{"id":729,"date":"2008-07-02T08:37:45","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T08:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/07\/study-hall.html"},"modified":"2008-07-02T08:37:45","modified_gmt":"2008-07-02T08:37:45","slug":"study-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/07\/study-hall.html","title":{"rendered":"Study Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, in the last GA until mid-August, the Pope announced that he’ll be focusing on Paul for a while. From AsiaNews:<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe must place ourselves,\u201d said the Holy Father, \u201cin the world of 2,000 years age. Under many aspects today\u2019s socio-cultural context is not that much different from that of that time.\u201d<\/span>
\nFirst of all, Paul \u201ccomes from a culture that was certainly in the minority, that of the People of Israel.\u201d In the ancient world in Rome, Jews were at best 3 per cent of the population.<\/span>
\n\u201cLike today their beliefs and lifestyle clearly set them apart from their environment. This can lead to mockery or admiration, something which Paul experienced as well.\u201d For instance, the Pope noted that \u201cCicero despised their religion and even the city of Jerusalem,\u201d whereas Nero\u2019s wife Poppaea was considered as a \u201csympathiser. Even Julius Caesar had recognised their particularism.<\/span>
\nPaul also lived immersed in the Hellenistic culture \u201cwhich at the time was a shared heritage at least in the Eastern Mediterranean,\u201d in a political situation in which the Roman Empire \u201cguaranteed stability and peace from Britain to Egypt, and provided (a common fabric for super partes unification.\u201d<\/span>
\nAnd if the \u201cuniversalistic vision that was typical of the Christian Paul owes its basic impulse to Jesus,\u201d the cultural preparation provided by his environment must be remembered so much so that he was seen as man of three cultures: Jewish, Greek and Roman.\u201d <\/span>
\nSimilarly, the Pope noted that the prevailing stoic philosophy influenced Paul as well. Among Stoic philosophers like Seneca one can find \u201cthe highest values of humanity and wisdom which are naturally received in Christianity;\u201d for instance the doctrine of the universe as a uniquely harmonious body, equality for all, and self-control.<\/span>
\nToday Benedict XVI moves into the Pope\u2019s summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. He will remain there until 11 July when he will leave to celebrate World Youth Day in Sydney (Australia). \u00a0<\/span>He will then be back in Castel Gandolfo on 22 July and on the 28th he will travel to Brixen-Bressanone (South Tyrol) for a period of rest until 11 August.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Sandro Magister today:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Universal and ecumenical. For a church that is “catholic” and “one.” This is the twofold horizon that the bishop of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople wanted to give to the Pauline Year, proclaimed together by the respective Churches of Rome and of the East. At the Mass celebrated on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the two successors of the apostles entered together into the basilica of St. Peter’s; together they went up to the altar, preceded by a Latin deacon and by an Orthodox one, carrying the book of the Gospels; together they listened to the chanting of the Gospel in Latin and in Greek; together they delivered the homily, first the patriarch and then the pope, after a brief introduction by the latter; together they recited the Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol in the original Greek, according to the liturgical use of the Byzantine Churches; they exchanged the kiss of peace, and at the end they blessed the faithful together. Never before now \u2013 after almost a thousand years of schism between East and West \u2013 had a liturgy so visibly oriented to unity been celebrated by the bishop of Rome and by the patriarch of Constantinople.
\nThe relationship with the Protestant communities remains deeper in the shadows for now. But the Pauline Year could be rich in significance for the dialogue with these communities as well. The leading thinkers of the Reformation \u2013 from Luther and Calvin to Karl Barth, Rudolph Bultmann, and Paul Tillich \u2013 elaborated their thought beginning above all with the Letter of Paul to the Romans.
\nAnd the contribution that the Pauline Year could make to dialogue with the Jews is no less relevant. Paul was an observant Jew and a rabbi, before falling down blinded by Christ on the road to Damascus. And his conversion to the Risen One never meant, for him, breaking with his original faith. The promise of God to Abraham and the covenant on Sinai were always for Paul one and the same with the “new and eternal” covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus. Joseph Ratzinger has written memorable pages on this unity between the Old and New Testament, in his book “Jesus of Nazareth.” <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Pope’s homilies from this past weekend are available at Zenit (not in English at the Vatican website yet). Vespers is here<\/a>\u00a0and Sunday’s is here. <\/a><\/span>
\nReminder: If you’re looking to immerse yourself in Paul over the next year, the Aquinas and More page on the Year of St. Paul has many excellent resources.
\n<\/a><\/span>
\nAnd here, the Catholic-leaning blogger at Catholidoxy has a good post on Paul, Protestants and Catholics<\/a>.<\/span>
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, in the last GA until mid-August, the Pope announced that he’ll be focusing on Paul for a while. From AsiaNews: \u201cWe must place ourselves,\u201d said the Holy Father, \u201cin the world of 2,000 years age. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}