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Growth in the maturity of faith, as one of the fundamental elements of the Christian life, is directly related to pastoral activity, particularly catechesis. Therefore, pastoralcatechetical dynamics, especially those of a parish nature, should necessarily contribute to permanent progress toward an increasingly mature faith in all dimensions of life. Many current indicators point to a genuine crisis not only of maturing in faith, but also of the beginning of that process in general, and in the actual decision to grow in faith. In this regard, certain areas of pastoral activity and catechesis with adults represent some of the most challenging and complex to actualize nowadays. In addition, the community, as an essential factor, is recognized not only as a reality on the path to progress, but often also as a challenging factor in terms of the representation of the environment of mature religious life. This article aims to distinguish the theologicalpastoral essential prerequisites for pastoral activity and catechesis with adult believers in the context of the community. These prerequisites primarily concern important elements of the structural relationship between a believer and the Christian community with respect to the progress in the maturity of the faith of both the person and the community. This discernment addresses some current aspects of the relevant topic, where more successful realization in today's social and pastoral contexts can aid the maturation process in faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, we present, comment and analyse some elements of our cultural and evangelical history, which have been marked by numerous philosophers and theologians starting from the ancient Church to the present day. Closing into the present actually means a ban on living. Present life has its roots in the past and offers its promises, expectations and courage to the future. History exists, and man can dwell in history, without which there is no creative culture, only when three dimensions of time are lived organically. In this context, we also observe the contribution of an immense procession of thinkers like St Thomas Aquinas in successive historical periods. In the article, we explore the possible contribution of metaphysics to the questions posed to the modern man. The evangelical influence on culture, which is a complex phenomenon, should certainly be shed light on. Furthermore, it can be more or less deep. It can be hidden, more or less conscious. It is not always strongly present where it is most required, it is not real where it is explicitly ordered. In addition to authentic fruits, one should also be aware of counterfeits and hypocritical activities. In short, its paths are different and manifold. It seems important to point this out so that we could evaluate this influence, which is authenticated and credibly confirmed in the eyes of Christian orthodoxy, and which establishes piety. Certain errors, exaggerations and deviations are not imaginable outside the Christian horizon, which unmask it or wage a battle with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis of this paper is based on an examination of the relationship between Christology and eschatology with soteriology, and through the analysis of their selected core concepts, it seeks to contextualize the discourse on salvation within a contemporary framework. Specifically, the study explores the terms of hope, faith, freedom, and bodily resurrection, which provide a framework for a modern approach to soteriological reality. The selected terms, when considered together, demonstrate their suitability in connecting the experiences of the contemporary individual, their existential position, and perspectives on salvation, while also drawing on rich theological traditions and Catholic doctrine. The initial research question that stemmed from the interconnection of the two treatises (Christology and eschatology) with soteriology has provided us with significant insights into various possibilities for contemporary understanding of salvation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the issue of religious crises, both in the past and present. The author explores the causes of these crises and how Christianity historically provided solutions. The author points out that crises of faith can disrupt the lives of individuals and communities, and there are both internal and external factors that can contribute to them. Throughout history, heresies and persecutions have been the most significant threats to faith. The article highlights the persecution of believers and the Church in the first centuries, particularly in mid-3rd century, as an example of external attacks on Christianity. The author also discusses the example of St Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, and the impact of the persecutions on the believers' faith. Cyprian emphasizes that, while external attacks can cause crises of faith, disunity and schism within the Church can be even more damaging. It seems that when the faith was challenged by heresy and schism, it also faced an internal threat from sin and the sinful behaviour of believers. This caused a crisis for those who were vulnerable to the temptation of sin or scandalized by sinners. The author asserts this crisis was rooted either in a deviation from God or a complete rejection of Him, which allowed for an