This lengthy document looks at the duties of those in authority and particularly mentions the duty to think with the Church. In this context, it quotes Pope Benedict's homily during the Chrism Mass earlier this year:
“Our obedience is a believing with the Church, a thinking and speaking with the Church, serving through her. What Jesus predicted to Peter also always applies: ‘You will be taken where you do not want to go'. This letting oneself be guided where one does not want to be led is an essential element of our serving and precisely that which makes us free”One odd feature of this document is that it speaks always of the "Reign of God" and never of the "Kingdom of God". I vaguely suspect that "Reign" is meant to avoid offending someone. If it is an inclusive language thing, are we now to speak of "Our Lady Sovereign and Mother" or to celebrate the feast of the "Reigning of Mary"?
Meanwhile, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has published a General Decree regarding the delict of attempted sacred ordination of a woman. Both the one who attempts to ordain and the woman are excommunicated latae sententiae. So those ladies in the famous boat should not be going to communion.
The link above is to the English translation. Here is a link to the Latin original.
7 comments:
Perhaps the "reign of God" is someone's reference to the thing about translating "n basileia" in the Our Father as "your kinging come" or "your kingship/reigning" come - that it's not a thing, as it were, but a state of affairs. I've read/heard this point a couple of times, but can't now remember where.
"Our Womyn, Sovereign and Parent", is probaby the formulation favoured by the progressivists in the English-speaking Bishops Conferences, actually!
I recall that pope Benedict has spoken of the Kingdom of God as being more a 'Reign' than a Kingdom. I seem to remember that this was because he finds 'Kingdom' to be too much sounding like a quasi-political entity. I'm not sure whether it is in his Introduction to Christianity or in his recent Jesus book, but this usage of the 'Reign of God' might be inspired by him?
Arguably, 'reign' might be a better translation of the Greek 'basileia', since it captures the action of the latter. In English, the word kingdom tends to be associated with a place (e.g. the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland), while both the New Testament 'basileia' and the corresponding Hebrew 'malkut' are action words denoting the active lordship of the king. [See chapter 3 of the Holy Father's _Jesus of Nazareth_.] Reign comes closer to capturing this meaning.
Well, there are quite a lot of people who say that they are "building the Kingdom." What they mean by it ranges from perfectly acceptable to downright scary, depending on the person.
Reign is less prone to the scarier interpretations.
There is only one Greek word in the New Testament (basileia) which corresponds with two English words: reign and kingdom.
The previous comments are quite good explanations, but omit the fact that there is just one Greek word behind them.
There is a more innocent explanation I feel, which is more usual in the often poor translations coming from the Vatican: it's an Italianism, viz. "Il Regno di Dio" translated as "the Reign of God". As a graduate in Italian, it's this sort of non-idiomatic translation that sets my teeth on edge!
Just to wear my Catholic Truth Society hat for a moment, I will just point out that CTS will be publishing this document. - Richard
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