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The communion of the people of God is a community of people saved by Christ, regenerated and anointed with the Holy Spirit who unites them and preserves them in diversity. The communion of the faithful is realized in the pneumatohagic institutional structure of the Church. The Holy Spirit is the source of the communal wealth of gifts and charisms that serve the communional unity of Christians. The Holy Spirit is also the guarantor of the subjectivity of the Church and the individual faithful who make her up.
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The author collected a few insights which he would consider as important concerning religiosity and religions in theological education. According to the first part it should be clear for future pastors, church workers and teachers of religion that they are always challenged by the question of the origin of religiosity, humanity and morality. The key question lying behind these is: What is the human being as such? The second part deals with the question of what objectivity in religious studies means and how much it is different in theology. It cannot be identified with agnosticism or even atheism. Any student of theology has to study other religions in their context, the history of their origins with utmost understanding and empathy which need not necessarily mean agreement. This leads to the third part on interreligious and ecumenical dialogue. Personal contacts cannot be substituted even with the best up-to-date literature. Dialogue does not mean self-abandonment, because that would make it unserious. Principles in ecumenical, i.e. inter-church dialogue are basically the same, although it is much more what unites than divides the partners. Briefly: we are truth-seekers. Finally a conclusion is summed up in nine theses.
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The Altenberg Ecumenical Round Table appeals in a declaration or appeal to Pope Francis asking him to lift the ban on Martin Luther and his followers, while appealing to the Lutheran World Federation to remove from the confessions the passages calling the Pope Antichrist. I describe the release of the Altenberg Appeal and the publication of the book on the subject, including its background and the first reactions to both. Finally, I explain my own position here.
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This article explores the development of Newman’s thought on the Church, throughout different phases of his long life. The article focuses, among other themes, on the nature of the Church, the important introduction to his Via Media (1877), the charismatic dimension of the ekklesia, and the respective roles of the pope, the bishops and the laity, in particular what the latter can contribute to the whole People of God. The article also seeks to delve into the question whether one can talk about ecumenism in the writings of the influential nineteenth-century English man of letters and opinion leader. The conclusion offers some final considerations on what Newman underwent during his long and meandering journey with regard to some basic tenets of his ecclesiology.
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The doctrine of the last times of this world of the Monk Justin Popovich concentrates primarily around the signs announcing the end of the world, which include the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, the conversion of Israel to Christ, the appearance of the Antichrist, a cosmic catastrophe, and also the heavenly sign of the cross on the eve of the Second Coming of the Savior. According to the Monk Justin, the most tragic moment at the end of this world will be the appearance of the Antichrist, in which all evil will reach its apogee. Proceeding from the Holy Scriptures, as well as the works of the Church Fathers, Archimandrite Justin discusses the resurrection of the human body, as well as the anakefalaiosis of everything created under the head of Christ, when only God “will be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). For Archimandrite Justin, the greatest gift of the Risen God-Man to human nature is the immortality of body and matter.
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As a liturgical act, the homily aims to direct the faithful to experience the full saving power of the Word of God. This, in fact, reveals the mystagogical function of the homily that cannot be ignored. This article deals with the issue of the liturgical actualization of the kerygma of the missionary discourse. First, he presents the liturgy as a place to experience the saving power of the Word of God, present in the mysteries of Christ. Then he presents Holy Communion as a moment of accessing the saving grace of the mystery, in order to finally interpret and connect the kerygma of the missionary discourse with liturgical signs that are to help the participants of the celebration discover the presence of the mystery of Christ in the missionary discourse. The indicated issues may constitute the substantive basis for the further development of liturgical theology and the practical application of broadly understood liturgical signs in the context of homily proclamation.
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We could better understand the sacrifice of the mass if we could recuperate the word “sacrifice.” The common, secular understanding of sacrifice speaks in terms of loss, sadness, and giving something up, whereas the biblical, theological understanding speaks in terms of gift, joy, and giving to God. This article therefore considers sacrifice in the three environments in which it occurs: innocence, sin, and Christ. The first is the cosmic liturgy of homo adorans, done in the state of original justice. The second recognizes a corrupted form of sacrifice, waiting redemption. The third is the sacrifice of the cross wherein grace perfects nature, and sacrifice is recuperated. The sacrificial Christ – priest and victim – gives himself to members of his mystical body to train them in true sacrifice.
