Life Of Priests Research Articles

The Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishop and Its Collaborative Exercise

* Professor of Canon Law, Washington Theological Union. 1 Abbreviations used in this article: AA Apostolicam actuositatem, Second Vatican Council, Decree on the apostolate of the laity (November 18, 1965). AS Apostolorum successores, Congregation for Bishops, Directory for the Pastoral ministry of Bishops (February 22, 2004). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004. c, cc canon, canons of the Codex Iuris Canonici, John Paul II, Code of Canon Law (January 25, 1983), unless otherwise indicated. CCEO Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, John Paul II, Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (October 18, 1990) CD Christus Dominus, Second Vatican Council, Decree on the pastoral office of bishops in the Church (Oct. 28, 1965) DH Dignitatis humanae, Second Vatican Council, Declaration on religious freedom (December 7, 1965) DV Dei verbum, SecondVatican Council, Dogmatic constitution on divine revelation (November 18, 1965) LG Lumen gentium, Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic constitution on the church (November 21, 1964) PG Pastores gregis, John Paul II, apostolic exhortation, Shepherds of the flock (October 16, 2003). Origins 33:22 (Nov. 6, 2003) 353–392. PO Presbyterorum ordinis, Second Vatican Council, Decree on the ministry and life of priests (December 7, 1965) TMDB National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishop: A Pastoral Reflection,” (November 14, 1991). Origins 21:30 (January 2, 1992) 473–492. UR Unitatis redintegratio, Second Vatican Council, Decree on ecumenism (November 21, 1964) The source for the documents of the Second Vatican Council: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,Volume Two: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner . (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1990). 382 The Jurist 68 (2008) 382–407 THE TEACHING MINISTRY OF THE DIOCESAN BISHOP AND ITS COLLABORATIVE EXERCISE James A. Coriden* Introduction This study focuses on the nature of the teaching office of the diocesan bishop, its ecclesial context and theological foundations, its scope and modes of exercise, and specifically on the collaborative exercise of the bishop’s teaching ministry. The study relies on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar reflections, both theological and canonical, on the episcopal teaching office within the Roman Catholic Church.1 It does not attempt to treat all of the issues related to 2 Michael Buckley, S.J., one of the collaborators on the November 1991 NCCB statement on “The Teaching Mission of the Diocesan Bishop,” graciously made available to me some of the earlier drafts prepared for that reflection. I am most grateful to him for this assistance . Several ideas and even some expressions from those drafts appear herein. the teaching ministry of the diocesan bishop 383 teaching authority or the question of legitimate dissent from the teaching of bishops. The work proceeds in three steps: a) the teaching mission of the Church, b) the teaching function of the bishop, and c) the modes of exercise of the bishop’s teaching function. It concludes with some suggestions for modifying the existing canons of the 1983 Code of Canon Law in order to bring them into closer conformity with the theology of the teaching office. A. The Teaching Mission of the Church 1) The Teaching Missions of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit In Jesus of Nazareth God disclosed himself to humankind in a unique way. Jesus the Christ was the ultimate revelation of God and God’s love for us. In his life and works, in his death and resurrection, Jesus united himself with us, gave himself up for us, and made known to us the ways of God. Jesus the teacher taught us the truth about ourselves and about God.2 Jesus promised and then sent his Spirit from the Father to continue and complete his mission, to remain with us, to remind us of what Jesus told us, and to lead us to all truth (Jn 14 & 16). The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple, unifies the Church’s communion and ministry, directs, instructs, and renews the Church by means of the Spirit’s gifts (LG 4). The Spirit gathered Christ’s disciples intoaChurch,andundertheSpirit’sguidancethatChurchkeepsfaithwith Jesustheteacher,andcarriesonhismissionofGod’sself-communication. These two teaching missions, of the Son and Holy Spirit, are intimately interrelated and mutually interdependent. Together they disclose the...

