Search results for ""the catholic university of america press""

St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village relates the life of a local faith community to the larger religious and secular world of which it is a part, and reciprocally illuminates that bigger world from the perspective of this local community. During the life span of this parish, the Catholic community in New York City has grown from a mere thirty or forty thousand to over three million in two dioceses. St. Joseph’s Church began as a poor immigrant parish in a hostile Protestant environment, developed into a prosperous working-class parish as the area became predominantly Catholic, survived a series of local economic and social upheavals, and remains today a vibrant spiritual center in the midst of an overwhelmingly secular neighborhood. Its history provides a fascinating glimpse of the evolution of Catholicism in New York City during the course of the past ­†“ years.The history of this parish is worth telling for its own sake as the collective journey of one faith community from immigrant mission to pillar of society and then to spiritual outpost in the Secular City. However, it has significance far beyond the boundaries of Greenwich Village because it documents at the most basic and vital level of Catholic communal organization the interaction between change and continuity that has been one of the most prominent features of urban Catholicism in the United States over the past two centuries.

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The Society of Jesus arrived in Italy in 1540 brimming with enthusiasm to found new universities. These would be better than Italian universities, which the Jesuits believed were full of professors teaching philosophical atheism to debauched students. The Jesuits also wanted to become professors in existing Italian universities. They would teach Christian philosophy, true theology, sound logic, eloquent humanities, and practical mathematics. They would exert a positive moral influence on students. The Jesuits were rejected. Italy already had fourteen universities famous for their research and teaching. They were ruled by princes and cities who refused to share their universities with a religious order led by Spaniards. Between 1548 and 1773 the Jesuits made sixteen attempts, from Turin in the north to Messina in Sicily, to found new universities or to become professors in existing universities. They had some successes, as they helped found four new universities and became professors of mathematics in three more universities. But they suffered nine total failures. The battles between universities, civil governments, and the Jesuits were memorable. Lay professors accused the Jesuits of teaching philosophy badly. The Jesuits charged that Italian professors delivered few lectures and skipped most of Aristotle. Behind the denunciations were profound differences about what universities should be. Italian universities were dominated by law and the Jesuits emphasized the humanities and theology. Nevertheless, the Society of Jesus had an impact. They added cases of conscience to the training of clergymen. They made four years of study the norm for a degree in theology. They offered a student-centered alternative to Italian universities that focused on research and ignored student misbehavior. Paul Grendler tells a new story based on years of research in a dozen archives. Anyone interested in the volatile mix of universities, religion, and politics will find this book fascinating and instructive, as will anyone who contemplates what it means to be a Catholic university.

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Catherine McAuley (1778–1841), the founder of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831, frequently gave oral instructions to the first Mercy community. Though she sometimes spoke explicitly about their religious vows, her words were always focused on the life, example, teachings, and evangelic spirit of Jesus Christ, emphasizing “resemblance” to him and fidelity to the calls of the Gospel. Her instructions have, therefore, a broad present-day relevance that can be inspiring and encouraging for all Christians. They are the “shining” words of a companion, a soul-friend, who offers guiding light to those who wend their pilgrim way toward the full embrace of God’s merciful reign. These instructions were initially written down, insofar as that was humanly possible, by sisters who were actually present and listening as she spoke. Some of their manuscripts were later copied into the long manuscript compilation that is the centerpiece of this book. Research also indicates that in preparing and giving her lectures, Catherine often relied on the content of previously published spiritual books, including works by Alphonsus Rodriguez, SJ, Louis Bourdaloue, SJ, and other well-known spiritual writers of the eighteenth and earlier centuries. The book’s endnotes illustrate this dependence. Catherine McAuley’s voice in these instructions is realistic, down-to- earth, humble, and compassionate. She is clearly dead-set against “froth” and “mere outward show” in one’s spiritual life. Like the practical Saint Teresa of Avila, whose life and thought she studied, she favors surrendering oneself now, with God’s help, to “ordinary,” every-day, possible holiness, rather than simply dreaming about extraordinary, but perhaps impossible, future sanctity. Her themes are some of the great themes of the Gospel: genuine humility and poverty of spirit, universal charity, self-denial, taking up one’s “cross,” and following Jesus Christ.

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St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles are distinctive and overlooked theological resources. These commentaries provide invaluable insights into the exigencies of the exercise of the episcopal office in bringing about the spiritual perfection of the faithful in Christ. The Ideal Bishop includes a review of the theology of the episcopacy found in St. Thomas’s principal contemporaries including Peter Lombard, St. Albert the Great, and St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. It also provides a conspectus of the same in the integrated corpus of Aquinas along with an introduction to St. Thomas’s lectures on the PE, their dating, the provenance of manuscripts, and their method of theological development. But the heart of this book is an examination of the theology and spirituality of the episcopacy found in the lectures on ­ Timothy, ’ Timothy, and Titus. Particular attention is devoted to Aquinas’s treatment of the nature, purpose, requisite virtues, disqualifying vices, special duties, and particular graces of the episcopal office.In his commentary, Aquinas identifies the episcopacy as a state of perfection wherein the prelate ought both to enjoy profound, mystical intimacy with Christ and to love and serve others by leading them to that same intimacy. In so doing, the prelate promotes ecclesial unity and secures his own salvation. Episcopal teaching, governing, and liturgical duties constitute the bishop’s fundamental mission which is established and empowered by the act of episcopal consecration received by the bishop elect. Aquinas grounds the efficacy of the bishop’s pastoral work on the quality of his interior life. Thus construed the episcopal office demands profound holiness, erudition, and pastoral skill. This work of Thomistic ressourcement substantively benefits the contemporary Church in her project of bringing the perennial truth of the Gospel more efficaciously to all, particularly with respect to the exercise of the episcopal office.

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A crucial topic in Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical dialogue is the natureand exercise of universal primacy in the church. In 1995, Pope JohnPaul II expressed the hope that pastors and theologians of both churchesmight seek ways in which the papal ministry could accomplish ""aservice of love recognized by all concerned"" (Ut Unum Sint). In thisshort and penetrating study, Paul McPartlan, a member of the internationalRoman Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue, presents aproposal, carefully argued both historically and theologically, for a primacyexercising a service of love in a reconciled church, West and East.McPartlan builds on the substantial foundation already laid in thedialogue for an understanding of the church in terms of the Eucharist.Eucharistic ecclesiology has been one of the most remarkable developmentsin the theological renewal of recent decades. Drawing particularlyon scriptural and patristic teaching, it offers a highly promising frameworkfor resolving this most sensitive and difficult of issues--recognizingthe bishop of Rome as the focal point and servant of the Eucharisticcommunion among bishops. Vatican II directed that those working forreconciliation between Catholics and Orthodox pay close attention to therelationships that pertained between the Eastern churches and the see ofRome before the split of 1054. McPartlan seeks to do just that, notably incorporatingthe teaching of the council on the role of the papacy to craft aproposal that may commend itself to Catholics and to Orthodox.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Paul McPartlan is Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenismat the Catholic University of America. He is a member of the International TheologicalCommission and the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialoguebetween the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. A contributor to therecently published Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria by theInternational Theological Commission, McPartlan also is the author of The EucharistMakes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue and Sacrament of Salvation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology.

