Since the 1970s health care costs in the United States have doubled, insurance premiums have far outpaced inflation, and the numbers of the uninsured and underinsured are increasing at an alarming rate. At the same time the public expects better health care and access to the latest treatment technologies. Governments, desperate to contain ballooning costs, often see a market-based approach to health care as the solution; critics of market systems argue that government regulation is necessary to secure accessible care for all.
The Catholic Church generally questions the market's ability to satisfy the many human needs intrinsic to any care delivery system yet, although the Church views health care as a basic human right, it has yet to offer strategies for how such a right can be guaranteed. Mary J. McDonough, a former Legal Aid lawyer for medical cases, understands the advantages and disadvantages of market-based care and offers insight and solutions in Can a Health Care Market Be Moral?
Drawing on Catholic social teachings from St. Augustine to Pope John Paul II, McDonough reviews health system successes and failures from around the world and assesses market approaches to health care as proposed by leading economists such as Milton Friedman, Regina Herzlinger, Mark Pauly, and Alain Enthoven. Balancing aspects of these proposals with Daniel Callahan's value-dimension approach, McDonough offers a Catholic vision of health care in the United States that allows for some market mechanisms while promoting justice and concern for the least advantaged.
With socialism in eclipse and market economies gaining acceptance worldwide, a new kind of ethics is needed to address social injustice and inequity. Richard C. Bayer debunks the present direction of mainstream social ethical theory by advancing market systems themselves as a means toward promoting justice and meeting human needs.
Observing that the primary vehicle for Christian ethics since the New Deal has been the welfare state, Bayer argues instead that market systems can provide a basis for reconciling capitalism and Christianity in both theory and practice. He proposes Christian personalism as an ethical approach that emphasizes the dignity of the human person and promotes the achievement of personal development through participation in a modified market economy.
Bayer's work draws on Catholic social thought and orthodox economics, adopting a post-Keynesian approach that deemphasizes the role of the state in the achievement of economic justice. As an example of a personalist economic reform agenda, he describes a "share economy" that advances solidarity among workers, promises greater economic efficiency, and increases employee participation in profit-sharing and decision-making.
Capitalism and Christianity integrates moral arguments with economic analysis to challenge prevailing thought in contemporary Christian social ethics. By incorporating key insights of liberalism while providing constructive criticism of that perspective, it creatively addresses both personal development and the common good.
More than fifty books debunking the religious claims of The Da Vinci Code have been published. Thisis the first book devoted to the fundamentally more interesting question: if those claims are so unfounded and erroneous, why have they resonated so strongly with millions of intelligent readers and filmgoers?
From the sexual abuse scandal that shook the foundations of the Catholic Church to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that cast a cloud over a troubled nation, Eric Plumer’s The Catholic Church and American Culture: Why the Claims of the DaVinci Code Struck a Chord investigates the contemporary events, ideas, and movements that fostered Dan Brown’s unprecedented dominance of best-seller lists and dinner-table conversation. This ambitious book considers the feminist movement, radical individualism, twelve-step programs, the authority of science and psychology, and other cultural developments that paved the way for The Da Vinci Code craze. It also reflects on the recent publication of the Gnostic Gospels, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Plumer’s engaging book is sure to stimulate further discussion about the role of religion in contemporary life.
Presenting case studies from sixteen countries on five continents, The Catholic Church and the Nation-State paints a rich portrait of a complex and paradoxical institution whose political role has varied historically and geographically. In this integrated and synthetic collection of essays, outstanding scholars from the United States and abroad examine religious, diplomatic, and political actions—both admirable and regrettable—that shape our world. Kenneth R. Himes sets the context of the book by brilliantly describing the political influence of the church in the post-Vatican II era. There are many recent instances, the contributors assert, where the Church has acted as both a moral authority and a self-interested institution: in the United States it maintained unpopular moral positions on issues such as contraception and sexuality, yet at the same time it sought to cover up its own abuses; it was complicit in genocide in Rwanda but played an important role in ending the horrific civil war in Angola; and it has alternately embraced and suppressed nationalism by acting as the voice of resistance against communism in Poland, whereas in Chile it once supported opposition to Pinochet but now aligns with rightist parties.
With an in-depth exploration of the five primary challenges facing the Church—theology and politics, secularization, the transition from serving as a nationalist voice of opposition, questions of justice, and accommodation to sometimes hostile civil authorities—this book will be of interest to scholars and students in religion and politics as well as Catholic Church clergy and laity. By demonstrating how national churches vary considerably in the emphasis of their teachings and in the scope and nature of their political involvement, the analyses presented in this volume engender a deeper understanding of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the world.
