Search results for ""Catholic University of America Press""

Religion and the Politics of Time is an extensive study of the changes in religious holidays in Old Regime and Revolutionary France. It highlights the importance of cultural and religious history in the transformations of French society that took place from the mid-seventeenth through the early nineteenth century and tells an important story of the development of a French national calendar of holidays. In Old Regime France, local bishops decided which holidays people living in their dioceses were required to observe. Even for non-Catholics, these were official holidays subject to the same regulations as Sundays, when most work was forbidden. In the seventeenth century, a diocese might have as few as 25 such days per year, or it might have as many as 45. Those numbers would decline significantly over the course of the eighteenth century in most of France as many holidays fell out of favor with most of society. Those changes, however, were only a prelude to the events of the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries attempted to do away with all traditional holidays and to institute a ten-day week. When Napoleon eliminated the republican calendar, he also took control over religious holidays from the church, while retaining only four holidays per year, and eliminating most legal prohibitions on Sunday work. ""Religion and the Politics of Time"" is the first full-length study of changes that affected how and when the people of France were expected to celebrate or to work. Beyond these issues, the book is about interactions between the population at large and the major institutions of French society. The changes in holidays also involved decisions as to who had the authority to make those changes - in other words, the right to tell people what they can do and when they can do it. This is a study of the rise of government intervention in the everyday life of French society.

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Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence brings together groundbreaking studies of objective truth as a robust, philosophically consequential reality and a compelling presence in all areas and dimensions of human life. After an era of philosophical reflection in both the Anglo-American and Continental traditions dominated by the denial or compromise of the standing and centrality of truth, which has been profoundly influential even in the general culture, important philosophers are again taking up and advancing the case for objective and substantial truth. This volume makes a unique contribution to this movement by presenting studies that enlarge and enliven the logical argument for truth by articulating and exploring the rich and robust presence of truth in various areas of human life and knowing, both speculative and practical. The chapters of ""Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence"", contributed by outstanding scholars in philosophy, theology, and law, include both fresh and penetrating interpretations of the great philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Heidegger on various dimensions of truth as well as original analysis and thoughtful speculative reflection on the presence and role of truth in various areas of human life such as law, art, and science. Together these studies provide investigations of objective and consequential truth from all the historical periods of philosophy and from contemporary outlooks on dimensions of truth in human life and knowing whose import is underappreciated.

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Faithfully Seeking Understanding provides a first-hand opportunity for English-speaking readers to encounter the thought of Johannes Kuhn (1806-1887), widely considered the greatest speculative theologian of the renowned Catholic Tubingen School. This volume presents selected essays spanning Kuhn's lengthy career. They are organized topically and edited by Grant Kaplan to give readers an approachable introduction to his thought. Despite having a significant influence on German theology and being the subject of much study in Germany, Kuhn's thought has attracted only marginal attention outside of Germany. These essays, in addition to a scholarly introduction, give evidence of the depth of Kuhn's thought and show his ongoing relevance for key fault lines in contemporary systematic and fundamental theology. The selections are taken from chapters of Kuhn's books, including his ""Catholic Dogmatics"", and from various articles that appeared in the ""Tubingen"" quarterly, ""Die theologische Quartalschrift"". They are arranged according to the following topics: faith and reason; revelation and the personhood of God; responses to Protestant liberalism; theological topics, including grace and freedom, theology and the university; and Catholic fundamental theology. Though diverse in subject, when read together the essays yield a complete theological vision that derives from a carefully constructed theological foundation.

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Thomas Aquinas and Jean-Paul Sartre are usually identified with completely different philosophical traditions: intellectualism and voluntarism. In this original study, Stephen Wang shows, instead, that there are some profound similarities in their understanding of freedom and human identity. Aquinas gives far more scope than is generally acknowledged to the open-endedness of reason in human deliberation, and argues that we can transform ourselves in quite radical ways through our choices. Sartre famously emphasizes the radical nature of choice, but also develops a subtle account of rationality and of the factual limits we encounter in the world and in ourselves. And in both thinkers the heart of human freedom lies in our ability to choose the goals we are seeking, as we search for an elusive fulfillment that lies beyond the confines of our temporal experience. This important study will interest Aquinas and Sartre scholars, as well as general readers seeking an introduction to their thought. It will also be invaluable for philosophers seeking fresh perspectives on questions of freedom, happiness, personal identity, act theory, meta-ethics, and theories of the self.

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Around the year 840, Liutbirga, the adopted daughter of a noble Saxon widow, asked to be walled into a cell in a church at one of the family's cloisters for religious women. She spent the last thirty years of her life in her cell, doing penance for her sins, fending off attacks by the devil, and instructing women in religion and handiwork through its one small window. Hathumoda, the daughter of a noble Saxon couple whose progeny would establish the first German empire, became abbess of a similar community of women when she was twelve years old. She too spent the rest of her life there, dying at the age of thirty-four in the course of an epidemic that swept across northwestern Europe. In spite of their confinement, both women made so great an impression on those who knew them that substantial biographies appeared within a few years of their deaths. In the growing field of early medieval texts in translation, this book presents the first full English translations of the ""Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen"", the first anchoress in Saxony, and Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim. The introduction and notes tell the story of the remarkable survival and transmission of the Lives and describe the ninth-century Saxon world that produced them and their authors. Although praised by their biographers for their holiness, Liutbirga and Hathumoda are not presented primarily as wonder-working saints, but as real flesh-and-blood women, pursuing sanctity in a world driven by family and ecclesiastical politics as much as spirituality. Histories of the women's families as well as memorials to their heroines, the ""Lives of Liutbirga and Hathumoda"" shed new light on a vibrant corner of Christian Europe in the century after Charlemagne.