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This exciting Civil War diary of a Redemptorist priest, Rev. James Sheeran, C.Ss.R., who was chaplain to the ­€th Louisiana Regiment of the Confederacy, is a national treasure. Irish-born Sheeran (1817-1881) was one of only a few dozen Catholic chaplains commissioned for the Confederacy and one of only two who kept a journal. Highlighting his exploits from August ­, ­…‘’ through April ’€, ­…‘“, the journal tells of all the major events of his life in abundant detail: on the battle field, in the hospitals, and among Catholics and Protestants whom he encountered in local towns, on the trains, and in the course of his ministrations. His ideological sympathies clearly rest with the Confederacy. The tone is forthright, even haughty, but captures in sure and steady fashion, both the personality of the man and the events to which he was a witness, especially the major battles. The journal is arguably the most unique narrative of the war written by a chaplain of any denomination and certainly is the most extensive.The journal permits us to hear a voice in Civil War studies that is seldom heard—that of a Catholic clergyman. The window given into the pastoral dimension of serving in America’s bloodiest war is further enhanced by a running commentary on politics, race, religion, and charitable works throughout the South. He also supplies an insight into incarceration as a prisoner of war at Fort McHenry, Baltimore. Last, because Sheeran was a frequent name dropper, tracking the movements of key military personnel or other personages of the war is made considerably easier through Sheeran’s references—all of which have been scrupulously documented in an easy-to-use index.

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Nostra Aetate is the shortest of the sixteen documents promulgated bythe Second Vatican Council. It is just five sections long. But the impact of those five paragraphs over the last five decades has been extraordinary. Fifty years after the promulgation of Nostra Aetate we must continue to examine closely the Church’s relationship to other faiths. The contents of this book originated in a conference at the Catholic University of America in May 2015. The essays and lectures contained within focus on the relationships of the Catholic Church with the other “Abrahamic” faiths, primarily Islam and Judaism. There is some discussion of the Asian religions as well. This volume, in structure, loosely follows the document Nostra Aetate itself. The first part of the book gives a broad view of the document and its importance. The following parts concentrates on the relationships between the Catholic Church and the Asian, Muslim and Jewish religions. The concluding section of the book surveys the reception Nostra Aetate received in various ecclesial and academic contexts.The essays in this volume provide an opportunity to reflect withprofound gratitude on the remarkable strides the Church has madein her dialogue with Muslims and Jews in the past fifty years. As wecontemplate the fruits this dialogue has borne and consider the future of these conversations, we can say with the Pslamist “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!”

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Robert of Arbrissel (d. 1117) once named Cluny among the chief holy places of Christendom—just after Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Rome. When Peter the Venerable (d. 1156) became the ninth abbot of Cluny in 1122, Cluny had thousands of monks in the mother abbey and her daughter cells, along with hundreds of affiliated houses and dependencies in England, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Holy Land. As a fierce advocate for Cluny against its detractors (which included the redoubtable Bernard of Clairvaux), Peter defended his Order at the same time that he reformed its customs.Peter the Venerable’s extensive literary legacy includes poems, a large epistolary collection, and polemical treatises. The first of his four major polemics targeted a Christian heresy, the Petrobrussians (Against the Petrobrusians); the rest took aim at Jews and Saracens. Catholic University of America Press has published his Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews. This present volume will make available in their entiretyPeter the Venerable’s twin polemics against Islam—A Summary of the entire heresy of the Saracens and Against the sect of the Saracens—as well as related correspondence. These works resulted from a sustained engagement with Islam begun during Peter’s journey to Spain in 1142–43. There the abbot commissioned a translation of sources from the Arabic, the so-called Toledan Collection, that include the Letter of a Saracen with a Christian Response (from the Apology of [Ps.] Al-Kindi); Fables of the Saracens (a potpourri of Islamic hadith traditions); and Robert of Ketton’s first Latin translation of the whole of the Qur’an. Thanks to Peter’s efforts, from the second half of the twelfth century Christians could acquire a far better understanding of the teachings of Islam, and Peter may rightly be viewed as the initiator of Islamic studies in the West.

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The problem of nature and grace lies at the heart of Christian theology. No dimension of divine revelation can be addressed without implicitly drawing reference to this issue. Analogies of Transcendence focuses on the central role that the analogies of being and faith play in developing a solution to the problem. These link God, as self-manifesting transcendence, to the human person as both fallen and justified, and to the material cosmos. Although the proposed solution draws on the work of Maréchal, de Lubac, Balthasar, and Rahner, it criticizes their approach for its underdeveloped analogies that diminish nature in grace’s engagement with it. In redressing this weakness, Fr. Fields adapts its solution to the intellectual struggle of our time. This volume examines the origins and structure of modernity, which, it asserts, has not been superseded and is therefore critical of ‘postmodernism,’ as well as of some ambiguous legacies of Thomism.The first part of Analogies of Transcendence probes selected understandings of nature and grace since Aquinas. These yield clues for a viable model, while also manifesting the deficiency of the theory of ‘pure nature,’ which contributes to fideism and secularism. More clues emerge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Vatican II and recent papal thought. The second part of the book constructs the model on the basis of the clues. It conceives the orders of ‘creation’ and ‘redemption’ as a continuum, and it develops a theology of nature. The third part then applies the model to other problems. These include reimagining the role of Christian art, revising the Thomist doctrine of God, and defending Christianity’s unique claim in relation to other religions. Throughout, this argument, both historical and systemic, enters the dialogue with the tradition, from the Fathers, to Augustine and the medieval, to Trent and the Baroque. Analogies of Transcendence also brings into sympathetic conversation the two often estranged titans of contemporary Catholicism, Balthasar and Rahner.

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Although Japanese scholars have acclaimed Baba Bunk? (1718–1759) asthe most outstanding essayist and public speaker of the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), Western historians of Japan have long ignored him. This is because Bunk?’s very existence contradicts the historical narrative that they have constructed. According to that narrative, Christianity in Japan ceased to exist by 1640, except in small, scattered communities, centered mainly on the Nagasaki area.Through a close critical analysis of Baba Bunk?’s often humorous,but always biting, satirical essays a new picture of the hidden world of Christianity in eighteenth-century Japan emerges—a picture that contradicts the generally-held belief among Western historians that the Catholic mission in Japan ended in failure. A Christian Samurai will surprise many readers when they discover that Christian moral teachings not only survived the long period of persecution but influenced Japanese society throughout the Tokugawa period.Bunk?’s bold assertion that a representation of the Eucharist wouldbe more appropriate as a symbol for Japan than the coat of arms of the emperor or the insignia of the shogun would eventually lead to his arrest, trial, and execution. The legal proceedings against him reveal the government’s embarrassment at the failure of its attempts to eliminate Christianity.This historical and literary study focuses on the personal as well as the public lives of many of the historical figures who were prominent in politics, philosophy, religion, and culture in the eighteenth century. The decadent state of Buddhism, the decline of Confucianism, and the popularity of the Yoshiwara “pleasure” quarters are some of the topics that illuminate this new history of early modern Japan and of the survival of Christianity.The first complete English translation of Baba Bunk?’s Contemporary Edo: An Album of One Hundred Monsters is included as an appendix.

