Search results for ""university of notre dame press""

During the past three decades there have been many studies of transnational migration. Most of the scholarship has focused on one side of the border, one area of labor incorporation, one generation of migrants, and one gender. In this path-breaking book, Manuel Barajas presents the first cross-national, comparative study to examine a Mexican-origin community’s experience with international migration and transnationalism. He presents an extended case study of the Xaripu community, with home bases in both Xaripu, Michoacán, and Stockton, California, and elaborates how various forms of colonialism, institutional biases, and emergent forms of domination have shaped Xaripu labor migration, community formation, and family experiences across the Mexican/U.S. border for over a century. Of special interest are Barajas’s formal and informal interviews within the community, his examination of oral histories, and his participant observation in several locations. Barajas asks, What historical events have shaped the Xaripus’ migration experiences? How have Xaripus been incorporated into the U.S. labor market? How have national inequalities affected their ability to form a community across borders? And how have migration, settlement, and employment experiences affected the family, especially gender relationships, on both sides of the border?

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Strange Words offers separate but interrelated close readings of four medieval Roland texts in French and Occitan, paying particular attention to scenes in which the speeches of various characters perform or mirror narrative functions. In this clearly written and accessible book, Margaret Jewett Burland focuses on discourse and narrative within the fictional universe to argue persuasively that medieval authors and audiences understood the battle of Roncevaux and its aftermath as an appropriate story in which to incorporate implicit commentaries about contemporary issues. It allows readers to interpret the well-known Oxford version, The Song of Roland, within the expanded context of its larger medieval textual tradition. The similarities and differences among the four versions Burland analyzes help modern readers to better appreciate which aspects of a given Roland text are most innovative and thus most suggestive of its particular political, social, or literary agenda. Strange Words is the first book in fifty years to compare multiple medieval Roland texts, and the first to do so in English. It will be welcomed by students and scholars of French and medieval studies.

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In Lubianka’s Shadow chronicles the extraordinary life of a young American Catholic priest, Father Léopold Braun, who, as pastor of a small Catholic church near the Lubianka political prison in the heart of Moscow, witnessed Stalin’s purges, the Soviet government’s campaign against organized religion, and the destruction of World War II. These memoirs, recently discovered in the archive of Fr. Bruan’s Assumptionist order by Soviet scholar Gary Hamburg, offer an intimate account of Fr. Braun’s valiant effort to uphold Christian worship in the only Catholic church allowed to operate in Stalin’s Moscow. Posted to Moscow in 1934 as chaplain of the United States embassy, Father Braun served the embassy staff and local parishioners in the Saint Louis des Français Church at a moment when Stalin’s anti-religious campaign was reaching a crescendo. He describes the Soviet government’s intimidation and arrest of his parishioners, police surveillance of the church building, and personal harassment designed to force him out of the country. Father Braun’s responses to these pressures—sometimes amusing, sometimes heart-rending, but always intelligent and soulful—tell us much about the capacity of ordinary people to respond to extraordinary circumstances. Under his pen, Soviet society comes alive, with its citizens’ poverty, cynicism, humor, and courage on full display. Accompanying the memoirs is an introductory, historical essay by G. M. Hamburg. In Lubianka’s Shadow is required reading for anyone interested in modern Russian history and for those concerned about the survival of religious faith under political assault.

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These essays, written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives, consider various present-day and historical efforts to make a language dominant through textual, institutional, academic, and literary means. Contributors examine pressures to elevate one language at the expense of another and the cultural and intellectual consequences of that elevation. Specific essays apply this theme of the contest of language to the suppression, survival, and revival of the Irish language; to Greek, Latin, and the emergence of the vernacular in Europe; to the relationship between minority and dominant language in China; and to the lack of linguistic imperialism in the spread of Arabic, among other fascinating topics.

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In his celebrated Essay on Population, Thomas Malthus raised the puzzle of why a benevolent Creator would permit material scarcity in human existence. Albino Barrera revisits this question using Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of participation and Sacred Scripture’s invitation to covenant fidelity and kingdom discipleship as analytical lenses with which to examine the seeming incongruity of scarcity in God’s providence. Barrera concludes that scarcity turns out to be a signal opportunity for economic agency to receive, internalize, and communicate God’s goodness and righteousness within the human community. Written for theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and policymakers interested in the theological and philosophical foundations of economics, this study argues that precarious, subsistence living is not an immutable law of nature. Rather, such a chronic, dismal condition reflects personal and collective moral failure. In this carefully researched study, Barrera argues that scarcity serves as an occasion for God to provide for us through each other and that there are strong metaphysical and scriptural warrants for enacting progressive social policies for a better sharing of the goods of the earth.

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American-born Cardinal Aloisius Muench (1889-1962) was a key figure in German and German-American Catholic responses to the Holocaust, Jews, and Judaism between 1946 and 1959. He was arguably the most powerful American Catholic figure and an influential Vatican representative in occupied Germany and in West Germany after the war. In this carefully researched book, which draws on Muench’s collected papers, Suzanne Brown-Fleming offers the first assessment of Muench’s legacy and provides a rare glimpse into his commentary on Nazism, the Holocaust, and surviving Jews. She argues that Muench legitimized the Catholic Church’s failure during this period to confront the nature of its own complicity in Nazism’s anti-Jewish ideology. The archival evidence demonstrates that Muench viewed Jews as harmful in a number of very specific ways. He regarded German Jews who had immigrated to the United States as "aliens," he believed Jews to be "in control" of American policy-making in Germany, he feared Jews as "avengers" who wished to harm "victimized" Germans, and he believed Jews to be excessively involved in leftist activities. Muench’s standing and influence in the United States, Germany, and the Vatican hierarchies gave sanction to the idea that German Catholics needed no examination of conscience in regard to the Church's actions (or inactions) during the 1940s and 1950s. This fascinating story of Muench’s role in German Catholic consideration—and ultimate rejection—of guilt and responsibility for Nazism in general and the persecution of European Jews in particular will be an important addition to scholarship on the Holocaust and to church history.

