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Abstract

Intellectual and spiritual formation of Joseph Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI - requires talk about the process of his development. The article refers to the most overlooked phase of the young Ratzinger, who moves from the position of a progres-sive and sometimes irresponsible theorizing academic theologian to the position of a thinker grounded in the community of faith, becoming the guardian and teacher of Christian doctrine in line with the spirit and tradition of the Church. A lot of light on the change in the attitude of the German professor sheds the preparatory phase to the Second Vatican Council and its debates, as well as the unpleasant experience of the student revolt in 1968, which finds our professor in Tübingen. And in this way the liberal German theologian grows into to an outstanding Catholic theologian of the universal Church.

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Authors and Affiliations

O. Andrzej Napiórkowski Osppe
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Abstract

This paper not only clarifies the concepts of secularism and secularization, but also analyzes them, and in its final part it evaluates them. The phenomenon of secu-larism is defined as an ideological and active attitude of hostility toward everything that is Christian. In turn, secularism, quite strongly associated with the current form of culture of societies and their development, is seeking autonomy and freedom. Rad-ical (sometimes irresponsible) secularization thesis of the Protestant (R. Bultmann, K. Barth, D. Bonhoeffer, E. Fuchs, F. Gogarten, G. Vahanian, P. van Buren, W. Ham-ilton, Th . J. Alitzer, J.A.T. Robinson, D. Sölle, W. Pannenberg) mind has been adopted by most Catholic theologians with a reasonable reserve. Catholic doctrine accepts the autonomy of temporal realities and a specifically understood process of profanation of the world (constructio mundi and consecratio mundi). However, the fact that different sectors of earthly life are governed by their own relevant laws, does not mean that the created things are totally independent of God, or that man can dispose of them freely and without any relation to the Creator (K. Rahner, J. B. Metz, P. Teilhard de Chardin, M. D. Chenu, J. Danielou, G. Thils, Ch. Duquoc, J. Maritain, H. de Lubac, Y. Congar, Cz. Bartnik, A. Skowronek, A. Nossol, J. Mariański). The position of the Catholic Church on this matter is contained in the conciliar Constitution Gaudium et Spes.

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Authors and Affiliations

O. Andrzej Napiórkowski OSPPE
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Abstract

This presentation outlines the movement of the contemporary Church away from the institutional ecclesiology. Within the context of the post-conciliar ecclesiology and being inspired by the thought of Y. Congar, I have developed 5 principles of reform (the Word of God and liturgy, love and witness, anthropological, ecumenical, interreligious). I have also submitted a few practical indications of this reform (tradition and modernity, unity with a whole, freedom and moral standards, respect for the transcendental reality) in order to perform it. The reform of the Church properly understood becomes her development, which should be seen as a long process, inscribed in the history of the Church as well as in the life of a believer. In their everyday life today’s mystics follow this way of the Church’s development and of their own conversion. Mysticism is not just for those who have been specially elected, but by the grace of Baptism, every Christian is called to holiness and to the practice of mysticism. Even not being aware of it, many are practicing it. Thus those principles and indications of the ecclesial reform also apply to our everyday life of following Christ in his Church.

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Authors and Affiliations

O. Andrzej Napiórkowski Osppe
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Abstract

A Contribution to the Methodology of Integral Ecclesiology

Summary

In the entire field of theological sciences, especially after the Second Vatican Council, many essential changes have taken place which relate not only to their meritorical aspect, but even more to methodology. A need of new precision and polishing up is particularly obvious in the tract on the Church.

The above article presents a few considerations relating to the methodology of integral ecclesiology, i.e. that which brings together the entirety of contemporary achievements of science about the Church accomplished by apologetics, fundamental and dogmatic theology. This challenge naturally exceeds the framework of this elaboration because each of these three fields has its own aim, subject and method within its own autonomy. Nevertheless, an undertaking of a scientifical reflection in this respect may bear fruit in a more accurate, i.e. more complete, picture of the reality of the Church which is a divine-human mysterium.

Presently integral ecclesiology, thanks to the pluralistically developing fundamental as well as dogmatic theology which express the mystery of the Church in the historico-salvific, semiotic, personalistic, transcendental-anthropological, symbolical or immanent perspective, applies two kinds of methods: of the subjective and of the objective type.

The contemporary turn towards man caused more attention to be given to the methods of the subjective type. Therefore the input of many theologians in the development of the psychologico-existential, transcendental and personalistic methods must be noted with acknowledgements. The analysis of Christianity in its ecclesial reality, in the aspect of man and his needs, led to the discovery of some aspects of the Church not so well exposed until now.

Nevertheless, objections towards methods of the subjective type referring to their lack of satisfactory objectivization and successfullness in justification of the credibility of revelation are raised. Such critical voices are most often raised by representatives of methods of the objective type. Customarily put forward among the methods of the objective type are the historico-synthetical, ecclesiologicoanalytical and historico-salvific methods.

The methods mentioned above (subjective and objective) are unfortunately expressed rather one-sidedly. It seems that a holistic approach to the mystery of the Church from the methodological position is still missing in them. It is also necessary to be able to perceive the inadequacy of any methodology, also in those attempts to create a methodology for integral theology declared by us. Every ecclesiological method which we would announce, even within the framework of total ecclesiology, also will not be void of deficiencies. The investigator himself, in order for him to advance in the construction of his method, already in the beginning faces a few important choices, which will determine his further work. He must not only accept one of the conceptions of the Church, but also describe the aim and tasks of his way of doing theology. In this last regard a wide optionality for the method of synthetical ecclesiology appears as well.

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Authors and Affiliations

O. Andrzej Napiórkowski OSPPE

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