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Blessings were an integral and vital element of medieval Christian life and worship. Benedictions for homes and workplaces, the knight and the pilgrim, the city under siege, and the fetus in the womb, are but a small sample of the multitudinous and fascinating extra-sacramental blessings that fill the leaves of the liturgical books of the medieval Latin Church. While commonly acknowledged as a crucial element in the life of medieval people, the meaning and importance of these blessings for their authors and audiences have been frequently overlooked by liturgical and historical scholarship, which has focused instead on the textual transmission and long-term changes in the blessings and the rituals surrounding them. This present work corrects this omission by examining these blessings with modern eyes, and a new methodology.In ""Blessing the World"", Derek A. Rivard studies liturgical blessing and its role in the religious life of Christians during the central and later Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the blessings of the Franco-Roman liturgical tradition from the tenth to late thirteenth centuries. Through a careful and extensive study of more than ninety such blessings, many of them translated for the first time and accessible to a readership beyond specialists in medieval liturgy, the author argues that medieval blessings were composed as a direct response to the needs, anxieties, beliefs, and fears of the laity, and therefore these texts represent a rich and largely untapped source for the study of lay piety and of ritual in medieval Europe.Effectively drawing upon anthropology, ritual studies, the phenomenology of religion, and traditional textual study, Rivard explores the rich themes of medieval piety that flow throughout the blessings in order to produce a new understanding of the blessing as an attempt to tap the power of the sacred for use in daily life. Benedictions for spaces, places, persons, items, and events are each studied in turn to produce this new understanding of these blessings, and in the process these petitions and rituals reveal much about larger issues of medieval people's cosmology, their perceived role in their cosmos, their conceptions of God, and their connections to the divine and to the spiritual powers of God's creation.

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How does the Church realize its public mission? How do different theological and philosophical commitments influence the conception of the Church's role in the public square? This work casts light on contemporary arguments over social Catholicism and the believer's role in society by illuminating a similar dispute between French Catholics among the Modernist Crisis (1909-1914).In the first decades of the twentieth century French Catholics were sharply divided over what strategy the Church should adopt to re-Christianize society. This conflict of mentalities found expression in a polemical exchange between lay philosopher Maurice Blondel and Jesuit Pedro Descoqs that occurred at the height of the Modernist crisis. On the one hand, Descoqs offered a defense of a Catholic alliance with the proto-fascist, monarchist Action Francaise. On the other hand, Blondel defended the democratic, social Catholics against the charge of social modernism in his ""Testis"" essays. Blondel's trenchant analysis of the integralist mentality that he found in Action Francaise Catholics has been described as ""the most penetrating analysis of this phenomenon of Catholic integralism that...represents an ever recurrent temptation for militant Catholics. ""Peter J. Bernardi's study presents a thorough exposition and analysis of this significant controversy. While highly sensitive to historical context, Bernardi primarily highlights the philosophical and theological positions involved. He maintains throughout the book that political allegiances and orientations colored theological arguments and makes clear that the issues at stake then are still relevant in understanding ecclesial tensions today. As eminent historical theologian Joseph Komonchak notes in the foreword, ""the controversy analyzed and described addressed issues so basic in importance and so broad in implication that the work will also be read with profit by others outside of the historical guild.

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Spirit's Gift is the first book in English devoted to the philosophy of Claude Bruaire (1936-1982). Its focus is the notion of gift, a notion that has recently been the subject of lively debate involving Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Marcel Mauss, and others. What makes Bruaire's approach to this subject distinctive is that he treats it ontologically. This book critically examines the two main insights that govern Bruaire's ontology of gift (ontodology). First, gift is being in its spiritual way of being. ""Spiritual"" in this case does not stand for one quality among others, but, more radically, it is what makes being be itself. Second, being itself (ipsum esse) is gift only because, as Christian Revelation suggests, the fullness proper to pure act is first of all an absolutely free donation in itself and to itself before being donation to another (creation). The coalescence of being, freedom, and spirit grounds the claim that being is gift. Bruaire's thought is presented in dialogue with his two main sources: German Idealism (Hegel and Schelling) and Christian revelation. Bruaire spent the bulk of his career as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Although not himself a Hegelian, he enjoyed and enjoys great standing as a scholar of and commentator on Hegel's philosophy. With Marion, Bruaire was a founding member of the French edition of the theological journal Communio, and he was held in high regard by the great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Bruaire's metaphysical account of gift also has affinities to that offered by Karol Wojytla - and subsequently developed under his pontificate as John Paul II. While Bruaire's understanding of gift is decidedly philosophical, it is also of considerable theological interest, bearing as it does upon questions of Trinitarian theology, theological anthropology, and the Catholic sacrament of marriage. Rightly understood, his conception of gift sheds considerable light on the Thomistic understanding of Ipsum esse subsistens. It can also contribute to a philosophical retrieval of the category of causality and to the elucidation of the ontological ground of ethics.

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Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle (1896-1987) is largely remembered as the controversial leader of the Archdiocese of Washington during its first, formative quarter century. Combining considerable foresight about the Church's social concerns with a stubborn resistance to innovation, he countered opposition from those who reviled his progressive stand, especially his steadfast demand for racial equality and support of organized labor. At the same time he earned the opprobrium of those who resisted his firm support of the magisterium, in particular his controversial defense of the pope's ban on artificial birth control and his rejection of liturgical experimentation in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Often overlooked is the fact that O'Boyle's Washington years followed a quarter-century participation in the modernization of the American Church's charity apparatus and the organization of its international relief effort. Such assignments placed him at the epicenter of the debate over the proper roles of church and state in providing social services. A product of the Catholic ghettoization of the early twentieth century, he was expected to lead his Church into fruitful partnerships with government and other organizations in support of society's most needy. This engaging biography seeks to explain O'Boyle's apparent contradictions by placing special emphasis on his formative years as the only child in an immigrant, staunchly pro-labor family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his training as a seminarian and curate in the rigidly traditional Church of his adopted New York. These influences, combined with his subsequent work with the poor and orphaned, instilled in him a progressive economic and social outlook as well as a lifetime sympathy for society's neglected. At the same time they strengthened an unquestioned obedience and loyalty to those in authority that figured so prominently in his later Washington years, where he came to embody the paradox of simple faith and complex humanity.

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Don Alvaro, or the Force of Fate by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas (1791-1865), premiered in 1835 in Madrid and changed the Spanish stage forever after. It was the benchmark Romantic play of early nineteenth-century Spain. In this English edition designed for either classroom use or performance, Robert Fedorchek presents a readable translation faithful to the tone and spirit of the original. Joyce Tolliver enhances the book with a rich introduction highlighting the work's lasting significance. The play tells of the torrid love of the mysterious Don Alvaro and the lovely Dona Leonor, and how fate intervenes - by way of Alvaro's role in the ""accidental"" death of Leonor's father - to bring about the extermination of Leonor's family at the hands of the man who loves her to distraction. Although chronologically not the first Spanish Romantic drama, Don Alvaro is generally considered the true exponent of the freedom of expression that Romanticism brought to the theater. It does away with all the Neoclassical rules: it exceeds twenty-four hours; the action takes place in two countries; it mixes high and low; prose alternates with verse; and the characters express, melodramatically and passionately, their innermost feelings. It is also generally considered the first play in the best trilogy, along with Antonio Garcia Gutierrez's El trovador (The troubadour, 1836) and Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch's Los amantes de Teruel (The lovers of Teruel, 1837).

