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

This book is about ecumenism, from a Catholic point of view. The first part, chapters 1 and 2, describe the history of divisions within the Church, as well as of the efforts to bring about Christian unity. The second part examines Ecumenism from a systematic theological perspective.This first part takes into account the different factors that led to definitive ruptures within the Church, which usually are not only theological. The text gives useful information about what happened after the respective divisions as well as about the various attempts to restore unity, the development of the Ecumenical Movement in the 20th Century, and the current situation of ecumenical dialogue within the Catholic Church. While offering insight into the sad history that has led to the present disunity, this work also highlights the way Christians have sought to bring to fulfill the petition of Christ that his disciples might be one, as He and the Father are one.The second part?chapters three, four and five?offers a systematic theological analysis of unity in the Church, from the point of view of dogmatic theology. We find here an explanation of the Catholic concept of ecumenism, of how Catholic theology understands the unity of the Church, and, finally, of the Catholic principles which sustain the efforts for regaining unity in the Church. The Second Vatican Council, and particularly the Constitution Lumen gentium and the Decree Unitatis redintegratio, are at the foundation of these reflections. At the same time, since the theology of the Church and the life of the Church are intimately connected, there is a profound link between this dogmatic section and the earlier historical section.The last chapter, about the practice of ecumenism, is also written from a theological perspective, but with more links with life and spirituality. The chapter recalls that ecumenism can never simply remain a set of theological principles, but rather inspires an attitude and action in charity which are essential to the Christian life.

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Aquinas on Imitation of Nature highlights and explores the doctrine of the imitation of nature, a crucial aspect of Aquinas' metaethics and fills the gap in research on Aquinas' moral doctrine and theory of action. It conveys Aquinas' doctrine of the imitation of nature as a natural feature of right practical reason regarding moral thinking and action, indeed as an indispensable feature of virtuous flourishing in individual and communal aspects of human life.The book starts with an overview of some of recent interpretations of Aquinas' moral doctrine and natural law, introducing the need to explore the role of the imitation of nature in human practical reasoning and action in this area of Aquinas' teaching. The chapters that follow are based on a careful reading of selected texts of Aquinas, and gradually develop a thorough and comprehensive picture of his doctrine of the imitation of nature as a source of practical principles. The final chapter provides various examples of how Aquinas understands the imitation of nature in the realm of moral reasoning and action.The originality of this volume comes from its account of Aquinas' medieval doctrine of the imitation of nature, in light of which the principles of right practical reason and virtuous action are congruent with and epistemologically dependant upon the basic terms of the movements of natural, sensible, non-rational agents. Through its thorough reading of Aquinas on the imitation of nature, the book aims to open new ways of appropriation of the metaphysical and natural tenets of his moral doctrine in the areas of theory of action, practical reason, natural law, and contemporary virtue ethics.

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Peter Linehan (+2020) followed his survey of original papal letters in Portugal, Portugalia pontifica 1198-1417 (2013) with the present volume. España Pontifica, that covers papal letters to Spanish recipients from Pope Innocent II (1198-1216) to Pope Boniface VIII (+1303). This volume will provide students of the medieval papacy and the Spanish church with an invaluable research tool to explore the relationship between Rome and Spain during the crucial period of the Spanish Reconquistà after the battles of Navas de Tolosa (1212) to the capture of Seville (1248).Linehan spent his career cataloguing papal letters from more than sixty Spanish repositories. For the past sixty years the Vatican has also been engaged in publishing surveys of original papal letters preserved from various European archives. However, this volume includes material that has not been included in these surveys.

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Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven treats four apparent problems concerning eternal life in order to clarify our thinking about perfect human happiness in heaven. The teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas provide the basis for solutions to these four problems about eternal life insofar as his teachings call into question common contemporary theological or philosophical presuppositions about God, human persons, and the nature of heaven itself. Indeed, these Thomistic solutions often require us to think very differently from our contemporaries. But thinking differently with St. Thomas is worth it: for the Thomistic solutions to these apparent problems are more satisfying, on both theological and philosophical grounds, than a number of contemporary theological and philosophical approaches.Christopher Brown deploys his argument in four sections. The first section lays out, in three chapters, four apparent problems concerning eternal life—Is heaven a mystical or social reality? Is heaven other-worldly or this-worldly? Is heaven static or dynamic? Won’t human persons eventually get bored in heaven? Brown then explains how and why some important contemporary Christian theologians and philosophers resolve these problems, and notes serious problems with each of these contemporary solutions. The second section explains, in five chapters, St. Thomas’ significant distinction between the essential reward of the saints in heaven and the accidental reward, and treats in detail his account of that in which the essential reward consists, namely, the beatific vision and the proper accidents of the vision (delight, joy, and charity). The third section treats, in five chapters, St. Thomas’ views on the multifaceted accidental reward in heaven, where the accidental reward includes, among other things, glorified human embodiment, participation in the communion of the saints, and the joy experienced by the saints in sensing God’s “new heavens and new earth.” Finally, section four argues, in four chapters, that St. Thomas’ views allow for powerful solutions to the four apparent problems about eternal life examined in the first section. These solutions are powerful because, not only are they consistent with authoritative, Catholic Christian Tradition, but they do not raise any of the significant theological or philosophical problems that attend the contemporary theological and philosophical solutions examined in the first section.

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Philosophy is born in its history as pursuit of the wisdom we are never able fully to know. Mystery and Intelligibility: History of Philosophy as Pursuit of Wisdom both argues for that method and presents the results it can achieve.Editor Jeffrey Dirk Wilson has gathered essays from six philosophical luminaries. In “History, Philosophy, and the History of Philosophy,” Timothy B. Noone provides the volume’s discourse on method in which he distinguishes three tiers of history. History of philosophy as method occupies the third and highest tier. John Rist reckons with contemporary corruption of the method in “A Guide for the Perplexed or How to Present or Pervert the History of Philosophy.” Wilson’s own essay, “Wonder and the Discovery of Being: From Homeric Myth to the Natural Genera of Early Greek Philosophy,” shows the loss of wonder, so evident in mythology, by early Greek thinkers and its recovery by Plato and Aristotle. In “Metaphysics and the Origin of Culture,” Donald Phillip Verene demonstrates the wide cultural implications of philosophical discoveries even when the discovery is the boundary of what humans can know. William Desmond offers an essay, “Flux-Gibberish: For and Against Heraclitus,” that owes as much to the humor of James Joyce as to the philosophical insights of philosophers, ancient, medieval, and modern. Eric D. Perl’s essay turns to the apophatic character of pursuing wisdom, perhaps especially when asking what may be the most fundamental metaphysical question: “Into the Dark: How (Not) to Ask, ‘Why is There Anything at All.’” Philipp W. Rosemann concludes the volume with the question best asked at the end of this literary seminar, “What is Philosophy?”Although there are philosophers within the analytic and continental schools who are committed to the history of philosophy, Mystery and Intelligibility demonstrates that history of philosophy as a third and distinct philosophical method is revelatory of the nature and structure of reality.

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In this wide-ranging conversation with the Italian journalist Luigi Geninazzi, Cardinal Angelo Scola discusses both the salient moments of his own life and the path and situation of the Church and society in Europe over the last half-century. The Cardinal recounts his life, speaking of the extraordinary gift of particular friendships he has had, starting with Luigi Giussani, founder of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation (CL), and moving on to discuss Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri De Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger.A figure who bridges the past three pontificates, Scola discusses his relationships with St. John Paul II, by whom he was nominated a bishop at the relatively young age of forty nine; Benedict XVI, with whom he has had an intense intellectual friendship for decades; and Pope Francis, of whom he speaks with affection and hope.At the center of this rich fresco of anecdotes and reflections stands a crucial question: what is the true path of the Church today? Between those who reduce Christianity to a mere civil religion and those who propose a purist return to the Gospel, the cardinal indicates a ""third way"" by betting on the freedom of the human person to recognize the supreme value of Christ. This is at the same time a bet on the active commitment of believers to contribute, starting from faith, to the birth of a new Europe, inevitably more diverse but no loss of its identity.

