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

The Catholic University of America Press is honored to announce the publication of the first volume of the critical English edition of The Collected Works of Karol Wojty?a/John Paul II. In conjunction with an international editorial board, the English Critical Edition will comprise 20 volumes, covering all of his writings and correspondence both in the years before and during his papacy.What makes this collection so important is that access to his writings have been a significant challenge. Except for official papal addresses and documents preserved and disseminated by the Vatican, his works have been scattered and limited, or in need of a new translation. Finally, English-language audiences have faced the challenge, even in the case of published texts, of working across multiple languages and translations and of dealing with textual idiosyncrasies.The inaugural volume of this collection is Person and Act, together with related essays, which is in many respects constitutes Karol Wojty?a’s most profound and well-known philosophical work. Originally published in 1969 as Osoba i czyn, this work of metaphysics and philosophy is widely influential even though it is highly challenging intellectually and has heretofore posed difficulties for translators.

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The Catholic University of America Press is proud to present the third volume in its Sayings of the Fathers of the Church series. Featuring esteemed scholars and writers compiling material from our acclaimed Fathers of the Church volumes, each title is devoted to select areas of theology. The inaugural volumes covered the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, and now we turn to The Holy Mass.The documents of early Christianity are rich in mentions of the Mass and its component parts. Sometimes they’re detailed descriptions, sometimes quick allusions. In this volume Mike Aquilina, a popular author on early Christianity, takes readers step by step through the Mass, from the Sign of the Cross through the Dismissal, illuminating the way with the words of the Fathers. Along the way readers encounter familiar rites, words, and gestures, but also familiar complaints — about long homilies, bad singing, liturgical abuses, and distracted congregations.The Holy Mass is divided into chapters based on the parts of the Mass known to modern Catholics of the Roman Rite. The Mass did not follow this sequence through the entirety of the era of the Fathers. Gregory the Great moved the position of the Lord’s Prayer. There were geographic variants for the placement of the Sign of Peace. Some ancient liturgies lacked a specific penitential rite — though all the liturgies had a penitential dimension to their prayers.Mike Aquilina’s introduction provides historical context and describes the rich development of the liturgy through the Church’s first few centuries. A foreword by Thomas Weinandy, OFM, Cap., a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, speaks of the relevance of this material for worshipers today.

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The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to present the second volume in our Catholic Women Writers series, which will attempt to bring new attention to prose work of Catholic women writers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Sheila Kaye-Smith was a best selling author who had published over 50 books in her lifetime, few of which remain in print since her death in 1956.The End of the House of Alard (1922) documents the choices made by the final generation of the aristocratic Alard family and the ways in which they, both willingly and reluctantly, bring the long line of their ancestral blood to a complete and sudden end. For some of them, the end of the Alard line is as painful to enact as it is for others to witness; for others it is welcomed as a necessary modernization or a true realignment toward religious integity and universal human truth. Some of the family's children yearn for individual liberty; others have it forced upon them. But none of them can find it under the burden of the Alard name and its crumbling estate. The End of the House of Alard is a novel about the human need for purpose, for a truth by which to live and for which to die. It is a novel about faith and idolatry, love and death, freedom and bondage, nature and grace. Put another way, it is about how human beings cannot escape the great challenge of salvation, of breaking free from false, man made gods in order to unite instead with the divine love of Christ. The novel's characters span a breadth of options on this spectrum and their various outlooks on life continue to reflect those available to us today.

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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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Wittgenstein influenced a generation of philosophers and theologians, with works such as Fergus Kerr's Theology After Wittgenstein showing the relevance of Wittgenstein's philosophy for contemporary questions in theology. Nature as Guide follows many of the insights of this earlier generation of Wittgenstein influenced scholars, to bring Wittgenstein into conversation with contemporary Catholic moral theology.The first four chapters of the book provides a reading of key themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, and draw among others on G.E.M. Anscombe to situate Wittgenstein in relation to the Platonic tradition. Understanding the relationship between grammar, metaphysics and nature is central to this tradition and these themes are examined through an account of Wittgenstein's philosophical development. These four chapters also provides a critical perspective on Wittgenstein's thought, engaging with the criticisms of Wittgenstein offered by philosophers such as Rhees Rush and William Charlton.Chapter five lays the groundwork for a dialogue between Wittgenstein and moral theology. Firstly, by examining how open Wittgenstein's philosophy is to dialogue with theology, and secondly through proposing the use of Servais Pinckaers' definition of moral theology to structure the conversation developed in subsequent chapters.Pinckaers' definition is based upon St Thomas Aquinas' presentation of the principles of human acts in the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae and the final three chapters focus on the question of human acts and their basis in human nature. The reading of Wittgenstein developed in the first part of the book is brought into dialogue with the tradition of Catholic moral theology represented by Pinckaers and other students of St Thomas, such as Anscombe, Josef Pieper, Herbert McCabe, Jean Porter and Alasdair MacIntyre. The book finishes with McCabe's account of the transformation of human nature through God's Word, showing how Wittgenstein's understanding of human practices can shed light on the life of grace.

