That Pope John Paul II was profoundly formed by and faithful to the general pastoral purpose and style of Gaudium et Spes throughout his pontificate is easy to show. He not only made constant reference to Gaudium et Spes, 22 and 24, referring to the former as encapsulating the motif of his pontificate, his encyclical, Fides et Ratio, stressed the unity of the two orders of knowledge, natural and supernatural. There is a "unity of truth" assured by the fact that God is Creator and Redeemer and thus the Author of what is revealed through creation and through the economy of salvation.

Carl Olson Pope John Paul II and the Christ-centered Anthropology of "Gaudium et Spes"

Here is Gaudium et Spes 22.

The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come,(20) namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.

He Who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15),(21) is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled,(22) by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice(23) and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.(24)

The Christian man, conformed to the likeness of that Son Who is the firstborn of many brothers,(27) received "the first-fruits of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:23) by which he becomes capable of discharging the new law of love.(28) Through this Spirit, who is "the pledge of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:14), the whole man is renewed from within, even to the achievement of "the redemption of the body" (Rom. 8:23):

Such is the mystery of man, and it is a great one, as seen by believers in the light of Christian revelation.

Orthodoxwiki tells us about Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and Primate of Greece who died this week.

Wikipedia gives plenty of detail on the public impact Christodoulos made.

Christodoulos opposed the decision to remove the ‘Religion’ field from national ID cards, seeing as part of a wider plan to marginalise the Church from Greek public life and stating that the decision was "put forward by neo-intellectuals who want to attack us like rabid dogs and tear at our flesh"

In 2004 the Archbishop criticized globalisation as a "bulldozer that is out to demolish everything, on account of those who want to rule the world without resistance or obstacles" adding that Greeks live in a paradise compared to other Europeans, because "they have a strong faith, they build churches, follow traditions, and resist globalisation".

On another occasion he stated that "the forces of Darkness cannot stand it [that Greece is a predominantly Orthodox country], and for this reason they want to decapitate it and flatten everything, by means of globalisation, the novel deity

Give us another like Christodoulos.

A conference on the theology of John Owen

Westminster College Cambridge, UK 19–22 August 2008 An increasing number of scholars from a wide range of disciplines are finding the thought of John Owen to be a fertile field for study. Nine of them will be presenting papers on his work at Westminster College, home to the original copy of the Westminster Confession.

Willem van Asselt Utrecht University, Holland

Stephen R Holmes St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, UK

Michael S Horton Westminster Seminary, California, USA

George Hunsinger Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, USA

Kelly M Kapic Covenant College, Georgia, USA

Suzanne MacDonald Calvin College, Grand Rapids, USA

Sebastian Rehnman Johannelunds Theological Seminary, Sweden

Alan Spence United Reformed Church, London, UK

Carl R Trueman Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, USA

For further details and a booking form - johnowentoday@aol.com A John Owen blog gives links to some of the speakers. Learn more and more about Owen.

Well done Alan (and Terry and Andy).

Long since the Moscow Patriarchate defrocked Father Gleb Yakunin, a Moscow priest who, as an elected deputy in 1990, had privileged access to the KGB archives and discovered that the collaboration between some bishops and the state security agencies had been worse than even he had imagined. The Church has never properly investigated this, clearly because so many of the bishops, not least the Patriarch, rose to power with the say-so of state authority.

Sometimes it is the local bishop who acts as an agent of secular power. Father Sergei Taratukhin was imprisoned in the 1980s as a Soviet-era dissident. In prison he became a believer, trained for the priesthood and became chaplain in Penal Colony No10, near Chita in eastern Siberia. He served there seven years, befriending an inmate, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, condemned by a Moscow court in 2005 for financial misdemeanours in a trial widely seen as politically motivated.

Taratukhin became convinced that Khodorkovsky was a political prisoner and campaigned for him. Bishop Yevstafy, his diocesan, intervened and removed him to a remote parish. Taratukhin objected, so his bishop defrocked him. Now the priest has appeared abjectly contrite on TV, in a scene reminiscent of clergy who recanted their anti-Soviet activities in former days. The bishop has offered him forgiveness and partial reinstatement - he now organises rubbish collection and shovels snow from the paths around Chita's new cathedral.