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The Field Day Theatre Company has been a vital presence on the cultural and intellectual scene since its inception in 1980. This venture represented an attempt by a group of distinguished Irish artists to contribute to a resolution of Northern Ireland's political crisis. Founded by playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea, Field Day's board of directors has included writers Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Tom Paulin and Thomas Kilroy, and documentary filmmaker David Hammond. Among Field Day's premieres are such modern Irish classics as Friel's ""Translations"" (1980), Kilroy's ""Double Cross"" (1986) and Stewart Parker's ""Pentecost"" (1987). In addition to producing new Irish plays and masterpieces of world drama, since 1983 Field Day has published literary and critical works ranging from pamphlets on Irish language and history to the multi-volume ""Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing"" and an on-going series of essays and monographs edited by Deane. In this study of Field Day, Marilynn Richtarik offers a narrative account of the early years of the company, during which its self-image and public reputation were formed. Drawing on contemporary reviews, pre-production publicity, pronouncements over time by the various directors, and personal interviews, she constructs a background for her discussion of Field Day's evolving aims and concrete achievements.

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John Paul's choice to yoke faith and reason together in an encyclical on the two sources of knowledge caught the world's By stressing ""the two wings"" of Catholic thought, the pope captures in the lively image of a soaring bird the same point that theologians like von Balthasar communicate by calling truth symphonic. This work aims to deepen the appreciation for the stereophonic approach to truth that the Holy Father recommends. The essays are in three sections: doctrinal themes; contemporary implications; and historical aspects. In the first, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., discusses the 20th century answers to a question that has long haunted Christians who felt the attraction of pagan philosophy: Can philosophy be Christian? In the second section, Bishop Allen Vigneron considers the significance of this encyclical for Catholic intellectual life today. David Foster discusses the implications of ""Fides et ratio"" for Catholic universities. The final section reviews the importance of biblical wisdom literature for the encyclical.

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The chief aim of this primer is to give the student, within one year of study, the ability to read ecclesiastical Latin. Collins includes the Latin of Jerome's Bible, of canon law, of the liturgy and papal bulls, of scholastic philosophers, and of the Ambrosian hymns, providing a survey of texts from the fourth century through the Middle Ages. An ""Answer Key"" to this edition is now available. Please see An Answer Key to A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, prepared by John Dunlap.

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The Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith. What can we say about the divine nature, and what does it mean to say that God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons who are one in being? In this book, best selling author Thomas Joseph White, OP, examines the development of early Christian reflection on the Trinity, arguing that essential contributions of Patristic theology are preserved and expanded in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.By focusing on Aquinas' theology of the divine nature as well as his treatment of divine personhood, White explores in depth the mystery of Trinitarian monotheism. The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God also engages with influential proposals of modern theologians on major topics such as Trinitarian creation, Incarnation and crucifixion, and presents creative engagements with these topics. Ultimately any theology of the cross is also a theology of the Trinity, and this book seeks to illustrate how the human life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal the inner life of God as Trinity.

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Why do some people achieve ethical excellence while others fail? For example, how did Gloria Lewis overcome a lifetime of difficulty and go on to found a non-profit focused on feeding the homeless while Danny Starrett, despite a seemingly ideal childhood, became a rapist and murderer? Why did some Germans rescue their Jewish neighbors while others stood by?One recent study found that four personal variables, taken together, differentiated Nazi-era bystanders from rescuers with startling 96.1% accuracy: social responsibility, altruistic moral reasoning, empathic concern, and risk-taking—traits related to ethical excellences (virtues) like justice, benevolence, and courage. Drawing from the combined wisdom of classical Socratic and Confucian philosophy, recent work in psychology, and the lived experience of recognized moral heroes, the book focuses on how each of us can work toward ethical excellence, becoming more like Lewis and neighbor-rescuers than like Starrett and Nazi-era bystanders.The ancient Socratic and Confucian philosophical traditions offer surprisingly sophisticated advice regarding moral education. Because research in psychology helps us assess the feasibility of cultivating virtue in ourselves and those we influence, Ethical Excellence focuses on combining sound philosophical analysis of ethical virtue and related concepts with relevant empirical research on how these concepts are manifested and developed in everyday practice. Willpower, for example, contributes to development of temperance or moderation, grit relates to perseverance, and empathy is connected to benevolence.Finally, the study of ethically exceptional people—moral heroes or exemplars—serves as living proof that ethical excellence is possible, and exemplars can provide inspiration to attempt it ourselves and guidance regarding how to do so successfully. Relevant stories and excerpts from the author’s own interviews with award-winning ethical exemplars complement the use of philosophical virtue theory and psychological research on virtue-relevant practice. Together, these three approaches—philosophy, psychology, and biography—help to triangulate” ethical excellence and its achievement, presenting a much clearer and more complete picture than we can get from any one of these methods alone.

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This collection of essays places Flannery O’Connor’s work in constructive and collaborative dialogue with Spanish literature and literary aesthetics. The international scholars who contributed to this volume explore the ways in which O’Connor’s literary and religious vision continues to work in the imaginations of both American and European—mostly Spanish—authors. The subtitle of the collection—From Andalusia to Andalucía—is a play on the name of O’Connor’s family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia—Andalusia—where she spent the last sixteen years of her life living with her mother. It is said that the farm’s name was chosen because its location in Milledgeville was the farthest north the Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century traveled in the eastern U.S. before returning to Florida to establish permanent Spanish settlements. While perhaps colloquial in its origins, it is, nevertheless, a fitting and emblematic link between the Southern Gothic aesthetics of O’Connor’s Andalusia and the baroque heritage of southern Spain’s Andalucía.The essays in this collection explore O’Connor’s literary vision through three interpretive lenses: first, through the relationship of the literary grotesque (a genre that often defines her work) with the Spanish baroque aesthetics that have come to define Spain’s artistic heritage; second, through the relationship between O’Connor’s literary imagination and the literature of other European writers that broaden the intellectual conversation about her work; and, third, through comparisons with other writers whose Catholic imaginations made their work—as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it—“counter, original, spare, strange.” As the essays contained in this volume show, the work of Flannery O’Connor continues to bear rich intellectual and spiritual fruit when engaging with enculturated literary and aesthetic traditions.

