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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.

The study that follows aims to be a sociological approach to the structure of contemporary Catholicism, with special reference to its expression in the centre and west of continental Europe. Not wishing to ignore other aspects of the issue, nor to exhaust the question, it seeks to focus on a sector of religious semantics in contemporary Catholicism: the area of the social order. Aware that Catholicism cannot be reduced to its religious dimension, even if this dimension, currently in crisis, has been the dominant tendency over the centuries, the present contribution endeavours to synthesise the results achieved through research dedicated to contemporary Catholic religious semantics and, in particular, to the way in which this thematises and organises questions relating to the social order. In this sense, it analyses certain aspects of the radical divergence between the most widely publicised religious semantic and another alternative one recovered by tradition through the 2nd Vatican Council, but not taken fully on board by Catholicism in the geographical-cultural area referred to. After an exposition of the two types of semantic, there is a presentation of the differences that distinguish them. Lastly is an attempt to shed light on certain perspectives under debate by the currently non-dominant semantic, albeit assumed by Vatican II and subsequent Popes.

It may be stated that there are occurrences in the social action of Christian communities: the paradox of informality and of institutional weight; the assistance of the laity; systemic complicity; impoverishment of social pastoral care; and certain blockages. These characteristics denote extraordinary potentials, which may be seen throughout history, and also certain limitations worthy of consideration. In order to make the most of the potentials and to overcome the limitations, the following lines of action seem recommendable: social action groups in all parishes; a social reception service in the parish institutions; qualification of the service of parish reception; organisation and management of Church institutions, in the light of the Church’s social doctrine; taking on and recognising lay identity; bringing about activity in Christian communities; coordination of parish social action; participation in the Parish Pastoral Council; integration in the social action of the Diocese; cooperation with non-Church entities; living in Christian brotherhood. Naturally each parish should adopt the kinds of action it regards as appropriate; it would be a considerable step forward if in every parish in the country, a social action group were to function, with representatives of all parts of the area that it covers.

The Church lives from the Liturgy. This is its decisive, non-exclusive dimension, because the Liturgy is the first school of faith and of spiritual life. Liturgy is not only rite, nor mere execution of rubrics, but ethos and, fundamentally an art of action, where the Church seeks aid for its everyday life. Christian life is founded on the Liturgy, that is, on sacramental celebration, especially on the sacraments of Christian Initiation, in celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours and in the broad horizon of the Liturgical Year. Indeed, spiritual life, though founded on God’s Word and on the Liturgy, requires catechesis, meditation, personal prayer, charity and many other dimensions of life in Christ. Liturgy is the Bible made prayer. Faith, professed and transmitted by the Church, is celebrated in the Liturgy and radiates to life in charity. The presence of God in the sacramentality of the Liturgy transforms the Christian to the measure of Christ. Anyone who has truly found Christ and has been found with Him, must announce and witness it in the simplicity of everyday life. This is the simple and beautiful seriousness of the Liturgy.

Our starting point is an affirmation by Romano Penna, an important specialist in the world of Pauline studies. He states, “The ex-Pharisee of Tarsus helps us all to purify the concept of Christianity.” Is this true? Can Paul’s thinking serve as a guide to a revisitation and prophetic reconfiguration of current Christian morphology? Does Paul indeed provide us with a set of interpellations that are valid not only “for all seasons” of the ecclesial path, but for the age in which we ourselves live? Well now, if we had to explain why Penna’s observation seems to us positively instigating, we would put forward four fundamental challenges: the challenge to receive metamorphosis as a grammar of belief; the challenge to build a Church consigned to Christ, more than to itself; the challenge of taking the community nature of Faith seriously; the challenge of living in a state of renewed beginning.

Research into the synodal experience of the early Church tends to consider these early synodal experiences in the light of the ‘prestigious model’ of the great ecumenical Councils, projecting the model of the great post-Constantinian episcopal gatherings on the rich and variegated synodal life of the earlier Church. From this stems, on the one hand, an inadequate valuing of the rich and inspiring experience of the early Church and, on the other, the continued prevalence of the modal of ‘episcopal’, i.e. clerical, synods, in which other members of the church have a merely facultative place. Hence this study is centred precisely on an analysis of synodal experience in the pre-Nicean period. After discussing the multiple expressions of synodality, we move on to the principal moments of synodality in actu. In a second part, taking advantage of the generous documentation provided by St Cyprian of Carthage, special attention is paid to the case of the African churches in the 3rd century.

In this study, inspired by the sixth centenary of the decree Haec Sancta, promulgated by the Council of Constance, and the fiftieth anniversary of the 2nd Vatican Council, based on William of Ockham’s Dialogus I, V, 25-28, we analyse and comment on two opposing opinions and their bases, the first of which upholds the fallibility of the General Council, (Venerabilis Inceptor), the other, its infallibility, (Marsilius of Padua, Defensor Pacis); following this, the study refutes the arguments in favour of conciliar infallibility, concluding with an appendix that presents the text of the four aforementioned chapters in Portuguese.

This paper, after stating that in the last five centuries the Church has only held two ecumenical councils, explains how Vatican II recovers the ecclesial collegiality theorised in the first half of the 15th century. It analyses this revival of collegiality in the Conciliar theologians K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, and in the text of the constitution Lumen Gentium; it deals critically with the obstacles to its development over several decades; and it welcomes the current revival from the hand of the pope Francis.