bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Bible and the Holy Land: Pastoral Letter from Jerusalem
Authors: Frizzell Lawence E. 
Published: July 2007

Spirits burdened by the wars or conflicts between peoples and nations have been uplifted in recent months, especially in the Near East. A new peace process between Israel and its neighbours, including direct negotiations with Palestinian leaders, requires consummate statesmanship and also an adjustment in the hearts of all, moving from fear and hatred to hope and generosity. The Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and Israel (December 30, 1993) has implications for Catholics and Jews everywhere. Within this context, the Latin-rite Patriarch of Jerusalem has promulgated a lengthy pastoral letter in November 1993. An English version is published in Origins 23 (January 20, 1994) pp. 541-555. In the context of an interfaith conference held in Jerusalem from February 1-4, 1994 the Patriarch gave an address entitled “Religious Leadership in the Holy Land.” This text will be studied at the end of the essay.In the pastoral letter Patriarch Michel Sabbah celebrates explicitly the new hope for “peace and reconciliation between our two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian, and with all the Arab world” (#1). The sad events of prolonged conflict “must not consume the past and present.. . “ but now the struggle will be to maintain and build peace with justice (#1). This letter about the Bible intends to encourage reading and understanding of God’s Word, “in order to make it the object of meditation and prayer” (#2).The poignancy of praying in the Eucharistic liturgy the psalms and readings about Israel and its neighbours has been particularly graphic for Christian communities in the Near East over recent decades.
Acts Commanded by Religion
Authors: Harter Wayne H. 
Published: July 2007

It is at least twenty years too late to prevent most Catholic institutions of higher education in Europe and North America from establishing departments of religious studies. It is not, of course, too late to disestablish them or, short of that rather impractical possibility, reform them along lines extending from a quite different set of principles. I believe a particularly good reason for doing no less than the latter is that the present enterprise is a contradiction to genuine Catholic education; simply one more manifestation of the stale secularism which now permeates Catholic schools. And the proof of this claim, as I intend to argue, lies in the fact that it is impossible within the regnant discourse of religious studies to reclaim what St Thomas meant by “acts commanded by religion.” The very notion of religion operating within that enterprise precludes it. The “religion” of religious studies is both too extensive in its initial presumptions but, more importantly, much too narrow in its final application to encompass what St. Thomas spoke of when he wrote on religion.Perhaps the best route, then, to what St Thomas meant by religion, and in particular by acts commanded by religion, is getting straight about what he was not speaking of. To this end we can look to the most recent Encyclopedia of Religion, published under the editorial leadership of Mircea Eliade. The contribution on “religion” by Winston L. King provides just the sort of definition that reflects, not only the current wisdom in the field of religious studies, but a perfect antithesis to the teaching of St. Thomas.
The Eschatology of the Cross
Authors: McGuckin Terence 
Published: July 2007

Eschatology has found new respect at the heart of theology in the course of the twentieth century. The cross of Christ as a source, subject and description of soteriological concentration has secured a central place in the work of theology in recent decades. More remarkable is the communion of soteriology and eschatology, yielding an emphasized eschatology of the cross, still fresh in contemporary theology. The development of this vision in theology is particularly instructive in the work of five renowned theologians: Moltmann, Kasper, Ratzinger, Küng and von Balthasar.In 1960 Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote that eschatology is the “sign of the times” of contemporary theology. That significance has strengthened in the passing of over thirty years. The work of many theologians demonstrates the truth of this and one of those most active in the breaking of the eschatological silence is the German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann.
Just Intervention and Police Action
Authors: Wicker Brian 
Published: July 2007

The debate about the morality of using military force in the post-coldwar period has shifted decisively away from theories of ‘just wars’ between states, towards the concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The Bosnian and Somalian crises have been widely discussed in this context The reason for the shift is that aggression by one sovereign state against another is no longer the principal focus of attention. Most of the conflicts now going on, or likely to take place in the future, are within the borders of states, not across them. (The Kuwait case was anomalous rather than typical of the period since 1989.) Yet such conflicts can easily turn into threats to peace and security, rightly attracting the attention of the international community under the terms of the UN Charter.Humanitarian intervention (henceforth, simply ‘intervention’) has been proposed for such purposes as the following:
to stop the fighting or enforce a cease-fire; to stop the forcible movement of populations (ethnic cleansing); to enforce the delivery of humanitarian aid and safe extraction of the sick and wounded; to preserve safe havens, zones, demilitarized areas or open cities; to restore pre-existing boundaries or enforce those newly agreed; to ‘restore’ democratic institutions — as in the ECOWAS declaration of 9 Aug. 1990; or, most ambitiously, to establish an international protectorate under UN control.The morality of intervention in pursuit of such causes such is commonly discussed by applying the traditional criteria for a just war. These criteria are directly relevant, in so far as they apply constraints to the use of organized force, or violence.
Early Dominican Hagiography
Authors: Haseldine David 
Published: July 2007

