bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Cardinal, in summary
Authors: Iglich Elsa , Kerr Fergus , Mills John Orme , Ombres Robert 
Published: July 2007

As we have already explained, what is printed here is based substantially on the German abridged version of Vittorio Massori’s interview. This first appeared in the Catholic newspaper Deutsche Tagespost on 7/8 and 14/15 December 1984.At the beginning of June appeared the long-awaited book (in Italian): Rapporto sulla fede, published by Edizioni Paoline, Turin (pp. 216, 14,000 lire). A German edition is appearing, and a French edition has already appeared (Entretien sur la foi, published by Fayard).
“He must increase, but I must decrease”
Authors: Hastings Adrian 
Published: July 2007

The Ramsden sermon, preached before the University of Oxford at St.Mary’s Church on 19 May 1985; first preached in Bulawayo Cathedral, Zimbabwe, on 28 October 1984.‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3.30). These words are offered to us in the fourth gospel as a comment by John the Baptist, not only on his relationship with Jesus, but also on the relationship between two groups of people—his own disciples and those of Jesus. Both had been baptizing. While Jesus himself had earlier been baptized by John, he had now developed a separate movement and more and more people, it seems, were transferring from one to the other. While the two movements were thus distinct, there remained a loose communion and much sympathy between them. Yet, as Jesus’ group advanced, so John’s declined. This can hardly not have been painful for John and bewildering for some of his more staunch disciples. But he accepted it.I would suggest that this relationship, as also the appositeness of John’s comment upon it, provides a model for the interpretation of a number of subsequent crucial turning points within Christian history.There is, first, that of the late apostolic period. On the one side was the senior church, that of Jerusalem. ‘You see, brother,’ Paul was told on one of his visits to the city, ‘how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed; they are all zealous for the law’ (Acts 21.20). Here was a considerable group of Christians, some of whom had undoubtedly known Jesus personally, some of whom were related to him by family ties, and all of whom were immersed in the scriptures.
Balthasar and his Christology
Authors: Nichols Aidan 
Published: July 2007

Hans Urs von Balthasar, the important Swiss theologian, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday on August 12th.Pope John Paul’s singling out of Hans Urs von Balthasar for the Paul VI award, for his contribution to Catholic theology, almost certainly marks his emergence as the preferred Catholic theologian of the pontificate. Interest in his thought is bound to increase, especially with the English translation of his master-work Herrlichkeit, now proceeding. Our aim here is to present what can only be an introductory picture of the man and his work, still—amazingly—so little known in the English-speaking world in spite of the fact that his eightieth birthday is at hand and he has been writing for fifty years. We are not attempting to summarize everything (that would be an impossibility) but considering the central theme of his writing, his Christology.Balthasar was born in Lucerne in 1905. It is probably significant that he was born in that particular Swiss city, whose name is virtually synonymous with Catholicism in Swiss history. The centre of resistance to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, in the nineteenth it led the Catholic cantons in what was virtually a civil war of religion, the War of the Sonderbund (which they lost). Even today it is very much a city of churches, of religious frescoes, of bells. Balthasar is a very self-consciously Catholic author. He was educated by both Benedictines and Jesuits, and then in 1923 began a university education divided between four Universities: Munich, Vienna, Berlin—where he heard Romano Guardini, for whom a Chair of Catholic Philosophy had been created in the heartland of Prussian Protestantism—and finally Zurich.
The Liberation of Christology from Patriarchy
Authors: Ruether Rosemary Radford 
Published: July 2007

The doctrine of Christ should be the most comprehensive way that Christians express their belief in redemption from all sin and evil in human life, the doctrine that embraces the authentic humanity and fulfilled hopes of all persons. The theological categories adopted by early Christianity to define the doctrine of Christ—early Christology, in other words—would seem to be inclusive of women. And yet, of all Christian doctrine, it has been the doctrine of Christ that has been most frequently used to exclude women from full participation in the Christian Church. How is this possible?Early Christianity used the word ‘logos’ to define that presence of God which has become incarnate in Jesus Christ. This term drew on a long tradition of religious philosophy. In Greek and Hellenistic Jewish philosophy, the divine Logos was the means by which the transcendent God came forth in the beginning to create the world. The Logos was simultaneously the immanence of God and the ground of creation. Through the Logos God created the world, guided it, was revealed to it and reconciled the world to God.The Logos was particularly related to the rational principle in each human soul. By linking the term Christ, the Messiah, through which God redeemed the world, to the Logos, early Christianity prevented a split between creation and redemption threatened by early gnosticism. The God revealed in Christ was the same God who created the world in the beginning, the authentic ground of creation manifest in fulfilled form over against the alienation of creation from its true being.
Prayer and Righteous Action: exploring Bonhoeffer's suggestion
Authors: Ford David F. 
Published: July 2007

