A Very Short Guide to Understanding the Scope, Purpose, and Doctrinal Weight of Papal Documents
Church Life Journal
by Elizabeth Huddleston
3d ago
When the pope speaks, Catholics tend to listen. Confusion often arises, however, when we do not have the tools to know how to properly listen. Using examples from Pope Francis’s pontificate (and some from other pontificates) we will outline the various types of papal writings in their scope, purpose, and doctrinal weight. One way to approach reading papal documents is to think of them as differing genres. Much like one would not read a newspaper, a poem, and a cookbook the same way, one also should avoid thinking of an apostolic constitution, a brief, and a homily in the same fashion. As you w ..read more
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Spiritual Worldliness: A Key Forgotten Bergoglioism
Church Life Journal
by Lucas Briola
5d ago
Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio delivered a speech on 7 March 2013 that would change his life and the life of the Church. That day, this relatively unknown ecclesial commodity—at least to the outside world—spoke for just under four minutes to the cardinals about to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor. In remarks that papal biographer Austen Ivereigh once likened to the Gettysburg Address, Bergoglio set out his vision of the Church.[1] His audience found this vision so inspiring that they elected him Pope Francis six days later. At the speech’s climax, Bergoglio urged the church to be missionary, to ..read more
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Theron Ware's Damnation and Catholicism, Then and Now
Church Life Journal
by Amy Welborn
1w ago
The novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, published in 1896, unspools the tale of a young Methodist minister who, thanks to Catholics, science, bohemianism, and good old American pragmatism, loses his faith. Yes, Reverend Theron Ware was vulnerable, no doubt. His pride, limited intellectual, spiritual and social background as well as the bitter, humiliating realities of church life rendered him susceptible to the possibility of damnation— or “illumination” as the novel’s original title slyly suggests; but what a journey it is, a complex trajectory put in motion and shaped by entanglements with a ..read more
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St. Gianna Beretta Molla: A Saint for Our Times
Church Life Journal
by Abigail Jorgensen
1w ago
St. Gianna Beretta Molla is a saint for our times. But, not for the reasons many believe. St. Gianna’s story is often portrayed as follows: she gave up her life so her child could live, thereby setting a heroic example for us of what it means to be a mother, a good mother, a godly mother. When I first “met” St. Gianna, I was frankly suspicious. As a sociologist, I immerse myself in studying how the examples we use and the stories we tell shape our ideals of what a person should be, what a saint looks like, who qualifies as a good mother. And, as a Catholic doula, one of the most dangerous narr ..read more
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Tolkien’s Erotic Lent
Church Life Journal
by Chase Padusniak
1w ago
The word “hackneyed” only begins to approach our habit of yoking John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (or better, his The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy) to Lent. Both, some have remarked, represent a journey. His Middle Earth (and here the absent middle is Middle English itself) mirrors our own yeoman’s sojourn. Traversing immense evil, good lies at the end of each. As a hobbit (or ascetic of old), get rid of your shoes! Saussure himself would marvel at the structural parallels. I do not mean to demean the impulse. We create the connections because they make sense (and because Tolkien’s books ..read more
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12 Points—Including 3 Worries, and a Thank-You—on Synodality in the Church
Church Life Journal
by John Cavadini
1w ago
To anticipate the formal expression of gratitude at the conclusion of this essay, I want to say at the outset that I have written this as a response to the invitation tendered by the Synthesis Report of the First Session of the XVI Ordinary Synod of Bishops to offer “theological deepening” of many of the ideas presented therein. This is, essentially, a brief essay in ecclesiology, hopefully relevant to several of the themes presented in the Synthesis Report. These themes are themselves echoes of many of the same themes that characterized much of the preparatory documentation, and I have respon ..read more
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The Final Word: Prolegomena to Eschatology
Church Life Journal
by Jean-Yves Lacoste
1w ago
The eschatological problem is more recent than the Greek problem of ousia [substance], yet like the problem of ousia it has sparked a “battle between giants,” and for this problem too, it is wise to come to a first conclusion: we do not really know what the final word is; on this subject, we are faced with an aporia. Faced with an aporia, however, we are not left unarmed, either existentially or conceptually. We can reach an understanding about our concepts and the meaning of our existence (that is, for the being that we are, being in the world between birth and death). And to arrive at s ..read more
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A Very Short Introduction to the History of Catholic Debates About the Multiverse and Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Church Life Journal
by Paul Thigpen
2w ago
Are we, on Earth, the lone intelligent inhabitants of this vast universe? The Catholic tradition teaches us that there are other rational creatures, namely angels, who are purely intellectual, non-physical beings. But do we humans share the cosmos with any other embodied intelligent forms of life? Today, speculation about the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) is livelier than ever in our culture. Yet many who contribute to this intensifying interest in ETI, especially Catholics, fail to realize that the contemporary discussion is only the most recent portion of a debate in Weste ..read more
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Lent Is the Time of Conversion
Church Life Journal
by Luigi Giussani
2w ago
There comes a time when the Word, the Christian discourse, must be born from our own personal looking at Jesus Christ. It is, in fact, Jesus Christ the Word who is at the center of our Lenten meditation. If the theme of Advent was that of a global expectation, if the time of Christmas was the announcement of the salvation that has come and begun to manifest itself, the liturgy of Lent is the supreme affirmation of this salvation that has occurred in Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ who is Lord of man, of nature, of the cosmos, of the world, and of its whole history; Jesus Christ in the precise contou ..read more
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What Difference Does the Trinity Make in Christian Prayer?
Church Life Journal
by Margaret Turek
3w ago
As Christians we believe in one God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The doctrine and worship of God in three persons distinguishes Christianity from all other religions as well as every sort of philosophical mysticism. Yet, most of us Christians would be hard-pressed to say something meaningful about the difference it makes to the practice of prayer that the one God is a trinity of persons. Hans Urs von Balthasar, a twentieth-century theologian, can help tremendously here. Balthasar, whose theological work as a whole was imbued with a contemplative spirit, devoted two books to the s ..read more
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