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Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) hailed Origen of Alexandria (185–254) as a holy priest, a gifted homilist, a heroic Christian, and a celebrated exegete and theologian of the ancient Church. In this book Thomas Scheck presents one of the fruits of Erasmus’s endeavors in the field of patristic studies (a particularly neglected field of scholarshipwithin Erasmus studies) by providing the first English translation, annotated and thoroughly introduced, of Erasmus final work, the Prefaces to his Edition of Origen’s writings (1536). Originally published posthumously two months after Erasmus’s death, the work surveys Origen of Alexandria’s life, writings, preaching, and contribution to the Catholic Church. The staggering depth and breadth of Erasmus’s learning are exhibited here, as well as the maturity of his theological reflections, which in many ways anticipate the irenicism of the Second Vatican Council with respect to Origen. Erasmus presents Origen as a marvelous doctor of the ancient Church who made a tremendous contribution to the Catholic exegetical tradition and who lived a saintly life.Scheck’s translation of Erasmus’s prefaces is prefaced by four substantial chapters of introductory material, outlining Erasmus’s program for theological renewal, a survey of Origen’s life and works from a modern perspective, a discussion of Origen’s legacy in the Church as an exegete and theologian (focusing particularly on Origen’s influence on St. Jerome), and the immediate 16th century background of Erasmus’s Edition of Origen. These chapters are followed by the translation itself, to which is then appended a lengthy appendix chapter that discusses Erasmus’s own legacy in the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

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Perfection in Death brings together topics—Christian martyrdom, virtue ethics, the “ethics of the end of life”—that have each seen a flowering of academic interest in the past two decades. Patrick M. Clark shows that these topics are in fact closely connected by examining one of the pre-eminent masters of Christian ethics, Thomas Aquinas.Perfection in Death compares and contrasts the relationship between conceptions of courage and death in the thought of Aquinas and his ancient philosophical sources. At the center of this investigation is Aquinas’ identification of martyrdom as the paradigmatic act of courage as well as “the greatest proof of the perfection of charity.” Such a portrayal of “perfection in death” bears some resemblance to the ancient tradition of “noble death”, but departs from it in decisive ways. Clark argues that this departure can only be fully understood in light of an accompanying transformation of the metaphysical and anthropological framework underlying ancient theories of virtue. Perfection in Death aims to provide a new, theological account of this paradigm shift in light of contemporary Thomistic scholarship.Perfection in Death concludes with the relevance of the change in framework manifested by Aquinas’s thought to recent and future trajectories in Catholic moral theology. In particular, treating Christ as moral exemplar has been proposed by scholars seeking a theological approach to the virtues that is more closely linked to Christology. Clark critically examines the promise and limitations of exemplarist models of virtue for moral theology.

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This important volume investigates the many forms of Catholic activism in Latin America between the 1890s and 1962 (from the publication of the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum to the years just prior to the Second Vatican Council). It argues that this period saw a variety of lay and clerical responses to the social changes wrought by industrialization, political upheavals and mass movements, and increasing secularization. Spurred by these local developments as well as by initiatives from the Vatican, and galvanized by national projects of secular state-building, Catholic activists across Latin America developed new ways of organizing in order to effect social and political change within their communities.Additionally, Catholic responses to the nation-state during this period, as well as producing profound social foment within local and national communities, gave rise to a multitude of transnational movements that connected Latin American actors to counterparts in North America and Europe. The Catholic Church presents a particularly cohesive example of a transnational religious network. In this framework, Catholic organizations at the local, national, and transnational level were linked via pastoral initiatives to the papacy, while maintaining autonomy at the local level.In studies of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic renewal in Europe and the Americas, scholars have rarely given ample analysis of the translocal and transnational interconnections within the Catholic Church, which became critical to the energy, plurality, and endurance of Latin American Catholic activism leading up to, and moving through, the Second Vatican Council. By studying Latin America as a whole, Local Church, Global Church examines a larger degree of transnational and translocal complexity, and its investigative lens spans regional, hemispheric, transatlantic, and international borders. Furthermore, it sheds new light on the complex and multifarious forms of Catholic activism, introducing a fascinating cast of actors from lay organizations, missionary groups, devotional societies, and student activists.

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Harold Frederic was for a long time known primarily as a writer of New York regional fiction and historical novels. His most outstanding and influential novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) represents the first extended narrative in US literature of Irish-Catholic entry into American life. In 1995, a year short of that novel’s centenary, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “WHAT a wonderful novel is The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Though raised in a German-American, Methodist environment in the Mohawk Valley of New York state, Frederic became intrigued with Ireland’s people, politics, and history when post-Famine Irish began arriving in his hometown of Utica in the 1860s and 1870s.The Martyrdom of Mave and other Irish Stories gathers for the first time all of the Irish work Harold Frederic completed in his lifetime. He planned more, but died of a stroke in his early forties, in England, where he was employed as The New York Times London Correspondent. He had earlier written his publisher that he had been “toiling for years” on the archeology of the Iveagha (present Mizen) Peninsula in Cork, and that the projected book of historical fiction underway would be unique. The Martyrdom of Maev and Other Irish Stories brings together the four sixteenth-century stories that Frederic finished and published in magazines in 1895–96, and two of his stories set in the west of Ireland of the second-half of the nineteenth century.Taken together the stories track the ramifications of the Elizabethan invasions as they extend to the famine, evictions, and humiliations still plaguing the country just before the rise of Parnell. The dramatic title story involves young romance caught in the political unrest that begot the Land-League and portrays as well the adamant, menacing, sexual prohibitions prevailing in the rural Ireland of the late nineteenth century. Others portray life within the remote Gaelic clans of late medieval Ireland. All the stories reveal Frederic’s brilliant prose talent—“The Path of Murtogh,” for example, a starkly primitive revenge tale, is as dark and shocking as anything by Edgar Allen Poe.For those who like Harold Frederic’s fiction, or who love dramatic tales set in Ireland, this collection makes for compelling reading.

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Enthusiasm for the operas of composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) flourished in fin-de-siècle France, fed by fascination for the medieval history and literature that inspired his work. By the 1890s, ""pilgrimages"" to Wagner's burial city of Bayreuth, Germany, home of a regular festival of his work, were a rite of passage for musicians and the upper crust. French admirers promoted Wagner's ideas in journals such as La Revue wagnérienne, launched in 1885. These writings fueled a mystique about Wagner, his music, and his beliefs.Philosopher Marcel Hébert developed his Religious Experience in the Work of Richard Wagner (1895) from this background of sustained popular interest in Wagner, an interest that had intensified with the return of his operas to the Paris stage. Newspaper debates about the impact of Wagner's ideas on French society often stressed the links between Wagner and religion. These debates inspired works like Hébert's, intended to explain the complex myth and allegory in Wagner's work and to elucidate it for a new generation of French spectators.Hébert's discussion of Wagner, written for a popular audience, might seem an anomaly in light of his better-known academic philosophical writings. Yet Wagner's use of myth and symbol, as well as his ability to write musical dramas that evoked emotional as well as cognitive response, resonated with Hébert's symbolist approach to dogma, and the appeal to religious experience characteristic of Modernist thinkers in general. By writing about Wagner to discuss these themes, Hébert caught the interest of the educated readership who shared his concern about the clash of ancient faith and modern thinking, and who were receptive to his argument that both could be reconciled through his revisionist approach. Thus, Hébert turned Wagner and his work into a vehicle for popularizing the Modernist vision of framing religion through experience as well as knowledge.

