Тени обретенной традиции: постсоборный взгляд на отношения епископов Рима и Испании в I тысячелетии

Despite some magisterial work, particularly on individual poems, critical commentary has not always served Alexander Pope well. Quite recently ignored, he had been a center of attention when the “industry” cranked out articles and books from what Hugh Kenner described as its “Natchez-Augustan manor.” Too often, Pope was “declawed,” made into a polite, civil figure whose ideas were hardly relevant, his bite by no means dangerous. In the heyday of criticism on Pope, his thinking was made to match the latitudinarian and liberal ideas of his commentators. It is time to return to Pope and to deconfine him (he himself stridently opposed all kinds of sectarianism, confinement, and reduction). Comparison of An Essay on Man with Dryden’s Religio Laici and Eliot’s Four Quartets offers valuable new insights into its character as both an essay(-poem) and a contribution to the layman’s faith tradition, the latter of which is strongly anti-sectarian and inclusivist; it sets us on a path toward appreciation of Pope’s concern with wholeness—with, that is, catholicity.

The subject of this edition is a forgotten 17th-century Polonicum: a Latin panegyric in hexameter by Antonio Querenghi entitled Ad urbem Romam in adventu Serenissimi Vladislai, Poloniae Principis (To the city of Rome on the occasion of the arrival of His Most Serene Highness Vladislaus, the Prince of Poland). The work, published in 1625 in Rome, was noted in bibliographies of S. Ciampi and K. Estreicher as anonymous. This is because the only copy known of the first edition until recently, preserved in the holdings of Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, was deprived of the title page. The discovery of a second, complete copy in the collection of Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome allowed us to identify the author, namely the Padovan humanist Antonio Querenghi (1546-1633), who from 1605 served as the pope’s personal secretary (cubicularius), prelate and referendary of both signatures. The closest relation Querengi developed with Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII), the “pope-Cicero” and patron of poets and artists, at whose side he stayed until his own death. On 19 January 1625 he graced with his panegyric the Roman visit of Prince Vladislaus Vasa, the later King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Vladislaus IV. The prince arrived in Rome on 20 December 1624, after an eight-month journey around Europe. Vladislaus, who tried to travel incognito, was received with all the honour due to the successor to the Swedish throne with the title of electi Magni Ducis Moschoviae (the elected Grand Duke of Muscovy). In the minds of the inhabitants of Europe, his person was also inextricably associated with the double triumph over the “schismatic” Muscovy, and above all with fending off Turks at the battle of Chocim (2 September–9 October 1621). Vladislaus spent the fortnight from 20 December 1624 to 2 January 1625 in the papal capital and took part in the celebration of the Jubilee. On 17 January he arrived there again after a short trip to Naples and left the city after only three days. Yet it was the latter short stay in Rome that the grandest reception in honour of the Polish Prince was held. On Sunday, 19 January, after a private audience with Pope Urban, at which only the closest curial dignitaries (with Querenghi probably among them) and officials from Vladislaus’ retinue were present, a sumptuous dinner was given with a concert afterwards. In the panegyric written for this occasion, Querenghi praises Vladislaus’ triumphs over “Muscovy twice defeated” (he meant armed attempts of the prince to the tsarist throne in the years 1610-1619) and over “the Thracian (i.e. Turkish) enemy”, the army of sultan Osman II. The ideological pivot of the poem is the pope’s planned general military expedition against Turkey: Urban VIII anoints the Polish Prince as the commander in chief of the upcoming crusade and a defender of Christianity. Vladislaus appears to be a new Hercules choosing the difficult path of Virtue, filled with renunciations and leading to eternal fame. In the panegyric apostrophe, the poet appeals to the Christian prince to follow the example of the mythical hero by taming the “godless monsters” (monstra impia) and taking upon his shoulders the weight of the world resting theretofore on the shoulders of the Italian Atlas – Pope Urban. Ad urbem Romam constitutes an excellent example of Querenghi’s stylistic manner shaped in the neo-Platonist spirit of hermetism, which made the poet create labyrinthine and enigmatic texts for the exclusive use of a narrow circle of exegetes. This manner resulted in a discrepancy, starkly visible through the refined hexameters, between two irreconcilable textual (and thus essentially linguistic) facts, one arising from historic discourse and the other generated within conventionally antiquisating, petrified, panegyric hyperbole. Namely, between Vladislaus who, abashed, retreated from Muscow and spent the battle of Chocim sick in his own tent, and the new Hercules who puts to rout the schismatic-pagan monsters threatening the Western civilisation.