The Angry Priests in a Hattian-Hittite Narrative

AbstractThe Hattian-Hittite interlinear bilingual fragment KUB 28.1 and its newly joined duplicate KBo 37.9 (+) KBo 37.74 are treated here. The text edition and interpretation are based on a combination of the Hattian and Hittite versions. The narrative contains scenes of some odd behaviors of priests which are an interesting addition to what we know about the administrative and daily life of priests in Hittite Anatolia.

The Parish, the Bible and Everything Else: Scripture and Our Common Quest to Make Sense

A metaphor is implied when one speaks of a person of “culture”, a “cultivated” person. The word “culture” here derives from agriculture, the tilling and planting of the soil to yield a harvest of nourishing things.Culture in this broad sense means simply, as Jacques Barzun defines it, “the interests and abilities acquired by taking thought.” Any thoughtful person is potentially a person of culture. Culture is not bookish or remote, not the province of the idle, the rich or the overeducated. On the contrary, it is essential to a meaningful life.The Church clearly has a mission in the world of culture in the broad sense of ‘taking thought’ about things that matter. But such discussion often neglects the fact that most adult Mass-goers commonly relate to the Church through their parish. Since parish life is how most people experience the Church, one can legitimately ask what it is about parishes that touches culture. In what way do they carry on as communities, not only of the heart and spirit, but also of the mind?How do laity work in the world, as Gaudium et Spes mandated them? How do parish priests “interpret the signs of the times” as the Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests directs? Paul VI said throughout Evangelii Nuntiandi that we must pay attention to the culture in which we immerse ourselves and not react to it passively but creatively. How, at the broadest level?Whatever the activity of the parish, whatever the spirituality of the laity and priests there, Scripture is a part of their experience.

Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Considerations

T ARTICLE has a simple thesis: categories with which we customarily think about religious life are inadequate to historical reality and that inadequacy is to a large extent responsible for some of confusion in Church today about religious life, especially about relationship to priesthood and of regular clergy, i.e. priests living in a religious order or congregation under a rule. This confusion, I further maintain, is harmful to religious orders and congregations, even those that do not have ordained members, and is also harmful in long run to Church as a whole. The confusion has roots deep in our past, but it remained latent or at least virtually unnamed until quite recently. Forcing it ever more into our awareness have been implications and implementation of certain documents of Vatican Council II, especially Presbyterorum ordinis on ministry and life of priests, Optatam totius on training of priests, Christus Dominus on pastoral office of bishops, and Perfectae caritatis on the renewal of religious life. An altogether crucial question has emerged: How do religious priests fit in of Church? If we turn to Council, we do not find an altogether satisfactory answer, although we are left free to infer that specific difference between religious and diocesan priests lies in fact that former take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, whereas latter do not. The ideals that these vows entail, however, are so vigorously enjoined upon diocesan priests themselves in Presbyterorum ordinis that in long run difference seems to be at most one of emphasis or consists simply in juridical fact of public vows, or perhaps life in community. The difference seems thus reducible to some rather subtle particularities of spirituality which in fact are almost impossible to define. The conclusion that seems to follow is that there is one priesthood, but priests can be animated by different spiritualities. There are no further differences. Although Presbyterorum ordinis concedes that its provisions are to be

The Health of American Catholic Priests: A Report and a Study

Journal Article The Health of American Catholic Priests: A Report and a Study, by [Joseph H. Fichter for the] Bishops' Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry, National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1985, v + 98 pp. $3.95 Get access David O. Moberg David O. Moberg Marquette University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 48, Issue 3, Fall 1987, Pages 286–287, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711528 Published: 01 October 1987

The English Secular Clergy and the Counter-Reformation

The century from the calling of the Council of Trent to the conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle stands out as one of the most creative in the pastoral history of Christian Europe. The great number of new apostolic orders, the devotional flowering in France which tamed and domesticated the mysticism of Spain for everyman, the renovation of the parish and the priestly life aspired to by Carlo Borromeo, Pierre Berulle and Vincent de Paul are all aspects of a transformation which is the spiritual face of the baroque. The practice of confession stands somewhere near the centre of this transformation. From an annual social rite concerned essentially with the restoration of peace and the guaranteeing of restitution, it became a monthly or even weekly private rite of reconciliation of the penitent with God. It became, too, the focus for the direction of souls which was now seen, supremely in the work of Francis de Sales, as a central part of the work of the priest. The Salesian tradition was to dominate the flood of devotional manuals published in every European language in the seventeenth century, and in it the practice of confession was developed beyond the juridical and canonical framework of Trent, and turned into a subtle and highly personal instrument of spiritual direction.

