Given as the Pusey House Recollections Lecture 2023.

The article tells the story of the remains of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family, who were killed in Ekaterinburg in 1918, discovered in 1979, found again in 1991, solemnly buried in 1998, and canonized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. Thoroughly researched in the cause of official criminal investigation and identified with genetic tests in several labs in Russia and abroad, the royal remains have not been recognized by the Church. The failure to reach a consensus on the veracity of the remains of the Romanovs occurred in parallel with the inability to decide what to do with the mummified body of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, a contemporary of Nicholas II who has been kept in a mausoleum in the Red Square since the 1920s. Though, after 1991, voices have been raised for removing his body from this symbolic center of the country, no consensus has been reached so far as to where to move it and why. Revisiting Verdery’s famous work, the present article argues that such a movement necessitates a political commitment to voicing new notions of belonging and citizenship. The liminal status of these two bodies proves that the contemporary state in Russia is a continuation of both the Soviet and imperial state programs, not a new political structure like other post-socialist countries. Based on the works by Kantorowicz and Cherniavsky, this research develops the concept of popular theopolitics and aims to examine how people’s political and religious ontologies make use of the Tsar’s image.

E. L. Mascall devoted much of his early scholarly career to developing accounts of analogy and natural theology grounded in the study both of Thomas Aquinas and in his Thomist successors. This essay examines Mascall’s account of analogy in relation to other views on analogy in his day, finding that in the 1950s, ‘image’ becomes at least as important a category for Mascall as ‘analogy’. Even while beginning from Thomist metaphysical standpoints and motivated by Thomist considerations, Mascall develops an account of thinking and speaking about God that diverges from his Thomist contemporaries, resembling more the thought of his ‘para-Thomist’ friend and colleague, Austin Farrer.

The timeless and unchanging nature of God was defended by Dr. Eric Mascall throughout his books. He argued against process theology, and in particular the works of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who was one of its foremost exponents. In his books, Mascall defended the distinction between our temporal and created nature and God’s divine and uncreated nature as found in historic theology. In a manner suited to his learning, he discussed the implications of modern physics for theology.

Former president Trump has maintained broad support despite falsely contending that he was the victim of electoral fraud, also known as the “big lie.” We consider both the antecedents of this phenomenon and its consequences. We propose that Trump supporters’ already established deep personal alignment—identity fusion—with their leader predisposed them to believe the lie. Accepting it then set the foundation for other identity-protecting beliefs and attitudes. Using a three-wave panel of Trump supporters, we found that the more fused they were before the 2020 election, the stronger their belief in the big lie grew between 2021 and 2024. Accepting the big lie helped solidify fusion with Trump and had consequences for related attitudes. Belief in the big lie predicted downplaying the criminal charges against Trump and supporting his antidemocratic policy agenda. Fueled by and fueling further fusion, belief in the big lie is a primary component of a larger narrative that emboldens Trump and justifies antidemocratic behavior.

Consider a possibly unsaturated Fell bundle $\mathcal {A}\to G$ over a locally compact, possibly non-Hausdorff, groupoid G. We list four notions of continuity of representations of $\mathit {C_c}(G;\mathcal {A})$ on a Hilbert space and prove their equivalence. This allows us to define the full $\mathit {C}^*$-algebra of the Fell bundle in different ways.

Studying complexes of cryptic or pseudocryptic species opens new horizons for the understanding of speciation processes, an important yet vague issue for the digeneans. We investigated a hemiuroidean trematode Lecithaster salmonis across a wide geographic range including the northern European seas (White, Barents, and Pechora), East Siberian Sea, and the Pacific Northwest (Sea of Okhotsk and Sea of Japan). The goals were to explore the genetic diversity within L. salmonis through mitochondrial (cox1 and nad5 genes) and ribosomal (ITS1, ITS2, 28S rDNA) marker sequences, to study morphometry of maritae, and to revise the life cycle data. Mitochondrial markers showed that L. salmonis is likely divided into six lineages (referred to as operational taxonomic units, OTUs), which often occur in sympatry, sometimes in a single host specimen. Variation in rDNA was not consistent with that in the mitochondrial markers. Morphometric analysis of maritae was performed for four out of six OTUs; it showed that some OTUs had significant differences from the others, but some did not. The effect of host species on the morphometric characteristics cannot be excluded. Intramolluscan stages were identified for two OTUs; they differed clearly by the structure of cercariae and also by the species of the first intermediate host. The case of L. salmonis is instructive in how different criteria for species delimitation can contradict each other. We regard this as a sign of recent or ongoing speciation and suggest using the name Lecithaster cf. salmonis. The most promising criteria to differentiate genetic lineages within L. cf. salmonis are first intermediate hosts and morphological characteristics of the cercariae: shape of the delivery tube and caudal cyst, and length of the filamentous appendage.