The Roman emperor accumulated political and religious power, which in republican tradition was divided between magistrates and priests. This does not mean, however, that the boundary between these authorities has been erased, which also confirms the manner in which the individual ruler held the pontifex maximus function. This article concerns two cases of Tiberius’ interventions as the pontifex maximus recorded by Tacitus. The first event is connected with the choosing of a new Vestal, and the next is related to the flamen Dialis’ (S. Cornelius Maluginensis) requests for governorship of the province. In both situations, the emperor appeared before the Senate in a dual role; he presented the pontiffs’ opinion as pontifex maximus, and as the princeps he made a decisions on its basis.

Some notes on the Twickenham 'Pope'

Pope uses an uncomfortably extended birth metaphor to characterize his collaboration with Jacques Raison, and asks Bennett for accommodation recomendations in Madison for himself and his family. On the verso is a handwritten note in French from Jacques Raison on his Linear A work with Pope.

Two texts in the Collectio Avellana, a sixth-century collection of documents concerning the relationship between bishops of Rome and emperors, provide us with a unique window into the Christian landscape of Rome in late antiquity. The first is the Quae gesta sunt, a narrative of the contested episcopal election at Rome in 366 between Ursinus and Damasus, written by a supporter of Ursinus. The second is the Libellus precum, a petition from a group of Nicene rigorists called ‘Luciferians’ which details the long persecution they have suffered at the hands of other Nicene Christians in Rome and elsewhere. The relationship between these two documents, and between these two communities, has long been a point of confusion in modern scholarship, but has only rarely been addressed as a question in its own right. This study examines these two documents in their mid-fourth-century context and concludes that they reflect the interests and experiences of separate communities. It concludes with a brief note about how the historical events of the 350s, which compelled these two separate Nicene communities to remain opposed to Damasus in the 360s, caused intractable social ruptures in Rome that Damasus was unable to overcome.

«El camino de la sinodalidad es el camino que Dios espera de la Iglesia del tercer milenio. Lo que el Señor nos pide, en cierto sentido, ya está todo contenido en la palabra "Sínodo". Caminar juntos -laicos, pastores, Obispo de Roma- es un concepto fácil de expresar con palabras, pero no es tan fácil ponerlo en práctica». Las palabras del papa Francisco funcionan como una clave de lectura de este artículo que propone "una escucha sociológica para la sinodalidad" desde un caso concreto. Para ello se hace un uso riguroso de diversas herramientas que permiten medir los diferentes "decibeles" de las creencias y prácticas religiosas, puntualmente, en una ciudad del Conurbano, porque se hace necesario poner el foco en un lugar determinado. Quizás, nos preguntemos qué sentido tiene leer un texto tan específico de La Tablada si uno no vive en dicha ciudad. La respuesta es que, más allá de los datos relevados y notificar cuantitativamente determinados indicadores de una investigación de tesis, resulta interesante conocer qué variables se manejaron, qué indicadores se midieron, con qué autores se dialogó, cuál fue la metodología utilizada; pues, abstrayéndonos de los valores absolutos, todo el elenco de información producido.

