A Missionary Church: Introduction and Chapter One of Evangelii Gaudium

The article provides a summary and synthesis of the Introduction and Chapter One of Evangelii Gaudium (EG 1–18 and 19–49), where Pope Francis outlines his vision of the church and the program of his pontificate. He envisions the church as fundamentally a missionary church and sees the role of his pontificate as bringing about the transformation of the church into a missionary church. The article concludes by showing that Pope Francis’ vision of the church in EG echoes Vatican II's decree Ad Gentes and is shaped by his experience of the church in Latin America. Thus, it ends with two observations: first, that with EG, Ad Gentes’ statement that “the Church is missionary by her very nature” ceases to be merely a theological declaration and now becomes a concrete pastoral program of action; and second, that EG, where the concerns of the third world are allowed to shape the vision of the universal church, is an eloquent manifestation of the church becoming a World Church.     

美国学生海外志愿传教运动与中华基督教学生立志传道团

19世纪末20世纪初,美国基督教历史上形成了以高等教育机构青年学生为基础、鼓励他们志愿到国外进行传教事业的学生志愿海外传教运动.运动将这些学生的三分之一都派到了中国,直接影响到中国的传教事业.受其工作理念和方式的直接影响,中华基督教学生立志传道团于1910年成立,促使许多学生接受基督教并成为神职人员,是中国基督教学生运动的主要力量之一,但在30年代以后消失于无形之中.它是20世纪初期中国基督教史上产生于学生界和知识分子界,面向学生和知识分子布道,劝导他们成为教会神职人员的团体.     

An Alternative Model of Political Reasoning

The primary instrument of dispute management in political liberalism is a form of political thinking and talking that tries to reconcile opposed positions with an impartial settlement based on fair arrangements and mutual respect, one that is careful to treat rival views equitably, and reasoned through from start to finish with open methods that lead to a public justification understandable to the disputants. But this model of reasoning is notoriously deficient in resolving disputes among radically different communities. A more effective form of political reasoning for these disputes that yet respects the background values of liberalism is found in the languages of state depicted in realist accounts of international relations. These languages avoid liberal appeals to be reasonable, reciprocity controlled by moral criteria, and the quest for common reasons. They represent a deliberative search for an accord that will meet the interests of the disputing parties as they define these interests and understand the settlements, and in this sense are welcome models to manage divisive issues in pluralist democracies. A complete version of political reasoning would contain both liberal and realpolitik models and a mechanism to adjudicate the appropriate uses of each model.I do not know how even to begin thanking my spring 2003 graduate seminar for the wonderful discussions that allowed me to refine my thinking on this research project. In different ways the following individual members of the seminar were helpful: Amanda Dipaolo, Dimitria Gatzia, Michael McFall, Michael McKeon, Roald Nashi, Paul Prescott, Joshua Vermette, Amy Widestrom, and the two regular auditors, Cyril Ghosh and Darrell Driver. I have also profited from numerous discussions with other graduate students, including, early in this project, Steven Benko and, more constantly, Ali Shomali. Faculty colleagues who have commented on the work and suggested literatures for me to read and references to track include James Bennett, Hans Schmidt, Peg Hermann, Elizabeth Cohen, Jim Watts, Jim Wiggins, David Miller and Thomas Green. I am particularly grateful to Everita Silina, a graduate student who has been a constant friend and invaluable research assistant for the past five years. The Miami International Relations Theory group provided a critical venue to try out portions of this paper at the University of Miami campus on April 23, 2004. I then presented a later version of the paper to a Philosophy Department colloquium at the University of Miami on April 22, 2005. The comments made by those who attended one or both of the sessions were very helpful. I am also grateful to Ken Baynes and Ned McClennen for allowing me to be an unlisted third instructor in their seminar on “law, economics and public reason” in the fall semester 2004 at Syracuse University, and for the opportunity to present some of this work at one of the seminar meetings. If anything demonstrates the importance of a good collective setting on intellectual work this seminar was one such demonstration.     

