The Career and Prospects of Providence in Modern Theology

An international conference 7-9 January 2008 King's College, University of Aberdeen

Sarah Coakley David Bentley Hart Nicholas J. Healey Alister E. McGrath Charles Mathewes Francesca Murphy Cyril O’Regan Katherine Sonderegger John Webster Philip G. Ziegler and others

This conference aims to break fresh ground in the analysis of divine providence by exploring a range of current proposals concerning its form, significance and viability within contemporary thought.

The character and interrelation of divine and human agency lies at the contested heart of modern theology. Since the Enlightenment, the classical doctrine of providence has been aggressively criticised within both theology and philosophy. Following on the cross-fertilization of early-modern eschatologies and the doctrine of providence, the idea of providence did not so much go into decline as migrate into secularized forms. In light of the divergence of such humanistic approaches from classical theological conceptions of providence, contemporary restatements of the idea require careful consideration: what exactly is to be recovered? A metaphysical account of the doctrine grounded in divine omnipotence? A thoroughly historicized notion of providence? Or, perhaps something altogether different?

By inviting scholars to examine the development of the idea of providence within intellectual history, the axial role of providence in modern systematic theologies, and the reformulation of the classical idea of providence after Hegel, we hope to advance the frontiers of investigation of the doctrine of providence at the present juncture.

'Following on the cross-fertilization of early-modern eschatologies and the doctrine of providence, the idea of providence did not so much go into decline as migrate into secularized forms'

'Eschatologies migrate into secularized forms'? Now that is an interesting remark. I wonder who could say more on this subject?

- and thanks to Andy Goodliff, always first with the news

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

1. We, the Catholic Bishops of Scotland, greet you in the name of the risen Christ. As we continue to celebrate the mystery of Easter, we renew our hope in Jesus Christ as the source of our salvation. 2. Elections to the Scottish Parliament and to Local Authorities are approaching. Each of us is called to make practical political choices for the sake of the common good of the people of Scotland. These choices should be made in conformity with our faith in Christ.

3. The Bishops recognise that many people in politics work conscientiously to achieve good, and we commend them to you. At the same time we cannot fail to notice a conflict of values in society. This conflict of values is reflected in the political sphere in policies, social legislation and regulations which are seriously at odds with the insights and values of our Christian faith and of other faiths.

4. The Bishops remain deeply concerned about legislation which allows abortion, embryo experimentation, easy divorce and civil partnerships. We have always campaigned against poverty, deprivation and injustice. We have raised our voices against a new generation of nuclear weapons. We foresee with apprehension a campaign to legalise euthanasia. We find ourselves having to counter criticism of the very existence of Catholic schools, in large part prompted by an agenda which aims to remove religion from the public sphere.

5. As well as these serious matters, Government has advanced proposals which imply a stealthy and unjust attack on the freedom of religion itself and on the rights of conscience. Earlier this year new regulations were enacted at Westminster which could prevent Catholic adoption agencies from carrying out their work according to the Catholic and Christian vision of family life. Last year, in the face of widespread opposition, the Scottish Parliament extended the right to adopt to unmarried and same sex couples. These dubious innovations are detrimental not just to the good of the Catholic community but to the common good of humanity as a whole. They deserve to be challenged at the ballot box.

6. The coming elections give us an opportunity to vote wisely and to choose the best political representatives for our communities. Many of those standing share our Christian values. There are signs of a desire for an authentic Christian voice in politics serving the common good of people of all faiths and none.

7. Your Bishops urge you to use your vote to support the candidates who offer the best chance of bringing the voice of a truly human and Christian civilisation to the decision-making chambers of our country. We invite you to look beyond the superficially attractive and fashionable to recognise those policies and values which are most in tune with the dignity of the human person and with the common good of our society.

8. To help you vote, we attach with this letter a number of questions you may wish to consider yourself and put to your election candidates.

9. Our faith is in the risen Christ. We are all to witness to Him even in our political choices, in the hope that we can make his love for all men and women more effective in our country!

May God bless you all.

Yours devotedly in Christ,

Scottish Catholic Media Office Catholic Bishops urge voters to challenge attacks on Christian values "at the ballot box"

The Scottish Catholic Media Office provides a service to the press and media, offering them information and guidance on the activities of the Church in Scotland. The Office is responsible to the Bishops' Conference of Scotland through its National Communications Commission, whose President is Bishop Joseph Devine.

"The Church cannot fail to be ever more deeply involved in the burgeoning world of communications. There must be an active and imaginative engagement of the media by the Church." Pope John Paul II

Notice that this statement begins with a doxology. This is the only way an announcement or document of the Christian Church can begin. Let's pick up some of these good habits, shall we?

Now I want to see an English, Anglican (and Catholic) Media Office. It would look like the Anglican Communion Office but will present the views of the Church of England, in the closest possible association with the Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales, to the nation, its government and media. It will be more than a news service (press statements of church news). It will set out the proposals of the Christian Church for the public policy of this nation. Its pronouncements should be shorter versions of the speeches of our remarkable Archbishop of Canterbury, but they will be issued by the bishops of the Church of England as a whole, wherever possible together with the Conference of the Roman Catholic bishops.

Can you fix that for me?

Copies of The Theology of John Zizioulas arrived here today. The book is published in May, and so far is visible on Amazon.co.uk only. Ashgate have the Contents page and Introduction. Here's the blurb.

John Zizioulas is widely recognised as the most significant Orthodox theologian of the last half century and acclaimed advocate of ecumenism. From his indepth knowledge of the intellectual resources of the Church, Zizioulas has argued that the Church Fathers represent a profound account of freedom and community that represents a radical challenge to modern accounts of the person. Zizioulas uses the work of the Fathers to make an important distinction between the person, who is defined by a community, and the individual who defines himself in isolation from others, and who sees community as a threat to his freedom. Zizioulas argues that God is the origin of freedom and community, and that the Christian Church is the place in which the person and freedom come into being.

This volume offers a critical appraisal of the theology of John Zizioulas. Leading Anglican, Reformed, Catholic and Orthodox international scholars, including Colin Gunton, Nicholas Loudovikos, Paul McPartlan, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Philip Rosato present essays which analyse Zizioulas' trinitarian doctrine of God, and his theological account of the Church as the place in which freedom and communion are actualised. Many include discussions of Zizioulas' Being as Communion as well as other lesser known works, now available in Communion and Otherness. Together they represent an unrivalled introduction to the work of this great theologian.

Robert Turner Eschatology and Truth

Alan Brown On the Criticism of 'Being as Communion' in Anglophone Orthodox theology

Wolfhart Pannenberg Divine Economy and Eternal Trinity

Markus Mühling The Work of the Holy Spirit

Colin Gunton Persons and Particularity

Douglas Farrow Person and Nature

Nicholas Loudovikos Christian Life and Institutional Church

Demetrios Bathrellos Church, Eucharist, Bishop

Paul Collins Authority and Ecumenism

Philip Rosato SJ The Ordination of the Baptized

Paul McPartlan The Local and Universal Church

Douglas Knight The Spirit and Persons in the Liturgy

The first chapter by Robert Turner sets out the issues very lucidly and accessibly. In my case, words of one syllable are all I can manage these days, so the Introduction is an easy read for any undergraduate. Then comes a simply awesome chapter by Alan Brown which shows just how exciting this subject can get.

I am very grateful to all the book's contributors of course, but most particularly to Demetrios Bathrellos, for whom this business has been going on for eight years, and to Mihail Neamtu, Alan Brown and Liviu Barbu, and to Pam Bertram and her colleagues at Ashgate. As for Zizioulas, I am still finding that there is much more to learn from this extraordinary theologian. As Liviu pointed out, he is a church father himself, and an apostle for the contemporary church.

From all this it clearly emerges that an authentic European "common home" cannot be built without considering the identity of the people of this Continent of ours. It is a question of a historical, cultural, and moral identity before being a geographic, economic, or political one; an identity comprised of a set of universal values that Christianity helped forge, thus giving Christianity not only a historical but a foundational role vis-à-vis Europe. These values, which make up the soul of the Continent, must remain in the Europe of the third millennium as a "ferment" of civilization. If these values were to disappear, how could the "old" Continent continue to function as a "leaven" for the entire world? If, for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the Governments of the Union wish to "get nearer" to their citizens, how can they exclude an element essential to European identity such as Christianity, with which a vast majority of citizens continue to identify? Is it not surprising that today's Europe, while aspiring to be regarded as a community of values, seems ever more often to deny the very existence of universal and absolute values? Does not this unique form of "apostasy" from itself, even more than its apostasy from God, lead Europe to doubt its own identity? And so the opinion prevails that an "evaluation of the benefits" is the only way to moral discernment and that the common good is synonymous with compromise. In reality, if compromise can constitute a legitimate balance between different particular interests, it becomes a common evil whenever it involves agreements that dishonour human nature.

