Repositório RCAAP

Within the framework of a dual statement, that of the dissemination of an urban model in the villages and the pursuit of a style of living belonging to the urban context (desertification of the villages), this article describes common trajectories of believers in an urban environment. In eight interrelated entries, it takes as a starting point current emerging values as formulated by Grand’Maison, confronts the main features of present-day cities (making a practical distinction between megacities and average-sized cities), recognises the identites of youth in effervescence to some extent everywhere in current society, reformulates the decline of Catholic hegemony as a form of sociability par excellence, puts forwards a possible heuristic mode of identifying trajectories of identification today on a religious plane and ends by programming pastoral targets that are both suitable and realisable. The text, which is deliberately functional, opts for a pragmatic and heuristic methodology, permitting possible future surveys in urban contexts of greater dimension. It is completely exploratory, refining a great variety of types of religious identification that mark paths among the Portuguese in the urban context.

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Starting from the definitions of myth, anti-myth and demythification, this article focuses on the undeniable and long-since recognised mythical features of the narratives of creation, origin and the Flood (Gn 1-11). Equally undeniable are the different forms of demythification in all narratives that have a mythological basis, such as the passing of a myth to literature and to a historical event.

The Jewish reading of Scripture permitted by recent documents from the Pontifical Bible Commission opens new perspectives for exegetes, provided they accept retranslation of the Greek text to Hebrew. Recourse to gematrias, which play with the numerical value of the letters, is frequent. Recourse to notarikon is also known and used in Jewish hermeneutics. This is what my own research has shown and once again in the present article, in both instances with an awareness that a text should always be read in its historical and cultural context.

Modern translations of the Bible in the West cross with Western history itself: this chapter has done it proud in furnishing the basis for its Christian matrix, for democracy, liberty and human fraternity. They have produced culture and literature, they have enriched the tradition of painting, with miniatures and illuminations of rare beauty. They have been a determining factor in the Bible’s reaching those thirsting for its inspiring message and for the latter to survive in the present for each people. Through them, the Bible has continued to speak for more than a millennium. Leaving aside other aspects that could be taken into account in the difficult act of translating (criteria of a literary, hermeneutical, theological, liturgical or whatever kind), this article takes a historical approach to translation for the most widely spoken Western languages (French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese), accompanying the circumstances in which each arose and influenced the religiosity of the peoples that produced and received it. A phenomenon that this adventure fell foul of was that of prohibitions on translating and reading. While, on the one hand, this would seem to be incomprehensible, on the other, it demonstrates the height of concern about preserving the Bible’s precious contents unaltered, trying to prevent its adulteration. If certain prohibitions were somewhat dramatic, others were tainted with persecution and blood, which reveals all too clearly the ardent desire to make it available for reading.

The article discusses the issue of so-called “canonical reading” and its role in the theological understanding of the biblical text. After the contextualization of the question, there will be an analysis of the expression "canonical reading” and the very closely related expressions “canonical approach”, “canonical criticism” and “canonical exegesis”. Following this, the canon concept will be considered in its exclusive, inclusive and intrinsic dimensions, so that, finally, the issue in the title of this article can be explored.

At the centre of this reflection, a profound conviction: we are listeners of the Word. In what terms should the relations between the Bible and Morality be thought of? This text corresponds to a path that draws from the body of recent ecclesial reflection on the subject. In appreciating the manner in which the Holy Scriptures are related to moral normativity (for example the commandment “not to kill”), we seek to receive in this respect the teachings of Pope Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium. But there is a biblical world beyond what is presented as prescriptive: an appropriate hermeneutic makes it possible to find indications of moral value in texts of very different genres; take for example Psalm 131 (130). Responsible for what we freely understand, we allow ourselves to be freed by the Word for a true change in life.

A two-year old child’s thirst for the Word of God led to a journey through the world of the Bible in children’s editions. The child’s identity is built by words. What do we build with editions of the Bible for children?

The present article approaches the Eucharist in its sacred dimension or as a sacred rite. This dimension is particularly manifest in the fruits of the sacrament of the altar. Here we will focus on an analysis of the ultimate “res” (res tantum). Taking up the patristic tradition and analysing the Eucharistic anaphoras, the Eucharist is considered in its nexus with the Christus totus. In the second part, data gathered from the patristic and liturgical tradition are compared with the Christology and Soteriology of Bernard Lonergan, to show that the binomial sacred-profane is not adequate for the mystery of the Eucharist, as a key to interpreting its purpose, its relation to life, the world and history.