Starting where Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism left off, John E. Tropman develops the idea that there is another religious-based ethic permeating society, a Catholic ethic. Where Weber proposed that a Protestant ethic supported the development of capitalism, Tropman argues that there is a Catholic ethic as well, and that it is more caring and community-oriented.
Weber's notion of the Protestant ethic has become widely accepted, but until Tropman's work, beginning in the mid-1980s, there had been no discussion of another, religious-based ethic. He suggests that if the Protestant ethic is an "achievement" ethic, the Catholic ethic is a "helping" one. Tropman outlines a Catholic ethic that is distinctive in its sympathy and outreach toward the poor, and in its emphasis on family and community over economic success. This book fully explores the Catholic ethic and its differing focus by using both historical and survey research. It also points to the existence of other religious-based ethics.
This clearly written book, employing the tools of both sociology and religious thought, will appeal to a wide audience, including students and scholars in disciplines informed by the influence of religion on politics and on social and economic behavior.
Contributors. Patrick Allitt, Paul Crowley, Thomas J. Ferraro, James T. Fisher, Paul Giles, Mary Gordon, Stanley Hauerwas, Frank Lentricchia, Robert A. Orsi, Camille Paglia, David Plante, Richard Rodriguez, Kathy Rudy, Andrew Sullivan, Mary Jo Weaver
In 1900 the Catholic Church stood staunchly against human rights, religious freedom, and the secular state. According to the Catholic view, modern concepts like these, unleashed by the French Revolution, had been a disaster. Yet by the 1960s, those positions were reversed. How did this happen? Why, and when, did the world’s largest religious organization become modern?
James Chappel finds an answer in the shattering experiences of the 1930s. Faced with the rise of Nazism and Communism, European Catholics scrambled to rethink their Church and their faith. Simple opposition to modernity was no longer an option. The question was how to be modern. These were life and death questions, as Catholics struggled to keep Church doors open without compromising their core values. Although many Catholics collaborated with fascism, a few collaborated with Communists in the Resistance. Both strategies required novel approaches to race, sex, the family, the economy, and the state.
Catholic Modern tells the story of how these radical ideas emerged in the 1930s and exercised enormous influence after World War II. Most remarkably, a group of modern Catholics planned and led a new political movement called Christian Democracy, which transformed European culture, social policy, and integration. Others emerged as left-wing dissidents, while yet others began to organize around issues of abortion and gay marriage. Catholics had come to accept modernity, but they still disagreed over its proper form. The debates on this question have shaped Europe’s recent past—and will shape its future.
The reach of the Catholic Church is arguably greater than that of any other religion, extending across diverse political, ethnic, class, and cultural boundaries. But what is it about Catholicism that resonates so profoundly with followers who live under disparate conditions? What is it, for instance, that binds parishioners in America with those in Mexico? For Joseph M. Palacios, what unites Catholics is a sense of being Catholic—a social imagination that motivates them to promote justice and build a better world.
In The Catholic Social Imagination, Palacios gives readers a feeling for what it means to be Catholic and put one’s faith into action. Tracing the practices of a group of parishioners in Oakland, California, and another in Guadalajara, Mexico, Palacios reveals parallels—and contrasts—in the ways these ordinary Catholics receive and act on a church doctrine that emphasizes social justice. Whether they are building a supermarket for the low-income elderly or waging protests to promote school reform, these parishioners provide important insights into the construction of the Catholic social imagination. Throughout, Palacios also offers important new cultural and sociological interpretations of Catholic doctrine on issues such as poverty, civil and human rights, political participation, and the natural law.
Charles E. Curran offers the first comprehensive analysis and criticism of the development of modern Catholic social teaching from the perspective of theology, ethics, and church history. Curran studies the methodology and content of the documents of Catholic social teaching, generally understood as comprising twelve papal letters beginning with Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, two documents from Vatican II, and two pastoral letters of the U.S. bishops.
He contends that the fundamental basis for this body of teaching comes from an anthropological perspective that recognizes both the inherent dignity and the social nature of the human person—thus do the church's teachings on political and economic matters chart a middle course between the two extremes of individualism and collectivism. The documents themselves tend to downplay any discontinuities with previous documents, but Curran's systematic analysis reveals the significant historical developments that have occurred over the course of more than a century. Although greatly appreciative of the many strengths of this teaching, Curran also points out the weaknesses and continuing tensions in Catholic social teaching today.
Intended for scholars and students of Catholic social ethics, as well as those involved in Catholic social ministry, this volume will also appeal to non-Catholic readers interested in an understanding and evaluation of Catholic social teaching.
In his Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom, Thomas Langan argued that the close interaction of traditions in today's society calls for methodical critical appropriation of the beliefs fostered by the principal traditions. He also promised to demonstrate by example how such appropriation could be accomplished. In The Catholic Tradition, Langan successfully fulfills that vow by showing how a tradition—the Catholic—has shaped his own outlook.