A community built without respect for the true dignity of the human being, disregarding the fact that every person is created in the image of God ends up doing no good to anyone. For this reason it seems ever more important that Europe be on guard against the pragmatic attitude, widespread today, which systematically justifies compromise on essential human values, as if it were the inevitable acceptance of a lesser evil. This kind of pragmatism, even when presented as balanced and realistic, is in reality neither, since it denies the dimension of values and ideals inherent in human nature. When non-religious and relativistic tendencies are woven into this pragmatism, Christians as such are eventually denied the very right to enter into the public discussion, or their contribution is discredited as an attempt to preserve unjustified privileges. In this historical hour and faced with the many challenges that confront it, the European Union, in order to be a valid guarantor of the rule of law and an efficient promoter of universal values, cannot but recognize clearly the certain existence of a stable and permanent human nature, source of common rights for all individuals, including those who deny them. In this context, the right to conscientious objection should be protected, every time fundamental human rights are violated.

Dear friends, I know how difficult it is for Christians to defend this truth of the human person. Nevertheless do not give in to fatigue or discouragement! You know that it is your duty, with God's help, to contribute to the consolidation of a new Europe which will be realistic but not cynical, rich in ideals and free from naïve illusions, inspired by the perennial and life-giving truth of the Gospel.

Pope Benedict to the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (COMECE)

It is becoming obvious that the leadership of TEC means to move resolutely ahead with its mission of civil rights and inclusion, insisting that these are imperatives of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a kind of brand name for American Episcopalianism. (We leave to the side whether inclusion or civil rights are being honored or thwarted by this idea.)

In the light of the failure to respond positively to the communiqué of the Primates Meeting, the course being charted is becoming increasingly clear. Apparently the Archbishop of Canterbury is prepared to hear out the leadership of TEC on an alternative plan that will deal with the problems it has created for life in Communion. But the disconnect that will result could be palpable, not least because TEC leadership does not acknowledge that it has created a problem that requires any remedy of the kind an Instrument of Unity has recently urged, with urgency. It views the problem as ‘conservatives’ out of step with the enlightened views it holds. The recent reports of Presiding Bishop Schori’s comments make this very clear indeed. She is to be commended for her candor.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will not be accused of failing to go the extra mile in this terrible mess. It might be suspected that his chief intention is to be sure he has a grasp of the facts at close hand. Proximity will in this case surely be a bracing thing.

It is becoming clear as well that a gift is only of any value if it is given and received both. Archbishop Rowan would be forgiven for being puzzled at the failure of conservative Bishops in TEC both to applaud and embrace the communiqué of Dar es Salaam and receive warmly what has been given. Not to gaze on it from afar or speak of its virtues only, but to unwrap and open and take good care of what has been given.

Efforts to delay or to seek another form of ‘peace’ can only be seen as yet another example of American unilateralism. There is nothing wrong, uncanonical, imperial, or otherwise with the communique’s requests. The requests address with clarity and charity a problem that unilateralists in the Communion have created. There is no evidence that the Primates are seeking fresh alternatives to the communiqué they crafted, and Archbishop Rowan is going the extra mile to take the pulse up close. Sadly, the patient is not only quite ill, but in denial as well.

The Anglican Communion Institute A Visit from the Archbishop

The ACI is alive and well but note the new website URL is anglicancommunioninstitute.com

Neil MacDonald is good at titles. What do you think of his latest?

Metaphysics and the God of Israel: Systematic Theology of the Old and New Testaments or of his earlier

Karl Barth and the Strange New World within the Bible: Barth, Wittgenstein, and the Metadilemmas of the Enlightenment

So what are the reviews like?

â??Neil MacDonaldâ??s reflection moves back, forth and sideways between critical biblical study, high-modern philosophy in the analytical tradition, and classical Christian doctrine. Most who have attempted such explorations have reported mostly blockades and traps. MacDonald discovers instead sudden opportunities of faithful insight and of â?? very often unexpected â?? theological construction. A remarkable and, I think, important book, to be read with attention.â?? Robert W. Jenson, Formerly Senior Scholar for Research at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, Professor Emeritus of Religion, St. Olaf College, Minnesota

â??MacDonaldâ??s is a voice crying in the wilderness. This is a brilliant effort to combine the very best in historical-critical and theological exegesis with dogmatic and philosophical reflection of a very high level. The writing style is lucid and at times almost poetic,which a theme as exalted as Godâ??s work in time requires. Sophisticated and full of insight. May his tribe increase.â?? Christopher R. Seitz, Professor of Old Testament and Theological Studies, University of St Andrews

â??Neil MacDonaldâ??s latest book is the first major effort in many decades to attempt to reintegrate systematic theology with biblical studies. The authorâ??s grasp of the whole spectrum of modern biblical scholarship, both in Old and New Testaments, is highly impressive. Because of his unique mastery of philosophical theory as well, he is superbly equipped for this exciting task. His book will certainly serve to open up a fresh dialogue, which is long overdue.â?? Brevard S. Childs, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament, Yale Divinity School

Hmm. Always interesting to see who a man's friends are.

But there is another remarkable fact about this Neil MacDonald. He teaches Christian dogmatics in London.

THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW AND THE ACADEMY A conference sponsored by the Aquinas Institute, Athletes in Action, the Baptist Student Fellowship, Christian Leadership Ministries, Manna Christian Fellowship, Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, Princeton Faith and Action, and the Witherspoon Institute. Princeton, New Jersey November 9-11, 2007

Contrary to the perception of certain intellectual circles, no oil-and-water dynamic need exist between academic excellence and Christian faith. History instructs us in this, as so much of the Western intellectual inheritance rests on the work of great Christian figures like Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Erasmus, John Calvin, and Jonathan Witherspoon. And yet, Christian students today are told via explicit arguments and subtle denigration that their positions on many issues lack rational foundations. Not only are Christian beliefs and practices under attack, but moral norms of sexual ethics and human dignity are increasingly challenged or even dismissed. The Christian Worldview conference will bring together thinkers from both inside and outside the academy to address several issues:

1. The nature of Christian truth and how we can know it. 1. Secularism and the Challenges of Faith 2. The Authenticity and Historicity of Scripture

2. The relationship between, and compatibility of, Christianity and science. 1. The rejection of scientific materialism as a philosophy 2. The nature of the universe as a designed system

3. The Christian and the Polis: where and how Christian and natural law principles influence public policy, with subsections on: 1. Bioethics 2. Sex and Marriage

The proposed topics of the Christian Worldview conference reflect the worries that students regularly confide to their priests and pastors, as these clergy have related to the Witherspoon Institute. Far from being a pep talk, however, the conference aims instead to explore how orthodox Christianity shapes one’s approach to scholarship and to engagement with the secular and academic worlds.

Amongst the stars are Robert P. George and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.

I know what the Witherspoon Institute is, and am impressed. I have even discovered The Institute on Religion and Democracy. Am I becoming a theocon? Stop me someone.

According to the Pope's 'nuptial anthropology', marriage partners are not merely turned towards one another in a dualistic relationship: they are also open towards a third, towards the child which expresses the unity of both in one flesh. Angelo Scola describes the structure of this relationship as one of 'asymmetrical reciprocity'. It is precisely in this respect that marriage mirrors the relations of the Holy Trinity. The mystery of the Mass has the same root as Christian marriage. The union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride the Church is a covenant in the Holy Spirit. The liturgy enacts the marriage of the Lamb, combining the wedding banquet of the Last Supper with the redemptive act of the Passion. Furthermore the trinitarian character of the Mass makes it 'asymmetrical' in the same way that marriage is asymmetrical (cf. Ephesians 5:31-2).

The 'watermark' of the Trinity is found throughout all of creation at every level, wherever the distinct identities of two things are preserved (and deepened) by uniting them in a third. Human and divine natures are united in the Person of the Son (Chalcedon). God and humanity are united in the sacrament of the Church (Vatican II). Man and woman are united in the 'one flesh' of marriage. Reason and feeling are united in the intelligence of the heart.

The 'watermark' of the Trinity is found throughout all of creation at every level, wherever the distinct identities of two things are preserved (and deepened) by uniting them in a third. Human and divine natures are united in the Person of the Son (Chalcedon). God and humanity are united in the sacrament of the Church (Vatican II). Man and woman are united in the 'one flesh' of marriage. Reason and feeling are united in the intelligence of the heart.

One surprising conclusion from this might be that many seemingly unrelated problems in the Church have a common cause. The crisis over sexuality, brought into the open by the reaction to Humanae Vitae in 1968, stems from the mentality that fails to understand the true nature of the 'asymmetric' relationship between man and woman. This is the same mentality that fails to understand the relationship between priest and people in the liturgy. This failure may express itself either in a clerical domination of the laity, or in a reversal of that relationship that eliminates all sense of the transcendent. On the one side, we find a poisonous cocktail of clericalism, aestheticism and misogyny. On the other, we observe politically correct liturgies devoted to the themes of justice and peace: everyone sitting in a circle, passing the consecrated chalice from hand to hand, with the priest improvising parts of the eucharistic prayer in order to make it more relevant and friendly. The icy 'coldness' of clericalism is answered by the melting 'warmth' of the community-oriented Mass, and the sentimental empowerment of the laity. It is hard to say which is worse.