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Christian satisfaction stands at the center of the Church’s teaching about salvation. Satisfaction pertains to studies about Christ, redemption, the Sacraments, and pastoral practice. The topic also enters into questions about God and the creature as well as about the divine mercy and providence. Somewhat neglected in the period after Vatican II, satisfaction now appears to scholars as the forgotten key to entering deeply into the mystery of Christ and his work. Seminarians especially will benefit from studying the place satisfaction holds in Catholic life.Further, ecumenical work requires a proper understanding of the place that satisfaction holds in Christian theology. Various factors operative since the sixteenth century have worked to displace satisfaction almost entirely from reformed practice and theology. To address such concerns, The Godly Image, has, over the past several decades and more, done a great deal to put satisfaction within its proper context of image-restoration. That is, to interpret satisfaction within the context of the divine mercy and not the divine justice. This unique contribution to satisfaction studies owes a great deal to the achievement of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In this sense, the book enacts a retrieval of the theology of the high classical period. Like much of Aquinas’s refined teaching, a proper understanding requires appeal to the commentatorial tradition that follows him. Interested students will find in this study the touchstones for further studies of these authors.The Godly Image aims also to distinguish the theology of Aquinas from that of the medieval author with whom the notion of satisfaction remains mostly identified, that is, Anselm of Canterbury. Although not a developed focus of the book’s contents, the attentive reader will recognize that Aquinas treats Saint Anselm with a reverential reading, even as the Common Doctor moves significantly away from interpretations of satisfaction that suggest that an angry God exacts from his innocent Son a painful substitutional penalty for a fallen human race.

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As it developed an increasingly distinctive character of its own during the first six centuries of the common era, Christianity was constantly forced to reassess and adapt its relationship with the Jewish tradition. The process involved a number of preoccupations and challenges: the status of biblical and parabiblical texts (several of them already debatable in Jewish eyes), the nature and purposes of God, patterns of prayer (both personal and liturgical), ritual practices, ethical norms, the acquisition and exercise of religious authority, and the presentation of a religious “face” to the very different culture that surrounded and in many ways dominated both Christians and Jews.The essays in this volume were developed within that broad field of inquiry, and indeed make their contribution to it. For, among the many issues already mentioned, there was also that of persons. What was Christianity to do, not just with Adam or Noah, say, but with Abraham, David and Solomon, the great prophetic figures of Jewish history—and, of course, with Moses?As we move, chapter by chapter, across the early Christian centuries, we see Moses gradually changing in Christian eyes, and at the hands of Christian exegetes and theologians, until he becomes the philosopher par excellence, the forerunner of Plato, the archetype of the lawgiver, the model shepherd of the people of God—yet all on the basis of a scriptural record that Jews would still have been able to recognize.Written by a range of established scholars, younger and older, many of them highly distinguished, The Christian Moses will appeal to graduate and senior students, to those rooted in a range of disciplines—literary, historical, art historical, as well in theology and exegesis—and to everyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations in this early era.

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Peter of Blois pursued the life of a twelfth-century intellectual with vigor and passion tinged with anxiety. After a thorough education in the arts, theology, and law at some of medieval Europe's finest schools - including those at Chartres, Paris, and Bologna - he served in the courts of royalty and archbishops alike. He attended diplomatic embassies, advised princes, argued legal cases at the papal court in Rome, and may well have gone on crusade to the Holy Land. All the while, along with several treatises, he wrote, compiled, issued, and re-issued a collection of letters to the intellectual elite of Europe. These letters detail the spiritual and professional anxieties of an educated professional always looking for employment and in considerable despair over the fate of his soul. Peter's dilemma, essentially insoluble, was how to carve out a place in a rapidly changing intellectual and political landscape. ""The Clerical Dilemma"" is the first book-length study of Peter of Blois' life, thought, and writings in any language. John D. Cotts uses Peter's letters and treatises to recreate the thought of the twelfth-century literati, illuminating the ambiguities, contradictions, and fundamental dynamism of that world. Paying careful attention to the difficult manuscript tradition of the letter collection, Cotts explores how Peter brought classical, patristic, monastic, and scholastic traditions into an uneasy synthesis, and deployed them in letters whose recipients represent a cross-section of contemporary intellectuals - from cathedral canons, to prominent scholars, to cardinals and popes. The book will be of interest to all those interested in the religious, political, and intellectual history of the twelfth century, providing new avenues for studying the ways in which medieval writers composed and revised their texts.

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In a time of discouragement, how can the Church renew itself and its outreach to all people? Bishop Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, insists that a ""dumbed down"" Catholicism cannot succeed in today's highly educated society--instead, the Church needs to draw upon its great theological heritage in order to renew its hope in Christ.With Renewing Our Hope: Essays for the New Evangelization, Bishop Barron traces this renewal through four stages. ""Renewing Our Mission"" lays out the challenges that call for Catholics to become more aware of their own intellectual resources in encountering the ""Nones."" ""Renewing Our Minds"" showcases the importance of theological reflection as a font of wisdom and sanity in the Church, touching on Thomas Aquinas, Hans Urs von Balthasar, the recently canonized John Henry Newman, and Pope Francis. In ""Renewing the Church,"" he proceeds to look at how Scripture, the family, the seminary, and Catholic college graduates can each contribute to this renewal. Finally, in ""Renewing Our Culture,"" he returns to the judgments Catholics must make in assessing contemporary culture, specifically, family life, liberalism, relativism, and (surprisingly) the beauty of cinema.Bishop Barron, known as the host of the Catholicism PBS video series, was previously rector and professor of systematic theology at Mundelein Seminary outside Chicago, Illinois. He demonstrates again in Renewing Our Hope his ability to make the fruits of his wide reading accessible to a broad audience, while still giving his academic colleagues much to consider.

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The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Irenaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer.At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims.This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context.As Fr. White states in the book's introduction: ""This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.

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Jacques Maritain was one of the leading French and Thomist philosophers of the twentieth century. He was particularly fond of America and its political experiment in liberal democracy. He taught at four American universities and came to know the young republic first hand. ""Maritain and America"" explores the engagement of his thought with the American political experiment in representative democracy and the culture of liberal individualism that it has fostered. The book begins with a consideration of the sources for the American founding - English common law, Protestant Christianity, Lockean natural rights theory - and then proceeds to examine the American political order from the perspective of various philosophers in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. These scholars are concerned with, among other things, the relationship of natural law and natural rights, understandings of the common good, and achieving unity in a pluralist society. One set of essays discusses America's unique settlements between faith and reason and between church and state. Another set explores the philosophy of personalism, one of the most notable projects that Thomists, such as Maritain, have undertaken in order to provide a metaphysical understanding of the human person that can both provide a foundation for natural rights and yet be open to a transcendent order of goodness. Other scholars take up the task of developing a theory of tolerance (in the context of a pluralist society) that is grounded in a common quest for wisdom and truth. The final section applies Thomistic ethics in the context of contemporary American society.