In this comprehensive study, Langan examines the history of the Catholic Church and the origins of its teachings since the Church's conception. Although committed to the Catholic religion, Langan does not obscure the Church's failings as he lays out the fundamentals of the Catholic faith.
He provides insight into the great Christological councils, discusses the differences in the spiritualities of East and West, and portrays the crucial roles that the pope and bishops played during the Middle Ages. He incorporates the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, and medieval Catholicism as he traces the rise and decline of Christian Europe, the great issues raised by the reform: priesthood, the Eucharist, spirituality, and Church structure.
Satan has no greater triumph, Langan asserts, than when Catholics, who are recipients of the Good News of God's universal love, allow selections from their tradition to be turned into sectarianism and ideology. This balanced history of the Church as human reality faces such perversions squarely. But despite betrayals by its own across the centuries, the Catholic tradition, with its origin at Sinai, remains the oldest and largest extant religious institution.
In a last section Langan offers a unique overview of the church's present situation, its strengths and weaknesses, the new movement and the challenge of the "new evangelization."
Contributors. Pedro Ramet, Arthur F. McGovern, Roman Solchanyk, Ivan Hvat, Robert F. Goeckel, C. Chrypinski, Milan J. Reban, Leslie Laszlo, Janice Broun, Eric O. Hanson, Stephen Denney, Thomas E. Quigley, Humberto Belli, Hansjakob Stehle, George H. Williams
Despite the constitutional division of church and state, the impact of Catholics on American politics in the 1960s and 1970s has been remarkable--as the names of the Kennedys, Eugene McCarthy, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, Peter Rodino, Thomas Eagleton, the Berrigan brothers, and Cesar Chavez will attest. In this portrait of American Catholicism, Mary Hanna intensely analyzes the political influence of this enormously complex organization. She focuses on the role of the Church in providing the means for an ethnic group to challenge and contribute to the values of the larger society.
Hanna recognizes that the Church is constantly striving to maintain a balance between changing social conditions and the principles of faith. In her analysis of the dynamics of this balance, she asks, for example, why the Church has had such influence on its members on the question of abortion, but has been somewhat less effective on questions relating to minority welfare. Interviews with working-class leaders in Catholic "ethnic" communities provide a new understanding of the complexities of Catholic feeling on these timely issues. Hanna's chapter on the subtleties of the abortion issue, as interpreted by church leaders, Catholic politicians, and the lay population, is a model of scholarship.
This study applies the methods of quantification, survey research, and interviewing to public policy, and yields unexpected results. For example, despite Catholics' stereotyped image as conservative and antiprogressive, Hanna shows that Catholic voters are very liberal on the subject of government's role in solving problems related to the general welfare-health care, the environment, education, crime, drug addiction. She also finds upward mobility in Catholics' education and especially their income. This work combines data from national surveys with personal interviews of clergymen and other Catholic public figures. Hanna's comprehensiveness, documentation, and innovation make this a searching analysis of contemporary American Catholicism.
Focusing primarily on the Catholic doctrinal view of the Jews and its ramifications, Egal Feldman traces the historicalroots of anti-Semitism, examining tenacious Catholic beliefsincluding the idea that the Jews lost their place as the chosen people with the coming of Christianity, deicide, and the conviction that their purported responsibility for the Crucifixion justified subsequent Jewish misery.
A new era of Catholic-Jewish relations opened in 1962 with Vatican II’s Declaration on the Jews, reversing the theology of contempt. Feldman explores the strides made in improving relations, such as the Vatican’s diplomatic recognition of the Jewish state, as well as a number of recent issues.
Catholic political identity and engagement defy categorization. The complexities of political realities and the human nature of such institutions as church and government often produce a more fractured reality than the pure unity depicted in doctrine. Yet, in 2003 under the leadership of then-prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a "Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life." The note explicitly asserts, "The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church's social doctrine does not exhaust one's responsibility toward the common good." Catholics and Politics takes up the political and theological significance of this "integral unity," the universal scope of Catholic concern that can make for strange political bedfellows, confound predictable voting patterns, and leave the church poised to critique narrowly partisan agendas across the spectrum.
Catholics and Politics depicts the ambivalent character of Catholics' mainstream "arrival" in the U.S. over the past forty years, integrating social scientific, historical and moral accounts of persistent tensions between faith and power. Divided into four parts—Catholic Leaders in U.S. Politics; The Catholic Public; Catholics and the Federal Government; and International Policy and the Vatican—it describes the implications of Catholic universalism for voting patterns, international policymaking, and partisan alliances. The book reveals complex intersections of Catholicism and politics and the new opportunities for influence and risks of cooptation of political power produced by these shifts. Contributors include political scientists, ethicists, and theologians. The book will be of interest to scholars in political science, religious studies, and Christian ethics and all lay Catholics interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the tensions that can exist between church doctrine and partisan politics.