The post-conciliar period emphasized the horizontal dimension of the liturgy (social concern) over the vertical (the act of worship). Whole religious orders went into decline as the communitarian aspect of their mission took precedence over the liturgical, the love of neighbour over the love of God. But according to trinitarian anthropology, the human person is by its very nature other-centred. We love God, and this opens us to the life of the other; we love our neighbour, and this opens us to the love of God. The love of God sends us out to do good, because it reveals who we are, self and neighbour both. We are then not (only) imitating the love of God that we see demonstrated in the liturgy, but living the liturgy out in the world. The liturgy is not (merely) separate in a horizontal sense from what goes on outside, but separate in the sense of being 'interior', of revealing the inner meaning and purpose of what lies outside. Sacred space, sacred time and sacred art are distinctive, not (just) as belonging to a parallel world, but as defining the centre of this world: the world in which we live and work.

Stratford Caldecott Liturgy and Trinity: Towards an Anthropology of the Liturgy - Second Spring (see Mystagogy)

In a Lent talk for Radio 4 Canon Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, poured scorn on the penal substitution account of the atonement. Jeffrey John, a wonderful communicator, communicated that the Christian Church has been teaching a vicious God. Canon John identifies the appalling doctrine the whole Church has been mistakenly though uniformly teaching from the beginning until now ('Canon' means the standard approved by and for the teaching of the Church).

Tom Wright now replies on Fulcrum. He does a very interesting thing. For what seems to me to be the first time Bishop Tom argues from a document of the Church (He does of course argue from documents in the Windsor process, but that is about church order, whilst this is about doctrine). It is a not very impressive but nonetheless very useful little report of the Doctrine Commission entitled The Mystery of Salvation. There is nothing like arguing from documents which have some measure of formal assent from the Church, the doctrine of which you took vows at your ordination to uphold. Failure to uphold that doctrine is to contradict yourself, which no one hurries to do.

The Mystery of Salvation notes that substitutionary atonement is taught in the Thirty-Nine Articles, and that this enshrines ‘a vital truth’, which can best be got at through the language of ‘vicarious’ suffering (p. 212). And, while perfectly properly emphasizing that the ultimate subject of the action in the death of Jesus is God himself (presumably God the Father), the Report notes (p. 213), immediately after the passage quoted from the 1938 Report to which Dr John refers (‘the notion of propotiation as the placating by man of an angry God is definitely unChristian’), that ‘it is nevertheless true that in Paul’s thought the effect of expiation is the same as that of propitiation – to neutralise the sin that is the cause of God’s displeasure and so to avert God’s wrath (however that should be understood).’ While noting the obvious problems with a crude doctrine of propitiation (a loving Jesus placating a malevolent God), the Report goes on to point out (p. 214) that both Athanasius and Augustine, as well as Calvin, spoke in terms of God himself providing the propitiation for his own wrath. The problem of the crude formulation was, in other words, already well known in the Greek and Latin Fathers, and this did not prevent them from continuing to see Jesus’ death in terms of propitiation even while insisting that the work from start to finish was the result of God’s love. Granted, the 1995 Report does scant justice to the history of the idea of substitution, both penal and otherwise, giving the bizarre impression that the idea was merely invented by Anselm and developed by Calvin, as though it were not also to be found in several of the Fathers, a good many of the mediaeval writers, and more or less all the Reformers, not least Martin Luther. But that is only to say that the Report, like all such productions, should not be taken as a definitive account either of what Anglicans are supposed to believe or of what they believe in fact.

We might also note that the 1995 Report had also spoken, earlier, of Jesus as having ‘died our death, sharing our failure, condemnation, despair and godforsakenness’ (p. 103, italics added). Earlier again, and more fully (and answering in a measure to Jenson’s request for the story of the cross to be more biblically rooted), the Report stated:

In going to the cross, Jesus acted out his own version of the total story, according to which Israel, represented by himself, must be the people in and through whom the creator God would deal with the evil of the world and of humankind. The cross, as the execution of Israel’s Messiah outside Jerusalem at the hands of the pagans, was thus the great summation of Israel’s exile, which was itself the fulfilment and completion of the ambbiguous and tragic story of Israel as a whole. At the same time, the cross was the supreme achievement of Israel’s God, returning to Zion as he had promised, to deal with his people’s sins and their consequences.

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham The Cross and the Caricatures - a response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and a new volume entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions

It is great to see that this very great (Anglican) biblical scholar, Tom Wright, has caught on to that very great (Lutheran) systematic theologian, Robert Jenson, even so demonstrating how wide the gulf between biblical and dogmatic theologians is.

There is one Anglican systematic theologian who examines the theology of Jenson and Wright in a long conversation about the relationship of biblical studies and doctrine and its implications for the atonement, including even penal substitution. His book is entitled The Eschatological Economy, and you can read the relevant sections on atonement, substitution, sacrifice, representation ('for us', 'in our place') in its chapters 3 and 4 here at Google Book. I'll put a copy in the post to Bishop Tom.

How strange that our Catholic adoption agencies, which seek homes for some of the most vulnerable and difficult-to-place in our society, should be seen as discriminatory, when in accordance with religious belief and practice they ask only for the freedom for themselves to choose for those children an environment which in their professional wisdom is the one most likely to promote their happiness and well-being.

I begin to wonder whether Britain will continue to be a place which protects and welcomes the works of people shaped and inspired by the Church. My fear is that, under the guise of legislating for what is said to be tolerance, we are legislating for intolerance. Once this begins, it is hard to see where it ends. While decrying religion as dogmatic, is dogma to prevail in the public square, forcing to the margins the legitimate expression and practice of genuine religious conviction? My fear is that in an attempt to clear the public square of what are regarded as unacceptable intrusions, we weaken the pillars on which that public square is erected - and we will discover that the pillars of pluralism may not survive.

The question is whether the threads holding together pluralist democracy have begun to unravel. That is why I have sounded this note of alarm. It is as a British Catholic citizen, pleading for the continuation of our proud democratic tradition of respect for the exercise of religious belief, that I have spoken before you tonight. I am conscious that when an essential core of our democratic freedom risks being undermined, subsequent generations will hold to account those who were able to raise their voices yet stayed silent.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC FORUM – the Corbishley Lecture, 28 March 2007, Westminster Cathedral Hall. the full lecture is a Word document at the bottom of the page

Well roared, Cormac. I think that in tone at least this is a first in the UK. Now what coverage has this speech received?

What is the case for collegiality? According to Quinn, this was not a revolutionary idea invented at Vatican II, but something prefigured at Vatican I, and later endorsed by Pope Pius IX in 1875 when the German bishops insisted they were not mere functionaries of the pope. â??The pope is bishop of Rome,â?? they maintained, â??not bishop of any other city or diocese, not bishop of Cologne or of Breslau.â?? Pio Nono explicitly agreed with that.

At Vatican II, the fathers of the council expanded and elaborated on the notion, and found solid theological backing for collegiality â??in the will of Christ, in the sacrament of Holy Orders and in the nature of the church as communion.â??

On paper, John Paul II agrees. In Ut Unum Sint, he lays down seven ways the pope can and should exercise his primacy (which Quinn endorses) and then adds, â??All this, however, must always be done in communion. When the Catholic church affirms that the office of the bishop of Rome corresponds to the will of Christ, she does not separate this office from the mission entrusted to the whole body of bishops, who are also â??vicars and ambassadors of Christ.â?? The bishop of Rome is a member of the â??College,â?? and the bishops are his brothers in the ministry.â??

In practice, says Quinn, the pope (and/or his curia) go right on with their autocratic ways, and thus continue to alienate Orthodox and Protestant Christians. He quotes Paolo Ricca, a Waldensian scholar in Rome: â??John Paul II must be convinced that the papacy as it is today has no real ecumenical chance. To have one, it must change.â??

How change? Quinn suggests the pope should:

* Get off the monarchy train. For a thousand years, the pope didnâ??t act like a king, but â??a servant of the servants of God.â?? Then a monk named Hildebrand came along at the beginning of this millennium and, as Pope Gregory VII, turned the church from a communion of autonomous churches into â??a juridical monarchyâ?? that had no precedent.

* Let bishops be bishops. By ancient tradition, bishops are the watchers of the faith. (The word bishop comes from the Greek episkopein, to watch over.) According to Vatican II, they are â??Vicars of Christâ?? every bit as much as the pope. But thereâ??s a currently powerful bloc in the church, writes Quinn, that thinks â??the pope can at any moment and for whatever reason intervene in the affairs of any diocese or even of any parish. This is the mentality that identifies primacy with sovereignty and regards the desire for a truer collegiality in the church as a plot to take power from the pope and â??turn the church into a democracy.â?? â??

