church, immigration has helped replenish the ranks of the faithful with predominantly traditional adherents. The demographic shift has in turn reinforced a culture of deference that impedes collective initiatives for reform. At the heart of Catholicism's resistance to change is the equation of hierarchical authority with inherited gender roles, especially the subordination of women. Age-old standards of sexual behavior are upheld as essential to cultural continuity and social order in and outside the church. The link between doctrinal tradition and institutional stratification makes reform of the church extraordinarily difficult. The Catholic Labyrinth traces the variably confrontational and incremental strategies of advocacy groups as they struggle to reconcile religious mores with the onslaughts of modernity.

The population of Brazil increased tenfold, from 10 to over 100 million, between 1880 and 1980, nearly half of this increase occurring since the end of World War II. The Politics of Population in Brazil examines the attitudes toward population planning of Brazilian government officials and other elites-bishops, politicians, labor leaders, and business owners-in comparison with mass public opinion. The authors' findings that elites seriously underestimate the desire for family planning services, while the public views birth control as a basic issue, represent an important contribution on a timely issue. A major reason for this disparity is that the elites tend to define the issue as a matter of national power and collective growth, and the public sees it as a bread-and-butter question affecting the daily lives of families. McDonough and DeSouza document not only the real gulf between elite and mass opinion but also the propensity of the elites to exaggerate this gap through their stereotyping of public opinion as conservative and disinterested in family planning. Despite these differences, the authors demonstrate that population planning is less conflict ridden than many other controversies in Brazilian politics and probably more amenable to piecemeal bargaining than some earlier studies suggest. In part, this is because attitudes on the issue are not closely identified with opinions regarding left-versus-right disputes. In addition, for the public in general, religious sentiment affects attitudes toward family planning only indirectly. This separation, which reflects the historical lack of penetration of Brazilian society on the part of the church, further attenuates the issue's potential for galvanizing deep-seated antagonisms. As the authors note, this situation stands in contrast to the fierce debates that moral issues have generated in Spain and Ireland. The study is noteworthy not only for its original approach-the incorporation of mass and elite data and the departure from the standard concerns with fertility determinants in population-but also for its sophisticated methodology and lucid presentation.

Founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus remains the largest and most controversial religious order of men in Catholicism. Since the 1960s, however, Jesuits in the United States have lost more than half of their members, and they have experienced a massive upheaval in what they believe and how they work and live. In this groundbreaking book, Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi draw on interviews and statements gathered from more than four hundred Jesuits and former Jesuits to provide an intimate look at turmoil among Catholicism's legendary best-and-brightest. Priests and former priests speak candidly about their reasons for joining (and leaving) the Jesuits, about their sexual development and orientation, about their spiritual crises and their engagement with other religious traditions. They discuss issues ranging from celibacy to the ordination of women, homosexuality, the rationale of the priesthood, the challenges of community life, and the divinity of Jesus. "Passionate Uncertainty" traces the transformation of the Society of Jesus from a fairly unified organization into a smaller, looser community with disparate goals and an elusive corporate identity.From its role as a traditional subculture during the days of immigrant Catholicism, the order has changed into an amalgam of countercultures shaped around social mission, sexual identity, and an eclectic spirituality. The story of the Jesuits reflects the crisis of clerical authority and the deep ambivalence surrounding American Catholicism's encounter with modernity.

Drawing on personal interviews with over 250 Brazilian leaders in industry, banking, politics, labor, the civil service, and the church, Peter McDonough challenges the conventional notion of elites in authoritarian regimes as unideological pragmatists. He demonstrates that the Brazilian Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Drawing on personal interviews with over 250 Brazilian leaders in industry, banking, politics, labor, the civil service, and the church, Peter McDonough challenges the conventional notion of elites in authoritarian regimes as unideological pragmatists. He demonstrates that the Brazilian Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.