ungodly lifestyle. The author also suggests that these crises always originate from within, where the soul abandons its foundation in God, even if the initial impulse comes from external sources. When individuals or groups of believers lose their connection to God, they inevitably experience a crisis that can lead to spiritual death. This serves as a sobering reminder of the importance of staying connected to God and living a life that is pleasing to Him. Interestingly, while the Holy Scriptures may present faith as a path that leads to a crisis, in this case, the crisis is interpreted as a choice, a discernment, a selection, a decision, and not a rupture. Jesus used these crisis moments in his deeds and preaching, and they can also be seen throughout the Old Testament. However, it is important to understand that Jesus never intended for these crises to lead to unbelief or impiety. Rather, he aimed to build believers who had an authentic, personal, and firm faith. The author believes this same approach can be used to transcend the crisis of faith that the Church faces today. This crisis cannot be overcome simply by changing structures or renewing them. Instead, a renewal of our direct and living communion with the living God is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural environment in which an individual lives and grows up undoubtedly shapes the relationship to God, religiosity, and faith, and it has a certain influence on the creation of an image of God. The encounter of another religion, especially from the Western culture, with the domestic cultural environment can cause admiration or an attitude of caution or rejection, but also the possibility of partial acceptance of its values. Such reaction elements can easily be observed in the so-called mission countries that accept the novelty of the Christian message. With the aim of examining the perception of the influence of the cultural environment on understanding and perceiving God, religiosity and faith, a survey was conducted among 1062 young believers in the West African state of Benin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people are often the object of reflection of the adults. They are often subject to their analysis, reflection, and teaching. We believe that any constructive criticism aimed at teaching young people based on analysis and reflection should necessarily be preceded by what Pope Francis calls us to in his pontificate - listening. Thus, this article went in the same direction - to listen and observe the voice and the word of young people, all with the aim of serving them in a correct and holistic way, i.e., so that their faith, as St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Ephesians, may grow to the knowledge of the Son of God, and that they grow to the measure of the full stature of Christ (cf. Eph 4: 13-14). Through these words, the Church seeks her way to meet young people and serve the Good News as the main task entrusted to her by the Risen Christ. The article presents a part of the survey results, using the Google Forms platform, conducted on a self - selected sample of students and working youth (aged 18-35) in Croatia. The research was conducted on a sample of 727 members of the reference population, and it is a convenience type of non-probabilistic sampling. The aim was to observe, based on the research results, which attitudes and faith emerge from the image of God that young people have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian faith does not owe its existence to any human culture, insofar as its foundation are laid by the supernatural source. Nevertheless, it is a well-known fact that in its realisation, it has a need for expressive forms of the cultural order. These forms are always and in various ways conditioned by concrete givens, frameworks, and elements of human co-existence and organisation, among which »city« has a special place. According to clear and multiple socio-demographic indicators, for centuries and decades, city is, in various intensities and forms, a special target of millions of people who were and are trying to realise their desire for meaningful and happy life. In other words, city has been for a long time, and is especially today, in the state of expansion. That expansion influences, in various ways, contemporary forms of living out faith in city. This article, therefore, engages with the topic of theological-pastoral discernment of today's state of practice of faith in city in Croatian and similar, culturally related European urban environments and offers a theological-practical analysis of trends related to this area that will obviously be current also in the future. Since the issue of concrete realisation of Christian faith in this environment is hardly a marginal social issue, it demands a systematic approach, especially in terms of a theological analysis of conditions of living out Christian faith amidst cultural changes of urban environment. Hence, the article puts emphasis on relating elements of faith with certain newer cultural forms while aiming at seeking possible solutions that might be of help in the future when it comes to quality encounters between human cultures and faith in the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the statement of the Second Vatican Council on homily as a constituent part of liturgy (see Sacrosanctum concilium, no. 52), the article analyses the issue of homiletic preaching. The