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How do we understand the notions of the beautiful, the true, and the good, and how do they help us to know, to understand? Philosopher Robert E. Wood considers appeal respectively to the heart, to the intellect, and to the will. In our minds, their interplay beckons each of us to assimilate one’s past, and look forward towards further endeavours. They also set up what Wood calls a ""dialogical imperative"" to speak from where we stand and to stand in place of the Other, the person facing us, as well. The order follows Plato's claim that the love of Beauty is the light of the Good that grounds our pursuit of the True.Human experience, according to Wood, has a ""magnetically bipolar"" character, rooted in organically based desires. Yet that experience is aimed, through the all-encompassing notion of Being, at the absolute totality of what is. The notion of Being affords a distance that grounds both understanding and choice. Culture enters in as well. Its developments, initially empty in relation to the totality, come to occupy the space of meaning between the here-and-now and the totality. Each human being's genetic endowments interplay with one's cultural shaping. Taking them up, each individual sets up a unique field of attractions and repulsions belonging to the heart as one’s radically individual center.Wood proceeds from this phenomenological basis to consider key thinkers from Heraclitus and Parmenides, to Heidegger, Buber, and Marcel. He seeks, in this collection of essays from the past forty years, to develop a ""fusion of horizons"" with them, as part of an on-going broader philosophical dialogue that constitutes the history of thought, now and to come.

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Genesis 16 tells of Abraham conceiving Ishmael with his wife Sarai's servant Hagar. Dominican Friar Richard Fishacre (ca. 1200-1248) used this Biblical narrative to explore the relationship of the natural and Divine sciences. Fishacre believed that the theologian must first study the world, before he could be fruitful as a theologian. How do the natural sciences, in short, help us better understand the Scriptures?Fishacre, like his contemporaries Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) looked at ways that the newly-translated natural philosophy of Aristotle, with its empirical emphasis and a belief that knowledge begins in sense perception, could supplement the more otherworldly Neoplatonic approach to philosophy and the sciences inherited from St. Augustine. Hagar's Vocation is a collection of fifteen essays which focus on the contributions of Richard Fishacre, the first Dominican theologian at Oxford to have left a written legacy.The questions addressed by Fishacre include his arguments for God's existence, the multi-faceted problem of the human soul, the eternity of the world, the nature of light, the free choice of the will, angels and ""spiritual matter,"" interiority and self-knowledge, undoing the past and God's absolute power, the magical arts, and the role of philosophy in a theology of creation.R. James Long, the world's leading authority on Fishacre, in this volume promises to establish this hitherto little studied English friar as a major figure in the development of a learned or philosophically grounded theology that remains the great achievement of High Scholasticism.

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Plague and Pleasure is a lively popular history that introduces a new hypothesis about the impetus behind the cultural change in Renaissance Italy. The Renaissance coincided with a period of chronic, constantly recurring plague, unremitting warfare and pervasive insecurity. Consequently, people felt a need for mental escape to alternative, idealized realities, distant in time or space from the unendurable present but made vivid to the imagination through literature, art, and spectacle.Pope Pius II experienced both plague and war during his reign and he exhibited many escapist behaviors typical of his period: the building of his “Shangri-La” at Pienza, his constant sight-seeing travels, his passion for natural scenery or Roman remains, his public spectacles, andthe humanism that immersed him in an idealized Roman past. This see-saw mentality of the period could plunge into melancholy when facing harsh realities and then propel them into ecstasies of makebelieve to counter their dispair.Plague and Pleasure uses the life and times of Pope Pius II as the framework for presenting a view of the Renaissance that the public can understand and appreciate and which may at least narrow the gap between the past known to scholars and that known to the public they ultimately serve.

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Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells of the creation of the world and our dominion over it. But is this the whole story? The planet on which we live is ecologically fragile, and all people of good will have a responsibility to take care of this most precious gift. During his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly drew attention to the environment, whether in terms of preserving it such as his address concerning Amazonia and his letter regarding the Arctic or distributing its vital resources such as water more equitably. What is more, during Benedict's papacy, the Vatican became the first, and remains the only, carbon-neutral country in the world.This book gathers together the audiences, addresses, letters, and homilies of Benedict on a wide-ranging set of topics that deal with the world about us. The major themes and connections he explores are creation and the natural world; the environment, science, and technology; and hunger, poverty, and the earth's resources.In these pages, Benedict insists that if we truly desire peace, we must be increasingly conscious of and nurture all of creation. Furthermore, he argues convincingly that as our love of God should cause us to protect the environment, so should our heightened sense of appreciation of the natural world draw us closer to God. Benedict speaks out against the spread of nuclear weapons, threats to biodiversity, and in favor of alternative energy. He urges sustainable development, equitable distribution of food and water, and an end to hunger.This book is a valuable resource for all those who seek to understand more fully the relationships among the environment, Catholic social teaching, and theology. Whether speaking to a vast crowd, meeting with a small group of scientists, or writing letters to world leaders, Benedict has shown a clear path towards a theologically cogent concern for the planet on which we live.

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Among the earliest writings in Syriac literature is the collection of 30 memre or discourses entitled the Book of Steps or Liber Graduum, mostly probably written in the late fourth century inside the Persian Empire (modern Iraq). The author, who deliberately withheld his name, wrote extensively on the spiritual life and exploits of two groups of committed Christians - the upright and the perfect- that flourished in a period prior to the development of monasticism. Deeply immersed in the exegesis of the Bible as a means of defining and guiding an ascetical lifestyle, the author defends celibacy, absolute poverty, the vocations of prayer, teaching and conflict resolution, as well as insisting that the perfect should not work. In an unparalleled manner for ascetical literature, by the end of the collection the author encourages the predominantly lay ""upright group"" to keep striving for the status of perfection as he is disappointed in the failings of the senior group he calls ""the perfect"".This collection of sixteen new critical essays offers fresh perspectives on the Book of Steps, adding greater detail and depth to our understanding of the work’s intriguing picture of early Syriac asceticism as practiced within the life of a local church and community. The contributors offer perspectives on the book’s historical context in the midst of the Persian-Roman conflicts, the influence of Manichaeism, dietary images, sexuality and marriage, biblical exegesis and the use of Pauline writings and theology, as well as explorations of the Book of Steps’ distinctive approach to the ascetical life.

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The US Supreme Court’s decisions concerning the first amendment are hotly debated, and the controversy shows no signs of abating as additional cases come before the court. Adding much-needed historical and philosophical background to the discussion, Richard J. Regan reconsiders some of the most important Supreme Court cases regarding the establishment clause and the free exercise of religion.Governmental aid to church-affiliated elementary schools and colleges; state-sponsored prayer and Bible reading; curriculum that includes creationism; tax exemption of church property; publicly sponsored Christmas displays - these and other notable cases are discussed in Regan’s chapters on the religious establishment clause. On the topic of the free-exercise clause, Regan considers such subjects as the value of religious freedom, as well as the place of religious beliefs in public schooling and government affairs. Important cases concerning conscientious objection to war, regulation of religious organisations and personnel, and western traditions of conscience are also examined.This book, written for students of law, political science, and religion, presents the relevant case law in chronological order. The addition of the historical context and Regan’s philosophical discussion enhances our understanding of these influential cases.

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What is the nature of political activity? This question has vexed political thinkers since Plato wrote Statesman and remains challenging today. Contemporary intellectual categories obstruct individuals from understanding politics as a distinct species of activity with its own realm of expertise, modes and ends. Instead politics is poorly directed by notions of achieving a complete or final end of affairs. It tends to be conflated with other types of activities and realms of life, including economics, power-seeking, and law and procedure. As a result, politics often is untethered from morality.Taking as their departure point the political-philosophical analyses of German scholar Tilo Schabert, the philosophical and empirical essays in this volume invite the reader to move beyond the sterile dichotomy of political activity as either pure will or as folded into a more manageable activity. The contributors argue that politics is a highly creative human activity that eludes capture within a final and static analytical framework, concluding that ethical political action is indeed part of the essence of politics.

