The Culture of the Church

1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-154
Author(s):  
Frank O'Malley

Among the preparatory prayers of the Mass, there are these words from Psalm 42: “Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy.” However inadequately accomplished, the purpose of this essay is to affirm and distinguish our cause as Catholic minds and human beings from the nation and from the world that are not holy—to affirm the strength and meaning of the world of the Church for our varied worlds of living and working. As Christopher Dawson points out in a remarkable essay, there is, even in the modern world, “a tradition of sacred culture which it has been the mission of the Church to nourish and preserve”—and to nourish and preserve it even in the nation that is not holy. “However secularized our modern civilization may become,” Dawson continues, “this sacred tradition [this sacred life] remains like a river in the desert, and a genuine religious education can still use it to irrigate the thirsty lands and to change the face of the world with the promise of a new life. The great obstacle is the failure of Christians themselves to understand the depth of that tradition and the inexhaustible possibilities of new life that it contains.”

10.34690/125 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 6-36
Author(s):  
Роман Александрович Насонов

Статья представляет собой исследование религиозной символики и интерпретацию духовного смысла «Военного реквиема» Бриттена. Воспользовавшись Реквиемом Верди как моделью жанра, композитор отдал ключевую роль в драматургии сочинения эпизодам, созданным на основе военных стихов Оуэна; в результате произведение воспринимается подобно циклу песен в обрамлении частей заупокойной мессы. Военная реальность предстает у Бриттена амбивалентно. Совершая надругательство над древней верой и разбивая чаяния современных людей, война дает шанс возрождению религиозных чувств и символов. Опыт веры, порожденный войной, переживается остро, но при всей своей подлинности зыбок и эфемерен. Церковная традиция хранит веру прочно, однако эта вера в значительной мере утрачивает чистоту и непосредственность, которыми она обладает в момент своего возникновения. Бриттен целенаправленно выстраивает диалог между двумя пластами человеческого опыта (церковным и военным), находит те точки, в которых между ними можно установить контакт. Но это не отменяет их глубокого противоречия. Вера, рождаемая войной, представляет собой в произведении Бриттена «отредактированный» вариант традиционной христианской религии: в ее центре находится не триумфальная победа Христа над злом, а пассивная, добровольно отказавшаяся защищать себя перед лицом зла жертва - не Бог Сын, а «Исаак». Смысл этой жертвы - не в преображении мира, а в защите гуманности человека от присущего ему же стремления к агрессивному самоутверждению. The study of religious symbolism and the interpretation of the spiritual meaning of “War Requiem” by Britten have presentation in this article. Using Verdi's Requiem as a model of the genre, the composer gave a key role in the drama to the episodes based on the war poems by Wilfred Owen; as a result, the work is perceived as a song cycle framed by parts of the funeral mass. The military reality appears ambivalent. While committing a blasphemy against the ancient belief and shattering the aspirations of modern people, the war offers a chance to revive religious feelings and symbols. This experience of war-born faith is felt keenly, but for all its authenticity, it is shaky and ephemeral. The church tradition keeps faith firmly, but this faith largely loses the original purity and immediacy. Britten purposefully builds a dialogue between the two layers of human experience (church and military), finds those points where contact can be established between them. But this does not change their profound antagonism. In Britten's work, faith born of war is an “edited” version of the traditional Christian religion: in its center is not the triumphant victory of Christ over evil, but a passive sacrifice that voluntarily refused to defend itself in the face of evil-not God the Son, but “Isaac.” The meaning of this sacrifice is not in transforming the world, but in protecting the humanity of a person from his inherent desire for aggressive self-assertion.


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-131
Author(s):  
Jarosław Horowski

One of the most difficult problems, which is to be solved by contemporary culture, is the ecological problem. It concerns the culture because the hedonistic and consumerist mentality of man plays an important part in it. Biocentrism states that the ecological problem results from traditional Western attitudes to the non-human world based on the belief that humans are the central and most significant entities in the universe. Biocentrism puts forward a teleological argument for the protection of the environment. It indicates that non-human species have inherent value as well and each organism has a purpose and a reason for being, which should be respected. Biocentrism states that the anthropocentric attitude to the non-human world results from the Christian worldview based on the Bible where it is written that God gives man dominion over all creatures. The author analyses the main issues of the Catholic concept of the relationship between human beings and other creatures. He indicates that ecotheology respects the inherent value of non-human creatures because, as the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the modern world Gaudium et spes says: “all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order”, but maintains that the purpose of the world is connected with its relationship to God. The author considers also what is the human subjectivity in behaving towards the environment and what is the dependence between the autonomy of the world and the subjectivity of man in ecotheology. In the end, the author comes to the conclusion that according to ecotheology the ecological problem results from the broken relationship between the human and God and in consequence it the broken relationship between the world and God.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-41
Author(s):  
Aurelius Fredimento ◽  
John M. Balan