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Christian worship is worship modelled on that of Jesus Christ, and in union with Him (cf. Rm. 12:1). Therefore the fullest expression of the worship of the Church is the Eucharist. In it is made sacramentally present the consummate, once-for-all, unique offering of Christ, that is to say, His life of obedience and devotion to the Father, which has its fulfillment in death upon the cross. The participation of the faithful in the Eucharist consists in the following of Jesus in obedience to the Father, that is, in rendering a spiritual offering which Jesus joins to His one offering. Participation in the Eucharist is a special challenge during the pandemic not only due to physical difficulties in participating, but also as regards fullest possible extra-sacramental participation, i.e., long-distance participation. The most important condition is the desire for sacramental participation and union with Christ, that is, spiritual communion. Mass-media transmissions of the Mass are helpful in this. Other essential conditions for such participation are an accompanying desire for ongoing conversion (directing of one’s life towards God) and involvement in the life of the Church on various levels. Meditation on the Word of God in the form of lectio divina is to be considered as an especial pillar of this extra-sacramental participation. The faithful have the right to read the books of Sacred Scripture in any order. The most ecclesial reading of the Bible, however, is that which is geared toward the daily Eucharist. The individual believer is nourished by this word which is addressed to the entire church on a given day.
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Is there such a thing as a boring rite, or is boredom instead an affective experience of a subject? This article argues that nothing—including the post-conciliar rites of the Church—can be intrinsically boredom. Rather, boredom—or more clearly the refusal to undergo boredom—is a spiritual sickness of late modernity. The article begins with an analysis of the phenomenon of boredom with a particular focus on boredom in a digital ecology. The article then turns to the symptoms of boredom as examined by social and cultural theorists over the last decade including Zygmunt Bauman, Harmut Rosa, and Byung-Chul Han. Lastly, the article examines Romano Guardini's The Spirit of the Liturgy as providing a medicine against the kind of anti-festive culture that is the source of boredom in late modernity. Boredom is not a problem with a rite but with the self who has not yet learned to participate in the serious playfulness of the act of worship.
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The liturgy as theologia prima has played an important role in forming awareness of the truths of the faith which form the foundation of prayer: lex orandi. This reciprocal relationship of lex crednedi−lex orandi was at the foundation of the formulation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pope Pius IX's bull of December 8, 1854, Ineffabilis Deus. While this feast was celebrated once a year, a more frequent opportunity to celebrate this mystery−even weekly−was provided by the votive office, which was introduced into the Officium Divinum in 1727, and after the proclamation of the dogma in 1854, new texts were ultimately approved in 1863. The votive office was removed in 1912. The liturgical texts have permitted presenting the mystery of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the lex orandi of the Church since the Council of Trent. They emphasize the close relationship between the Immaculate Conception and the virginal maternity of Mary. From eternity Mary had been prepared by God Himself as a pure dwelling place for His Son. In receiving this privilege from God, Mary did not lose her virginity. It was therefore important to show the beauty of Mary against the background of the mystery of original sin and the promise of the protoevangelium of the Book of Genesis. This idea was emphasized in the office by texts from the Book of Wisdom and the Song of Songs, as well as texts from the Fathers of the Church. In praising the Virgin Mary with the words of the votive office, her intercession is entreated for everyday life, and also for help in striving for salvation. Reading and meditating on the liturgical texts thus shapes a proper perception of devotion to Mary in the tradition of the Western Church.
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In his last encyclical: Ecclesia de Eucharistia, St. John Paul II clearly declared that the Eucharist is the source and summit of evangelization. One of the bridges that link both of those realities: liturgy and new evangelization, is mystagogy, which is also called liturgical formation or catechesis. This article aims at presenting how the mystagogy of the ancient Church functioned, and how we can use this method today in new evangelization. Also, we wish to show that mystagogy is not just a way of explaining liturgical rituals, but it also enables the faithful to experience what is being celebrated. In this sense, mystagogy also aims at transmitting and building faith, which is why each proclamation of the kerygma should be mystagogical and each mystagogical catechesis should be kerygmatic.
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The aim of this study is to make known to the reader the theology of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation in the Assyrian Church of the East and with its Liturgy called “Order of Pardon” (taksā d-h.usāyā). The research has been based on the genuine Syriac patristic tradition and on the most important liturgical source, i.e. the Order edited by the prominent catholicos Ishā'Yahb III (†659). The analysis includes the explanation of theological image of the “robe of glory,” which creates the link between the Sacrament of Penance itself and Baptism, the theological meaning of Christian conversion and the presentation of taksā d-h.usāyā. The study shows the Syro-Oriental celebration of the Sacrament as a comprehensive and theologically coherent with the Rites in the other Christian communities. Some peculiarities of this Ordo attest its originality and don't depreciate in any way its theological and liturgical value.
