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Against the background of the inveterate politicization and polarization of synodical practice, this article aims to reclaim synodality as a spiritual pathway, in the spirit of Pope Francis's current initiative. It argues that participation in synodality is the birthright of Christians and that the widest consultation is mandated. Synodality calls for an organic model of the church that is inimical to hierarchy and top-down forms of leadership. Synodality, so understood, has the potential to revitalize the church, not least in evangelization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore to what extent Asian women's participation in the current synodal process has opened up space towards the recognition of their concerns in the Catholic Church. While encouraging broad participation, discussion on taboo issues and local synodal initiatives, it remains to be seen whether this synodal process will usher in the radical reform or transformational level of participation women want to see in the church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text aims to provide a retrospective view of the creation of the Bishops Council of Latin America (CELAM), as a great historical and ecclesial success, slowly conceived and developed in the mind and in the pastoral of the «fathers» of latinoamerican theology and pastoral, to answer to the compelling needs of the region. We focus on the interventions of Pope Pious XII through his Pontificate, as well as the creative continuity of his successors, who knew how to carry on with the Pope Pacelli's prophetic vision towards the strengthening and expansion of the Latin American Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the five General Conferences of the Latin American Episcopate held over the course of half a century, from the first one, held in Rio, until the most recent one in Aparecida. To facilitate the understanding of these Conferences, the theological context of each is recalled and some of the main points of their "Conclusions" are indicated. These Episcopal Assemblies prove that there is a specifically Latin American pastoral theology. Nonetheless, if before one had to prevent Eurocentric exaggerations, it is currently necessary that one avoid excessive Latin Americanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion about the date of the Council of Gangra began in 1703 and has never reached the point of certainty and general agreement. Scholars have proposed dates between 340 and 376. I propose the year 358 for the Council of Gangra on the basis of the following assumptions: Eustathius of Sebastea came from Caesarea of Cappadocia, just as Basil did; he started to practice his unique asceticism in the early 340s; the deposition by his father Eulalius was the first one based on the charges connected to his asceticism; it was only after Eustathius became bishop of Sebastea (357) that his habits riveted the attention of the bishops of Pontus. In 358, three councils in the diocese of Pontus examined his asceticism, namely those of Melitene, Neocaesarea, and Gangra. Sozomen states that Eustathius was deposed from the bishopric in Gangra. Since Eustathius came from Caesarea in Cappadocia and was ordained priest there, the fact that the synodical letter of bishops gathered in Gangra was addressed specifically to the clergy of Armenia proves that at the time of the Council of Gangra, Eustathius was already bishop of Sebastea (since 357). The Council of Gangra must have been held before the Council of Constantinople (359/360) as it appears in the charges brought against Eustathius during the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. 1. A Brief History of the Congregation of the Mission. 1.1 Establishment of the Congregation of the Mission. 1.2. Founding Motive of the Congregation of the Mission. 1.3. Erection of the Congregation of the Mission. 2. The Juridical Elements of the Congregation of the Mission. 2.1. Nature of the Institute. 2.2. Purpose of the Institute. 2.3. The Character of the Institute. 2.4. Fraternal Life in Common. 2.5. Vows. 3. Historical Facts of Vincentian Apostolate in India. 4. Organizing the Apostolate in the South Indian Province of the Congregation of the Mission. 4.1. In Relation with the Superior General. 4.2. In Relation with the Bishops. 5. The Relation with the Bishops and Practice of Subjection. 5.1. General principles followed in the Relationship with the Bishop. 5.1.1. Contemporary Understanding of the Secular Character of the Congregation. 5.1.2. The Principle of Autonomy. 5.1.3. Respect for and Coordination and collaboration with the Bishop. 5.1.4. The Principle of Subordination. 5.2. The Practice of Subjection to the Bishop in the Specific Areas of Mission of the Province. 5.2.1. Erection and Suppression of Houses and Local Communities. 5.2.2. Written Agreements. 5.2.3. Parish Ministry and Appointments of Confreres to the Diocesan Posts. 5.2.4 The Material Goods of the Province and Permission from the Holy See for the Alienation and Transaction Affecting Patrimonial Conditions. 5.2.5. Religious Dress Code. 5.2.6. Popular Mission. 6. Privileges of the Congregation of the Mission. 6.1. The Canonical Concept of Privilege and its application to the Congregation of the Mission. 6.2. Privilege of the Congregation of the Mission in General. 6.2.1. Proving the Existence of the Privileges. 6.2.2. Diocesan Bishop cannot impose Censures. 6.2.3. Dispensation of the Ecclesiastical Laws.6.3. Privileges concerning the Houses and Churches of the Congregation of the Mission. 6.3.1. Erection of the Houses. 6.3.2. Changing House from one Place to another within the Same City. 6.4. Privileges concerning the Ministers of the Word. 6.4.1. The Extension of the Privileges of the Congregation of the Mission to the Secular Priests. 6.4.2. Admitting Members to the Pious Associations. 6.5. Privileges concerning the Eucharist. 6.5.1. Concerning the Participation in the Chrism Mass. 6.5.2. Maundy Thursday Mass. 6.5.3. Mass Intention Book. 6.6. Privileges concerning the Sacrament of Penance: Absolution of the Censures. 6.7. Privileges concerning the Liturgy: Dispensing the Liturgy of Hours. 6.8. Privileges concerning Temporal Goods. 6.8.1. Prescription of Temporal Goods. 6.8.2. Alienation of Temporal Goods. 6.8.3. Changing the destination of the Goods. 6.8.4. Decision to give Goods of One house to Another. Conclusion. Bibliography. Appendices. Contents of the Thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of a documentary and bibliographic research carried out in the general archive of the Latin American Episcopal Council, Celam. It focuses on its contribution to ecumenical dialogue during its sixty years of history. It presents the people involved in the process, the contributions of the General Assemblies of the Episcopate and their main theological and ecumenical emphasis. It also highlights the evolution of the concepts, the influence of the Ecclesiology of Communion and of the missionary discipleship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the competencies of the Apostolic Signatura. Topics discussed include old ordering of the tribunals of the Papal Signatura of Favors and Justice; institution of Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura by the Apostolic Constitution Sapienti consilio; and competencies of the Apostolic Signatura.