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Drawing upon the richness and breadth of Jacques Maritain's thought, the contributors to this volume engage readers with philosophical essays about the search for truth in human life and civic engagement. The essays examine a broad range of topics, from those that are more properly theoretical, such as God, science, natural law, practical reason, education and democracy, to those that are more practical, such as capital punishment, eugenics, friendship, love and art. In each essay, the author implicitly challenges the claims of relativism and postmodernism, specifically the idea that there is no ""real"" truth and that what matters is merely the perspective of one's own frame of reference. The essays argue instead that theoretical truth-claims have practical consequences, that truth matters to those who are affected by it.

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The Development of Dogma examines the nature of dogmatic statements and the causes of development. It devotes particular attention to the emergence of the form of dogmatic statements at the Council of Nicaea, but notes how this form is anticipated in the New Testament. It situates dogma and its development within the matrix of the great fundamental theological realities of Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium. Fr. Mansini examines at some length how the Church comes to recognize a development as a genuine development rather than as a distortion of the word of God. The Development of Dogma is especially valuable today for its discussion and defense of the philosophical presuppositions of dogma, which are often simply presupposed but should not be ignored in a complete account of development. These presuppositions touch on fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of knowledge, the objectivity and trustworthiness of names, and the various logical forms employed in understanding how development is related to a closed revelation. The historicity of human knowledge is also addressed, and the role of dogma itself in heading off the extreme relativism the historical nature of man is supposed to imply for ecclesial faith and life. The Church's dogma about dogma enunciated at the First Vatican Council is also examined. The role of certain fundamental concepts in understanding the possibility of the irreformability of dogma it speaks of is expressly addressed--concepts in principle accessible to all human beings and that enable a trans-cultural, trans-temporal proposal and reception of revealed truth.

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An altar is a place of sacrifice or an offering table as a place of worship for deities. Whether what Christians use in worship today may be an altar is a matter of dispute among the denominations. Since the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, the altar has been the focus of many redesigns of Catholic church rooms.In doing so, one likes to orientate oneself on the early church. The Council refers to the ""norm of the fathers"". But how can this be reconciled with the widespread opinion that Christianity did not know any cult and no sacrifices in the beginning, but only love and sin feasts, celebrated in house churches? Only at a late stage, since the time of Emperor Constantine, did a real state cult with sacrifices, altars and magnificent sacred spaces develop, and the church still suffers from this historical ballast today. But is this really true? Or are these not rather clichés that need to be critically questioned? This volume cuts a few paths through the thicket and arrives at results that are as surprising as they are stimulating.

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Provides the reader with an introductory presentation of key themes in Thomistic metaphysics. There are many such books, of course, but this one is, to use a phrase Michael Gorman has adopted, analyticfacing' - it presents things in dialogue with analytic philosophy.

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On the Day of Atonement, two goats were brought before the high priest at the temple. One was chosen as the goat for the Lord, a spotless sacrifice, and the other was set aside for Azazel, doomed to bear sins into the wilderness. Jewish Temple Theology and the Mystery of the Cross shows how a theological appreciation for the two movements of Yom Kippur makes it possible to identify the paradox at the heart of Christian soteriology: in his single atoning act, Jesus Christ fulfills the work of both goats, without confusion, without division. Appreciation for this paradox helps illuminate many of the doctrinal debates in the history of Christian soteriology and offers a compelling way forward.Jewish Temple Theology and the Mystery of the Cross begins with a survey of biblical geography: first, a rich theological pilgrimage to Mount Zion, the home of beauty, goodness, and truth, and then to the surrounding desert, the wilderness of sin and sorrow. To appreciate the Yom Kippur liturgy, and to understand the priestly word "atonement," one must be oriented by this cosmic stage. Drawing on the best modern historical critical scholarship, this volume reveals the wonders hidden in Leviticus and shows how a sophisticated theological interpretation of this book leads to breakthroughs in our understanding of Christ's saving work.Seeing the mystery of the cross from the perspective of the ancient Jewish scriptures has surprising results. For example, Richard Barry shows how Hans Urs von Balthasar's controversial theology of Holy Saturday is a compelling development of Azazel goat soteriology; it is not only biblically licit but is in some ways mandated by the logic of Yom Kippur. At the same time, David Bentley Hart is celebrated for the way he powerfully advances modern YHWH goat soteriology, yet obedience to the logic of Yom Kippur also necessitates a nuanced biblical critique of his muscular universalism.How can Christ fulfill the seemingly contradictory movements of both goats in a single saving work? Grappling with that question, Jewish Temple Theology and the Mystery of the Cross seeks to draw nearer to the heart of the mystery of salvation.

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Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach applies Thomistic virtue theory to today's most challenging questions of cooperation with evil.For centuries, moralists have struggled to determine the conditions necessary to justify moral cooperation with evil. The English Jesuit Henry Davis even observed: ""[T]here is no more difficult question than this in the whole range of Moral Theology."" This important book addresses this challenge by applying the virtue-based method of moral reasoning of St. Thomas Aquinas to issues of cooperation with evil.Those who pastor souls report frequently receiving questions from attentive believers about whether a particular human action inadvertently contributes to some moral evil. Examples of potentially immoral cooperation with evil include whether one may shop at a particular franchise known for its support of abortion, whether Catholics may attend civil marriages outside the Church, or whether an organization may submit to government mandates that health insurance include payment for immoral practices.Although recent moralists have tackled specific topics related to cooperation with evil, agreement on an overall common paradigm has not yet been reached. Rethinking Cooperation with Evil proposes a method for Christian believers and others to approach these questions from the foundation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and the magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. This text provides both an overall method for how to understand the issue of cooperation, as well as practical counsel for specific cases.Rethinking Cooperation with Evil advances the theological conversation on this topic from both speculative and practical vantage points. To facilitate his argument, Connors utilizes historical analyses that contrast Aquinas's method of moral reasoning with that of the casuist treatment of cooperation. Consequently, the book includes numerous case studies that will be of interest both to moral theologians and readers new to the topic.