Today you will be baptized a Christian. All those great ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be spoken over you, and the command of Jesus to baptize will be carried out on you, without your knowing anything about it. But we are once again being driven right back to the beginnings of our understanding. Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and the Holy Spirit, love of our enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship—all these things are so difficult and so remote that we hardly venture any more to speak of them. In the traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp or express it. That is our own fault. Our Church, which has been fighting in these years only for self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to man and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and sense, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organising, must be born anew out of this prayer and action.That was written by Bonhoeffer during that period of his imprisonment in Tegel between April and August 1944 when, having faced up to the prospect of a long time in prison due to the delay of his trial, he settled down to critical and creative theological work.
Practical Reasoning, Human Goods and the End of Man
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: July 2007

Our practical reasoning goes well and attains its truth when we identify ways of adequately getting or realising really desirable objectives. And our objectives are really desirable (good) when they either are really desirable in themselves, or are steps on the way to getting or realising some such intrinsically desirable objective or objectives. If there is but one such intrinsically desirable objective, our practical reasoning cannot go well unless we know what it is. If, as seems much more plausible, there are a number of intrinsically desirable objectives, our practical reasoning cannot go well unless we know whether there is some further objective to be attained or realised by or in the pursuit of some or all of these intrinsically desirable objectives, i.e. whether there is some further point to pursuing them; and if so, what that further point or objective (‘last end’) actually is.Some say that the true last end is some one of the intrinsically desirable human goods, say, the highest instantiation of the highest good attainable in this life, thus contemplation of God to the extent that God is knowable through His creatures. Others agree that it is some one human good, but place it beyond this life, and beyond merely human capacities, in the beatific vision and contemplation of God.
The Involvement of God
Authors: McCabe Herbert 
Published: July 2007

I have called this paper ‘The involvement of God’ because I want to take part in a discussion about such questions as whether God suffers with the sufferings of his creatures, in order to ask how far God is involved in his world. I shall first try to defend what I take to be the classical doctrine of God derived from Augustine and Aquinas: that it is not in the nature of God to be involved in the suffering of the world as spectator, sympathiser or victim, but that it is in God’s nature nonetheless to be involved with his creatures more intimately than any creature could be involved with any other. Secondly I shall argue that the Christology of Chalcedon does make sense of the notion that God suffers and indeed was tortured to death; indeed, in large part it just is this notion. Thirdly, and a bit more tentatively, I shall suggest that a sacramental interpretation of Chalcedonian christology yields the whole of the doctrine of the Trinity.The subject of God’s suffering is so popular amongst theologians today that I am quite incapable of even beginning to give a survey of recent literature—this is partly because I haven’t read enough and partly because I don’t want to misrepresent authors by isolated quotation. I shall quote very little; I am concerned with certain ideas, how they hang together and how they fall apart.
Seeking the Glory of Him who sent us
Authors: Horn Romuald 
Published: July 2007

The English Dominican Father Romuald Horn, who here, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, reflects on what the priesthood means for him, spent many years of his life as a priest in the once famous parish of St Dominic’s, Newcastle upon Tyne (which in his early days contained some of the most deprived parts of Tyneside.) He is now a confessor at the Basilica of St Mary Major, Rome.A golden jubilee is not an occasion for argument. If fifty years are not reason enough, it would seem useless to look further. For one can speak with the tongue, and one can say a word with one’s whole life. Even to change one’s mind after so long a time, impressive as it may be, doesn’t get rid of fifty years easily. In particular the golden jubilee of a priest contains a whole life, and a long one, because ordination comes at the beginning of maturity. Argument is still more out of place, because the priest is a minister, a servant. It is for his Lord to judge, not for himself. This is the true judgment, which the Lord will deliver at his own chosen time, a judgement which may not be anticipated. It remains for the minister to pass judgment on his ministry from his own point of view, as servants may compare one master with another, and one condition of service with alternative employment. This is what I am endeavouring to do now in this year of my golden jubilee, 1985.
Theologies of Repression
Authors: Márkus Gilbert 
Published: July 2007

