Keep us, O Lord, while we tarry on this earth, in a serious seeking after thee, and in an affectionate walking with thee, every day of our lives; that when thou comest, we may be found not hiding our talent, nor serving the flesh, nor yet asleep with our lamp unfurnished, but waiting and longing for our Lord, our glorious God for ever and ever.
–Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “‘I know your works; you have the name of being alive, and you are dead. Awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death, for I have not found your works perfect in the sight of my God. Remember then what you received and heard; keep that, and repent. If you will not awake, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life; I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
–Revelation 3:1-6
European leaders say 26 out of 27 EU member states have backed a tax and budget pact to tackle the eurozone debt crisis.
Only the UK has said it will not join. Prime Minister David Cameron said he had to protect key British interests, including its financial markets.
The 17 countries that use the euro have all agreed to the deal.
What counts as a church? Chuck and Stephanie Fromm recently found out.
After hosting several periodic Bible studies for up to 50 people in their home in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., the Fromms were fined $300 for violating a city ordinance that prohibits groups of three or more people from gathering without a permit. The couple appealed and city officials agreed last month to reimburse them and re-examine the ordinance, but the case created a stir in religious circles.
“It struck a deep nerve. Bible studies in people’s homes have been a long part of American culture and heritage,” says Brad Dacus of the Pacific Research Institute, which took on the Fromms’ case. “We’re concerned that other cities will try to get away with the same thing.”
The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, announced on Thursday 8 December 2011 that the Reverend Canon Dr Samuel Wells has been appointed as the next Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Sam, who will take up the post in the summer of 2012, is currently Dean of the Chapel and a Research Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, where he leads a staff of 25 in upholding the Chapel’s reputation for preaching, music and liturgy, oversees the 35 campus ministers and is the regular preacher at the year-round Sunday services, which regularly attract a congregation of around 900….
Thirty years ago… [yesterday], on December 8, 1981, the Supreme Court decided the case of Widmar v. Vincent””probably the most important pro-religious-liberty judicial decision of the modern era. The question at issue was whether the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), a state university, could bar a Christian student group named “Cornerstone” from using university facilities because the students wished to engage in religious worship and expression. While UMKC allowed other student groups to use its facilities, the university excluded Cornerstone from doing so under a regulation forbidding the use of its buildings “for purposes of religious worship or religious teaching.”
By a vote of 8”“1, the Court held that the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause protects religious speech and association by private speakers and groups, just as it protects speech by any other speakers on any other subject, and that the Establishment Clause does not authorize discriminatory exclusion of religious speech.
During his homily at the Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice (for the election of the Roman Pontiff) on April 18, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cautioned his fellow-cardinals that John Paul II’s successor would have to deal with an emerging “dictatorship of relativism” throughout the western world: the use of coercive state power to impose an agenda of dramatic moral deconstruction on all of society.
Some Catholic commentators charged that Ratzinger’s warning was so over-the-top that he could never be elected pope. Others thought the formula “dictatorship of relativism” a neat summary of a grave threat to freedom and believed that a man with the courage to call things by their true names would make a fine pontiff.
Recent events throughout the western world have fully vindicated the latter.
(Alert blog readers are asked to note where the author of this article teaches–KSH).
A recent study on youth and discipleship by Slavic theologian Jana Struková suggests that the key to this sort of formation is in renewing a sense of Christianity as a vocation. A vocation is a calling, a “voicing” of the gospel into language that speaks directly to the reader or listener. As Martin Luther argued, the gospel is nothing until I hear it addressed to me; once my ears are trained to hear it, I can begin responding, “working with words” to live out an answer to its call.
Reframing Hollinger’s concept of acculturation as vocation shows us that gospel words are irreplaceable in the formation of Christian youth. If they are brought up constantly hearing God’s loving address, they will grow to love the gospel like they love their friends and family. And this is not just due to the nostalgic familiarity of the “big black book on the shelf.” No, it is the message, the content””the very voice of God in the words of Scripture””that inspires devotion. The challenge of Christian education, according to the early 20th-century theorist George Albert Coe, is to “lead each one to adopt” the words and teachings of the faith “as his very own desire, purpose, and practice.”
