Repositório RCAAP

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This article aims to show the origin of the rite of the adoration of the Cross in the Good Friday liturgy. For this purpose we will examine the Roman, Gallican and Mozarabic liturgies. From the documents studied we find that up to the 7th century no specific liturgy is known. In Rome the sacramentary Gelasianum Vetus is the first liturgical book to mention a liturgy of the Word for this day followed by a rite of veneration of the Cross and by the communion of the faithful. The history of this rite is linked to the worship of the relic of the true Cross practised in the stational liturgy of the Pope. The relic was taken in procession from the Basilica of St. John Lateran to the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, where it was deposited on an altar. In the early 8th century, the Ordo romanus XXIII testifies to this Papal liturgical practice, following the description made by Egeria of the Holy Week rites in Jerusalem in the late 4th century. The Gallican liturgy knows of no rite of adoration of the Cross. In the Hispanic tradition, the origin of the Good Friday rites is related to the Offices of Lauds, Terce and None, where the predominant theme is the Passion of Christ. The author concludes, therefore, that the rite of the adoration of the Cross was not born in Rome or in Spain, but was a development of the veneration of the relic of the Holy Cross and of the Divine Office, respectively.

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St. Ciprian was bishop of Carthage at a time (248-258) when the catholic Church was faced with a double challenge: on the one hand, the crisis of unity and integrity of the Christian community, manifest in internal divisions and numerous lapsi resulting from the test of persecution; on the other, the need to redefine the ‘frontiers’ and ‘gateways’ of the relationship between the Church and secular society. In response to this double challenge Ciprian put forward an ecclesial practice based on the metaphor “domus-home” through which he sought both to redefine the conditions for belonging closely to the Ecclesia (extra ecclesiam nulla…) and to permit a risk-free opening to the outside world (ecclesia in saeculo).

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The «Elihu Speeches» (Jb 32-37) break into the book of Job like an apparently unknown and unexpected voice, in order to take up the principal lines of a debate begun by Job and his friends. The surprise element and the philological complexity of the speeches have elicited uncountable critical reactions, expressed in this article as dominant questions made to Job 32-37. It is in the range and opportunity of these questions that the project and the response of Biblical Rhetorical Analysis achieves a peculiar importance, remarkably set out in new horizons of understanding and of inquiry, that are guaranteed to be close to the biblical text and of its author. The decisive step is the study of the composition of the text, as the unequivocal ground for an objective and coherent understanding and interpretation. The interpretation is validated by critical observation, where the convincing unity of the Elihu Speeches and the vigour of the wisdom language are affirmed. These are the foundations of an author’s configuration and of the focus of his message, producing a fecundity that goes hand in hand with the opportunity for new debate.

The Bari document (1987) of the mixed international Commission for Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue, which is looking into the connection between faith, the sacraments and Church unity, is a convergence document that outlines the differences of the Churches on the matter of baptism. The question of the value of baptism for the partners in this dialogue, crucial in all its implications, is an area that is open and promising in its demands for a new logic of understanding of ecclesial relations. Working on a systematic basis, dialogue around the value of baptism and its recognition in relations between the two Churches requires of them a reinvention of methods, seen in terms of ‘differentiated consensus’ and models founded on the model of ‘sister Churches’. This article seeks to contribute to this reinvention.

“Baptism in children: new readings of an eternal reality” is a brief summary of the doctoral dissertation of João Pedro Brito, defended on 18/03/2004 at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome. This work seeks new forms of expression on a classic theme of sacramental theology: paedobaptism. With the help of the Humanities and of new exegetic approaches, it attempts to make explicit certain affirmations from theological tradition in relation to this theme, reclothing them with new, more dynamic elements, with a view to returning to them their original riches, and to help to manifest new virtualities that may be contained within them.

The title of this article relates to the present author’s doctoral thesis. This study is theological and liturgical in nature and is articulated in the manner of a triptych, centred on the concepts sacramentum-mysterium and ministerium. The first section is made up of an analysis of certain texts by six Church Fathers: Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian, Ciprian, John Chrysostom, Augustine and Isidore of Seville. In the second part, eight liturgical documents are examined: Traditio Apostolica, Veronese, Old Gelasian, Gregorian Adrian, Gelonian, Ordines Romani, Liber Ordinum Episcopal of Silos and the Roman-Germanic Pontifical. The final chapter is dedicated to three theologians of the first Scholastic: Ivo of Chartres, Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard. The theological turning of the ecclesial sources to the sacramentality and the ministeriality of the first millennium enables us to conclude that these patristic, liturgical and theological testimonies find their natural environment in the liturgical celebration.In actual fact, the sacrament and the ministry of the liturgy are anything but an enigma. It is the mystery of God that is made real in Jesus Christ. The idea that leaps forth from this triptych is the concept that the liturgy is the sacrament of mystery and that the ministry of the Church is the diacony of mystery, the visible sign of the only and same mystery of Christ.

The present text affirms ‘primacy of relation’, questioning some of the lines of Western thinking which underrate it as a ‘minimal’ category, a ‘charitable case’, almost a ‘non-entity’. The doctrine of the Trinity, demanding a grammar that synthetically unites ‘substance’ and ‘relation’, finds in the notion of ‘Person’ an ‘ontological novelty’ which, in triple measure, expresses the ad se (for itself ) of the substance and the ad aliud (for the other) of the relation. “In God it is exactly the same thing (omnino idem) to be and to be a person. If being is an absolute term, the person is the relation.” (Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, VII, VI, 11). That is why «le jeu trinitaire» makes real «par excès et par avance» (J.-L. Marion) the ‘lost paradise’ of thought: reconciling the ‘in-itself ’ and the ‘for-itself ’.And the reciprocity of the Trinity, the paradigm of perfect relationship, is increasingly the place to which various lines of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics return.