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Plotinus is often accused of writing haphazardly, with little concern for the integral unity of a treatise. By analyzing each treatise as a whole, From the Alien to the Alone finds much evidence that he constructed them skillfully, with the parts working together in subtle ways. This insight was also key in translating several central passages by considering the flow of the argument as a whole to shed light on the difficulties in these passages as well as reveal the structure often latent in particular treatise. The volume also serves to clarify Plotinus' rich use of images. Commentators, for instance, tend to take the images of light and warmth to explain the relation of soul and body as in conflict, with light casting out warmth. A close look at the text, however, reveals that Plotinus uses each image to correct the limitations of the other. Thus, since the soul is incorporeal, it is actually more transcendent than light and as activating the body is more completely present than warmth. Similarly, recent commentators are quick to take the related impassibility of the soul as implying a Cartesian gap between body and soul. The problem Plotinus faces, however, is that his description of the soul's pervasive presence in the body jeopardizes its impassibility as in the intelligible. His effort then is actually to introduce a gap that preserves the soul's nature, rather than overcome a gap that would make the very existence of the body problematic.While this work confirms much recent scholarly consensus on Plotinus, many of Gurtler's interpretations and general conclusions give constructive challenges to some existing modes of understanding Plotinus' thought. The arguments and their textual evidence, with the accompanying Greek, provide the reader with direct evidence for testing these conclusions as well as appreciating the nature of Plotinus' philosophizing.

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Neither Nature nor Grace operates at the intersection of systematic and philosophical theology, exploring in particular how St. Thomas Aquinas variously uses the latter in service to the clarification and faithful advancement of the former. More specifically, Neither Nature nor Grace explores the overlooked logical difficulties that have followed the late modern debates in ecumenical Christian theology as to whether knowledge of God is available solely through God’s gracious self-revelation (e.g., Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture), or through revelation and the deliverances of natural reason. Van Wart takes the prominent French Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange as paradigmatic for the case that knowledge of God can be had by both revelation and natural reason. Representing the opposing position, that God can only be known through divine revelation, Van Wart highlights the work of influential Protestant theologian Karl Barth. By placing these two imposing 20th century theologians in conversation, and by providing a careful theo-philosophical analysis of the logical mechanics of each thinker’s respective arguments, Van Wart shows how both inadvertently overreach their self-professed epistemological bounds and just so run into significant problems maintaining the coherence of their relative theological positions. That is, against their expressed intentions to the contrary, both thinkers unwittingly evacuate the divine essence of the mystery Christian tradition has always previously claimed it to have, effectively reducing the being of God to mere creaturely being writ large. As a contrasting corrective to this problem, Van Wart proffers a constructive grammatical reading of Aquinas’s measured account of the crucial but often overlooked logical differences between what can be said of the divine, on the one hand, versus what can be known of God, on the other. While many recent works have attempted to solve the ongoing arguments which Garrigou-Lagrange and Barth epitomize regarding the epistemic use of God’s effects, Van Wart’s contribution constructively pushes the conversation to a different level in showing how Aquinas’s grammar of God provides a salutary means of dissolving and moving beyond these contentious debates altogether.

