Portal:Catholic Church/Article Archive/2007
January 2007[edit]
Portal:Catholicism/Article Archive/2007/January 2007
February 2007[edit]
Portal:Catholicism/Article Archive/2007/February 2007
March 2007[edit]
Portal:Catholicism/Article Archive/2007/March 2007
April 2007[edit]
Portal:Catholicism/Article Archive/April 2007
May 2007[edit]
Vatican City, officially State of the Vatican City (Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae; Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano), is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. At approximately 44 hectares (110 acres), it is the smallest independent nation in the world.[1]
It was created in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756 to 1870). Vatican City is a non-hereditary, elected monarchy that is ruled by the Bishop of Rome — the Pope. The highest state functionaries are all clergymen of the Catholic Church. It is the sovereign territory of the Holy See (Latin:Sancta Sedes) and the location of the Apostolic Palace — the Pope's official residence — and the Roman Curia. Thus, while the principal ecclesiastical seat (Cathedral) of the Pope as Bishop of Rome (the Basilica of St. John Lateran) is located outside of its walls, in Rome, Vatican City can be said to be the governmental capital of the Catholic Church.
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June 2007[edit]
In Roman Catholicism, marriage is one of the seven sacraments. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, paragraph 1623, "the spouses as ministers of Christ's grace mutually confer upon each other the sacrament of Matrimony by expressing their consent before the Church." An argument for the institution of the sacrament of Matrimony by Christ himself, and its occasion, is advanced by Bernard Orchard in his article The Betrothal and Marriage of Mary to Joseph[2] In the Eastern Catholic Churches (i.e., non-Latin rite churches in full communion with Rome), "Only those marriages are valid that are celebrated with a sacred rite, in the presence of the local hierarch, local pastor, or a priest who has been given the faculty of blessing the marriage by either of them, and at least two witnesses…. The very intervention of a priest who assists and blesses is regarded as a sacred rite for the present purpose."[3]
Marriage forms the foundation of the family, the fundamental unit of the referring community (ordinarily the parish). The ideal references are found in the Holy Family (Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Saint Joseph, Mary's husband). See related articles of Canon law.[4]
To Catholics, the primary purpose of marriage is to fulfill a vocation in the nature of man and woman, for the procreation and education of children, and to stand as a symbol of the mystical union between Christ and his Church.[5] Fecundity (the ability to reproduce) is good, a gift and a goal of marriage.
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References[edit]
- ^ "Holy See (Vatican City)". CIA — The World Factbook. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
- ^ DUCATUM EVANGELII: The Betrothal of Mary to Joseph, Summary page 1
- ^ can. 828 CCEO 1991
- ^ http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P3V.HTM Canon Law
- ^ Catechism Of The Catholic Church
July 2007[edit]
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in the Frankish lands of western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope Gregory the Great with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman and Gallican chant.
Gregorian chants are organized into eight scalar modes. Typical melodic features include characteristic incipits and cadences, the use of reciting tones around which the other notes of the melody revolve, and a vocabulary of musical motifs woven together through a process called centonization to create families of related chants. Instead of octave scales, six-note patterns called hexachords came to define the modes. These patterns use elements of the modern diatonic scale as well as what would now be called B flat. Gregorian melodies are transcribed using neumes, an early form of musical notation from which the modern five-line staff developed during the 16th century.[1] Gregorian chant played a fundamental role in the development of polyphony.
Gregorian chant was traditionally sung by choirs of men and boys in churches, or by women and men of religious orders in their chapels. It is the music of the Roman Rite, performed in the Mass and the monastic Office. Gregorian chant supplanted or marginalized the other indigenous plainchant traditions of the Christian West to become the official music of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Although Gregorian chant is no longer obligatory, the Roman Catholic Church still officially considers it the music most suitable for worship.[2] During the 20th century, Gregorian chant underwent a musicological and popular resurgence.
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References[edit]
- ^ Development of notation styles is discussed at Dolmetsch online, accessed 4 July 2006
- ^ The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Second Vatican Council. The Catholic Encyclopedia addresses this point at length: plainchant article. This view is held at the highest levels, including Pope Benedict XVI: Catholic World News 28 June 2006 both accessed 5 July 2006
August 2007[edit]
The Shroud of Turin (or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have been physically traumatized in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is being kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. The shroud is the subject of intense debate among some scientists, believers, historians, and writers regarding where, when, and how the shroud and its images were created. Some believe it is the cloth that covered Jesus of Nazareth when he was placed in his tomb and that his image was recorded on its fibers at or near the time of his proclaimed resurrection. Skeptics contend the shroud is a medieval hoax or forgery — or even a devotional work of artistic verisimilitude. Radiocarbon tests in 1988 by three independent teams of scientists yielded results showing that the shroud was created in the Middle Ages and not the first century A.D.