Inequality is skyrocketing. In this world of vast riches, millions of people live in extreme poverty, barely surviving from day to day. All over the world, the wealthy's increasing political power is biasing policy away from the public interest and toward the financial interests of the rich. At the same time, many countries are facing financial fragility and diminished well-being. On top of it all, the global economy, driven by fossil fuels, has proven to be a collective act of self-sabotage with the poor on the front lines. In a new foreword to his book, Anthony M. Annett examines the Biden administration's economic policies and discusses reactions to Cathonomics.
A growing chorus of economists and politicians is demanding a new paradigm to create a global economy that seeks the common good. In Cathonomics, Annett unites insights in economics with those from theology, philosophy, climate science, and psychology, exposing the failures of neoliberalism while offering us a new model rooted in the wisdom of Catholic social teaching and classical ethical traditions. Drawing from the work of Pope Leo XIII, Pope Francis, Thomas Aquinas, and Aristotle, Annett applies these teachings to discuss current economic challenges, such as inequality, unemployment and underemployment, climate change, and the roles of business and finance.
Cathonomics is an ethical and practical guide for readers of all faiths and backgrounds seeking to create a world economy that is more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable for all.
Deborah E. Kanter tells the story of neighborhood change and rebirth in Chicago's Mexican American communities. She unveils a vibrant history of Mexican American and Mexican immigrant relations as remembered by laity and clergy, schoolchildren and their female religious teachers, parish athletes and coaches, European American neighbors, and from the immigrant women who organized as guadalupanas and their husbands who took part in the Holy Name Society. Kanter shows how the newly arrived mixed memories of home into learning the ways of Chicago to create new identities. In an ever-evolving city, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans’ fierce devotion to their churches transformed neighborhoods such as Pilsen.
The first-ever study of Mexican-descent Catholicism in the city, Chicago Católico illuminates a previously unexplored facet of the urban past and provides present-day lessons for American communities undergoing ethnic integration and succession.
Evangelium Vitae, or "The Gospel of Life," Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, addresses practical moral questions that touch on the sacredness of human life: abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, and capital punishment. Tackling major moral and cultural ideas, the Pope urged "all men and women of good will" to embrace a "culture of life" instead of the prevailing "culture of death." In this book, scholars from a wide range of disciplines—law, medicine, philosophy, and theology—and various religious perspectives discuss and interpret the Pope's teachings on these complex moral issues.
The opening essays establish a context for the encyclical in the moral thought of John Paul II and examine issues of methodology and ecclesiology. A second group considers the themes of law and technology, which are crucial to the way the encyclical views the specific matters of life and death. The final section turns to the specific topics of abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, medical experimentation, and capital punishment.
Seeking to promote discussion between the ideas of the encyclical and other points of view, this volume does not attempt to endorse Evangelium Vitae but rather to illustrate its relevance to both private choice and public policy. It will serve as a foundation for further dialogue and allow others to approach the pontiff's thought with new awareness and insight.
Evolution has provided a new understanding of reality, with revolutionary consequences for Christianity. In an evolutionary perspective the incarnation involved God entering the evolving human species to help it imitate the trinitarian altruism in whose image it was created and counter its tendency to self-absorption. Primarily, however, the evolutionary achievement of Jesus was to confront and overcome death in an act of cosmic significance, ushering humanity into the culminating stage of its evolutionary destiny, the full sharing of God’s inner life. Previously such doctrines as original sin, the fall, sacrifice, and atonement stemmed from viewing death as the penalty for sin and are shown not only to have serious difficulties in themselves, but also to emerge from a Jewish culture preoccupied with sin and sacrifice that could not otherwise account for death. The death of Jesus on the cross is now seen as saving humanity, not from sin, but from individual extinction and meaninglessness. Death is now seen as a normal process that affect all living things and the religious doctrines connected with explaining it in humans are no longer required or justified. Similar evolutionary implications are explored affecting other subjects of Christian belief, including the Church, the Eucharist, priesthood, and moral behavior.
In 1980, Brazil was the largest Roman Catholic country in the world, with 90 percent of its more than 120 million people numbered among the faithful. The Church hierarchy became aware, however, that the religion practiced by the majority of its members was not that promoted by the institution, a point dramatized by the rapid growth of other religious movements in Brazil—particularly Protestant sects and spirit-possession cults. In response, the Church created and assumed new roles. The Church in Brazil is a case study of the changes within the Church and their impact on Brazilian society.