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Hans Urs von Balthasar places Origen of Alexandria “in rank . . . beside Augustine and Thomas” in “importance for the history of Christian thought,” explaining that his “brilliance” has captivated theologians throughout history (Spirit and Fire, 1984, 1). This brilliance shines forth in his nine extant homilies on Isaiah, in which he employs his theology of the Trinity and Christ to exhort his audience to play their crucial role in salvation history.Origen reads Isaiah’s vision of the Lord and two seraphim in Isaiah 6 allegorically as representing the Trinity, and this theme runs throughout the nine homilies. His representation of the seraphim as the Son and Holy Spirit around the throne of the Father brought early accusations that Origen was a proto-Arian subordinationist, followed by a pointed condemnation by Emperor Justinian in 553. These homilies, originally delivered between 245 and 248, are extant only in a fourth-century Latin translation. Though St. Jerome, likely because of these controversies, does not identify himself as the Latin translator, the evidence overwhelmingly points to his pen, and his reliability in conveying Origen’s authentic meaning is well documented.If one sets aside the questionable charges of subordinationism, these homilies, expounding on passages from Judges 6-10, come alive with Origen’s legacy of presenting Christ as the central figure of the soul’s ascent to God. Reading allegorically the two seraphim to be Jesus and the Holy Spirit around the Father’s throne, Origen draws a picture of the Trinity as a tightly knit whole in which the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally sing the Trisagion (“Holy, holy, holy”) to each other and the Father about the divine truths of God’s nature, allowing the part of their song that conveys the “middle things” of salvation history to be heard by creation. The “second seraph” is the Son, or Jesus, who descends holding a hot coal, or Scripture, from the altar of the throne, with which he cleanses Isaiah’s lips, or the believer’s soul. Origen employs his signature exegetical method of allegory and typology through the lens of the threefold meaning of Scripture to emphasize to his hearers that Christ is the deliverer, the content, and the reward of the healing Word. He repeatedly assures them that those who submit to Scripture will enter into salvation history’s cycle of cleansing from sin, growth in virtue, and ever-deepening knowledge of God. As a result, they will become like Christ and thus will be prepared to join the Trinity for all eternity at the heavenly wedding feast.

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According to 1 Cor 15.44 and 1 Cor 15.52, the human body “is sown an animal body, [but] it will rise a spiritual body” and “the dead will rise again incorruptible, and we will be changed.” These passages prompted many questions: What is a spiritual body? How can a body become incorruptible? Where will the resurrected body be located? And, what will be the nature of its experience? Medieval theologians sought to answer such questions but encountered troubling paradoxes stemming from the conviction that the resurrected body will be an “impassible body” or constituted from “incorruptible matter.” By the thirteenth century the resurrection demanded increased attention from Church authorities, not only in response to certain popular heresies but also to calm heated debates at the University of Paris. William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, officially condemned ten errors in 1241 and in 1244, including the proposition that the blessed in the resurrected body will not see the divine essence. In 1270 Parisian Bishop Étienne Tempier condemned the view that God cannot grant incorruption to a corruptible body, and in 1277 he rejected propositions that a resurrected body does not return as numerically one and the same, and that God cannot grant perpetual existence to a mutable, corruptible body.The Dominican scholar Albert the Great was drawn into the university debates in Paris in the 1240s and responded in the text translated here for the first time. In it, Albert considers the properties of resurrected bodies in relation to Aristotelian physics, treats the condition of souls and bodies in heaven, discusses the location and punishments of hell, purgatory, and limbo, and proposes a “limbo of infants” for unbaptized children. Albert’s On Resurrection not only shaped the understanding of Thomas Aquinas but also that of many other major thinkers.

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From the Trinity provides an overall view of the history and the philosophical and theological significance of God the Trinity, not only from a religious point of view but from an anthropological and socio-cultural view as well. The perspective is that of Christian doctrine, specifically Catholic, in dialogue with the cultural sensitivity of our times and with the religious pluralism that characterizes it. Following the generative-progressive method proposed by Vatican II, the book begins with a phenomenological reading of the signs of the times, with special focus upon the performative aspect of the announcement and the doctrine of faith. In particular, constant attention to the contribution made by the mystics and great charisms (from Augustine of Hippo to Francis of Assisi and Theresa of Avila up until Therese of Lisieux, Edith Stein and Chaira Lubich) toward a deeper understanding of the Trinitarian truth. From the Trinity is unique in what it offers not only for Trinitarian theology, but also for other theological disciplines (Christology, Pneumatology, Anthropology, Ecclesiology, etc.) – in which the Trinity shines forth as the central and enlightening truth – as well as for philosophy, the humanities and the natural sciences. This perspective is especially developed in terms of a Trinitarian ontology (see Part V) by which reality is understood in light of the revelation of the Trinity. The implications of the incarnation of the Son of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit are taken seriously in studying the truth of all things as they are perceived in the space created by living and thinking “in” Jesus, united to the Father in the Spirit, as suggested by the title of the book, looking upon reality “From the Trinity.”

