The evolution of the Byzantine Empire after the death of Emperor Constantine the Great until the tenth century

"Constantine the Great considered himself the representative of God on earth, but also the fact that through his mind is transmitted “divine intelligence.” This conception about the emperor manifested itself throughout the existence of the Byzantine Empire. The emperors who followed Constantine the Great intervened in problems that arose within the Church. Some of them supported it, and others who shared the heresies that appeared during this period, persecuted the important representatives of the Church who tried to defend the purity of Christianity. Within the Byzantine Empire, numerous transformations will now take place in all fields, and these transformations will lay the foundations on which the Byzantine state developed. "

Pastoral Practice of the Academic Parish of Prague

This paper examines pastoral practice of the Academic Parish of Prague in compliance with its specific character – service to people from academia. Data analysis from qualitative interviews and document-based research identified two major areas of ministry – pastoral care (ad intra) and public engagement (ad extra) – and positioned the community somewhat between a parish ministry and chaplaincy. Specifically, empirical research suggested that people opt for this parish because it acknowledges their social, spiritual and intellectual needs seriously and relevantly, and addresses its members with respect. Theologically, it maintains there is a compatibility between the parish offer and expectations of people, and argues that the parish interpreted and handled its specific mission – addressing urban and educated people – relevantly and authentically.

On the Collegiality of the Episcopate in the Light of the Theology of the Second Vatican Council

"The collegiality of the episcopate was a particular concern of the Second Vatican Council. Consequently, ordination always integrates the individual bishop into the college of bishops, so that the episcopal authority conferred on him personally can only be exercised as a member of this college. Through the exercise of the collegiality of the bishops, the synodality of the churches is also expressed. In this context, it can be stated that for centuries the universal Church understood itself as a community of the many local churches of equal theological rank, which were in communion with one another. In the first three centuries, the primacy of Rome in the communion was much more strongly connected with the entire Roman community and not with a person or an office. In the West, a new form of ecclesiastical self-understanding and self-realization established itself in the fifth century, in which the bishop of Rome with his office increasingly detached himself from his own church. This ultimately led to the development of a centralised papal church, which was predominant in the second millennium. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Pope has once again been seen primarily as the bishop of a local church, and only from there as the bearer of primacy, and therefore he remains visibly and concretely inserted into the collegiality of the bishops in the service of the synodality of the churches."

A Precursor of the Ecological Spirituality in Romania: God's Servant Mihai Neamtu OSBM

"The encyclical letter Laudato Sì approaches the topic of the integral ecology in order to inspire a unitary strategy to deal with the challenges of the social – environmental crisis. In this context, it emerges the necessity for the human person to live in a certain way of being in the nature and in the society, that would lead to specific actions meant to care for the common home. For the Christians and not only, the way of being is linked to spirituality. This paper aims to interpret some of the essential elements of the ecological spirituality from the theological perspective and place them in the context of the life of Mihai Neamtu (1924-2000), a Romanian Greek-Catholic monk of the Order of St. Basil the Great. Posterity remembers God’s Servant Mihai Neamtu as an example of responsible living in the common home. His humble, sober and generous way of life was the expression of a profoundly Christian and prophetic way of being, anchored in the Catholic faith and the Eastern spirituality. His relation with the Creator modelled his interaction with the nature and his fellows. He used his charismas heroically for the spiritual and fleshly good of all, proving that there is a natural link between the care for the nature and the care for the persons affected by spiritual or physical pathologies or by poverty."

Delicts against the sanctity of the Eucharist and the simulation of the liturgical action

The present article addresses two groups of delicts from the sixth book of the current Code of Canon Law (Sanctions in the Church), i.e. Delicts against the sanctity of the Eucharist and the simulation of the liturgical action. The content of this book is debated among theologians and canonists, raising a variety of questions: Does the Church have the right to coerce the faithful with penal sanctions? Should penal law exist in the Church, or do certain organizing measures suffice? Based on the first canon of the sixth book (can. 1311), this article shows that using sanctions is a native right of the Church. Since sacraments, in particular the Eucharist, belong to the essence of the Church, the delicts against the sanctity of the Most Holy Sacrament and the simulation of the Sacraments have a great impact on the life of the Church. Therefore, although there are many open questions and several ambiguities around this issue, the present article argues that the Church needs an adequate legal order in the case of sacraments.