For the ecumenical movement, the Second Vatican Council was a turning point that fundamentally changed the conditions for relationships between the churches. Since the council, the Roman Catholic Church has become an active partner in the ecumenical movement, while until the middle of the 20th century it had deliberately rejected any recognition of the ecumenical movement as a new reality in the life of the churches. The change has particularly affected the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the jubilee of the Second Vatican Council (2nd VC) is an appropriate moment to assess the developments in ecumenical relations during these fifty years. Of course, the significance of the 2nd VC goes far beyond its impact for ecumenical relations. Mention could and should be made of its new understanding of the place of the church in the modern world, of its affirmations of human rights and religious liberty, as well as of its initiatives preparing the way for inter-religious encounter and dialogue. The following reflections, however, will be limited to the development of ecumenical relations in the fifty years since the council. The generation of those in the leadership of the WCC who witnessed the 2nd VC and who participated in its successive sessions as observers on behalf of the WCC and of some of its member churches has passed away. This is true in particular for the first general secretary of the WCC, Dr W.A. Visser't Hooft; for the principal observer on behalf of the WCC, Dr Lukas Vischer; and for the two Orthodox observers, Dr Nikos Nissiotis and Fr Vitalij Borovoij. Their accounts still provide a vivid testimony for the groundbreaking significance of the council. The present attempt to assess the development in ecumenical relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC is written from the perspective of someone who since 1971 has been involved in shaping these relationships, who was co-secretary of the Joint Working Group between the Vatican and the WCC, and general secretary of the WCC from 1993-2003. The foundation for the new phase in ecumenical relationships was laid decisively by the Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, which was approved by the council in November 1994. With its affirmation that those “who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are brought into certain, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church” (N. 3), the decree formulated the ecumenical consequences of the new articulation of the ecclesiological self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium). Thus, the relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the other Christian churches were placed on a new basis. Soon after the council, this became evident in the development of an impressive network of bilateral dialogues between the major church families, which have led to important results. An assessment of these dialogues, which have been documented in several volumes under the title “Growth in Agreement,” is beyond the scope of these reflections. In the immediate period following the announcement of the forthcoming Vatican Council, the WCC became the privileged ecumenical partner for the Roman Catholic Church. Even before the official establishment of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, a first secret encounter took place at Milano in 1960 between Cardinal Bea, the future president of the secretariat, and Dr Visser't Hooft, the general secretary of the WCC. Subsequently, the WCC served as a facilitator for the invitations of ecumenical observers at the council and was itself represented by two observers. The position papers and commentaries of the ecumenical observers were taken seriously at the council. For example, the preface to the Decree on Ecumenism, which refers positively to the ecumenical movement, has been influenced by a memorandum from the WCC. A second encounter between Cardinal Bea und Dr Visser't Hooft took place in April of 1964, even before the promulgation of the Decree on Ecumenism. It prepared the way for the establishment of a Joint Working Group (JWG) between the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC with the initial mandate to clarify the basis for future relationships. During its first mandate period between 1965 and 1967, the JWG developed a very productive activity. With the publication of a basic working document on the understanding and the methodologies of “ecumenical dialogue” it had fulfilled its initial task. As a consequence, a number of common initiatives were launched for direct collaboration between the Vatican and the WCC. Mention should be made in particular of the joint Committee on Society, Development and Peace (SODEPAX), which began its work with a joint secretariat in 1968. High hopes were placed in this endeavour and SODEPAX quickly became a symbol for the new quality of relationships. However, the increasingly independent dynamics of its activities led the two parent bodies to reduce and refocus the mandate, and eventually this form of structured cooperation was concluded in 1980. The Joint Advisory Group on Social Thought and Action that was created in its place proved to be ineffective and was terminated after a few years. The same fate caught up with two other early initiatives, that is, the Women's Ecumenical Liaison Group and a structure for cooperation in the field of the laity, both of which ceased operation after only a few years. What remained from this initial hopeful period were official cooperative relationships in the fields of theological study, especially in the framework of the Commission on Faith and Order; of mission and evangelism, facilitated especially by Catholic missionary orders; of ecumenical diakonia; and of inter-religious dialogue. The most long-lasting cooperative endeavour has been the joint preparation of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity. At the 4th Assembly of the WCC in Uppsala (1968), Fr Roberto Tucci SJ in a public address mentioned the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church might join the WCC as a full member. At the same time, the Vatican approved the inclusion of Roman Catholic theologians as official members of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order. Since then all decisive theological study processes in the WCC have benefited from full Roman Catholic participation. One year later, in June 1969, Pope Paul VI visited the WCC secretariat in Geneva. This was a gesture of high symbolic significance, even though the Pope left no doubt about the difficulties that still needed to be resolved on the ecumenical way. In the same year, the JWG formed a small working group to study the conditions and implications of a possible Roman Catholic membership of the WCC. The report under the title “Pattern of Relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches” (1972) came to the conclusion that there were no fundamental obstacles preventing possible membership. However, serious consultations on the highest levels in the Roman Curia led to the conclusion that the Roman Catholic Church would not further pursue this option in the near future. These conditions have not changed in the forty years since then, even though the Roman Catholic Church has joined national ecumenical structures in more than fifty countries as a full member. The focus of ecumenical activities on the part of the Vatican shifted more and more towards bilateral dialogues with the major Christian church families and structured cooperation with the WCC was reduced. despite all divisions which have occurred in the course of the centuries there is a real though imperfect communion which continues to exist between those who believe in Christ and are baptized in his name . . . Through the development of the ecumenical movement that communion has been experienced anew. This is not to claim that it has been created anew. Since it is beyond human power and initiative, it precedes all ecumenical efforts for the restoration of