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The interpretation of Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion has a long and rich tradition. However, its study is often narrowly focused on its so-called “ontological argument.” As a result, engagement with the text of this work tends to be lopsided, and the prayerful purpose that undergirds the whole book is often completely ignored. Even the most rigorous engagements with the Proslogion often have little to say, for instance, about how the prayers of Proslogion 1, 14, and 18 contribute materially to Anselm’s argument, or how his doctrine of God develops organically from the divine formula in the early chapters to the doctrines of eternity, simplicity, and Trinity in later chapters. There are very few works that offer a sustained analysis to Anselm’s flow of thought throughout the entire Proslogion, and no one has explored how Anselm’s doctrine of creaturely joy in heaven in Proslogion 24-26 is a fitting climax and resolution to the book.Anselm’s Pursuit of Joy attempts a sustained, chapter-by-chapter textual analysis of the Proslogion, and offers the first effort to situate Anselm’s doctrine of heaven in Proslogion 24-26 as the climax of the earlier themes of Anselm’s work. Gavin Ortlund suggests that the basic purpose of Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion is to seek the visio Dei that he articulates as his soul’s deepest desire (Proslogion 1). While Anselm’s argument for God’s existence (Proslogion 2-4) is an important piece of this effort, it is only one step of a larger trajectory of thought that leads Anselm to meditate further on God’s nature as the highest good of the human soul (Proslogion 5-23), and then to anticipate the joy of possessing God in heaven (Proslogion 24-26). In other words, the establishment of God’s existence is only the penultimate consequence of Anselm’s famous formula “that than which nothing greater can be thought”—his ultimate concern is with the infinite creaturely joy that is entailed by his existence. The Proslogion is, far more than an argument for God’s existence, a meditation on God as the chief happiness of the human soul.

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Human sexuality is a very important subject, especially in a cultural context such as ours, in which social and work transformations offer behavioral models that are characterized by a remarkable sexual indeterminacy. In Transcending Gender Ideology, Antonio Malo tries to rethink sexuality with equilibrium and intellectual rigor, using a philosophical approach, since sexuality does not only affect biological aspects or social conditioning, but above all the same essence of the relationship between man and woman.Malo’s reflections begin with the historical evolution of the concept of sexuality: the naturalistic conception, which sees the difference between man and woman as something biological and absolute, and the postmodern conception, which criticizes it by judging human sexuality as a socio-cultural construction or gender. According to Malo, the limitation of the gender approach is to deny the relationship of human sexuality to the body and to the differences between man and woman. In fact, by rejecting these aspects, they end up sustaining a limitless creativity of freedom, which transforms the body into something that is used at will, and relationships as something fluid.Faced with these extremes, Malo proposes a vision of sexuality as a personal condition or sexed condition, received at the time of birth, but which develops, grows and matures through family models, experiences and relationships. Even if based on an original sexual difference, sexed condition covers many other aspects: physical, psychological, social and cultural, as well as behavioral patterns and, above all, the personal integration of sexuality through the gift of oneself in marriage or in celibacy.

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Seamus Heaney & the End of Catholic Ireland takes off from the poet’s growing awareness in the new millennium of “something far more important in my mental formation than cultural nationalism or the British presence or any of that stuff—namely, my early religious education.” It then pursues an examination of the full trajectory of Heaney’s religious beliefs as represented in his poetry, prose, and interviews, with a briefer account of the interactive religious histories of the Irish and international contexts in which he lived. Thus, in the 1940s and 50s, Heaney was inducted into the narrow, punitive, but also enabling Catholicism of the era. In the early 1960s he was witness to the lively religious debates from the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich’s Honest to God to the seismic disruptions of Vatican II. When the conflict in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants broke out, Heaney was forced to dig deep for an imaginative understanding of its religious roots. From the 1980s on, Heaney more and more proclaimed his own religious loss while also recognizing the institution’s residual value in an Irish society of rising prosperity, weariness with the atrocities of a partly religion-inspired IRA, and beset by the scandals of sex abuse among the clergy. Kieran Quinlan sees Heaney as an exemplar of this period of major change in Ireland as he engaged the religious issue not only in major writers such as James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, and Czeslaw Mi?osz, but also in a diverse array of less familiar commentators lay and clerical, creative and academic, believers and unbelievers, Irish and international. Breaking new ground by expanding the scope of Heaney’s religious preoccupations and writing in an accessible, reflective, and sometimes provocative manner, Quinlan’s study places Heaney in his universe, and that universe in turn in its wider intellectual setting.

