LFU:online

Students will be able to recognize the mission, significance and opportunities of church institutions/communities in the face of global challenges and to name prophetic alternatives for action as examples.

The Church has the "duty to search for the signs of the times and to interpret them in the light of the Gospel" (GS 4). This mandate of the Second Vatican Council, which guides pastoral ministry, is often cited in pastoral plans, but concrete parish life is often determined by the feasts of the church year and the necessities of sacramental pastoral ministry. Others seem to be responsible for the big questions of global crises: Social ethics, politics, economics, ...  

But the world has become a "global village": Through media, structural and economic networks, we humans on the one globe are linked in many ways by invisible threads. What are the concrete challenges for the local church? 

The lecture explores the question of what church communities - beyond analyses, appeals and aid projects - can contribute to a sustainable society worth living in and to a global common good. Church as an effective "sign and instrument" (LG 1) will have to go beyond the paradigm of charity and ask first about the structural conditions of a more just world (so Pope Francis in EN 202).  What does this mean for a concrete ecclesial community and can it thereby regain its prophetic power?

Lecture with powerpoint presentations, textreader, collaboration

Oral examination

To be announced in the lecture.

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