Repositório RCAAP

This article seeks to clarify five points – each of them combining reflections of principle with aspects of a more practical-pastoral kind – the implications of reading the ‘signs of the times’ for the life of the Church. As a point of departure we take the Church’s need to assume an attitude of permanently listening to the ‘Word of God’. Secondly, this believing sensibility is placed in the context of the indispensible incarnation of Christian existence. A reading of the ‘signs of the times’ is only possible in the recognition and promotion of the ‘sensus fidei’ of the members of the Church. As a consequence, what is involved here is the understanding and practice of the Church as a dialogical community, while interpellations emerge with the aim of bringing about paths to Christian and ecclesial conversion.

The former juridical regulations of the Church, the Code of Canon Law issued in 1917 (CIC 17), in legislating on the right of the clergy to sustenance did not shift from traditional doctrine. The Church has established norms: it has fought for the right of clergy to property; it has constituted the beneficium ecclesiasticum to guarantee them an honest life: it has confirmed their control over the goods that constitute the portio congrua; it has affirmed that someone who owns some patrimony may nevertheless live from beneficial goods; it even accepts that the rights of the stole may constitute part of quasi-patrimonial assets, it has legislated that a minister merits sustenance sufficient to provide a mode of living that is dignified and comfortable, in accordance with the economic conditions in which he works and the obligations of the clerical state, but it has never ceased to underline and defend, in doctrinal terms, that the clergy only have the right to what is necessary and that there is never a justification for a style of living that is luxurious, ostensive, for what they receive should not remove them from the evangelical path of a simple, frugal life.

It was Walter Benjamin who identified the figure of the narrator as the one who is just. But can the same be said of the reader? And following the same line of thinking, can we risk proposing the term justice to classify the practice of reading? It is this possibility that the present article tests, in the first part, sounding out the various modes of what might be called a ‘just reading’ – knowing that a reading that sets itself up as a ‘doing (of ) justice’ to the text will always be an open hermeneutic, a hermeneutic that accepts what is implicit in the sentence by the writer Maria Gabriela Llansol: “understanding a text is like understanding a dog”. The second part presents the development of narratology, in the course of the 20th century, seeing the creation of this methodological tool as an attempt at justice in relation to the text.

The emergence of humankind in the chain of the evolution of species marks an ontological leap. While Biblical anthropology underlines the difference between Man in relation to matter and the other animals (since he is in the image of God), evolutionary theories, on the other hand, show the relationship of Man to Animal, in the phylum of primates. The present article seeks to establish a dialogue with evolutionary theories, without the need to compromise the specificity of Christian anthropology. Within the context of evolutionary continuity occurs an ontological discontinuity, expressed traditionally through the concept of ‘soul’ (the ontological moment that configures material in human form). While still animal, Man is God’s personal creation, a relational happening. He is, after all, the only animal capable of giving a name to things and of trying to decipher the enigma of his life and his origin.

During the Dutch invasion and occupation of Brazilian soil Father António Vieira preached several sermons of great religious and patriotic ardour. He celebrated victories (1638), warned against inappropriate euphoria (1639), comforted men and cried to God for help after noisy defeats (1640). He joined sound realism and intrepid faith in this mission. Peace shall come only from war. However only in God is the key to victory, because he is the lord of history. Philosophy of history turns theology of history.

This brief article seeks to evoke the Jesuit Manuel Pinto and his contribution to the European Liturgical Movement. Though Portuguese, he actually worked more in Granada and in Rome. He presented his doctoral thesis in Theology at the Granada Faculty of Theology in 1951, on the theme of “the theological value of liturgy”. His aim in this, however, was not to present a real treatise, but merely to put forward a first sketch or essay of a work on Liturgy as a theological source, divided into two parts: firstly, the notions of Liturgy and of the theological process in the light of the Magisteriumand of theological thinking; secondly, the theological value of the Liturgy in a systematic study through investigation and verification of the Biblical, patristic and theological sources. The publication of his work was important, allying itself with so many other theologians and liturgists, such as the Benedictine Cipriano Vagaggini, who also succeeded him to the chair of Liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University, in that it constituted an emblematic work for liturgical science.