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The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series of the 19th century rendered into English many of Jerome's treatises and letters while bypassing his biblical commentaries as well as some of his most important exegetical letters. This omission, which was not helpful to scholarship, was probably due to the great length of these works. Although the problem was partly remedied by some new English translations of the 20th century, the present volume fills a significant lacuna by translating into English the Scriptural exegesis that Jerome conveyed in his relatively unknown epistles, many of which were composed in response to queries he had received from various correspondents. Many of these letters are presented here for the first time in English.Based on the Hilberg edition, this volume contains new translations, introduced and annotated, of Jerome's Epistles 18-21, 25-30, 34-37, 42, 53, 55-56, 59, 64-65, 72-74, 78, 85, 106, 112, 119-121, 129, 130, and 140. Two newly translated letters from the famous exchange with Augustine over the meaning of Galatians 2:11-14 are included (Epp. 56 and 112), as well as a new rendering of Ep. 130 to Demetrias (which technically is not an ""exegetical"" letter but does present important information about the Pelagian controversy). Overall, this collection hopes to serve as a useful introduction to Jerome's approach to biblical interpretation, of both the Old and the New Testament. Some letters focus on the historical meaning of Pauline and Gospel texts, while others contain allegorical expositions of Old Testament passages. Jerome's competence as a Hebrew scholar will become evident to the reader of this volume as well as his thorough acquaintance with the antecedent Greek and Latin Christian exegetical traditions.

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This volume is a tribute to Fr. John F. Wippel. Following the philosophical order that Aquinas might have adopted ""had he chosen to write a Summa metaphysicae""--an order that Wippel himself lays out in his Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas--these essays unfold new research on some of the most intriguing topics in Aquinas's metaphysics, from the most recent generation of scholars formed by Wippel's pioneering work.The contributors address the discovery of being qua being via separation (Gregory T. Doolan), propter quid metaphysical demonstrations (Philip Neri Reese), the origins of the controversies about the real distinction between essence and esse (Mark Gossiaux), a defense of essence-realism as a key to the real distinction (David Twetten), the relationship of likeness and agency (Therese Scarpelli Cory), created form as act and potency (Stephen Brock), the variation of accidental forms (Gloria Frost), the possibility of angelic judgment (Francis Feingold), argumentation for the existence of God (Gaven Kerr), the propriety of "" Qui Est"" as a Divine Name (Brian Carl), 'Beauty' as a Divine Name (Michael Rubin), and God's application of creaturely powers to action (Jason Mitchell).

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This book serves two purposes: first, it celebrates the career of the late Maureen Tilley; second, it provides a "state of the field" look at some of the latest scholarship on Christian North Africa in late antiquity. The chapters, written by both senior scholars and the next generation of North African researchers, fills gaps in some of our understandings of the colorful people, places, and disputes that arose in the unique environment of Christian North Africa. The book centers around Augustine, Donatist studies, and North African biblical interpretation, representing Tilley's major areas of interest, while also ensuring coverage of Tertullian (a major figure in the North African church and one of Tilley's hobbyhorses) and the pilgrimages to North Africa and other places. It contributes to the field(s) by providing new scholarship from some of the biggest names in Christian North Africa studies (Patout Burns, Robin Jensen, Bill Tabbernee, Anthony Dupont, and Allan Fitzgerald) and in Patristic/early Christian studies writ large (Blake Leyerle and Geoffrey Dunn) while demonstrating the new trajectories of Christian North Africa research from early career (Alden Bass) and emerging (Colum Dever) scholars. The editors were Tilley's dissertation director (the late Liz Clark) and one of her last mentees (Zach Smith), so the entire collection has a meta-view of academic genealogy—knowledge flowing from Tilley's mentor, through colleagues and mentees, and down through and to the next generation who carry on those legacies.

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Catholic theology has to face a certain number of fundamental questions: what is the nature and content of Christian revelation, what are the sources of revelation, how are the mysteries of the faith to be understood in relation of one to another, and how do the truths of the Catholic faith relate to the acquisitions of natural reason. In the contemporary context, Catholic theology is marked by a diversity of approaches, many of which are seemingly incompatible or estranged from one another. How might we think about the unity of Catholic theology over and above the diversity of forms? What role, if any, can Aquinas play as a common doctor in facilitating exchanges between theological traditions in the Church?Principles of Catholic Theology seeks to address directly the nature of Catholic theology and the challenge of its contemporary articulation with an eye towards its articulation in its Thomistic key. This book is also the first of a series of collections of essays by Thomas Joseph White, OP, extending over a range of fundamental topics in Catholic dogmatic theology.

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What does it mean to say that Scripture is God's Word? And just how true is the Bible? Though sometimes dismissed as "fundamentalist" concerns, these questions also sent twentieth-century Catholic theology searching for a new paradigm of biblical inspiration. Theologians repeatedly attempted to reconcile the traditional conviction that the Bible shares in the omniscience of its divine author with scholarly findings that suggested otherwise. Joseph Ratzinger contributed both negatively and positively to this project, deconstructing the regnant manualist models of inspiration and constructing an alternative inspired by St. Bonaventure. The result is an ecclesial model of surprising comprehensiveness and balance. Indeed, The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture concludes that Ratzinger's alternative provides the least inadequate paradigm currently on offer today.The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture breaks new ground in several ways. First, it situates Ratzinger within a broader Catholic quest for a theology of inspiration, showing his model offers advantages even relative to those proposed by modern theology's most eminent minds: John Henry Newman, Pierre Benoit, Karl Rahner, and David Tracy. Secondly, this book shows how Ratzinger's paradigm generates "tests" for identifying the perennially valid affirmations of Scripture, and thus an approach to resolving disputed biblical questions. Must one who accepts the authority of Scripture believe in the Devil? Are the Marian dogmas really "in" Scripture? To what extent does Jesus's prohibition of divorce still apply in today's changed social circumstances? Just how historical are Gospel narratives, like the Last Supper, intended to be? The result is a book that bridges the gap between normative theology and historical exegesis. Overall, The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture presents Ratzinger not as an unimaginative enforcer of doctrinal conclusions but as a creatively faithful theologian, whose reconfiguration of inspiration should serve as the point of departure for all future reflection on the subject.