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In Tutti Fratelli, Pope Francis has called again for a “culture of encounter,” But how should his theology, pastoral practice, and social message be understood and applied in the Church of the Americas, a single but complex reality that extends from South to North? This volume offers analyses from experts looking back to the Argentine pontiff’s first fateful encuentros in the Americas as a help for understanding the present reality of the Church in the Western Hemisphere. The group includes theologians, historians, and political scientists, and the unique contribution of the volume lies in the panoramic perspective offered by the book as a whole.The initial essays set the stage for the volume as a whole, offering rich insight into Argentine and Latin American history, the world from which the Pope came and to which he returned in 2015, as well as surveying the impact of the Latin American “theology of the people” on the Pope’s visit to the U.S.Additional essays address theological, historical, and pastoral engagements that cut across several of the visits. The final group of essays is dedicated to the visits themselves and is arranged in the order that they occurred. Pope Francis and the Search for God in América is offered to all the members of the Church in América, South and North, old and young, with the hope that it will spur even more thought, reflection, prayer, and service.

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Syriac Christianity developed in the first centuries CE in the Middle East, where it continued to flourish throughout Late Antiquity and the Medieval period, while also spreading widely, as far as India and China. Today, Syriac Christians are found in the Middle East, in India, as well in diasporas scattered across the globe. Over this extended time period and across this vast geographic expanse, Syriac Christians have built impressive churches and monasteries, crafted fine pieces of art, and written and transmitted a sizable body of literature. Though often overlooked, neglected, and even persecuted, Syriac Christianity has been – and continues to be – an important part of the humanistic heritage of the last two millennia.The present volume brings together fourteen studies that offer fresh perspectives on Syriac Christianity, especially its literary texts and authors. The timeframes of the individual studies span from the second-century Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible up to the thirteenth century with the end of the Syriac Renaissance. Several studies analyze key authors from Late Antiquity, such as Aphrahat, Ephrem, Narsai, and Jacob of Serugh. Others investigate translations into Syriac, both from Hebrew and from Greek, while still others examine hagiography, especially its formation and transmission. Reflecting a growing trend in the field, the volume also devotes significant attention to the Medieval period, during which Syriac Christians lived under Islamic rule. The studies in the volume are united in their quest to explore the richness, diversity, and vibrance of Syriac Christianity.

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The specific concern in What We Hold in Trust comes to this: the Catholic university that sees its principal purpose in terms of the active life, of career, and of changing the world, undermines the contemplative and more deep-rooted purpose of the university. If a university adopts the language of technical and social change as its main and exclusive purpose, it will weaken the deeper roots of the university’s liberal arts and Catholic mission. The language of the activist, of changing the world through social justice, equality and inclusion, or of the technician through market-oriented incentives, plays an important role in university life. We need to change the world for the better and universities play an important role, but both the activist and technician will be co-opted by our age of hyper-activity and technocratic organizations if there is not first a contemplative outlook on the world that receives reality rather than constructs it.To address this need for roots What We Hold in Trust unfolds in four chapters that will demonstrate how essential it is for the faculty, administrators, and trustees of Catholic universities to think philosophically and theologically (Chapter One), historically (Chapter Two) and institutionally (Chapters Three and Four). What we desperately need today are leaders in Catholic universities who understand the roots of the institutions they serve, who can wisely order the goods of the university, who know what is primary and what is secondary, and who can distinguish fads and slogans from authentic reform. We need leaders who are in touch with their history and have a love for tradition, and in particular for the Catholic tradition. Without this vision, our universities may grow in size, but shrink in purpose. They may be richer but not wiser.

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In the past twenty years or more, there has been a growing interest among philosophers and theologians alike in the transcendentals and especially in the beautiful. This seems fortuitous since so much of contemporary culture is fixated in many ways on beauty, on what might be called a superficial or man-made beauty, intent on outward appearance, with little or no concern for the human person’s interiority and distinctive nature. The Ancients and the Medievals, on the contrary, were sensitive not only to the beauty of nature and art but also to beauty as intelligible, that is, to the beauty of moral harmony and of metaphysical splendor. While the question of whether the beautiful is in fact a transcendental aspect of being continues to be a subject of dispute in contemporary scholarship, the relationship between the beautiful and the good has been accepted since ancient times and has been attended to in recent publications. None of these publications, however, offers a systematic treatment of this relationship by drawing from the wisdom of both ancient and medieval thought in such a way as to bring together the work of scholars in this tradition.Beauty and the Good intends therefore to make a singular contribution by presenting a richer alternative to the contemporary cult of beauty and appearance on the one hand, and to the concomitant decline of real beauty on the other hand. In addition to highlighting the centrality of beauty in the Aristotelian account of moral virtue, where virtue is kalon and virtuous actions are done for the sake of kalon (the word kalon designates that which is beautiful, noble, and good)—an account which is found echoed in the medieval notion of intrinsic goodness (bonum honestum), understood as intelligible or spiritual beauty—this volume will provide the metaphysical and theological grounding for beauty, as influenced in part by Plato and Neoplatonism, together with a much needed account of how we know and judge beauty, and how for the recognition of true good and real beauty we need to be properly disposed. The integration of philosophical and theological reflection on the nature and relationship of beauty and the good, on our perception and judgment of beauty and of the good as beautiful, and on the motivational role of beauty in human action has as its goal to produce a coherent volume of essays.

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The future of the Church depends, in part, on forming future priests and ministers who are ready to accompany, lead, and love the People of God. Formation advising is one important part of that work. A Guide to Formation Advising for Seminarians/Seminary Faculty offers a practical guide to formation advising as a ministry of accompaniment, participation, and evaluation. Deacon Edward McCormack offers a comprehensive introduction to the ministry of formation advising for seminarians studying for priestly ministry. These volumes are for men and women who are new to the ministry of formation advising. The recent Vatican guidelines for seminary formation call for professional accompaniment of seminarians throughout their formation. This book explains in concrete detail how to do this through the entire formation process.Beginning with an overview of the formation process, A Guide to Formation Advising for Seminarians/Seminary Faculty explains the role of the formation advisor and the skills required for that ministry. It describes the various ways the formation advisor accompanies a person through the formation process. McCormack also provides concrete suggestions for how to promote in seminarians’ active participation in the process. Formators will also find explanation of the evaluation process with a style sheet and examples of written evaluations. The handbook contains an annotated bibliography on all the major topics a formation advisor comes across.

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Cardinal Tommaso de Vio (1469-1534), commonly known as Cajetan, remains a misunderstood figure. Cajetan on Sacred Doctrine is the first ever monograph on Cajetan as a theologian in his own right, and it fills an immense lacuna in the debate on the nature of sacred doctrine from the Thomism of the Renaissance. Confirming Cajetan as a key protagonist within the emergent Reformation, this work delivers an indispensable immersion into his theological method in relation to his closest predecessors and contemporaries: Hervaeus Natalis, Blessed Duns Scotus, Gregory of Rimini, Johannes Capreolus, Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, Martin Luther, and others.The first ever commentary on St. Thomas Aquinas’s entire Summa Theologiae was published by Cajetan. This monograph focuses primarily on the Summa Theologiae Ia pars, question 1, concerning sacred doctrine, and how Cajetan unpacks the potency of Aquinas’s opening syllogism, setting forth a coherent division of the question, and ultimately touching the mind of Aquinas when revealing the articles of the Apostles’ Creed as the Summa Theologiae’s macrostructure. Finally, we are shown how Cajetan emphasizes the essential link between ecclesiology and the communication of sacred doctrine, especially the papacy’s role in guaranteeing the proposal and explication of the faith.Cajetan’s accomplishments as a biblical exegete established him as a renowned Renaissance scholar and a forerunner of future ecumenical dialogue. Furthermore, his grasp of theology’s perennial properties continue to make him an important interlocutor in the renewed quest for a unity in theology in an ever more fragmented aggregation of theologies.Cajetan’s theological labor is a perpetuation of the via antiqua, a biblical-theological worldview handed down through Tradition. St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390), the via antiqua’s preeminent Eastern representative and chief theological constructor of Christendom, offers the monograph’s author--himself a Byzantine Hieromonk--a prime opportunity for a few closing insights on the innate symphony between two very distant periods and distinct theological traditions within the one ecumenical Church.