* Encourage local churches to select, even elect, their own bishops, as they did in the beginning. Quinn here leans on the scholarship of the late Dominican Cardinal Yves Congar, whose work took the fathers of Vatican II back to the early primitive church for ideas that would help them bring the church up to date in the 20th century. According to Congar, â??the election of priests and bishops goes back to the time of the apostles.â??

Robert Kaiser A blueprint for papal reform â?? a review of John R. Quinn The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly call to Christian Unity and see Timothy Radcliffe's Reply to Neal Ascherson Democracy in the Church?

FAITH & PUBLIC POLICY FORUM

WEDNESDAY 2 MAY 07

'Religion, Citizenship and Liberal Pluralism'

Lord Raymond Plant, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Philosophy, King's College London

All seminars are held between 5.30pm and 7.00pm in room 3c, Old Committee Room, Strand, London

Driving the development of the ascetical tradition was a religious culture of hope and love - hope that one can genuinely train his or her spiritually destructive passions, and the expectation that the meek and merciful would achieve a love of Jesus Christ. It was the ascetical discipline that in no small measure protected the early Church from the onslaughts of pagan sexuality, and indeed, contributed mightily to the development of Christian culture. Because the purpose of religion has changed, this ancient understanding of the ascetical tradition has faded in the Catholic Church. . . . .

In its purpose, theory, and practice, the therapeutic mentality stands in stark opposition to religious devotion and personal repentance for sin. Allegiance to the therapeutic mentality has dislodged ascetical habits and manners...

These ideas persist because of a deeply held assumption about the role of science in probing the foundational truths about living things. Since Descartes, science has claimed the privileged status as the arbiter of all objective truth. Philosophy, traditionally understood in the writings, for example, of Plato, and especially the natural philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, can no longer lay claim to the truth (it is supposed) since this ancient and dated discipline does not have the specialized knowledge of the sciences, which give them their unique and privileged status. Rather than begin with the study of the intellect, the life of virtue, and that of the spiritual life in religion, in the empirical sciences, and many in the therapeutic disciplines, rest comfortably with the idea that man’s conscious behaviors about the good, and about the significance of sex, can only be understood by investigating the bodily appetites - most importantly sexual desire - and social forces. Many believe that only the scientist is uniquely qualified for this task and both the cleric’s and the commoner’s judgment on such matters must defer to this expertise. In sum, little quarter is given to religion or philosophy for guiding sexual behavior or teaching the student of its nature. This is especially true for therapeutic psychology, the branch of behavioral science that treats persons with emotional concerns.

On the contrary, Plato observed, for example, that in the act of healing, the body of man cannot be cured without a knowledge of the soul - the psyche. This principle implies a hierarchical understanding. That is, the lower part, the body (and here we include the emotions) cannot be completely understood without understanding of the higher part, the soul, because the body is by nature meant to serve and be governed by the soul. Hence, when the physician treats the patient, he must consider the soul as well as the body.

As a result of the decline of asceticism, the currents of pagan sexuality have seriously harmed the Church. Without a return to asceticism and the ancient purpose of religion which gave birth to it, the Church remains unprepared to withstand the inevitable waves of sexual corruption. The recent crisis demonstrates that the mental health professions imbued with the therapeutic mentality provided no safe harbor. They have no theory of Christian asceticism for use with laymen, the formation of seminarians, or in the rehabilitation of deviant priests. Virtually nothing can be found in therapeutic science on the subjects of asceticism, chastity or virginity, and prayer is addressed only superficially. Without this understanding, therapeutic psychology cannot proceed from a rational basis to assist in the psychological treatment of the fallen Christian in the return to authentic devotion, the priest in his return to ascetical practice, and the seminarian in the formation of an ascetical chastity.

It is time that we move beyond the idea that the psychology of the Christian be left in the hands of specialists who have no interest or understanding of religious devotion, chastity, prayer, and ascetical discipline. We take the first small steps in outlining a psychological theory of Christian asceticism and draw upon experimental science in both psychology and biology to illustrate the points that we set forth from St. Thomas Aquinas. However, we must define the nature and the scope of the problem as it currently exists, how the sexual apology grew out of therapeutic science and infiltrated the Church, the obstacles in the path of reform, and finally, how ascetical tradition can be framed to address the problems we face today.

CWN Church scandal reflects ascetical breakdown with an excerpt from a chapter of The Linacre Institute After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests

A church, in fact, when it’s working, when it’s alive and healthy, is a place that tells you the world is too small. That may sound a rather odd way of putting it, but the church should be a place that tells you that the world is too small. That is, the world of rational calculation, the world of profit and negotiation, the world where we know exactly how to measure success and failure, and the world which teaches us ways of successfully managing the uncomfortable edgy feelings at both extremes so that we don’t have to pay too much attention to them. A church says that that’s not enough, the world is too small. You need bigger words than the world will allow; you need a bigger heart than the world would allow because you need words for gratitude and ecstasy just as you need words for terror and pain and misery. And the world is not going to give you that space. And the church is, because the church celebrates a hospitable God in whose embrace is room enough for the whole of you.

Archbishop of Canterbury at the CTE Forum in Swanwick 2003

Next Friday evening (27 April 07) Archbishop Rowan Williams is speaking on discipleshipship at Fulcrum in London. See you there?

The catholicity of the Church expresses the fullness, integrity, and totality of its life in Christ through the Holy Spirit in all times and places. This mystery is expressed in each community of baptized believers in which the apostolic faith is confessed and lived, the gospel is proclaimed, and the sacraments are celebrated. Each church is the Church catholic and not simply a part of it. Each church is the Church catholic, but not the whole of it. Each church fulfils its catholicity when it is in communion with the other churches. We affirm that the catholicity of the Church is expressed most visibly in sharing holy communion and in a mutually recognised and reconciled ministry.

The relationship among churches is dynamically interactive. Each church is called to mutual giving and receiving gifts and to mutual accountability. Each church must become aware of all that is provisional in its life and have the courage to acknowledge this to other churches. Even today, when eucharistic sharing is not always possible, divided churches express mutual accountability and aspects of catholicity when they pray for one another, share resources, assist one another in times of need, make decisions together, work together for justice, reconciliation, and peace, hold one another accountable to the discipleship inherent in baptism, and maintain dialogue in the face of differences, refusing to say â??I have no need of youâ?? (1 Cor.12:21). Apart from one another we are impoverished.

World Council of Churches Called to be the One Church

"Get rid of the cross or we will burn your Churchesâ??. This is the threat aimed at the Chaldean Church of Sts Peter and Paul, located in the ancient Christian quarter of Baghdad, Dora.

The Islamic group active in Dora seems to have delivered an ultimatum to the Christian community there: convert to Islam or die; moreover reports say that they have delivered a Fatwa forbidding Christians to wear the cross or make any religious gesture. It also permits the confiscation of goods and properties belonging to the Christian families who find themselves forced to flee their homes for safety at short notice.

Baghdadâ??s **Christian community**â??s worries have been added to by the US militaryâ??s decision to forcibly occupy Babel College, property of the Chaldean Church. The Babel, the only faculty of theology in the country, houses on of the most ancient religious libraries in the region, full of priceless manuscripts. Because of the increased insecurity in the city and continual abductions of religious the faculty had transferred to Ankawa, in Kurdistan January last, leaving the building empty.

Asia news Threats to the Church in Iraq

Right from the days of Jesus’ mission between the Jordan, Galilee and Jerusalem, some have been embarrassed by the eschatology articulated in his message of the approach of God’s final reign. Some have not been able to avoid asking whether there is something shamefully mistaken or wrong hereabouts. Such embarrassment has persisted to this day. For about the last 100 years such concerns have become especially strong amongst some academic circles including theologians, historians, anthropologists and others. Complementing this, we are familiar with a recurrent cluster of embarrassments in encountering death or the dying, and topics such as guilt, sin, judgement, the worth and meaning of human life, authority, tradition, and related matters, in a wide range of contexts. The anthropologist Mary Douglas, most famously in her book Purity and Danger, explored insights concerning how we (as human beings) tend to find dangerous or dirty (impure) matters which we do not know how to make sense of, in terms of our conventional and established ways of trying to sort out our experience into various kinds and schemas. For example, is blood more to do with life or death, and how can we, how should we, keep these apart, or connect them, or both?

If Knight is right, then he offers us a powerful paradigm, new yet with ancient roots, for living and working face-to-face with such matters, so as to make better sense of them and of our shared, shareable humanity, in the company of Israel, Jesus Christ and the Christian community. His account of the triune God articulates the grammar which guides this approach. Knight helps us, here and now, towards appreciating better the riches of the vision of Irenaeus of Lyons: the glory of God is a living human being: human life is the vision of the glory of God. This is a book to buy and re-read, to argue and struggle and live with.

