![\"St.](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/05\/St.-Peters-Basilica-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>A good example, she says, is clerical celibacy.<\/p>\n
In the Middle Ages, priests were allowed to marry. Clerical celibacy, while an ideal followed by some, was not enforced universally. Priests had children and their families lived on land given to them by the bishop \u2013 land the priest could bequeath to his sons. That eventually led to a problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would happen to the church and its property if all of its priests gave away as inheritances all of the property they had received from the church?\u201d she says. \u201cHistorically, that is the evolution. This is why clerical celibacy was enforced. In the 12th<\/sup> century, when you had the consolidation of property, when Canon Law is created, that\u2019s when it becomes an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, you can argue that clerical celibacy is a spiritual issue, enforced to distinguish clergy from laity, says Rollo-Koster. It makes clergy superior to normal men.<\/p>\n Through the centuries, the church has continued to evolve, today dealing with such issues as immigration, global warming, and same-sex marriage. At the same time, the Catholic faith has spread in Africa and parts of Latin America, while seeing a decline in Ireland, says Rollo-Koster.<\/p>\n Recently, Pope Francis condoned the use of contraceptives in the fight against such diseases as AIDS and the Zika virus. \u201cUp to now, there was no question about contraception,\u201d she says. \u201cThe church said no. Now, the pope is saying that, in the time of AIDS, it\u2019s OK to use a condom. So that is an evolution that is coming from the bottom up.\u201d<\/p>\n Pope Francis has also been vocal on immigration and global warming. \u201cThe papacy understands the issues with immigration today \u2013 the movements of populations worldwide \u2013 created by the lack of natural resources, number one, lack of water. All of this is linked to climate change,\u201d says Rollo-Koster. \u201cThe papacy is almost trying to take a leadership role on this issue, saying we need to do something about it \u2013 which is actually surprising when you look at the relationship between popes and science. Quite a change from Copernicus and Galileo, they\u2019re trying to push their previous issues to the side.\u201d<\/p>\n Rollo-Koster, an author of eight books on medieval culture and the papacy, was already contracted with Cambridge University Press to write a book on the 14th<\/sup> century schism in the church when she was approached about three years ago by a Cambridge editor. \u201cThe editor said would you think about heading a collection that would be the entire history of the papacy,\u201d says Rollo-Koster, \u201cand, stupid me, I said yes.\u201d<\/p>\n Rollo-Koster has put together a team of international editors to work on the project. A scholar in medieval history, she wanted a person with expertise in the modern period, so she contacted Ventresca, who is Canadian. The rest of the team includes editors from the U.S., Denmark, and England.<\/p>\n In the last three years, they\u2019ve tackled the enormous job of framing the four volumes from the ground up, outlining each down to the table of contents. For the last year, they\u2019ve faced the hardest work \u2013 lining up the scholars with the breadth and understanding of the papacy to write the 35 articles per volume. \u201cWe really have the people in the field who know their stuff,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Each article, about 30 pages each, will give a coherent argument of a topic, taking in the historical perspective and presenting points of view that historians have failed to consider, while also looking to the future. Above all, she says, each needs to be balanced, showing the bias of previous work and covering \u201call the shades of gray.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing has of course to do with religion,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it\u2019s absolutely outside faith. We are all historians, so we look at it as historians. Our personal faith has nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Jan. 28, 2019 \u2013 Jo\u00eblle Rollo-Koster, a history professor at the 溏心vlog免费B站, is heading an international team of scholars that is creating a landmark work on the history of the papacy commissioned by Cambridge University Press. \u201cThe Cambridge History of the Papacy,\u201d expected to be released in 2022, will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-74536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}