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In contemporary philosophy the status, indeed the very viability of metaphysics is a much contested issue. The reflections offered here ex­plore diverse aspects of this contested status and offer a defense of meta­physics. In other works, perhaps most fully in Being and the Between, William Desmond has tried to develop what he calls a metaxological metaphysics in response to different skeptical, if not hostile approach­es to metaphysics quite common in our time. The Voiding of Being com­plements the systematic dimensions of this metaxological metaphys­ics outlined in Being and the Between. It presents a set of studies which amplify important themes in the unfolding of modern metaphysics, in relation to major earlier and contemporary thinkers, while adding nu­ance to what is involved in the more systematic articulation of a metax­ological metaphysics. There is what the author calls a voiding of being in modernity, expressed in diverse developments of thought. “The Voiding of Being,” might seems to conjure up negative associations but the aim of the thoughts gathered here is not at all negative. While attempting to understand the voiding of being in modern thought, our appreciation of the promise of metaphysical thinking can also be renewed and indeed extended—extended beyond skepticism and hostility to metaphysics. Desmond engages many interlocutors along the way, from the long tra­dition, such as Heraclitus, Aquinas and Hegel, as well as more contem­porary thinkers like Heidegger and Marion. As the book’s subtitle sug­gests, it is concerned with the continued doing of metaphysics and not only the contemporary undoing of it.

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The Hibernensis is the longest and most comprehensive canon-law text to have circulated in Carolingian Europe. Compiled in Ireland in the late seventh or early eight century, it exerted a strong and long-lasting influence on the development of European canon law. The present edition offers—for the first time—a complete text of the Hibernensis combining the two main branches of its manuscript transmission. This is accompanied by an English translation and a commentary that is both historical and philological. The Hibernensis is an invaluable source for those interested in church history, the history of canon law, social-economic history, as well as intellectual history, and the history of the book. Widely recognized as the single most important source for the history of the church in early medieval Ireland, the Hibernensis is also our best index for knowing what books were available in Ireland at the time of its compilation: it consists of excerpted material from the Bible, Church Fathers and doctors, hagiography, church histories, chronicles, wisdom texts, and insular normative material unattested elsewhere. This in addition to the staple sources of canonical collections, comprising the acta of church councils and papal letters. Altogether there are forty-two cited authors and 135 cited texts. But unlike previous canonical collections, the contents of the Hibernensis are not simply derivative: they have been modified and systematically organised, offering an important insight into the manner in which contemporary clerical scholars attempted to define, interpret, and codify law for the use of a growing Christian society.

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In The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Matthew Levering has written a book for theologically educated readers who mistrust von Balthasar or who mistrust von Balthasar’s critics. The book shows that von Balthasar’s critics can and should benefit both from the rich and wide-ranging conversations that mark his trilogy and from the critical and constructive engagement with German philosophical modernity offered by the trilogy. In addition, Levering hopes to show that those who mistrust von Balthasar’s critics need to be more Balthasarian in their response to criticisms of the Swiss theologian. In this introductory volume, the focus is on the first volume of each part of the trilogy. This approach exhibits the main lines of von Balthasar’s trilogy in a way that allows for an introductory volume of manageable size. This approach also avoids the more controversial volumes of the trilogy. Reading von Balthasar with the goal of engaging his more controversial views is certainly justifiable, but in an introductory book, the danger is that some readers could miss the forest due to their opposition to some of the trees. The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar contributes to the healing of the internecine conflicts that, since the 1930s or earlier, have pitted Ressourcement theologians and Thomistic theologians against each other with grave consequences for the health of Catholic theology. Despite sharing a strong belief in the faithful mediation of divine revelation through Scripture and the Church, many Catholic theologians today find themselves at loggerheads with each other. Easily forgotten by the Ressourcement and Thomistic combatants is their shared commitment to the theo-aesthetic beauty, theo-dramatic goodness, and theo-logical truth of Christ’s revelation of Trinitarian self-surrendering love as our source and supernatural goal, and their shared rejection of philosophical modernity’s immanentism, historicism, and power-centered voluntarism. The present book seeks to highlight these shared commitments, while leaving room for disagreement about von Balthasar’s specific positions and approaches.