In an original and illuminating discussion, Thomas Bruneau combines institutional analysis and survey data to explore the relationship between structural changes in the Church and evolving patterns of practice and belief. His discussion displays the richness and variety of devotion in Brazil—characteristics recognized by many observers—and examines the Church's potential for influencing the people's religious life.
Moving from the historical and national to the regional, Bruneau analyzes and compares changes among eight dioceses. He concludes that the Church is actively promoting a progressive social role for itself and, by backing its statements with actions, is perceived as being socially effective by both supporters and opponents.
The first study in which the national and diocesan levels of the Church are analyzed together, it is also the first to inspect systematically the Basic Christian Communities, thought by some to be the most significant grass-roots movement in the Catholic world of that time.
By 1952 the Chinese Communist Party had suppressed all organized resistance to its regime and stood unopposed, or so it has been believed. Internal party documents—declassified just long enough for historian Paul Mariani to send copies out of China—disclose that one group deemed an enemy of the state held out after the others had fallen. A party report from Shanghai marked “top-secret” reveals a determined, often courageous resistance by the local Catholic Church. Drawing on centuries of experience in struggling with the Chinese authorities, the Church was proving a stubborn match for the party.
Mariani tells the story of how Bishop (later Cardinal) Ignatius Kung Pinmei, the Jesuits, and the Catholic Youth resisted the regime’s punishing assault on the Shanghai Catholic community and refused to renounce the pope and the Church in Rome. Acting clandestinely, mirroring tactics used by the previously underground CCP, Shanghai’s Catholics persevered until 1955, when the party arrested Kung and 1,200 other leading Catholics. The imprisoned believers were later shocked to learn that the betrayal had come from within their own ranks.
Though the CCP could not eradicate the Catholic Church in China, it succeeded in dividing it. Mariani’s secret history traces the origins of a deep split in the Chinese Catholic community, where relations between the “Patriotic” and underground churches remain strained even today.
This contribution to European historical literature--based on extensive research in Madrid--provides a clear and dispassionate account of successive ecclesiastical-secular conflicts and controversies, and deftly summarizes the diverse ideological and intellectual currents of the times.
Nowhere in Europe has the Roman Catholic Church exerted a more mystical hold on the life of a nation than it has in Spain. Yet this hold has not been unchanging or unchallenged. By the mid-eighteenth century the Church was no longer the only legitimate source of authority, the all-pervasive presence that it had been, most forcefully in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Still, its power remained formidable. The Spanish Church imposed standards of conduct over the entire range of society, from the aristocracy to the peasant masses, and it possessed the material resources necessary to maintain an elaborate ecclesiastical network that influenced every aspect of Spanish life.
The heart of the book deals with the reactions of the Church to the dramatic, sometimes violent, changes that occurred during the critical nineteenth-century period of national transition from royal absolutism to popular liberalism. The study examines the responses of the Church to the new social and political forces that could no longer be excluded or contained, among them an emergent secular--even anticlerical--culture and a developing capitalism.Callahan demonstrates that these changes engendered resentments and frustrations deep within the ecclesiastical order that persisted well into the twentieth century, notably with the Spanish Church's embrace of Franco.
The story of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests has sent shock waves around the nation and will not fade from consciousness or the news. We ask, "How could this happen?" And then we ask, "How could the Catholic Church let this continue for so long—in seeming silence and duplicity?" Paul R. Dokecki, a community psychologist at Vanderbilt University, an active Catholic, and a former board member of the National Catholic Education Association, investigates the crisis not only with the eye of an investigative reporter, but with the analytical skills and training of a psychologist as well. Moreover, he lays the foundation for reasonable and practical reform measures.
Through the scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston as well as the earlier, if less well known but momentous, case in the Diocese of Nashville, Dokecki reports on and analyzes what is ultimately an abuse of power—not only by the clergy but by church officials. As distasteful as these instances may be, they are compelling reading, enlightened by the author's abilities to contextualize these events through the lenses of professional ethics, the human sciences, and ecclesiology. According to Dokecki, these and other instances of clergy sexual abuse reveal a systemic deficiency in the structure and the nature of the church itself, one that has prevented the church from adequately dealing with its own worst sins.
Dokecki may shine a spotlight into the church's dark corners—but he does so in the service of enlightenment, calling the church back toward the vision of Vatican II and the spirit of Pope John XXIII—toward a greater transparency, a more open and participatory governance in the church, and for a greatly expanded role for the people of God who make up the church. It is in this way, Dokecki believes, the church will be better able to keep the innocent children of the church safe from harm.
Roisin Cossar brings a new perspective to the history of the Christian church in fourteenth century Italy by examining how clerics managed efforts to reform their domestic lives in the decades after the arrival of the Black Death.