aim is to determine the liturgical place and nature of homily so that preaching might be formed by celebration. To prepare and celebrate homily as a liturgical act necessarily involves the question of how to reach life through liturgy. In the wider cultural frame of postmodernity, homiletic preaching and liturgical celebration are not by themselves understandable. When facing homiletic preaching and liturgical celebration, the contemporary human being often does not understand that kind of discourse, because he/she does not experience it. Experience should, therefore, be the starting point of the new integration of homily into liturgy and liturgy into life. In that sense, the article thematises the state and perspectives of homiletic preaching in terms of its liturgical nature and anthropological articulacy within the frame of cultural environment of our contemporaneity. By taking into consideration that preaching is not simply transmission of contents of faith, but an act of faith in the bosom of a sacramental celebration, this article will attempt to offer notes for mistagogical preaching by following Paul's idea of mutuality of faith and word (2 Cor 4:13): to speak in images, homily as a liturgical act, homily as a process of transformation, homily as an act of faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term »new birth« in Jn 3:5 is often used in the Biblical theology and is an object of exegetical-hermeneutical research. In the context of Jesus's open anthropology, the »new birth from above« becomes an even more obvious sign of supernatural Divine intervention in the life of not only Nicodemus, but of every human being. In the encounter of Jesus and Nicodemus Jesus explains to Nicodemus - a human being and a pharisee - the way of salvation that demands his faith. Many interpreters of that passage see the sacrament of baptism in the workings of the Holy Spirit and in »being born from water«. Although the Gospel writer makes use of the technic of misunderstanding and interruption of dialogical communication within the composition, Jesus approaches the representative of his religious opponents with love and proclaims to him the way to the Kingdom of God in which one enters in a new way - by grace from above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the thesis that dialogue is an essential, although not the only, dimension of Christian faith and a way of its realisation. Dialogue incorporates all its subjects and their interrelations: God - human being - Church - world. The author develops the thesis against the background of the understanding of dialogue as an intentionally established communication among equal interlocutors in which differences are mutually respected and that aims at establishing one common reality or consensus. The second part of the article demonstrates that dialogue has its foundation in God himself, who has revealed himself to the human being dialogically so that the human being could be saved. Within this manifold divine-human communication, which reaches, in both directions, its eschatological and exemplar pinnacle in Jesus Christ, the whole history of salvation narrates and it becomes the paradigmatic example of every other dialogue that is led out of faith with people throughout history. The third part deepens the ecclesiological dimension of the Divine-human dialogue, because in the historical-soteriological dynamics the Church has been sent to continue the dialogue with God and in God's name with people ad intra and ad extra. In the last part the relationship of the Church as the one that continues the dialogue of faith towards (self)-critique and plurality as contemporary values (but also often barriers for realisation of dialogue) is being discussed. These are the challenges that the Church cannot avoid and that ought to be perceived as criteria of its own renewal and growth, so that the Church might remain authentic witness of God's dialogue with human beings in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By promulgating the bull Misericordiae vultus on April 11, 2015, Pope Francis has announced the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy as the special time for the Church. The bull has pointed out two things: 1) the goal of the jubilee, which is to open the possibility for the human being to have a true encounter with God and to have a personal experience of the closeness and love of God, and (2) demands, which are primarily addressed to ministers of the sacrament of reconciliation, and these consist in revealing the face of mercy of the Heavenly Father and in helping the penitent on his/her way of faith. For this reason, the main goal of this article is to reflect on the relation between faith and mercy in the sacrament of reconciliation. However, in order to avoid unnecessary idealisation of this relation, experience does not allow us to forget the other »side of the coin«, i.e., how the penitent to whom mercy is proclaimed is not only encountering love of God, but, often, also his/her own disbelief, which, then, makes the further discourseon merciful God full of love and goodness harder. The article does not exclude possible banalisation of sin, sinful state, and faith (since God who loves forgives always and everything) either. These things, then, point out an incorrect understanding of God´s mercy. This challenge sets the task for the minister of the sacrament of reconciliation to present