pope benedict XVI Research Papers

Even in a general overview of the question of Catholic identity, which is my task today, a choice of focus is necessary. The literature and material on the rather vague word “identity” in combination with the equally broad adjective... more

Even in a general overview of the question of Catholic identity, which
is my task today, a choice of focus is necessary. The literature and material on
the rather vague word “identity” in combination with the equally broad
adjective “Catholic” are immense and concern more or less all aspects of
Catholic religious life.
The first restriction of the theme I intend to make is to situate this
question in a particular context. As you all are very well aware of, we now
enter the Year of Faith, an initiative of Benedict XVI, beginning October 11,
2012. The natural thing is thus to connect the notion of Catholic identity to
the concerns of the special year lying before us.
However, in the same way, we must ask: faith in what meaning and
why right now? It is not the year of the liturgy that is commencing, neither
the year of ecumenism, nor that of tolerance or the Bible. Why is the question
of faith so pressing in the second decade of the third millennium?
The foundational text for the Year of Faith is Porta Fidei, the apostolic
letter establishing the year, to which a note of a more practical nature from the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is connected. A special website has
also been launched for the year, which is hosted by the Pontifical Council for
New Evangelization.3 We thus have three main sources (Porta Fidei, the
Annusfidei website and the Pontifical Council for New Evangelization) to
mine for clues, connecting the theme of Catholic identity to the present
concerns of the Church.
Furthermore, there is also the instrumentis laboris for the synod of
bishops, “The New Evangelization for The Transmission of The Christian
Faith,” which is a more elaborate document. At the time of finalizing this
article (October, 2012), the synod is still going on and each day new texts are
published in the form of bulletins. My thoughts and comments collected in
the article were in the main written before the synod, but have been
reinforced by the texts so far published on the web. The synod seems to mark
a new phase in the understanding and critique of modernity offered by the
Catholic Church. However, for the final position we have to wait for the
apostolic exhortation of Pope Benedict.

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- by Clemens Cavallin
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- 3
  Catholic Studies, Roman Catholicism, pope benedict XVI

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- by Teemu Taira
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- 13
  Religion, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, Multiculturalism

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- by Innocent Smith, op
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- 3
  Musicology, Sacred Music, pope benedict XVI

This article examines the position of Joseph Ratzinger with regard to the classical question in the field of the theology of religions, the salvation of non-Christians. In criticism of a recent book by Ambrose Mong, it is argued that... more

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- by Emil Anton
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- 19
  Soteriology, Purgatory, Theology of Religions, Benedict Xvi

St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae explained the relationship between faith and reason. His work in the Summa as well as in the Summa contra gentiles laid the groundwork for Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI to further expand... more

There exist very different accounts about the attitude of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI to interreligious dialogue. Does interreligious dialogue aim at theological truth and intertwine with mission, or is it an impossibility that... more

A driving engine these days is not manual work, steam power or electricity, but information. Social and economic life is especially based on formation, searching for and classification of information. New information and communication... more

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- by Imrich Gazda
- •
- 11
  Social Media, Facebook, Twitter, Google

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- by Domingo García
- •
- pope benedict XVI

Hildegarde de Bingen , considérée de longue date comme une sainte, n'a été officiellement canonisée que récemment, en octobre 2012, à la fin du pontificat de Benoit XVI. A cette occasion, on passe ici en revue les formes les plus... more

The Wedding Feast of the Lamb Has Begun: The Relationship Between Eschatology and Liturgy in the Logoscentric Theology of Joseph Ratzinger Roland Millare, S.T.D. Director: Matthew Levering, Ph. D Numerous scholars have engaged... more

The Wedding Feast of the Lamb Has Begun: The Relationship Between Eschatology and Liturgy in the Logoscentric Theology of Joseph Ratzinger

Roland Millare, S.T.D.

Director: Matthew Levering, Ph. D

Numerous scholars have engaged Joseph Ratzinger’s theology of the liturgy and his eschatology. The unique contribution of this study is the focus on the inherent relationship between eschatology and the liturgy in light of Ratzinger’s insistence, under the influence of Romano Guardini, upon the primacy of the logos over ethos (“Der Primat des Logos über das Ethos”). Throughout our study, we will establish Ratzinger’s consistency in the underscoring the primacy of logos over ethos and the centrality of Christ in his theology, which enables him to maintain that the liturgy is inherently eschatological. The primacy of the logos is the central hermeneutical key to understanding the unique vision of Ratzinger’s Christocentric liturgical theology and eschatology. In light of Ratzinger’s consistent appreciation for the significance of the primary of the logos, he is able to show the significance of sacrifice in forming the Church and her worship, the Church as a communio and the hope rooted in her contradistinction with the world, rational worship (logiké latreía) and the Church’s mission of charity, and orientation of the Church’s worship (and all space and all time within it) towards the incarnate Logos within Ratzinger’s work.