Michael Bourdeaux Putin and the Patriarchs

In the man Jesus Christ however there was no movement of sense that was not controlled by reason; and even his natural bodily activities were in a sense voluntary, inasmuch as that he willed that his flesh should do and suffer according to its own proper nature. So there is even greater unity of activity in Christ than there is in other men. … Christ’s grace was not just his own personal grace but the grace proper to the head of the whole Church, to whom all members are joined so as to constitute one person mystically. So what Christ earned he earned for all his members, just as what man does with his head serves all his members. The sin of Adam, whom God appointed to beget the whole of humanity, passed on as inheritance to others by bodily propagation; the earnings of Christ, whom God set up as the head of all men by grace, pass on to all his members by spiritual birth of baptism which makes us members of Christ’s body.

Saint Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae Part III, chapter 13, 19.1

Today is the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul and also the feast of Saint Gregory Nazianzus

At his birth we duly kept Festival, both I, the leader of the Feast, and you, and all that is in the world and above the world. With the Star we ran, and with the Magi we worshipped, and with the Shepherds we were illuminated, and with the Angels we glorified Him, and with Simeon we took Him up in our arms, and with Anna the aged and chaste we made our responsive confession. And thanks be to Him who came to His own in the guise of a stranger, because He glorified the stranger. Now, we come to another action of Christ, and another mystery. I cannot restrain my pleasure; I am rapt into God.

Almost like John I proclaim good tidings; for though I be not a Forerunner, yet am I from the desert. Christ is illumined, let us shine forth with Him. Christ is baptized, let us descend with Him that we may also ascend with Him. Jesus is baptized; but who is He, and by whom is He baptized, and at what time? He is the All-pure; and He is baptized by John; and the time is the beginning of His miracles. What are we to learn and to be taught by this? To purify ourselves first; to be lowly minded; and to preach only in maturity both of spiritual and bodily stature.

Oration on the Holy Lights (XIV)

The saints are there to do us good. Let's get to know them. Many thanks to Wikipedia contributors to the saints pages, list of saints, chronological list and links to calendars.

Now I'd like a single ecumenical saint-a-day calendar please.

Every Christian doctrine is an exemplification of the Christian doctrine of God. The Christian confession of God and that God is for us, requires an account of the generous provision of God, which is what providence is, and it requires all the other doctrines that make our talk about providence meaningful. The Christian doctrine of God tells us that we are not God, and so we are discharged from the exhausting though self-imposed duty to make ourselves divine, that is to take ourselves to be everything, and also to be able to stand outside this everything and decide whether or not to affirm it. One corollary is that we can really know other people, but we cannot know them and master them utterly, because they belong not in the first place to us, but to God, who has high ambitions for them. We are not ourselves by being ‘just-human’, without God. Thus the doctrine of God gives us the truth of man, but the truth of man cannot be extracted from this doctrine and cashed out into a theory about man. Because God mystery, by which we mean he is knowable only to extent he makes himself known, and man is the creature of God, man is a mystery too. The assessment of God is that we along with rest of the world are worth waiting for, and the Church is the demonstration that this is still the good judgment – of God. The secret of being human, is hidden with God, and only in communion with him, can we be human, together, with other humans.

The Son and the Spirit in the Providence of God – John Zizioulas on time and communion

Catholic Identity in the American Public Square

When we speak about a nation's culture, we mean the entire fabric of its common life, from art and music to sports and schools. But since this is an election year, I want to apply the idea of Catholic witness specifically to our public life as citizens. Here are ten simple points to remember.

1. George Orwell said that one of the biggest dangers for modern democratic life is dishonest political language. Dishonest language leads to dishonest politics-which then leads to bad public policy and bad law. So we need to speak and act in a spirit of truth.