This paper purports to deal with a non-existent subject in holding that there was no Dominican hagiography before the canonization of St. Dominic nor for some time afterwards.Dominic Guzman died and his obsequies were presided over by his friend and patron Cardinal Ugolino on 6th August 1221. The same Ugolino, having ascended the papal throne as Gregory IX, issued a bull on 3rd July 1234 ordering annual celebration of the feast of St Dominic and likening the Order of Preachers he founded to those of St Benedict and Citeaux as an historic achievement for the faith. The first life of St. Dominic written by a Dominican (or by anyone) is the Legenda S. Dominici of Peter of Ferrand composed between 1235 and 1239 for liturgical use in the new office of St. Dominic which was established throughout the Order in the latter year.It is at first sight astonishing that no earlier Dominican life exists and that none was produced specifically for submission in the canonization proceedings as had become standard practise at this time: these facts this paper seeks to explain. To do so will involve answering two questions: 1. What was the procedure which had become established for the canonization of saints by 1234 and what factors affected its operation in the case of St. Dominic? 2. What material had in fact been produced from Dominican sources about Dominic up until his canonization and why did this not include a life of the saint?
Early Dominican Confessional Practice
Authors: Cessario Romanus 
Published: July 2007

At the beginning of the 13th century, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) sanctioned a number of fresh efforts at evangelization. Among the major pastoral concerns that the conciliar decrees addressed, the sacrament of penance figures in a prominent way. Having established the requirement of annual confession as a fixed element of Christian life, the conciliar Fathers at the same time recognized the need to supply qualified priests who could competently exercise the ministry of reconciliation.With Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, St Dominic was present at the Fourth Lateran Council, after which he obtained official approbation for his newly-begun work of preaching and hearing confessions. In 1221, Pope Honorius III granted universal faculties to Dominic’s band of preachers-confessors. The international character of Dominic’s mission in the Church meant of course that his fiiars would hear the confessions of persons caught up in the displacement that marked the beginning of European cosmopolitanism. This circumstance explains the advice that, according to Paul of Hungary, St Dominic himself gave to his brother priests, namely, that they should discreetly enquire during the course of the confession from where the penitent came, so that their spiritual counsel could take account of certain regional differences, such as local fasting customs. Of course, such advice would be hardly necessary for a parish priest who heard the confessions only of those under his permanent pastoral care.Recent scholarship suggests that we should not underestimate the importance that hearing confessions played in the pastoral ministry of the early Dominican friars.
The Best Reader and the One Repetitor? The Bishop in Augustine's Confessions
Authors: Mazziotta Richard 
Published: July 2007

The Confessions of Saint Augustine’ have been esteemed throughout the centuries for the literary elegance with which their author integrates self-disclosure, compunction, and analysis of the human and redeemed condition. For all the claims made for this classic, however, rarely has it been noted that prime among Augustine’s intentions in writing was to convey a definitive point of view regarding the orthopraxy of the Church. This article maintains that central to the Confessions is an unequivocal instruction regarding the reading and interpretation of texts. Written between 397 and 401, only a few years following Augustine’s succession in 395 to the see of Hippo, the Confessions are a study of the place of texts in the community. Furthermore, they are an explicit defence of the bishop’s primacy in the governance of a community’s texts.No matter what his topic at any given moment, Augustine’s attention throughout the Confessions scarcely deviates from the issues of speech, language, poetics, and, ultimately, scripture. Augustine plumbs their meaning throughout, returning repeatedly to how all these function for ill or good within community. Cognizant of the extent to which language and texts can abet fallen human nature and lead towards its worst proclivities, Augustine admonishes readers ever to beware of the potential of texts to deceive, endanger, and enslave. To note only this, however, would be to remain ignorant of the author’s far more important conviction. If some words can entrap, cannot different words liberate? The scriptural Word of the psalms, which Augustine quotes so profligately that his own voice
Two Paths to Truth: A Tribute to Georges Lemaître
Authors: Dwyer Christopher 
Published: July 2007