Priests at the end of the Middle Ages resembled their lay contemporaries as they entered into domestic relationships with women, fathered children, and took responsibility for managing households, or familiae. Cossar limns a complex portrait of daily life in the medieval clerical familia that traces the phases of its development. Many priests began their vocation as apprentices in the households of older clerics. In middle age, priests fully embraced the traditional role of paterfamilias—patriarchs with authority over their households, including servants and, especially in Venice, slaves. As fathers they endeavored to establish their illegitimate sons in a clerical family trade. They also used their legal knowledge to protect their female companions and children against a church that frowned on such domestic arrangements and actively sought to stamp them out.
Clerical Households in Late Medieval Italy refutes the longstanding charge that the late medieval clergy were corrupt, living licentious lives that failed to uphold priestly obligations. In fashioning a domestic culture that responded flexibly to their own needs, priests tempered the often unrealistic expectations of their superiors. Their response to the rigid demands of church reform allowed the church to maintain itself during a period of crisis and transition in European history.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has been exacerbated in the minds of many by the dismal response of church leadership. Uncovered along with the abuse of power were decisions that were not only made in secrecy, but which also magnified the powerlessness of the people of the church to have any say in its governance. Accordingly, many have left the church, many have withheld funding—others have vowed to work for change, as witnessed by the phenomenal growth of Voice of the Faithful. Common Calling is indeed a call—for change, for inclusion, and a place at the table for the laity when it comes to the governance of the church.
By first providing compelling historical precedents of the roles and status of the laity as it functioned during the first millennium, Common Calling compares and contrasts those to the place of the laity today. It is this crossroad—between the past and the possible future of the Catholic Church—where the distinguished contributors to this volume gather in the hope and expectation of change. They examine the distinction between laity and clergy in regard to the power of church governance, and explore the theological interpretation of clergy-laity relations and governance in the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. They look at how church officials interpret the role of the laity today and address the weaknesses in that model. Finally, they speak clearly in outlining the ways governance may be improved, and how—by emphasizing dialogue, participation, gender equality, and loyalty—the role of the laity can be enhanced.
Speaking as active believers and academic specialists, all of the contributors assert that the church must evolve in the 21st century. They represent a variety of disciplines, including systematic theology, sacramental theology, canon law, political science, moral theology, pastoral theology, and management. The book also includes an essay by James Post, cofounder of the Catholic lay movement Voice of the Faithful, the organization that was in part responsible for the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law. Common Calling looks to a future of transparency in the Catholic Church that, with an invested laity, will help to prevent any further abuse—especially the abuse of power.
The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century: The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 reveals the dynamic role a seemingly marginalized community played during a defining period for the emergence of English religious identity. Based on her new critical edition of additions made to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 and by questioning the purpose of those late tenth-century additions, Karen Louise Jolly is able to uncover much about the Chester-le-Street scribes and their tumultuous time, rife as it was with various political tensions, from Vikings and local Northumbrian nobles to an increasingly dominant West Saxon monarchy.
Why, for instance, would a priest laboriously insert an Old English gloss above every Latin word in a collection of prayers intended to be performed in Latin? What motivated the same English scribe to include Irish-derived Christian materials in the manuscript, including prayers invoking the archangel Panchiel to clear birds from a field?
Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church’s ongoing scandals. Confessions of a Gay Priest divulges the clandestine inner workings of the seminary, providing an intimate and unapologetic look into the psychosexual and spiritual dynamics of celibacy and lays bare the “formation” system that perpetuates the cycle of abuse and cover-up that continues today.
Under the guidance of a charismatic college campus minister, Rastrelli sought to reconcile his homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse. When he felt called to the priesthood, Rastrelli began the process of “priestly discernment.” Priests welcomed him into a confusing clerical culture where public displays of piety, celibacy, and homophobia masked a closeted underworld in which elder priests preyed upon young recruits.
From there he ventured deeper into the seminary system seeking healing, hoping to help others, and striving not to live a double life. Trained to treat sexuality like an addiction, he and his brother seminarians lived in a world of cliques, competition, self-loathing, alcohol, hidden crushes, and closeted sex. Ultimately, the “formation” intended to make Rastrelli a compliant priest helped to liberate him.
The classic account of crisis and conversion.
Aurelius Augustine (AD 354–430), one of the most important figures in the development of western Christianity and philosophy, was the son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste, and his Christian wife, Monnica. While studying to become a rhetorician, he plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts, leading him to Manichaeism. In 383 he moved to Rome and then Milan to teach rhetoric. Despite exploring classical philosophical systems, especially skepticism and Neoplatonism, his studies of Paul’s letters with his friend Alypius, and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose, led in 386 to his momentous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. He soon returned to Tagaste and founded a religious community, and in 395 or 396 became bishop of Hippo.