2. Catholic is a word that has real meaning. We don't control or invent that meaning as individuals. We inherit it from the gospel and the experience of the Church over the centuries. We can choose to be something else, but if we choose to call ourselves Catholic, then that word has consequences for what we believe and how we act. We can't truthfully claim to be Catholic and then act as though we're not.

3. Being a Catholic is a bit like being married. We have a relationship with the Church and with Jesus Christ that's similar to being a spouse. If a man says he loves his wife, his wife will want to see the evidence in his love and fidelity. The same applies to our relationship with God. If we say we're Catholic, we need to show that by our love for the Church and our fidelity to what she teaches and believes. Otherwise we're just fooling ourselves, because God certainly won't be fooled.

10. The heart of truly faithful citizenship is this: We're better citizens when we're more faithful Catholics. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, choices, actions and convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.

Archbishop of Denver Charles J Chaput shows his fellow bishops how to do it. Even his website demonstrates a determination to communicate clearly, generously and evangelically. Can't we do that?

This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2008

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an expression of the ecumenical movement – a worldwide movement among Christians to heal the divisions within the Church; to promote dialogues among churches and Christian communities; and to encourage Christians everywhere to better understand and reflect the implications of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Each year from January 18 – 25, Christians are encouraged to pray together as a sign of the unity that is already theirs in Christ and that that unity will become complete.

Here are some very considerable resources, giving the background to the week, and a form of worship for each day of the week, from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, jointly produced with the World Council of Churches Faith and Order

6.9.2 The Church needs children present in its worship, as patterns of discipleship, as reminders that we come into the presence of God not through our own deserving, but because we are creatures of God’s creation. But children also need to be present in worship because it is the locus of Christian formation. Worship is fundamental if children are to grow in the knowledge and love of God.

Christian formation is lifelong, and it begins in infancy; children who are excluded from worship suffer significant deprivation. Of course, we can make up for experiences missed in childhood, but it is hard work. We know that in many areas of experience, learning in childhood is much easier than later in life: this applies in worship no less than in learning a language. The language, gesture and attitudes which facilitate both our worship and our growth in faith are acquired most easily in childhood, and what is learnt then forms the foundation on which all subsequent learning is to be built. It is constantly necessary to challenge the prevailing misapprehension that children do not ‘understand’ what is happening in worship, and that education for worship is a top-down didactic exercise.

Transforming Worship: Report of the Liturgical Commission

No immersion in the waters of the Jordan River this year for Orthodox believers who gathered on its shores to celebrate the Feast Day of the Baptism of Jesus. They were prevented by Israeli security forces.

Several thousands of pilgrims were able never the less to take part in a prayer service celebrated by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilus III at the Qasr el-Yahud Monastery dedicated to St John the Baptist on the west bank of the river, a site which the Israelis closed at the start of the second Intifada in 2000 and have generally kept off limits ever since. Even on this exceptional occasion Israeli soldiers were all over the place.

At the end of the ceremony the faithful walked in procession to the river bank where according to tradition Jesus was baptised.

Asia News

Professor Janet E. Smith Sacred Heart Major Seminary

Contraception: Why Not?

__Thursday 6th March Westminster Cathedral Hall London 7-9pm.

In the not so distant past, I attended a Mass. It was a typical parish Mass. There was a choir in the back, there were Eucharistic ministers, there were lay lectors, there were altar servers. There was laity galore.

But the impression I took away with me - after an hour and a half - was the person of the priest. His voice echoed in my ears, his presence dominated my memory of that time. He introduced the Mass, he explained things, there was an RCIA rite, so he explained that, he preached a 25 minute homily, and at the end of Mass, after the lector ran through 6 announcements, he stood and added two rather lengthy announcements of his own.

I’m not kidding when I say that my reaction, at one point was, If you want to turn around, face the crucifix and whisper for a while, THAT WOULD BE FINE WITH ME. PLEASE. FEEL FREE.