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In The Extravagant Robert Baker explores the interplay between poetry and philosophy in the modern period, engaging a broad range of writers: Kant, Wordsworth, and Lyotard in a chapter on the sublime; Rimbaud, Nietzsche, and Bataille in a chapter on visionary quest; and Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Mallarmé, and Derrida in a chapter on apocalyptic negativity. His guiding concern is to illuminate adventures of “extravagant” or “wandering” language that, from the romantic period on, both poets and philosophers have undertaken in opposition to the dominant social and discursive frames of a pervasively instrumentalized world. The larger interpretative narrative shaping the book is that a dialectic of instrumental reason and creative negativity has been at work throughout modern culture. Baker argues that adventures of exploratory wandering emerge in the romantic period as displaced articulations of older religious discourses. Given the dominant trends of the modern world, however, these adventures repeatedly lead to severe collisions and crises, in response to which they are later revised or further displaced. Over time, as instrumental structures come to disfigure every realm of modern life, poetries and philosophies at odds with these structures are forced to criticize and surpass earlier voices in their traditions that seem to have lost a transformative power. Thus, Baker argues, these adventures gradually unfold into various discourses of the negative prominent in contemporary culture: discourses of decentering, dispersing, undoing, and erring. It is this dialectic that Baker traces and interprets in this ambitious study.

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The Sword of the Lord is the first book to examine military chaplains and the development of the military chaplaincy across history and geography—from the first to the twenty-first century, from Europe to North America. The scope of this work reveals the astonishing fact that the military chaplaincy has existed in a recognizable form for more than 1,600 years. Contributors analyze specific historical moments in the development of the chaplaincy, beginning in antiquity and progressing through the Crusades, the English Civil War, the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. Four key themes connect the chapters of this book. The first is the basic issue of historical development over time. Where and when did the military chaplaincy begin and how has it changed? A second theme involves the emotionally and spiritually intense relationships that develop between chaplains and the men and women they serve. How have military chaplains dealt with the enormous responsibility of ministering to soldiers about to kill or possibly be killed? The third theme is that of chaplains' often precarious position between military and religious authorities. Are military chaplains primarily morale boosters, retained by rulers and military commanders because they prepare soldiers to fight hard and face death bravely? Or are they above all pastors, caring for the spiritual needs of their constituency? How do they balance conflicting duties and demands? A fourth related theme is the profound moral and theological dilemmas raised by the chaplaincy. Even under the least morally ambiguous circumstances, chaplains work in the midst of violence, coercion, and suffering. How have they understood their tasks and carried them out in deeply troubled and brutal times? What are the ethical implications of their work? In addition to contributions by historians, this book includes vivid accounts by two former chaplains—an American rabbi who served in World War II and an American Catholic priest who served in Vietnam. This remarkable work treats with care and sensitivity a fascinating and important topic. Anyone interested in military history, religious studies, ethics, or pastoral care will profit from reading this book.

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In The Singing Irish, Michael Alan Anderson brings to life the rich history and traditions of the Notre Dame Glee Club. Replete with nearly three hundred images, the stunning large-format book examines the early history of the ensemble before 1915, its robust membership, rehearsal and concert customs, and the contributions of its conductors through the decades. Anderson interviewed dozens of Glee Club alumni going back to the early 1940s to narrate the vibrant story of the group, while assembling a wealth of documents that detail the activities undertaken—and impressions made—by this extraordinary musical ensemble. The group’s famous appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1950s marked the height of the Glee Club’s visibility; however, the ensemble continues to sell out concerts on national and international tours, having traveled to nearly every state in the United States and numerous countries in Europe, Asia, and Central America. Through its eclectic repertoire and polished singing, the Glee Club has achieved a lofty status among collegiate choral ensembles in the United States, beloved by students, members of the Notre Dame family, and friends and supporters of the university around the world. Combining the meaningful culture of Notre Dame with the highest standards of artistic excellence, The Singing Irish makes a wonderful keepsake for fans and alumni of the Notre Dame Glee Club as it enters its centennial year.

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Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb is a compelling and highly original study of the paradox of courage. Richard Avramenko contends that courage is not simply one virtue among many; rather, it is the primary means for humans to raise themselves out of their individualistic, isolated, and materialistic existence. As such, courage is an absolute and permanent good for collective human life. Specifically, Avramenko argues that when we risk "life and limb" for one another we reveal a fundamental care that binds our community together. Paradoxically, the same courage that brings humans together also drives us apart because courage is traditionally understood as manly, by definition, exclusionary, inegalitarian, and violent. Avramenko explores the efforts of political thinkers throughout history—such as Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Tocqueville—to reformulate courage so as to hold fast to all that is good about it while jettisoning that which is problematic. In addition to martial courage, the book looks at political courage, moral courage, and economic courage. Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb makes a vital contribution to the discipline of political science. Clearly and engagingly written, the book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political theory, ethics, and gender studies.