A fundamental level of Receptive Ccumenism is that of the reception by a dialoguing church of an institutional charism of a partner church as a gift of the Spirit. It is proposed here that in the Lutheran/Roman Catholic Dialogue in Australia, this kind of receptivity has been evident in two ways. First, at least in part through this dialogue, the Lutheran Church of Australia has come to a new reception of episcopacy. Second, in and through this same dialogue, Roman Catholic participants have come to see that their church has much to receive from the Lutheran Church of Australia with regard to synodality, above all in fully involving the lay faithful in synodal structures of church life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the synodality of bishops in the church governance in Rome. Topics include the announcement of Pope Francis regarding the Extraordinary Synod meeting to be held in autumn 2014, and the development of the synod's role. Information regarding the pastoral consequences of the Council's teaching is also provided.

An essay is presented on the rules of episcopal conferences since Vatican II. It offers a history of episcopal conferences and examines its role in the government of the Catholic Church. The author also relates the importance of episcopal conferences and discusses the proposed laws about said conferences to be inserted in the Code of Canon Law.

Aggiornamento, reform, rupture, revolution continuity and discontinuity are some of the concepts raised in hermeneutical debate on Vatican II. The different interpretations of Vatican II have determined its reception. This article assesses the hermeneutics present in the debate between the closing of the Council in 1965, up to the year 1985, when an Extraordinary Synod was held. The period is subdivided in three: From 1965 to 1968, year in which the crisis of the Church was manifest; from 1968 until the end of Paul Vl's pontificate in 1978; and from the election of John Paul II in 1978 to 1985. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 13th Synod General Assembly on the new evangelization for the transmission of Christian faith held in Rome, Italy. The appointment of Archbishop Nikola Eterovic as secretary of the synod is discussed. The proclamation of Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen during the Eucharist is also discussed.

