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The present article provides an overview of the particular synods that have been conducted since the Second Vatican Council in Germany. It also takes into account those counseling processes that cannot be qualified as canonical synods.
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Synods have a long tradition in the ecclesiastical history, though their significance varied in different epochs of the Roman Catholic Church. Within the European area, synods gained in importance after the Second Vatican Council, although they appeared in a new or rather modified form. This also applies to the diocesan synods and the Austrian Synodal Process (1973/1974), which took place after and has been celebrated by the supporters of the Second Vatican Council.
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Christian existence is an implication of Christological orthodoxy and only in this light of the (Christological) truth it is of redemptive significance. Its shape depends on the answer to the question: who is Jesus, in essence? However, it is only possible to recognise Lord through our personal engagement, which is excellently expressed in the closeness to Him, contemplation and consent to His action. As an act of the whole existence, watching the Pierced (Crossed) leads us to recognize the truth about God in Christ, at the same time opening the way to imitate Him. The message of the Gospel is something more than a moral imperative; the obligation does not result here from individual conviction, but the reality – the taste and sense of life – has been changed irreversibly and redemptively.
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The theme of testimony is one of the most important theological motifs in the final book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of John. The noun “testimony” appears there nine times (1:2-9; 6:9; 11:7; 12:11-17; 19:10[x2]; 20:4), always in the singular form. The noun “testimony” is accompanied three times by the verb “have”, with which it creates the syntagma “have the testimony” (6:9; 12:17; 19:10). This syntagma, according to some analysts, indicates “a deeper identity of the disciples” of Jesus. In the present article I suggest an analysis of the above-mentioned phrase, seeking to identify the essence of that deeper identity of Jesus’ followers, which is expressed by the analyzed constituent segment. I begin with a few remarks about the etymology of the noun “testimony”, understood as the memory of people and events. Next, I analyze the three fragments which feature the syntagma “have the testimony”. From that background, I finally seek to answer the question of the sense of such an expression within the context of understanding the identity of Jesus’ followers. The living memory of Jesus – kept, experienced and passed along – shapes the identity of Christ’s followers. It looks back to the past, but at the same time is open to the present and, through hope, allows believers to await the future. In this way Jesus’ followers become witnesses and prophets of Jesus in the modern world.
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Maria Karłowska in her activity was primarily guided by the good of women who were harmed by fate. In this connection, she led an educational activity that allowed her to change her life. This study refers to the issue of principles and methods of education used by Karłowska. These were the principles of: loving one's neighbor, respecting the dignity of the human person and personal freedom. Instead, the methods were: teaching, prayer, silence and work. The effectiveness of this educational system is evidenced by the fact that today it is also used in the homes of the Good Shepherd, which continue the mission of Maria Karłowska. The views of Maria Karłowska are also worth comparing with the axiological context related to logoterapy.
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The category of communio belongs to the most important concepts of systematic theology. It refers to the internal life of the Trinitarian God, the relationship between God and man, the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ, the Church and all Christian realities. Today the revelation of God is also perceived as the reality of communication and communion. Communio theology was initially and most widely developed during the post-conciliar times as communio ecclesiology, bearing also the ecumenical importance, but this development was marked also by the broader dogmatic theology, founding its growth so far in Trinitology, sacramentology, Christology, anthropology, theology of creation. As a specific “gold mine” communio includes huge potential that is waiting for exploration primarily in systematic theology, but not only, as it also reaches pastoral theology.
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In the present collective study the members of the Department of Systematic Theology at the Cyril and Methodius Theological Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc respond to the encyclical of Pope Francis Laudato si’. First, they point out that the encyclical amounts to a strong defense of the Christian approach to problems of the environment. It consists of a certain completion of Compendium of Social Doctrine of Church where the digrespond to the encyclical of Pope Francis nity of all creatures is emphasized. Theo mariological, sacramentological, eschatological and ethical parts of the text are also inspiring in this respect. Most of what the encyclical presents has been for a long period of time an integral part of the lessons and formation in all the disciplines offered by the Department of Systematic Theology.