the unity of all Christians.1 The report also referred to the failure of the efforts to give visible and structured expression to the relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC. While there was no doubt that the Roman Catholic Church could accept the basis of the WCC, the report indicates that the Roman Catholic Church understood its constitution “as a universal fellowship with a universal mission and structure as an essential element of its identity.” It sees further difficulties in “the way in which authority is considered in the Roman Catholic Church and the processes through which it is exercised.”2 In this way the report for the first time points to the fundamental differences in the understanding of ecclesial fellowship, and thus it concludes this assessment with the question: “How can the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, without forming one structured fellowship, intensify their joint activities and thereby strengthen the unity, the common witness and the renewal of the churches?”3 In any case, the question how “the real, though imperfect communion” can gain visible shape has remained open since then and it has become clear that the Decree on Ecumenism of the 2nd VC did not offer a conclusive answer. In the following years, until the 5th Assembly of the WCC at Vancouver (1983), cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church concentrated more and more on the work of the Commission on Faith and Order. During this period the commission concluded its work on the convergence documents on “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” (BEM), which were approved at the meeting of the commission in Lima (1982). In appropriating the results of bilateral dialogues and with full participation of the Roman Catholic members of the commission these convergence texts manifested a large measure of agreement on central issues of doctrine and church order. No other result of ecumenical theological work has been discussed on a similarly broad level in the churches. In 1987 an official response from the Roman Catholic Church to the convergence texts stated that “BEM is perhaps the most significant result of the [Faith and Order] movement.” The response underlines that baptism is the decisive basis for the communion which “already exists between divided Christians.” It is somewhat more reserved regarding the text on the eucharist, but it considers that a reception by all churches of the theological understanding and description of the celebration of the eucharist as expressed in the Lima document would be an important development in the direction of affirming a “common faith.” Critical questions were addressed in particular to the document on the ministry. But even here the response comes to the conclusion that the acceptance of the proposals of the Lima document on the ministry would represent a “major step towards Christian unity.”4 In order to avoid misunderstandings the response however underlines once again the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church and its unity by quoting explicitly the affirmation in the Decree on Ecumenism (No. 4) that the “unity of the one and only Church which Christ bestowed on His Church from the beginning . . . subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time.”5 It links this with the expectation “that the study of ecclesiology must come more and more into the centre of the ecumenical dialogue.”6 When in 1984 Pope John Paul II visited the ecumenical centre in Geneva he emphasized his office as Bishop of Rome, which had served as the visible point of reference and as the guarantee of unity in faithfulness to the apostolic tradition. Ten years later, after the Commission on Faith and Order at its 5th World Conference in Santiago de Compostela also recommended a common study of the question of a universal office of unity, the Pope came back to this question in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint “on commitment to ecumenism” (1995) and invited church leaders and theologians “to engage in a patient and fraternal dialogue on this subject” in order “to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation” (No. 95f). This dialogue has begun, but so far no solution has been found. The WCC assembly at Vancouver (1983) gave the impulse for a “conciliar process for justice, peace and the integrity of creation,” which became a crystallization point for ecumenical cooperation in the period until 1990. The Roman Catholic Church was invited to co-sponsor this process. While it accepted this invitation on national and regional levels, its participation on the global level remained restricted, especially because of questions regarding the ecclesiological foundations of the conciliar process. This fact served to underline the need to give more focused attention to the issues of ecclesiology, as had been urged already in the Roman Catholic response to the BEM document. On the basis of a proposal by the Faith and Order Commission, the 6th Assembly of the WCC at Canberra (1991) in its declaration on “The Unity of the Church as Koinonia: Gift and Calling” re-affirmed the importance of the concept of koinonia in searching for a common ecumenical understanding on ecclesiology. Since its 5th World Conference at Santiago de Compostela (1993) the Commission on Faith and Order had concentrated its attention on working out a convergence statement on the church. Several preliminary statements were published and circulated among the churches for reaction. After successive revisions, a final text has been accepted by the Commission in 2012 under the title, The Church: Towards a Common Vision. In November 2013 it was received by the 10th Assembly of the WCC at Busan and it is now before the churches for serious study and appropriate reception. It will now have to be seen whether and how the Roman Catholic Church will respond to this concerted ecumenical effort to address the core issues of ecclesiology that have been at the centre of ecumenical dialogues during these past decades. This question is of particular interest since, with the document “Dominus Jesus” (2000) and the subsequent Decree with “Responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the Doctrine On the Church” (2007), the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith strongly affirmed the uniqueness and exclusivity of the Roman Catholic Church and defended a rather restrictive interpretation of the teachings of Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the 2nd VC. This is a matter of concern particularly for the churches of the Reformation. The council had referred to them as “ecclesial communities,” but this has now been sharpened in the sense that they cannot “according to Catholic doctrine be called Churches in the proper sense,” since, due to “the absence of the sacramental priesthood they have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the eucharistic mystery.”7 These statements were issued by the Vatican under the responsibility of Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI. Whether new ecumenical signals will come from Pope Francis still has to be seen. At this stage it appears that there are still profound differences in the understanding of the church and of ecclesial communion. On the one hand we discern a universal ecclesiology oriented towards communion with the Bishop of Rome and the recognition of his primacy which stands over against an ecclesiology that recognizes the plurality of local churches and is oriented toward a communion in which “all churches are able to recognize in one another the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church in its fullness.”8 This brief retrospective of developments during these fifty years leaves a mixed impression. The 2nd VC and particularly the Decree on Ecumenism have irrevocably brought the Roman Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement and its ecumenical commitment has been re-affirmed in very solemn terms by successive