In light of our recent discussion of reform in the history of the Church, I wanted to bring to your attention a panel featuring John O’Malley, Russell Hittinger, and Joseph Mueller. The panel addresses losses and gains in the governance of the Church after Vatican I. There are some important references in the dialogue back to… Read More Vatican I and Papal Governance
by Matthew Gaetano Article 5 of the Colloquy of Regensburg–its statement on justification–is a famous moment in the history of dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants. A while ago, we published a rough translation of the agreement on original sin. I’ve provided here a translation of Articles 1 through 3 on the state of innocence,… Read More Articles 1-3 of the Colloquy of Regensburg
by Matthew Gaetano The Jesuit theologian, Robert Bellarmine (d. 1621), has appeared quite a few times in the early days of The Regensburg Forum. His Controversies offered one of the most thoroughgoing challenges to Protestant theology. And Bellarmine’s Controversies came in for extensive criticism from hundreds of Reformed and Lutheran theologians–at times quite harsh. For our effort to… Read More Ranking “Errors” and the Assurance of Salvation
by Eric J. Demeuse In a rich and now classic work, Models of the Church 1 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., outlines six conceptual tools or ‘models’ prevalent today which serve to explain and explore the mystery of the Church—the Church as institution, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, servant, and community of disciples. None are sufficient in… Read More The Ecclesiology of the Catechism of Trent: Some Observations
by Matthew Gaetano A friend of the Regensburg Forum, Darryl Hart, has undertaken a dialogue with me about the authority of the Council of Trent, among other things. This will certainly not be the last time that we address this topic here. But I thought that I could offer some more substantial evidence for my claims… Read More Trent’s Authority and Its Interpretation of Luther
by Matthew Gaetano As I hope to discuss in future posts, one of the clearest differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant soteriologies is how each confession thinks about original sin in the justified. Roman Catholics hold that it is taken away, while confessional Protestants believe that it remains (though, of course, it is not imputed).… Read More Regensburg (1541) on Original Sin
A Review of Ulrich Lehner’s The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Oxford, 2016) by Eric J. Demeuse In a recent post for The Regensburg Forum, Trevor Anderson notes that ‘the question of the continuity between the pre-Vatican II (read: Tridentine) and post-Vatican II Church is one worth asking, and if left unanswered… Read More Trent, Vatican II, and Enlightenment
by Trevor Anderson I was born about twenty years after the Second Vatican Council, and came into communion with the Roman Catholic Church about twenty-five years after that, so I have no recollection of what the Catholic Church was like before Vatican II. Likewise, I have no recollection of what the relations between Protestants and Catholics,… Read More Trent and Vatican II: Suggested Principles for Analysis