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When Latinos in the United States was first published in 1986, it was hailed as a “triumph” by the National Catholic Reporter, “inspiring” by the journal American Studies, and was named an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year by Choice. The book was widely adopted in Latino and ethnic studies classes at colleges and universities throughout the country. Now, in the second edition, David Abalos updates his pioneering application of the transformation theory to key aspects of Latino politics, history, and culture. He draws on examples from everyday human encounters to address specific concerns of both Latino individuals and groups. Among the issues addressed are: the need to maintain Latino family heritage while allowing each member to develop the autonomy necessary to interact both within the family and within American society; the importance of avoiding assimilation; the necessity for Latinos to develop the skills and competence that allow them to enter into America's business world without losing their commitment to the community; rediscovery of Latino religious symbols of transformation that renew the life of the sacred; and the need to preserve Latino heritage through a strategy of being both American and Latino. The second edition contains extensive new material. Abalos includes a new section on archetypal analysis. He has added discussions of the relationship between the sacred and the political in American politics, and of assimilation and its effects on the immigrant. He addresses the new wave of migration and what it means to the future of the United States and la comunidad Latina. Abalos has also added a new chapter on the politics of education, which is, he argues, the most important civil rights issue facing the Latino community. The notes and bibliography reflect recent scholarship, especially that of Latina writers and Chicana feminists.

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The Alliance for Catholic Education, referred to most commonly by its acronym ACE, is one of the best known and widely respected programs at the University of Notre Dame. The rock band U2 praised it during a concert at Notre Dame, the President of the United States acknowledged it in a valedictory address, and each year hundreds of students compete for admission. Established in 1994 by Fr. Timothy Scully, C.S.C., and Fr. Sean McGraw, C.S.C., ACE places more than 150 college graduates in over one hundred parochial schools throughout the United States. The overarching purpose of ACE is to improve Catholic schools, especially in underprivileged areas of the U.S., by enabling exceptionally talented students to teach in them. ACE, in turn, offers students two years of meaningful service and a graduate degree from Notre Dame. In Teaching Service and Alternative Teacher Education: Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education, Michael Pressley and his fellow contributors provide the history of ACE. They also offer a blueprint for other educational institutions interested in implementing a similar program. Covering the fundamentals of starting and maintaining a program like ACE, Teaching Service and Alternative Teacher Education discusses motivation, planning, intellectual foundations, and community building. It also tackles practical issues such as financing the program, obtaining accreditation, and recruiting teachers.

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Despite the separation between classical and modern theories of government, contributors to Aristotle and Modern Politics find Aristotle a useful interlocutor for assessing both possibilities and limitations in contemporary politics. In this collection, noted political scientists, theologians, and philosophers discuss the magnitude of Aristotle’s presence in contemporary debate and demonstrate some of the ways in which Aristotle sheds new light on contemporary problems. This engaging book also exhibits the persistence of political philosophy at a time when the pervasive influence of “ideology” and “historicism” lead many to deny its possibility. Although the authors of these essays differ on the nature of Aristotle’s contribution, all are united by the conviction that he has something important to teach citizens of modern political societies. If the fundamental principles of modern politics were drawn from critical reflections of reason over and against the imposition of authority under its various guises, modern politics can best sustain itself by nurturing the critical attitude that initially brought it into being. Paradoxically, serious engagement with the "preliberal" thought of Aristotle can render contemporary debate more fruitful by bringing to light subtle limitations in the political discourse of any era, including our own. If the modern understanding of freedom is primarily freedom to speak and think for oneself, the essays in Aristotle and Modern Politics exhibit the persistence of political philosophy by thinking beyond limits often constricting contemporary paradigms.

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Joseph Bobik offers a translation of Aquinas’s De Principiis Naturae (circa 1252) and De Mixtione Elementorum (1273) accompanied by a continuous commentary, followed by two essays: “Elements in the Composition of Physical Substances” and “The Elements in Aquinas and the Elements Today.” The Principles of Nature introduces the reader to the basic Aristotelian principles such as matter and form, the four causes so fundamental to Aquinas’s philosophy. On Mixture of the Elements examines the question of how the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) remain within the physical things composed from them.

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Published in 1944, What the Negro Wants was a direct and emphatic call for the end of segregation and racial discrimination that set the agenda for the civil rights movement to come. With essays by fourteen prominent African American intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Roy Wilkins, What the Negro Wants explores the policies and practices that could be employed to achieve equal rights and opportunities for Black Americans, rejecting calls to reform the old system of segregation and instead arguing for the construction of a new system of equality. Stirring intense controversy at the time of publication, the book serves as a unique window into the history of the civil rights movement and offers startling comparisons to today’s continuing fight against racism and inequality. Originally gathered together by distinguished Howard University historian Rayford W. Logan in 1944, our 2001 edition of the book includes Rayford Logan’s introduction to the 1969 reprint, a new introduction by Kenneth Janken, and an updated bibliography.

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“In describing Hauerwas’ work as Christian ethics, one can allow that phrase its full scope of meaning. It is the work of an ethician who is thoroughly conversant with that branch of philosophy and comes to grips with its major issues. He is also firmly committed to the view that, in modifying the substantive ‘ethics’ with the adjective ‘Christian,’ one is designating a distinct reality. . . . Hauerwas invites us to share an understanding of ethics in general and of Christian ethics in particular that is a great deal subtler and more complicated than most currently popular versions of those subjects. For contemporary Christian ethics to accept his invitation will mean letting itself in for some very rigorous and versatile thinking.” —America

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Alasdair MacIntyre—whom Newsweek has called "one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world"—here presents his 1988 Gifford Lectures as an expansion of his earlier work Whose Justice? Which Rationality? He begins by considering the cultural and philosophical distance dividing Lord Gifford's late nineteenth-century world from our own. The outlook of that earlier world, MacIntyre claims, was definitively articulated in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which conceived of moral enquiry as both providing insight into and continuing the rational progress of mankind into ever greater enlightenment. MacIntyre compares that conception of moral enquiry to two rival conceptions also formulated in the late nineteenth century: that of Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral and that expressed in the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII Aeterni Patris. The lectures focus on Aquinas's integration of Augustinian and Aristotelian modes of enquiry, the inability of the encyclopaedists' standpoint to withstand Thomistic or genealogical criticism, and the problems confronting the contemporary post-Nietzschean genealogist. MacIntyre concludes by considering the implications for education in universities and colleges.