popes. In many ways the Roman Catholic Church has even begun to claim leadership responsibility regarding the development of ecumenical relationships that would have been unthinkable in the period before the 2nd VC. The numerous bilateral doctrinal dialogues have reached important clarifications regarding basic issues of faith and order and have concluded many of the doctrinal controversies between the churches. One of the most significant results is the “Common Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran churches that was solemnly signed in 1999. Ecumenical collaboration between the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC has so far been based on the conviction that there is only “one ecumenical movement” that embraces all Christian churches and traditions. This is reflected also in the Decree on Ecumenism, which in the headline of its first chapter speaks of “Catholic Principles of Ecumenism,” instead of “Principles of Catholic Ecumenism” as was initially proposed. However, after fifty years there are increasing doubts whether we are still dealing with one and the same ecumenical movement, or whether competitive understandings of ecumenism and its ultimate goal have emerged in the meantime. The ecclesiological self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church as articulated in the official interpretation of the teachings of the 2nd VC places the Roman Catholic Church with its universal structure and its hierarchical understanding of authority and its exercise into the centre of the search for Christian unity. This cannot easily be reconciled with the understanding of ecclesial unity in conciliar fellowship that has developed in the course of serious dialogue within the fellowship of churches in the WCC. The fact that it has not been possible so far to give visible and structured expression to the “real though imperfect” communion based on the common baptism indicates that there are still differences of rather basic character. The recent Vatican statements referred to above strengthen this impression, precisely where they interpret the teachings of the council. It is evident that the declarations of the 2nd VC, including the Decree on Ecumenism, were the result of controversial discussions among the council fathers trying to hold together widely divergent positions and convictions. Thus, they allow for different interpretations and show signs of internal tension or even contradictions. It should therefore not come as a surprise that the process of renewal that was initiated by the council has not yet reached its full clarity. However, that raises the question whether the changes in ecumenical relationships that were initiated by the council, and particularly by the Decree on Ecumenism, can be regarded as an open process in the sense that the ecumenical reception and discussion of the teachings of the council can make a contribution to clarifying the remaining questions and tensions, or whether the Decree on Ecumenism has to be regarded as the final word of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the challenges of the ecumenical movement. While the papal encyclical Ut Unum Sint has in many respects been received as a source of encouragement, there was disappointment among many ecumenical partners that Pope John Paul II did not go beyond repeating and re-affirming the teachings of the Decree on Ecumenism and did not appear to adequately recognize and honour the insights and clarifications that have been reached in the course of fifty years of intensive ecumenical dialogue, not least in the context of bilateral conversations. The use of this expression, which indicates the full identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church, does not change the doctrine on the Church. Rather, it comes from and brings out more clearly the fact that there are ‘numerous elements of sanctification and of truth’ which are found outside her structure, but which “as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, impel towards Catholic Unity”.9 In a lecture 2004, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Decree on Ecumenism, Cardinal Kasper as President of the Pontifical Council on Promoting Christian Unity already dealt extensively with this same issue and stated that the formulation “subsists in” “contains in nuce the whole ecumenical problem.”10 The Cardinal felt that thanks to this formulation, which replaced the simple “is,” the council was able to take a decisive step forward. “It wished to do justice to the fact that there are found outside of the Catholic Church not only individual Christians but also ‘elements of the church’, indeed churches and ecclesial communities which, although not in full communion, rightly belong to the one church and possess salvatory significance for their members.” The concept “subsistit in”, according to the intention of the Theological Commission of the Council, means: the church of Christ Jesus has its concrete location in the Catholic Church… It is not a purely Platonic entity or a prospective future reality, it exists in a concrete historical form, it is located in the Catholic Church. Understood in this sense “subsistit in” encompasses the essential thrust of the “est.” But it no longer formulates the self-concept [self-image] of the Catholic Church in “splendid isolation”, but also takes account of churches and ecclesial communities in which the one church of Jesus Christ is effectively present, but which are not in full communion with it. In formulating its own identity, the Catholic Church at the same time establishes a relationship of dialogue with these churches and ecclesial communities. Accordingly it is a misunderstanding of “subsistit in” to make it the basis of an ecclesiological pluralism or relativism which implies that the one church of Christ Jesus subsists in many and thus the Catholic Church is one among many other churches . . . The Catholic Church continues to as it to be the true church of Christ in which the of the of are present, but it now sees itself in a context of dialogue with the other churches and ecclesial communities. It does not any new doctrine but establishes a new and formulates its self-concept in a concrete one could even The Council is that the church is on a through towards a concrete historical of what its most profound This interpretation is but it is not clear how this position can as a basis of further ecumenical dialogues on ecclesiology. the theological dialogue will But the reception of their results difficulties in all because the new and common that has been developed through these dialogues cannot easily be reconciled with the doctrinal of the churches. a towards the affirmation of a communion” will not be possible without a of the ecclesiological by the teachings of the council. The papal encyclical Ut Unum Sint also has not been able to open a way forward. An of a new ecumenical might be in the response from the Vatican to the of the WCC document Towards a Common and a Common of the WCC This response the “common or basis of ecumenism” by repeating the conviction that is a true and real, even imperfect, koinonia between the Catholic Church and other Churches and But it then “It is a real sacramental koinonia the churches a true baptism by which one is into the of explicitly the of the which already exists between the churches by of their common this statement recognizes the ecclesiological quality of these ecumenical relationships. It once again that this “real but imperfect communion” is to any to form of it even is to that understanding the WCC has ecclesiological believe that a further development of the of a as in these statements could the ecumenical dialogue about the understanding of the church and its unity from the present, and open future It is that the Joint Working Group between the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC has a study on the and Ecumenical of a Common was the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, from through