Culture-Specific Counseling: An Alternative Training Model

Culture-specific counseling has been proposed as a supplement to cross-cultural and multicultural approaches. In the culture-specific approach, we start with the culture and its peoples and search out natural helping styles. In contrast with the conventional approach of adapting existing counseling theory to “fit” a new culture, the culture-specific method seeks to generate new theory and technologies of helping. This preliminay study uses a case model drawn from African-Igbo culture and applies anthropological constructs that seek to discover a more culturally sensitive approach to counseling theory, to training in counseling skills and knowledge, and in using evaluative research techniques. The methods used in this report may be useful in generating a new set of theories more relevant to many different cultural groups. Se ha propuesto que la consejería culturalmente específica sirve como un complemento al acercamiento intercultural y multicultural. En el acercamiento culturalmente específico, empezamos con la cultura y sus gentes y buscamos estilos naturales de ayudar. En contraste con el acercamiento convencional en el que se adapta la teoría existente de consejería para que se ajuste a una cultura nueva, el método culturalmente específico procura engendrar nuevas teorías y técnicas de ayuda. Este estudio preliminar usa un caso modelo sacado de la cultura africana Igbo, aplicando constructos antropológicos que intentan descubrir un acercamiento más sensitivo a la teoría de consejeriá, preparación en habilidades y conocimientos de consejería, y en el uso de técnicas de investigación evaluativas. Los modelos usados en este artículo pueden ser útiles para engendrar un nuevo grupo de teorías mas pertinente para muchos grupos culturales diferentes.     

Missionary Discipleship as the Innovation of the Church in Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium

Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium talks about discipleship in a framework of mission and evangelization. Rather than concentrating on the discipleship as such, it uses as a lens the spiritual commitment of conversion to missionary discipleship, challenging all Christians and the whole Church, including institutional structures, to this conversion. In common with the World Council of Churches’ document Together towards Life, Evangelii Gaudium emphasizes a need for Christians to focus on the heart of the Gospel, the love of the trinitarian God, in order to find trustful, dynamic, and transformative mission for the “changing landscapes” of today's global and local phenomena. This article deals with the concept of missionary discipleship in Evangelii Gaudium. To this end it discusses discipleship and its underlying structure of continual conversion as it is represented in both Evangelii Gaudium and the WCC's mission document Together towards Life.     

A New Model for Premarital Counseling Within the Church

The divorce rate among Christians is higher than that of the average population. This statistic is cause for concern and change in church preparation for marriage. Although instruction for pastoral premarital counseling exists, most churches do not follow the minimum guidelines. Churches need a new proactive model for building good marriages rather than mending broken ones. This article presents one such model for marriage preparedness. A graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary     

An Alternative Framework for Defining Mediation

The present article provides an alternative framework for evaluating mediated relationships. From this perspective. a mediated process is a chain reaction, beginning with an independent variable that affects a mediator that in turn affects an outcome. The definition of mediation offered here, presented for stage sequences, states three conditions for establishing mediation: (a) the independent variable affects the probability of the sequence no mediator to mediator to outcome; (b) the independent variable affects the probability of a transition into the mediator stage; (c) the mediator affects the probability of a transition into the outcome stage at every level of the independent variable. This definition of mediation is compared and contrasted with the well-known definition of mediation for continuous variables discussed in Baron and Kenny (1986), Judd and Kenny (1981), and Kenny, Kashy, and Bolger (1997). The definition presented in this article emphasizes the intraindividual, time-ordered nature of mediation.     

Church: An Overlooked Mental-Health Resource

In a multi-perspective survey of mental-health consumer needs, 50% of the stakeholders in the Alaska mental-health system identified participation in church or religious activities as important. However, the publicly supported mental-health service system has a tradition of rarely using church-based resources for its clients. In today's climate of diminishing government, this may be the time for publicly supported mental-health and other social-service providers to rethink their traditional avoidance of church and religious activities. For many consumers, church and religious activities may be a considerable potential resource within the continuum of resources needed for psychiatric rehabilitation.     