“I was interested in truth from the point of view of salvation just as much as in truth from the point of view of scientific certainty. It appeared to me that there were two paths to truth, and I decided to follow both of them.”The two paths led Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), the Belgian priest who became a founding father of modem cosmology, to the farthest reaches of the universe. The centenary of his birth fell on 17 July; his face, accompanied by the “primeval atom”, is currently featured on Belgium’s stamps.Born in Charleroi, in the heart of French-speaking Belgium, he planned to become an engineer. But service in the First World War turned his thoughts to the priesthood, and he was ordained by Cardinal Mercier in 1923. After further mathematical studies in Cambridge and in the USA he returned to Louvain in 1927 as Professor of Astronomy, and remained there (apart from frequent travels) for the rest of his career.The 1920’s were exciting years in astronomy. In 1919, the team led by Arthur (later Sir Arthur) Eddington, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, to the island of Principe had observed the bending of light near the sun that provided the first proof of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In 1925, Hubble’s observations yielded the first evidence that the distant nebulae are separate galaxies, and that they are receding from us.Lemaitre's achievement in those years was to show, in a famous paper of 1927, that the Einstein model of the universe could not be static: it must either expand or contract.
Liberation Theology and the Bearers of Dangerous Memory
Authors: Grey Mary 
Published: July 2007

Liberation theologians, from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even from North America and Europe, are actively engaged in responding to massive human rights violations in countries where revolution has either been a success or a tragic failure. The inspiration for this commitment is the Church's ‘Option for the poor’, originating in the historic Conferences of the Latin American Bishops at Medellin and Pueblo. But twenty years on, in a changed global context, there is a need for Liberation Theology to develop more than a praxis-oriented focus: there needs to be a further development of that epistemic shift on which Liberation Theology was originally constructed, as well as a new sensitivity as to how knowledge itself is attained. This new sensibility must extend to those who have withstood and suffered the violation of human rights, and include reflection on who has the right to know, and the de-humanisation process on both individual and communal levels. I will briefly explain what I mean by this epistemic shift before exploring the whole notion of ‘dangerous memory* and its bearers.I consider this to be a theo-political task: theology has always been concerned perhaps over possessively with the location of truth and its formulations. But since the work of Michel Foucault, philosopher and social historian, and his call for the ‘insurrection of the subjugated knowledges’, it is no longer possible to ignore the power factor in theological expressions. The call to listen to oppressed peoples as the ‘bearers of theological truth’ must be woven into the struggle against the dominant ideology.
Truth and Martyrdom: The Structure of Discipleship in Veritatis Splendor
Authors: Berkman John 
Published: July 2007

Early in February, I was privileged to participate in a gathering of forty-five predominantly Catholic philosophers and theologians who met to discuss John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Most of the discussion at the conference focused on the second of the encyclical’s three chapters, which deals with “some trends of theological thinking and certain philosophical affirmations [that] are incompatible with revealed truth.”(§29) Conspicuously absent was any attention to either the first or especially the third chapters of the encyclical. The first chapter investigates the nature of Christian discipleship through the lens of St Matthew’s account of Jesus’ meeting with the rich young man. (Matt 19) The third chapter treats the issue of Christian martyrdom and other sources for Christian renewal. In the course of the discussion, the notion of discipleship was mentioned rarely, and the subject of martyrdom never came up. By concentrating almost exclusively on the second chapter, the conference failed to locate the encyclical’s critique of particular “trends of theological thinking and certain philosophical affirmations” within the context provided by Veritatis Splendor itself, namely that of Christian discipleship. In doing so this group mirrored much of the general response to Veritatis Splendor, which has centred almost exclusively on the second chapter. It is my goal to shift this focus, and to highlight the primacy of discipleship for a right understanding of Veritatis Splendor.Veritatis Splendor has a message about a notion central to our lives: freedom. The Pope argues that the common conception of freedom as merely the absence of constraints is misguided. Christian freedom must be connected with the pursuit of truth.
On Nietzsche, Postmodernism and the New Enlightenment
Authors: Meynell Hugo 
Published: July 2007