When logos is subordinated to ethos, the human person becomes subjected to a materialist ontology that leads to an ethos that is concerned above all by utility and progress, which affects one’s approach to understanding the liturgy and eschatology. How a person celebrates the liturgy becomes subject to the individual whim of one person or a group of people. Eschatology can be reduced only to addressing the temporal needs of a society guided by a narrow conception of hope or political theology. If the human person wants to understand his authentic sacramental logos, then he must first turn to Christ the incarnate Logos, who reveals to him that he is created for a loving relationship with God and others. Ratzinger describes his work as having an “incomplete character,” yet this study has demonstrated that there is a unity within Ratzinger’s “fragmentary” writings that is defined by the primacy and centrality of the Logos incarnate.

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- by Roland Millare
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- 24
  Liturgy, Liberation Theology, Christology, Theological Aesthetics

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- by Domingo García
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- 3
  pope benedict XVI, Apostolic Succession, Pope Francis

In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI describes the Christian vocation to overcome the obstacles that hinder the establishment of authentic fraternity in the world. Through the theme integral human development, the pope maps a... more

A more developed version of this work has been published in 2023 as a the book: Religious Pluralism: Toward a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2023).... more

A more developed version of this work has been published in 2023 as a the book: Religious Pluralism: Toward a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2023). "This study examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism in the form of John B. Cobb, Jr.’s Deep Religious Pluralism. Working through a variety of conceptions of religious pluralism in analytic, process, and South Asian philosophies of religion the dissertation argues in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world’s major religious traditions. Cobb’s Whiteheadian-based hypothesis is argued to offer a plausible explanation of the compossibile veridicality of different religious traditions because the ontological pluralism he employs functions as a generic schema that serves to inform a sensible narrative of compossible religious ultimates, heretofore thought to be mutually exclusive. By shifting to a process metaphysics our horizons of pluralistic understanding shifts as well, because a Whiteheadian metaphysics allows for a multiplicity of efficacious religious praxes, soteriologies, and ontological cum religious ultimates—such as God, Dao, Brahman, and śūnyatā—to obtain simultaneously. What is more, these ultimates can co-exist in a non-hierarchical relationship, thereby avoiding inclusivist tendencies and enabling the claim that one’s own religion is a true tradition, rather than the true tradition.
After arguing that neither ontological nor religious ultimates are axiomatically singular, the dissertation argues for the viability of Cobb’s Whiteheadian religious pluralism as a middle-path between relativist resignations and absolutist “solutions” to the philosophical challenges of religious diversity. Relevant aspects of process philosophy and process theology are then explained in detail in order to demonstrate how a Whiteheadian schema of multiple ultimates can serve as an adequate framework for a genuine religious pluralism. Pluralistic meta-theologies from classical and contemporary South Asian philosophy are also critiqued, and non-dualism is argued to be just as problematic a basis for a genuine religious pluralism as previously discredited Western attempts at formulating a viable pluralistic hypothesis. Within the context of the first English language philosophical critique of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings (as Joseph Ratzinger) in opposition to religious pluralism, an argument against religious absolutism is made by way of the need for faithful adherents of religious absolutisms to engage in open inter-religious dialogue, which, in turn, is argued to necessitate an assumed meta-theological position of religious pluralism."

