The ordinary episcopal visitation of parishes, treated in canons 396-398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, is studied here from its origins to the present. The dissertation’s first chapter traces the historical development of this ancient canonical institute, particularly with a view to showing its usefulness for Church reform. The second examines the canons of the 1917 and 1983 codes and provides a detailed commentary on the latter. A final chapter studies the visitation of parishes in Canada. Three methods are used, corresponding to the three chapters. In the first chapter, a primarily historical review draws on Scripture, the Fathers, papal legislation, the decrees of provincial and ecumenical councils (particularly the Council of Trent), and other sources. The second chapter takes an exegetical approach, interpreting the 1983 canons on the visitation in light of the former law, the Second Vatican Council, and contemporary papal and curial documents. The visitation is related to the diocesan bishop’s power of governance. The third chapter presents the results of the author’s survey of Canadian bishops, carried out according to the methods of social science research. Without arguing that the visitation is a panacea for all the Church’s ills, the author concludes that it is a highly effective way for bishops to address some present difficulties and avoid future ones.

The classic historical commentary by White and Dykman on the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, long out of print, is now available in a special limited-edition reprint. Revised for the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons of the General Convention, it is an indispensable reference work for libraries and diocesan offices.

Listen to the Heartbeat of the Church resurrects the concept of episcopal visitation, an age-old and rarely used practice in Catholic parishes and dioceses. Using information gleaned from a survey of one hundred Benedictine monasteries along with a nine-month experience of facilitating a parish goal-setting process, Baroch describes how visitation can strengthen parishes and dioceses by closing the communication gap that sometimes exists between the laity and the hierarchy. Her fictional account of St. Anonymous Catholic Church, the heart of the book, shows how a struggling congregation can accomplish its goals when parishioners, the pastor, and their bishop engage in shared ministry. It can happen--one parish, one diocese at a time.

In this detailed study of the history of universal literacy in Sweden, a group of renowned scholars review and explore the possibilities for the wider circulation and broader application of central dimensions of the early literacy studies, expounding upon the work of the Swedish Lutheran pastor and pioneering social historian Egil Johansson. Working initially with parish registers, especially examination registers from northern Sweden, Johansson discovered the extraordinary usefulness of these documents to determine how literacy in Sweden occurred well before any other European nation, despite the fact that Sweden was industrialized about 100 years later than the European norm. Egil Johansson also developed imaginative data-analysis techniques that help historians around the world to better picture the complete human cast of the past. With the help of numerous contributors Johansson founded a giant database of church records and other information, which now can help the understanding of preindustrial society. Johansson's work spans over many aspects of literacy and social history and their respective relation to religion and gender.

Across Europe, the parish church has stood for centuries at the centre of local communities; it was the focal point of its religious life, the rituals performed there marked the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless the church itself artistically and architecturally stood apart from the parish community. It was often the largest and only stone-built building in a village; it was legally distinct being subject to canon law, as well as consecrated for the celebration of religious rites. The buildings associated with the "cure of souls" were sacred sites or holy places, where humanity interacted with the divine. In spite of the importance of the parish church, these buildings have generally not received the same attention from historians as non-parochial places of worship. This collection of essays redresses this balance and reflects on the parish church across a number of confessions - Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anti-Trinitarian - during the early modern period. Rather than providing a series of case studies of individual buildings, each essay looks at the evolution of parish churches in response to religious reform as well as confessional change and upheaval. They examine aspects of their design and construction; furnishings and material culture; liturgy and the use of the parish church. While these essays range widely across Europe, the volume also considers how religious provision and the parish church were translated into a global context with colonial and commercial expansion in the Americas and Asia. This interdisciplinary volume seeks to identify what was distinctive about the parish church for the congregations that gathered in them for worship and for communities across the early modern world.