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The broad public debates on religion and ethics frequently suffer from empirical deficiencies. All sides tend to argue in a way one might call an “a priori” mode of argumentation. In contrast, this lecture offers some empirically grounded reflections. First, Hans Joas asks whether the morality of secularized societies could be a mere remnant or reverberation of religious traditions. Secondly, he briefly investigates with regard to tribal societies whether religion should be considered to be constitutive for morality at all. Thirdly, he uses an example from Christian missionary work to look at the interaction of new religion and traditional morality....

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...