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St. Thomas Aquinas enables the reader to appreciate both Thomas's continuity with earlier thought and his creative independence. After a useful account of the life and work of St. Thomas, McInerny shows how the thoughts of Aristotle, Boethius, and Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius were assimilated into the personal wisdom of St. Thomas. He also offers a helpful study of the distinctive features of Aquinas's Christian theology.

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Brian H. Smith's book surveys recent religious and political developments in Latin American Christianity, especially in the rapidly growing Pentecostal churches and in Catholicism. He finds that despite efforts by the Vatican to make the Latin American Church less involved in politics (in the wake of liberation theology) by the papal appointment of a whole new generation of conservative bishops since 1980, Catholicism is still very much a political force throughout the region. Catholic bishops, in spite of their conservative religious ideology, have felt obligated to preach the social doctrine of the Church and have vigorously denounced new economic models for enriching a minority of the population at the cost of the majority who are poor. Bishops also have denounced corruption in governments that has grown to epidemic proportions in recent years, and have strongly opposed legislative proposals that are anti-Catholic. Regardless of these efforts by Catholic prelates to maintain government support for the Church's institutions and its traditional moral concerns in law, Protestantism - especially in Pentecostal denominations among low-income sectors - has grown at a significant rate in the past twenty years. Although traditionally reluctant to involve themselves in politics, Pentecostals in recent years have become more active either by forming new Christian parties or by joining or supporting existing political movements. Their political agenda overlaps in some areas with that of Catholics. These shared concerns could lead to a coalition between Catholic and Pentecostal leaders that could have a real impact on public policy, given that over ninety percent of the population is now affiliated with one of these two denominations. However, Pentecostal religious and political leaders are also pushing publicly for full separation of church and state (which exists now only in Cuba and Mexico) and for all religions to have equal status in law. Both these similarities and the differences in the political agenda of Catholics and Pentecostals could complicate public policy debate in the years ahead and certainly short-circuit any attempts to remove religion as a significant, and sometimes divisive, influence in politics in newly constituted liberal democracies in Latin America.

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Stanley Hauerwas presents an overall introduction to the themes and method that have distinguished his vision of Christian ethics. Emphasizing the significance of Jesus’ life and teaching in shaping moral life, The Peaceable Kingdom stresses the narrative character of moral rationality and the necessity of a historic community and tradition for morality. Hauerwas systematically develops the importance of character and virtue as elements of decision making and spirituality and stresses nonviolence as critical for shaping our understanding of Christian ethics.

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With Narrative and the Natural Law Pamela Hall brings Thomistic ethics into conversation with ongoing debates in contemporary moral philosophy, especially virtue theory and moral psychology, and with current trends in narrative theory and the philosophy of history. Pamela M. Hall’s study offers a solid, challenging alternative to rigid, legalistic interpretations of the substantial discussion of law in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae and defends Aquinas’s ethics from charges of excessive legalism. Hall argues that Aquinas’s characterization of the content and relationship of natural, human and divine law indicates that his understanding of the quest for the human good is practical, communal, and historical. Hall maintains that natural law, the ongoing inquiry into what is the human good, is narrative both in terms of its internal structure and its being informed by the specific story of Scripture. According to Aquinas the discovery of natural law is enacted historically and progressively within communities and by individuals through a process of practical reasoning. Hall then goes on to show how natural law requires articulation by human law, and how both are connected to divine law (salvation history) as Aquinas understands it. Aquinas represents inquiry into the human good as a kind of historical narrative or story with stages or “chapters”; thus knowledge of natural law requires time and experience, as well as sustained reflection by individuals and by whole communities. Such learning of natural law implies the operation of prudence and the assistance of the moral virtues.

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In The Natural Rights Republic, renowned political theorist Michael P. Zuckert examines the natural rights philosophy as expressed in sources like the Declaration of Independence and aims to counter contemporary confusion by offering an insightful study of the concept that dominated the mindset of the founding generation of the United States.

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This is a remarkable account of a personal journey exploring the evidence for, and far-reaching implications of, human evolution. It is also a powerful inside look at the experience of lecturing on controversial matters at the academic meccas of America. In 1964, Raymond Nogar, a Dominican Scholar Priest and author of the highly regarded book, The Wisdom of Evolution, set out on a ten campus tour that took him to the Universities of Illinois, California, Stanford, North Carolina, Harvard, Michigan and Notre Dame, among others. The Lord of the Absurd is not a collection of Nogar's Lectures, but rather a series of reflections about interaction with audiences, challenging modes of thinking, understanding the risk of unsettling ideas, and the deepening of the author's own convictions in the very presentation of his lectures. He came to realize that the "transforming effect of speaking, in its most creative phases, calls forth much more interpersonal existence, one in which the speaker, the listener and the word are caught up in a drama of human experience which reinterprets the world and gives directions to an existence which otherwise would remain utterly senseless." One sees in Nogar's reflections on his lecture experiences a progressive deepening of his own thought and spirituality. The same evidence for human evolution that has led some to atheism and a view of existence itself as Absurd, the result of nothing more than chance, circumstance and complexity, leads Nogar to a deeper appreciation of the mystery of creation. He acknowledges that the human situation is filled with frivolity and fate, wonders and strangeness and happenings whose apparent meaninglessness pose a dilemma. But, for Nogar, it was exactly in that human situation that Christ presented himself. His life, death and resurrection show him not as the Lord of cosmic order but as Lord of the Absurd. This book can be read with profit by anyone who wishes to probe the truly profound questions of life.