At the end of their National Conference this summer, the bishops of the Philippines spoke out strongly against human rights abuses in their country. They recited a long list of the names of people killed in the past year, including priests, journalists, trade unionists and other community leaders. Such denunciations of violence and repression are now fairly standard parts of the conclusions of many bishops’ conferences, but the Philippine bishops’ statement is interesting because it singles out the use of ‘religious fanatics’ in the government agencies’ counter-insurgency campaigns. The bishops condemned this as an ‘unholy strategy’, and claim that it is only ‘conducive to the worst forms of terrorism’. The arming and training of fanatical religious groups to fight the New People’s Army had led the civilian Home Defence Force to become ‘instruments of terror rather than peace’.Though the Philippine bishops’ conference was addressing itself to its own local situation, they are clearly aware that this use of certain groups of Christians by repressive governments is not peculiar to their own country. Other local Catholic hierarchies have spoken out strongly against various religious groups. In recent months Mexican Church leaders, together with labour leaders and others, have called for the expulsion of various evangelical, fundamentalist sects from Mexico. The enormous financial resources of these sects, together with their political and social impact, has led to accusations that they are an integral part of US foreign policy in the region, and even that they operate as a front for the CIA.
A Long Sermon for Holy Week
Authors: McCabe Herbert 
Published: July 2007

I think the best way to begin is to ask why Christ died on the cross. That we can give some kind of answer to this question in terms of the meaning and purpose of the life of Jesus is presupposed by the Christian activity of ‘preaching Christ crucified’ two thousand years after the event. For our purposes, then, we can rule out the idea that it was all a tragic misunderstanding which need never have happened ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’, said Jesus of his executioners; but even if this means that they misunderstood him, the misunderstanding was not fortuitous. It was a misunderstanding that was in some way to be expected. In the gospels Jesus is presented not, indeed, as seeking his death or courting it but as realising that it was unavoidable. It is this unavoidability that we shall be looking at here, in Part Two of this ‘long sermon’.Scholars dispute about the circumstances of the death of Jesus but two facts seem fairly well established: Jesus was executed by the Romans because they found him a threat to the precarious stability of their colony; and they were encouraged to do this because Jesus was rejected by the leaders of his own people. I think that, in the end, the reason why he was thus rejected was that he claimed to ‘speak with authority’; that is, he regarded attachment to his own person as more significant even than belonging in the ordinary way to the People of God in accordance with the Law.
The Greenham Vigil: a women's theological initiative for peace
Authors: West Angela 
Published: July 2007

On August 31st 1984, ten women arrived at Blue Gate, the entrance to the American Cruise missile base at Greenham Common to do the night watch for the peace camp there—and simultaneously to keep the vigil of the Passion based on the gospel of St. Mark. It so happened that that weekend was the anniversary of the women’s peace camp—three years since it had been set up in 1981. The camp had been evicted and destroyed many times. But the women return and remain, gathering around the fire, huddled under sheets of polythene at night and in the rain. Old prams stand at the ready for the women to wheel away their few possessions when the bailiffs come in the morning—as they do most days.The women of the camp welcomed the night watchers and extended the hospitality of their fire, before going off to sleep under the polythene sheets. The vigil women remained around the fire to keep the watch, gathering each hour on the hour to face the guarded gates of Greenham, to sing a psalm, read from the bible and pray. Towards morning at 6.00 a.m., as dawn came up over the base, and Mark’s gospel told of Jesus being led away and delivered to Pilate, the night watch prepared to depart. Meanwhile, another woman was getting up in London and going to continue the vigil in the church beside her house.Without the presence of the women’s peace camp at Greenham, this theological initiative for peace on the part of Christian women would not have taken place.
A Long Sermon for Holy Week Part 3 The Easter Vigil: The Mystery of New Life
Authors: McCabe Herbert 
Published: July 2007

