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Barbkw
Guest
Separate hopefully from the secular Left leaning Nobel Peace Prize committee.
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Tsuwano
Guest
You mean that same secular left leaning Nobel Peace Prize committee which gave the Peace Prize to Mother Theresa?
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Barbkw
Guest
Deserved then with her. Fast forward 30 years.
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kaid100
Guest
Despite not being religious I like the idea of a Nobel Prize of Theology, although a thought: if it ends up being Vatican-based, does that mean it will only ever be awarded to Christians? Or maybe even only Catholics?
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Ridgerunner
Guest
There has to be more to this story. Is it even meant literally; that it would somehow be part of the secular Nobel apparatus? If so, what would keep it from being given to, say, Osama Bin Ladin, who is a “theologian” of a perverse sort, or Ayatollah Khameni? After all, the Nobel Committee gave Arafat a peace prize.
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kaid100
Guest
I think that the good sense of the Nobel committee would stop that. Just because an organisation is secular, it doesn’t make them eevil or stupid. Remember that Arafat’s prize (joint with Shimon Peres) came soon after the Oslo accords and his renunciation of violence. Something similar happened after the Good Friday Agreement with David Trimble and John Hume. One of the accords worked out, the other didn’t; but if the Nobel committee played it safe every time the prizes wouldn’t have the world standing they do now. Martin Luther King got his when he was practically considered an Enemy of the State.
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Petergee
Guest
One of the very, very few Catholics to have ever won this or indeed any other category Nobel Prize.
I don’t know if the Communist Chinese government would agree that the committee is left-leaning. The bias is more towards protestantism (especially in the early years), secularism and politically correct trendyism.
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Petergee
Guest
There is not a single “Nobel Committee”. There is a committee for each individual category. The committees are not all even based in the same country. The Theology prize would be set up along the lines of the Economics prize, which was set up in the 1960s quite seperately from the Nobel estate.
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kaid100
Guest
Very very few? This website has a (non-exhaustive) list of God-fearing Nobel winners, and Catholics are not underrepresented: 100 Nobel Winners. As I mentioned above, the decision to award a prize to Martin Luther King was at the time quite radical, it is only politically correct by modern standards.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Thank you for the information. Still, one has to question the wisdom of this. I can’t understand how the Vatican would want Catholic organizations to fund a prize that could end up being awarded to those who may be the enemies of the Church. Possibly those churchmen intend to control the award tightly, but it’s difficult for me to see why they would even want to do it.
As I said, there has to be more to this story.
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markomalley
Guest
Why in the world would the Holy See want to create an award named after the Lutheran inventor of TNT?
I think it is a fine idea to create an award for theological achievement and to try to create with it a similar air of authority as accompanies the Nobel prizes, but the term “Nobel Prize” is already taken and shouldn’t be hijacked…imho.
I think it is a fine idea to create an award for theological achievement and to try to create with it a similar air of authority as accompanies the Nobel prizes, but the term “Nobel Prize” is already taken and shouldn’t be hijacked…imho.
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kaid100
Guest
It’s worth noting that Nobel’s work on explosives was to make them much safer for their use in mining. Earlier explosives had been much more likely to go off at the wrong time, injuring people. One of his reasons for founding the Nobel prizes (especially the Peace Prize) was to try to remove the stigma that being involved with explosives might suggest he is in some way violent or warlike.
I agree that using the existing name is probably not the fairest move, the “Vatican Prize for Theology” sounds like a good name, with a gravitas of its own.
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Petergee
Guest
In comparison with protestants, Jews and atheists, Catholics are WAY under-represented in comparison with the Catholic proportion of the population. See books.google.com.au/books?id=PfRaPHr86XUC&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=christians+nobel+prizes&source=bl&ots=s5ecJJfb4g&sig=fKyvO-TwhknWdO9SxmVT8TFu3cw&hl=en&ei=RSf2TKnRBoiycJaA1YcF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=christians%20nobel%20prizes&f=false
And it’s certainly not because Catholics have not been outstanding in new contributions to science, literature and peace. Catholics have been much more than pulling their weight.
And maybe a lot of people in the US in the 1960s thought M L King was a radical, but the Catholic hierarchy and pretty much every Catholic in the rest of the world who knew about him, thought that he was a good Christian who was merely talking simple common sense.
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kaid100
Guest
The link you posted shows that Catholics are underrepresented only in the scientific categories, the literature and the most prestigious prize, the Peace Prize are overrepresented, according to your source. The source actually says that it is Jews, not Catholics, that are not represented enough in total. Maybe a Vatican Prize in Theology would help to redress the balance there, after all: both Jesus and the first Pope were Jewish.
I don’t know about what Catholics thought of MLK, I certainly never claimed they were against him, but he was certainly considered an radical by by the FBI.
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JReducation
Guest
The answer to the question, “Who gets this prize?” is in the aritcle.
*The objective of the Vatican Foundation: Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI is to promote research and study of the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, as well as to **organize scientific congresses *and award scholars who are outstanding for their theological research.
The goal is not to give prizes to those who come up with some new and ingenious doctrine or moral solution to some problem. It’s to award those whose methods of scientific and theological research, especially using the thought of Joseph Ratzinger are outstanding. This can be any theologian of any faith, if he stays within those parameters.
The research must be a scientific study of the theological work of Joseph Ratzinger.
I would imagine that they will have much lengthier and detailed list of criteria at some point, if they don’t already have it.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
*The objective of the Vatican Foundation: Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI is to promote research and study of the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, as well as to **organize scientific congresses *and award scholars who are outstanding for their theological research.
The goal is not to give prizes to those who come up with some new and ingenious doctrine or moral solution to some problem. It’s to award those whose methods of scientific and theological research, especially using the thought of Joseph Ratzinger are outstanding. This can be any theologian of any faith, if he stays within those parameters.
The research must be a scientific study of the theological work of Joseph Ratzinger.
I would imagine that they will have much lengthier and detailed list of criteria at some point, if they don’t already have it.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Petergee
Guest
Did you actually read the passage and the accompanying table?. Jews are by far the most OVER-represented. Jews are only 0.2% of the world’s population but have won more than 20% of all the Nobels. Yes that’s more than hundredfold over-represented. Catholics, averaging 20 to 25% of the world’s population in the 20th century, won only 11.6% of the Nobels.
Catholics are underrepresented in all categories except Literature where they are about the right proportion - but this is counterbalanced by the massive over-representation of atheists in the Literature category.
Who would be just about the very last people whose opinion I would ask as to who deserves a Peace Prize.
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kaid100
Guest
Quoting directly from the article you linked:
A review of the Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2000 reveal that 654 laureates belong to 28 different religions. Most (65.4%) have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. While separating Roman Catholics from Protestants among Christians proved difficult in some cases, available information suggests that more Protestants were involved in the scientific categories and more Catholics were involved in the Literature and Peace categories.
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Petergee
Guest
Exactly, there were more Catholics with Literature and Peace Prizes than there were Catholics with science prizes. That is, Catholics are **somewhat less underrepresented **in Lit and Peace than they are underrepresented in the sciences. The source certainly does not say, as you nonsensically claimed, that Catholics are overrepresented in Literature and Peace prizes.
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JReducation
Guest
We should not be so concerned with the number of Catholics represented in the list of Nobel Prize recipients. What should concern us is that the works of science, literature, art, music, economics, and theology are rarely used for the purpose that God intended. These great human achievements are gifts from God, meant to give hope to man that he can be better, that he can be happier, that he can be of service to his brothers and sisters and that he has a duty to build the world according to the plan of Eden.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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