Organizational Climates and Careers. The Work Lives of Priests

Organizational Climates and Careers. The Work Lives of Priests

Organizational Climates and Careers, the Work Lives of Priests

Organizational Climates and Careers, the Work Lives of Priests

John Tracy Ellis, editor. <italic>The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations</italic>. (Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.) Collegeville, Minn.: Saint John's University Press. 1971. Pp. xvii, 488. $6.95.

John Tracy Ellis, editor. <italic>The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations</italic>. (Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.) Collegeville, Minn.: Saint John's University Press. 1971. Pp. xvii, 488. $6.95.

Conditionnements sociaux des vocations sacerdotales en Pologne

The author draws up certain hypotheses on the social conditioning of priestly and religious vocations in Poland, on the basis of a survey realized in 1962. The survey shows the influence of the family, the social valorisation of the priestly life and the influence of priests, as factors favorable to the nurturing of priestly vocations. On the other hand the pattern of the priestly role, the renouncing of that which is socially valorised are negative factors in certain social environments. A new motivation appears in the social classes where the need for promotion is no longer imperative, linking the religious need to the perfection of the person. Such facts lead to a questionning of the way religion is inserted in society. In a second part, the author tries to understand the reasons for the disproportion noted between the large number of those who desire to enter the seminary and the actual number of candidates. The favorable factors (family environment, in fluence of priests) are neutralised by the attraction of a social success and especially by the image of the Church which perpetuates out-dated patterns of religiosity. The religious appears as peripheral and secondary in society because of the practice of the Church.

Three Jesuits at Plowden Hall in Shropshire in the Eighteenth Century

Plowden Hall, probably the house portrayed in the once widely-read novel John Inglesant by J. H. Shorthouse, is about four miles distant from the small town of Bishop's Castle in Shropshire. The family papers are still at the Hall, but the letters upon which this account is based were found at Archbishop's House, Westminster. They were written between 1747 and 1763 by three successive chaplains to the Plowden family. Very few such letters appear to have survived, and they provide invaluable and vivid details about the daily lives of priests on the English Mission. The letters were written to local Jesuit superiors of the Residence of S. Winifrid at Holywell in Flintshire. Until 1761 the Superior was Fr. John Williams, and after that Fr. Thomas Daniel or Watson.

Christ in Us. By James Killgallon and Gerard Weber. (Sheed and Ward, London; Cloth 10s. 6d., Paper 6s.) - The Risen Christ. By Caryll Houselander. (Sheed and Ward, London; 8s. 6d.). - The Priestly Life. By Knox Ronald. (Sheed and Ward, London; 12s. 6d.)

Christ in Us. By James Killgallon and Gerard Weber. (Sheed and Ward, London; Cloth 10s. 6d., Paper 6s.) - The Risen Christ. By Caryll Houselander. (Sheed and Ward, London; 8s. 6d.). - The Priestly Life. By Knox Ronald. (Sheed and Ward, London; 12s. 6d.)

John Huddleston O. S. B.

The two great moments of John Huddleston’s life have made the latter half of it stand out in high relief, while his earlier days have always been lost in obscurity. Everyone knows that he was instrumental in saving the life of Charles II after the battle of Worcester, and that he reconciled the dying King to the Faith; but concerning his childhood, College days and early priestly life the old biographers have little to say. New evidence which has come to light about his youth, and inaccuracies which are common even in the well-documented history of his dealings with the King, make it worth while to try to rewrite the story of his life.

Book Review: Concerning the Priestly Life

Book Review: Concerning the Priestly Life