It’s possible for a priest to allow his own personality to be subsumed into the liturgical rites as they are presently constructed. I’ve seen it done, often. But the opposite temptation is intensely evident in the present structure, and it seems to me to be a temptation that is not necessarily succumbed to out of ego - there is just a space and an expectation there that the priest’s personality is an essential element of the liturgy - if you read articles on this from the 70’s, it’s very clearly stated. Personally, the pressure involved in that seems unimaginable and exhausting to me.

Amy Welbourn A brief note on clericalism

Dr Nazir-Ali does not simply blame the Saudis, or other foreign governments who might have been funding militant Islam in the mosques of Great Britain, for the rise in Muslim chauvinism in this country. He blames the British people themselves, arguing that there has been a catastrophic collapse in Christian-based morality and spirituality in this country over the past 40 or so years and that this has created a "moral vacuum" in society as a whole, which has been increasingly filled – at least in the minds of impressionable youth – by fundamentalist Islam.

Here, as a leading figure in the Church of England, Dr Nazir-Ali is swimming in dangerous waters. Is it the British people who should be blamed for deserting, in their millions, the once-dominant Church of England? Or should not the Church of England look at its own performance and try to understand why it has lost such a vast proportion of its audience – at least as defined by regular churchgoing, rather than notional affiliation?

Dominic Lawson

Congratulations to Dr Mihail Neamtu, whose 'The Nicene Christ and Desert Eschatology' has been accepted by the University of London for the degree of PhD.

Already a fellow of New Europe College in Bucharest, Mihail will soon be visiting fellow at the University of Notre Dame. And did you know that he has his own wikipedia entry? He organises some good conferences too.

I hope I achieve all this before I reach thirty.

The Maryvale Institute - our International Catholic College for Catechesis, Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education at Birmingham shows more energy than any other Catholic institution in the UK than I am aware of. Maryvale wants to see 'the proclamation of the Catholic faith in its fullness and integrity'. In the UK, this sounds like a bold new start.

Maryvale is advertising for a Director of its Marriage and Family Life Programme.

The Maryvale Centre for Marriage and Family Life is a new initiative set up following discussions between the John Paul II Institute in Rome and the Maryvale Institute. Its purpose is to make available, within the Maryvale Institute, a range of courses, modules and suitable educational materials pertaining to the teachings of the Catholic Church on marriage and family life. The range will cover basic parenting information, through a ‘ladder’ of initiatives, co-ordinating with some existing courses already available at Maryvale, leading to the development of a new MA Course in Marriage and Family Life studies, modelled on those of the John Paul II Institute’s Theology of the Body Programme.

I would really like to see this sort of initiative here in London. I suppose I will have to be content with Spes - the School for Evangelism at St Patrick's Soho.

Does the Harvard-educated manager of cultures function too much as a Nietzschean Ã?bermensch, operating upon the raw material of humanity from the supposed heights of critical understanding rather than leading from within the ranks? Will a person in a position of power who â??readsâ?? his fellow man, rather than listening to what he actually says, end up manipulating rather than serving? And toward what will the Harvard graduate manage culture? Who sets the production goals for all those cultural factories of meaning? Am I too cynical when I suspect that it will be the naked self-interest of those who have convinced themselves that culture makes no real claim of truth upon the human soul? In other words, is the new vision for general education at Harvard alarmingly illiberal?

R. R. Reno Harvard's Postmodern Curriculum

The Providence conference at Aberdeen was just as wonderful as anticipated. Though there were seventeen speakers, it was a comparatively small affair, and thanks to Francesca Murphy’s amazing powers of organisation and hospitality it was all most relaxed and convivial. Champions of wildly contrasting approaches chuntered happily away at every interval and supper.

Trouble is, I suppose, that it was wonderful because it was small, and it was small because so few folk from other British universities appeared, presumably because they had decided that Aberdeen was too far to go. But as Stephen Webb pointed out, only Brits would think that the journey to Aberdeen was long: Americans would consider that just a local journey .

