2009 January

For the latest copy of our Newsletter: Catholic Theology in the Public Academy, please click here: newsletter3a.pdf

“MINISTRIES IN THE CHURCH TODAY- NORTH/SOUTH DIALOGUE”
JUNE 11TH – JUNE 13TH, 2009, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO
INVITATION & CALL FOR PAPERS
 
The Board of Editors of the widely respected international theological review Concilium will hold its Annual Meeting at Loyola University Chicago from June 10-15, 2009. Central to the meeting will be an international symposium on ‘Ministries in the Church Today: North-South Dialogue’ from Thursday – Saturday, June 11-13. Jon Sobrino, S.J., of the University of Central America, will deliver the keynote address. Other members of the Board of Editors will also be among the speakers.
 
Concilium was founded in 1965 to promote the renewal opened up by the Second Vatican Council. Today, it is perhaps the most widely-subscribed theological journal in the world, appearing five times a year in five languages (English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese). Many institutions of theological education and pastoral practices in Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as Europe, North America and Australasia are subscribers. 

The symposium will bring together participants from the developing world with representatives of the churches in the West to reflect on the importance of ministries in the church, including those of clergy, lay women and men.  Concilium invites participants both to join the discussion by attending the symposium and to consider proposing a paper for the symposium.

To propose a paper, please send a 250-word abstract to: concilium.madras@gmail.com. The proposal deadline is February 15, 2009. Papers presented at the symposium will be considered for publication in an early 2010 issue of Concilium.

If you are interested in attending the symposium, have questions, or would like receiving additional details as they become available, please email conciliumsymposium@gmail.com.

To download a poster – please click the icon below.

Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning: Learning to Be Church Together

Just short of 200 church leaders, theologians, national and international ecumenists, church officers, organisational experts, and local church practitioners gathered together at Ushaw College, Durham, last week, 11-15th January, to embrace and take forwards a new contribution to the ecumenical movement that has been developed by staff of the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University.

The department was recently ranked as the top department for research in theology and religion in the UK, according to the recent Research Assessment Exercise.

Building on the work of an acclaimed originating conference in January 2006 and complemented by a major innovative regional comparative research project in Receptive Ecumenism and the Local Church, the Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning conference drew representatives of fifteen different ecclesial traditions together, accompanied by a Jewish philosopher, Prof. Peter Ochs of the University of Virginia, to focus on the explicitly self-critical, receptive question as to ‘What can we and what need we learn with creative integrity from our others?’

This second Receptive Ecumenism International, held in conjunction with the annual gathering of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network, was again organised and jointly hosted by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University and Ushaw College, the Roman Catholic seminary for the north of England.  Alongside an anonymous trust, other partner bodies and sponsors included: Churches Together in England, the Diocese of Durham, the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, the Jerusalem Trust, the Northern Synod of the United Reformed Church, One in Christ, the Society for Ecumenical Studies, and The Tablet and The Pastoral Review.

Amongst the delegates from four continents and twenty-one countries were eight Roman Catholic bishops, including the new Bishop-elect of Hexham and Newcastle, Canon Seamus Cunningham, in his first public engagement as such, two Anglican bishops, a Greek Orthodox Metropolitan and Archimandrite, the Directorate of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, the Directorate of Churches Together in England, and official representation from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity bearing an endorsing opening message from the Council’s President, His Eminence Cardinal Walter Kasper.

In his opening message, read by Monsignor Mark Langham, Cardinal Kasper spoke for the fourth time in public of Receptive Ecumenism as offering ‘a new way forward on our ecumenical path.’  For their part, Rev. Dr David Cornick, General Secretary, and other staff members of Churches Together in England spoke enthusiastically of their desire to integrate the thinking and strategy behind Receptive Ecumenism into their core activities, even extending to the possibility of producing both a practical handbook for Receptive Ecumenism and the Local Church and a scripture-based small group resource pack to promote the practice of breaking the Word together as a privileged place for encountering and receiving of one another’s gifts in our own respective brokenness.  Similarly, Dr John Gibaut, Director, and Dr Tamara Grdzelidze of the Faith and Order Commission, spoke of the significance of Receptive Ecumenism as a complementary strategy in service of their common aims and of their intention to present the strategy to the next plenary assembly of the Faith and Order Commission in Geneva in October 2009 with a view to incorporating it into their work.

In due course, Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning: Learning to Be Church Together will issue in a second major volume of essays to complement that deriving from the originating January 2006 colloquium, Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, Paul D. Murray (ed.), (Oxford: OUP, 2008).

The Program of the event can be accessed here.
 

Abstracts for the Parrallel Paper/Workshops can be accessed here.
 