Christian faith becomes a matter more of decision than of inheritance in our modern societies. Its practice is strongly conditioned by the cultural tendency to an intense individual assertiveness widespread in those societies. Pastoral work shows how diverse and irregular the itineraries of Christian believers can be. Church communities must verify their authenticity. They need not only to deepen the identity of Christian faith, but also to study the cultural tendency to a more independent use of freedom. In fact, Christian faith acquires a new appearance through its encounter with this tendency: it comes out as an event more informed by the individual’s experience and sensitivity. By paying attention to this, Church communities will be more able to discern the multiple ways people decide to believe today.

Der bioethische Diskurs vollzieht sich gegenwärtig im Kontext gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhänge, die immer mehr die Interaktion mehrerer Fachdisziplinen postulieren. Die Genese und Entwicklung der Bioethik wäre unverständlich, wenn der Beitrag der Theologie unbeleuchtet bleiben würde. Der Aufsatz behandelt die vielschichtigen Beziehungen zwischen der Bioethik und der Theologie. Es wird dargestellt, wie und unter welchen Bedingungen eine theologische Beteiligung in der bioethischen Arbeit möglich ist, wobei eine Definition des interdisziplinären Charakters der Bioethik erforderlich ist.

This text analyses documents published after the Conciliar Reform, from an ‘architecturological’ perspective, in order to establish fundamental principles for the ‘construction’ of a true liturgical space. The new ecclesiology, like the new living conditions (habitat) of modern mankind, demand a génie du lieu chrétien where a set of immediately perceptible meanings tell of Him who brings the community of all believers together around the altar. The model of the ‘church-home’ is the model where a dimension of welcome and hospitality, proper to our own homes, tells of meeting “through Christ, with Christ and in Christ”.

The author begins by presenting the three great steps in exegetic research on the relationship between Jesus and the Judaism of his time, defined as follows: a first perspective which would be the discontinuity between the preaching of Jesus and that of the Apostles (Reimarus), Paul being attributed with the founding of Christianity as a systemin opposition to Judaism; a second phase, being the theory of confrontation between Jesus and the Judaism of his time (Käsemann); and lastly, for several decades, there has been reinforcement of the perspective of the ‘placing of Jesus within the Judaism of his time’, an approach that has found adhesion among innumerable scholars, both Jews and Christians. Shifting from a context of opposition between Jesus and Judaism, it has now become consensual to talk of Judaism as the frame of reference for an understanding of the message of Jesus.To illustrate this perspective,Manns presents two texts fromthe NT: one alluding to the resurrection, “the stone removed from the tomb”, and the title given by Jesus to Peter, “Simon, son of John” (Jn 1,43 and 21,15-17).The author interprets these passages, by contextualising them in a long Jewish tradition, well illustrated with a great many texts drawn from Judaism: Targumim, Midrashim and other writings.

The theologian is not primarily concerned with historical facts in themselves when treating the figure of Jesus. His reflexion works on the level of Christian faith. The story of Jesus gains greater breadth for him: it is born of the factual past, only to go beyond it and spread through the proclamation and life of the Church over the course of time. The theologian portrays Jesus without being limited to his human behaviour. He also looks for what emerges from this as traits of divinity.He sees in Him who so humanly struggled with God someone who freed himself from his historical specificity through the paschal mystery, to become the universal means of access to God. He understands how, by disappearing through the heavens of ascension, Jesus became the Lord who anonymously crosses with peoples’ lives. He believes that Jesus keeps on discreetly disquieting people everywhere, while all does not live in accordance with God.

The Bellum Iudaicum by Flavius Josephus is a complex literary project, which, at least in part, seeks to link the causes and consequences of the fall of Jerusalem. This study began through an interest in revisiting the basis for the classical literature which other scholars had already detected in the work. Josephus’ debt to Tacitus and Greek historians has been noted and debated for centuries. However, the present study brings the reader not only certain echoes of Tacitus not previously mentioned, but also marks of other exponents of Greek literature who had remained unnoticed.The language of the tragic poets provided Flavius Josephus with a means as much to seduce a non-Jewish audience, as to guide Jewish readers collectively towards a deeper understanding of the tragic nature of the story.

The heterogeneous character of the texts that circulated among monks in Upper Egypt, in the 4th and 5th centuries, may be appreciated from the make up of the earth en ware jar that contained the library of Nag Hammadi.The second work in the second codex of Nag Hammadi is the self-styled “Gospel according to Thomas”. Thomas moves within a wide spectrum of parallels and allusions, which include all of the synoptic tradition (Q,Mk,Mt,Lk,M, L) and John (Paul and the Old Testament should be excluded).Thus there are records of contacts of all of the channels of the Evangelical tradition. But, on the other hand,Thomas contains a good number of statements with a clear or relative Gnostic flavour, which lack any parallel in the original Jesus tradition. How, then, riddled as it is with this conflict, can Thomas’ text form part of and illuminate what we know of the historical Jesus?