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While there has been agreement among followers of Aquinas that being insofar as it is being (being qua being) is the subject of metaphysics, there is not agreement on how this being qua being is to be understood, nor on how we come to know the being that is the object of metaphysical investigation. The topic of what being is, as the object of the science of metaphysics, and how to account for the “discovery” of the being of metaphysics have emerged as central problems for the contemporary retrieval of Aquinas and for the larger project of post-Leonine Thomism in general. This lack of agreement has hampered the retrieval of Aquinas’s metaphysics.The collection of essays within The Discovery of Being and Thomas Aquinas is divided into three major parts: the first set of essays concerns the foundation of metaphysics within Thomism; the second set exemplifies the use of metaphysics in fundamental philosophical issues within Thomism; and the third set employs metaphysics in central theological issues. The Discovery of Being and Thomas Aquinas allows major scholars of the different types of Thomism to engage in a full-scale defense of their position, as well as expanding Thomistic metaphysics to the discipline of theology in important ways.

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The Book of Acts: Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical Readings brings together leading Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical theologians to read and interpret the book of Acts from within their ecclesial tradition, while simultaneously engaging one another in critical dialogue.Combining both theological exegesis and ecumenical dialogue, each chapter is uniquely structured to facilitate a rich reading of Scripture and an engaging though critical dialogue across the traditions. Each chapter begins with a main essay by either a Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical theologian on a section of the book of Acts; the main essay is followed by responses from theologians of the other two traditions. The chapter concludes with a final response from the main author. Readers are thus provided with not only a deep and engaging reading of the book of Acts but also the unfolding of a rich theological-ecumenical dialogue centered on Scripture.Since the essays engage the Book of Acts from both a theological and ecumenical framework, anyone interested in understanding how our ecclesial traditions inform our reading of Scripture would do well to read this book, as would anyone interested in the book of Acts, ecumenical dialogue, and the theological interpretation of Scripture. The contributed essays are scholarly enough to be of value to graduate students and professional scholars, yet are written in a style that will be accessible to the general public.

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The Human Person presents a brief introduction to the human mind, the soul, immortality, and free will. While delving into the thought of Thomas Aquinas, it addresses contemporary topics, such as skepticism, mechanism, animal language research, and determinism. Steven J. Jensen probes the primal questions of human nature. Are human beings free or determined? Is the capacity to reason distinctive to human beings or do animals also have some share of reason? Have animals really been taught to use language? The Human Person touches on topics that bear upon the very fabric of the universe. Are human beings merely well-ordered collections of chemicals or do they have a soul that gives them life and understanding? Is there any element in human beings that survives death? Can human minds get in touch with the objective world or just forever dwell in the domain of their subjective experiences? The book closes by considering the most fundamental question of all: are human beings merely cosmic accidents with no purpose or is there some meaning to human life? In this book, beginners of philosophy will learn the wonders of their own nature by studying Aquinas's thought on the human person.

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What is the modern turn in philosophy? In other words, what are the features that make modern philosophy distinctively “modern” in contrast with the pre-modern philosophy from which it emerged – for example, medieval scholasticism, Renaissance philosophy, and ancient Greek and Roman thought? How did the modern turn in philosophy transpire? That is, what did specific philosophers contribute that shaped the distinctive character of modern philosophy? The twelve essays in this volume seek to address these questions, and in doing so they exemplify and contribute to a rich debate about the nature and value of modern philosophy.This volume approaches the modern turn not as an event that occurred all at once, but rather as a series of shifts in different areas of philosophy at different times. The essays are arranged broadly in chronological order of the topics they treat. Among the themes that recur most often in these essays are, first, that modern philosophy is characteristically preoccupied with questions about foundations and, second, that it ultimately prioritizes practice over theory. But the virtues of this text is in presenting a wide range or perspectives on modern philosophy – what constitutes it as modern, when it arose, and what its shortcomings may be.