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The authors of The Longing for Home explore the notion that home is both a place and a condition of the spirit. While a person may have a place that is home, he or she may also be nostalgic for an inner spiritual home which beckons even as it lies beyond the human grasp. Essays by Elie Wiesel, Werner Gundersheimer, and Frederick Buechner complete part one. Part two focuses on philosophical explorations of the meaning of home.

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Focusing on the contemporary experience of cultural and religious pluralism, the authors in this volume work toward a reconception of the basic concepts in philosophy of religion—the idea of God and the religious ways of knowing that idea—as historically dynamic. Eliot Deutsch argues that aesthetic and religious considerations are not peripheral to philosophy but are at the heart of the philosophic enterprise. Cornel West shows how recent developments in American philosophy, particularly in the work of Quine, Goodman, and Sellars, have opened up the possibility of a historicist philosophy of religion. After reviewing some of the fundamental defenses for belief in God in his neoclassical theism, Charles Hartshorne elaborates the argument from order and the argument from the rational aim. J.N. Findlay insists that the philosophy of religion is itself part of religious knowing, and so, that there can be no radical distinction between philosophic method and personal religious belief. Ninian Smart proposes a “soft epistemology” in dealing with religious matters. Anthony Flew and Kai Nielsen represent longstanding criticism of the philosophy of religion. Naomi R. Goldenberg looks for a salvific religious message in psychoanalysis and feminism. Gordon D. Kaufman’s “Reconceiving God for a Nuclear Age” criticizes traditional conceptions of God from within the Christian tradition. In a study of meaninglessness in the modern world, Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that religious consciousness deals explicitly with the totality of meaning implicit in all everyday experience. Langdon Gilkey considers the creationist controversy as it was argued in the Arkansas courts in 1981. Leroy S. Rouner examines the significance of Tillich’s doctrine of the Fall as a contribution to interreligious understanding. Jurgen Moltmann finds in Ernst Bloch’s atheism a particular challenge to Jewish and Christian theology.

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Johann Baptist Metz is one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians in the post-Vatican II period, however there is no comprehensive overview of his theological career. This book fills that gap. It offers careful analyses and summaries of Metz's work at the various stages of his career, beginning with his work on Heidegger and his collaboration with Karl Rahner. It continues with his work in the nineteen-sixties when he moved off in a radically different direction to found a "new political theology" culminating in his seminal work, Faith in History and Society. Metz addresses themes ranging from the situation of the Church "after Auschwitz," the future of religious life in the Church, and the relationship between religion and politics after the end of the cold war. J. Matthew Ashley covers all of Metz's writings along with his crucial relationships to figure like Karl Rahner, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin and the social critics of the early Frankfurt School. Interruptions shows that despite the dramatic turn in the nineteen-sixties there is an underlying continuity in Metz's thought. Ultimately, however, the underlying continuity in Metz's career is defined by a spirituality, a spirituality that is painfully yet hopefully open to the terrible suffering that characterizes our century, a spirituality founded in the Prophets, in Lamentations, and in the figures of Job and the Jesus of Mark's Gospel. This book shows how Metz has tried to find theological concepts adequate for expressing this spirituality—which he calls a "Mysticism of open Eyes" or of "suffering unto God"—and to work out its political implications. To this end the book has an opening chapter on the relationship between spirituality and theology, and a closing chapter that shows that the most fundamental difference between Rahner and Metz is rooted in the different Christian spiritual traditions out of which the two operate. Interruptions is essential reading for anyone interest in Spirituality and Mysticism and in their relation to political philosophy.

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In Yeats and Afterwords, contributors articulate W. B. Yeats's powerful, multilayered sense of belatedness as part of his complex literary method. They explore how Yeats deliberately positioned himself at various historical endpoints—of Romanticism, of the Irish colonial experience, of the Ascendancy, of civilization itself—and, in doing so, created a distinctively modernist poetics of iteration capable of registering the experience of finality and loss. While the crafting of such a poetics remained a constant throughout Yeats's career, the particular shape it took varied over time, depending on which lost object Yeats was contemplating. By tracking these vicissitudes, the volume offers new ways of thinking about the overarching trajectory of Yeats's poetic engagements. Yeats and Afterwords proceeds in three stages, involving past-pastness, present-pastness, and future-pastness. The first, "The Last Romantics," examines how Yeats repeats classic motifs and verbal formulations from his literary forebears in order to express the circumscribed cultural options with which he struggles. The essays in this section often uncover Yeats's relation to sources and precursors that are surprising or have been relatively neglected by scholars. The second section, "Yeats and Afterwords," looks at how Yeats subjects his own past sentiments, insights, and styles to critical negation, crafting his own afterwords in various ways. The last section, "Yeats's Aftertimes," explores how, thanks to the stature Yeats achieved through its invention, his style of belatedness itself comes to be reiterated by other writers. Yeats is a towering figure in literary history, hard to follow and harder to avoid, and later writers often found themselves producing words that were, in some sense, his afterwords.

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The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages has been widely recognized as the standard work on the subject in any language. Robert E. Lerner examines this fourteenth-century European heresy as it appeared in its own age. He concludes that the Free-Spirit movement was not a tightly organized sect of anarchistic deviants, but rather a spectrum of belief that emphasized voluntary poverty and quietist mysticism.

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Fulfillment in Christ presents an original, contemporary treatment of one of the most challenging parts of Catholic theology. Germain Grisez and Russell Shaw offer a radical rethinking of fundamental moral theology in the light of Vatican II and in response to the current turmoil in that field.