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The paper asks what are the criteria for designing educational materials for teaching religious education to pupils with intellectual disability. It deduces them from results of parameters analysis of existing textbooks for other school subjects which have already been proved by educational praxis in special schools for a long time. Paper describes process, results and conclusions of this analysis.
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The article presents the phenomenon of sacred prostitution which was characteristic of many ancient cultures and religions throughout the world. It shows a few of the most important issues connected with the sacred prostitution (also called religious or ritual): its origins (the cult of deities of love and fertility, typical of the pre-Christian cultures); its forms (one-time prostitution as an act of sacrificing one’s virginity or one-time sacrifice of a woman who was no longer a virgin, and constant prostitution practiced by priestesses or temple prostitutes); its main purposes (unification with deity, making a tribute to deity, pledge of the fertility of men, earth and animals by re-enactment of archetypical act of hieros gamos, the divine marriage). The article also analyses the religious anatomy of the phenomenon, basing on the thesis of Mircea Eliade; shows examples of sacred prostitution, taken mainly from The Golden Bough, the canonic work of Sir James George Frazer, and F.S. Pierre Dufour’s History of Prostitution; discusses the taboo of women’s blood on the basis of Jean-Paul Roux’s works; mentions the historical change in the meaning of the word “virgin” applying to Edward Whitmont’s statements; brings up controversies over the judgment of sacred prostitution as a historical phenomenon, referring to Edward Whitmont’s and Georg Baudler’s standpoints.
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The article adds some new and substantial bibliographic information to the corpus of the Bibliography of Old Romanian Books.
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The homiletics literature at the beginning of the 19th century in Transylvania, lying under Petru Maior’s personality, splits in two ways. The first one is that of the funeral sermons that followed and continued a rich literature with up‑to‑date elements. The second one consists of Didahii, unique sermons regarding the education of children. Maior’s sermons for Sundays and Feast Days are the peak of his homiletics. These sermons reflect the priest’s visionary spirit, they contain rhetorical elements and highlight historical, theological, moral duty and educational knowledge. Maior intends to teach, form and model the faithful on their way towards salvation, and towards a good behaviour. 200 years later, some of the situations described in the sermons might seem impossible to us, nowadays. But, in those times, when the sermons were written and published, they did respond to some painful realities of life. Most of the problems, and situations described then are always valid, and its advices, and rebukes are up‑to‑date even nowadays. Similarly to the way some of the Church Fathers’ sermons are a spring of inspiration for today’s preachers, Maior’s sermons abound in current matters, such as: salvation, faith, prayer, fasting, forgiveness, mercifulness, kind understanding, noble deed, and community, but also other social life and family‑related matters. His thematically sermons can be considered a real index of quotes from the Bible, the Church Fathers, or even from the ordinary layman life for the very specific topic.
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This paper focuses on an understudied topic in Turkish academia: Safavid waqfs. It first gives general information about Safavid waqfs then traces the waqfs of Shah Abbas in the literature. To this end, it investigates a manuscript copy of Shah Abbas’ waqfiyyah found in Iranian archives and analyses the content of this copy. Secondly, it asserts that the political, social, and economic aspects of Safavid waqfs are as crucial as of the Ottoman waqfs, and more studies are required to grasp the significance of the subject. Even the political features of these institutions were more comprehensive and prominent than other issues related to these institutions. Therefore, this paper lastly examines how the Safavid waqfs, between the reigns of Shah Ismail to Sah Abbas I, functioned politically.
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In this article, I analyze the identifications of middle school, high school, and university students with: Catholic Church (denominational), faith in God (religious) and compulsory religious practices (cultic). These identifications were evident in the attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and actions of Polish youth in the second half of the 20th century and in both decades of the 21st century. The basis for this presentation are the results of sociological research carried out between 1956 and 2018 by a number of researchers into the religiosity and morality of young people studying in middle schools, high schools and studying in universities. To what extent did the Polish youth consolidate their own faith and continue the religious traditions handed down to them by their parents during their religious upbringing in their own beliefs and actions? What percentage of these young people doubted these religious truths and the value of traditions, or rejected them as unnecessary in their personal and religious lives? I will answer these questions based on the research findings in this article, taking into account her declarations regarding these identifications.
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