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Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921), the most important female author of Spain’s nineteenth century, was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, critical articles, chronicles of modern life, and plays. Active in the age of Catholic social teaching inaugurated by Pope Leo XIII, Pardo Bazán imagined religion as an underpinning for personal and social organization. She addressed the individual experience of faith and culture, and focused on the tension between individualism and the social aspects of religious practice. As a talented literary artist herself, Pardo Bazán was no stranger to the challenges faced by gifted, privileged members of society, particularly in the form of temptations offered by modernity and its widespread encouragement of self-seeking. She wrote repeatedly about the change of heart that may be experienced by intellectually and materially advantaged individuals, and shared details of her own spiritual journey, arguing that once the creative person redefines herself as Franciscan instrument, she is able to contribute through her art and actions to the realization of a personalist society rich in sacramentality. Whole Faith: The Catholic Ideal of Emilia Pardo Bazán, then, is an analysis of how this early feminist put her unique talents to work for her nation, and blended into the worshipping body of Spain by creating for her compatriots a sacramental vision that enriched and commemorated their daily lives.

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The Universe We Think In arises from a tradition of realism, both philosophical and political, a universe in which the common sense understanding of things is included in our judgement about them. The scope is both vast and narrow – vast because it is aware of the reality of things, narrow because it is the individual person who can and wants to know them. The abiding undercurrent of this book is that the cosmos, the universe, does not look at us human beings, but we look at it, seek to understand it, and do understand much of it. Why is this so? The book seeks to begin with the basic question that we each ought to pose to ourselves; namely: “Why do I exist?” Nothing is more immediate than the relation of what is not ourselves to ourselves.We have the strange experience that we cannot even ‘know ourselves’ unless we know something that is not ourselves. In a sense, we have two related worlds, the one that exists, a universe, as it were, that includes each of us, and the same world that we think about. What is so striking about our personal existence is that we can know what is not ourselves. Indeed, we not only want to know what is not ourselves, but this knowledge of what is not ourselves is also, in part, the reason for our existence in the first place. Our thinking about the world is not unrelated to the world that is. Yet, once we understand what is in the world, both systematically and casually, we find ourselves free in a world of others who also think and communicate with one another. Thus, to know ourselves includes knowing what is not ourselves in its own diversity. Ultimately, we seek to know why it all is rather than is not, why it all belongs together in the same universe.

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During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the intersection of support for Irish freedom and the principles of Catholic social justice transformed Irish ethnicity in Boston. Prior to World War I, Boston’s middle-class Irish nationalist leaders sought a rapprochement with local Yankees. However, the combined impact of the Easter 1916 Rising and the postwar campaign to free Ireland from British rule drove a wedge between leaders of the city’s two main groups. Irish-American nationalists, emboldened by the visits of Irish leader Eamon de Valera, rejected both Yankees’ support of a postwar Anglo-American alliance and the latter groups’ portrayal of Irish nationalism as a form of Bolshevism. Instead, ably assisted by Catholic Church leaders such as Cardinal William O’Connell, Boston’s Irish nationalists portrayed an independent Ireland as the greatest bulwark against the spread of socialism. As the movement’s popularity spread locally, it attracted the support not only of Irish immigrants, but also that of native-born Americans of Irish descent, including businessman, left-leaning progressives, and veterans of the women’s suffrage movement. For a brief period after World War I, Irish-American nationalism in Boston became a vehicle for the promotion of wider democratic reform. Though the movement was unable to survive the disagreements surrounding the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, it had been a source of ethnic unity that enabled Boston’s Irish community to negotiate the challenges of the postwar years including the anti-socialist Red Scare and the divisions caused by the Boston Police Strike in the fall of 1919. Furthermore, Boston’s Irish nationalists drew heavily on Catholic Church teachings such that Irish ethnicity came to be more clearly identified with the advocacy of both cultural pluralism and the rights of immigrant and working families in Boston and America.

