Pope Rebuking Priest Using Several Modern Day Christian Thinkers - Essay Example

Pope Rebuking Priest Using Several Modern Day Christian Thinkers According to the church history, a lot has changed where there has been emergence of new technology and practices altering the way religious teaching are being done. Currently, despite of priest claiming their concerns for the church, they have been driven by their own ideas and preferences. For instance, a group of dissenting Austrian priests has started questioning the important teaching of Catholic Church. We see them asking the church to permit ordination of women, to allow priests to offer Holy Communion to the divorced Catholics remarrying without an annulment and to do away with the responsibility of religious celibacy, but Pope Benedict rebukes them and takes actions of ending celibacy. Pope Paul III has also raised concerns about the modern changes of Christian teachings; he has pointed various modern day Christian thinkers, who have used their new perceptions, ideas and understandings to alter the traditional Christian religious teachings. These characters include Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Soren Kierkegaard, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Rudolph Bultmann, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, and Dietrich Bohoeffer (Brown). Rogers states that Pope Benedict XVI, who in the past few years has guided the church’s doctrinal agency, delivered his homily in St. Peter’s Basilica during the time that priests recall the swearing they made when ordained (233). He sharply condemned a team of rebellious Austrian priest and laymen for going against major teachings of Catholic Church; this group is officially known as Pfarrer initiative and it has posed a lot of challenges to the church on issues such as banning of female priests and priestly celibacy. During a Maundy Thursday gathering in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI made a speech that he was not to tolerate disobedience. He was actually referring to the current efforts made by priests in both Austria and Europe of disobeying the church. Speaking from the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, Benedict said that despite these priests claiming their concerns for the church, they are influenced by their own ideas and preferences to create desperate actions for changing the church, and that they should instead be turned into radicalism of obedience. In the year 2006, a team of Austrian priest opened the Pfarrer initiative led by Rev.Helmut Schuller; the former leader of a Catholic aid organization, with the intentions for calling for disobedience. Their aim was to abolish priestly celibacy and opening clergy to women in order to relieve priest shortages. However, according to Italian news reports, together with priest across Europe and United states, the Pfarrer initiative claims to acquire more than 300 Austrian priest and deacons together with supporters in other nations. Its influence has therefore increased to such an extent that Vatican officials met with superior Austrian bishops with an aim of discussing on how to handle them. Benedict also mentioned that in June the same year, about 2000 Austria’s priests in the initiative, had essentially threatened a schism, claiming that Vatican’s refusal to consider their protests left them with no option but to follow their conscience and take action independently. These priests made a revised call to disobedience, stating that parishes were capable of celebrating Eucharistic services in absence of priest and that they would make public speech about female and married priesthood. Benedict rejects the dissident’s idea, made during the second Vatican committee, of fossilizing the church and reviews that on the contrary; the development of new religious society in recent decade illustrated the vitality and true rejuvenation of the church by the 1962 to 1965 Vatican II. Benedict’s message is one of the greatest – and most straight- speeches that have mostly been dominated by a scandal of sexual abuse, Vatican hierarchy in disarray and recurring tangles with other faiths. It also has made Benedict discover who has been illustrating his or her age, in struggling form as a defender of orthodoxy, supporting a smaller church containing many ardent believers over larger society that depends on what he views as diluted doctrine (West 24). According to Donadio, Pope Paul III was one of the popes, who stuck in traditional religious teachings and made an effort of stopping the destruction of these teachings and other activities that were conducted in the church. On Holy Thursday 2002, he made a public speech on spread of the U.S. sex abuse scandal and denounced the grave scandal as well as the sins of priestly abusers that were reviewing the dark shadow of suspicion to the entire priests. Pope Paul was frustrated by the way religious teachings were changing in the modern days. He therefore lunched the Council of Trent on 13th December, 1545 where25 sessions were made from then until 1563. In the Council of Trent, he raised a debate that involved the following issues; 1. Tradition and scripture were to be under equal power; this denied the essential protestant belief that bible alone could not form the basis of Christian belief. 2. Upholding good and quality works. 3. It was only Catholic Church that was given the sole right to interpret the bible. 4. He emphasized that the seven sacrament of the church were necessary guideline of divine salvation. 5. He also reviewed that communion in both types was forbidden apart from expressing permission from the pope. The debate proceeded and Protestants were invited in, they demanded two things. They wanted all bishops to be comforted from a vow of submission to the papacy and that the councils’ authority was to be made superior to the Papacy. The papacy contains the office of the bishop, or pope of Rome, and the structure of central ecclesiastical administration of the Roman Catholic cathedral over which he presides. This system was thought by the Roman Catholics to be the descendant of the apostle Peter, the pope view his claim to be jurisdictional dominant in the church. According to the Petrine theory, confirmed by the committee of Florence, it defines a matter of belief by using the first Vatican committee of 1870, sanctioned by the second Vatican committee of 1964. It is said that Jesus Christ presented the position of predominance in the cathedral upon peter alone. In defining Petrine predominance, the first Vatican committee mentioned three classical New