The development and the progress of media communication at the present is a fact of the knowledge and the technology development that must be accepted. It presence like the flowing water which has a fast current that brings also two influences both positive and negative that must be accounted for the members of the Catholic Students Community Of St. Martinus Ende (KMK St. Martinus Ende). Both positive and negative influences the media community like a kinetic energy or a power attraction that attract  them in a tiring ambiquity. Let them walk alone without escort of a decisive compass where they should have a rightist attitude and responsible. On the point, the guidance and assistance of the church is an  offering  if the church will be born a generation  of the future  of the  church  that is mature and has a certain quality  based  on the growth  and the development  of acuteness and inner  to determine the attitude to the development of media communication. The process of sharpening of mind and the sharpeness of the participants can be realized by giving some activities such as: awareness, deepening and even  the sharpeness of the actor of  media communication as an  alternative of reporting work of the God Kingdom for human beings. It becomes the main moving spirit or activator  for the board of KMK Of St. Martinus Ende  to plan and boring  about the activity of catechism. The activity rise the method of Amos.  By this method, the participants are invited to build a deeply reflection that based on thein real experiences about the media communication, while keep on self opening to the God planning will come  to them  and  give them via  the commandment of God.  The commandment  of God  come to light, inspiration, motivate, power and critics to the  participants about the using of the media communication as a media of the commandment of the kingdom of God  to the world that is more progress and development lately.


Author(s):  
José Jorge Gutiérrez-Samperio

<p>Pests, in their broad sense, have played an important part in the history of humankind. We could say that humans, crops and pests have walked together through life. Codices, glyphs, paintings and countless ancient documents, including the Bible and the Koran, bear witness to this. Humanity has been attacked by its own diseases, but also by those that limit them from obtaining food and deteriorate the environment. COVID-19, which is now troubling us and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March of 2020, became a part of the list of experiences we have suffered in the past, with pests or epidemics that caused millions of deaths by diseases or famines. It is paradoxical that this health contingency occurs when the United Nations General Assembly, on December 20th, 2018, in its resolution A/RES/73/252 decides to declare 2020 the International Year of Plant Health in order to “highlight the importance of plant health to improve food security, protect the environment and biodiversity and boost economic development” according to the pronouncement by the FAO. For the first time, in an era with great technological and scientific breakthroughs, humanity was aware of its vulnerability against the inevitable evolution of life forms in the face of dilemmas global impact caused by human beings. Thus, the pest or parasite makes its own declaration of existential preeminence through SARS-CoV-2 to remind us that the health of humans or plants is the essence of life and its continuity. But perhaps absolute health is not enough. It is necessary to find a balance in a world overwhelmed by giving so much in return for almost nothing to everyone living on it. If the sensor of our anthropocentric intervention of the world is climate change, then biological chaos is a masterpiece. The reemergence of pests and diseases considered eradicated, or those of zoonotic origin that had never accompanied our existence is a surreal dystopia that we will never be able to deny again.</p>


Horizons ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaReine-Marie Mosely

In the face of continual and increased human suffering in every corner of the world, good and principled people often do nothing. Edward Schillebeeckx's understanding of negative experiences of contrast begins with outrage at excessive human suffering and is followed by protest and eventual praxis to ameliorate and end the suffering. The author queries whether unconscious bias prevents human beings from seeing this suffering, and suggests that embracing a rigorous Ignatian consciousness examen may correct this impairment.


Kairos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Mario Kushner

The fundamental thought of the Lausanne congresses and The Cape Town Commitment (TCTC) statement as the final product of the third congress, could be summarized by these words: “The Church needs to evangelize the world.” From that battle cry come the challenges of knowing the Gospel and mastering the skills necessary for implementing that plan. This article points out that both challenges can be overcome only through a consistent educational ministry within local fellowships of believers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Biesta ◽  
Patricia Hannam

AbstractIn this paper we explore the relationship between religious education and the public sphere, suggesting that religious education, if it takes its educational remit seriously, has to be orientated towards the public sphere where human beings exist together in and with the world. Rather than seeing religion as propositional belief, we argue for an existential approach that focuses on the question as to what it means to exist religiously. We offer educational and theological arguments for our position and, along both lines, seek to (re)connect religion and religious education to the idea of democracy.


Author(s):  
Sam Scott

This is a book about labour exploitation. Labour exploitation tends to emerge when workers are subject to excessive and oppressive forms of control; controls that are rooted within workplaces and beyond. A central argument of the book is that it is time to study control and exploitation from a social harm perspective. This perspective is novel in the way that it questions a crime-orientated approach to issues and problems at work. Specifically, labour exploitation may exist without evidence of a crime being committed, and, only the most extreme cases of labour exploitation are ever effectively criminalised. Correspondingly, solutions to labour exploitation are needed that acknowledge the limitations of legal baselines. These involve a re-assessment of the contemporary structures within which work and workers are produced and reproduced. The book draws heavily on evidence from workers in the food supply chain, mainly of migrant origin, to reveal the face of labour control, exploitation and harm in contemporary contexts. In addition, policies shaping work/workers are profiled from across the world, some that facilitate harm and others that prevent it. The book concludes that it is time to contemplate the plight of the world’s workers as human beings, rather than to simply engage in research aimed at maximising the efficiency and productivity of labour. To this end, the dilemma is not about how to produce good and better workers, but how to produce good and better work.


2005 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 445-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Obokata

Trafficking of human beings is a widespread practice in the modern world. It has been estimated that up to 800,000 people, especially women and children, are trafficked all around the world each year.1Virtually all States are affected,2and traffickers are believed to make between $7 and $10 billion annually from the trafficking business.3In order to combat trafficking, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol) was adopted in December 2000, within the framework of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Organized Crime Convention).4


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