A Reactivação de Paulo deve ser lida, claramente, como uma expressão cifrada, que procura descrever um fenómeno específico: a recente viragem politica na abordagem de Paulo que tem sido liderada não já pela teologia, mas pela filosofia e pela Teoria da Cultura. Poderíamos descrevê-lo como o impacto de um inusitado boom editorial que junta ateus e católicos, judeus e protestantes, e o extravagante lacaniano, em torno à reivindicação de Paulo. No interior deste heterogéneo e efervescente movimento, a obra de Giorgio Agamben, que Paul Ricoeur classifica como um «vigoroso trabalho», parece-nos ser a que coloca o desafio maior e mais original a uma reflexão contemporânea sobre Religião e Espaço Público.

The main purpose of this study is to think about silence in mystical language. It draws attention not only to a general usage regarding the unsayable, or ineffable, within ecstatic experience, but also gives value to its precise intermediate meaning, as a specific rhythm of pause. Indeed it is starting from this category of ‘pause’, or aposiópesis, which ever since Greek rhetoric has drawn attention to this kind of reticence, that we remark upon the value of the intimacy and loneliness of spiritual language, thus marked with significant ‘interruptions’. In this introduction to the theme, then, is discussed the allusive status, performative of language and even its fecund deconstruction in the face of the idealization of its paradoxical apophantic character, theoretical expectation and contemplative capacity. In the first part of this study, the polysemic nature of ‘silence’ is clarified, bearing in mind several semantic levels and degrees regarding the essence of the mystic secretum: from the vows of silence and their ‘muteness’, to the gift of ‘saying’ the unsayable, passing through its ascetic, voluntary condition, and also through the passive recognition of mystic ineffability, further stressing the means of constituting such a language formed through a negative way (apophatic theology). The meaning of this mystic silence is then exemplified, not only as a typology, but considered as a scale, using the study case of Sister Marie-Aimée de Jesus, OCD, † 1874, who gradually meditated upon her own experience. In the course of the twelve degrees under consideration, they are put into context and studied, always complemented through annotations in footnotes, through comparisons that reveal the importance of rhythmic differentiation in the practice of mystical silence. In the third and last part, we advise against the temptation of taking silence as a fuga mundi or as a metaphysic of secret silence within some kind of ‘gnostic serenity’, as a sigé, in opposition to the realistic fecundity of some humble, but experienced and well-spoken-of, ‘prayer of quietness’. Appealing to the language of a number of more recent mystics, a synthesis is made of the flowing of love pointing to the gradual intensification of mystic silence in a scale that must be considered as an alternative to its solely contemplative hermeneutics. To this end a useful, synoptic schematization is presented of the typology of silence. Lastly, we leave as a clue for all the appraisal of silence as a pause of wisdom and a holy reticence in the practice of the inner life, the importance of the oriental monastic tradition of hesykhía, as an example in which (albeit simplified), it is still possible to find the differentiations of the several spiritual silences, by the means of this silent prayer as a holistic exercise.

Evoking the memory of the poet and semiologist José Augusto Mourão, priest of the Order of Preachers, who died on 5th May 2011, the periodical Didaskalia is publishing here two unpublished homilies, with an introduction by Alfredo Teixeira. The homilies of this Dominican priest bear witness to a unique, contemporary alliance between literature and theology.

When we thought that material progress was unlimited, that human relations were heading for a Fraternity on a global scale, that states would be partners, that banks were the inexhaustible safe of a rich father without limit, when we thought that the identity card and the passport would become dispensable, usefully substituted by a simple credit card, that we could use freely from airport to airport around the Earth, and we thought that frontiers would be abolished, all of a sudden, everything changed. To ask what Culture knows about Fraternity is equivalent to asking what Culture knows about what today Humanity is in itself.