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The Art of the Game of Chess is the first English translation of Fr. Ruy López’s 1561 book about chess, Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del ajedrez. López was a priest who served as King Philip II’s confessor and royal advisor. As a connoisseur of chess, King Philip II promoted the game in his court, and it did not take long for López to become known as Spain’s and one of Europe’s greatest chess players.López is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential chess thinkers of all time whose theories of chess are an integral part of how chess is played today. Academics, including historians, linguists, sociologists, and Hispanists, as well as non-academics, especially chess enthusiasts, will appreciate this translation, which opens with a Foreword by Andrew Soltis, who is a Grandmaster and a United States Chess Hall of Fame Inductee, and includes a critical introduction and more than 275 footnotes.

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The Wayfarer’s End follows the human person’s journey to union with God in the theologies of Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas. It argues that these seminal thinkers of the 13th Century emphasize scriptural notions of divine rewards as ordering principles for the graced movement of human viators to eternal life. Divine rewards emerge as a fundamental category through the study’s emphasis on Thomas and Bonaventure as scriptural commentators and preachers whose work in sacra pagina structures the content of their sacra doctrina. Shawn Colberg places Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s scriptural, dogmatic, and polemical works into conversation and illumines their mutually edifying depictions of the way to eternal life.Looking to the journey itself, The Wayfarer’s End demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the roles played by God and human beings in the movement to full beatitude. To that end, it explores the relationships between grace and human nature, the effects of sin on the human person, the vital themes of predestination, conversion, perseverance, and the place of “reward-worthy” human action within the overall movement toward union with God. While St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas both stress the priority of grace and divine action for the journey, the study also illustrates their distinct frameworks for human action, unpacking Bonaventure’s preference for the language of acceptatio versus Thomas’s emphasis on ordinatio. This difference inflects their language of rewards, their exposition of scripture, and the scope of free human action in the movement to union with God. This study places the two most seminal theologians of the 13th Century into conversation on central and enduring topics of Christian life. Such a comparative study has been sorely lacking in the field of studies on Aquinas and Bonaventure. It offers insight to those interested in high scholastic thought, Franciscan and Dominican understandings of human salvation, and Thomist and Franciscan theology as it pertains to questions of the Reformation, including biblical exegesis on justification and sanctification. Above all, the study appreciates and foregrounds the richness of Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s vocations: mendicant theologians concerned to share the fruits of contemplation with fellow friars and others seeking the goal of the wayfarer’s end.

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These sermons by Ambrose of Milan (340–397 AD) provide a window into the preaching and scriptural exegesis of the legendary bishop, whose exposition of the Old Testament was instrumental in the conversion of Augustine of Hippo and in the development of Latin theology. In his treatise On Noah and his two Defenses for David, Ambrose borrows from influential Greek theologians, including Philo of Alexandria, Origen, and Didymus the Blind, while developing his own commentary on the exemplary patriarchs. Ambrose’s exegesis typifies both his attention to the letter of Scripture as well as his spiritual and allegorical reading of the holy figures or “saints” who lived before Christ.The first treatise presents Noah as a model just man, as Ambrose pairs the literal and the higher or spiritual meaning of the Genesis flood narrative to address topics ranging from the Genesis narrative to Stoic ethics to the Incarnation. In his defense of David to the emperor Theodosius, Ambrose ties David’s sin and repentance to his own close reading of Psalm 51(50), David’s plea for himself in his famous “Miserere.” While the authenticity of the third treatise included in the volume, the Second Apology of David, has long been challenged, recent scholarship suggests that it transmits Ambrose’s own preaching, which applies the lessons of David’s life to the situation of gentile unbelievers, Jews, and the church; even if it is the work ofa later imitator, the Second Apology is a compelling and systematic treatment of the David’s sin and repentance as relevant to Christian morality and doctrine.The three treatises, previously unavailable in English translation, broaden our understanding of exegesis in the Latin West and our interpretation of Ambrose as preacher and exegete.

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Reinhard Hütter’s main thesis in this third volume of the Sacra Doctrina series is that John Henry Newman, in his own context of the nineteenth century, a century far from being a foreign one to our own, faced the same challenges as we do today; the problems then and now differ in degree, not in kind. Hence, Newman’s engagement with these problems offers us a prescient and indeed prophetic diagnosis of what these problems or errors, if not corrected, will lead to—consequences which have more or less come to pass—and, furthermore, an alternative way which is at once thoroughly Catholic and holds contemporary relevance.The introduction offers a survey of Newman’s life and works and each of the subsequent four chapters addresses one significant aspect of Christianity that is not only contested or rejected by secular unbelief, but also has a counterfeit for which not only Christians, but even Catholics have fallen. The counterfeit of conscience is the “conscience” of the sovereign subject (Ch. 1); the counterfeit of faith is the “faith” of one who does not submit to the living authority through which God communicates but rather adheres to the principle of private judgment in matters of revealed religion(Ch.2); the counterfeit of doctrinal development is twofold: (i) paying lip service to development while only selectively accepting its consequences on the grounds of a specious antiquarianism and (ii) invoking development theory to justify all sorts of contemporary changes according to the present Zeitgeist (Ch. 3). Finally, the counterfeit of the university are all those “universities” whose end is not to educate and thereby to perfect the intellect, but rather to feed more efficiently the empire of desire that is informed by the techno-consumerism of today (Ch. 4). John Henry Newman on Truth and its Counterfeits concludes with an epilogue on Hütter’s journey to Catholicism.

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Even prior to his death on 15 November 1280, the Dominican master Albert of Lauingen was legendary on account of his erudition. He was widely recognized for the depth and breadth of his learning in the philo­sophical disciplines as well as in the study of God, earning him the titles Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus. Moreover, his authoritative teach­ing merited him the moniker Magnus, an appellation bestowed on no other man of the High Middle Ages. This volume contains the first half of Albert the Great’s commentary On Job (on chs. 1–21), translated into English for the first time; a translation of the second half of the work will appear in a subsequent volume of the Fathers of the Church, Me­diaeval Continuation series. Albert completed Super Iob in 1272 or 1274, when he was over seventy years old, at the Dominican Kloster of Hei­lige Kreuz in Cologne, where, as lector emeritus of the Order, he likely lectured on this profound biblical book. Significantly, Albert may have been inspired to produce On Job by his most famous student, Thomas Aquinas, who had written his own Joban commentary, the Expositio su­per Iob ad litteram, while serving as conventual lector at San Domenico in Orvieto from 1261 to 1264. Yet Albert occupies a unique position in the history of the interpretation of Job: he is the first and only exegete in history who explicitly reads the whole book as a debate in the mode of an academic or scholastic disputation among Job and his friends about divine providence concerning human affairs. The Introduction to this volume situates Albert’s On Job—its general approach and key exegetical features—in the broad context of Dominican theological education and pastoral formation in the thirteenth century.

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In the life of the Catholic Church, the papal encyclical Humanae vitae represents a deepening of understanding regarding the nature of married love and the transmission of life. Despite fifty years (1968-2018) since it's promulgation, many Catholics have yet to discover the treasure of these rich teachings. This volume therefore seeks to elucidate the encyclical's reaffirmation of the divine plan. It does this in a unique way by providing essays from experts of various disciplines that include history, theology, science, medicine, law, and governmental policy. The occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae vitae offers a teaching moment. In this compendium, experts representing a variety of disciplines including history, culture, theology, medicine, law, and psychology present their reflections upon God's divine plan as described in Humanae vitae. The authors first presented this work in an abbreviated form at a symposium held at The Catholic University of America (April 4-6, 2018). Here, their presentations are substantively developed and hopefully will encourage further scholarly work. Ultimately, their purpose is to help the reader arrive at a more positive understanding of the teachings found in Humanae vitae. Although designed for the educated reader, the essays presume that when the teachings of Humanae vitae are embraced by men and women, they can contribute to the healing of the wounds of a world broken by sin but redeemed by Christ.