How well are we meeting this challenge? A quick survey of adult classes and Sunday sermons does not paint a pretty picture….
The Faculty of Theology plans to change its name to the Faculty of Theology and Religion from October 2012, subject to approval from the Council of the University.
The change of name continues to reflect the Faculty’s longstanding traditions of Christian Theology, while acknowledging the greater breadth of teaching and research found in the Faculty today….
The European Union suffered the most damaging split in its 54 year history after David Cameron used the British veto to block eurozone treaty change after France and Germany opposed “safeguards” to protect Britain’s economy….
The Prime Minister insisted that he had been prepared to support treaty change among all 27 of the EU’s members to allow the 17-strong eurozone to take measures to tackle its debt crisis and to enforce tough new fiscal rules for the single currency.
But after 11 hours of bad-tempered talks, Mr Cameron said that he had blocked the changes because France and Germany and refused to agree to a “protocol” giving the City of London protection from a wave of EU financial service regulations related to the eurozone crisis.
The Sumner County Board of Education settled a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union over teacher-led prayer and other religious activity in public schools.
This is the third time in three years that the ACLU has taken a Middle Tennessee school district to court over religion. The Sumner suit was filed in May on behalf of nine students who complained that teachers were leading prayer in classrooms, religious groups were distributing Bibles, school events were being held in churches, and schools were allowing local churches to send youth ministers into the lunchrooms to preach to children, unsupervised.
The possibility of getting church halls approved for the registering of civil partnerships is being explored after new regulations on civil partnerÂships in places of worship came into force on Monday. The Church of England nationally is not allowing the use of churches.
A note from the General Synod’s secretary-general, William Fittall, sent to Synod members last Friday, said that under the new rules “no Church of England religious premises may become ”˜approved premises’ for the registration of civil partnerships without there having been a formal decision by the General Synod to that effect.”
An accompanying Legal Office memorandum seeks to allay fears of litigation under the Equality Act if churches refuse to hold the cereÂmonÂies. It says that the “clear view” of the Legal Office and government lawyers is that churches would not be guilty of illegal discrimination.
Moscow’s only Anglican church, St Andrew’s, opened its doors 127 years ago to meet the needs of the Russian capital’s growing British community.
Seeing as the Scots were the wealthiest members of the community at the time, the church was dedicated to the patron saint of Scotland.
The architect, Richard Knill Freeman, never came to Russia, sending the drawings of the building (a replica of hundreds of Victorian Anglican churches) and his recommendations by post.
Christian worship is a political act – as much as any placard waving demonstration or any conniving behind the scenes number-crunching. In worship, Christians bow to a power above and beyond Kings and Presidents. They name Jesus Christ as the supreme Lord. They proclaim a name that is above every name. In Christian worship we are reminded that reality isn’t what it appears to be.
That is the remarkable achievement of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). It draws the worshipper into the world as the Scriptures describe it – a world in which only God is Almighty and yet supremely merciful and in which human beings are utterly dependent on him, for life and for new life.
That contemporary revisions of the liturgy have de-emphasized the sovereign power of God by preferring to address him by any name other than “Almighty” loosens a knot that binds the theology of the BCP tightly together.
(Please note–the content of this article may not be suitable for some blog readers–KSH).
The invention of sex addiction reflects the culture’s deep-rooted fear that too much sex without commitment is bad for you.
Interestingly, there’s no proof of that. In fact, sex addiction isn’t even an accepted disease among most psychiatric and psychological organizations in the world. The American Psychiatric Association no longer includes it as a pathology in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This is largely because there is no consensus even among researchers of exactly what an addiction is ”“ there are as many definitions of addiction as there are treatment centres….
[The Episcopal Church]…is hemorrhaging members. In the last 40 years, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. lost 34 percent of its members and 3.66 percent in the last five. This year it declined 2.36 percent and counts just over 2 million members….
Jefferts Schori did not give any response about this decline, nor did she comment on the Catholic Church’s outreach to disaffected Episcopalians….