Ian McPherson Amazon (UK) review of The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God

You can read the Introduction to The Eschatological Economy on this site (right side bar) and chapter 1 at Amazon

Now you can read chapters 2-6 of The Eschatological Economy at Google Book .

Anglican Mainstream's article On the cross gives a handy summary of the debate on penal substitution - and see Mike Ovey's new Pierced for my Transgressions - evidence that there is just a little theology going on in London.

What is occurring in modern Europe? We are all observers of how a dramatic weakening of Europeâ??s Christian identity is taking place. Europe is losing the characteristics given to it by Christianity â?? I would like to stress: both Western and Eastern! Borrowing some words from the title of our conference, Europe is losing its soul. Over the centuries the Christian soul of Europe gave it life, made it remarkably attractive for the most remote countries and peoples and endowed its culture with universal character.

European values are becoming more and more secular, but I would not say that these values have totally lost their ties with Christianity. Many of them could not have appeared if there had been no Christianity in Europe. They represent a watered-down, worldly version of traditional European Christian values, and in this devitalized version are often turned against the Christianity that gave birth to them, casting doubt on the Christian identity of Europe. Breaking with the spiritual foundations of European civilization, these values risk losing the good that was placed in them by Christianity. Our concern is that Europe, having lost its connection to Christianity, may in the end make recourse to such forms of oppression or even violence against the individual that have always been foreign to her. Russia, as no other country, has experienced just how grave the break with oneâ??s spiritual roots can be for civilization, something that threatens societies not only with the loss of their countenance, but also with the rise of violence toward the person, egregious violations of personal freedom and the suppression of spiritual needs. The history of Russia in the twentieth century should serve as a warning to modern Europe, demonstrating that the rejection of the spiritual and cultural foundations on which a civilization is founded can present a serious threat to civilization itself. Indeed, the forms of social relations that were shaped in the twentieth century were to a significant extent a secularized variant of values characteristic of the Russian spiritual tradition: collectivism became the secularized version of conciliarity (â??sobornostâ??â??) and the community-centered life, a single state ideology replaced the spiritual authority of the Church. The effects of this substitution are well-known to everyone. Thus, secularism, the break with spiritual traditions, represents a great threat to the existence of European civilization.

At the foundation of this declaration lie two principal distinctions: between two meanings of human dignity, which we have agreed to call value and dignity, as well as between two meanings of freedom: freedom as the non-determinatedness of human actions and freedom as not being subjugated to evil and sin. The fact that man is created in the image of God, as well as the fact of the Incarnation, i.e. the assumption by the Son of God of our nature for the salvation of the human race, serve as the basis for the affirmation of the pre-eminent value of human nature. This value cannot be taken away or destroyed. It should be respected by everyone: by other people, society, the state, etc. An integral part of human nature that gives it special value is the freedom of choice. This freedom was placed into human nature by God Himself and cannot be violated by anyone: neither other people, nor evil powers, nor even God Himself.

By itself this freedom is only an instrument with which the person realizes his moral choices. Freedom of choice should be used for attaining freedom from sin. Only by liberating oneself from the shackles of sin and acquiring the â??freedom of the glory of Godâ??s childrenâ??, as St. Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Romans (8,21), can one give meaning to his inherent ability to make free choices and acquire that which in the Declaration is called dignity. Human dignity is the highest goal of existence. Expressed in theological terms, it corresponds to the likeness of God in the person. Dignity is acquired when one makes his choices in favour of the good, and is lost when one chooses evil.

Just as freedom of choice, human rights, to which the Declaration is dedicated, are instruments that should serve the higher goal of the moral perfection of the person. On the one hand, the Declaration recognizes human rights as an important social establishment that defends people as Godâ??s creation from infringements from outside. On the other hand, it places the category of human rights into a moral context. The text of the Declaration states: â??We are for the right to life and against the â??rightâ?? to death, for the right to creation and against the â??rightâ?? to destruction. We acknowledge the rights and liberties of the person to the extent that they help the person rise toward the good, protect him from internal and external evil, and help him to realize his potential positively in societyâ??.

Therefore, as mentioned in the text of the Declaration: â??Rights and liberties are inextricably connected with the obligations and responsibilities of the personâ??. In the Declaration the categories of the liberties and rights of the person received an additional, very important dimension â?? the moral dimension. This dimension sets a higher goal to the essentially instrumental categories of the freedom of choice and rights. Thanks to this moral dimension, the category of human rights acquires a teleological completion and a goal that lies beyond its own boundaries, in the realm of the most profound areas of human existence. From this perspective the Declaration contains a more multi-faceted, complex and holistic approach to the problem of human rights, an approach that takes into account the fact that the person bears the image of God and that his existence should have moral significance.

Along with the participants of the Tenth World Russian Peopleâ??s Council, we too can testify to the fact that the welfare and perhaps the very existence of human civilization in a globalized world will to a great extent depend on the ability to combine rights and freedoms with moral responsibility. For freedom and morality, placed by God Himself into human nature and which belong to everyone regardless of their culture or religion, are able to combine the existing civilizational models in a peaceful and viable manner.

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Introductory Speech at the European Conference on Christian Culture â??Giving a soul to Europeâ?? Vienna, 3-5 May 2006

â??Jesus of Nazarethâ?? is the first part of a two-volume work that Joseph Ratzinger conceived many years ago as part of his â??long interior journeyâ?? in search of â??the face of the Lord.â?? In this first volume, the narrative begins with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and continues to his transfiguration on Mount Tabor. The second volume will continue to his passion, death, and resurrection, with another chapter dedicated to the accounts of his infancy: the annunciation, his birth, the wise men, the flight into Egypt.

In this first volume, the narrative begins with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and continues to his transfiguration on Mount Tabor. The second volume will continue to his passion, death, and resurrection, with another chapter dedicated to the accounts of his infancy: the annunciation, his birth, the wise men, the flight into Egypt. In the preface, Ratzinger explains his intention in writing this book: to present the Jesus of the Gospels to the men of today as the historically real Jesus, true God and true man.

In the introduction, Benedict XVI presents Jesus as the â??new Mosesâ?? proclaimed by the Old Testament in the book of Deuteronomy: â??a prophet with whom the Lord spoke face to face.â?? But it goes much further: if Moses could not contemplate the face of God, but could only see his â??shoulders,â?? Jesus is not only the friend of God, but his only-begotten Son; he is â??in the bosom of the Fatherâ?? and therefore can reveal him: â??He who sees me sees the Father.â??

The first chapter is dedicated to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Immersing himself in the water, Jesus â??accepts death for the sins of humanityâ?? â?? while the voice from heaven that proclaims him the beloved Son of God â??is an anticipation of the resurrection.â?? The trajectory of his life is already drawn.

Chapter two: the temptation of Jesus. In order to save humanity, Jesus must overcome the main temptations that, in different forms, threaten men in every era. And by transforming them into obedience, he reopens the way to God, to the true Promised Land that is the â??kingdom of God.â??

The third chapter is dedicated to the Kingdom of God, which is the lordship of God over the world and over history, but is identified with the very person of Jesus, living and present here and now. In Jesus, â??God comes to meet us â?? he reigns in a divine way, meaning without worldly power; he reigns with a love that endures â??to the very endâ??.â??

Chapter four: the sermon on the mount. In this, Jesus appears as the â??new Moses,â?? who brings to fulfillment the Torah, the law. The Beatitudes are the hinge of the new law and, at the same time, a self-portrait of Jesus. He himself is the law: â??This is the point that demands a decision, and thus it is the point that leads to the cross and the resurrection.â??

Chapter five: the Lordâ??s prayer. Having become a follower of Jesus, the believer can call upon the Father with the words that Jesus taught him: the Our Father. Benedict XVI explains this point by point.

Chapter six: the disciples. Their fellowship with Jesus gathers the disciples into the â??weâ?? of a new family, the Church, which is in turn sent out to bring his message to the world.

Chapter seven: the parables. Benedict XVI illustrates the nature and purpose of these, and then comments on three of them, all from the Gospel of Luke: the parable of the good Samaritan, the one about the two brothers and the good father, and the one about the rich pleasuremonger and the poor Lazarus.

Chapter eight: the great Johannine images â?? water, the vine and wine, bread, the shepherd. The pope comments on these one by one, after having explained who the evangelist John was.

Chapter nine: the confession of Peter and the transfiguration. Both of these events are decisive moments for Jesus, and also for his disciples. These clearly show what is the true mission of the Son of God on the earth, and what is the fate of those who want to follow him. Jesus, the Son of the living God, is the Messiah awaited by Israel who, through the scandal of the cross, leads humanity to the kingdom of God, to definitive freedom.

Chapter ten: Jesusâ?? statements about himself. Benedict XVI comments on three of these: â??Son of Man,â?? â??Son,â?? and â??I Am.â?? The last of these is the mysterious name with which God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, and through which the Gospels provide a glimpse of the fact that Jesus is that same God.