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Navigating the seemingly competing claims of human reason and divine revelation to truth is without a doubt one of the central problems of medieval philosophy. Medieval thinkers argued a whole gamut of positions on the proper relation of religious faith to human reason. Thinking Through Revelation attempts to ask deeper questions: what possibilities for philosophical thought did divine revelation open up for medieval thinkers? How did the contents of the sacred scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam put into question established philosophical assumptions? But most fundamentally, how did not merely the content of the sacred books but the very mode in which revelation itself is understood to come to us – as a book ""sent down"" from on high, as a covenant between God and his people, or as incarnate person - create or foreclose possibilities for the resolution of the philosophical problems that the Abrahamic revelations themselves raised? Robert Dobie explores these questions by looking in detail at the thought of three of the most important philosopher-theologians of the Middle Ages: Averroes, Moses Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas, each working within the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian traditions respectively. Of particular interest are two questions central to medieval thought: in what sense is the world ""created"" and what is the proper nature and ontological status of the human intellect? These two problems took on such importance in this period, this book argues, because they forced medieval philosophers and theologians to confront the degree to which the revelation they considered authoritative made possible their resolution. Thus, these medieval thinkers show thinkers today what possibilities are available for navigating the age-old question of the proper relation between faith and reason in a world where questions of the rationality of religious faith – especially from an inter-faith perspective – are not diminishing but increasing in importance.

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Readers interested in the origin and development of Wojtyła's early thought on marriage, sexuality and the family, or on Aquinas's metaphysical, moral and teleological suppositions, or on his teaching on marriage, will find rich resources, clear prose and illuminating exegesis, calmly and accessibly presented. The treatment of Aquinas's theology of marriage is the best I have read.

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In Hebrew and Arabic, the words Amen and Amin?the most frequent conclusions of prayers?derive from cognate consonantal roots. The Greek and other versions of the Hebrew Bible continue to use the word Amen; the New Testament follows suit. The basic meaning of Amen or Amin in all three scriptures is the same, a passionate address to God: 'I entrust myself to You; I put my faith in You, I keep faith with You.' It is the cry of a person struggling to grasp and be grasped by God. Amen: Jews, Christians, and Muslims Keep Faith with God examines faith as it is understood by Jews, Christians and Muslims; it does not aim to be a work of systematic theology or a lengthy explication of the contents of different faith traditions. It offers Jews, Christians and Muslims several approaches to faith as a category of human experience open to God: a faithful God who reaches out to grasp the faithful human being at the same time that the faithful human being reaches out to grasp a faithful God. This two-sided faith, divine and human, lies at the center of each faith tradition. The book examines faith as one might examine a gem, gazing at different facets in turn. In this process, Patrick Ryan, a Jesuit who has lived for decades in Africa as well as in the United States, shares the personal reflections of one who has tried to live a life of faith not only in the company of fellow Christians but also in the company of Jews and Muslims, friends for many years. The work as a whole, and each chapter within it, begins and ends with reflections shared with an anonymous but real person who has struggled with faith for all that time and who continues the struggle with faith even today.

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Jan-Heiner Tück presents a work that explores the sacramental theology, lived spirituality, and Eucharistic poetry of the Church’s doctor communis, St. Thomas Aquinas. Although Aquinas’ Eucharistic poetry has long occupied an important place in the Church’s liturgical prayer and her repertoire of sacred music, the depth of these poems remains hidden until one grasps the rich sacramental theology underlying it. Consequently, Tück first offers a detailed but approachable primer of Aquinas’ theology of the sacraments, before diving deeply into the Angelic Doctor’s theology and poetry of the Eucharist. The Scriptural accounts stand at the heart of the systematic framework developed by Aquinas, and thus significant attention is devoted to showing the harmony between the accounts of Christ’s passion and the detailed exposition of the Summa theologiae. Moreover, the Eucharistic controversies of the ninth and eleventh centuries provide the contrapuntal context in which Aquinas did his thinking, praying, and writing. Not surprisingly, therefore, the response he crafts to these controversies draws upon both speculative powers and contemplative prayer, brought together in the unity of Aquinas’ theology and spirituality. The net result is a twofold treasure for the Church: a careful systematic presentation of Eucharistic theology and the lived devotional expression of the same in the carefully constructed—and now much beloved—stanzas of Pange lingua gloriosi, Lauda Sion, Adoro te devote, etc. By revealing the lively interplay of the saint’s powerful speculative intellect and a heart steeped in love for the Eucharistic Lord, Tück offers a sophisticated exposition of Aquinas’ Eucharistic poetry and the roots it sinks into a wider theological framework. Finally, the contemporary significance and power of Aquinas’ work is drawn out, not only in the rarefied realm of intellectual inquiry but also in the everyday expanse of ordinary life.

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The Standard Bearer of the Roman Church examines the missionary work of the early modern Capuchin friar, and doctor of the Church, Lawrence of Brindisi. Renowned in his own day as a preacher, Bible scholar, missionary, chaplain, and diplomat, as well as vicar general of his order, Lawrence led the first organized, papally-commissioned Capuchin mission among the non-Catholics of Bohemia in the Holy Roman Empire from 1599 to 1602. He returned again under papal mandate, from 1606 to 1613. Andrew J. G. Drenas analyzes Lawrence’s evangelistic and polemical strategies in central Europe in order to shed light on some of the ways the Capuchins labored in religiously divided territories to confirm Catholics in their faith and to win over heretics.The introduction explains, principally, the book’s purpose and the historiographical background. After providing a brief biographical sketch of Lawrence’s life followed by details of his afterlife, Drenas examines Lawrence’s leading role in establishing the Capuchins’ new Commissariate of Bohemia-Austria-Styria in 1600, and specifically its first three friaries in Prague, Vienna, and Graz. From there the volume moves on to treat his preaching against heresy, followed by a focus on how Lawrence, while in Prague, involved himself directly in theological disputations with two different Lutheran preachers. The first dispute, with Polycarp Leyser, took place in July 1607, and dealt with good works and justification. The second, with a Lutheran whose identity remains unknown, and which occurred in August 1610, concerned Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary. This is followed by an analysis of the Lutheranismi hypotyposis, or The Express Image of Lutheranism, Lawrence’s literary refutation of Lutheranism following additional contact with Polycarp Leyser in 1607. Finally, Drenas considers briefly the effectiveness of Lawrence’s apostolate and closes with a review of the book as a whole.

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The Profession of Widowhood explores how the idea of ‘true’ widowhood was central to pre-modern ideas concerning marriage and of female identity more generally. The medieval figure of the Christian vere vidua or “good” widow evolved from and reinforced ancient social and religious sensibilities of chastity, loyalty and grief as gendered ‘work.’ The ideal widow was a virtuous woman who mourned her dead husband in chastity, solitude, and most importantly, in perpetuity, marking her as “a widow indeed” (1 Tim 5:5). The widow who failed to display adequate grief fulfilled the stereotype of the ‘merry widow’ who forgot her departed spouse and abused her sexual and social freedom. Stereotypes of widows ‘good’ and ‘bad’ served highly-charged ideological functions in pre-modern culture, and have remained durable even in modern times, even as Western secular society now focuses more on a woman’s recovery from grief and possible re-coupling than the expectation that she remain forever widowed.The widow represented not only the powerful bond created by love and marriage, but also embodied the conventions of grief that ordered the response when those bonds were broken by premature death. This notion of the widow as both a passive memorial to her husband and as an active ‘rememberer’ was rooted in ancient traditions, and appropriated by early Christian and medieval authors who used “good” widowhood to describe the varieties of female celibacy and to define the social and gender order. A tradition of widowhood characterized by chastity, solitude, and permanent bereavement affirmed both the sexual mores and political agenda of the medieval Church. Medieval widows—both holy women recognized as saints and ‘ordinary women’ in medieval daily life—recognized this tradition of professed chastity in widowhood not only as a valuable strategy for avoiding remarriage and protecting their independence, but as a state with inherent dignity that afforded opportunities for spiritual development in this world and eternal merit in the next.