 
Recording of the plenary papers can be purchased from Agape Ministries.

A collection of photos can also be viewed at Flickr

Late October 2008, during the final week of the Synod of Bishops, saw a series of formal celebratory events in Rome marking the publication of Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, (Oxford University Press, 2008).  This volume, comprising 32 original essays by a team of internationally recognised scholars from across the Christian traditions, represents the first published fruits of the first major research project of the Durham Centre for Catholic Studies.  Focussed on an international research colloquium that was held at Ushaw College, Durham in January 2006 to mark the award of an honorary doctorate to His Eminence Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the volume both introduces a fresh new strategy for Christian ecumenism that is fitted to the demands of the present context – Receptive Ecumenism – and illustrates and tests this strategy in relation to what Roman Catholicism can and should learn, or receive, with integrity from its ecumenical others.

On Wednesday 22nd October the Caravita Community at the Oratory of San Francesco Xavier del Caravita hosted an Ecumenical Evening Prayer in dual honour of the volume and of the ministry of Mgr Don Bolen, whose period of office both at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and at Caravita had recently come to an end and who had given such decisive support to the Receptive Ecumenism project.  The Rt Rev. Michael E. Putney, Catholic Bishop of Townsville, Australia and co-chair of the Joint Commission for Dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Roman Catholic Church presided.  The Rt Rev. N. T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham and world-renowned scripture scholar preached.

In turn, on the evening of Thursday 23rd October Rev. Dr James Puglisi, SA, Director of the Centro Pro Unione, hosted a splendid formal launch event for the volume and associated reception in the Centro’s magnificent rooms overlooking the Piazza Navone.  After a short speech by Dr Paul D. Murray, the volume’s editor and Director of the Durham Centre for Catholic Studies, Cardinal Kasper expounded the core theme of the volume, commending the transformative potential and decisive significance of its self-critical searching after ‘[W]hat we are missing and what we can learn from the other.’

Immediately following the launch, His Excellency Mr Francis Campbell, British Ambassador to the Holy See, hosted a private dinner at the British Embassy in celebration of the volume at which His Eminence Cardinal Kasper and Dr Murray were the toasted guests of honour.  In his speech the Ambassador spoke of the significance both of the volume and broader project of which it is a part and of the distinctive long-term institutional development represented by the dual establishment of the Durham Centre for Catholic Studies and the Bede Chair of Catholic Theology.

This September sees launch of Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning: Exploring a Way for Contemporary Ecumenism, a major and much anticipated volume by Oxford University Press, 2008 (US publication date is the start of November) containing revised papers, plus additional commissioned essays, deriving from the first international Receptive Ecumenism colloquium held in January 2006.  For publication details and introductory offer please see below.The January 2006 colloquium at Ushaw College, organised by the then nascent Centre for Catholic Studies in conjunction with Ushaw, was held to mark the conferral by Durham University of the degree of Doctor of Divinity honoris causa on H. E. Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.  (For further details of this internationally acclaimed event, click here).  Cardinal Kasper himself and Mgr Don Bolen (until very recently responsible for Catholic-Anglican and Catholic-Methodist relations within the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity) are amongst the 32 contributing authors, as are also Bishop Michael Putney, Nicholas Lash, Keith Pecklers SJ, Mary Tanner OBE and a host of other internationally recognised theologians and ecumenists from across the traditions. For full details of the essays included in the volume please click here.
For promotional discount, please click  here.

Book launch events and second international Receptive Ecumenism conference

Over the next few months there are to be three significant events related to the publication of this volume.

1.  The UK launch for the volume will take place at Ushaw College on Wednesday 10th September, 6.30pm, during the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain, the theme of whose conference this year is Vatican II and the Church to Come (give a link to the CTA’s website).  
2. On Thursday 23rd October at 6.00pm, during the forthcoming Synod of Bishops, the Centro Pro Unione (off the Piazza Navone, Rome) is to host an international launch reception for the volume in the company of Cardinal Kasper and H.E. Francis Campbell, HM Ambassador to the Holy See.  All are welcome both to this event and to the Ecumenical Evening Prayer that is being hosted the evening in celebration of the volume by the Oratory of St. Francis Xavier, Via del Caravita, at which Bishop Tom Wright (Anglican Bishop of Durham will preach).  For further details of both events, click here
3. From 11th-15th January 2009 the second international Receptive Ecumenism conference will take place, Receptive Ecumenism and Ecclesial Learning: Learning to Be Church Together.  For further details, please click here, or contact Dr Marcus Pound, Deputy Director of the Centre for Catholic Studies, at m.j.p.pound@durham.ac.uk