The present text is one of a set of reflexions aimed at showing how the Catholic Church reacted to the trilogy of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It is concerned with the third of these concepts, Fraternity, an essential element in any critical return to the controversy that profoundly marked relations between the Church and the intellectual world during the 19th and 20th centuries, and only in recent decades has come to be confronted with lesser animosity. The question is well known. But it is worth recalling its most significant aspects.

The theme of ‘discipleship’ is a constant in all of the Gospels. St. John, in his text, presents great sobriety on the theme, which leads authors to reduce the question to chapter 1 (1,35-51. The vocation of the disciples). Frédéric Manns shows that the problem cannot be limited to this textual horizon but, on the contrary, it finds its best framework in chs. 18 and 19, in the context of the narrative of the passion and of the manifestations of Christ Resurrected. As well as the question of the unity between the Master and the disciple, these chapters show us all of the involvement that arises from action and from the relationship between the disciples, from the reference to their names to the description of their attitudes towards the Master. It is in chapters 18 and 19 that the 4th Gospel presents us with the ‘paradigms’ of the disciple from the perspective of ‘following’, drawing attention to three of them: the ‘beloved disciple’, Peter and Judas. The 4th Gospel also has recourse to other forms of framing ‘discipleship’ going well beyond the Twelve and the narrative of their drawing towards Jesus, as in the case of Nicodemus. The relevance conferred upon them at the Supper and the narrative of the Passion defines the manner in which the presence of the ‘disciple’ goes beyond the mere mention of them, placing upon them a profound significance which does not end with the initial chapter. On the contrary, it is in these texts (passion and resurrection) that St. John shows us the road of the disciple and the wealth of his theology concerning ‘following Jesus’.

The present text – a talk given at the Faculty of Theology at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon – serves as a reminder that, before all else, ecumenism is not a human invention nor a political question, but is founded on the Lord’s prayer and forms part of his testament, and hence is not dependent either on sudden success or temporary failures. For this very reason and despite all obstacles, we should have no doubt as to its importance or its obligatory nature: it is an irreversible process of fidelity to Christ, confirmed by the Council and by the post-Conciliar popes. What has already been achieved in the ecumenical dialogue of the last few decades, both in terms of theological dialogue and a drawing closer in a mutual relationship, is extremely significant. But there is an awareness that we have entered a new phase in ecumenism, marked by considerable disillusion, unfulfilled expectations, new questions that have arisen, internal tensions that have emerged within the Churches themselves. In this situation it is important to avoid both the risk of ecumenism becoming a mere academic question, and the danger of falling into an ecumenical activism, not ‘received’ by the Christian communities. It is essential particularly to remember that it is the Holy Spirit that is the true driving force of the ecumenical movement. For this reason, it is crucial for us to deepen and to live spiritual ecumenism as an interior renovation, a conversion of mentalities, a purification of memories, a capacity to pardon. In this sense we need to develop an ecumenical spirituality, giving new vigour to what is already happening in small groups at various levels: in this respect, decisively for the future, it is possible to go much further than hitherto, without harming the canonical laws in this respect. But the priority that is granted to spiritual ecumenism does not diminish the importance of theological dialogue, but rather provides it with an existential support that is broader, richer and more effective.

One of the difficulties in discovering the presence of origin myths and their spirituality in the Biblical narratives of Gn 1-11 may be connected with the question as to whether these narratives might be nothing but an imagined story. In reality, the myth, while not a story that actually happened, has all the grandeur of a true story, because its world is the true world of the ultimate sense of the realities of life. Making them go back to the act of divine creation and to the absolute Being, bestows transcendent meaning upon them, making them more real. The primordial ‘time’, absolute and sacred, of the ‘beginning’ comes to renew historical time and to give strength to its acts. Hence, our culture has constant, salutary recourse to the myth, as a ‘symbolic reservoir’, to fuse the conceptual explanation of things with the profound comprehension of its higher sense.