明清之际中国天主教会传教经费之来源

教会经费的最主要来源，是各教会宗主国及教廷的资助. 但由于各国国内政治情况的变化，海上交通的梗阻或意外的出现，以及中国政府的禁教等原因，很多时候，各国及教廷的经费无法到达传教士手中，因此必须有来自其它渠道的经费进行补充。这些渠道有澳门各界及国内教友的支持，中国政府的赏赐及任职传教士的俸禄及传教士所从事的借贷收租，参与经贸活动所得收益等。本文收集中西文各方面之罕见材料，对所有可能的经费来源进行了较为深入的探讨。     

An Introduction to the Horizon Model: An Alternative to Universalist Frameworks of Mystical Development

Critics have pointed out that the content and sequence of mystical development reported by different traditions do not seem very congruous with the contention that there is a universal path of mystical development. I propose a model of mystical development that is more subtle than traditional ‘invariant hierarchical’ models, and which explains how the apparently differing accounts of mystical development between traditions and thinkers can be reconciled with each other in a more convincing fashion, and brought together under one umbrella. The model preserves both the objective core of perennialism and the culturally subjective element of mystical ‘specialization’ that is undeniably evidenced in the mystical literature, and which hierarchical and invariant ‘universalist’ accounts struggle to integrate.     

An assessment of Church life in Vietnam

Biblia: Válogatás a Vizsolyi Bibliábol (Bible: Selections from the Vizsoly Bible) compiled by István Vas. Budapest: Európa könyvkiadó, 1986. 933 pp. 125 Ft.

Vallási kisközösségek Magyarországon (Small Religious Communities in Hungary ) by József Fodor. Budapest: Magyar Média, n.d. Paperback, 168 pp.

The Struggles for Poland by Neal Ascherson. London: Michael Joseph, 1987. 242 pp, £14·95.

Human Rights in Yugoslavia edited by Oskar Gruenwald and Karen Rosenblum‐Cale. Los Angeles: Institute for Interdisciplinary Research; New York: Irvington Publishers, 1986. 673 pp.

?rtve Drugog Svetskog Rata u Jugoslaviji (Victims of the Second World War in Yugoslavia) by Bogoljub Ko?ovi?. London: Biblioteka Na?e Delo, 1985. 205 pp. Include English and French summaries

The Churches of China by Britt E. Towery, Jr. Revised and enlarged second edition. Waco, Texas: Long Dragon Books, 1987. 300 pp.

Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan by Olivier Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Paperback, 254 pp.

Ioann XXIII ‐ Pobornik edinstva khristian (John XXIII: Bringer of Christian Unity) by Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad and Novgorod Vienna: Pro Oriente, 1984. 656 pp.

A Radiance in the Gulag by Nijole Sadunaite. Translated by Rev. Casimir Pugevi?ius and Marian Skabeikis. Manassas, Virginia: Trinity Communications, 1987. Paperback, 148 pp. English printing planned for January 1988.

Book note

Der Geistliche und seine Gemeinde in Osteuropa (The Priest and his Parish in Eastern Europe) edited by Wolfgang Kasack. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1986. Paperback, 160 pp.     

Ecological Neuropsychology: An Alternative to the Deficit Model for Conceptualizing and Serving Students with Learning Disabilities

The present paper contends that children with learning disabilities are better served when assessment and intervention are conceptualized within an ecological neuropsychology perspective than within the traditional deficit model perspective, which is the predominant approach to intervention in medical and educational settings. The deficit method conceptualizes problems as within the child, and the major consequence of this approach is that little time is spent analyzing the learning environment or other systems that might impact the child's ability to be successful in an academic setting. Therefore, rehabilitation efforts have had limited success. In contrast, ecological neuropsychology is a strength-based approach that considers the child, as well as the systems within which he/she interacts, when assessing, diagnosing, and intervening with students who are experiencing learning difficulties.