In spite of Nietzsche’s enormous and apparently ever-increasing influence, it is notoriously difficult to spell out the essence and precise implications of his position. This is evidently due partly to his poetic and rhetorical style; but in my view there is a more important reason than this. I would maintain that his thought, when taken as a whole, is rather like a carpet which cannot be laid straight unless you cut off one or other of two bits. To make Nietzsche consistent, you have to reject or downplay one of two elements in his thought. If you reject one, what you get is cognitive and moral nihilism; if you reject the other, you end up with what I want to call the new enlightenment. In these respects the postmodernists, as represented at any rate by Michel Foucault, are Nietzsche’s true successors.When in nihilistic mood, Nietzsche seems to imply that it is true that there are no truths, that it is really morally good to act as though there were no such thing as moral goodness. In the course of considering this self-destructive tendency of one strand of Nietzsche’s thought, Walter Kaufmann remarks that consideration of problems like these was not Nietzsche’s strong suit. Now the basis of the new enlightenment is epistemological, and turns on theses and arguments which directly address such problems. These may be summarized as follows: (1) Denial that our judgments are ever true is self-destructive (is it supposed to be true that we never speak the truth?); and so is denial that we ever have good reasons for our judgments (do we have good reasons for this particular judgment?).
Theology's historical task: The problem of the disciplines
Authors: Evans G.R. 
Published: July 2007

John Henry Newman came to see the need to frame what was in effect a new discipline of the history of theology, with rules and subject-matter which would make it a practical working instrument, but with a flexibility which would allow for insights about the interconnectedness and coherence of a living body of knowledge which was sustained in a vital community. This recognition, and Newman’s own response to it are instructive because, mutatis mutandis, we stand in much the same need now. Unlike the history of (say) philosophy or science, the history of Christian theology deals with subject-matter which is understood to be of its nature continuous and semper eadem But it clearly changes within that continuity. And that poses special problems historiographically.We can get a glimpse of the way one thing led to the other in Newman’s arriving at these perceptions in a letter written in 1826. Newman begins by suggesting that it might be put to the test whether the Anglican divines from the sixteenth century onwards, if read so as to eliminate the adversariality of the polemic in which many of them had been engaged, had amongst them set out an account of their beliefs which formed a coherent and harmonious whole.‘My dear Rickards,—In our last conversation I think you asked me whether any use had occurred to my mind to which your knowledge of our old divines might be applied. Now one has struck me,—so I write. Yet very probably the idea is so obvious that it will not be new to you, and. … I begin by assuming that the old worthies of our Church are neither Orthodox nor Evangelical … now it would be a most useful thing to give a kind of summary of their opinions. … if, then, in a calm, candid, impartial manner, their views were sought out and developed, would not the effect be good in a variety of ways?
Authentic Relationships: Justice, Love, and Christian Spirituality
Authors: O'Keefe Mark 
Published: July 2007

The Letter of James reminds Christians that an authentic Christian faith cannot be completely separated from works:What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (James 2:14-17 NRSV).Similarly, a number of theologians have recently suggested that an authentic Christian spirituality cannot be separated from an active concern for and pursuit of justice. These theologians argue that a Christian cannot truly strive to grow in a relationship with God without a real concern for the well-being of other persons. One cannot hope to attain a transcendent union with God without a lived concern for the present circumstances of other men and women.The present article attempts to offer further insight into the connection between justice and spirituality by focusing on the relational aspect of each and by viewing them in relationship to a contemporary understanding of Christian love. In short, it will be argued that justice, love, and Christian spirituality are all concerned with the establishment of authentic relationships with God, with other persons, and with the created order—ultimately as a transcendent hope but also as a task in present historical circumstances.
Adam Smith and the Spanish Inquisition
Authors: Meikle Scott 
Published: July 2007

Spain in the Eighteenth century was in two minds about the economic thought of the Enlightenment reaching it from other parts of Europe. The first half of the century has been aptly characterised as a period of ‘ideological hesitancy’, but in the second half the hesitancy came to an end. The liberal cause, and its main instruments the Sociedades Economicas de los Amigos del Pais, made great strides. Political economy, then a brand new science, was welcomed by the liberal statesmen like Jovellanos and Campomanes who flourished under Carlos III. Their primary concern was that Spain might lose heavily if she were too slow getting into the new international market economy, and they regarded works like Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as important guides to the industrial and commercial policies Spain should pursue.Others were more cautious. Intellectuals trained in the Aristotelian tradition were often more concerned about the moral quality of the new economics, and about the moral costs of pursuing the kind of policies that flowed from it. These are concerns which today, after a further two hundred years experience of market economy, are even more alive now than they were then. It is worth reflecting on whether these critics were entirely the reactionary flat-earthers they are customarily dismissed as being. History is written by the victors, and the Enlightenment won this engagement, so it is only to be expected that in our standard accounts the Aristotelian opponents of the Enlightenment come out badly.