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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.

The commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council is an invitation to the rediscovery of its fundamental intuitions, not only by way of historical curiosity, but as a genuine effort to receive and to learn from this event in the life of the Church. The term aggiornamento, used by Pope John XXIII to translate one of the intentions of the Council, is one of those intuitions to be revisited. That is what is proposed in this text, in placing its use at the time of the Council and in showing its theological meaning.

The Second Vatican Council coincided with the end of the long 19th century, which ran from 1840 to 1960. Not as a result of it, but after this date, western societies entered a new culture, which is not sufficiently comprehended by the concept of secularisation, a term that is too broad and polysemic. When ecclesiology bases itself on Lumen Gentium 8 [“The Church, a unique and complex reality that coalesces from a divine and a human element”], it concludes from it that a new enculturation is necessary, arising from more precise analyses. To respond to these new challenges involves developing an articulation of ecclesial responsibilities among ‘one alone’, ‘all’ and ‘some’ (synodality at all levels). While taking parishes into account, it is a matter of establishing channels of communication with those that we no longer reached, of being attentive to their requests for the sacred, for spirituality, even if in aesthetic terms, for interreligious dialogue. And it is important above all to develop an evangelical word that is not confused either with morality or with civil laws. Which supposes, in other words, that we take into consideration the historicity of Christian anthropology. It always continues to be essential to remain close to people and to the evolution of social justice.

Aware that what is at stake in the reception of Vatican II is the manner in which the Church lives its identity and mission at the present time, this study concentrates on the Council’s reception within the framework of the Church(es) in Portugal. Underpinned by certain hermeneutical criteria, the text focuses on five perspectives, from which it appears indispensable to read anew and to evaluate the Council’s reception in the Portuguese context. Under analysis, then, are: heuristic significance borne of ecclesial awareness and theological reflection on the process of the Council’s reception; perception of the conjunctural significance of the Council as an event; the difficult road of synodal practice in the life of the Church; difficulties in the reception of episcopal collegiality and of the theology of local Churches; the dimension of ‘pastorality’ as an interpellation to life and to the witness of the Church today. In global terms and in conclusion, it points to the necessity for a creative hermeneutic as an impulse and challenge to profound pastoral renewal.

Ecclesial movements currently occupy an important place in the Catholic Church. One may even consider that the ‘Church of movements’ has taken control in this period of advanced modernity, in opposition to the ‘parochial civilisation’ that marked Catholicism for centuries. The ‘charismatic Church’ comes to the help of the ‘hierarchical Church’, which is now struggling with some difficulties. This article examines the tension between parishes and movements that has broadly-speaking arisen from the emancipation of the individual in relation to territory and the construction of new living spaces. There emerges, as a consequence, a tendency to build the Church on the basis of affinity and of similarity (of means, age, choices…) more than on the basis of belonging to a given territory. This tension, however, already manifested itself prior to the Council, and infiltrated the Conciliar debates before making a leap forward in recent years with the explosion of movements.

It is a strange fact that an attentive observer of reality, as was Michel de Certeau, should apparently have paid so little attention to the Second Vatican Council: he dedicated just two articles to it. In this brief reflection the aim is to show how this virtual silence on the part of Michel de Certeau is, on the contrary, a ‘subtle voice of silence’: for Certeau the issue is not one of speaking about, but somehow to speak on the basis of the Second Vatican Council, taking seriously the ‘inaugural’ and methodical character of the event, which made possible what was to follow. The themes, the questions, the places and the personal commitment suggested by the Council are already present in Certeau, and the expression of his life, his competence, his time and his commitments are nothing but one of the possible parables that embody the revolution of the credible that the Council recognises, interprets and inaugurates. This article contains a rapid reconstruction of the scenario and an analysis of the two articles to cast light on some of the key points that Certeau reflects on: particularly the relationship between the today and the founding event that ‘permits’, as well as the role of language-conversation.

The Second Vatican Council, starting from a path already trodden, impressed its own characteristics on moral-theological reflection. Emphasis is placed here on certain aspects that have marked these fifty years of theological ethics: the indispensable relationship between morality and Scripture; the centrality of the moral conscience and the importance of discernment; the debate concerning the specificity of Christian morality. Themes that mark out the different roads of post-Conciliar moral theology, accompanied by interventions, at various levels, of the ecclesial Magisterium.

This text presents an ethical-theological reflection on moral conscience and liberty, in the light of the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council. On the one hand, it seeks to show that the various elements of the Christian conception of moral conscience create openings for the possibility of freedom. On the other, it provides evidence that the Council’s doctrine corresponds to a change in paradigm, not only for this specific theme, but also for a reflection on morality in general, since the doctrine on moral conscience may be seen as a synthesis of all discourse on morals. The selection of the aspects to be covered seeks to aid understanding the significance of the contribution of Vatican II to this theme. Various elements are identified that help in framing these theological-moral categories and to understand how far an appropriate conception of the conscience permits a broad, personalised approach to human morality from the perspective of the believer, presenting a number of consequences for ethical reflection. It also seeks to clarify if liberty constitutes a condition for acting in conscience or if liberty is the result of our acting in conscience.