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In Faithful Persuasion David S. Cunningham offers the contemporary era's first sustained account of the relationship between rhetoric and Christian theology. Cunningham argues that Christian thinkers should abandon their attempts to codify argumentation within the canons of formal logic and suggests that they should instead come to a more organic understanding of the process of persuasion. This rhetorical approach to theology can cast new light on longstanding theological controversies and establish a new agenda for the study of the methods, sources, and norms of Christian theology. Drawing chiefly upon the rhetorical insights of Aristotle, and on the reappropriation of Aristotle’s views by numerous modern rhetoricians—ranging from John Henry Newman to Kenneth Burke and Chaim Perelman—Cunningham establishes a firm foundation from which to support his central assertion that ‘Christian theology can best be understood as a form of persuasive argument.’ In addition, he explores the implications of a rhetorical method for studies in doctrinal formulation, biblical exegesis, and church history. Written for theologians, clergy members, and laypeople with a strong interest in theology, this book will introduce readers to the richness of the rhetorical tradition and its important implications for the discipline of Christian theology.

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The title of Lash's book, inspired by a combination of George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins, symbolizes his answer to the problem with which he is concerned, that of religious experience. 'I propose,' he says, 'to argue, on the one hand, that it is not the case that all experience of God is necessarily religious in form or content and, on the other hand, that not everything which it would be appropriate to characterize as "religious" experience would thereby necessarily constitute experience of God.' To sustain his argument he begins by building up an account of the relationship between the principal elements of human experience which contrasts quite fundamentally with that proposed and presupposed in William James's classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience, drawing on writers as different as Schleiermacher and Buber, Rahner and Newman. 'However,' he goes on, 'this is not a book about James or Newman, Rahner or Schleiermacher. It is the issues, or the argument, which interest me.' 'I want to try to understand the senses in which, and the circumstances in which, our common human experience may be said, from the standpoint of a Christian account of such experience, to furnish us with experience and knowledge of the mystery of God, and to indicate the doctrine of God that is implied in this attempt.'

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An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, reprinted from the 1878 edition, “is rightly regarded as one of the most seminal theological works ever to be written,” states Ian Ker in his foreword to this sixth edition. “It remains,” Ker continues, "the classic text for the theology of the development of doctrine, a branch of theology which has become especially important in the ecumenical era.” John Henry Cardinal Newman begins the Essay by defining how true developments in doctrine occur. He then delivers a sweeping consideration of the growth of doctrine in the Catholic Church from the time of the Apostles to his own era. He demonstrates that the basic “rule” under which Christianity proceeded through the centuries is to be found in the principle of development, and he emphasizes that throughout the entire life of the Church this principle has been in effect and safeguards the faith from any corruption.

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These original essays offer evidence that a growing number of Anglo-American philosophers are finding in the classical discussion of God's existence and nature fertile sources for the critical reflection on issues in the philosophy of religion. Nelson Pike challenges Aquinas' claim that God is not responsible for evil and shows how the rejection of this claim bears on the proem of evil. Richard Swinburne defends the classical Christian understanding of heaven and hell, arguing that it is both philosophically plausible and compatible with the Christian conception of God's goodness. Philip Quinn proposes a defensible version of the classical assertion that God's conserving a creature in existence is tantamount to his continuously creating that creature. Thomas Flint and Alfred Freddoso present an analysis of omnipotence which they claim to be both philosophically adequate and consonant with the orthodox Christian belief that God is both omnipotent and incapable of sinning. James Ross's main purpose is to dislodge the assumption that God's power is properly and adequately thought of as the power to cause (or bring about or actualize) states of affairs. Clement Dore reinterprets and defends Descartes' often maligned Fifth Meditation argument for God's existence. finally, Mark Jordan explicates the metaphysical foundations of Aquinas' doctrine of divine names.

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Upon presenting the 1986 Nobel Prize for Peace to Elie Wiesel, Egil Aarvick, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, hailed him as "a messenger to mankind--not with a message of hate and revenge but with one of brotherhood and atonement." Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity, first published in 1983, echoes this theme and still affirms that message, a call to both Christians and Jews to face the tragedy of the Holocaust and begin again.

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This is the first English translation of Il Fiore, the late-thirteenth-century narrative poem in 232 sonnets based on the Old French Roman de la Rose, and the Detto d’Amore, a free-wheeling version of many Ovidian precepts of love in 240 rhymed couplets. The elaborate allegory of the Fiore presents the complex workings of love, understood primarily as carnal passion, in the human psyche through the use of personifications of a wide array of characters who engage in various social (and bellic) interactions. There are personifications of social stereotypes and attitudes, mythological figures, abstract qualities, psychological and physical states, and personality traits. The Detto d’Amore includes features of the perennial controversy between proponents of the pleasures of erotic passion and those who counsel pursuit of the sublime joys found solely in the exercise of reason. The incomplete poem also contains a conventionalized—and idealized—description of the physical traits of the lady, as well as a portrait of the perfect courtly lover. The importance of these two works lies in part in their possible attribution to the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. But even if Dante is not the author, the Fiore is a valuable witness to the literary taste and cultural concerns of medieval Italy and to matters of poetic influence and reception among different literary traditions.

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The central, driving theme of this volume is democracy, its vicissitudes and its possibilities in Latin America. Guillermo O’Donnell considers the pattern of political and social alliances that have shaped Argentina’s agitated history, and focuses on the tensions and intrinsic weaknesses of bureaucratic-authoritarianism, especially in its most repressive guises, at a time when it projected itself as an enduring, efficient, and potentially legitimate form of political authority. He includes detailed empirical analysis of daily life under extremely repressive regimes and argues throughout that the struggle for democracy is the most appropriate way, both morally and strategically, to take advantage of the fissures and tensions that close examination discovers behind the bureaucratic-authoritarianism facade. Counterpoints is a successful mix of personal experience and meticulous scholarship—a trajectory of O’Donnell’s work that starts with the critique of authoritarianism and ends with a close examination of presently existing democracies in Latin America. His discussion of the flaws of the new democracies originating from defective institutionalism and extreme social inequalities is especially valuable for scholars of democracy and democratization, comparative politics, and Latin American politics.