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This study reconsiders and reassesses the work of Allen Tate as a poet whose themes and expression place him among the most studied andcanonical Modernists of the last century. Allen Tate (1899–1979), a former Poet Laureate of the US, although generally regarded during his lifetime as one of the twentieth century’s preeminent literary critics and men of letters, has been largely overlooked by critics in the years since his death. John V. Glass III rectifies this by tracing the development of Tate’s thought and verse from his early years as a student at Vanderbilt in the 1920s through his final terza-rima sequence completed in the 1950s. Tate’s poetry in the intervening years charts the course of an American modernist who brings to bear on the problems of his age the unique perspective of a southerner, one who refuses either to accept sentimentality or to repudiate the past in his search for a solution to the dissociation of sensibility. Beginning with his early devotion to Art itself, followed by his effort to replace the primacy of Art with that of History, Tate’s poetry dramatizes his gradual movement—one that is first public and intellectual, and then private and spiritual—toward acceptance of the central spiritual tradition of Western Civilization. By focusing on the relationship between Tate himself and the speakers in his poems, and on the relationship between those speakers and readers who like the poet, John V. Glass III helps the reader find themselves drawn into universally apprehensible experience. The course of Tate’s own thought, frequently presented as being at a remove from common experience, proves not merely accessible, but also a model for those who, like Tate himself, seek to understand the fractured nature of Modernity and to discover an alternative to it in a traditional conception of Being.

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Tapping into selected works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, this book offers a series of philosophical meditations designed to retrieve and deploy a distinctively Erasmian manner of thinking—one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony. In purpose, it takes a philosophical route, addressing perennial questions of self-knowledge—what we can know and how best to communicate what we take to be true, what we ought to do or how we should live, and what we might hope for or what would offer us fulfilment. In method, however, this work taps into the various strategies of irony at play in the works of Erasmus, looking for guidance in handling these age-old questions. What readers will find in Erasmus is a knack for playfully reversing appearances and realities, a penchant for pushing disturbing questions relentlessly to the limit, and a skill for juxtaposing oddly matched opposites. Again and again, Erasmus presses readers to rethink these fundamental questions with dexterity and nuance, ever ready to appreciate the surprising and unsettling upshot of ironic insight.The practical result—as the meditations of this book illustrate—is animble defense of ironic truth-telling, a staunch but idiosyncratic complaint for peace, and a daring defense of pleasure in religious life. On each score, irony of the Erasmian sort is a manner of thinking especially well-suited for creatures like ourselves—richly complex, wonderfully odd, and often full of folly, yet somehow complacent and often dogmatic—precisely because such ironic thinking has the power to prod and prompt fruitful reflection on our lives. Truth and Irony is an invitation to think in an Erasmian manner—in short, to think ironically about the truth of our lives for the sake of enhancing human existence.

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Nathan Bracher’s François Mauriac on Race, War, Politics, and Religion: The Great War Through the 1960s, consists of a selection of some ninety editorials penned by the Catholic novelist and intellectual François Mauriac, who received the Nobel Prize for literature and who was admitted to the Académie Française in 1933. As is often the case for prominent writers and intellectuals in France, Mauriac became active in political punditry early in his career, at the time of the First World War. Intensifying notably in the tumultuous years of the 1930s on, this activity continues to expand over the next five decades. After 1952, Mauriac’s editorials came to represent the most important dimension of his intellectual activity. He was, to cite the prominent journalist and intellectual Jean Daniel of Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s most distinguished and formidable editorialist of the twentieth century.Bracher’s book provides for the first time an opportunity for English speaking readers to discover the incisive power, passionate humanity, and historical perspicacity that made his voice one of the most resonant in the French press. Mauriac’s public stances on events left nobody indifferent. He was the first to denounce torture in Algeria, and the most eloquent in appealing to the heritage of humanism left by Montaigne and the Sermon on the Mount. The editorials collected here moreover provide a series of striking perspectives on the most dramatic events that France had to confront over the course of the twentieth century, from World War I, to the rise of Fascism and the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, to the various episodes of World War II, on to the Cold War, the strains of decolonization in the 1950s, and the reign of Charles de Gaulle that coexisted with the upheaval of the 1960s. Mauriac’s gripping editorials enable the reader to revisit these historical moments from within and through the eyes of a French Catholic intellectual and writer who approaches them with passion, commitment, and remarkable lucidity.

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Individual freedom looms large in political and ethical thought. Nevertheless, the theoretical foundations underlying modern liberalism continue to be contested by proponents and opponents alike. The Myth of Liberalism offers a unique contribution to this debate by following through on the often-underdeveloped suggestion that liberal principles are untenable because they are self-contradictory. By analyzing and ultimately refuting each of the proposed underpinnings of liberalism—liberty, equality, rights, privacy, autonomy, or dignity—Safranek concludes that contemporary liberalism is a myth: it is not a coherent political philosophy as much as a collection of causes masked by emotively potent political rhetoric.Safranek marshals thorough evidence to make the case that each of the allegedly fundamental liberal principles amount to the right to do as one desires. As a result, liberalism’s proponents must offer some method or principle to mediate the inevitable conflict of desires. In fact, all liberal scholars invoke some form of John Stuart Mill’s harm principle to proscribe unacceptable desires. But this leads to self-contradiction: because all acknowledge that harm can be psychological as well as physical, anyone suffers harm when his act is legally prohibited, as this denies him the object of his desires (liberty) for the sake of another’s desires. Therefore any right advanced in the name of liberty contradicts that very principle.While finding inherent flaws in liberal justifications for personal liberty, including rights to same-sex marriage, abortion, and assisted suicide, Safranek reveals the consequences of the contemporary liberaldisdain for morality as a basis for law and constitutional rights. To correct for these shortcomings of the modern liberal notions of freedom, which are grounded in the passions, The Myth of Liberalism proposes an alternative way of safeguarding the human desire for liberty: a cogent retrieval of a pre-modern intellectual tradition that esteems reason and virtue.

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To understand the past, we necessarily group people together and, consequently, frequently assume that all of its members share the same attributes. In this ground-breaking volume, Éric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke bring renowned scholars together to challenge this norm by seeking to rediscover the individual and to explore the dynamics between individuals and the groups to which they belong.Instead of taking religious groups as their point of departure, the authors in Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity address the methodological challenges attached to a rescaling of the analysis at the level of the individual. In particular, they explore the tension between looking for evidence about individuals and taking individuals into account when looking at evidence. Too often, the lack of direct evidence on individuals is used as a justification for taking the group as the unit of analysis. However, evidence on group life can be read with individuals as the focal point. What it reveals is how complex is the interaction of group identity and religious individuality.The questions examined by these authors include the complex relationships between institutional religions and religious individuals, the possibility of finding evidence on individual religiosity and exploring the multiplicity of roles and identities that characterizes every individual. Shifting the attention towards individuals also calls into question the assumption of groups and invites the study of group-making process. The result is a picture that makes room for dynamic tension between group identity and religious individuality.