Testament content associating with: john 21:15ff, Matthew 16:18ff and john 1:42. The committee was able to understand these texts and utilize them to indicating that Christ himself comprised Saint Peter as apostle’s prince. He also constituted that it was a visible head of the cathedral that possessed of a predominance of jurisdiction that was to be presented in perpetuity to his papal descendant, together with the power to pronounce infallibly on faith matters. Despite the pope’s priestly authority as a bishop originated from the sacramental work of ordination, the pope got his papal power from an act of voting, which had been Sacred College’s right of cardinals. It was through virtue of their choice that each pope became heir to his official title, modern and ancient, sacred and secular: bishop of Rome, successor of apostles’ prince, vicar of Jesus Christ, patriarch of the West, ultimate pontiff of the universal cathedral, primate of Italy, and archbishop of the Roman province. The council of Papacy therefore declared Protestants comments as unacceptable to the church and reviewed a variety of issues. First, it clarified that bishops were to proclaim only appropriate men to holy classification and to take charge of their moral life. Second, is that clergy were expected to live in their parishes and conduct regular duties; in this case, seminary was to be set up in every diocese, and finally, there have been upholding of the clerical celibacy, communion in one type for the laity, veneration of relics and images, and penances and pilgrimage. Pope Paul III talks of various people with modern Christian way of thinking, ideas and understanding about the religious teachings and most of them are psychologist, geologist, paleontologist, and philosopher-theologian. First, he talks of Immanuel Kant who suggests that all human beings experience a natural moral duty. Kant believes that people’s moral duty could be exposed to them through reason objective. He also suggests that acting morally means conducting one’s duty, and someone’s duty is obeying the innate moral laws. Kant’s categorical imperative suggests the following, 1. The universal law; here all moral proclamations should be general laws and should apply to everyone under any conditions. 2. Treating human beings as ends in themselves. 3. Acting as if someone lives in a sovereignty of ends. Kant therefore, assumes that all coherent agents are capable of deducing whether a disagreement was moral or not through motive alone and so. All coherent human being should be capable of concluding the same moral laws. Another person mentioned by Pope Paul is Friedrich Schleiermacher. He is generally known as a founder of present protestant theology and works as a systematic interpreter of Christian dogmatism. Although much of philosophical work concentrated on philosophy of religion, a modern philosophical point of view is probably Friedrich’s hermeneutics. He suggests that religion’s essence is neither acting nor thinking, but a perception and feeling. Soren Kierkegaard is another character who is a prolific and profound writer in the golden age of rational and artistic activity. His occupation crosses the territory of literary criticism, psychology, fiction, devotional literature, theology and philosophy. He therefore brings the mixture of communications to bear it as social analysis and for the rationale of renewing Christian faith. He argues that the world is fundamentally paradoxical and that the transcendent union of man and God through Jesus Christ is the greatest paradox. He also suggests that having a personal affiliation with God supersedes all given social structures, moralities and communal norms. Soren proposes that each person opt to make his or her independent choices which constitute his or her exercise. He further proposes that no inflicted system can lead to altering responsibility of each person to seek to delight God in whatever paradoxical and personal way. Each individual suffers from the distress of indecision until he establishes a leap of faith. He says that Christian faith does not only involve reaping church dogma, but also involves individual subjective passion (Aitken 198). According to Brown, another modern Christian thinker is known as Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, he is a Jesuit priest, philosopher, theologian and a geologist known for his creative interpretation of the evolution of the universe and humanity. Teilhard is well known for his special evolutionary cosmology, especially his concept of collective idea that he nicknames the noosphere. He imagines it as a universal network and share of knowledge, research, trade, communication, and ideas which would eventually connect humankind in a circle of thought. He understands evolution as a purposeful course in which universal energy matter progressively moves towards the direction of increased complexity. This process of evolutionary would eventually culminate by converging spiritual and material into a super perception that he nicknames the Omega Point. This is a supreme position of consciousness and complexity which Chardin views it as the main cause of the universe to develop in complexity and consciousness. Omega Point is seen as existing inform of supremely conscious and complex, inspirational and independent of the sprouting universe. Pope Paul III also mentions of Rudolph Bultmann whose contention is that it is possible to put Enlightenment’s negative condemnation of myth to positive purpose by a theology with concern for preaching of the gospel. For him, myth embraces the real claims that fail to harmonize with scientific understanding. Bultmann suggests that, the Christ legend of the New Testament is a single version of the Gnostic legend of the heavenly Redeemer. Look at the following example, claiming that Jesus rose from the death does not refer to a genuine fact or occasion about his inasmuch because facts and occasions are held to be improved or reconstructed using scientific means. Karl Barth is another character whose theology is seen as being clearly Christo centric. To him it does not signify that theological topics are limited to a study of people and work of Christ but that all theology is able to find focal centered in Christ. He says that Gods knowledge is obtained only through Jesus Christ and that a person of Christ and his work cannot be discussed separately. Christ is a pre existing symbol and a Christian principle of the trinity, so personification of Christ is a personification of the entire Godhead. Barth apprehended to what is referred to as the threefold