Sandro Magister And He Appeared in Their Midst

Benedict XVI Jesus of Nazareth

In recent years, there has been a strong emphasis in Orthodox Ecclesiology on the eucharistic understanding of the Church. Truly, the Eucharist Liturgy is the climax of the Church's life, the event in which the people of God are celebrating the incarnation, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, sharing His glorified body and blood, tasting the Kingdom to come. The ecclesial koinonia is indeed constituted by the participation of the baptized in the eucharistic communion, the sacramental actualization of the economy of salvation, a living reality which belongs both to history and to eschatology. While this emphasis is deeply rooted in the biblical and patristic tradition and is of extreme importance today, it might easily lead to the conclusion that Orthodox limit the interpretation of the Church to an exclusive worshipping community, to protecting and to preserving the Good News for its members. Therefore a need was felt to affirm that the Liturgy is not a self-centred service and action, but is a service for the building of the one Body of Christ within the economy of salvation which is for all people of all ages. The liturgical assembly is the Father's House, where the invitation to the banquet of the heavenly bread is constantly voiced and addressed not only to the members of the Church, but also to the non-Christians and strangers.

This liturgical concentration, "the liturgy within the Liturgy", is essential for the Church, but it has to be understood in all its dimensions. There is a double movement in the Liturgy: on the one hand, the assembling of the people of God to perform the memorial of the death and resurrection of our Lord "until He comes again". It also manifests and realizes the process by which "the cosmos is becoming ecclesia". Therefore the preparation for Liturgy takes place not only at the personal spiritual level, but also at the level of human historical and natural realities. In preparing for Liturgy, the Christian starts a spiritual journey which affects everything in his life: family, properties, authority, position, and social relations. It re-orientates the direction of his entire human existence towards its sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, renewed by the Holy Communion and the Holy Spirit, the members of the Church are sent to be authentic testimony to Jesus Christ in the world. The mission of the Church rests upon the radiating and transforming power of the Liturgy. It is a stimulus in sending out the people of God to the world to confess the Gospel and to be involved in man's liberation.

Liturgically, this continual double movement of thanksgiving is expressed in the ministry of the deacon. On the one hand he brings and offers to the altar the gifts of the people; on the other, he shares and distributes the Holy Sacraments which nourish the life of Christians. Everything is linked with the central action of the Church, which is the Eucharist, and everybody has a diaconal function in reconciling the separated realities.

Ion Bria The Liturgy after the Liturgy and also in (88 page) book form.

The Faith and Order Commission following the New Delhi assembly turned its attention to a new study of the patristic period. A study group was formed in 1962 and decided to give particular attention to the text of Basil of Caesarea on the Holy Spirit. In presenting its report to the Faith and Order Commission at Bristol in 1967, the group says in its introduction:

"All churches share the common foundation of the Fathers. But they are not accorded the same authority by all the churches, and patristics study is carried on by various methods and with unequal intensity. Therefore it is of great importance for the further development of the ecumenical movement that we come to a common understanding of the Fathers. The problem appeared early in the ecumenical movement. Its urgency has become especially clear, however, since the family of Orthodox churches began to participate fully in the World Council of Churches. … In view of the special significance of the problem for the relationships between Orthodox and Western member churches, the group was to be composed of an equal number of participants from East and West."

The report, apart from a special interpretation of the essay on the Holy Spirit by Basil of Caesarea, deals with the significance of patristic study for the ecumenical discussion and reflects on the significance and the message of patristic texts for today. Unfortunately, this creative ecumenical approach to a common study of the patristic period has not been continued further in the work of the Faith and Order Commission.

A parallel study on "The Importance of the Conciliar Process in the Ancient Church for the Ecumenical Movement"... introduced the notion of "conciliarity" into ecumenical discussion and explored in particular the importance of conciliarity for the unity of the church.

The report explains: "If we are rightly to understand the importance of synods and councils for the life of the church, it is wise to begin with the general notion of 'conciliarity'. By conciliarity we mean the fact that the church in all times needs assemblies to represent it and has in fact felt this need. These assemblies may differ greatly from one another; however, conciliarity, the necessity that they take place, is a constant structure of the church, a dimension which belongs to its nature. As the church itself is 'an assembly' and appears as assembly both in worship and many other expressions of its life, so it needs both at the local and on all other possible levels representative assemblies in order to answer the questions which it faces."

The report underlines the close relationship between the conciliar process and the unity of the church by pointing to the fact that all councils were rooted in the eucharistic life of the church and were intended to strengthen the life of the church as the eucharistic assembly. Recognizing the fact that contemporary church assemblies composed of representatives of churches which do not live in eucharistic fellowship cannot be properly designated as a council, the commission was nevertheless convinced that they can "contribute towards creating the conditions which will enable all churches to participate in a truly ecumenical council"

. . .

There can be no doubt, however, about the decisive influence of Orthodox thinking in all three texts, particularly in terms of the emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit both in baptism and the eucharist (epiklesis) and the emphasis on the ecclesiological and eschatological dimension of both baptism and the eucharist.

Konrad Raiser The Importance of the Orthodox Contribution to the World Council of Churches (WCC)

Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius

Fellowship Conference 2007: Scripture in the Church 13 - 17 August 2007 All Saints Pastoral Centre, London Colney (near St Albans), England

There is a limit beyond which the words of Benedict XVI do not go. They reach completely only those who listen to them in person, whether present physically or thanks to a live television broadcast. The number of these persons is substantial, more than for any earlier pontificate. The Easter â??urbi et orbiâ?? message and the Way of the Cross on Good Friday were followed by huge crowds and retransmitted in more than forty countries. But even more vast is the number of persons who receive the popeâ??s message in an incomplete form â?? or not at all.

Benedict XVI experienced this communications block to an even greater extent in the other celebrations of last Holy Week.

In the Chrism Mass on Thursday morning, the pope dedicated the homily to explaining the profound meaning of being a priest, â??clothed with Christâ?? and thus able to act and speak â??in persona Christi.â?? He did this by reviewing the symbolism of the liturgical vestments. But how many of the more than four hundred thousand Catholic bishops and priests did his words reach?

In the homily for the Mass of the Lordâ??s Supper on Thursday evening, Benedict XVI illustrated the novelty of Jesusâ?? Passover with respect to the one celebrated by the Jews.

In the homily for the Easter Vigil, he described the victory of Jesus over death by using the depictions customary in the Eastern Churches: with the risen Jesus who descends into Hades, and thus â??brings the journey of the incarnation to its completion. By his death he now clasps the hand of Adam, of every man and woman who awaits him, and brings them to the light.â??

But among those present at these Masses, only those who understood Italian were able to listen fruitfully to the popeâ??s homilies. The Catholic media outlets that translated and distributed the texts in various countries barely extended the listening area, to a niche audience.

For a pope like Benedict XVI, who has centered his ministry precisely upon the word, this is a serious limitation. The offices in the Roman curia that deal with communications have to this point done nothing new in order to remedy this, at least in part. For example, no one sees to a quick distribution of the popeâ??s texts by internet to all the bishops and priests of the world, in the various languages.

The only effective initiatives in this area are those of Benedict XVI in person. With his book about Jesus that will be issued in a few days in multiple languages, he will reach in a direct and personal way an extremely high number of readers all over the world.

And it is precisely Jesus, â??true God and true man,â?? who is the heart of Pope Benedictâ??s message. Just as he was the heart of his Easter homilies. Here they are in their entirety:

Magister then includes the following texts in full:

**

1. At the Chrism Mass on the morning of Holy Thursday

2. At the Mass of the Lordâ??s Supper on the evening of Holy Thursday

3. At the Way of the Cross on Good Friday

4. At the Easter Vigil Mass

5. After the Mass on Easter Sunday

**

Sandro Magister Easter in Rome: The Secret Homilies of the Successor of Peter

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. His Word became flesh in the living, dying and rising of Jesus Christ, God's human face. In response the Son gives himself to the Father and the Father is the Father because the Son, who has answered his call has given him his name. The Spirit enables creation to participate in this dynamic of giving and receiving.

Humanity is one of the languages which the persons of the Trinity use in communicating with one another. The Trinity is not some divine threesome but a union in which the persons call one other into being. They give themselves up to one another in the Spirit and in doing so each evokes in each what else would never come to be. The resurrection opens the door to a participation in this way of being fully human. "Say to my brethren that I ascend to my Father and now your Father and my God and now your God".

The resurrection is a revelation of the life of God which was expressed on the first Easter Day but the resurrection is also the open door to a new creation in which we are called to participate in the life of the Trinity and to discover that life in all its fullness comes not as we hoard up ourselves and set our hopes of happiness on accumulating things but when in the power of his Spirit we give up ourselves to one another and so bring a new world of possibility into being.

This has been proved experimentally in the lives of the saints. Even to those of whom St Peter said "they did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead."