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In the wake of Vatican II and the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, disruption and disagreement rent the Catholic Church in America. Since then a diversity of opinions on a variety of political and religious questions found expression in the church, leading to a fragmented understanding of Catholic identity. Liberal, conservative, neoconservative and traditionalist Catholics competed to define what constituted an authentic Catholic worldview, thus making it nearly impossible to pinpoint a unique ""Catholic position"" on any given topic. A Partisan Church examines these controversies during the Reagan era and explores the way in which one group of intellectuals - well-known neoconservative Catholics such as George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Richard John Neuhaus - sought to reestablish a coherent and unified Catholic identity.Their efforts to do so were multilayered, with questions related to Cold War politics, US foreign relations with Central American dictatorships, the economy, abortion, and the state of American culture being perhaps the most contentious subjects. Throughout these debates neoconservative intellectuals voiced their opposition to positions staked out by the Catholic bishops of the United States and to other schools of thought within American Catholicism.While policy questions were an important component of Catholic identity, a more fundamental disagreement was reflected in the neoconservative concern that a significant fraction of church leadership had embraced a misguided ecclesiology, one that misconstrued the relationship between the church's mission and political life. In this book, Todd Scribner, of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, traces out the contours of these disagreements by focusing on neoconservative Catholic thought and identifying the distinct manner in which they addressed matters of grave importance to the post-Vatican II church.

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Recent discussions of Thomas Aquinas's treatment of natural law have focused upon the ""self-evident"" character of the first principles, but few attempts have been made to determine in what manner they are self-evident. On some accounts, a self-evident precept must have, at most, a tenuous connection with speculative reason, especially our knowledge of God, and it must be untainted by the stain of ""deriving"" an ought from an is. Yet Aquinas himself had a robust account of the good, rooted in human nature. He saw no fundamental difference between is-statements and ought-statements, both of which he considered to be descriptive.Knowing the Natural Law traces the thought of Aquinas from an understanding of human nature to a knowledge of the human good, from there to an account of ought-statements, and finally to choice, which issues in human actions. The much discussed article on the precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2) provides the framework for a natural law rooted in human nature and in speculative knowledge. Practical knowledge is itself threefold: potentially practical knowledge, virtually practical knowledge, and fully practical knowledge.This distinction within practical knowledge, typically overlooked or underutilized, reveals the steps by which the mind moves from speculative knowledge all the way to fully practical knowledge. The most significant sections of Knowing the Natural Law examine the nature of ought-statements, the imperative force of moral precepts, the special character of per se nota propositions as found within the natural law, and the final movement from knowledge to action.

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Julius I (337–352) was one of the first bishops of Rome to benefit from the imperial sponsorship of Christianity. Elected to o”ce in the winter of 337, just six weeks before the death of Constantine the Great, he participated in a moment of expansion of the Church Triumphant. Within his own see, he furthered the monumentalization of spaces devoted to public worship and the growth of the clergy, processes already well underway during the reign of his predecessor. Beyond Rome, he reinforced the prestige and influence of the Apostolic See by intervening in the major church political and doctrinal issues of his day. This collection of six letters written by or to Julius is entirely concerned with the Arian controversy, which, beginning in the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea, wouldcontinue to disturb the peace of the western church until the late sixth century. It includes a long letter in which Julius accounts for his decision to put aside the decisions of eastern councils condemning and deposing Athanasius of Alexandria and Marcellus of Ancyra, two staunch supporters of the Nicene Creed, then under attack by a wide coalition of eastern bishops acting in alliance with the emperor Constantius II (337–61). This letter represents a notable milestone in the process that would culminate in the constitution of the medieval papacy.Dr. Glen L. Thompson draws the letters together in the first comprehensive critical edition of the letters of Julius since that produced by the Maurist scholar Pierre Coustant in the early eighteenth century. For most letters, Prof. Thompson has collated all extant manuscript sources; the current edition, presenting both the original Greek and Latin texts and a fresh translation, is based on his study of sixty manuscripts. The ancient text is equipped with critical notes and a full catalogue of scriptural and other citations. The facing-page translation is accompanied by copious notes on historical and theological issues. There are four indices: of scriptural citations, modern authors, manuscripts, and proper nouns and key ideas and themes. This volume will be useful to anyone - historians, classicists, theologians - who wishes to learn about this important era in the history of the west. It will be a valuable resource for graduate and undergraduate students as well as professional scholars.

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John Paul II (1978–2005) was the first pope to speak extensively on the challenges of the historic changes of the situation of women in modernity and postmodernity. He addressed matters such as the inherent dignity of women; aspirations for personal fulfillment including achievement and economic success outside the home; the roles pertaining to marriage, family and children; and the vital contributions of women in the life of the church. He offered a profoundly personalist vision that united contemporary concerns with ancient faith, in a way that can advance discourse within and beyond the Catholic church.In Pope John Paul II Speaks on Women, Brooke Williams Deely presents a comprehensive record of John Paul II’s reflections. This collection brings to the forefront the full context and content of his original contributions. Since John Paul II encouraged women and men to expand what he has adumbrated, this book facilitates ongoing dialogue. The principle of the organization of the volume is chronological, compilingJohn Paul II’s teachings on the subject of women arranged by date over the entire term of his Papacy. Since this influential Pope addressed the situation of women from the beginning of his pontificate, this overview of his writings and his spoken addresses best showcases the development and historical context of his thought.This distinctive book, in a handy assembling of encyclicals, Apostolic letters, and public remarks, should be attractive to readers of diverse perspectives and disciplines. Whether in the fields of women’s studies, history, philosophy, psychology, or theology (especially for theologians and seminarians interested in his Mariology, theology of the body, and philosophical anthropology), this collection is ideal for classroom use. It is also readily suitable for the general public and for people who want to deepen their appreciation of John Paul II as a person, saint, thinker, cultural critic, and world leader.

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We live in a world in which we watch our words, spoken or written. We do not wish to offend anyone by what we say. But consideration of our speech is not something new. As Gabriella Baika stakes out in this thought-provoking manuscript, worries about transgressive speech began in the High Middle Ages. This broad-ranging book, which explores the notion of peccata linguae ""sins of the tongue,"" mobilized the work efforts of an impressive number of theologians. Moral errors committed with the aid of the tongue, the organ responsible for speech, came to be viewed as crimes comparable to theft, adultery, or murder.The Rose and Geryon examines patterns of verbal behavior in works by Jean de Meun and Dante (with a focus on the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy) in relationship with the most influential systems of verbal sins in the Middle Ages, systems elaborated by William Peraldus, Thomas Aquinas, Domenico Cavalca, and Laurent of Orléans. The book begins with a presentation of these four systems, and from there proceeds to analyze Jean de Meun’s Testament as a possible source of influence for the Divine Comedy and take a closer look at Dante’s prose works in search for a comprehensive theory of sinful speech. Furthermore Baika discusses verbal transgressions such as flattery, evil counsel, double talk, sowing of discord, and falsifying of words, under the heading Lingua dolosa ""The Guileful Tongue,"" and the relationship between violence and the poetic discourse. The myriad ways in which the two iconic poets of medieval France and Italy absorb the tradition of peccata linguae in their works prove that abusive speech was not the exclusive sphere of interest of the ecclesiastical writers; secular poetry in the vernacular enriched in original ways the medieval debate on verbal vices. The Rose and Geryon addresses scholars and students of French and Italian literatures, as well as readers interested in ethics and women’s studies.

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Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics models new ways to study medieval historical writing. It analyzes the oldest history of a Slavic people written by a Slav, the Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague. Some scholars read Cosmas as a mere annalist, others as a fanciful narrator only partially reliable as a source of historical data, and still others as a panegyrist of the Premyslid dynasty and an exponent of Czech national identity. However, close reading of his text reveals Cosmas to be a fierce critic of the prevailing political order, indeed of all political orders per se. Rather than apologizing for or pandering to the dukes of Bohemia, Cosmas holds before them and their magnates a harsh mirror in which their deplorable deeds are exposed; yet by thisvery act he exhorts them to change, and thus to work for the broader benefit of the community instead of for petty, personal gain. Recovering this vision of contemporary Czech society requires doing justice to Cosmas’s craftsmanship: it means holding his text up to a prism, rotating and continually re-reading his vibrant prose through a series of different faces - gender, narrative, mythmaking, classicism, territory, power. The result is the first work to treat Cosmas’s text on its own terms. It finds that the wisdom of the ancient past proved directly and immediately relevant to the politics of the medieval present.