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What does it mean when we speak of human dignity? What challenges does human dignity confront in our culture today? What is the relationship between contemporary understandings of human dignity and the ancient Christian doctrine of imago Dei, the view that human beings are created in ""the image and likeness of God""?This book pursues these and related questions in the form of an ecumenical ""trialogue"" by leading scholars from the three major Christian traditions: John Behr from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Russell Hittinger from the Catholic, and C. Ben Mitchell from the Protestant tradition. The book is the first of its kind to foster an ecumenical conversation around teachings of imago Dei and present-day understandings of human dignity. The three chapter-essays, the editor's introduction, and the afterword by Lutheran theologian Gilbert Meilaender draw from a wide array of sources, including Scripture, patristic works, ancients creeds, medieval and Thomistic writings, papal encyclicals, Protestant confessional statements, the works of modern theologians, and more. Imago Dei will serve as an indispensable resource for those wishing to deepen their grasp of the theological bases for Christian views of human dignity, as well as for those who believe that Christ's words ""that they be one"" (John 17:21) remain a theological imperative today. The combination of ethical inquiry and ecumenical collaboration makes this timely book a unique and compelling contribution to present-day Christian thought.

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The scholarly tradition of the Presocratics is the beginning of the ""Greek Miracle,"" the remarkable flowering of arts and sciences in ancient Greece from the 600s to 400s BC. Greek thought turned from pagan religion and the mytho-poetic work of Hesiod and Homer, to inquiry into the natures of things, to the world and our place in it. This tradition, starting with Thales (b. 624 BC) and proceeding through Democritus (d. 370 BC), is the unifying theme of this volume. The contributors, renowned experts in their various fields of philosophy, provide introductions to the Presocratic philosophers and discuss how this philosophical school was appropriated and treated by later philosophers.Joe McCoy opens the volume with a survey of the historical developments within Presocratic philosophy, as well as its subsequent reception. The essays begin with Charles Kahn's account of the role of Presocractic philosophy in classical philosophy. Individual philosophers are then discussed, namely, Anaximander by Kurt Pritzl, Heraclitus by Kenneth Dorter, and Pythagoreans by Carl A. Huffman. Next are chapters on Xenophanes by James Lesher, Parmenides by Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Empedocles by Patricia Curd, and Anaxagoras by Daniel Graham. The collection concludes with an examination of the reception of the Presocratics in early modern and late modern philosophy by John C. McCarthy and Richard Velkley, respectively.The philosophy of the Presocratics still governs scholarly discussion today. This important volume grapples with a host of philosophical issues and philological and historical problems inherent in interpreting Presocratic philosophers.

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Pope John Paul II was a great defender of truly vulnerable human beings throughout his life, affirming their personhood consistently and powerfully. In John Paul II on the Vulnerable, Jeffrey Tranzillo provides a lucid introduction to John Paul II’s philosophical and theological understanding of the human person. Unlike other writings on the topic, Tranzillo’s explicit aim is to highlight an aspect of John Paul’s work that has been largely neglected until now. He shows convincingly that John Paul’s seminal reflections on the human being as a personal agent progressed over time to include human beings at even the most vulnerable stages of development or decline. With this advance in thought, the pontiff began to declare eloquently that the vulnerable are capable of contributing to and enriching the human community through their activity. An engaging overview of John Paul II’s life, thought, and work introduces the book and provides readers with helpful background material. It shows that John Paul’s interest in, and lofty regard for, the human person is rooted in his strong Catholic faith and in the extraordinary life experiences that he interpreted in its light. Following this is an examination of his principal works on the human person, emphasizing their implications for vulnerable human beings as persons and actors. Tranzillo considers this theme in the light of selected Christological texts of John Paul II and then reflects on John Paul’s portrayal of the vulnerable in his social encyclicals and Evangelium Vitae. A final chapter develops the anthropological underpinnings of John Paul’s thought on the radically vulnerable and their personal agency.

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Few Western thinkers have been more influential and less known than Peter Damian (1007-1072). After centuries of neglect and misinterpretation, the man who emerges from Patricia Ranft’s exhaustive investigation of his writings will surprise many. Immoderate in rhetoric yet moderate in teachings, Peter Damian is a man for the ages. Damian began his career in the schools of northern Italy, but soon joined a community of hermits at Fonte Avellana. His genius was too brilliant to hide, however, and he was called forth from solitude to fill the roles of religious reformer, theologian, adviser, cardinal, preacher, spiritual director, and papal legate. These roles brought him in contact with the pressing issues of mid-eleventh-century Italy. Fortunately, he recorded much of what he did and thought. In many areas he broke with accepted practices, abandoned old methods, and offered innovative approaches to problems. The previously unrecognized social theology at the core of his thought contributed much to the culture developed during this crucial period of Western history. In the first comprehensive work based wholly on critical editions of Damian’s writings, Ranft explores all 180 letters of Damian and his vita of Romuald. She highlights Damian’s ideas across a range of topics— stewardship, social responsibilities, community, class, gender, ethics, ecology, justice, sexuality, avarice, authority, individualism, clerical behavior, and labor—and shows how his ideas influenced the shape of Western culture.

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The modern world is dominated by sport. The Olympics and the World Cup are seen by billions of television viewers from around the globe. When Pope Benedict travels to foreign countries, typically the only venues large enough to hold the crowds for a papal Mass are sports arenas, such as London’s Wembley Stadium. In response to the call of popes and the Second Vatican Council to read the signs of the times, Sport and Christianity explores the connections between these two seemingly disparate phenomena. It reflects on what the fascination for sport reveals about the human person and to what degree sporting activities are compatible with, and can even advance, the church’s mission. The book discusses the attitude toward sports presented in the Old and New Testaments and in the writings of the church fathers. This leads naturally to a study of Christian anthropology , the relationship between God and man, as well as the connection between the body and the soul. There is an extensive look at sports as viewed by recent popes, including Pope Pius XII—who denounced the use of drugs in sports as early as 1955—as well as Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. The editors pose provocative questions, such as what is Christian about sport, and how can we make sport more Christian? Ideally teamwork, pursuit of a common goal, and trying for excellence are laudable, but winning at all costs or the subjugation of Sundays to football are not. Last, given that some countries send priests as chaplains to the Olympic games and some professional sports teams have chaplains, there is a section on how to give pastoral advice to those who work in the sports professions.

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The Psalms, used as hymns for liturgy, have also been read as guidance for the spiritual life. Composed between 364 and 367, Hilary of Poitiers’ commentary on the Psalms was the last of his writings before his death. In what appears to be a substantial but conventional commentary, Hilary also employs the Psalms to explore three progressive stages of the Christian life—baptism, resurrection, and transformation—then proposes a complex, integrated model for the Christian life. He makes use of cultural and theological resources acquired throughout his education and from his encounters as a Christian bishop in the mid-fourth century. In this examination of Hilary’s treatise, Paul C. Burns discusses the intended audience of Hilary’s text and the use of the Psalms by Christians in the fourth century. He identifies Hilary’s distinctive perspectives; his dependence on Origen; his Latin theological and exegetical tradition; and the creative directions of Hilary’s thought.