The question relative to the motive of incarnation has been seen in the history of theology in at least two manners: divinisation, which would be the angle of oriental theology; redemption of sin, which would be the predominant angle in the West. This essay, taking as a starting point the issues with regard to the soteriological question in M. Luther, R. Bultmann and K. Barth, seeks to understand the motive of incarnation starting from the notion of substitution, taking as references, on the one hand, the liturgy of Holy Saturday, and, on the other the hermeneutic contributions of D. Sölle and N. Hoffmann on substitution. In this manner, we gain a deeper understanding of the redeeming movement of the incarnate Word which supports itself in the experience of death as such, conquering death in the place of its triumph. The liturgy of Holy Saturday thus acquires a new range and relief not only in the celebration of the paschal mystery, but also as a stimulus to soteriology.

The Bible Society has been continuously active in Portuguese territory since 1809 though this has been maintained through recourse to diverse structural arrangements, the establishment of a national association with full organic and financial autonomy being relatively recent. The pioneering spirit of its mission and the introduction to Portuguese society of a concept and mechanisms of access to the Bible, different from what it was familiar with, made its assimilation and development difficult. After more than two centuries, the Bible Society demonstrates three main contributions to the presence of the Bible in Portugal in the contemporary era: 1) making the Bible available in different translations, widening its reception by creating opportunities for a variety of audiences; 2) distribution of the Bible on a large scale and very widely, in social, religious, and economic terms, thus enlarging significantly access to it even by sectors of the population that otherwise would have been unlikely to be able to obtain it; 3) promotion of the Bible through a broad social spectrum of initiatives which, by bringing together different social and religious agents, have sought to place it in a position that transcends its strictly religious use.

This article deals with the double biblical worldview about poverty: as a social context one is not responsible for, or as a state of mind which enhances brotherhood and fraternity. Both of them criticize the worldview that looks upon poverty as a punishment or as fate impossible to be changed. The biblical vocabulary on this subject offers a broad perspective from these woldviews throughout Israel’s history, where the prophets and wisdom literature assumed an acute critique of all those who oppress the poor in various ways.

In the middle of the second century AD, Hermas, a Christian layman in Rome suggested in his book The Pastor a new way of relationship between rich and poor in the Christian community based on the practice of redemptive almsgiving. For the first time in the history of Christianity, the rich were not convicted or encouraged to conversion, but they were invited to pay evergetic service the poor (Similitude 2). In return the rich will receive eternal life through those they have helped. His teaching will decisively influence those who will come after, including Clement of Alexandria.

This study manifests Saint Augustine’s position, in the form of texts that are moments of preaching (Sermons 15/A and 50), concerning the right to the human ownership of riches, that is to say, of goods in general: this possession just finds its whole justification in its relation to its good use, to its use as a contribution to the universal good. This is not an extrinsic but an intrinsic finality of the use of riches. Thus, the right to the use of riches depends on the good use there are destined to. Possession of riches is therefore not an absolute right, perhaps destitute of founding reason, but constitutes a relative right, that derives its rightness from the goodness of that to what it proposes itself to achieve. This applies to the possession of any riches, so it applies also to the possession of one´s own being, possession that is justified only if it is used in the service of the universal good.

This article analyses the writings of two leading representatives of Scottish Enlightenment – David Hume and Adam Smith – with a view to identifying the contribution of their moral works to a reflection on the place of poverty and on the displacement of the poor individual. We briefly relate these theoretical developments to those of other precursors of poverty economics and suggest a mapping with concepts of attraction, repulsion, sovereignty, accountability, want and need. Finally, we attempt to show how these approaches fed into the economic work of Smith, fuelled the increasing relevance of a relative conception of poverty and were eventually took up by the dominant doctrinal strand in political economy, and afterwards in economics.

