November 5, 2023
/We are pleased to bring you another edition of CATH-Links, an initiative born from the CC@S synodal process and the Intra Community Council. We hope this initiative will continue to encourage reflection, engender discussion, and help members better understand and engage with the Church and the modern world.
If you are interested in submitting reflections, meditations, articles, book reviews, etc., see Submit Resources for Publication for submission guidelines. We look forward to your participation!
SYNODAL NEWS
Synod Report: A Church that involves everyone and is close to world’s wounds. [vaticannews.va] The Synthesis Report at the conclusion of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod on Synodality is published. Looking ahead to the second session in 2024, the text offers reflections and proposals on topics such as the role of women and the laity, the ministry of bishops, priesthood and the diaconate, the importance of the poor and migrants, digital mission, ecumenism, and abuse.
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
“Laudate Deum”: the Pope’s cry for a response to the climate crisis [vaticannews.va] Pope Francis has published an Apostolic Exhortation building on his 2015 encyclical. We’re not reacting enough, he says, we’re close to breaking point. He criticizes climate change deniers, saying that the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt. And he describes how care for our common home flows from the Christian faith. Full text of “Laudate Deum” at vatican.va
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION
A Mysterious Alchemy Within the Communion of Saints [wordonfire.org] By Dr. Richard Clements. “We human beings are far more interconnected with each other than we tend to realize. Our actions right here, right now can impact any other human being who has ever existed or ever will exist anywhere in the world. Or to state it more succinctly: our actions right here and now can impact anyone, anywhere, anywhen. And we ourselves may have been the beneficiaries of the actions of someone we’ve never met, living anywhere in the world, now, in the past, or in the future. How? Through the mysterious phenomenon known as the communio sanctorum, or ‘communion of saints’… Our ‘acts of love’ can be like ripples of goodness in the cosmic sea of divine goodness, radiating outward from us to touch the lives of innumerable others.”
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
The Preferential Option for the Poor in the Bible [harvardcatholicforum.org], a Daniel Harrington S.J. Memorial Lecture by Gary Anderson, the Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Thought at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Anderson is an internationally recognized scholar on the Old Testament, early Judaism and Christianity, and theological themes in the Scriptural tradition. A past president of the Catholic Biblical Association, he was Professor of Old Testament at Harvard Divinity School before moving to Notre Dame. Professor Anderson is the author or editor of more than ten books, including the award winners Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (Yale, 2013), Sin: A History (Yale, 2009), and Christian Doctrine and the Old Testament (Baker 2017). He has also written for The Christian Century, First Things, Commonweal, and America. He holds a PhD from Harvard University.
BOOK OF INTEREST
AI, Faith, and the Future: An Interdisciplinary Approach [buy at amazon.com] is “a collection of scholarly essays authored by members of a multidisciplinary research group on ethical and theological reflections about Artificial Intelligence at Seattle Pacific University. The intent of the authors is twofold: orient the reader to historical, technical, philosophical, ethical, and theological perspectives on the nature and use of AI; and then offer a series of disciplinary and theological explorations on the impact of AI. These new narratives can become the focus of beliefs which shape how society views its AI future… The faith perspectives expounded in its pages do not presume a monoculture of Christian homogeneity, rather the authors draw on early church, Catholic teaching, and several Protestant perspectives to draw from a diverse mix of theologians. The authors’ conclusions drawn from these perspectives do in fact provide a new array of narratives from which future explorations can embark with clarity and reproducible steps into the self-evident New World of AI automation and discovery.” Full review at aiandfaith.org