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- by Matthew S LoPresti
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- 43
  Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ontology

On February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI stepped down from the papacy. On March 13 of the same year a new pope was elected in his place and took the name “Francis.” The present paper analyzes the medievalizing and medieval-associated... more

Meditations on the Feasts, Fasts, and
Other Solemnities of the Church
Pope Benedict XVI

This paper does not concern itself with a dialogue between those who share, or think they share, a common vision of reality. Rather, the focus is on those who generally do not share a common vision of reality. By focusing on this second,... more

In this book Napolitano shows the rendering of migration present at the heart of the 21C Roman Catholic Church and why this is a key battleground for a changing Europe. She shows how Catholic Latin American lay and religious migrants and... more

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- by R. Jared Staudt
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- 9
  Christianity, Theology, Culture, John Paul II/Karol Wojtyla

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- by Davide De Caprio and +1
  Santiago Sanz Sánchez
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- 16
  French Studies, Etienne Gilson, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac

Arno Tausch, Profesor Visitante, Universidad de Corvinus, Budapest, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Hungría y Universidad de Innsbruck, Departamento de Ciencias Políticas, Innsbruck, Austria Juan Diez-Nicolas, Profesor emeritus de... more

Arno Tausch, Profesor Visitante, Universidad de Corvinus, Budapest, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Hungría y Universidad de Innsbruck, Departamento de Ciencias Políticas, Innsbruck, Austria

Juan Diez-Nicolas, Profesor emeritus de sociología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Christian Ghymers, Profesor de Ciencias Economicas en el ICHEC de Bruselas (Brussels Management School)

Peter Herrmann, Director Académico del Instituto Eurispes (Istituto di Studi Politici, economici e Sociali Osservatorio Europeo sulla Qualità social) en Roma.

Bajo colaboración de Alfonso Galindo Lucas, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Cádiz, España

En la víspera de la renuncia del Papa Benedicto XVI, anunciada el 11 de febrero de 2013, dijimos en una publicación de un nuevo e importante “think tank” en Argentina a finales de noviembre de 2010 en algún lugar que

este libro es [...] una clara invitación a las fuerzas "iluminadas" dentro de la Iglesia Católica, de buscar, en tales situaciones, el ecumenismo de la Ilustración con las mejores fuerzas de las Iglesias cristianas, católicas y protestantes por igual, con el judaísmo y el con el Islam, y con las corrientes humanistas y democráticas dentro de otras religiones del mundo y también entre los no creyentes, para buscar alternativas humanistas y socio-liberales alternativas a la crisis actual y para salvar la democracia contra las nuevas tendencias autoritarias en muchos países.

El terremoto verdadero de la perestroika y glasnost, efectuado por los cambios actuales en la Iglesia católica romana, iniciada por la renuncia del Papa Benedicto XVI y la elección del jesuita argentino Jorge Bergoglio al Papado como Papa Francisco I, es un evento mundial, que es de enorme importancia para la política y la economía mundial al mismo tiempo y no sólo para los católicos romanos y los religiosos en general en nuestro mundo. En vista de estos hechos, Arno Tausch y Christian Ghymers, los autores del estudio bonarense (2011) ‚El Papa ¿Cuántas Divisiones Tiene? Sondeo Global del Catolicismo Mundial Según el ‘World Values Survey’ y el ‘European Social Survey’’ E-Book N° 49, Centro Argentino de Estudios Internacionales: http://www.caei.com.ar/es/irebooks.htm decidieron, publicar este estudio sobre el catolicismo romano global como un libro, junto con nuevos materiales sobre el tema escritos por el profesor Juan Diez Nicolas, profesor emeritus de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, y fundador de los estudios basados en el World Values Survey en idioma Castellano, y el profesor Peter Herrmann, actualmente Director Académico del Instituto Eurispes (Istituto di Studi Politici, economici e Sociali Osservatorio Europeo sulla Qualità social) en Roma. Los autores agradecen al Centro Argentino de Estudios Internacionales el permiso de publicar este estudio como un libro.

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- by Arno Tausch and +2
  Christian Ghymers
  peter herrmann
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- 45
  Religion, Christianity, Sociology, Political Sociology

Jacques Maritain, one of the greatest contemporary thinkers on the relation between politics and religion, gathered the attention of many scholars during the last decades. However, many historical changes have taken place since his death... more