clear teaching that mercy of God the Father is dynamics of his love with which he meets the human being and invites him/her to respond in a similarly dynamic way: to repent and to believe in the gospel. From this dynamics of love springs the truthfulness of the proclamation of mercy that calls to faith and faithfulness, i.e. to the renewal of the Covenant of the filial relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authentic concreteness of thought made possible by the first principle of every being is the basic speculative argument of Italian critical ontology. In the undividable relation between thought and being a direction of thinking in philosophy has been formed in Italy in the first half of the 20th century. This direction is based on Kant's premises and, in extremely turbulent context of speculative thinking and often in polemics with dominant currents of though, it has pointed out the fundamental importance of the »God issue« as a true philosophical argument. The concept of consciousness, as consciousness of God and from God, within that that exists in (ἐν) Him, made possible by Him, is the proof of the phenomenal unconfined-ness of what is thought, through implementation of the Augustinian-Bonaventurian principles of the Franciscan tradition. The intention of this article is, therefore, to present speculative consistency of this extremely vital school of Italian ontology, but also the most prominent argument of its philosophical reflection, i.e. the concreteness of consciousness in existential being as a manifestation of uniqueness of being [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article tries to present the understanding of theology in the published texts of prof. dr. Josip Turčinović (1933 – 1989). He did not engage with this issue directly, but the idea of theology as understanding of faith is quite present in his thought and sometimes even pointed out. The reconstruction of this modo exercito given understanding begins with his texts, which are mostly of kerygmatic nature, and deals fi rstly with Turčinović´s understanding of faith in Triune God as the basis of theology. After that the article presents the main dimensions of the concept of theology that can be detected in his texts: there, theology is seen as an understanding of faith, a discourse on God, as a refl ected form of self-understanding of the Church, and as the face of faith that is turned towards the public. In all of this there is a touch of critique understood as, for faith and theology, a needed discernment of facts in the Church and society, and a touch of praxis or realisation of faith in life of a believer and his/her community. The fi nal part points out some consequences of Turčinović´s understanding of faith. These concern the theologian as a person and his/her work, research on our theological heritage, and necessary poly-dialogical character of theology in contemporary cultural and social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the question of human being's capacity for joy and happiness. In that sense, particular emphasis lays on the Christian notion of joy as beatitude. Through the history of Christian theology and spirituality, beatitude was always connected to the faith and moral life. In that sense, the Christian meaning of happiness and joy as beatitude necessarily imply thematic interweaving of theology and spirituality, of reasonable and virtuous life. Aft er the initial biblical-anthropological refl ection on the subject of joy, the central part of the article is dedicated to the theology of beatitude with the emphasis on Augustine's and Thomas's theological thought. Starting with their philosophical and theological presuppositions for the Christian concept of happiness, and in the light of Christian spirituality and impulses of Pope Francis in Evangelii gaudium, there is the conclusive rethinking of specifi c Christian concept of happiness as beatitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Buber's refl ection on the relationship between philosophy and religion has been signifi cantly infl uenced by Cabala and Hassidism. By putt ing into the centre of his re- fl ection the concept of shekinah (the presence of God), he wants to confi rm, through a phenomenological approach, one of his basis theses on complete immanency of God in the cosmos and in the human being. By identifying religion with the Presence and by distancing every Thou from the area of object, Buber establishes the relation of presence in which religiosity (that he distinguishes from religion), expressed in the human being's activity, crosses a journey from being an »exception«, as an experience of otherness that does not fi nd its place in the regular dimension of the human beings' existence, all the way to the presence that becomes the basis and the bearer of the human being's existence, because all our relations fi nd their fulfi lment and meaning in the eternal Thou. The dialogue, meeting, and relation are not decorative categories of our religiosity, but the way that leads us to put the whole reality in the relation. Buber's intention is to confi rm the insight that the essence of religiosity is the human being's activity that refl ects in life the original dialogue between God and the human being. In this way, Buber opens a way for dialogical religiosity through the traditional thought of his people and his own philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]