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This innovative book discloses Karl Rahner's foremost achievement: discovering and delineating an ethos of Catholicism, a multi-faceted and comprehensive approach to life in Christ. Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics does so by placing the German Jesuit and his teacher, philosopher Martin Heidegger, into a richly detailed dialogue on aesthetics. The book treats classic Rahner topics such as anthropology and Christology. But it breaks new ground by exploring themes such as angels, Mary, and the apocalypse, juxtaposed with analogous philosophical topics in Heidegger.Peter Joseph Fritz reveals that Rahner, contrary to a widespread opinion, did not ""turn to the subject."" Rather, Rahner meticulously avoided the spirit of modern subjectivity. In doing so, Rahner follows paths cleared by Heidegger. The counter-subjective thrust of Rahner's thought has aesthetic implications. In fact, Rahner's turn away from modern subjectivity begins with his philosophical dissertation, Spirit in the World, which this work shows to be an aesthetic text through and through. Rahner's aesthetics in Spirit in the World and other works prove distinctive because of its resonance with a Heideggerian variety of the sublime, which Rahner first encounters during Heidegger's lectures on the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin.Rahner's improvement upon the Heideggerian sublime gradually matures over the course of Rahner's career into a complex strategy of resistance toward Heideggerian thinking. This becomes most clear in Rahner's eschatology, which is an apocalyptic discourse that rejects Heidegger's own apocalypse of being's history.Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics offers a fresh and innovative reconsideration of the classic pairing of Rahner and Heidegger. By doing so, it contributes to ongoing conversations on theological aesthetics, the interfacing of postmodernity and theology, and, most of all, on the enduring legacy of Rahner himself.

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Thomas More"" the humanist. ""Sir Thomas More"" the statesman. ""Saint Thomas More"" the martyr. Who was Thomas More? Which characterization of him is most true? Despite these multiple images and the problems of More's true identity, Travis Curtright uncovers a continuity of interests and, through interdisciplinary contexts, presents one Thomas More.The One Thomas More carefully studies the central humanist and polemical texts written by More to illustrate a coherent development of thought. Focusing on three major works from More's humanist phase, The Life of Pico, The History of Richard III, and Utopia, Curtright demonstrates More's idea of humanitas and his corresponding programme of moderate political reform. Curtright then shows how More's later polemical theology and defense of the ecclesiastical courts were a continuation of his commitments rather than a break from them. Finally, More's prison letters are examined. His self-presentation in these letters is compared with other recent and iconic versions, such as those in Robert Bolt's Man for All Seasons and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. Instead of a divided mind emerging, Curtright ably shows More's integrity and consistency of thought.

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Epiphanius of Cyprus was lead bishop of the island from 367 until his death in 403, and he was a contemporary of several of the great church fathers of the patristic era, including Athanasius, Basil, and Jerome. He is well known among modern scholars for his monumental heresiology, the Panarion, as well as for his involvement in several ecclesiastical and theological controversies. Before he began to write his magnum opus, however, he had already completed the Ancoratus, an important theological treatise, written in the form of a letter to Christians in southern Anatolia. The Ancoratus addressed numerous theological issues, particularly in response to the continuous disputes about the divinity of the Son, the developing arguments over the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and the early quarrels over the Incarnation of Christ. In addition, he included his thoughts on proper biblical exegesis, the problematic theology of Origen, and the relationship of the Christian faith with Hellenistic culture. Epiphanius’s convictions on these issues represented important contributions to the ongoing theological and cultural controversies of the late fourth century, but he has often been overshadowed in modern scholarship by the work of his more illustrious contemporaries. Because there has been no complete English translation of the Ancoratus to date, this volume adds significantly to the resources available for patristic studies.

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St. Cyril of Alexandria is best known for his role in the Christological controversies of the fifth century. In recent decades, scholars have been attending more carefully to his exegetical legacy. Most of Cyril’s work takes the form of biblical commentary rather than doctrinal treatise. Indeed, during his long career he wrote commentaries on nearly every book of the Bible. Less attention, however, has been given to Cyril’s pastoral work as the Patriarch of Alexandria, perhaps because his commentaries and doctrinal treatises do not reveal much about his daily pastoral duties. Here the Festal Letters are especially helpful.Twenty-nine in all, these letters cover all but three of Cyril’s years as a bishop. The first twelve were published in 2009 ((Fathers of the Church 118(). The present volume completes the set. Festal letters were used in Alexandria primarily to announce the beginning of Lent and the date of Easter. They also served a catechetical purpose, however, allowing the Patriarch an annual opportunity to write pastorally not just about issues facing the entire see, but also about the theological issues of the day. Thus, in these letters we catch a glimpse of Cyril the pastor writing about complex theology in an uncomplicated way. These letters also illuminate other realities of the ancient church in Alexandria, especially the relationship with the Jewish community and the rising influence of asceticism.

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This is a brief highly readable history of the Catholic experience in British America, which shaped the development of the colonies and the nascent republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Historian Robert Emmett Curran begins his account with the English reformation, which helps us to understand the Catholic exodus from England, Ireland, and Scotland that took place over the nearly two centuries that constitute the colonial period. The deeply rooted English understanding of Catholics as enemies of the political and religious values at the heart of British tradition, ironically acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a Catholic republican movement that was a critical factor in the decision of a strong majority of American Catholics in 1775 to support the cause for independence.Papist Devils utilises archival material, newspapers, and other contemporary records in addition to a broad array of general histories, monographs, and dissertations dealing with the British Atlantic world. The unprecedentedly broad scope of this study, which encompasses not only the thirteen colonies that took up arms against Britain in 1775, but also those in the maritime provinces of Canada as well as the ones in the West Indies, constitutes a unique coverage of the British Catholic colonial experience, as does the extension of the colonial period through the American Revolution, which was its logical dénouement.

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Aristotle labours under no illusion that in the practical sphere humans operate according to the canons of logic. This does not prevent him, however, from bringing his own logical acumen to his study of human behaviour. Aristotle, according to Fr. Flannery, depicts the way in which human acts of various sorts and in various combinations determine the logical structure of moral character. Some moral characters—or character types—manage to incorporate a high degree of practical consistency; others incorporate less, without forfeiting their basic orientation towards the good. Still others approach utter inconsistency or moral deprivation, although even these, in so far as they are responsible for their actions, retain a core element of rationality in their souls. According to Aristotle, moral character depends ultimately upon the structure of individual acts and upon how they fit together into a whole that is consistent—or not consistent—with justice and friendship. This book will appeal to professional scholars and graduate students with an interest in Aristotle’s ethics and in ethics generally. It proposes comprehensive interpretations of some difficult passages in Aristotle’s two major ethical works (the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics). It brings to bear upon the analysis of human behaviour passages in Aristotle’s logical works and in his Physics. It also draws connections among areas of particular interest to contemporary ethics: action theory, the analysis of practical reason, and virtue ethics.

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Since the Second Vatican Council, an exciting array of new theological voices, themes, and venues for reflection has emerged. Laymen and women today offer many noteworthy contributions to theology; theologies have developed in new cultural contexts, such as Latin America, Africa, and Asia; and new themes—such as peace, justice, liberation, ecology, and bioethics—have come to the fore in public concern and theological reflection. While these are fundamentally positive developments, this period has witnessed a certain fragmentation of theology. In the end, amid legitimate and valuable diversity, Catholic theology has been challenged to maintain a common voice with a clear sense of identity. Theology Today addresses the vital question of what exactly is Catholic theology. It considers basic perspectives and principles that characterize Catholic theology and offers criteria by which diverse theologies may be recognized as authentically Catholic. The major themes are listening to the Word of God, abiding in the communion of the church, and giving an account of the truth of God. Many topics are considered, such as faith’s response to God’s Word, the study of scripture as the soul of theology, fidelity to the Apostolic Tradition, attention to the sensus fidelium, responsible adherence to the ecclesiastical magisterium, the companionship among theologians, the rationality and unity of theology, theology as science and wisdom, and theology’s place in the university and its role in the church’s constant dialogue with the world. By reflecting on this thought-provoking document, Catholic theological inquiry stands to be reinvigorated.