Jacques Maritain, one of the greatest contemporary thinkers on the relation between politics and religion, gathered the attention of many scholars during the last decades. However, many historical changes have taken place since his death forty years ago and religious revival after Fukuyama’s announcement of “the end of history” by the time of communism’s collapse, marked the beginning of the XXI century. Eventually, this has been surprising and even unpredictable for many people, but it would not surely be so for Maritain. Pope Benedict XVI points out some reasons which allow us to understand why Maritain would not be surprised by this tension between western and non-western. Those reasons are exactly on the opposite side of the anathemas against western’s cultural and historical heritage which the philosophical post-modern disenchantment usually sustains. Actually, this attitude of Oikophobia, as Scruton called it, seems to be the problem rather than the solution. As Benedict XVI argues, it testifies the vestige of Marxist rigidly materialist philosophy beyond the fall of communism, whose failure tends to be carelessly assigned to its economic recipes.
Although associated to a progressive quest for individual rights and liberties, post-modern relativist hostility against the Tomist and Aristotelian aim for truth poses the same threats to democracy that Maritain tirelessly fought on his life. First of all, it represents an obstacle to the progress of knowledge as it sees all philosophical and theological conceptions of man and life to be contingent and meaningless. Consequently, it slips to a political attitude which is neither neutral or pragmatic nor tolerant or pluralistic as Rorty, among others, presume, since it denies religion its communitarian dimension by confining it to the private sphere. Maritain would agree, then, that the lack of a Christian spirit in contemporary philosophy’s approach to man’s deepest yearnings, weakens western's societies ability to evolve in a fruitful interreligious dialogue as well as in interculturalism - a healthy multiculturalism.

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Defining what a business is can be a daunting task. Its telos today as before is not very well understood, much less is there a consensus. Philosophers have added to the conversation proposing the main tenets of a business such as... more

Review of Peter Seewald's Benedict XVI

La primera encíclica del papa Francisco, Lumen Fidei, es un texto escrito principalmente por Benedicto XVI que Francisco ha hecho suyo. Aunque es una encíclica sobre cuestiones de antropología teológica –la virtud teologal de la fe– el... more

The relations between Turkey and Vatican had started to be spoken more frequently after Pope Francis’s visit to Turkey in 2014. Turkey-Vatican relations which were established formally in 1960 embody an important historical past. Formal... more

Together with his colleague Theodor W. Adorno of the »Frankfurt School«, Max Horkheimer’s critiques of enlightenment, modern thought and instrumental reason remain to be some of the most powerful and controversial discussed statements in... more

Op-Ed en La Nación, 14 de abril de 2008

This month we start a series of letters dedicated to the relationship between liturgical music and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Maestro Aurelio Porfiri, editor of this series, has long experience in liturgical music at many... more

This month we start a series of letters dedicated to the relationship between liturgical music and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Maestro Aurelio Porfiri, editor of this series, has long experience in liturgical music at many levels and in many cultural contexts (including at St. Peter's Basilica and then in Asia for the last seven years). This collection of articles will cover liturgical music in its foundations, valid for every rite and liturgical form, as well as in the in the " new " liturgical sphere created by Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum. We are pleased and honored that Maestro Porfiri has chosen Paix Liturgique as one of the outlets for his work, which we believe should offer a chance not only for experts to exchange ideas, but also for the faithful to consider their personal relationship with liturgical music and its significance in participation in the sacred act of the liturgy. Participation in the Singing at Mass Aurelio Porfiri There have been few topics which have so captured the attention of liturgical experts like that of participation. This term has been impugned by one after another faction as if each one possessed its secret meaning, discovered by and revealed to only a chosen few, who thus turned even legitimate debates on the issue into Gnostic liturgists' meetings. Gnostic because, especially after the Council, participation has become a battle issue in which lurks every sort of political, sociological, and psychological element. For some, " participate " means that everyone does everything. However, this interpretation goes against the true meaning of participation which lies not in the mode of doing but in that of being. This mode does not exclude doing, but rather contains it in a broader, more articulated process. Doing presupposes being and all that goes along with it, but it is not an end in itself. Now this must be better clarified. Two Symmetrical Errors Sacrosanctum Concilium defines liturgy as " sacred action. " Such a definition would make one think that the element of doing be more important than that of

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- by Aurelio Porfiri
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- 7
  Liturgy, Christian liturgical music, Sacred Music, Pope Pius XII

A discussion of how Christianity may effectively speak about death and suffering, a rejection of the traditional approach to theodicy and instead an appeal to a theology of hope. This is built upon the works of N.T Wright and... more

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- by Chris Button
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- 17
  Christianity, Ethics, Theology, Systematic Theology

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- by Antonio Sabetta
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- 3
  Theology, Faith and Reason, pope benedict XVI

Book review, accepted for publication in Nova et Vetera. When George Smith first deciphered the Mesopotamian account of the Flood and realized he was the first person to read it in a couple thousand years, he started running around the... more