Cystic Echinococcosis (CE) is a zoonotic disease caused by Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato. Diagnosing CE primarily relies on imaging techniques, and there is a crucial need for an objective laboratory test to enhance the diagnostic process. Today, cell-free DNAs (cfDNAs) have gained importance regarding their biomarker potential. This study aims to investigate the diagnostic capabilities of different cfDNA targets (Echinococcus-specific repeat sequences (mgs-4 and mgs-12) and partial fragment of repetitive sequence (EG1 Hae III)) and evaluate their diagnostic effectiveness when compared to a frequently used commercial E.granulosus-specific IgG ELISA. Seventy-six confirmed hepatic CE patients and healthy controls were included in the study. The EG1 Hae III region was assessed using nested PCR, whereas real-time PCR was employed to investigate other cfDNA targets. Analysis of the cfDNA-targeted tests indicated that mgs-4 demonstrated the highest diagnostic efficacy in distinguishing CE patients from healthy controls, achieving a sensitivity of 60.5% (p = 0.002). Combining ELISA with the mgs-4 target led to an increased sensitivity of 72.4% for distinguishing between CE patients and the control group. The sensitivity rates for ELISA and the three cfDNA targets varied among the groups. Active CE patients showed sensitivity rates of 52.9%, 52.9%, 23.5%, and 52.9% for ELISA, mgs-4, mgs-12, and EG1 Hae III assays, respectively. In contrast, inactive cyst patients displayed sensitivity rates of 21.4%, 66.7%, 19%, and 42.9% for the corresponding assays. The mgs-4, either alone or in combination with ELISA, demonstrated notably higher sensitivity values for CE diagnosis in all group comparisons compared to serology.

This article examines sermons for the crusade against the Hussite king of Bohemia, George of Poděbrady, preached by Thomas Harder, an Augustinian canon and parish priest in Klosterneuburg, in the summer of 1467. These texts give us a direct insight into how preachers in fifteenth-century parishes might have dealt with the general commission to publicize the crusade, as they incorporate the crusade agenda into the pastoral content. Like his twelfth and thirteenth-century predecessors, Thomas Harder knew how to exploit the penitential and edifying potential of the crusade, combined with concerns for individual religious improvement and moral reform. Through an analysis of intertextual links, this study shows that he also systematically gathered, processed and disseminated topical information relevant to the fight against Bohemian heresy. Although he followed in the footsteps of high medieval crusade preachers in the themes he addressed, he also drew on more contemporary and local sources to inform his discourse and provide explanation of the immediate political circumstances.

Why could politicians of religious minority backgrounds become national leaders in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas in some other countries, almost all the national leaders have been from the religious majority background for decades if not centuries? I argue that the most important factor explaining the incidence of national leaders of a religious minority background or lack thereof is whether the main adversary in the constitutive conflict that established the nation-state was of the same religious sectarian background or not. Nations established in a constitutive conflict against an adversary of the same religion are much more likely to have national leaders of a religious minority background. Furthermore, political leaders of religious minority backgrounds have three “secular” paths out of their marginality, which is also determined by the combination and nature of the primary external and internal conflict of the nation. I examine these paths through the cases of Britain (liberalism), France (socialism), and Hungary and Italy (nationalism). Finally, I examine a world-historical example of pattern change, the rise of Catholic-origin national leaders in previously Protestant-led Germany, which was due to a new constitutive conflict (World War II and the Holocaust) that altered the national-religious configuration.

Eric Mascall and Karl Barth shared a common concern with the influence of liberal Protestantism on their churches in England and Germany. They agreed this problem was best addressed through the lens of natural theology. Yet, while for Mascall a Thomistically informed understanding of natural theology was the best way to counteract liberal Protestantism’s influence on the Church, for Barth, natural theology was to blame for the Church’s confusion. The concern this paper raises was Barth’s sharp delineation between human reason and divine revelation in the end, complicit with the ontological duality of modernity that was the basis of the liberal Protestantism he was rejecting? By dealing with modernity on its own terms, Barth undermined the capacity of the Church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament to be effective agents of personal transformation. Whereas Mascall’s realistic ontology not only repudiates the idealist foundations of liberal Protestantism but also offers the Church the necessary ontology foundation for understanding its ministry of Word and Sacrament as effective embodiments of God’s transforming grace.