This keeping him company continues. God holds out the gift to us of life with him and he has started the work of building a holy people. The day of resurrection has dawned. It is accomplished. But the resurrection is also happening and the resurrection is full of future hope in a world where we have only just begun to learn how to speak the language of humanity as God intends.

The Rt Revd Richard Chartres, Bishop of London Sermon for Easter Day

He is a very well-read bishop, so we are very glad to have him.

The Holy Spirit is the medium of God for humankind. He makes a real and material place for us and supplies the whole resource of our creaturely life with God. The Father and the Son speak the Spirit. The Spirit is the language they speak. But the Spirit can speak and be many languages, without being less the language of the Son and Father. The Spirit extends their speech to create a new language, which the Father and the Son are content to speak. They speak humanity. Humanity is one of the modes in which they speak divinity to each other. Humanity does not give divinity something that it did not have before; it is not a reduction of, or addition to, their divinity. The Son is the first speaker and the native speaker. He speaks humanity perfectly and is at home in the flesh; and in the flesh of humanity he is perfectly at home with the Father. He is not impeded by or disguised by the flesh, for it is brought into existence by the speaking of the Son and the Father. The human entity and mode of being are spoken by that enfleshing word and utterance. This humanity the Son receives from the Father, by the Spirit.

Douglas H Knight The Eschatological Economy: Time and the Hospitality of God chapter 1.5

The Lord Jesus, who became for us the food of truth and love, speaks of the gift of his life and assures us that "if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever" (Jn 6:51). This "eternal life" begins in us even now, thanks to the transformation effected in us by the gift of the Eucharist: "He who eats me will live because of me" (Jn 6:57). These words of Jesus make us realize how the mystery "believed" and "celebrated" contains an innate power making it the principle of new life within us and the form of our Christian existence. By receiving the body and blood of Jesus Christ we become sharers in the divine life in an ever more adult and conscious way. Here too, we can apply Saint Augustine's words, in his Confessions, about the eternal Logos as the food of our souls. Stressing the mysterious nature of this food, Augustine imagines the Lord saying to him: "I am the food of grown men; grow, and you shall feed upon me; nor shall you change me, like the food of your flesh, into yourself, but you shall be changed into me." It is not the eucharistic food that is changed into us, but rather we who are mysteriously transformed by it. Christ nourishes us by uniting us to himself; "he draws us into himself."

Here the eucharistic celebration appears in all its power as the source and summit of the Church's life, since it expresses at once both the origin and the fulfilment of the new and definitive worship of God, the logiké latreía. Saint Paul's exhortation to the Romans in this regard is a concise description of how the Eucharist makes our whole life a spiritual worship pleasing to God: "I appeal to you therefore, my brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom 12:1). In these words the new worship appears as a total self-offering made in communion with the whole Church. The Apostle's insistence on the offering of our bodies emphasizes the concrete human reality of a worship which is anything but disincarnate. The Bishop of Hippo goes on to say that "this is the sacrifice of Christians: that we, though many, are one body in Christ. The Church celebrates this mystery in the sacrament of the altar, as the faithful know, and there she shows them clearly that in what is offered, she herself is offered." Catholic doctrine, in fact, affirms that the Eucharist, as the sacrifice of Christ, is also the sacrifice of the Church, and thus of all the faithful. This insistence on sacrifice – a "making sacred" – expresses all the existential depth implied in the transformation of our human reality as taken up by Christ (cf. Phil 3:12).

SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS s.70 The Eucharistic form of the Christian Life

Logiké latreía (Romans 12.1) - 'reasonable worship' - worship of the true God transforms us from irrational and reasonless to holy, rational and joyful creatures, who no longer seek to makes deities - idols - of ourselves or one another. The Son's true worship of the Father is the act that creates and re-creates truth here on earth, and allows us to participate freely with one another in the Son's life.

Britainâ??s democracy has stood out among nations both by its tolerance and its traditional respect for the value of religion in the public sphere. These are not principles in contradiction. Indeed British democracy has been exemplary precisely because these two principles are mutually reinforcing. There is no room for intolerant secular dogmatism or cynicism towards Christians. But I fear we may be seeing now exactly the appearance of such attitudes. So when Christians stand by their beliefs, they are intolerant dogmatists. When they sin, they are hypocrites. When they take the side of the poor, they are soft-headed liberals. When they seek to defend the family, they are right-wing reactionaries.

I do not think it an accident that this new secularist intolerance of religion has been accompanied by the stateâ??s increasing acceptance of anti-religious thinking. There is a modern British law, not actually on the statute book but widely observed, that politicians, in the famous words of Alistair Campbell, â??donâ??t do Godâ??. Politicians should stay clear of religion, and treat all religions alike. They are free to believe what they like, because the state â??has no beliefsâ??.

What looks like liberality is in reality a radical exclusion of religion from the public sphere, and such an exclusion does deep harm to the tolerance and inclusivity which has worked so well for so long. Yet this doesnâ??t sit easily with what the state often wants from religion. If one looks at Catholic schools, for example, one cannot deny that they are among the most popular schools in British society. Most of them are over-subscribed, they work hard at integrating pupils and are among the most socially diverse. Where they can, they are happy to receive a significant number of people from other faiths â?? or from none. Whenever I meet politicians, of whichever particular party persuasion, they invariably comment on how much admired our Catholic schools are. But I always say to them, â??You cannot have the fruits without the rootsâ??. Catholic schools are rightly recognised as gems in our education system but we must bear in mind that they are underpinned by a community of faith lived by ordinary families, families who are happy to contribute to the common good of our society. Remove the faith which motivates those parentsâ?? choice of a school and you remove the heart from those very schools.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-Oâ??Connor RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC FORUM â?? the Corbishley Lecture, 28 March 2007, Westminster Cathedral Hall. the full lecture is a Word document at the bottom of the page

Well roared, Cormac. Now what coverage has this speech received?

The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous: "The right hand of the Lord does valiantly; the right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly."

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not give me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Easter Day Psalm 118

Now what the events of Good Friday and Easter tell us is that every single human being is implicated in something profoundly wrong. We say, rather glibly, that Jesus died for our sins, that he died to save humankind – and thereby we say that we are all in need of something we cannot find or manufacture for ourselves, in need of a word, a gift, a touch from someone else, somewhere else, so that we can be made free of whatever it is that keeps us in the clutch of illusions and failures. If the purpose of Jesus dying was that all might be made whole, the implication is that all have been sick. So that Good Friday tells all of us, those who think they’re good and those who know they’re bad, all alike, to look inside and ask what part we would have played in the drama of the Lord’s death. There is only one innocent character in that drama and it isn’t me or you. So for all of us there is something in our lives that would, if it came to it, if it reigned unchecked in us, allow us to range ourselves with the crucifiers – some habit of selfishness or fear, some prejudice, some guilt that we don’t want confronted, some deficit in love or lovability. In some way, however small, we have already contributed to the death of Jesus. He is there on the cross because we are the way we are.

But on Easter Day, this bleak recognition is turned on its head. We were all involved; yet the combined weight of every human failure and wrongness, however small or great, all of that could not extinguish the creative love of God. We share one human story in which we are all caught up in one sad tangle of selfishness and fear and so on. But God has entered that human story; he has lived a life of divine and unconditional love in a human life of flesh and blood. He has not protected himself, or forced anyone to accept him. And in this world that human beings have made for themselves, this world of politics and religion and social co-operation, divine love loses. It is helpless to maintain itself in the face of the so-called real world. The vortex of error and failure that affects everybody in the world draws Jesus into its darkness and seems to destroy him body and soul. That, says Good Friday, is the kind of world this is, and we are all part of it.

Yet there is more than the world to think about. If that love is really what it claims to be, eternal and unconditional, it will not be destroyed. What’s more, the human embodiment of that love, the flesh and blood of Jesus, cannot be destroyed. As we heard in the reading from Acts this morning, the friends of Jesus ate and drank with him after he was raised from the dead – as we are doing in this Holy Communion. The life that God brought into the world in Jesus is here for ever with us.

Archbishop of Canterbury Easter Day sermon

Beloved Concelebrants and pious and God-loving children of the Church,

CHRIST HAS RISEN! Once again we hear this joyful Christian greeting within our Christian Communities. But many of these prosperous Communities disregard the question and very real issue of death, and live as though death did not exist and the resurrection was without meaning. However, â??Fearful is the mystery of deathâ??, as the hymnographer says and our daily reality reiterates. The fear of death, which is most acute in those who confront problems of health or old age, even when it is alleviated in a variety of ways, consumes our peace of mind, fills the soul with irrational anxiety and often leads to suicide, for the relentless insecurity becomes unbearable.

The Resurrection of Christ put an end to this insecurity. Death is no longer the ruler of life; it is not the unavoidable end of our existence. Our tomb stones do not overshadow our existence for ever with an everlasting silence. The stone which shut the tomb of Christ was rolled away, and Christ came forth triumphant, master over death, unscathed by its sting, the firstborn of the dead. From that moment, the door of the tomb remained open behind Him for all.