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Is the faith journey a matter of reflection, of emotion, or of obedience? Is there valid and convincing evidence that does enable human beings to assent to Jesus Christ and his message? What is the influence of cognitive assumptions and of affective tendencies in the art of believing? Should we distinguish faith and belief? And do we need more than one kind of conversion?Taking account of the widespread indifference, skepticism, and distrust of organized religion in the West, Louis Roy begins The Three Dynamisms of Faith with the human concern about hope and about a reachable happiness, both in our contemporary world and in the Bible. He then traces these themes in three historic giants of Christian thinking: Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, and Bernard Lonergan, presenting their converging descriptions of the three dynamisms of Christian faith: the quests for meaning, for fulfillment, and for truth. Fr. Roy shows how The Three Dynamisms of Faith are lived in today’s culture and how they are systematically related; sometimes in alliance and sometimes in apparent opposition. Having led the reader to a plausible answer to the human condition in Catholicism, in his final chapter he discusses some classic issues that result: possible tensions between meaning and truth, between feelings and insight, and about the role of religious experience in becoming attuned to Christian revelation. All along, Fr. Roy describes concrete examples of problems that may occur in the journey of faith: blindness and distortions, the varieties of self-deception, the limitations of natural reason. Logical stages on the way to faith are also identified. A pastoral conclusion brings those multiple threads together; it insists on the legitimate diversity of emphases in people’s journeys, and it proposes a balance between the rich strengths available in persons and groups.

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General Principles of Sacramental Theology addresses a current lacuna in English-language theological literature. Bernard Leeming’s highly respected book Principles of Sacramental Theology was published more than sixty years ago. Since that time, there has been a noted decrease, especially in English-language sacramental theology, in treatments of the basic topics and principles—such as the nature of the sacraments of signs, sacramental grace, sacramental character, sacramental causality, sacramental intention, the necessity and number of the sacraments, sacramental matter and form, inter alia—which apply to all of the sacraments. Rather than deconstruct the Church’s tradition, as many recent books on the sacraments do, Roger Nutt offers a vibrant presentation of these principles as a sound foundation for a renewed appreciation of each of the seven sacraments in the Christian life as the divinely willed means of communion and friendship between God and humanity. The sacraments bestow and nourish the personal communion with Jesus Christ that is the true source of human happiness. Recourse to the patrimony of Catholic wisdom, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, can help to highlight the sacraments and their significance within the plan of salvation. This book will be of use in seminary, graduate, and undergraduate courses. It is further offered as a source of hope to all those seeking deeper intimacy with God amidst the confusion, alienation, and disappointment that accompanies life in a fallen world. The sacraments play an irreplaceable role in pursuing a Universal Call to Holiness that is so central to Vatican II’s teaching.

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In this sequel volume to his Dark Passages of the Bible (CUA, 2013), author Matthew Ramage turns his attention from the Old to the New Testament, now tackling truth claims bearing directly on the heart of the Christian faith cast into doubt by contemporary New Testament scholarship: Did God become man in Jesus, or did the first Christians make Jesus into God? Was Jesus’ resurrection a historical event, or rather a myth fabricated by the early Church? Will Jesus indeed return to earth on the last day, or was this merely the naïve expectation of ancient believers that reasonable people today ought to abandon?In addition to examining the exegetical merits of rival answers to these questions, Ramage considers also the philosophical first principles of the exegetes who set out to answer them. This, according to Joseph Ratzinger, is the debate behind the debate in exegesis: whose presuppositions best position us for an accurate understanding of the nature of things in general and of the person of Jesus in particular?Insisting upon the exegetical vision of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as a privileged avenue by which to address the thorniest issues in contemporary biblical exegesis, Ramage puts the emeritus pontiff’s hermeneutic of faith into dialogue with contemporary exponents of the historical-critical school. Carrying forth the “critique of the critique” called for by Joseph Ratzinger, Ramage offers the emeritus pontiff’s exegesis of the gospels as a plausible and attractive alternative to the mainstream agnostic approach exemplified in the work of Bart Ehrman.As in the case of Benedict’s Jesus trilogy upon which he draws extensively, Ramage’s quest in this book is not merely academic but also existential in nature. Benedict’s scholarship represents the fruit of hispersonal quest for the face of Christ, a quest which involves the commitment to engage, critique, and learn from the most serious challenges posed by modern biblical criticism while affirming the foundations of the Christian faith.

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