Confessions, composed ca. 397, is a spiritual autobiography of Augustine’s early life, family, personal and intellectual associations, and explorations of alternative religious and theological viewpoints as he moved toward his conversion. Cast as a prayer addressed to God, though always conscious of its readers, Confessions offers a gripping personal story and a philosophical exploration destined to have broad and lasting impact, all delivered with Augustine’s characteristic brilliance as a stylist.
This edition replaces the earlier Loeb Confessions by William Watts.
The classic account of crisis and conversion.
Aurelius Augustine (AD 354–430), one of the most important figures in the development of western Christianity and philosophy, was the son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste, and his Christian wife, Monnica. While studying to become a rhetorician, he plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts, leading him to Manichaeism. In 383 he moved to Rome and then Milan to teach rhetoric. Despite exploring classical philosophical systems, especially skepticism and Neoplatonism, his studies of Paul’s letters with his friend Alypius, and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose, led in 386 to his momentous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. He soon returned to Tagaste and founded a religious community, and in 395 or 396 became bishop of Hippo.
Confessions, composed ca. 397, is a spiritual autobiography of Augustine’s early life, family, personal and intellectual associations, and explorations of alternative religious and theological viewpoints as he moved toward his conversion. Cast as a prayer addressed to God, though always conscious of its readers, Confessions offers a gripping personal story and a philosophical exploration destined to have broad and lasting impact, all delivered with Augustine’s characteristic brilliance as a stylist.
This edition replaces the earlier Loeb Confessions by William Watts.
The anthropology that supports marriage perceives justice to be a particular reality, and for this reason marriage will always be a subject of law and of great interest to jurists and sociologists alike. With respect to the realization of justice in marriage, understood as the moment the bond is created, Catholic ecclesiology and canon law articulate an original legal category––namely, the consensual incapacity to marry. In the last fifty years, however, and despite the juridical innovations provided by the current Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983, American canonical practice in the sphere of marriage law has lost its foundation. The consequences of this include mechanisms of judgment that are rendered incoherent although not inactive, particularly in local tribunals reviewing claims of marriage nullity. In other words, the application of law in the Catholic Church moves forward without a clear indication of its anthropological basis. Canon law, then, on the issue of marriage is perceived to be purposefully oppressive or absolutely meaningless.
Jurists, scholars, and members of the Roman Curia acknowledge that, more than a general response to this crisis of law and marriage, what might be needed most is greater scrutiny of the canon in which the formula for consensual incapacity appears. It is furthermore acknowledged that American canonical practice is perhaps the most influential in the world, and is responsible for shaping and sustaining the global attention given to this issue. To fully grasp the crisis and the best way forward, a profile of this canon in American jurisprudence is fundamental and demanded presently. The new course charted by canonical studies and formation of jurists, as well as the new developments in ecclesiastical legislation, will find guidance in this study provided by Catherine Godfrey-Howell, and further insight in the foreword given by the American Cardinal prelate and former Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke.
As David Kelly writes, "Catholic moral theology has not been completely constant over the centuries; it has learned and developed." In Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics he demonstrates how Catholic health care ethics can—and should—evolve similarly in response to the lightning speed of modern medical advances. Kelly draws on and analyzes the Catholic tradition of medical ethics—but he does not shy away from criticizing it as well, giving health care professionals, hospital ethics committees, and students a fresh treatment of Catholic health care ethics emphasizing theology, methodology, and application.
First discussing the Catholic understanding of the human person, Kelly proposes a Catholic Christian approach to the meaning of human life as it applies specifically to health care. He includes a brief history of the relationship between religion and medicine, and makes strong claims about how theology ought and ought not to be applied in health care ethics. Drawing from the terminology and approaches used by secular bioethics, he suggests how a Catholic perspective on health care can utilize certain secular moral-philosophical positions, even as they apply to the issues of birth control, and end-of life concerns. As practitioners, patients, and families face the difficult decision to continue or stop treatment for dying patients, Kelly compassionately, but practically, explores their concerns in light of American law and ethics. Finally, he provides measured insight on pain management, hospital ethics committees, stem cell research, genetic engineering, and allocation of health care resources.
Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics is informed, challenging, articulate, and bold—bringing to the extremely important field of Catholic health care ethics a much-needed and welcome voice, unafraid to speak to the most difficult issues of the 21st century.
Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics, Second Edition, integrates theology, methodology, and practical application into a detailed and practical examination of the bioethical issues that confront students, scholars, and practitioners. Noted bioethicists Gerard Magill, Henk ten Have, and David F. Kelly contribute diverse backgrounds and experience that inform the richness of new material covered in this second edition.