The shroud is rectangular, measuring approximately 4.4 x 1.1 m (14.3 x 3.7 ft). The cloth is woven in a herringbone twill and is composed of flax fibrils entwined with cotton fibrils. It bears the image of a front and dorsal view of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. The two views are aligned along the midplane of the body and pointing in opposite directions. The front and back views of the head nearly meet at the middle of the cloth. The views are consistent with an orthographic projection of a human body, but see Analysis of the image as the work of an artist.
The "Man of the Shroud" has a beard, moustache, and shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He is well-proportioned, muscular, and quite tall (1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)) for a man of the first century (the time of Jesus' death) or for the Middle Ages (the time of the first uncontested report of the shroud's existence, and the proposed time of possible forgery). Dark, red stains, either blood or a substance meant to be perceived as blood, are found on the cloth, showing various wounds:
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September 2007[edit]
The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II with the dual goals of liberating the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslims and freeing the Eastern Christians from Muslim rule. What started as an appeal by Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos for western mercenaries to fight the Turks in Anatolia quickly turned into a wholesale Western migration and conquest of territory outside of Europe. Both knights and peasants from many nations of Western Europe, with little central leadership, travelled over land and by sea towards Jerusalem and captured the city in July 1099, establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Crusader states. Although these gains lasted for less than two hundred years, the First Crusade was a major turning point in the expansion of Western power, as well as the first major step towards reopening international trade in the West since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It was also the most successful crusade, being the only one to succeed in capturing Jerusalem.
By the early 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate had rapidly captured North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain from a predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire. During the 9th century, the Reconquista picked up an ideological potency that is considered to be the first example of a "Christian" effort to recapture territory, seen as lost to Muslims, as part of the expansion efforts of the Christian kingdoms along the Bay of Biscay. Spanish kingdoms, knightly orders and mercenaries began to mobilize from across Europe for the fight against the surviving and predominantly Moorish Umayyad caliphate at Cordoba.
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October 2007[edit]
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, is a personal prelature of the Catholic Church that teaches the Catholic belief that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The Opus Dei prelature is made up of ordinary lay people and secular priests governed by a prelate. Opus Dei is Latin for "Work of God", and the organization is sometimes known simply as "the Work".
Most of its 87,000 members, called supernumeraries, lead traditional family lives and have secular careers. The celibate numeraries and numerary assistants live in special centers, while associates are celibate members living in their private homes.
Opus Dei was founded in Spain in 1928 by a Roman Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá and given final approval in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. In 1982, it was made into a personal prelature — its bishop's jurisdiction is not linked to one specific geographic area, but instead covers the persons in Opus Dei, wherever they are. Opus Dei is the first and so far the only Catholic organization of this type. Various Popes and Catholic leaders have strongly supported what they see as Opus Dei's innovative teaching on the sanctifying value of work, and in 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized Saint Josemaría Escrivá.
November 2007[edit]
Catholic social teaching comprises those aspects of Catholic doctrine which relate to matters dealing with the collective aspect of humanity. The foundations of modern Catholic social teaching are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum Novarum.
A distinctive feature of Catholic social teaching is its concern for the poorest members of society. This concern echoes elements of the Jewish law and of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, and recalls the teachings of Jesus Christ recorded in the New Testament, such as his declaration that "whatever you have done for one of these least brothers of Mine, you have done for Me." Another distinctive feature of Catholic social doctrine is the way in which it has consistently critiqued modern social and political ideologies both of the left and of the right: communism, conservatism, socialism, libertarianism, capitalism, liberalism and Nazism have all been condemned, at least in their pure forms, by the Popes at one time or another.
Jesus taught that on the Day of Judgement God will ask what each of us did to help the poor and needy: "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40. This is reflected in the Church's canon law, which states, "[The Christian faithful] are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources."
The principles of Catholic social teaching, though in most cases far older in origin, first began to be combined together into a system in the late nineteenth century. Since then, successive popes have added to and developed the Church's body of social teaching, principally through the medium of encyclical letters.
December 2007[edit]
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago is a diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The Archdiocese of Chicago is one of the largest dioceses in the nation by population and comprises Cook and Lake counties, covering 1,411 square miles (3,653 km²) of Illinois. The original Diocese of Chicago was created on November 28, 1842, and was elevated to the status of an archdiocese on September 10, 1880. On September 27, 1908, the Diocese of Rockford was broken off from the Archdiocese, and to create the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois on December 11, 1948, territory was taken from Peoria, Rockford and Chicago diocese.
The Archbishop of Chicago concurrently serves as metropolitan bishop of the Ecclesiastical Province of Chicago, whose suffragan bishops are the bishops of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield. It has become customary for each successive Archbishop of Chicago to be raised to the rank of Cardinal by the Pope in consistory, but the offices are not formally linked. Francis Eugene Cardinal George, OMI is the current Archbishop of Chicago.
There are 2,363,000 Catholics living in the Cook and Lake counties of Illinois, or 39% of the population.