word of God, revelation and scripture are seen to be three distinct, yet incorporated forms of God’s word. Each form is different from one another, yet is incorporated with each other. However Paul Tillich supposes that the Christian theology is created in order to accomplish the church’s demand. He says that proclaiming the reality of Christian’s message and construing the reality for the new generations are two apologetic means for the church to respond questions. Situations triggers distinct questions on human way of life and the Christian theology respond to these questions according to the Christian message. Christian’s methods of explaining ultimate concern are derived from the Christian message, this methods includes the church history, bible, and the history of both culture and the religion. All these are considered as basis of systematic theology, yet the medium indicating those sources are the religious experiences. Paul considers this understanding as a medium but not the source through which the sources can manage to reach us. Tillich reviews the method of correlation as the key to understanding his theology. He also says that it is an approach collating insights from Christian exposure with issues originating from philosophical, psychological, and existential analysis. Karl Rahner is one of the many modern Christian thinkers in the list offered by Pope Paul III. He is very creative in terms of diverse philosophical and theological sources. He thus anticipate many of the tensions affecting Christians in a progressively more fragmented and pluralistic society. He points to the inspirational nature of the individual spirit, to the person, who, by good quality of his or her transcendent and dynamism orientation, is directed to God in each and every act of love and knowledge. Rahner struggles to such via media between the organizational and the fascinating scope of the church, between the freedom of the person and ecclesial authority (Aitken 246). Donadio states that, the remarks made by Pope Benedict XVl and Pope John Paul during the Holy Thursday homilies, reviews the rising battle in the global Catholic churches. The theological issues reviewed by both popes, intersects with the current thoughts, ideas and understanding of the modern priest. Modern religious teachings have been as a result of introduction of young and less active priest to serve the church. These priests have been driven by their own ambitions, ideas, perception and understanding of religious teaching hence offering religious teachings to many Christians according to their own ways. Buckingham’s bishop called Alan Wilson commented that England church once used to be a guardian of the nation’s ethical, but is currently perceived as irrelevant to them. He also reviews that there have been changes in nation’s moral instinct. The church in its territory has become the guardian of the important system of the county’s grandparents, and the religious anoraks classified by esoteric logic, defensiveness and discrimination. Wilson further, claims that the national institution still appears disintegrated from all this remote and hierarchy obsessed on its own stuff. The future church may be a less civil service or conservative business, Alcoholics Anonymous movement, an ultimate locally delivered and a life changing and nonprofit organization. During Good Friday, as parishes organize for Easter services on Sunday, it is a pleasures moment to evaluate the state of the England church, which Rowan Williams will renounce to his successor after moving to Cambridge next winter. Under Williams’s leadership, two decisions were to be made either unconsciously or perhaps unwillingly: there were to be female bishops and that no foreseeable future could be openly gay and partnered bishops. Neither of the decisions were the William’s expected outcomes because he hoped for a compromise that would make it possible for the female bishop’s opponents continue living within the church, but this was decisively rejected by the General Synod. In the early ten years at the beginning of William’s episcopate, it became a mandatory for him to appoint Jeffrey John as a bishop. This was because John was aligned with another priest and within a short period he entered into a civil corporation with him. William indeed gave John an occupation as dean of St Albans with the intensions of showing his compensation for his dissatisfaction, but it became difficult for him to overcome evangelical opposition for being a bishop. These limited gestures were quiet enough to incite a schism in the global Anglican Communion between the conservative, mostly in Africa and the liberals, mostly in North America. In conclusion, modern churches have undergone various changes especially the religious teachers and this has led to extinction of the traditional religious teachings which were considered of high value to the church. We find that, the modern priests are responsible for the extinction of the Catholic Church. Various priests from Europe and Australia have formed a group called the Pfarrer initiative led by Rev.Helmut Schuller. Its intension is to disobey and change the Catholic religious teaching. A number of modern Christian thinkers have also affected the church; these are protestant found in fields such as philosophy, theology, psychology, geology, paleontology and philosopher-theologian. The way they use their own ideas, knowledge and perception to analyze the church, has influenced people to go against the church doctrines. There is therefore a need to protect our traditional religious teaches because they form a very strong foundation for the church, and that they help many people grow spiritually binding by the rules of Christianity. Both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Paul III have shown their efforts of protecting the Catholic Church by banning Pfarrer initiative and threatening those priest who went against the church. Work citation Aitken, James. The Papacy: Its History, Dogmas, Genius, And Prospects: Being the Evangelical Alliance First Prize Essay on Popery. New York: Cornell University Library, 2009. Print. Brown, Andrew. The Church Of English Needs It Own Rebirth. The guardian, 6 April 2012. Web. 22 April 2012. Donadio, Rachel. Pope Rebukes Priest Who Advocate Ordaining Women and Ending Celibacy. Europe, 5 April 2012. Web. 22 April 2012. Rogers, Thomas. The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England. London : BiblioBazaar, 2009. Print. West, Nathaniel. The Ark of God-The Safe-Guard of the Nation. 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