The book is organized into three sections: theology (basic issues underlying Catholic thought), methodology (how Catholic theology approaches moral issues, including birth control), and applications to current issues. New chapters discuss controversial end-of-life issues such as forgoing treatment, killing versus allowing patients to die, ways to handle decisions for incompetent patients, advance directives, and physician-assisted suicide. Unlike anthologies, the coherent text offers a consistent method in order to provide students, scholars, and practitioners with an understanding of ethical dilemmas as well as concrete examples to assist in the difficult decisions they must make on an everyday basis.
Debra Sabia describes and analyzes the rise, growth, and fragmentation of the popular church and assesses the effect of the Christian base communities on religion, politics, and the nation's social revolutionary experiment.
A provocative analysis of how Christianity helped legitimize the death penalty in early modern Europe, then throughout the Christian world, by turning execution into a great cathartic public ritual and the condemned into a Christ-like figure who accepts death to save humanity.
The public execution of criminals has been a common practice ever since ancient times. In this wide-ranging investigation of the death penalty in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, noted Italian historian Adriano Prosperi identifies a crucial period when legal concepts of vengeance and justice merged with Christian beliefs in repentance and forgiveness.
Crime and Forgiveness begins with late antiquity but comes into sharp focus in fourteenth-century Italy, with the work of the Confraternities of Mercy, which offered Christian comfort to the condemned and were for centuries responsible for burying the dead. Under the brotherhoods’ influence, the ritual of public execution became Christianized, and the doomed person became a symbol of the fallen human condition. Because the time of death was known, this “ideal” sinner could be comforted and prepared for the next life through confession and repentance. In return, the community bearing witness to the execution offered forgiveness and a Christian burial. No longer facing eternal condemnation, the criminal in turn publicly forgave the executioner, and the death provided a moral lesson to the community.
Over time, as the practice of Christian comfort spread across Europe, it offered political authorities an opportunity to legitimize the death penalty and encode into law the right to kill and exact vengeance. But the contradictions created by Christianity’s central role in executions did not dissipate, and squaring the emotions and values surrounding state-sanctioned executions was not simple, then or now.
When Richard A. McCormick's The Critical Calling was first published, Andrew M. Greeley commented that "in years to come scholars will look back on Father McCormick's work and say, 'This was a man who knew what he was talking about!'" In this reissue, with a new foreword by Lisa Sowle Cahill, both first-time readers and those opening the pages for a return visit with an honored friend will find Greeley's characterization remains valid.
Father McCormick begins The Critical Calling with his personal affirmation of the work of Vatican II: "I believe the Council was a work of the Spirit—desperately needed, divinely inspired, devotedly and doggedly carried through." Yet, he stresses this was no uncritical endorsement of everything the Council did and said. Part One includes a discussion of fundamental moral theology that looks at the relationship between the church hierarchy and individual moral decision making and several chapters addressing issues precipitated by actions involving Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Part Two focuses on practical and pastoral questions that touch on contemporary concerns ranging from abortion to AIDS, divorce, homosexuality, and teenage sexuality.
Cahill suggests that "those who lived through the tumultuous 1960s and '70s" as well as "those who came to maturity after the Council" will find this book to be an accurate and evocative reflection of the passions that imbued all those early debates and a helpful explanation why those passions ran so high. All readers will benefit from the wise insights into the controversies of that era and the more recent struggles, challenges, and debates that confront today's church.
Religious traditions in the United States are characterized by ongoing tension between assimilation to the broader culture, as typified by mainline Protestant churches, and defiant rejection of cultural incursions, as witnessed by more sectarian movements such as Mormonism and Hassidism. However, legal theorist and Catholic theologian Cathleen Kaveny contends there is a third possibility—a culture of engagement—that accommodates and respects tradition. It also recognizes the need to interact with culture to remain relevant and to offer critiques of social, political, legal, and economic practices.
Kaveny suggests that rather than avoid the crisscross of the religious and secular spheres of life, we should use this conflict as an opportunity to come together and to encounter, challenge, contribute to, and correct one another. Focusing on five broad areas of interest—Law as a Teacher, Religious Liberty and Its Limits, Conversations about Culture, Conversations about Belief, and Cases and Controversies—Kaveny demonstrates how thoughtful and purposeful engagement can contribute to rich, constructive, and difficult discussions between moral and cultural traditions.
This provocative collection of Kaveny's articles from Commonweal magazine, substantially revised and updated from their initial publication, provides astonishing insight into a range of hot-button issues like abortion, assisted suicide, government-sponsored torture, contraception, the Ashley Treatment, capital punishment, and the role of religious faith in a pluralistic society. At turns masterful and inspirational, A Culture of Engagement is a welcome reminder of what can be gained when a diversity of experiences and beliefs is brought to bear on American public life.
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