Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 93 No. 3, 2023.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.93.3.7
Church Resilience in Times of Crisis. A Moral-Ethical Aspect from a Post-Conciliar Perspective
Ante Bekavac
; Catholic Faculty of Theology University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author attempts to illuminate the challenges of church resilience in times of crisis from a moral-ethical aspect in a post-conciliar perspective. The modern man is in the midst of many crises that affect his moral and spiritual life as well as the testimony of faith in the person of Jesus Christ. The deep crisis that has engulfed man has contributed primarily to moral and spiritual disorientation. Abandoning the fundamental truth about himself, man ended up deceiving sin — living as if there were no God. As a member of the mysterious body of Christ, Christian life is necessarily understood in the light of Christian proclamation. By the sacramental dimension of faith, man – a believer, is united and participates in the faith of the Church in which he develops resistance. Therefore, the development of church resistance in times of crisis should be understood precisely in this basic expression of moral-theological knowledge which emphasizes that man is wounded by sin, thus that sin prevents me from achieving fullness. By Christ’s incarnation, God has offered the wounded man the fullness of life according to his dignity. The restoration of man and the creation of ecclesiastical resistance emphasize the basic structure by which man lives so that he is primarily carried by the grace and gift of faith. In this sense, the development of resilience means the development of a life of grace that has been restored in the person of Jesus Christ, because human dignity that has been damaged by sin has been miraculously restored in Christ. Moral-fundamental knowledge follows the development of resilience as a unity of moral-spiritual life in the light of faith, which is carried primarily by virtue, but also by sacraments that behold the presence of Christ. Christian faith, understood as healing from sin, restoring freedom and dignity, signifies that fundamental resilience, understood as the possibility of accepting the gift of the truth about man, which means revealing moral values in the light of authentic moral anthropology and all the defining extensions of faith resulting therefrom. Man’s openness and building up resilience within the Church in light of theological and moral virtues makes man a participant in the grace and gift of faith, in which God gives himself to man. The article presents the challenges of developing resilience in five points, demonstrating fundamentally that the mystery of man, his dignity, cannot be understood without God, and that church resilience is understood as the renewal of man in light of the fundamental expression of Christian faith that God had created man as a free, reasonable being endowed with absolute and inviolable dignity. Resistance within the Church requires the unity of moral and spiritual life, as well as the growth and development of authentic theological anthropology.
Keywords
God; the Church; man; dignity; sin; morality; resilience; freedom
Hrčak ID:
311240
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2023.
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