The fear of death has vanished for all who wish to follow in the footsteps of Christ. All things have been filled with joy and hope. â??Where, Death, is your sting? Where, Hell, is your victory?, asked my predecessor Saint John Chrysostom in triumph.

However, brethren and beloved children in the Lord, we live the ever-present death and continuous Resurrection of the Lord, not only in the sacrifice of Golgotha that we see portrayed in our churches, but also in the lives of the saints, ancient and contemporary. The Lord rose and granted life. But He also continues to grant resurrection and life. Death is now a gate of passage to a new state of life. It has ceased to be a prison for souls, a dead end, a state without hope. The boundaries of deathâ??s stronghold were broken down, its gates shattered, and everyone who follows Christ is able to return to life with Christ.

Believe, brethren and children, and have hope! Be free from the fear of death and lifeâ??s anxieties, because for the Faithful, like yourselves, death is no more. Only, cleanse your souls and bodies and enrol as followers of Christ, Who is also your own Resurrection. Christ has risen and you are all potentially risen. The glad and joyful message of the Resurrection is a message for you. It is not something foreign or irrelevant to you. Your mouths should be filled with joy when you say, â??Christ has risen!â?? For â??Truly He has risen!â?? and we are raised with Him.

May His life-giving Grace, â??which heals what is infirm and makes up what is lackingâ??, be with you all. Amen.

Holy Pascha 2007 + Archbishop of Constantinople Bartholomew Fervent Intercessor to The Risen Christ for you all

If modern Britain faces a challenge today, it is to recover the language and the spirit of the age of democracy, to forge a meeting place for all citizens where firmly-held beliefs are not disqualified because they are seen as â??outmodedâ?? or â??dogmaticâ??. The public sphere is the forum of collective reasoning, and it cannot be a space empty of tradition and particular belief. A tolerant society is not one without constitutive beliefs, since its tolerance flows from a very constitutive belief.

Pope Benedict rightly emphasises the use of reason. Reason informs discussion and reasonable decisions. The public sphere is the locus of a discussion in which society seeks a common mind about important matters. The importance of religion to that discussion is vital, because religion is, fundamentally, concerned with truth. Truth is not something we construct, but something we seek together. The right to religious freedom and to respect for the exercise of conscience on its journey towards the truth has been increasingly recognised as the foundation of the cumulative rights of the person. There can only be a democratic discussion when truth is a matter of universal concern. That is why freedom of religion cannot be a relative value. Freedom of religion is not unconditional, of course; but it cannot be made relative to other rights on the grounds that truth is not the concern of the state. A state which denies the freedom of religion is not a religiously neutral state, but a state which upholds relativism. Relativism takes its stand on a desire for equal treatment of different beliefs in the conviction that these beliefs are relative. Yet, in contradictory fashion, it does so because of a belief in human equality and dignity, which are not relative values. Relativism is no friend of true democracy. By banishing religion from the public sphere in the name of equality, it discounts religious perspectives from debate, banishes truth to a private sphere, labels it â??religiousâ?? and infers it to be irrational, and solidifies disagreements into divergent strands of belief. Debate is thereby impoverished, and democracy weakened.

The assertion of truth is not an obstacle to freedom but its precondition. If we allow religious perspectives in debate, we can discuss issues about truth on the basis of reason. We can search for the truth together, using reason in freedom.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-Oâ??Connor RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC FORUM â?? the Corbishley Lecture, 28 March 2007, Westminster Cathedral Hall. (The full lecture is a Word document at the bottom of the page).

The procession of the Palms is the procession of Christ the King: we profess the Kingship of Jesus Christ, we recognize Jesus as the Son of David, the true Solomon, the King of peace and justice. Recognizing him as King means accepting him as the One who shows us the way, in whom we trust and whom we follow. It means accepting his Word day after day as a valid criterion for our life. It means seeing in him the authority to which we submit. We submit to him because his authority is the authority of the truth.

Psalm 24[23], which speaks of the ascent, ends with an entrance liturgy in front of the temple gate: "Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in". In the old liturgy for Palm Sunday, the priest, arriving in front of the church, would knock loudly with the shaft of the processional cross on the door that was still closed; thereupon, it would be opened. This was a beautiful image of the mystery of Jesus Christ himself who, with the wood of his Cross, with the power of his love that is given, knocked from the side of the world at God's door; on the side of a world that was not able to find access to God. With his Cross, Jesus opened God's door, the door between God and men. Now it is open. But the Lord also knocks with his Cross from the other side: he knocks at the door of the world, at the doors of our hearts, so many of which are so frequently closed to God. And he says to us something like this: if the proof that God gives you of his existence in creation does not succeed in opening you to him, if the words of Scripture and the Church's message leave you indifferent, then look at me - the God who let himself suffer for you, who personally suffers with you - and open yourself to me, your Lord and your God.

Pope Benedict Palm Sunday homily

In order to recover its Christian roots, Europe needs the re-emergence of Christian unity. In their present state of separation, the causes of which lie in the distant past, the Christian churches cannot call effectively upon the nations of Europe to remember and reappropriate the spiritual and cultural resources of their Christian past. The ruptures of Christian unity that have led to the separate existence of confessional churches and to their endless controversies have contributed so decisively to the calamities of European history and to the sufferings of the nations of Europe, that these separate churches continuously remind educated Europeans of the historical reasons why modern culture and political order have had to be cut loose from any religious foundation. But human life needs a religious foundation lest it becomes empty of meaning and self-destructive. The cultural history of humankind provides ample evidence that this function of religion is irreplaceable. This is also true of social life and public culture. The only question, in the long run, is what kind of religion comes to be of basic importance in the life of a culture. In this respect, if Europe is to preserve what has been distinctively European in its cultural tradition, it cannot easily dispose of Christianity, provided that Christianity does not present itself as sectarian, nor sells out to secularism, but continues to incorporate within itself the best heritage of classical antiquity and therefore openness to reason as well as the true achievements of modern culture. Might a reuniting Christianity also offer evidence of having learnt the lessons of history concerning toleration and the provisional nature of human knowledge even about the truth of revelation? Such a renewal of an ecumenical and therefore truly catholic Christian church could perhaps heal aching memories in European nations of past sufferings and bitter conflicts. It might inspire a new confidence both in the cultural unity of Europe and in the prospect and vigour of its renewal.

Wolfhart Pannenberg The Churches and the Emergence of European Unity

The secular state, which we now risk adopting in Britain seeks a politics entirely independent of religion, in which religious principles have nothing to say in the â??realâ?? world of political action. The choice of the State to side with the secular is said to be neutrality; and it is usually justified by an appeal to equality. But this is in itself ideology, divorcing religion from the public realm on the pretext that religion is divisive. This sets up great tensions in society. The more determinedly secular a state becomes, the more pressure mounts for religious beliefs to assert themselves. We then no longer have a common search for truth on the basis of shared reason, but a series of monologues in which each side excludes the other. People talk past each other. There is little reasoned thinking. There is no adequate civil discourse. Society is then at risk of the fragmentation of its moral structure.

The Church claims only its legitimate part in the political process â?? to assist the very reasoning which is fundamental to the pursuit of justice. The Churchâ??s task is not to propose technical solutions to questions of governance or economic activity, but to help to form a social culture based on justice, solidarity and truth, for the common good. That is a culture that can form the kind of people who can develop those solutions against a transcendent moral horizon. The Churchâ??s task is of nurturing, to assist a public debate that is tolerant, reasoned and inclusive, but within a moral framework which seeks to defend and promote justice and human flourishing.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor The freedom to believe and the freedom to serve the common good - the Corbishley Lecture

Like so many other horrific accounts of Christian persecution in Iraq, this story went unnoticed in the West...

Since the invasion of Iraq, militants have bombed 28 churches and murdered hundreds of Christians.

The latest report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that two million Iraqis have fled since the invasion, and almost a third of these are Assyrian – who are down from 1.4 million in Saddam’s Iraq to fewer than 500,000 today.

Now, while one of the world’s oldest Christian nations faces extinction at the hands of Islamic extremists, the West does nothing.

Ed West We must not let this ancient Church slide into oblivion.

Christians of Iraq includes the Minority Right Group Report Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s minority communities since 2003 (PDF)

The communities covered in this report make up about 10 per cent of the Iraqi population. They include Armenians, Bahá’ís, Chaldo-Assyrians, Faili Kurds, Jews, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabaks, Turkomans and Yazidis. Many of these groups have lived in Iraq for two millennia or more. Though they have survived a long history of persecution that goes back far beyond Saddam Hussein’s rule, there is a real risk that they might not survive the current conflict. Because they are caught up in violence between the majority Sunni Arab, Shia Arab and Sunni Kurdish groups, and are also specifically targeted for atrocities, assimilation or mass displacement and exodus, some may now be facing total eradication from this ancient land. These communities are invisible in the eyes of the world.