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Acts of Faith and Imagination wagers that fiction written by Catholic authors assists readers to reflect critically on the question: "what is faith?" To speak of a person's "faith-life" is to speak of change and development. As a narrative form, literature can illustrate the dynamics of faith, which remains in flux over the course of one's life. Because human beings must possess faith in something (whether religious or not), it inevitably has a narrative structure—faith ebbs and flows, flourishes and decays, develops and stagnates.Through an exploration of more than a dozen Catholic authors' novels and short stories, Brent Little argues that Catholic fiction encourages the reader to reflect upon their faith holistically, that is, the way faith informs one's affections, and how a person conceives and interacts with the world as embodied beings. Amidst the diverse stories of modern and contemporary fiction, a consistent pattern emerges: Catholic fiction portrays faith—at its most fundamental, often unconscious, level—as an act of the imagination. Faith is the way one imagines themselves, others, and creation. A person's primary faith conditions how they live in the world, regardless of the level of conscious reflection, and regardless of whether this is a "religious" faith.Acts of Faith and Imagination investigates the creative depth and vitality of the Catholic literary imagination by bringing late modern Catholic authors into dialogue with more contemporary ones. Readers will then consider well-known works, such as those by Grahame Greene, Flannery O'Connor, and Muriel Spark in the fresh light of contemporary stories by Toni Morrison, Alice McDermott, Uwem Akpan, and several others.

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Vatican II initiated lively conversations about the identity of religious orders and congregations when the council pointed out that these religious communities are divine gifts in and to the church. Keith Egan examines the nature of these charisms including, not only the original or founders' charism, but how charisms evolve over the centuries. Special theological attention to these charisms show that they are not something but, in fact, are the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit.This volume offers a case study the original charism of the Carmelites. The first Carmelites originated when various hermits were displaced by the armies of Saladin. These dislodged hermits sought refuge on Mount Carmel in a ravine facing the Mediterranean Sea. There, these hermits, now Carmelites, sought from Saint Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a description of their life of solitude. Albert's Formula of Life describes the original Carmelite charism as a life of prayer and contemplation. This Formula eventually became a Rule that made possible a transformation of hermits into friars. Egan is at work on a sequel that examines this radical transformation.

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Reading Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas: His Commentaries on Aristotle's Major Works offers an original and decisive work for the understanding of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. For decades his commentaries on the major works of Aristotle have been the subject of lively discussions. Are his commentaries faithful and reliable expositions of the Stagirite's thought or do they contain Thomas's own philosophy and are they read through the lens of Thomas's own Christian faith and in doing so possibly distorting Aristotle?In order to be able to provide clarity and offer a nuanced response to this question a careful study of all the relevant texts is needed. This is precisely what Leo Elders sets out to do in this work.Each chapter is devoted to one of the twelve commentaries Thomas wrote on major works of Aristotle including both his massive and influential commentaries on the Metaphysics, Physics and Nicomachean Ethics as well as lesser known commentaries. Elders places Thomas's commentary in its historical context, reviews the Greek, Arabic and Latin translation and reception of Aristotle's text as well as contemporary interpretations thereof and presents the reader with a thorough presentation and analysis of the content of the commentary, drawing attention to all the places where Thomas intervenes and makes special observations. In this way the reader can study Aristotle's treatises with Thomas as guide.The conclusion reached is that Thomas's commentaries are a masterful and faithful presentation of Aristotle's thought and of that of Thomas himself. Thomas's Christian faith does not falsify Aristotle's text, but gives occasionally an outlook at what lies behind philosophical thought.

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Among the writers of the Syriac Christian tradition, none is as renowned as St. Ephrem of Nisibis (ca. 307–373), known to much of the later Christian world simply as "the Syrian." The great majority of Ephrem's works are poetry, with the madraše ("teaching songs") especially prominent.This volume presents English translations of four complete madraše cycles of Ephrem: On the Fast, On the Unleavened Bread, On the Crucifixion, and On the Resurrection. These collections include some of the most liturgically oriented songs in Ephrem's corpus, and, as such, provide a window into the celebration of Lent and Easter in the Syriac-speaking churches of northern Mesopotamia in the fourth century. Even more significantly, they represent some of the oldest surviving poetry composed for these liturgical seasons in the entire Christian tradition. Not only are the liturgical occasions of the springtime months a source of colorful imagery in these texts, but Ephrem also employs traditional motifs of warm weather, spring rainstorms, and revived vegetation, which likely reflect Hellenistic literary influences.Like all of Ephrem's poetry, these songs express early Christian theology in language that is symbolic, terse, and vibrant. They are rich with biblical allusions and references, especially to the Exodus and Passion narratives. They also reveal a contested religious environment in which Ephrem strove to promote the Christian Pascha and Christian interpretations of Scripture over and against those of Jewish communities in the region, thus maintaining firm boundaries around the identity and practices of the churches.

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This volume is an important contribution to the field of Margaret More Roper studies, early modern women's writing, as well as Erasmian piety, Renaissance humanism, and historical and cultural studies more generally.Margaret More Roper is the learned daughter of St. Thomas More, the Catholic martyr; their lives are closely linked to each other and to early sixteenth-century changes in politics and religion and the social upheaval and crises of conscience that they brought. Specifically, Roper's major works - her translation of Erasmus's commentary on the Lord's Prayer and the long dialogue letter between More and Roper on conscience - highlight two major preoccupations of the period: Erasmian humanism and More's last years, which led to his death and martyrdom.Roper was one of the most learned women of her time and a prototype of the woman writer in England, and this edited volume is a tribute to her life, writings, and place among early women authors. It combines comprehensive and convenient joining of biographical, textual, historical, and critical components within a single volume for the modern reader. There is no comparable study in print, and it fills a significant gap in studies of early modern women writers.

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Reflection on natural law reaches a highpoint during the Middle Ages. Not only do Christian thinkers work out the first systematic accounts of natural law and articulate the framework for subsequent reflection, the Jewish and Islamic traditions also develop their own canonical statements on the moral authority of reason vis-à-vis divine law. In the view of some, they thereby articulate their own theories of natural law.These various traditions of medieval reflection on natural law, and their interrelation, merit further study, particularly since they touch upon many current philosophical concerns. They grapple with the problem of ethical and religious pluralism. They consider whether universally valid standards of action and social life are accessible to those who rely on reason rather than divine law. In so doing, they develop sophisticated accounts of many central issues in metaethics, action theory, jurisprudence, and the philosophy of religion. However, do they reach a consensus about natural law, or do they end up defending incommensurable ethical frameworks? Do they confirm the value of arguments based on natural law or do they cast doubt on it?This collection brings together contributions from various expert scholars to explore these issues and the pluralism that exists within medieval reflection on natural law. It is the first one to study the relation between the natural law theories of these various traditions of medieval philosophy: Jewish, Islamic, Byzantine, and Latin.Each of the first four essays surveys the 'natural law theory' of one of the religious traditions of medieval philosophy—Jewish, Islamic, Byzantine, and Latin—and its relation to the others. The next four essays explore some of the alternative accounts of natural law that arise within the Latin tradition. They range over St. Bonaventure, Peter of Tarentaise, Matthew of Aquasparta, John Duns Scotus, and Marsilius of Padua.

