Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments

Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments
Author: Joseph Martos
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2017-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532640455

Honest rituals are ceremonial actions that celebrate what is actually happening in people’s lives. Religious rituals, however, often celebrate beliefs and doctrines (e.g., the birth of Christ, God’s forgiveness of sins, or the gifts of the Holy Spirit) that have little to do with people’s experience. Martos argues that early Christian rituals were grounded in experiences such as conversion, community, commitment, and self-giving. Lacking a vocabulary to name such experiences, the authors of the New Testament and other early documents resorted to metaphors such as baptism into Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit, forgiveness by God, and the presence of Christ during worship. By the fourth century, however, those metaphors were taken to be unexperienced metaphysical realities rather than experienced realities. The medieval schoolmen developed philosophical explanations of what went on in church rituals, and the Catholic Church continues to teach that its sacraments are automatically effective despite growing evidence to the contrary. What if religious rituals were to regain their original authenticity? What if the guiding value in designing church ceremonies was honesty rather than liturgical correctness? After liberating the reader from doctrinal constraints, Martos invites Catholics into a re-visioning of the traditional sacraments and a reawakening of ritual imagination in non-Western cultures.

Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments

Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments
Author: Joseph Martos
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532640471

Honest rituals are ceremonial actions that celebrate what is actually happening in people's lives. Religious rituals, however, often celebrate beliefs and doctrines (e.g., the birth of Christ, God's forgiveness of sins, or the gifts of the Holy Spirit) that have little to do with people's experience. Martos argues that early Christian rituals were grounded in experiences such as conversion, community, commitment, and self-giving. Lacking a vocabulary to name such experiences, the authors of the New Testament and other early documents resorted to metaphors such as baptism into Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit, forgiveness by God, and the presence of Christ during worship. By the fourth century, however, those metaphors were taken to be unexperienced metaphysical realities rather than experienced realities. The medieval schoolmen developed philosophical explanations of what went on in church rituals, and the Catholic Church continues to teach that its sacraments are automatically effective despite growing evidence to the contrary. What if religious rituals were to regain their original authenticity? What if the guiding value in designing church ceremonies was honesty rather than liturgical correctness? After liberating the reader from doctrinal constraints, Martos invites Catholics into a re-visioning of the traditional sacraments and a reawakening of ritual imagination in non-Western cultures.

Deconstructing Sacramental Theology and Reconstructing Catholic Ritual

Deconstructing Sacramental Theology and Reconstructing Catholic Ritual
Author: Joseph Martos
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498221793

Catholic sacramental doctrine has lost much of its credibility. Baptized people leave the church, adolescents stop attending shortly after they are confirmed, supposedly indissoluble marriages regularly dissolve, few go to confession, and many do not believe in transubstantiation. Drawing upon his decades-long study of the sacraments, Martos reveals how teachings that seemed rooted in the scriptures and Catholic life have become unmoored from the contexts in which they arose, and why seemingly eternal truths are actually historically relative. After carefully constructing Catholic teaching from the church's own documents, he deconstructs it by demonstrating how biblical passages were misconstrued by patristic authors and how patristic writings were misunderstood by medieval scholastics. The long process of misinterpretation culminated in the dogmatic pronouncements of the Council of Trent, which continues to dominate Catholic thinking about the church's religious ceremonies. If the sacraments are released from their dogmatic baggage, Martos believes that the spiritual realities they symbolize can be celebrated in any human culture without being tied to their traditional rites.

Bringing Bernard Lonergan Down to Earth and into Our Hearts and Communities

Bringing Bernard Lonergan Down to Earth and into Our Hearts and Communities
Author: John Raymaker
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2018-11-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1532657978

Bernard Lonergan is a world-renowned philosopher, methodologist, and theologian. The complexity of his work has tended to limit his accessibility to average readers. Bringing Bernard Lonergan Down to Earth seeks to remedy this limitation by showing how Lonergan did address problems of community life. He also broadened his interest after writing Insight to include a reaching into our hearts as modeled, for example, by the genius Blaise Pascal. Lonergan also sought to bridge religious divides. Here the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and love are indispensable but that does not curtail from Lonergan's uncanny ability to reach out to secularists by focusing on ethics. The importance of Lonergan's interdisciplinary work is signaled in the book's twelve explorations (in the concluding Part IV) that detail for interested readers his extraordinary ability to solve major philosophical issues.