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A provocation to theological thinking
The paper is presenting the main stages in the history of mankind using the concept of system and how a certain system of a certain stage is evolving out of the previous stage into another new one using also the mathematical theory pertaining to the transition of a system between two different states. The paper is also dealing with the rational laws and rules governing the economy, laws and rules that are necessary to explain evolution. One important fact which is resulting out of the paper is that although necessary those economical rules and laws are unfortunately insufficient to explain the gaps one can always find everywhere one looks in the history.
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Nikals Luhmann betrachtet die sozial-politische Wirklichkeit als ein System, als eine Einheit, die sich von selbst entwickelt oder lebt. Diese Wirklichkeit kann man autopoetisch oder selbstreferenziell bezeichnen. Zu den sozialen Systemen, die die Gesellschaft beschreiben, gehören nach Luhmann die folgenden Elemente: „Anwesenheit“, „Wahrnehmung und verbale Kommunikation“, „Geschichte und Struktur“, „System und Umwelt“, „soziale Kontrolle“ sowie „Identität und Abstraktionsleistungen“. Das System und die Komplexität stellen die Schlussbegriffe der Theorie Luhmanns dar. Diese Publikation beschreibt zuerst die allgemeine Systemtheorie von Niklas Luhmann und dann die Anwendung von dieser Theorie für die Gesellschaft und für die Welt der Politik.
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The Kamieniec diocese, a part of which was the Winnica district, consisted of 101 parishes, 9 branches, 88 chapels with 302.858 believers. Such was the situation until the October Revolution. In the district alone “there were 55 Roman-Catholic churches with 46 separate chapels and believers numbered 153.516, according to the current administrative division”. The Winnica district included 1899 villages, 16 housing estates for workers, and 7 towns, which were inhabited by 2.390.000 people in 1941, and 2.037.000 in 1946.As regards religious organizations, the process of closing buildings for prayer, churches, and orthodox churches on a mass scale started from 1932 onwards. It was carried out with such a consequence that in 1937 there was no official religious community. Only after the attack of Germany on the USSR on 22nd June 1941 a practical opportunity for the regeneration of religious life appeared; both the faithful and the clergy took advantage of it. We learn from the report prepared by A. Ustenko, a deputy to the chairman of the District Board in Winnica, that "from 1st January 1945 there were 997 religious communities in the Winnica district," and they all represented various religions. The authorities allowed the Catholic Church, to which 100.000 faithful belonged, to perform their religious duties only in 41 churches. These data, however, are incomplete, according to the proxy of the Board for the Religious Cult. The Winnica district, as he said, "[...] is specific in this regard, for there lives a large number of Catholics who are autochthons, and part of them are Ukrainians." In relation to their nationality, the Catholics were divided into Poles (ca. 60 per cent), and Ukrainians (40 per cent). National membership of the faithful was one of the essential criteria for closing the Catholic churches. In 1951 there were 18 open buildings for religious purposes in the district. Pastoral ministry was provided by Rev. M. Wysokiński, and there were 63.111 faithful.In 1955 the number of open temples in the Winnica district remained the same. The number of permanent pastors changed. In all the parishes 6 priests worked. Outside their permanent residence, they could conduct pastoral work in other communities only two or three times a year.The party and state institutions “succeeded” in 1962 by introducing nationality for the faithful, those who identified themselves with the Catholic Church. According to the office of the proxy the Board for the Religious Cult), the Catholics constituted 97 per cent - Ukrainians, and only 3 per cent - Poles. The year 1965 brought about some changes in the state policy towards the Church. Officially, the authorities confirmed that there were 20 Catholic parishes in the district, although 6 parishes were not registered.