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Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit? The answers to these questions were so obvious in the first centuries of Christian history, that the New Testament and the earliest Christian writers did not feel the need to deliberately address the identity of the Spirit. The more stringent question was this: what does the Spirit do in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the life of Jesus, in the community of disciples, in the Church, and in the world? These same questions, however, did not have the same obvious answers to subsequent generations.Writing in the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus observed a slow progress of better understanding the identity and mission of the Holy Spirit throughout the centuries; his opponents still referred to the Spirit as a "strange," "unscriptural," and "interpolated" God (Or. 31). One would expect that today, centuries later, pneumatology would be exponentially further developed than in the patristic era. And yet, contemporary theology only rarely asks who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does. That is where the present volume attempts to bring a contribution, by addressing early Pneumatologies reflected in the Scriptures and the age of the martyrs, historical developments in patristic literature and spiritual writings, and contemporary pneumatological themes, as they relate to ecumenism, ecology, science, ecclesiology, and missions.The present volume gathers essays authored by eleven world-renowned theologians. Each contribution originated as a public lecture addressed to theologians and an educated general audience, followed by a private colloquium in which the lecturers conferred with scholars who are experts in the field. Thus, the present volume offers a multifaceted approach to Pneumatology, in an ecumenical spirit.

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After almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, what was John Paul II's legacy regarding the ministerial priesthood? What answers did he give to the questions still surrounding this reality today? Nilson Leal de Sá, CB, examines the pontiff's twenty-seven letters of Holy Thursday addressed annually to the priests. Unlike some papal documents, which are drafted by many hands, these letters to priests were born of a personal initiative, wherein the pope spoke ab imo pectore (from the depths of his heart), giving a little of himself and his thought. Cardinal Georges-Marie Cottier, theologian emeritus of the Pontifical House and a connoisseur of the texts of the Holy Father, has confirmed that "the Letters of Holy Thursday were written by John Paul II himself."Leal de Sá has sought in the diversity of the letters of Holy Thursday the major points of the thought of John Paul II on this important topic. The first chapter dwells on the sources of his teaching and emphasizes his use of the Word of God, Tradition, and the conciliar Magisterium. These foundations are the basis of the second chapter, which highlights the priestly identity in the life of the Church. Finally, the third chapter elucidates the specific mission of the priest.The Priesthood, Mystery of Faith presents itself as a real and stimulating synthesis of John Paul II's thought about the ministerial priesthood in a systematic way. It renews us in the appreciation of the inestimable gift that God makes to the whole Church through the sacrament of the Holy Orders.

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A Catholic Quest for the Historical Christ brings together a collection of interrelated essays on the historical Jesus and primitive Christology. Sensitive to the diverse, but traditionally Protestant assumptions and perspectives of the ""Quest"" as well as to the widely lamented disconnect between New Testament exegesis and classical dogmatic theology, an alternative approach is proposed in these pages. Ecumenical and conciliar reference points, along with non-confessional historical methods (e.g. archeology) shape the basic project, which nevertheless assumes some distinctive and important Catholic contours. This particular synthesis injects the voice of a missing interlocutor into an established conversation that has not infrequently been both historically confused and dogmatically (and philosophically) numb.The book is divided into three sections: Historical Foundations, Theological Perspectives, and Jesus and the Scriptures. While the individual chapters represent independent probes, the cumulative argument and arc of the study drives in clear and concerted directions. After a first approach to the Gospel data, attentive at once to historiographical and historical questions, a series of interventions reorienting the present scholarly discussion are suggested. These various, foundational essays lead, finally, to a sustained mediation on the mind of Christ, considered as a unique reader of the Scriptures: a meditation having its proper reflex and reflection in the way Christians themselves, as readers of the Gospels, participate in the Lord's own encounter with the living Word.

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This book offers an introduction to the theological and historical aspects of the papacy, an office and institution that is unique in this world. Throughout its history up to our present time, the Petrine ministry is both fascinating and challenging to people, both inside and outside the Catholic Church.Gerhard Cardinal Müller speaks from a particular and personal viewpoint, including his experience of working closely with the pope every day as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He addresses, in particular, those dimensions of the papal office which are crucial for understanding more deeply the pope as a visible principle of the church's unity.500 years after the Protestant reformation, The Pope offers insights into the ecumenical controversies about the papacy throughout the centuries, in their historical context. The book also exposes prejudices and cliches, and points to the authentic foundation of the Petrine ministry.

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Although not well-known in the English-speaking world, Fr. Ambroise Gardeil, OP (1859-1931) was a Dominican of significant influence in French Catholic thought at the turn of the 20th century. Conservative theologians like Frs. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, Michel Labourdette, OP, Jean-Hervé Nicolas, OP and many others hailed him as a careful expositor of the supernaturality of faith, a defender of the theological nature of rational apologetics, and a spiritual master.The True Christian Life provides a thorough and stirring introduction to Fr. Gardeil's work in spiritual theology. The volume was originally published posthumously through the collaboration of Fr. Gardeil's nephew, Fr. Henri-Dominique Gardeil, OP and Jacques Maritain. Fr. Ambroise, prior to beginning work on his masterpiece on spiritual experience, La Structure de l'âme et l'expérience mystique, drafted nearly eight-hundred pages that would have set forth a full presentation of moral-ascetical theology. While drafting this massive work, his reflection on the soul's receptive capacity for grace led him to the two-volume study, La Structure, and he never was able to finish his original designs for a comprehensive study of the Christian moral-spiritual life. Soon after his death, his nephew gathered several essays from the Revue thomiste and Revue de Jeunes, along with a complete-but-unpublished study on prayer. Drafting a lengthy introduction on the basis of Fr. Ambroise's unpublished notes, Fr. Henri-Dominique assembled a volume of moral / spiritual theology that sets out the principles of many important themes: divinization through grace, Christian prudence /conscience, the virtue of religion, devotion, and prayer.In this volume, the reader will find a clear and rhetorically striking presentation of the central mysteries of the spiritual life, presented with stirring and beautiful rhetoric by a theological master from the Thomist tradition.

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