The author describes and comments on developments that have taken place since Vatican H with regard to teaching authority. Among subjects exercising such authority he treats episcopal conferences and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Among objects of definitive teaching he treats truths that are not revealed but necessarily connected with revealed truth. As a way of exercising teaching authority, he discusses papal declarations that a doctrine has been taught infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the features, causes, and consequences of issues that Korean Catholicism faced in and since the 1990s. Along with a rapid, continuous increase in the size of its congregation since the 1990s, the number of parish churches, priests, and religious also have grown rapidly. Even in the social welfare sector, Korean Catholicism has experienced the sharpest quantitative expansion among Korean religions. Catholicism's pronouncements and engagement in social issues, on the other hand, have decreased. Participation of Catholic-based civil organizations in social movements has also plunged. Due to the increasing number of priests, lay believer's participation in church activities has become relatively passive, which is indicated by ebbing religious commitments. Solidarity of the congregation has weakened and the number of tepid Catholics has grown. Church vitality has diminished markedly with the continuously declining number of the young generation and the sharp surging proportion of the aged. Moreover, with growing wealth as well as social and political influences, the Catholic Church is being criticized, from inside and outside, as a "religious power." Korean Catholicism has mounted reform drives to deal with such problems, but to no avail. As a consequence, the possibility has risen for Catholicism to accommodate the demands of the middle class congregation, whose degree of commitment is low, and to incur negative societal criticism in place of positive appraisal of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1931 the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia K. Irbe suggested discussions at the deaneries about various topics of the planned Synod at the end of 1931, and also about the shortcomings of the episcopal synodal order or demand its substitution with the episcopal order. As this suggestion was not supported by the deaneries and was not included in the agenda of the Synod, the theme of the change in church order initiated by Bishop K. Irbe was concluded in 1932 by the decree of the Consistory that "the synodal episcopal order is not to be changed." However, in practice, during the period between 1934 and 1940, as a result of the initiative of the church itself and of the autoritarian state administration, the synodal episcopal order was de facto replaced by the episcopal order and all the prerequisites - the draft law about the state church and the new church Constitution - for introducing the state church model created in 1940. These processes formed the understanding of the church and its relations with the state that substantially enabled the Soviet authorities to implement the policy of sovietisation of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran church and bringing it under Soviet interests, depriving the church of its rights of autonomy and self-determination. While the intention of the autoritarian regime was to integrate the church into the structures of state power and administration, the aim of the Soviet regime was to weaken the church as an institution as much as possible and to consign it to oblivion and extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides an analysis of Karl Rahner's book The Shape of the Church to Come and comments briefly on the context of this book, namely, the German Synod at Würzburg, Germany in 1971. Rahner was prescient in thinking that it may only be a single occasion that may precipitate a huge crisis in which many Catholics will leave the Church, refusing to pay the church-tax, as is happening in Germany today. Although Rahner sharply criticizes the Church as institution, his passionate loyalty to the magisterium also comes through loud and clear in all his writings. Rahner, the consummate theologian, cannot be pigeonholed into neat categories like "conservative" or "liberal" because his theology knows how to do a balancing act. Finally, Rahner is such a trailblazer in theology that it may take another fifty years for the institutional Church to catch up with his thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the summary of a conference that focused on national synods, the Second Vatican Council and the preparation of the synod in Würzburg, Germany. The conference was held February 23-25, 2010 in Erbach, Germany and topics under discussion included the Catholic bishops meeting in Medellin, Colombia in 1968, the Austrian synod process, as well as the joint synod of the Dioceses in the Federal Republic of Germany.

This article discusses the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, organized on September 21, 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI. It examines the significance of the new evangelization, which will be carried out in countries where secularization presents a crisis for the Catholic Church. The author analyzes the characteristics of the council of the Roman curia, which he compares with others from the past, including the Council for the Laity and the Council for Justice and Peace.

El artículo presenta un análisis de las leyes canónicas recopiladas en el sínodo celebrado por el obispo español Pedro de Lepe y Dorantes en 1698, en Logroño, capital de La Rioja, España. El autor discute la importancia histórica de este sínodo, como parte de la historia del Derecho canónico.

This article explores the national factors that predict bishops’ votes on two of the most contentious issues at the Second Vatican Council. Using data obtained from the Vatican Secret Archive, analyses demonstrate that rational choice oriented theory in the sociology of religion that focuses on competition is limited. While competition is important to religious leaders’ actions, its effects can be understood only in relation to other crucial characteristics of the social environment within which leaders operate. These characteristics, which we derive from Neo-Institutional Theory (NIT), shape leaders’ interests and often lead them to prioritize concerns about their institutions’ legitimacy over the concerns about efficiency and growth rational choice theorists assume are predominant. Most NIT studies examine the population of firms within one organizational field. Because we hold firm constant and examine how variation in the type of organizational field (supplied by the more than 100 countries in our analyses) predicts firm leaders’ actions, this study represents a unique test of NIT. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 5th General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, which took place in Aparecida, Brazil (May 2007), the bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean promoted a continental mission. Thirty years ago, in the 3rd Conference, in Puebla, Mexico (1979), a concept for the mission was elaborated: "Liberating Evangelization", based on the "option for the poor", developed during the 2nd General Conference in Medellín, Colombia (1968), and also based on Paul VI's exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi. Both expressions, common to the Liberation Theology, have meant -in practice- persecutions from diverse powers, even ecclesial ones. Which is, then, the relevance of Puebla's liberating evangelization for the Christian task in the current continental mission? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents excerpts from addresses by participants in the Synod on the Word of God, including one on criteria for reading the Bible, another on the importance of conveying the Word of God through art, and another on reading the Bible with devotion.