[Instead she said she] sees encouraging signs. “Engagement in God’s mission looks different in different places, but it usually has something essential to do with Jesus’ own primary acts of service – feeding, healing, and teaching people,” said Jefferts Schori, mid way though her nine year term. “I also see church members moving out into the community to listen to the deep spiritual questions of the unchurched and dechurched.” And she’ll find out this Sunday that is also what has revitalized Incarnation.
Almighty God, who in many and various ways didst speak to thy chosen people by the prophets, and hast given us, in thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the hope of Israel: Hasten, we beseech thee, the coming of the day when all things shall be subject to him, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.
–Church of South India
“Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider how you have fared. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may appear in my glory, says the LORD. You have looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? says the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while you busy yourselves each with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought upon the land and the hills, upon the grain, the new wine, the oil, upon what the ground brings forth, upon men and cattle, and upon all their labors.” Then Zerub’babel the son of She-al’ti-el, and Joshua the son of Jehoz’adak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him; and the people feared before the LORD. Then Haggai, the messenger of the LORD, spoke to the people with the LORD’s message, “I am with you, says the LORD.” And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerub’babel the son of She-al’ti-el, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehoz’adak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month. In the second year of Darius the king…
–Haggai 1:7-15
…[Mariann] Budde, who was installed last month as the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, faces a tough road. After a decade of schism within the church and a broad disillusionment with mainline Protestantism in general, membership in the Episcopal Church in America ”” the denomination of FDR and George Herbert Walker Bush, the throne of high WASP-dom ”” has fallen on hard times.
Recent polls put Episcopalians in America at fewer than 2 million, which means that there are numerically more Jews, more Muslims and more Mormons in this country than there are Episcopalians. Washington, D.C., one of the largest and most visible dioceses in the country, has not suffered the same radical attrition as elsewhere; still, membership has stagnated for the past 10 years at about 40,000 members in 88 congregations.
“We got so fascinated with ourselves that the world just sped by us,” says Budde. “We’re like a boutique. We’re the most inclusive church in the world that’s the tiniest church in Christendom. .”‰.”‰. I’m not interested in being the leader of a boutique church.”
How did you find Oxford in 1993 after Stanford?
The differences were stark. Stanford is sunny, dry, very California, very informal; Oxford is cloudy, wet, and quite formal! Stanford was founded in the late 19th century, and Oxford’s ethos at first glance appears to belong to another era. But both schools are places of ideas and have a very committed academic culture.
What were your first impressions?
I lived at Magdalen in a ground-floor room looking onto Longwall Street. It was quite dismal so I spent as much time as I could in the Magdalen gardens. But in my second year I had a beautiful apartment that overlooked Rose Lane and the rose gardens in the Daubeny Building, and that was like being moved from a black hole into the most beautiful place on campus.
Dr. [Alexandra] Bloom and Mr. [Tom] Nishioka, who is 42, met on Jan. 5, 2000, in a swing-dance class in the East Village. “Tom was the perfect lead,” Dr. Bloom said.
Even without the diagnosis of cancer, for which she still receives treatment, she said they would have renewed their vows.
“With any couple, the years go by, and you go through so much together ”” the birth of children, and the ups and downs of work lives, to name just a few,” Dr. Bloom said. “And time passes, and everything changes, and yet the couple stays together. And there’s something so powerful about that, and it’s so moving.”
Celebrating the renewal of vows can take many shapes and forms ”” not usually three-day events ”” depending on religious traditions and personal preferences.
On Dec. 2, leaders of the Diocese announced they had received a request from the Bishop’s Committee at St. Timothy’s, Fort Worth, asking that members of the mission congregation, as well as Fr. Christopher Stainbrook, the vicar, be permitted to become part of the Roman Catholic Church’s Anglican Ordinariate while continuing to use the real property of the church for worship, instruction, and fellowship activities. It was announced that a forum would be held on Sunday, Dec. 11, to discuss the situation, and that a vote of the qualified members would be taken the following week in order to ascertain the wish of the majority of the congregation.
