Pregledni rad

Pastoral Theology in Today's Time of Crisis

Stipe Nimac ; Katolički bogoslovni fakultet Sveučilišta u Splitu, Split, Hrvatska

Sažetak

The aim of this work is to draw attention to the situation and some repercussions and challenges for practical theology that are emerging in the present period of crisis. The introduction offers a brief overview of the crisis in society and the church; it highlights the diminishing trust in institutions and the growing process of individualisation as well as the accessibility of religious know-how to anyone who is interested; it points out tendencies of independent, often syncretic creation of personal religiousness.
The first section of the article points out the beginning of »Pastoral Theology« (F. S. Rautenstrauch) in the crisis of the Enlightenment; it emerged as a science that was supposed to contribute to re-establishing a balance between Church-theological tradition, the situation of pastoral activities and the actual pastoral worker; the Enlightenment led to a rift between three great notions and the crisis they are now facing leads us the point that the experience of those times can teach us something with regard to our current circumstances.
The next part of the article points out some important elements in analysing the current »triangle crisis«: contemporary society is burdened with various contrasts including religious that are not managing to integrate but even with the utmost effort and minimal procedural rules is managing to be preserved; tensions with the Church are a reflection of the situation in society. All of God's people, primarily pastoral workers, are faced with the demand to find new focuses not only in their role but in their own personal church identity which has resulted in post-modern individualisation in society and the Church.
As far as Church-theological tradition is concerned, current times are ruled by a situation in which everyone is involved with theology and pastoral care and are compelled to be integrated into various theological discussions or some theological concept or other; they need to be analytically powerful based on the tradition of faith in the Church and need to be trained for action, i.e. they who are in any way involved in theology need to gain certain skills for cerigmatic, diaconic and liturgical action while building the community of God's people.
The next section points out what is to come out of the duty of practical theology. Firstly, it is worth keeping the Church's duty in mind: starting from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it needs to open and free the life of people for a new — based on the Gospel and fed by it - way of self-comprehension and practical action. In order to remain credible and to clearly point out its unavoidable significance to today's life the Church must shape itself from the inside in keeping with those principles that it proclaims. Secondly, it is necessary to redefine pastoral activities in the context of general Christian-Church activities: its special function in the process of traditionalising Christian faith consists of institutionally ensuring a returnable relationship to the community of the faithful with Jesus Christ and to be at the 'service of all services' in the community. Thirdly, practical theology must point out the tension that rules between remembering Jesus'joyous word and creativity in the space of acting and the life of the church and to find inspiration in all of God's people. Finally, avoiding the ghettoisation and succumbing to the powerful, practical theology will develop critically and point out the potential of the Gospel and will endeavour to operationalise these three fundamental options: the option for solidarity with people in current times; the option for the »poor and all those suffering« (GS 1) and the option to self-consciously adopt one's own Christian tradition in light of the »signs of the times« (GS 4).
In all of this we seen the need to rethink some fundamental options and directions for practical theology as a facultative discipline and the urgency to relate it to practise amongst God's people primarily those who work pastorally and who in insecure conditions are faced with the inevitability of making concrete decisions.

Ključne riječi

practical theology; pastoral; crisis; (post)modern; society; the Curch; tradition

Hrčak ID:

22538

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/22538

Datum izdavanja:

25.2.2008.

Podaci na drugim jezicima: hrvatski

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