In the text notes ring out with the colour of wisdom, traversing the opening chapters of Genesis and therefore ringing out on every page of the Holy Scripture of the Two Testaments, in the story of Israel and of Judah, in Jesus, and in our own story. Everything placed beneath the tone of the first benevolent, permanent Gift of God and the second response or human responsibility, not always appropriate to the first Gift of God, which may not be possessed; only received with open hands and grateful heart. This is how mankind often passes from Gift to owner and transforms the fruit into theft. This is how the Resurrection of Jesus itself may be read as ‘the legend of a theft’ (Mt 27,62-66; 28,11-15) or ‘the story of a Gift’ (Mt 28,1-8.16-20). And all of Scripture shows a God who intervenes mercifully to cure this hardened, human heart.

Even his contemporaries, especially Julian of Eclanum, accused Augustine of ‘inventing’ original sin. The present article seeks to show how far this accusation is just, by analysing Augustine’s own response. The latter, whenever confronted with the thesis according to which, in speaking of ‘original sin’ he was innovating in terms not only of terminology but also theology, always responded by arguing that he was setting out and defending the old unanimous doctrine universally professed by the tradition of the Church. To prove it he turned to the authority of the Church Fathers, both Latin and Greek. The present study focuses precisely on assessing Augustine’s ‘patristic argumentation’ so that we can thereby evaluate whether or not and how far the Bishop of Hippo was ‘innovative’ in the way he formulated and defended the doctrine of original sin.

Sketching human existence from among four parables, the exercise of freedom is described as an effective disposition before the mystery of original alterity which precedes and involves human beings in their entirety. As the force that responds to the provocation of this instance, freedom dramatically generates an affective interpretation of the enigma of the origins (a moving gift or an intolerable imposition?) and the effective expectation of an ought-to-be so that life might be good. The recognition-of-being-recognised-as-son is presented, to conclude, as another manner of naming the realisation of freedom that is disposed to the bounty of the Origin of life (and of its Destiny), precisely because it is recognised as trustworthy. Indeed, the most elementary matter to be decided in the exercise of freedom is the grace of trusting in being loved (and the disgrace, the fear of not being loved). An extraordinary example of how one is a Son is the story, among us, of the liberty of Jesus of Nazareth.

The theme The interpretation of the Creation according to Paul Ricoeur is divided into two parts. The first part succinctly analyses Ricoeur’s initial project (1.1), aiming at understanding the author’s motivation for the study of the question of evil from a hermeneutic perspective. This path leads to the myths surrounding evil, among them the myth of Adam and Eve (1.2) – already widely known, this interpretation is not an object of analysis here. Following this is a brief general reflection on the concepts of beginning, nothingness and creation (1.3), as well as on the knowledge of God within the philosophy of religion (1.4). The second part delves into the core of the issue, by commenting closely on the first two sections of Paul Ricoeur’s “Thinking the Creation”, included in the book Penser la Bible (1998). This interpretation is focused on the two themes: the creation as an act of separation (2.1); and the creation as an act of foundation (2.2). Among other things, the challenge consists of thinking of time in association with the theory of ‘founding events’.

The question of origin takes a central role in René Girard’s fundamental anthropology. For a long time his theories and hypotheses concerning human cultures having a religious origin were silenced or misunderstood in academic teaching. But, as he argues, in the beginning is imitation leading to violent conflict, and it is the scapegoat mechanism that permits the survival of humankind in early primitive societies. Unveiling these origins of social order, always rooted in a hidden violence, explains our contemporary situation and all the concern about the protection of real victims in history.

Cinema has always been interested in expressing the sacred, directly linked to the image of the divine and in more implicit forms, using reality as a space for union between Man and the Transcendent. In either case, the body is a place for film to represent the origin of the sacred, because the camera, and particularly the close-up, isolates parts of the original context and succeeds in transforming its meaning. What are the principal cinematographic forms of revealing the contemporary sacred? The very concept of sacred is ‘in coming into being’. What is the position of contemporary cinema front to this ‘new sacred’? This text seeks to raise these questions through an analysis of various examples from the history of cinema.