The social impact of the industrial revolution has had both positive and negative consequences, and the reflection that such social changes have brought to the Teaching of the Catholic Church has had a remarkable and long lasting effect. Two areas of intervention illustrate this process: besides having created a strong involvement in terms of practical social action, it has also contributed to the publication of a formal document, Rerum Novarum, by Pope Leo XIII. This document has created a tradition, still vivid today, of direct involvement in social practical matters. The key theoretical references for the grounding of such documents were the Bible, the Tradition and Theology. The doctrinarian aspect of a pastoral moral teaching, however, has inhibited other critical readings of these document that, themselves, carries fundamental philosophical interpretations. Therefore, the proposal of a radically different interpretation, and radical means from the roots, enables the recovery of such philosophical directions, which, in turn, have supported, and continue to support, the Catholic Church’s doctrine and social practice. Consequently, the present study aims at dialoguing with such crucial philosophical insights, trying to make them explicit and accessible through this dialogic process.

A Unitarian reflection on the contribution that the Church’s social doctrine gives to the whole of moral theology draws its reasoning from the experience of historical relationships gathered in the light of the Word, according to an instance of justice recognised as such on the part of the weakest. The present text focuses on three questions that express the solicitude of the Church’s social doctrine and of present-day moral theology: that of the relation between the individual and the common good, between solidarity and privilege of the weak, between the formation of conscience and structured living. Ever since the ancient Biblical and extra-Biblical ethical and juridical traditions, pressure on the common good and solidarity as decision in pursuit of it are essential references to bring about an understanding of the sense and the fulfilment of living for the individual and for society. Human honesty matures when it consciously pledges its own liberty in responsibility towards the other, in a sincere and objective search for communion. In the word and in the existence of Jesus of Nazareth solidarity becomes recognisable in its sense and in its concrete possibility in this story, as a reality of sharing and of the gratuitous building of reciprocity. This sense needs to be recognised today, in the face of the pluralism that actually marks the world’s reality and in the face of arbitrary economic policies that weigh upon the life of the weakest, obviating the temptation to think of the common good as the sum of resources aimed at the private good of the individual or to speak of solidarity, without reference to the concrete pledge concerning the common destiny of the earth’s resources, to enable access to these on the part of the poorest. With regard to the force of structures that are not easily modified and that consolidate forms of thinking that do not show solidarity, we continue to be entrusted with the interpretation of life present in the Eucharist. The bread and wine, with all that they signify in the system of inter-human relations, are bestowed on us in remembrance of the real bestowal of Jesus, appealing to our consciences and our becoming a believing community in bringing about the life of Christ operating in our own. If the social conditions of our ways of living really do form us, the historical conditions themselves are formed by the fabric of freedom. Solicitude for the formation of consciences has the aim of favouring the personal freedom of each individual and of a form of social living that guarantees better conditions for humanity.

Just as happens with other religious creeds, Christianity too presents a clear ethic, summarised synthetically in Jesus Christ’s commandment to: “love God and one’s neighbour” (Mt 22,37-40). In this sense, we may say that Christianity is a religion with a praxis, operative, that does not leave the resolution of human problems to the care of the gods, but which assumes the mandate and the manner in which the Creator has made responsible in relation to the ordering of the created world (Gn 1,28). For this motive, the Church’s mission cannot ignore the whole issue that hides behind concepts such as ‘liberation’, ‘human advancement’, prophetic denouncement’, ‘struggle against injustice, ‘eradication of poverty’, ‘human rights’, ‘confronting every kind of oppression’, ‘defence of the dignity of those on the fringes of society’… Recently, indeed, Pope Francis entitled chapter IV of the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in the following manner: “The social dimension of evangelisation”. It is true that the Church has for two thousand years always concerned itself with the poor and with solidarity and the tasks of human advancement, especially in health and education. But now the perspective is really something different: no longer an attitude of care of the spirit, which determined the purpose of mission in the ‘salvation of souls’ or in the ‘cure of souls’ – with the evident danger of the body-soul dichotomy, and still less one of providing assistance, which sought to succour all those in need in acts of charity but which did not uncover nor interest itself in the structural causes of all injustice and human suffering.

The new bishop of Rome, Francis, expressing the desire of a “poor church for the poor” brings back the controversy of the “preferential option for the poor” of the Church in Latin-America, whilst at the same time universalizing that polemic. In this text firstly the authors analyze the way Francis resumes and reproposes the option for the poor for the whole Church, starting from the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Secondly the article promotes a second reading of the relation between Bergoglio and the liberation theologians, not only in order to discern the continuities and discontinuities between them, but most of all to seek the reality of the option for the poor and its openness to the theological work.