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In the past fifty years statisticians and methodologists in the social sciences have developed and refined a family of closely related statistical methods for the study of social phenomena. While the value of such methods of analysis is universally acknowledged, their use has never been wholly uncontroversial. In 1993 prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines (social sciences, statistics, philosophy of science) gathered at the University of Notre Dame to debate whether causal modeling techniques old or new can really justify the drawing of causal conclusions on the basis of correlational statistical data. The resulting volume from that groundbreaking conference is Causality in Crisis? a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to perhaps the most important set of issues confronting social scientific researchers in the 1990s and beyond. In the essays presented here contributors critically reassess the widely accepted view that statistical methods of analysis can and do yield causal understanding of social phenomena. Although a number of technical issues receive attention, the overall emphasis is on the larger historical, philosophical, and conceptual perspectives that underlie and inform current methodological controversies. The debates in Causality in Crisis? have far-ranging implications, for on their resolution hinges the question of what sort of knowledge of social life it is possible to achieve on the basis of non-experimental social scientific research. Any scholar who makes use of causal methods, as well as all who are affected by decisions reached on the basis of such methods, will have a stake in the challenging arguments put forth in this volume.

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Law professors Thomas E. Baker and Timothy W. Floyd asked some of their legal colleagues to respond to this provocative question: "Can a good Christian be a good lawyer?" Here are twenty-one highly personal narratives that answer the question of how each writer tries, sometimes but not always successfully, to be both a good Christian and a good lawyer. How does a lawyer called to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ reconcile his or her faith with the secular calling to the legal profession? The editors did not set out to provide some kind of final resolution or unified consensus. Instead, they have compiled a remarkable collection of reflections by lawyers, judges, and academics who represent many different branches of Christianity. The reader is likely to find many role models to emulate and the inspiration to continue to fight the good fight in these accounts grounded in legal and Christian thought. Reading about these real-life ethical dilemmas, conflicting loyalties, and personal difficulties offers the reassurance that others have shared their ongoing struggle to rhyme their career with their faith. Although every lawyer will find Can a Good Christian Be a Good Lawyer? especially meaningful, these essays speak to all persons of faith who strive to practice their beliefs in their work.

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This work considers the complex, far reaching issues surrounding the Human Genome Project - an international scientific enterprise aimed at attaining a complete sequence and locator map of the human genetic structure by the year 2005 - offering the elimination of genetic abnormalities and diseases.

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Christians among the Virtues investigates the distinctiveness of virtues as illuminated by Christian practice, using a discussion of Aristotle’s ethics together with the work of significant contemporary scholars such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum. Hauerwas and Pinches converse with, learn from, and also critically engage powerful and explicitly non-Christian accounts of virtues, and then form a specifically Christian account of certain key virtues, including obedience, hope, courage, and patience. This book will deepen the current public debate about virtue by showing how different traditions and practices yield distinctive understandings of the virtues, and by articulating the particularity of virtues informed by Christian practice. Hauerwas and Pinches begin with a discussion of Aristotle’s account of happiness, virtue, and friendship, and explore how the temporal character of life threatens the possibility of being virtuous. The authors then contrast this idea with the Christian recognition of our temporal limitations as a call to virtue, rather than a threat. In the second section, the authors address a work by John Casey which attempts to present an account of the virtues purged of their Christian heritage. This analysis, as well as the critical readings of MacIntyre and Nussbaum, will be of particular interest to philosophers and theologians alike. The authors bring a theological voice to the popular and philosophical debates about virtue. While the work encourages Christians to think about what is unique to Christian virtue, its specificity does not limit its applicability but opens up and deepens the debate over the particular interpretations of virtues: calling on others to present more specific articulations of what it means to be courageous, obedient, hopeful, and patient, and to contrast those accounts with the Christian interpretations presented by the authors. In this respect, Christians among the Virtues is the first work in what could be called the “second stage” of the recovery of the virtues—the work of understanding the difference among interpretations of the virtues in the light of different practices and traditions.

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Political theology is one of the most influential theological movements of the latter part of the twentieth century, and yet, as Arne Rasmusson argues here, the field suffers from deep inherent tensions in its attempt to mediate the Christian tradition and the modern emancipatory tradition. Rasmusson contributes to political theology through an innovative discussion of the relationship between church and society and an exposition of the thought and work of political theology's influential representative, Jürgen Moltmann. Rasmusson further refines his argument by filtering Moltmann's theology through an exploration of Stanley Hauerwas's theological positions.

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Encompassing half the continent of South America, Brazil is one of the most modern, complex, and misunderstood nations. Renowned Brazilian anthropologist Roberto DaMatta takes the misconceptions and offers a fresh, provocative interpretation of the complexity of social structure in Brazil. Using the tools of comparative social anthropology, DaMatta seeks to understand his native country by examining the values, attitudes, and systems that shape the identity of Brazil and its people. He probes the dilemma between the highly authoritarian, hierarchical aspects of Brazilian society and the concurrent desire for equality, democracy, and harmony in that same society. DaMatta leads us on a fascinating exploration into the the world of Brazilian carnivals, rogues, and heroes, and in so doing uncovers a deeper meaning of the rituals, symbols, and dramatizations unique to Brazil and its multifaceted society.