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The origins of the organisational structures of the Roman-Catholic Church in Belarus reach back to the end of the fourteenth century. During several-centuries old history the Church in those territories experienced various events. The period of repression and persecutions of religion and the Church in the Soviet state had brought about enormous destruction. The number of open churches and Catholic priests in Belarus was constantly dwindling until the 1980s. The political changes that followed together with perestroika and the final fall of the communist totalitarian system initiated the period of religious revival in the Catholic Church in Belarus. As a result of these changes in 1989, the Catholics in Belarus received their own bishop, Father Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz. In 1991 the diocesan structures were reorganised. It was then that the following dioceses were established: the Mińsk-Mohylew diocese, the Pińsk diocese, and the Grodno diocese. From that time onwards the Latin Church in the Republic of Belarus was conducted for many years by the parish priest of the cathedral in Pińsk, Archbishop and Metropolitan Bishop of the Mińsk-Mohylew diocese, Rev. Kazimierz Świątek, who in 1994 was made cardinal. Another reorganisation took place in 1999, when a new diocese was established with its capital in Witebsk. In that year the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus was established. In the beginning of the 1990s the Church in Belarus numbered 150 churches (the remaining 87 were under reconstruction, and 9 under construction), 130 priests, out of whom 68 from Poland, 55 alumni in the theological seminary in Grodno, and over one million faithful. The decisive majority of the Catholics in this country (ca. 90 per cent), especially in the northern areas, are of Polish origin. At the moment, ca. 15 per cent of population in Belarus belong to the faithful of the Catholic Church. After more than ten years the Latin Church in Belarus numbered as many as 400 parishes, 360 priests, including 160 local, 160 religious priests (most of them from Poland), 350 nuns (140 local), 150 alumni, and 1.200 faithful. The number of parochial communities of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite in Belarus has been constantly increasing since the end of the 1980s.
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In 1891 Pope Leo XIII published the famous Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’, which outlined the basis of Catholic social teaching. Following this document, priests began to engage in social action among working people. One such priest was the Archbishop of Gniezno and Poznan, Fr. Florian Oksza-Stablewski, the initiator of the “Christian and Social Movement” (19021910) – the first Polish scholarly journal devoted to social and economic issues. Involved in the development of this magazine were Fr. Kazimierz Zimmermann and Fr. Stanislaw Adamski, as well as the St. Wojciech printing and publishing house in Poznan in the person of its director, Fr. Peter Wawrzyniak. Writings on social issues were published in the magazine, and it supported the Catholic labor movement. Readers were encouraged to create Catholic workers’ unions and join their ranks. The spreading socialist movement was criticised and its anti-religiousness proclaimed. The magazine also strove against Jewish influence on Polish economic life. The creators of the periodical also took an interest in domestic service, especially involving women. The material, moral and health difficulties of this occupational group were discussed in the periodical. Female servants were encouraged to be interested in the Catholic women’s associations that were created for them, where they were guaranteed spiritual, material, medical and legal assistance. In this type of association, there were also schools for servants where they were taught reading and writing, religion, accounts, Polish history and all aspects of domestic work (cleaning, laundry, ironing, sewing, cooking, caring for farm animals and domestic birds) as well as work of other kinds
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The aim of the article is to show in what communication contexts Pope John Paul II was during his first homeland pilgrimage and what was the characteristic of those contexts. The research problem lies in a question, if and how communication context determines verbal and non-verbal behaviours of the speaker. The source materials include the video recordings of the first homeland pilgrimage, records of the homilies, the reflections and the speeches. Three parts of the article cover respectively: the concept of the communication context, considering its ambiguity, the factors determining its form and the types of that context.
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Sprawowanie sakramentu pokuty i pojednania należy do najważniejszych posług kapłańskich. Poprzez tę posługę kapłan uświęca nie tylko penitenta, ale i samego siebie.
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The short text of Elisabeth Belenson can be understood as an insight into the nature of the human soul. The author describes madness as a special state of the soul and the most mysterious and dangerous way of moving towards God. It is also a grasp of the mentality and way of thinking of philosophers and writers of post-revolutionary Russian emigration, in which in a strange relationship there is Greek mythology, criticism of positivism and faith in God’s Mercy.
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Examining beliefs and cult objects from the perspective of an archaeologist is not an easy task because of the small number of written sources or lack thereof. It is difficult to interpret artifacts that are presumably not just functional. These are the arts and religion. The degree of difficulty of analyzes devoted to beliefs increases when we deal with illiterate culture. It is also not surprising that skepticism and restraint with regard to the analysis and interpretation of symbols, beliefs and rituals. One of the interesting research questions that archaeologists are dealing with is rock art. At present, its rise and interpretation are connected with shamanistic theory. It is recognized as a belief system, a kind of religion with cosmogony (A. Rozwadowski, 2012). The text is an attempt to answer the question of the earliest religion. Can shamanism be regarded as form of the religion and its relationship with the art of rock paleolithic?
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