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St. Thomas Aquinas produced his Commentary on the Romans near the end of his life while working on the Summa theologiae and commenting on Aristotle. The doctrinal richness of Paul’s Letter to the Romans was well known to the church fathers, including Origen and Augustine, on whom Aquinas drew for his commentary. With this rich collection of essays by leading scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, Aquinas’s commentary will become a major resource for ecumenical biblical and theological discussion. Authored by theologians, historians, and biblical scholars, Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas contributes to a historical reconstruction of Aquinas’s exegesis and theology by addressing such topics as: the Holy Spirit, the Church, the faith of Abraham, worship, preaching, justification, sin and grace, predestination, Paul’s apostolic vocation, the Jewish people, human sexuality, the relationship of flesh and spirit in the human person, the literal sense of Scripture, Paul’s use of the Old Testament, and the relationship of Aquinas’s commentary on Romans to his Summa theologiae. This volume fits within the contemporary reappropriation of St. Thomas Aquinas, which emphasises his use of Scripture and the teachings of the church fathers without neglecting his philosophical insight. Contributors are Bernhard Blankenhorn, Markus Bockmuehl, Hans Boersma, John F. Boyle, Edgardo Colón-Emericr, Holly Taylor Coolman, Adam Cooper, Michael Dauphinais, Gilles Emery, Scott W. Hahn, Mary Healy, John A. Kincaid, Matthew Levering, Bruce Marshall, Charles Raith II, Geoffrey Wainwright, Michael Waldstein, and Robert Louis Wilken. In On the Cessation of the Laws, Grosseteste draws out the theological, christological, and soteriological issues implicit in the question of the relationship between the Old and New Covenants.

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The Bible on the Question of Homosexuality addresses the hotly debated topic of whether the Bible condemns homosexuality by a close reading of the biblical texts without taboo or prejudice, without personal or church interpretation. The authors--three Christian exegetes, two Catholic and one Protestant--are interested in discovering what the Bible says about homosexuality. They take seriously the world from which the biblical text emerges, and discuss the hermeneutical challenges raised by scripture. They deal with the full range of issues raised by homosexuality in the Bible including Jesus' own sexual orientation and his relationship with the Beloved Disciple. Their conclusions are modest though their comprehensive overview is significant. Innocent Himbaza begins the work by looking at the entire range of Old Testament texts and examining the often-cited discussions of homosexuality: Sodom and Gomorrah, the outrage at Gibeah (Judges 19), the relationship between Jonathan and David, and the relationship between Saul and David. Next Adrien Schenker addresses the question: Why did the Law of Moses forbid homosexual relations (Leviticus 18 and 20)? Schenker also examines such issues as the death penalty for those caught in homosexual relationships within the proper historical context and the significance of these Levitical passages within the perspective of biblical theology. ,p>The third and final section of the book looks at homosexuality within the New Testament. Jean-Baptiste Edart first examines the Pauline texts (1 Corinthians 6 and 1Timothy 1; Romans 1). He then examines Jesus and the healing of the centurion's slave in Luke 7, Jesus' relationship with the Beloved Disciple, Jesus' attitude toward homosexual acts, and finally the commandment of love. Though many books are available on the topic of homosexuality and the Bible, most advance a particular ideology. This book, while not a moral treatise on homosexuality, intends only to clarify, without a predetermined interpretation, what the Bible actually says on the subject.

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The first English translation of the authoritative Leonine edition of Q. 3 of St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Potentia Dei. It includes a new English translation of Question 3, in which Thomas takes up questions and ideas about divine and human freedom.

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Through their teachings and writings, these seven theologians created a profound scholastic expression of what Christ’s transfiguration was and what it meant for Christians in their day.

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This translation of Erich Meuthen's well-known biography of Nicholas of Cusa presents the foremost summary of Cusanus's life and thought. From its original edition in 1964 through its seventh edition in 1992, Meuthen's sketch has found an appreciative audience. As Meuthen takes readers through Cusanus's life (1401-1464) they will be amazed that, in an age when writers set down every word with quill and ink, and one traversed every mile on land by foot or horse, Cusanus covered thousands of miles, maintained detailed administration of church affairs, rose in rank to cardinal, served as a papal legate, and still found time to write penetrating treatises such as The Catholic Concordance, Learned Ignorance, The Vision of God, and The Peace of Faith. While rendering Meuthen's language into smooth prose that still reflects his style and intent, the translators have added an introduction that describes the historical context for Cusanus. New also is a glossary of terms, as well as an updated bibliography of Cusanus research compiled by Hans Gerhard Senger, and a tribute to Meuthen by Morimichi Watanabe.

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Though the figures associated with the Modernist crisis in Roman Catholicism are normally viewed as looking forward in terms of critical history and philosophy, they also looked back in history to the church's mystical tradition. ""Modernists and Mystics"" is the first book to tell the story of the Modernist turn to the mystical. It focuses on four diverse modernist-era figures - Friedrich von Hugel, Maurice Blondel, Henri Bremond, and Alfred Loisy - and explores their understanding of mysticism and their relationship to mystics. In the six original essays included in this volume, the authors discuss how von Hugel, Blondel, Bremond, and Loisy all found inspiration in the great mystics of the past. These figures drew inspiration from Fenelon, seeing parallels between the Quietist controversy in which he was deeply involved and the crisis affecting Catholicism in their own day. For them, the reaction against Quietism represented the beginning of a definitive narrowing and suffocating of Catholicism as a living religious tradition. This constriction and hyper-intellectualization of the tradition culminated in the established neoscholasticism of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century manuals of theology. These Modernists opposed the marginalization of the 'mystical element' in religion as well as the consequences that followed from it, and they argued for the restoration of the mystical in the Catholicism of their own time. ""Modernists and Mystics"" also locates these theologians in the larger debates within Catholicism and within the secular academy. Albert Houtin's approach to mysticism in his biography of Cecile Bruyere of Solesmes represents a reductive reading of the phenomenon, indebted to the theories of J.M. Charcot. Loisy's debate with Henri Bergson in the 1930s provides a sense of how mysticism was viewed in the French University. Both von Hugel and Bremond contributed to the widening of Catholic horizons regarding the prevalence and nature of mystical experience, while Blondel contributed the perspective of a Catholic philosopher. The contributions of these figures enrich our understanding of debates over mysticism in the early twentieth century as well as our appreciation of the complexity of the Modernist movement.

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Composed of ten original essays written with the goal of exploring the thought of one of the most significant German philosophers of the 20th century, namely, Josef Pieper (1904-1997), this book is the only systematic treatment of his expansive philosophy to date. It brings his philosophy into dialogue with that of other important 20th century philosophers and schools of thought. The breadth of this discussion is itself a tribute to Josef Pieper. Not only do the essays seek to make better known the thought of this significant man, but they also deepen an understanding of some of the philosophical problems and challenges of our time. Some of the subjects discussed are, among others, the notion of totalitarianism and the question of what constitutes authentic culture; the intrinsic value of leisure and its relation to the total world of 'work'; the dimension of virtue in the on-going realization of the human person; the rational foundation of hope in confrontation with incomprehensible violence (such as that of Auschwitz, Burundi, and the events of September 11); the relation between faith and reason in a secular society; and the legitimacy of tradition.