Of the speakers, I was impressed by Charles Matthews, Stephen Webb and Philip Ziegler for extremely articulate accounts of the doctrine of providence in public theology. I particularly enjoyed talking to Matthew Levering, Hans Reinders, David Hart, Don Wood, Andy McGowan, Scott Prather, James Merrick and as ever Brian Brock.

I got drafted in to do a paper at the last minute. Here it is.

Chair in Theology, Ministry and Education at King's College London

The Dept of Education and Professional Studies (DEPS) invites applications from scholars to join one of its most successful and expanding research cohorts - the Centre for Theology Religion and Culture. (CTRC).

Founded by Professor Andrew Walker in 1995 CTRC is a research and teaching centre dedicated to excellence in the fields of Theological Education, Professional Development in Church ministry and Religious Education in schools. The Centre is committed to a multi-disciplinary approach to religion and culture with particular emphasis on Christian theology, social science, and philosophy. The Centre continues to oversee a large and successful MPhil/PhD programme.

Society for the Study of Theology

Theology and Politics - 2008 conference

St John's College, Durham 31 March – 3 April 2008

Oliver O'Donovan John Milbank Charles Mathewes (A Theology of Public Life and Evil and the Augustinian Tradition)

and there's the Spring Harvest Christian Eschatology and Contemporary Culture day conference

Saturday 26th January Kings College London

In the modern era, the idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer's own soul, while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a final Judgement, however, has not disappeared: it has simply taken on a totally different form. The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries isâ??in its origins and aimsâ??a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested.

Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of powerâ??whatever beguiling ideological mask it adoptsâ??will cease to dominate the world.

This is why the great thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were equally critical of atheism and theism. Horkheimer radically excluded the possibility of ever finding a this-worldly substitute for God, while at the same time he rejected the image of a good and just God. In an extreme radicalization of the Old Testament prohibition of images, he speaks of a â??longing for the totally Otherâ?? that remains inaccessibleâ??a cry of yearning directed at world history. Adorno also firmly upheld this total rejection of images, which naturally meant the exclusion of any â??imageâ?? of a loving God. On the other hand, he also constantly emphasized this â??negativeâ?? dialectic and asserted that justice â??true justiceâ??would require a world â??where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone.â??

This, would mean, howeverâ??to express it with positive and hence, for him, inadequate symbolsâ??that there can be no justice without a resurrection of the dead.

Benedict XVI Spe Salvi (42)

+?ARTHOLOMEW

By the grace of God Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome And Ecumenical Patriarch

To the Plenitude of the Church Grace, mercy and peace From the savior Christ born in Bethlehem

Christ is born, glorify Him; Christ comes from heaven, meet Him.

Beloved brothers and children in the Lord,

It is with great joy that our Church calls us to glorify God for His loving and personal presence on earth of Christ in divino-human hypostasis, being one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

We must, therefore, examine very carefully the true and life-giving significance of the incarnation of the Son and Word of God. For, first, it reveals to humanity that God is personal and is made manifest to us as personal, just as He has also created us as persons; second, it reveals to us that God embraces us with His love. These two events, the personhood and love of God, express fundamental truths of our faith, which of course we have heard about many times. Nevertheless, their impact upon our lives is not as great as it should be, inasmuch as many of us do neither experience Christ’s brotherhood and His boundless love for us in a personal way, nor do we in turn return our love to Christ in order that, by sharing in His love, we may also share by grace in His other properties.

If others – who have not known Christ and, as a result, drown in their search for an impersonal being that they perceive as divine – are somewhat justified, we Orthodox Christians are not at all justified in pursuing such ways that lead to an impasse. For, instead of seeking God as person and approaching Him in the one who approach us, namely Jesus Christ, these deceived people desperately strive to become divine through their own powers, like Adam thought he could achieve by obeying the evil spirit. However, the true and personal God, who is known only through Jesus Christ – the one born in a manger out of love for us – promised us adoption and return to the bosom of the Father, as well as deification by grace through Christ. It is only through Christ that one may fulfill the universal human desire to transcend the corruption and isolation of an existence without love and the cultivation of communion among divine and human persons in love, which leads to eternity and incorruption.