Real Presence

Real Presence
Author: Regis A. Duffy OFM
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 172522819X

Why is there so much worship and so little real commitment to living out the Gospel? How can there be so much participation in the sacraments and so little growth and transformation in most of our lives? In this challenging book of practical theology, Regis Duffy tackles vital questions that are seldom asked, let alone answered. Basing his argument solidly on the New Testament and core Christian teaching, Duffy shows how ritual, sacrament, worship, and community have real meaning and worth only when they function as effective symbols of transformation and renewed commitment. What is often lacking is not God's presence, but our own. By relating individual sacraments (Initiation Eucharist, Penance) to studies of the life cycle and stages of faith, Real Presence presents a compelling vision of what genuine participation in the Christian community involves throughout our lives. Contents: - The Cutting Edge of Faith: Commitment - Unearned Gifts and Their Symbols - Conflict as Crossroads for the Christian - A Question of Presence - The People in the Water - Servants at Table - Fragmented Stories - The Future Community Now.

The Sacraments

The Sacraments
Author: Joseph Martos
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2009-08-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814657079

What are the sacraments, really? For centuries, the religious lives of Catholics and other Christians have revolved around church rituals with generally accepted individual and social effects. What, precisely, are those effects, and how are they produced? Traditional theology used Greek philosophy to understand the sacraments and how they work. But is there no other way to understand them? In fact, there are a number of ways, and this book invites you to look at the sacraments through a variety of lenses: psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, morality, and spirituality. As the introduction to this volume challenges, "If you read this book, and especially if you engage in the interactive study to which it invites you, your understanding of sacraments will be changed forever." To help personalize your investigation, the author has created a web site with thought-provoking questions that encourage you to interact with the ideas being proposed in this volume. To engage these topics more deeply, see www.TheSacraments.org.

Real Presence

Real Presence
Author: Regis A. Duffy
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2010-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608996107

Why is there so much worship and so little real commitment to living out the Gospel? How can there be so much participation in the sacraments and so little growth and transformation in most of our lives? In this challenging book of practical theology, Regis Duffy tackles vital questions that are seldom asked, let alone answered. Basing his argument solidly on the New Testament and core Christian teaching, Duffy shows how ritual, sacrament, worship, and community have real meaning and worth only when they function as effective symbols of transformation and renewed commitment. What is often lacking is not God's presence, but our own. By relating individual sacraments (Initiation Eucharist, Penance) to studies of the life cycle and stages of faith, Real Presence presents a compelling vision of what genuine participation in the Christian community involves throughout our lives. Contents: - The Cutting Edge of Faith: Commitment - Unearned Gifts and Their Symbols - Conflict as Crossroads for the Christian - A Question of Presence - The People in the Water - Servants at Table - Fragmented Stories - The Future Community Now.

Ritual in Early Modern Europe

Ritual in Early Modern Europe
Author: Edward Muir
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2005-08-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521841535

The comprehensive 2005 study of rituals in early modern Europe argues that between about 1400 and 1700 a revolution in ritual theory took place that utterly transformed concepts about time, the body, and the presence of spiritual forces in the world. Edward Muir draws on extensive historical research to emphasize the persistence of traditional Christian ritual practices even as educated elites attempted to privilege reason over passion, textual interpretation over ritual action, and moral rectitude over gaining access to supernatural powers. Edward Muir discusses wide ranging themes such as rites of passage, carnivalesque festivity, the rise of manners, Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the alleged anti-Christian rituals of Jews and witches. This edition examines the impact on the European understanding of ritual from the discoveries of new civilizations in the Americas and missionary efforts in China and adds more material about rituals peculiar to women.

Doors to the Sacred

Doors to the Sacred
Author: Joseph Martos
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780764824517

Doors to the Sacred has endured as an indispensable account of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. Used in hundreds of university and seminary courses and full of critical acclaim, it details their historical and cultural evolution and the rituals and practices associated with them. This Vatican II Golden Anniversary Edition explains the liturgical changes found in The Roman Missal, Third Edition, and provides extensive resources for students and seekers alike, including: A visual timeline of people, events, and sacramental changes in Church history, A glossary of philosophical and theological terms An updated annotated bibliography for further reading An improved design for easier reading and reference.

A Sacramental-Prophetic Vision

A Sacramental-Prophetic Vision
Author: Matthew T. Eggemeier
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814680925

The sacramental and prophetic traditions of Christian spirituality, suggests Matthew Eggemeier, possess critical resources for responding to the contemporary social crises of widespread ecological degradation and the innocent suffering of the crucified poor. In A Sacramental-Prophetic Vision, Eggemeier maintains that the vital key for cultivating these traditions in the present is to situate these spiritualities in the context of spiritual exercises or ascetical practices that enable Christians to live more deeply in the presence of God (coram Deo) and in turn to make this presence visible in a suffering world.