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Around 1147 the bishop of Chartres directed Geoffrey Grossus, a monk of Tiron Abbey, to write the life of its founder Bernard of Abbeville (ca. 1050-1116) in an effort to further his canonization. Although Geoffrey Grossus blithely borrowed from other writings on saints' lives to further his hagiographical purpose, he presented an erudite, action-filled, and sympathetic portrait of the ascetic founder of an increasingly prominent and wealthy congregation. Bernard was a reformed Benedictine monk, abbot of Saint-Cyprien of Poitiers, and claustral prior of its daughter abbey, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe. Deposed at the instigation of Abbot Hugh of Cluny shortly after his installation in 1100, Bernard traveled to Rome to make a spirited defense of Saint-Cyprien's independence before the papal curia. He alternated cloistered life with unauthorized retreats with Vital of Savigny's hermit community, supporting himself by woodworking and ironwork, and offshore on the pirate-infested Chausey Island. On tours with Vital and Robert of Arbrissel, he risked his life preaching clerical celibacy in Normandy. In old age he founded Tiron Abbey in Perche near Chartres and became known as a healer and visionary. Although Bernard worked few miracles and was never canonized, he was venerated as a holy man who was deeply involved in many aspects of the religious reformation of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Tiron expanded into a large congregation under royal patronage with abbeys and priories in modern France and the British Isles, where it preceded the Cistercians by a decade in Wales, Scotland, and on the Southampton Water. Tironian abbeys and priories survived until the English Reformation and the French Revolution. The first English translation of the ""Vita Bernardi"", this book makes accessible to medieval and religious historians one of the more interesting and lively stories of the twelfth century.

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The eucharistic crisis of the eleventh century posed the greatest challenge to the Church's understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament until the Reformation. The eucharistic symbolism of ""Berengarius of Tours"", which was at the heart of the controversy, was challenged first by Lanfranc of Canterbury and then by his student Guitmund of Aversa. Both authors countered with a vigorous defense of the Church's traditional belief that the body of Christ in the Eucharist is the same body that was born of the Virgin Mary, now risen and in glory. In this first English translation of Lanfranc's ""De corpore et sanguine Domini adversus Berengarium"", the reader learns firsthand both the history of the crisis and the doctrinal issues in question. Lesser known than Lanfranc's work, but of greater doctrinal significance, is Guitmund's ""De corporis et sanguinis Christi veritate in eucharistia"". In Guitmund's work, one finds a treatment of the doctrinal issues involved that is not only more systematic than that of Lanfranc, but far more speculative in character, and one that presents a fascinating vision of the Eucharist as a continuation of Christ's Easter appearances. Such a vision is one that the translator calls the species domini or an 'appearance of the Lord'; for it interprets the doctrine of the Real Presence in a way that identifies it as physical contact with the celestial Christ, of the same genre as the post-Resurrection appearances to his followers. The translations of both Lanfranc's and Guitmund's works, along with extensive commentary and notes, make this volume of the ""Mediaeval Continuation of the Fathers of the Church"" series an important study in the history of the development of eucharistic theology.

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The essays presented in this volume are among the most wide-ranging, intellectually rich, and diverse of Christopher Dawson's reflections on the relations of faith and culture. In them, he explores the contact between the spiritual life of the individual and the social and economic organization of modern culture. His focus ranges from the passing of industrialism to the Catholic understanding of the human person, to Islamic mysticism, to a Christian account of sexuality.Dawson argues that modern Western culture is unique in its tendency to ignore its spiritual roots and its once close contact with nature and tradition, and to substitute for them an impersonal economic and materialist organization of mass society. In these essays, he warns against the increasingly secular preoccupations of modern sociological accounts of European culture and insists that they require the supplement and corrective of theology and philosophy. But he is equally insistent on the dangers of a false spiritualism that ignores emerging sociological insights.Widely praised as one of the most important Catholic historians of the twentieth century, Christopher Dawson, in all of his writings, masterfully brings various disciplinary perspectives and historical sources into a complex unity of expression and applies them to concrete conditions of modern society. ""Enquiries into Religion and Culture"" includes an introduction by Robert Royal.

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Juan Valera's ""The Illusions of Doctor Faustino"" (Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino) came out in 1875, one year after the resounding success of his ""Pepita Jimenez"". One of the author's contemporaries, the critic Manuel de la Revilla, considered it among the most important novels of his time and compared it to Flaubert's ""L'Education"" sentimentale on account of the negative influence of Romanticism on the protagonist's character and life.Don Faustino Lopez de Mendoza, scion of an illustrious but impoverished family of the highest nobility, believes himself destined for great accomplishments in the literary world, sees himself as a poet of the first rank, and immerses himself in grand, if not grandiose, illusions.While living in a provincial Andalusian town and dreaming of triumphing in Madrid's artistic circles, Faustino embarks on a discovery of love, anguishes over his impecunious state, and engages in endless self-analysis. Love - or, at all events, a monetarily advantageous marriage - seems to go hand in glove with turning his illusions and dreams into triumphs and realities.He falls for Costanza and is rejected by her; he falls for Maria and she eludes him; he thinks he falls for Rosita then callously scorns her after meeting up again with Maria, who flees from him after a night of lovemaking. Reduced to financial ruin by a revengeful Rosita, Faustino betakes himself to the Spanish capital. Many years later all three women, as well as his daughter Irene (by Maria), converge in Madrid, and how he extricates himself from each relationship and meets his sad end constitutes the denouement of this searching novel that depicts the deleterious effects of the Romantic malaise that swept through western Europe in the early part of the nineteenth century.

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Theodore of Mopsuestia was hailed in his lifetime as one of the outstanding theologians and bishops in the second half of the fourth and early fifth centuries. He was then and still is respected as the preeminent spokesperson for the School of Antioch's unwavering defense of Christ's full humanity and its exegetical approach to the Scriptures. But within ten years after his death in 428, his enemies began to attack him openly, eventually succeeding in condemning both his works and person at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. He has since been declared by some as the ""Father of Nestorianism."" In this book, Frederick G. McLeod first establishes the principal influences that shaped Theodore's exegetical outlook. He then draws out the typology that Theodore sees present between Adam and Christ's humanity, exploring three major roles that Christ's humanity plays as the head of all human immortal existence, the bond of the universe, and the perfect image of God. Next McLeod shows how Theodore's customary word for Christ's ""person"" (prosopon) ought to be understood in a functional way. The book concludes by applying these insights to the 71 excerpts that were used to condemn Theodore at the Second Council of Constantinople and proposing that these passages can be interpreted in a different, non-heretical way. This book enables one to judge Theodore's christological statements in the wider context of how he conceives of Christ's roles in salvation. It establishes clearly how Christ can be said to be a true mediator between the Father and all creation. It also makes one aware of the communal dimensions and relationships contained in the notion of ""person."" Finally, it indicates how the body plays an essential role in human and cosmic salvation.

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Outside the New Testament, our earliest complete witness to Christian apologetic against the Jews remains the ""Dialogue with Trypho"", written by Justin Martyr (circa 165), a convert to Christianity from traditional Greek religion. The ""Dialogue"" purports to be a two-day dialogue that took place in Asia Minor between Justin and Trypho, a Hellenized Jew. Justin argues extensively on the basis of lengthy Old Testament quotations that Christ is the Messiah and God incarnate, and that the Christian community is the new Israel. In the beginning of the work Justin recounts how he converted to Christianity. The ""Dialogue"" remains of great, and varying, interest. It has important information on the development of Jewish-Christian relations, on the development of the text of the New Testament, and on the existence and character of the early Jewish Christian community. Justin's story of how he became a Christian is one of our early conversion accounts. The ""Dialogue"" is a useful textbook for classes investigating the development of religion in Late Antiquity since it touches on many aspects of religion in the Roman Empire. This edition of the ""Dialogue with Trypho"" is a revision of Thomas B. Fall's translation, which appeared in ""Fathers of the Church"", volume 6. Thomas P. Halton has amended the translation in light of the 1997 critical edition by Miroslav Marcovich, and has provided extensive annotation to recent scholarship on the ""Dialogue"". Michael Slusser has edited the volume to bring it into conformity with the new selection from the ""Fathers of the Church"" series.

