What are the sacraments, really? For centuries, the religious lives of Catholics and other Christians have revolved around church rituals with generally accepted individual and social effects. What, precisely, are those effects, and how are they produced? Traditional theology used Greek philosophy to understand the sacraments and how they work. But is there no other way to understand them? In fact, there are a number of ways, and this book invites you to look at the sacraments through a variety of lenses: psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, morality, and spirituality. As the introduction to this volume challenges, "If you read this book, and especially if you engage in the interactive study to which it invites you, your understanding of sacraments will be changed forever." To help personalize your investigation, the author has created a web site with thought-provoking questions that encourage you to interact with the ideas being proposed in this volume. To engage these topics more deeply, see www.TheSacraments.org.
Catholic sacramental doctrine has lost much of its credibility. Baptized people leave the church, adolescents stop attending shortly after they are confirmed, supposedly indissoluble marriages regularly dissolve, few go to confession, and many do not believe in transubstantiation. Drawing upon his decades-long study of the sacraments, Martos reveals how teachings that seemed rooted in the scriptures and Catholic life have become unmoored from the contexts in which they arose, and why seemingly eternal truths are actually historically relative. After carefully constructing Catholic teaching from the church's own documents, he deconstructs it by demonstrating how biblical passages were misconstrued by patristic authors and how patristic writings were misunderstood by medieval scholastics. The long process of misinterpretation culminated in the dogmatic pronouncements of the Council of Trent, which continues to dominate Catholic thinking about the church's religious ceremonies. If the sacraments are released from their dogmatic baggage, Martos believes that the spiritual realities they symbolize can be celebrated in any human culture without being tied to their traditional rites.
Honest rituals are ceremonial actions that celebrate what is actually happening in people's lives. Religious rituals, however, often celebrate beliefs and doctrines (e.g., the birth of Christ, God's forgiveness of sins, or the gifts of the Holy Spirit) that have little to do with people's experience. Martos argues that early Christian rituals were grounded in experiences such as conversion, community, commitment, and self-giving. Lacking a vocabulary to name such experiences, the authors of the New Testament and other early documents resorted to metaphors such as baptism into Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit, forgiveness by God, and the presence of Christ during worship. By the fourth century, however, those metaphors were taken to be unexperienced metaphysical realities rather than experienced realities. The medieval schoolmen developed philosophical explanations of what went on in church rituals, and the Catholic Church continues to teach that its sacraments are automatically effective despite growing evidence to the contrary. What if religious rituals were to regain their original authenticity? What if the guiding value in designing church ceremonies was honesty rather than liturgical correctness? After liberating the reader from doctrinal constraints, Martos invites Catholics into a re-visioning of the traditional sacraments and a reawakening of ritual imagination in non-Western cultures.
Rohr and Martos answer the question, "Why Be Catholic?" fairly and squarely, showing a deep appreciation about what is good in Catholicism and a penetrating honesty about the Church's shortcomings. They also examine what it means to be Catholic in the United States today. Finally, to answer the title question in a more personal way, they present portraits of some outstanding Catholics, especially those we call saints, who have found personal fulfillment by living their faith to the utmost.
The Promise Keepers, a Christian men's movement, is helping men find direction again. In a new Introduction to The Wild Man's Journey, Father Richard Rohr acknowledges the movement's contributions and analyzes its weaknesses, tracing the journey of a man's life and offering seven promises for a healthy spirityuality for Catholic men.
The New Testament is sometimes called the New Covenant, signifying a new relationship between humanity and God. From the viewpoint of salvation history, the New Testament is the completion and the culmination of the Old Testament. In terms of length, it is only a small portion of the entire Bible, and yet it is that portion which brings it all together. Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos look at the many ways salvation themes are proclaimed by the various authors and literary styles of the New Testament.
A work of major importance, written for an ecumenical audience, Doors to the Sacred is a sweeping and detailed account of the historical and cultural evolution of sacramental rituals and practices. Since its initial publication, the book has garnered widespread critical acclaim and has become a mainstay not only for students but for all thinking Christians who want to understand the past fully while making their present participation in the sacraments more genuine and intelligent. Martos has greatly expanded all of the bibliographic material and has incorporated the latest developments in theological study and inquiry. His focus is on the seven ecclesial sacraments of the Catholic Church: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing, Marriage, and Orders. Though based on thorough research and impressive scholarship, Doors to the Sacred is written in a lively style that will be welcomed by a general audience.
“You are about to set out on a great adventure!” Richard Rohr told his original listeners when The Great Themes of Scripture talks were recorded for St. Anthony Messenger Press in 1973. This first volume offers newcomers to the Hebrew Scriptures a feel for their overall religious themes. But for all readers this book uniquely sounds the call of the Lord and invites response in a way that will touch lives as deeply as Rohr's original talks.
A refreshing summary of the New Testament....Useful for adult education and small study groups." --"Catholic Transcript" ALSO AVAILABLE--Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament
Since the early 1990s there have been various movements designed to encourage 'masculine spirituality'. All these movements share a concern that spirituality has become too feminine and that men's experiences of the spiritual are being marginalized. The task of masculine spirituality is to promote 'authentic' masculine characteristics within a spiritual context. Numen, Old Men examines these characteristics to argue that masculine spirituality is thinly veiled patriarchy. The mythopoetic, evangelical, and Catholic men's movements are shown to promote a hetero-patriarchal spirituality by appealing to either combative and oppressive neo-Jungian archetypes or biblical models of man as the leader of the family. Numen, Old Men examines spiritualities that aim to honour and transcend both the masculine and feminine, and offers gay spirituality as an example of masculine spirituality that resists patriarchy.
The desire of the Father in composing it, was to contribute to spread devotion to St. Joseph, as well as nourish his clients' piety. The same is our desire. Does not this great Saint, whom God has distinguished above all others by the glorious titles of Spouse of Mary and Father of Jesus, and whose heroic aets have admirably corresponded to this twofold dignity, which no creature, human or angelic, can ever share with him-does not, I repeat, this great saint merit on our part a special worship and particular homage? A great number of writers and sacred orators have undertaken, in elegant panegyrics, to show forth the prerogatives and the virtues of St. Joseph, and they have succeeded in rallying around him a multitude of devout clients, who invoke him as their advocate and their father, as the worthiest object of their confidence and love, after Jesus and Mary. We shall endeavor, our turn, to attain the same result, hut by an easier and shorter way-that of examples; a way to which Fr. Patrignani has given the preference. Examples, in fact, more easily enter into the mind, and penetrate more readily into the heart, than do the most solid reasonings. 'The latter merely convince; the former, besides conviction, carry something more soul-stirring-persuasion. In the first book we shall present the homage and services which have been rendered to St. Joseph, as so many motives for attaching ourselves to his worship: in the second, we shall narrate the favors granted by this saint to those devoted to his interests. The third book will contain certain pious practices calculated to honor St. Joseph and to make him known.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.