On Dec. 6, lawyers for The Episcopal Church parties delivered a letter to our legal team inquiring about the situation at St. Timothy and commenting that the proposed use of the St. Timothy property by a body from another denomination would not be a “normal course of business use” in compliance with the order of the 141st District Court signed Oct. 20, 2011. The team was asked to explain how the situation would be handled to be in compliance with the order to avoid a hearing before the court, or the TEC lawyers indicated they would proceed to bring the matter to the court’s attention.Our attorneys have therefore informed Fr. Stainbrook and the Bishop’s Committee that “Bishop Iker and the diocesan leadership … cannot jeopardize the entire Diocese as a result of your desire to join the Ordinariate.” It is imperative that all parties to the proceedings in the 141st, including St. Timothy, obey the October 20 order.
As a result, the Dec. 18 vote of the mission congregation has been canceled. The Dec. 11 forum will be held as planned, so that the congregation has an opportunity to ask questions and share its concerns. Bishop Iker will accept Fr. Stainbrook’s resignation from Anglican orders as part of his stated intention to seek re-ordination for service in the Ordinariate.
“We regret,” Bishop Iker says, “that the desires of the St. Timothy’s Ordinariate group to continue to use the facilities after Jan. 1, 2012, would be contrary to the court order and subject all of us to unnecessary legal proceedings that the TEC lawyers have stated they are prepared to pursue. Sadly, this prevents a pastoral solution to a sensitive issue of spiritual discernment. We are grateful to Bishop Keith Ackerman for his willingness to provide Sunday services at St. Timothy’s beginning on the first Sunday after Christmas Day.”
Across the U.S., an estimated 3million patients visit these centers each week, according to the Urgent Care Association of America, a trade group based in Chicago. To meet demand, the number of facilities has increased from 8,000 in 2008 to more than 9,200 this year, the association said. About 600 urgent centers opened this year.
Fueling that rise are two longstanding trends — crowded emergency rooms and a lack of primary care doctors. Urgent care operators say another factor is helping to propel business: the drive to lower costs.
In 1983, Morgan spoke at a press conference about ending a series so beloved that the last show drew a record 125 million viewers. He said someone had asked him if he thought M*A*S*H had made him a better actor.
“And I said I didn’t know about that, but I know it’s made me a better human being and there aren’t many shows you can say that about,” he said.
I am always encouraged when Christians choose to measure their actions by the Word of God. When making a decision, it is helpful to measure it against Scripture and even to be able to justify the action with a passage or a verse. As an Anglican Christian and an Episcopalian, I am even more encouraged when our leaders seek to live biblically. This does not always happen. Unfortunately, this week in church news was not a good week for the untrained to learn from Anglican bishops how to read the Scriptures properly. Our bishops, if you are not aware, generally wear purple shirts as a sign of their office. What we witnessed this week in two separate cases is Purple Shirts Proof-texting in Public (warning: do not say this three times fast with five saltine crackers in your mouth).
There is an inherent danger in reading the Bible to find a verse or text to prove your point. This error is known as proof-texting, and all trained theologians are warned against this isolationist tendency. As I was taught in seminary, “a text without a context is a pretext.” The discipline of receiving godly instruction from God’s Word includes the study and consideration of the fullness of any piece of Scripture that we would choose to quote. There were two notable examples of proof-texting this week by Anglican bishops.
The first came from the Right Reverend Clifton Daniel, Bishop of East (North) Carolina in a letter written to our own Bishop Lawrence. In it, he chose to reference and apply Mathew 18:15-20. Here is the context:
Since we have had no direct communication from you regarding these reported actions, we determined that it is our duty as bishops of this province to address these concerns in direct communication with you, as Jesus exhorts his followers in Matthew’s Gospel (18:15-20), and in accord with our ordination vows regarding the unity and governance of the church. What we seek in the coming weeks is a face-to-face meeting with you and and a representative group of your fellow Bishops Diocesan of Province 4 in order to have a clarifying conversation and to address the concerns raised among us:
The letter continues with the listing of two concerns. In the final paragraph, his letter indicates that he will release the letter to “Episcopal news organizations” following a telephone conversation.