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European radical political thought—represented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Michel Foucault—has deeply impacted the Western intellectual tradition and political life. These thinkers sought to transform Western societies by critiquing institutions that they felt led to oppression of groups. They saw societies and institutions as part of a history that constantly develops and has no objective, timeless purpose, or principles. They understood the history of things people do, and of events that happen, in a primarily evolutionary way. As a result, these radical political thinkers have often been thought to have a strong historical consciousness. Andrew Russ argues in this book that a closer look at their philosophical underpinnings finds that Rousseau, Marx, and Foucault are much less “historical” in their methodology than is widely believed. Instead, they share a more “timeless” view, one indebted to principles ordinarily seen as timeless or transcendent. Russ finds that these thinkers are actually quite dependent on the philosopher who concluded the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant. Russ’s study shows how Kant’s view of human freedom and subjectivity as timeless actually informs the work of the radical political position.

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Immediately after his baptism Augustine set out to produce a Christianised version of the ancient liberal arts curriculum. By an ordered sequence of contemplation, moving from linguistic to mathematically based disciplines, Augustine suggested that study in the liberal arts could render the mind and heart docile before God. Though Augustine later would shift his focus more directly toward biblical study, his early reflections on secular learning remain an attractive and powerful model for Christian thinking about the arts. Happiness and Wisdom contributes to on going debates about the nature of Augustine’s early development, and argues that Augustine’s vision of the soul’s ascent through the liberal arts is an attractive and basically coherent view of learning, which, while not wholly novel, surpasses both classical and earlier patristic renderings of the aims of education. Ryan N. S. Topping begins by embedding Augustine’s educational works within the historical and philosophical context of Christian and pagan late antiquity. He then shows how Augustine’s writings on education, far from being irrelevant to the trajectory of his mature thought, provide a key to interpreting many of his other explorations in ethics and epistemology. Augustine’s Christianised liberal arts curriculum is vindicated as an outgrowth of his moral theology, an expression of his abiding conviction that happiness is the end of human aspiration, and that—against both Ciceronian scepticism and Manichean dualism—the created order speaks to men of the mind of God.

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Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy has often been criticised for ignoring a crucial dimension of community in its account of the lives that agents ought to lead. Historical and contemporary critics alike often paint Kant’s moral theory, with its emphasis on rationality, as overly formalistic and unrealistically isolating. Against these criticisms, Kate A. Moran argues that Kant’s moral philosophy reserves a central role for community in several important respects. In the first part of her book, Moran asserts that Kant’s most developed account of the goal toward which agents ought to strive is actu¬ally a kind of ethical community. Indeed, Kant claims that agents have a duty to pursue this goal. Moran argues that this duty entails a con¬cern for the development of agents’ moral characters and capacities for moral reasoning, as well as the institutions and relationships that aid in this development. Next, Moran examines three specific social institutions and relationships that, according to Kant, help develop moral character and moral reasoning. In three separate chapters, Moran examines the role that moral education, friendship, and participation in civil society play in developing agents’ moral capacities. Far from being mere afterthoughts in Kant’s moral system, Moran maintains that these institutions are crucial in bringing about the end of an ethical community. The text draws on a wide range of Immanuel Kant’s writings, including his texts on moral and political philosophy and his lectures on ethics, pedagogy, and anthropology. Though the book is grounded in an analysis of Kant’s writing, it also puts forward the novel claim that Kant’s theory is centrally concerned with the relationships we have in our day-to-day lives. It will, therefore, be an invaluable tool in understanding both the complexities ofKant’s moral philosophy, and how even a liberal, deontological theory like Kant’s can give a satisfying account of the importance of community in our moral lives.

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Metaphysics, the science of being as being, is the subject of this volume composed in honour of John F. Wippel, the Theodore Basselin Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, and an internationally prominent metaphysician and expert in medieval philosophy. Scholars present studies on key philosophical and historical issues in the field. Though varied, the investigations address three major metaphysical themes: the subject matter of metaphysics, metaphysical aporiae, and philosophical theology.Robert Sokolowski considers the historical recapitulation of the phrase ""the science of being as being""; Dominic O'Meara focuses on the development of this science in late antiquity; Jan A. Aertsen asks why the medievals called it ""First Philosophy""; and Andreas Speer returns to the origins of metaphysical discourse for a better understanding of contemporary metaphysical issues. Gregory T. Doolan examines difficulties concerning Aquinas's metaphysics of substance; Jorge Gracia looks to the tradition of scholastic philosophy to examine the individuality and individuation of race; and James Ross argues against the modal ontologies of the twentieth century, showing that metaphysical possibility depends on the existence of a free, divine creator. Stephen F. Brown considers Godfrey of Fontaines on the role of metaphysics in revealed theology; John F. Wippel examines Aquinas on the ""preambles of faith,"" those doctrines presupposed by faith that can also be proven philosophically; Brian J. Shanley addresses Aquinas's philosophical views on providence; Eleonore Stump, looking to Aquinas as well, shows how God can be personally present to human beings; and Marilyn McCord Adams offers a metaphysical consideration of the Christian doctrine of resurrection.

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Christopher Dawson wrote The Judgment of the Nations in 1943, in the midst of the horrors of World War II. He took four years in the writing of it, years, he claimed, “more disastrous than any that Europe had known since the fourteenth century.” By his own admission it had cost him greater labour and thought than any other book he had written. It is, perhaps, his most characteristic work.Dawson argues in compressed form for what he laid out more systematically in other books: his view that the West was at an hour of crisis and was fighting for its life as a civilisation. He did not view the disasters of the two World Wars as the cause of that disintegration; they were rather symptoms of a much deeper malaise, that of the loss of the spiritual vision that had created and sustained Western culture through the centuries. He lays out his understanding of what might be necessary for the West to reengage its spiritual and cultural roots and find a new way forward. For Dawson, such a restoration could not be coercive, but needed rather to be based upon a new perception of the inherent cultural creativity of Christianity.The Judgment of the Nations was widely praised upon publication. The Guardian called it “an appraisement of the contemporary situation by an historical thinker of the first importance,” and the Irish Independent “a monument, alike of historical and of philosophical erudition.” It was Dawson’s hope in this work to describe the nature of the spiritual struggle Europe was facing, to map out its true lines, and to point the way through an impending and perhaps probable disaster to a renewal of European life, a renewal whose success or failure would have a decisive impact on the entire world.

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Roman Catholic Modernism, in France, was prominently represented by scholars whose interests were, in significant measure, historical. Notable examples are Louis Duchesne, Alfred Loisy, and Albert Houtin. Where philosophy was concerned, Maurice Blondel, together with his collaborator Lucien Laberthonniere, grappled with the legacy of Kant and the problem of the subjectivity of human knowing. Marcel Hebert (1851–1916) stands at the confluence of these two tendencies. Hebert’s appreciation of the exegesis of scripture and its subsequent development in church tradition was importantly shaped by both Loisy and Duchesne. And like Blondel and Laberthonniere, he felt the insufficiency of scholasticism to speak to minds formed by modernity, to formulate an adequate response to the philosophical legacy of Kant. He acknowledged his debt to Duchesne and Loisy in history, but regarded himself, though an autodidact, their superior in philosophy.This volume, the first to be published in English about Hebert, is essential for a full understanding of Catholic Modernism. The articles show Hebert’s early attempt to find common ground between Aquinas and Kant, the impact of Kant on a symbolist reading of dogma intended to “save” dogma for Catholics coming to terms with modern exegesis and modern philosophy, the radical lengths to which he took that symbolist reading, and his eventual break with Catholicism when the Church failed to be receptive to this programme.Included here are selected articles, the entire second of edition of Pragmatisme, William James’s review of the first edition and Hebert’s response to it, and a review by Eugene Menegoz.

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