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Spanning nearly 500 years, The American Catholic Experience describes the Catholic experience from the arrival of Columbus and the other European explorers to the present day. Jay P. Dolan discusses Catholicism as it spread across the New World, transforming—and being transformed by—the land and its people. The book traces the evolution of the urban ethnic communities by examining the vital contributions of the immigrant church to Catholicism. Finally, Dolan examines the controversy of the modern church and the extraordinary changes in the Catholic consciousness as it comes to grips with such contemporary social and theological issues as war and peace, the arms race, abortion, social justice, the ordination of women, and a married clergy.

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In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper delivers a stimulating quartet of essays on the four cardinal virtues. He demonstrates the unsound overvaluation of moderation that has made contemporary morality a hollow convention and points out the true significance of the Christian virtues.

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In his Enquiry—which has been described as "certainly one of the most important aesthetic documents that eighteenth -century England produced"—the young Burke provided a systematic analysis of the 'sublime' and the 'beautiful,' together with a distinctive terminology which served to express certain facets of the changing sensibility of his time. The introduction traces the main sources of Burke’s ideas and establishes the nature of his originality. The largest section of the editor’s introduction, however, examines the influence of the Enquiry. Major writers like Johnson, Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy, painters such as Fuseli and Mortimer, and critics such as Diderot, Lessing and Kant, as well as many other minor figures, recognized Burke’s new insights, and in varying degrees assimilated them. The second edition, revised by Burke himself, provides the copy-text, including changes between the first and second editions.

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These essays offer a historically rigorous dismantling of Western claims about the superiority of celibate priests. Although celibacy is often seen as a distinctive feature of the Catholic priesthood, both Catholic and Orthodox Churches in fact have rich and diverse traditions of married priests. The essays contained in Married Priests in the Catholic Church offer the most comprehensive treatment of these traditions to date. These essays, written by a wide-ranging group that includes historians, pastors, theologians, canon lawyers, and the wives and children of married Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox priests, offer diverse perspectives from many countries and traditions on the subject, including personal, historical, theological, and canonical accounts. As a collection, these essays push especially against two tendencies in thinking about married priesthood today. Against the idea that a married priesthood would solve every problem in Catholic clerical culture, this collection deromanticizes and demythologizes the notion of married priesthood. At the same time, against distinctively modern theological trends that posit the superiority, apostolicity, and “ontological” necessity of celibate priests, this collection refutes the claim that priestly ordination and celibacy must be so closely linked. In addressing the topic of married priesthood from both practical and theoretical angles, and by drawing on a variety of perspectives, Married Priests in the Catholic Church will be of interest to a wide audience, including historians, theologians, canon lawyers, and seminary professors and formators, as well as pastors, parish leaders, and laypeople. Contributors: Adam A. J. DeVille, David G. Hunter, Dellas Oliver Herbel, James S. Dutko, Patrick Viscuso, Alexander M. Laschuk, John Hunwicke, Edwin Barnes, Peter Galadza, David Meinzen, Julian Hayda, Irene Galadza, Nicholas Denysenko, William C. Mills, Andrew Jarmus, Thomas J. Loya, Lawrence Cross, and Basilio Petrà.

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These essays will interest readers familiar with the work of Nobel Prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and are a great starting point for those eager for an introduction to the great Russian’s work. When people think of Russia today, they tend to gravitate toward images of Soviet domination or, more recently, Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The reality, however, is that, despite Russia’s political failures, its rich history of culture, religion, and philosophical reflection—even during the darkest days of the Gulag—have been a deposit of wisdom for American artists, religious thinkers, and political philosophers probing what it means to be human in America. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stands out as the key figure in this conversation, as both a Russian literary giant and an exile from Russia living in America for two decades. This anthology reconsiders Solzhenitsyn’s work from a variety of perspectives—his faith, his politics, and the influences and context of his literature—to provide a prophetic vision for our current national confusion over universal ideals. In Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson have collected essays from the foremost scholars and thinkers of comparative studies who have been tracking what Americans have borrowed and learned from Solzhenitsyn and his fellow Russians. The book offers a consideration of what we have in common—the truth, goodness, and beauty America has drawn from Russian culture and from masters such as Solzhenitsyn—and will suggest to readers what we can still learn and what we must preserve. The last section expands the book's theme and reach by examining the impact of other notable Russian authors, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Gogol. Contributors: David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Nathan Nielson, Eugene Vodolazkin, David Walsh, Matthew Lee Miller, Ralph C. Wood, Gary Saul Morson, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Micah Mattix, Joseph Pearce, James F. Pontuso, Daniel J. Mahoney, William Jason Wallace, Lee Trepanier, Peter Leithart, Dale Peterson, Julianna Leachman, Walter G. Moss, and Jacob Howland.

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Reason and Politics explores the central phenomena of political life and, therefore, of human affairs in general. Amidst the seemingly endless books on more and more narrowly specialized topics within politics, Mark Blitz offers something very different. Reason and Politics: The Nature of Political Phenomena examines the central phenomena of political life in order to clarify their meaning, source, and range. Blitz gives particular attention to the notions of freedom, rights, justice, virtue, power, property, nationalism, and the common good. At the same time, Blitz shows how, in order to understand political matters correctly, we must also understand how they affect us directly. We do not merely theorize over political questions; we experience them. Blitz also considers matters such as the powers and motions of the soul, the nature of experience, and the varieties of pleasure and attachment. Living at a time when technological change makes it difficult even to claim convincingly that there are defining human characteristics and natural limits that we simply cannot change, Reason and Politics proposes that there are in fact basic phenomena not only in politics, but that make up human affairs as such. In examining these central phenomena in a lucid and articulate manner, this book makes a unique contribution not only to the study of politics but also to the study of philosophy more broadly. It will interest undergraduate and graduate students, political scientists and philosophers, those interested in politics, and general readers.

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