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Widely renowned as the 1952 Nobel Prize winning author of novels depicting stark yet searing clashes of passion, possession, society, and spirituality within the Catholic bourgeoisie of the Bordeaux region, Francois Mauriac is now gaining long overdue recognition as France's premier editorialist of the 1950s and 1960s. This book, the first English-language study of Mauriac's Bloc-notes, presents these poignant, incisive editorials on social justice, war, and human rights in postwar France as both symptomatic of a culture imbued with the past and emblematic of a Christian humanist's ethical approach to history and memory. Francois Mauriac lived history past and present most intensely. Filtering his perception of decolonization in general and the Algerian war in particular through the tumultuous episodes of the Crusades, the religious wars, the French Revolution, the Dreyfus affair, and the German Occupation, he delivered the earliest and most stinging indictments of torture and oppression in the Algerian war. Through the Past Darkly explains how Mauriac returns to the momentous figures and events of history neither to sacralize France's past nor to justify its present but rather to narrate the ongoing story of history as the universal human drama engaging the political integrity of the French Republic as well as the moral responsibility of each person. At the same time, the Bloc-notes constitutes a ""place of memory,"" a deliberate crystallization of the past aimed at rescuing the pathos of public and private experience from oblivion. Mauriac, argues Nathan Bracher, articulated a distinctive approach to history: in contrast to de Gaulle's nationalist epic and Sartre's commitment to the dialectics of class struggle, its lucid, uncompromising assessments of French society and politics have withstood the test of time.

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Although Blaise Pascal's Penses have occupied a uniquely privileged niche in the literary canon in France for over three centuries, they had long slumbered in America. It is just in the last thirty years that critical theorists in this country have been discovering in them texts rich in modernist and post-modernist readings. Still, critics here have largely ignored the renewal in traditional Pascal studies that has occurred in France over the last four decades. Pascal and Disbelief introduces readers to the recent developments in Pascal scholarship, particularly the return of the Penses to their original status as the working draft of Pascal's never-completed Apology for the Christian Religion. All sources, including critical commentary and little-known seventeenth-century texts, are presented both in their original French and in English translation. The Catholic University Press of America

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Thomas Kinsella began writing in the early 1950s when Irish poets were struggling to emerge from what he identified as the ""double shadow of Yeats and English verse"". Throughout his career, Kinsella has sought to establish his identity as an Irish poet writing in English, and to determine his place within the dual Irish tradition, Gaelic and English. This comprehensive study explores the poet's development within both the Irish and the English contexts, and defines the nature of his poetic achievement. It also offers a new reading of Kinsella's evolving relationship to one of his major literary forebears, W.B. Yeats. What becomes clear is the formidable accomplishment of a poet, now writing at the height of his powers, whose substantial body of work warrants comparison with the grand masters of 20th-century literature in English, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett. Beginning with Kinsella's first volume of poetry in 1956 and concluding with his most recent work, ""From Centre City"" (1994), the book traces the evolution of the poet's style and vision from the formal lyricism of his early volumes, through the long narrative poems of his middle period, to his later sequences of spare, laconic poems that are increasingly rich in polyphony and intertextuality. It finds that the formal structure and mellifluous cadence of Kinsella's early poetry, indebted to the works of past masters, such as Auden, Eliot and Yeats, give way to experimentalism, to a dislocated poetry that is often lacking closure. In his later writing, diverse exemplars, ranging from the early Irish literature and myth and the 18th-century Irish poet Aogan O Rathaille to the psycholoanalysis of Carl Jung and the music of Gustav Mahler and Sean O Riada, aid Kinsella in tracing his personal and poetic inheritance. This book illuminates poetry often regarded as difficult, and offers a useful evaluation of a major poet who continues to contribute to contemporary Irish poetry.

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Reading Job with St. Thomas Aquinas is a scholarly contribution to Thomistic studies, specifically to the study of Aquinas’s biblical exegesis in relation to his philosophy and theology. Each of the thirteen chapters has a different focus, within the shared concentration of the book on Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job. The essays are arranged in three Parts: “Job and Sacra Doctrina”; “Providence and Suffering”; and “Job and the Moral Life”. Boyle’s opening essay argues that Aquinas’s commentary seeks to show what is required in the “Magister” (namely, Job and God) for the effective communication of wisdom. Mansini’s essay argues that by speaking, God reveals the virtue of Job and its value in God’s providence; without the personal revelation or speech of God, Job could not have known the value of his suffering. Vijgen’s essay explores the commentary’s use of Aristotle for reflecting upon divine providence, sorrow and anger, resurrection, and the new heavens and new earth. Levering’s essay explores the commentary’s citations of the Gospel of John and argues that these pertain especially to divine speech and to light/darkness. Bonino’s essay explains why divine incomprehensibility does not mean that Job is wrong to seek to understand God’s ways. Te Velde’s essay explores how Aquinas’s commentary draws upon the reasoning of his Summa contra gentiles with regard to the good order of the universe. Goris’s essay reflects upon how, according to Aquinas’s commentary, sin is and is not related to suffering. Knasas’s essay argues that Aquinas does not hold that the resurrection of the body is a necessary philosophical corollary of the human desire for happiness. Wawrykow’s essay explores merit, in relation to the connection between sin and punishment/affliction as well as to the connection between good actions and flourishing. Spezzano’s essay shows that Job’s hope and filial fear transform his suffering, making him an exemplar of the consolation they provide to the just. Mullady’s essay reflects upon the moral problems and opportunities posed by the passions, along with the ordering of the virtues to the reward of human happiness. Flood’s essay shows how Aquinas defends Job’s possession of the qualities needed for true friendship (including friendship with God), such as patience, delight in the presence of the friend, and compassion. Lastly, Kromholtz’s essay argues that although Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job never extensively engages eschatology, Aquinas depends throughout upon the reasonableness of hoping for the resurrection of the body and the final judgment.

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Human speech and writing reveal our powers both to generalize and to criticize our own procedures. For this we must use words non-mechanically and with a freedom without definite limits, but still allowing mutual intelligibility. Such powers cannot be simulated by any possible physical mechanism, and this shows that human beings in our acts of judgment and understanding transcend the body.Philosopher, psychologist and linguist are all concerned with natural language. Accordingly, in seeking a unified view, Braine draws on insights from all these fields, sifting through the discordant schools of linguists. He concludes that one extended logic or “integrated semantic syntax” shapes grammar, but without constricting languages to being of one grammatical type.Language as learnt and speech are both essentially public, geared to a community of language-users. Therefore, psycholinguists should imitate Gibson’s treatment of our perceptual system and treat learning and use of language as arising by adaptation to our social and natural environment. Through taking the malleability of the functioning of the brain and its parts to an extreme, grammar has become unrestricted by neurology, limited only by logical and pragmatic constraints.For Braine, a language is a living thing, both in the development of thought and in conversation. Chomsky has entrenched a static, building-block, model of a language as a code, each lexical item with just one meaning. Yet in our learning and use of language each word develops an indefinite spread of uses or senses adapted to the realities and questions which we have to confront. The idea ""one lexical item, one meaning"" applies only to formal languages, not to the natural language which extends beyond social life to embrace mathematics, physics and all the sciences, religion and literature.In rewriting the philosophy of grammar, Braine restores the dynamic conception of language, reuniting structure and communicative function. Grammar, typically through the verb, gives the sentence its ""saying"" function, the verb being what brings the sentence to life, giving the sentence’s other elements their role and force.

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Philip Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and the waves of refugees arriving in Austria fleeing the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War.The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the “coming of age” of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times.

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