... because it is only Christian men Guard even heathen things.G.K.C.At the time of the full moon at the Spring Equinox the people of the Messiani extinguish all their hearth-fires and every lamp and lantern and source of light from amongst them. They gather then on the hillside at midnight and in the darkness a Holy Man strikes the new fire from the rock of flint and with this a great sacred fire is made to blaze. This new fire from darkness represents, for the Messiani, the rebirth of Messia, their dying god, and also the rebirth of the year and the coming of new life out of darkness and winter.An image of the risen god in the form of a tall candle is then lighted from the fire to symbolise his return to life from the dead, and adorned with certain sacred signs by which past and future and all time is made to centre on this time and this place. Led by the flame of the image the whole throng then moves in procession from the fire to the place of assembly. As they go they take new flame from the image for their own torches and lanterns and they dance and shout the praises of Messia ‘the new light of the world’.When the crowd is once more assembled Messia is erected amongst green boughs and flowers and other signs of fertility and a Holy Man addresses it in song, bringing this Holy Night to coincide with the mythic nights of creation and of the birth of the Messiani people,
The Destabilising Poverty Crisis
Authors: Evaristo Arns Paulo 
Published: July 2007

The opening address at the 18th World Conference of the Society for International Development (S.I.D.), Rome, 1 July 1985Together with the Catholic Bishops of the United States (in their first draft of the pastoral letter on the economy) I would like to affirm:
‘Every perspective on economic life ... must be shaped by two questions:— What does it do for people?— What does it do to people?The poor have a special claim on our concern because they are particularly vulnerable...’This World Conference is at the same time an opportunity and a responsibility. It is an opportunity to take up again one of the most difficult of world debates: the relation between the North and the South. And it is a responsibility because even though this Conference is one of analysis and dialogue we must take steps so that its influence goes beyond this level. We have reached a point in history where debate and dialogue without international action have become an offence and an insult to those who are suffering in North and South because of international economic policies. This morning I would like to speak of the meaning and the validity of the topic that was given to me. We all, rich nations and poor, want poverty to be the centre of world concern. But, in my view, the reasons for our concern are fundamentally different. And it is this that I would like to develop in the first part of my presentation.
Most Unholy Alliance: Conservative Attitudes to Christianity in East and West
Authors: Corner Mark 
Published: July 2007

It is now nearly a decade since Edward Norman’s controversial Reith lectures, subsequently published as Christianity and World Order, helped to generate a great deal of debate about the appropriate sphere of Christian moral concern.Dr Norman’s view is clear:...the teachings of the Saviour clearly describe a personal rather than a social morality.Any attempt to outline a Christian social morality—to ‘involve the Church in politics’—means compromising the proper concern of Christians with what is transcendent. It entails sanctifying whatever prevailing political world-view is current at the time. Among Western nations, Norman argues, this means supporting what he calls a ‘Human Rights Ideology’. The Human Rights movement ‘has elevated Western liberalism to the apparent authority of eternal truth’. As a consequence, ‘... the Churches now see Human Rights as the essence of the Christian message’. Christians in politics are engaged, then, in a process of absolutising a relative (Human Rights), identifying the essence of Christianity, which must be changeless, with a prevailing political ideology which represents only the view of a liberal twentieth century establishment in the West. In doing so, they obscure the truly changeless essence of Christianity, which lies in eternal values, values which by definition cannot be political.Criticisms of Norman’s thesis have been numerous, and the arguments on both sides are now well-rehearsed. Any attempt to outline a Christian personal morality, no less than a Christian social morality, involves the apparent compromise of associating with current secular ideologies, it has been pointed out.
Being a Preacher: The Franciscan Way
Authors: Harding John 
Published: July 2007

Reading Simon Tugwell’s book The Way of the Preacher led me to consider what St Francis of Assisi had to say about preaching and what is the place of preaching in the life of the Franciscan.Given that both the Dominicans and the Franciscans are essentially mendicant, it is not surprising that over the centuries they have been heavily involved in both preaching and teaching. As Fr. Tugwell ably demonstrates, the Order of Preachers came into being as the practical response of St Dominic to the most urgent need of the Church in southern France, namely, the need for competent and devout preachers. St Dominic realized that to reverse the serious decline of the Church in southern France (and elsewhere too) there was a need for preachers who could be relied upon to expound and if necessary defend the authentic catholic tradition. Such preachers were not easily to be found and when they were to be found they were not easily retained. St Dominic did the obvious and eminently practical thing, he began what was soon to become the Order of Preachers. Preaching, for Dominicans, is very much a matter of self-definition. For Franciscans it is not quite so straightforward.Many studies have sought to isolate the distinctive characteristics of the Franciscan charism but few, if any, would list preaching as being among its most noteworthy. Having said this, it would be hard to trace the growth of the Franciscan movement without encountering such notable preachers as would compare with the great preachers of old.