Alexander Pope to Magdalen Rackett [née Pope], 22 October 1741 [popealOU0040365a1c

The research, scholarly synthesis, and teaching conducted in a Catholic university are crucial to the dialogue the Church conducts with the cultures of our time, which is essential to the future of the Church and of the world. Their fruitful pursuit depends on unconditional commitment to the truth, both on the immediate subject of study and at the deeper levels of human existence in which freedom, justice, and human dignity are grounded. A significant consequence of the worldwide Second Vatican Council for Catholic colleges and universities was a new understanding of the Christian calling of the laity, in light of diminishing numbers in the vowed religious congregations. To the extent that the Catholicity of the colleges had largely been seen as the charge of the sponsoring religious community, there was a widening gap between the profession of faith and available human resources. Further, a move from ownership of colleges and universities by religious congregations to the installation of lay boards of trustees—without requiring any special introduction of lay trustees to the church-related history and commitment intrinsic to the colleges—was at first not appreciated. Consequently, due to these and other factors, Catholic colleges and universities found that they could no longer take for granted the religious character of their institutions. They could no longer assume that the values and goals professed by the institutional mission were spontaneously implemented in practice. In response to these growing concerns, Pope John Paul II promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. This document identified the common characteristics of all Catholic colleges and universities. In the introduction to Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II reflects personally on his own experience as a university professor of philosophy. He portrays the Catholic university as a place where the encounter of faith and reason is taken seriously and pursued into the great complexity of contemporary science, philosophy, social sciences, and so forth. He acknowledges that this involves creativity. Hence, there is bound to be some experimentation, some trial and error, some wrestling with the ways in which secular knowledge is incorporated into the way Catholics see everything by the light of faith.