One of the two oldest manuscripts of Greek canon law, the Codex Patmiacus 172, sheds new light on the history of the Council in Trullo (691/92). Whereas from the other 45 extant manuscripts only 220 episcopal signatures to this Council have been known so far, the Patmiacus has preserved 6 additional signatures and thus raises the number of the hitherto known clerical participants to 226, representing a total of 227 bishoprics. Since these subscriptions are preceded by the signature of the Emperor, the Patmiacus is the sole extant manuscript that bears in fact a total of 227 signatures, the number of participants assigned to this Council in the later canonistic tradition. Besides, this manuscript offers a great number of additions and corrections to the other 220 signatures. Due to the discovery of the six new episcopal signatures, however, the question of authenticity of the six position markers found in some manuscripts to indicate the place for the signatures of six episcopal sees which were present at the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 681/82 but apparently absent in 691/92 must be reconsidered. Whereas so far these markers have been considered original because it was only by their connumerating that the number of 227 could be achieved, this argument has become obsolete by the subscription list of the Patmiacus. Furthermore, the missing of the first three markers in the oldest extant manuscripts as well as their odd positions makes it very likely that they are not original but were interpolated at the times of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in order to assimilate the beginning of the subscription list of the Council of 691/92 to the one of 681/82 and thus substantiating Tarasios' claim that the Council in Trullo was a continuation of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Whether the West and the metropolitan sees present in 681/82 - Rome, Thessaloniki, Sardinia, Ravenna and Corinth - were in fact invited as well to the Council in 691/92 is once again an open question and cannot be answered by reference to the manuscript tradition. Finally, the reasons for the western opposition to this Council are not so much to be sought in the form of the subscription list but more in the content of the canons and the Logos Prosphonetikos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses activities and news relating to canon law and the Holy See that took place in 2007. On January 27th, Pope Benedict XVI discussed the role of truth as a point of convergence between the investigation process and pastoral service. The suspension and laicization of Monsignor Fernando Lugo Méndez, President of Paraguay, is also discussed, and the excommunication of the "Army of Mary" Christian sect from Canada is also mentioned. The article concludes with the results of the Spanish Episcopal Conference.

The present study offers a reflection about the actual regulation of permanent diaconate --not exempted, perhaps, from certain confusions-- considering three important questions: the relationship between clerical state and conjugal life; the professional work of the permanent deacons and their participation in politics. For that purpose, this study considers as a point of departure the norms of the Code of Canon Law of 1983 about the rights and obligations of the clergy (cfr. cc. 273-289) and the Directory of the Congregation for the Clergy of 1998 about the ministry and the life of permanent deacons, which presents a perspective partially different in some important aspects. Besides, in relation with those same questions, some norms of particular law are studied, concretely the Directories for permanent deacons prepared by the Episcopal conferences of United States and of Brazil, which have been approved ad experimentum in these recent years by the Holy See. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines a perspective on personhood offered by magisterial Roman Catholicism. Vatican II encyclicals Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae; Anthropological thrust of Vatican II which refers to the dignity of the human person, her mystery and vocation; Roman Church as safeguard of the dignity of the person.

I argue that works of art and literature can be primary expressions of religious ideas, i.e., ones not dependent on other modes of communication like preaching or theology. This does not mean, however, that such works are independent of criticism, for an artist or writer can show something that is untrue, immoral, crude, and so on. I maintain that art and literature may criticize theology, or vice versa; or, thirdly, the relationship between them may be reciprocal, and I illustrate these three possibilities via Ibsen’s Brand, Goethe’s Faust, and the film Dead Man Walking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the reaction of the Latin Frankish Churches against the iconoclast controversy in the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. Factors that contributed to the Council's proceedings; Pope Hadrian's apology for icon worship; Role of the papal legates; Papal response to the Council of Nicaea II; Implications of the Lombard threat for the Roman, Byzantine and Frankish relations; Frankish response to the Council.

Offers a Christian reflection on several issues in moral theology that face East Asia. Discussion on the 1998 Synod of Asia held in Rome; Christianity's dialogue with Asia tradition; Contextualization of moral theology in East Asia.

Provides a theological discussion about the meaning and extent of the principle of collegiality in the Roman Catholic church. Examination of the collegial principle according to the Vatican Council II; Role of the synod and national conferences of bishops; Difference between a collegial and collective bishop act; Theological synthesis of the meanings based on the communion-collegiality-synodality model of Pope John Paul II.

The article discusses the regulations governing the Synod of Bishops, an advisory board for the Pope that was put in place during Vatican II. Representing a broad spectrum of Roman Catholic leadership, the Synod's main task is to work with the Pope for the good of the Church and to mediate ecclesiastic problems.

The article discusses the regulations governing the Synod of Bishops, an advisory board for the Pope that was put in place during Vatican II. Representing a broad spectrum of Roman Catholic leadership, the Synod's main task is to work with the Pope for the good of the Church and to mediate ecclesiastic problems.