Saint John of Kronstadt (1829-1908) served 53 years of his ministry at St Andrew's Cathedral, Kronstadt, devoting himself to the salvation of the city slum-dwellers. His charitable works became famous as did his healing prayers, rumoured to work miracles. He and his works became the object of pilgimage and he was considered a saint long before his ecclesiastical canonization in 1990. Although these selections are intended primarily for priests, the laity may also benefit from the words of St John of Kronstadt.
Saint John of Kronstadt (1829-1908) served 53 years of his ministry at St Andrew's Cathedral, Kronstadt, devoting himself to the salvation of the city slum-dwellers. His charitable works became famous as did his healing prayers, rumoured to work miracles. He and his works became the object of pilgimage and he was considered a saint long before his ecclesiastical canonization in 1990. Although these selections are intended primarily for priests, the laity may also benefit from the words of St John of Kronstadt.
This charismatic Russian pastor brought mental, physical and spiritual healing to thousands during the late 19th and early 20th century. Selected passages focus on the purpose and manner of prayer, sin and forgiveness, spiritual life and spiritual warfare, and the last things.
Most contemporary theologies of Holy Orders consider priesthood mainly in its diocesan context and most contemporary theologies of religious life do not consider how ordained ministry functions when it is internal rather than external to religious life. Understanding the Religious Priesthood provides a history and theology of religious priesthood that contributes to our understanding of this vocation’s identity and mission. It uncovers what religious priesthood shares with diocesan priesthood and non-ordained religious life and what makes it different from both those other vocations. Christian Raab begins by tracing the history of religious priesthood from its origins in the early Church to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. He demonstrates that religious priests often faced questions about how to reconcile their two callings, but that they also provided answers in their theologies and spiritualities of priesthood and religious life. Meanwhile, they made key contributions to the Church’s life and mission. Raab then investigates the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on priesthood and religious life. Observing that the Council presented priesthood according to a diocesan typology and presented religious life without sacerdotal associations, he argues that the lack of imagery of religious priesthood contributed to a post-conciliar vocational identity crisis among religious priests. He then seeks to remedy this lacuna by appealing to the biblical images for religious priesthood Hans Urs von Balthasar offered in his theology of vocations. Raab argues that Balthasar’s imagery is a promising way forward for understanding the identity and mission of religious priesthood. In a final part, Raab provides a substantial theological articulation of religious priesthood which illuminates its liturgical signification, ecclesial mediation and mission, and ministerial identity. Here he draws not only from Balthasar but also from Pope John Paul II, Yves Congar, Jean-Marie Tillard, Brian Daley, and Guy Mansini to construct his profile.
Fifteen sermons that aid both laity and clergy in a better understanding of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, the most basic of Baptist principles.
For more than a century, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church has attempted to walk along with the modern world, criticizing what is bad and praising what is good. Counsels of Imperfection described the current state of that fairly bumpy journey. The book is divided into 11 chapters. First comes an introduction to ever-changing modernity and the unchanging Christian understanding of human nature and society. Then come two chapters on economics, including a careful delineation of the Catholic response, past and present, to socialism and capitalism. The next topic is government, with one chapter on Church and State, another on War, and a third that runs quickly through democracy, human rights, the welfare state, crimes and punishments (including the death penalty), anti-Semitism, and migration. Counsels of Imperfection then dedicates two chapters on ecology, including an enthusiastic analysis of Francis’s “technocratic paradigm”. The last topic is the family teaching, which presents the social aspects of the Church’s sexual teaching. A brief concluding chapter looks at the teaching’s changing response to the modern world, and at the ambiguous Catholic appreciation of the modern idea of progress. For each topic, Counsels of Imperfection provides biblical, historical and a broad philosophical background. Thomas Aquinas appears often, but so does G. W. F Hegel. The goal is not only to explain what the Church really says, but also how it got to its current position and who it is arguing with. In the spirit of a doctrine that is always in development, Counsels of Imperfection points out both strong-points and imperfections in the teaching. The book should be of interest to specialists in Catholic Social Teaching, but its main audience is curious newcomers, especially people who do not want to be told that there are simple Catholic answers to the complicated problems of the modern world.
The ideas which have defined and informed Christian priesthood in the past are now called into question more than at any time since the Reformation. Is there such a thing as a Christian cult? Is Christian worship in any other way sacrificial? How can ordained Christians be seen as part of a ministerial priesthood distinct from other believers? What does it mean to teach with authority within and on behalf of the Church? When Michael Ramsey wrote The Christian Priest Today he could assume that the priest would be seen as a man of the Eucharist, a confessor, an intercessor and an exponent of the Church's teaching. In the contemporary Church none of these things can be taken for granted in the same say. This book seeks to re-pristinate the doctrine of ministerial priesthood by setting it within the context of fundamental moral theology - to recall readers from all Christian traditions to the fundamental soundness of the concept of ministerial priesthood and its importance in contemporary ecumenical duologue, liturgical reform and pastoral planning.