Now it has been widely noted in the blogosphere that Bishop Daniel only partially followed the admonition of Matthew 18. Here’s how the text reads:
15 ”If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
In his hurry to find a Bible verse to justify the request of the Province IV Bishops, Bishop Daniel failed to follow the very verse he is quoting. Verse 15 requires Bishop Daniel to visit with Bishop Lawrence privately and alone. It seems that Bishop Daniel has moved on to the action described in Verse 16 of a group of believers going to a recalcitrant brother. The only problem is he assumes the conditions in Verse 17 (refusal to listen) and pre-publishes the “offense” to the church. This my friends is a prime example of a Purple Shirt Proof-texting in Public. Humbly, either follow Matthew 18 or do not quote it.
The second example involves international Anglican relations and relieves any of the more conservative Anglicans from the smug thought that their heroes, especially their bishops, would not publicly proof-text. This example comes in a letter from the Right Reverend Charles Murphy to the Archbishop of Rwanda, the Most Reverend Onesphore Rwaje. There has been a breakdown in the relationship of the Anglican Mission in America with its parent body the Rwandan House of Bishops. In the letter Bishop Murphy chooses the Exodus story to elucidate the situation. Here’s how this portion of the letter reads:
I must now say, however, that I believe that the Lord’s present word to me (and to us) now directs me to look beyond Genesis chapters 39-45, and on into the Book of Exodus. There we find the following:
Exodus 1:8 > “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”
Clearly, with an altogether new and different leadership in place in our African home of refuge and sojourn, the Anglican Mission, like the people of God earlier in Exodus, now finds itself in a very new and different situation. The result, as we saw in the story of Exodus, is that God’s sovereign hand which had led His people into Africa (Egypt) in the earlier Book of Genesis, then took a dramatic turn in the Book of Exodus instructing His people that it was now time for them to leave Africa.
Exodus 5:1, 8:1, 9:1 etc. > God next states again and again that He is ready for His people to go.
The promise, of course, was that He had actually prepared a new home in a new location, which would then launch a totally new chapter in the unfolding story of the people of God.
Exodus 10:1 > God then begins to move within the hearts of the Egyptian leadership to make it more and more clear to the people of Israel that Africa (Egypt) could no longer be viewed as their lasting home.
I now see a parallel between the Exodus story and the present situation with Rwanda and the PEAR. Things have now been made very clear to me, and I am thankful for the clarity that I now have.
I am very thankful that Bishop Murphy believes that he has received a clarity from the Lord, but I want to humbly suggest that the text from which he draws a parallel is unfortunately a proof-text for his actions.
The Exodus powerfully reminds us of God’s sovereignty over all people and events, not just the people of Israel. Joseph’s rise to power in Pharaoh’s household is a perfect example of God’s guiding hands over all things. Because we understand who Pharaoh is ”“ a competing deity with Yahweh in the Exodus narrative ”“ it is hard to accept that the Archbishop or the Rwandan church is a parallel. Bishop Murphy goes on to directly compare Africa and Egypt. He even suggest the use in this case of them interchangeably. How can that be? Biblically, going to Egypt is sometimes required but never preferred. Egypt is a pagan nation. Africa ”“ a continent- is not first of all a nation and second of all is not pagan. For American Anglicans troubled by the drift of the Episcopal Church to seek shelter from the church in Rwanda is not akin to going to Egypt, at least not biblically. Again we see a Purple Shirt Proof-texting in Public.
As a parish priest my concern is for everyday Christians to receive the power and presence of the Lord through the proper understanding of God’s Word. Because I believe 2 Timothy 3:16 when it says that the “all Scripture is”¦ useful for teaching,” I want all of our people to know how to properly receive the teaching that is also useful for “rebuking, correcting and training.” We expect a lot from our leaders, but I do not think it is too much to expect that they would be “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 3:15). May I just ask for no more Purple Shirts Proof-texting in Public?
–The Rev. Shay Gaillard is rector, Church of the Good Shepherd, Charleston, S.C.
The BCS must dump the human polls and replace them with a selection committee similar to the one used in college basketball. Let an objective group of people collectively determine a ranking of who should play in the championship game (or make a playoff if a shift is made to that system). Anyone with a vested interest would have to abstain from the discussion. At least that way there would be accountability, and a rogue or uninformed person couldn’t hijack the entire process and ruin a season. Let this still count for two-thirds.