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- by Emil Anton
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- 11
  Protestantism, Catholic Theology, Roman Catholicism, Benedict Xvi

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- by Bellarmine Ezumah, PhD
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- 7
  Religion, Media Studies, Media, Religious Studies

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- by Roberto Regoli
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- 16
  Religious Studies, Benedict Xvi, Papacy, Storia della chiesa

The relationship between faith and reason is one that has vexed philosophers and theologians throughout the ages. Often bouncing from phases of fideism and rationalism, the history of thought is marked by significant swings back and... more

OPEN ACCESS: http://doi.org/10.30687/JoMaCC/1864-4239/2022/01 This open-access, peer-reviewed journal offers a space to investigate, according to the criteria of historical research, the phenomena related to Christianity and the... more

Benoit XVI et dialogue islamo-catholique : Eléments sine qua non et interlocuteurs sélectifs Les religions qui appellent au dialogue entre les croyants et Dieu sont appelées à un dialogue entre elles-mêmes. L'Islam et le Christianisme... more

Benoit XVI et dialogue islamo-catholique : Eléments sine qua non et interlocuteurs sélectifs Les religions qui appellent au dialogue entre les croyants et Dieu sont appelées à un dialogue entre elles-mêmes. L'Islam et le Christianisme sont les deux plus grandes religions monothéistes du monde. Ensemble, elles couvrent environ la moitié de la population mondiale. Les formes que prennent leurs rapports sont très nombreuses. Le dialogue islamo-catholique ne représente qu'une de ces formes. Ce dialogue s'avère être d'une importance accrue, en l'occurrence dans le nouveau contexte du déchirement identitaire dont le point culminant fut le 11 septembre 2001. Incontestablement, après cette date, le fait religieux est redevenu une référence identitaire, politique et sociale après des décennies où l'on avait cru, dans plusieurs milieux académiques occidentaux, à la prépondérance irréversible de la laïcité et du sécularisme. Cet évènement vient une décennie après la fin de la grande bataille entre les états nations libéraux et le communisme. Une crispation identitaire commençait à prendre place au sein des sociétés, et surtout celles qui connaissent une certaine mixité multiculturelle avec une diversité confessionnelle. Naturellement, la composante religieuse qui fait souvent partie de l'identité humaine est parfois interprétée sous une forme idéologique d'exclusivisme qui peut résulter en dérives plus ou moins graves. Pour éviter le scénario catastrophe, les humains n'ont d'autres solutions que d'entamer un processus de dialogue sur la plus grande échelle possible internationalement. Dans le présent article, je dresserai un portrait des principaux éléments qu'a formulés le Pape Benoit XVI concernant le dialogue islamo-catholique. Cette formulation met en exergue sa représentation vis-à-vis du processus du dialogue ; Sa représentation est axée principalement sur les trois éléments suivants :-Le respect de l'identité religieuse-La réfutation de la violence-Liberté religieuse et réciprocité. En fonction de l'interaction avec ces éléments, le Pape procède au choix des interlocuteurs. Ces derniers résultent d'un choix très sélectif en fonction des attentes et des craintes communément partagées avec le Pape.

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- by Georges Dwailibi
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- 4
  Christianity, Dialogue, Islam, pope benedict XVI

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- by Erica VanSteenhuyse, M.A.
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- 20
  Theological Ethics, Contraception, Natural Law, HIV/AIDS

A driving engine these days is not manual work, steam power or electricity, but information. Social and economic life is especially based on formation, searching for and classification of information. New information and communication... more

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- by Albert Kulla
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- 12
  Art, Social Media, Facebook, Twitter

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- by Ludovic Bertina
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- 8
  Technology, Religion and Ecology, Catholic Social Teaching, Ecology

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- by Robert P. Russo
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- 16
  Philosophy, Theology, Systematic Theology, Christology

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- by Antonio Sabetta
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- 3
  Theology, Faith and Reason, pope benedict XVI

From my review: "Much of the marketing for this book claims that Scott Hahn demonstrates Pope Benedict XVI’s unprecedented reliance on Scripture. That’s an accurate evaluation, but Hahn accomplishes far more. He cues everything from papal... more

This essay examines the evolution of the various meetings of religious leaders in Assisi convened by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI and what this evolution signifies about interreligious dialogue and interreligious prayer. From their... more

pope benedict XVI

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