This thesis is a religio-cultural history of Florence in the years 1419-1443, during which Popes Martin V and Eugenius IV were forced to locate their papacies in that city due to a variety of religious and political factors. It traces the impact of these papal residencies, and it argues that this important period has been thus far understudied by historians; its conclusions are therefore a re-examination of the prevailing scholarly consensus.

The popes' house, near Hatfield Get access Notes and Queries, Volume s5-VI, Issue 146, 14 October 1876, Page 309, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s5-VI.146.309a Published: 14 October 1876

From its foundation in 1135 onward, the Cistercian abbey of S. Maria di Chiaravalle Milanese has played a leading role in Milan’s political, social, economical and religious life. Despite the ideal of the desertum prescribed by the Order’s Rule, the monks of Chiaravalle Milanese were closely linked to the urban elites and to the public institutions for the entire Middle Ages. Nonetheless, as a Cistercian monastery, Chiaravalle Milanese had other privileged interlocutors: the most important one was the Papacy, as proven by the large number of letters (up to 120 until the beginning of the 15th century) addressed by popes to Chiaravalle Milanese and still preserved into the monastic archives. This paper aims at pursuing the critical editorial work recently carried out on Chiaravalle Milanese’s papal and Apostolic legates’ charters from 1139 to 1311, by publishing 16 unedited papal letters dating from the pontificate of John XXII to that of Boniface IX. In addition, 3 more charters are edited in an Appendix, which are useful to contextualize and explain the relationship between Chiaravalle Milanese and the Holy See during the 14th century.

Pope the poet and pope the antiquary Get access T. S. T. S. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s6-IX, Issue 221, 22 March 1884, Page 225, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s6-IX.221.225b Published: 22 March 1884

Alexander Pope to Magdalen Rackett [née Pope], Sunday, 8 August 1734 [popealOU0030421a1c