The computers can still be used for one-third, just to check the committee’s power. But the computer pollsters who refuse to release their formulas should be removed from the BCS. You must have transparency, and BCS experts like Jerry Palm need to be able to verify that the formulas are calculated correctly.
It is time for the BCS to be proactive. The BCS has changed its formula in the past only after a specific event forced them to, after the damage had been done. The system is open to being manipulated by bias, inaccuracy, ignorance, and even corruption….
We believe that this pivot toward Beijing is no routine oscillation in North Korean policy. The drive to normalize relations with the U.S. from 1991 to 2009 had been real, sustained and rooted in Kim Il Sung’s deep concern about the regime’s future in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps there was no better demonstration of the North’s approach in those years than the situation on Oct. 25, 2000 ”” the 50th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People’s Volunteers into the Korean War. Who was in Pyongyang on that date meeting Kim Jong Il? The Chinese defense minister? No, he was cooling his heels while Kim met with the U.S. secretary of State. That was no accident of scheduling on Pyongyang’s part; it would not happen again today.
If the paradigm shift is real, we expect the North in the near to medium term to make far less overt trouble. Less tension on the Korean peninsula? What could be wrong with that? Nothing, as long as it is understood that such tranquillity will also provide a veil for the North’s continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated delivery systems. With the onset of stability and growing Chinese-North Korean cooperation, Pyongyang may well calculate that the outside world’s focus on the North Korean nuclear program will become diffuse.
Have the Shepherds lost the flock?
Confusion over the consequences of the AMiA Bishops walkout has spawned a host of contrary opinions as to what the schism means for the organizations clergy and congregations. While the AMiA leadership insists that congregations and clergy are tied to the person of Chuck Murphy, other AMiA leaders have argued the link is with the Province of Rwanda.
One email circulated within the AMiA ranks outlines the contrary view….
Behind the Christian faith’s profession of the one God we find the daily profession of faith of the people of Israel: “Here, O Israel: the Lord is our God. The Lord is the only God” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The unheard of fulfillment of the free bestowal of God’s love on all men was realized in the incarnation of the Son in Jesus Christ. In this revelation of God’s intimacy with man and his bond of love with man, the monotheism of the one God is illumined by a completely new light: the trinitarian light. And in the trinitarian mystery, fraternity among men is also illumined. Christian theology, together with Christian life, must restore the happy and clear evidence of the impact of the trinitarian revelation on our community. While the ethnic and religious conflicts in the world make it more difficult to accept the singularity of Christian thinking about God and the humanism inspired by it, men can recognize in the Name of Jesus Christ the truth of God the Father toward which the Holy Spirit draws every longing of creatures (cf. Romans 8). Theology, in fruitful dialogue with philosophy, can help believers to become aware and bear witness that trinitarian monotheism shows us the true face of God, and this monotheism is not the cause of violence, but is a force for personal and universal peace.
The point of departure of every Christian theology is the acceptance of this divine revelation: the personal acceptance of the Word made flesh, listening to the Word of God in Scripture. From this starting point theology assists the believing intelligence of faith and its transmission. But the whole history of the Church shows that to reach the unity of faith, the acknowledgement of the point of departure is not enough. The Bible is always read in a given context and the only context in which the believer can be in full communion with Christ is the Church and her living Tradition. We must always re-live the experience of the first disciples, who “persevered in the teaching of the apostles and in communion, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). From this perspective the Commission studied the principles and criteria according to which a theology can be Catholic, and also reflected on the contribution of contemporary theology. It is important to remember that Catholic theology, always attentive to the link between faith and reason, had an historical role in the birth of the university. A truly Catholic theology, with the two movements, “intellectus quaerens fidem et fide quaerens intellectum” (understanding seeking faith and faith seeking understanding), is necessary today more than ever, to make a symphony of the sciences possible and to avoid the violent derivations of a religiosity that opposes itself to reason and a reason that opposes itself to religion.
Read it all (emphasis mine).