In September of 2014 thirty new members were appointed for a five-year term to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. These theologians, clerical and lay, were chosen from twenty-six different countries and from five continents. The commission was charged with composing three documents of contemporary theological importance, one of which was that of the relationship between faith and the sacraments. This finished document was published, with the approval of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and by Pope Francis in Spanish in early 2020 under the title: La Reciprocidad entre Fe y Sacramentos en la Economía Sacramental. A subsequent English translation was published thereafter under the title The Reciprocity Between Faith and Sacraments in the Sacramental Economy. This present volume contains the text of the English translation. There follows an introduction by a member of the ITC, Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap., and subsequently followed by six explanatory and interpretive commentaries on various chapters of the document. Dr. John Yocum considers the contemporary relevance of the topic. Dr. Christopher Ruddy examines the dialogical nature of the sacramental economy of salvation. Dr. Jennifer Holmes Martin discusses the relationship between faith and the sacraments of initiation. There are two commentaries for section four concerning faith and the sacrament of marriage. Professor John Grabowski treats the strictly theological issues relating to faith and marriage. Canonist Timothy Cavanaugh takes up the canonical issues regarding faith and its relationship to enacting a valid sacramental marriage. Dr. Daniel Keating rounds off the commentaries by surveying the conclusion of the document, that is, the present need for evangelization so as to enliven the faith of the faithful, and the present relevance of the new ecclesial movements within the Church today. These commentaries are aimed at aiding priests and seminarians as they address or prepare to address the pastoral and theological concerns they encounter or will encounter on a daily basis. This volume could also be used in parish adult education groups as well, wherein the laity could better understand the relationship between faith and the sacraments.

In the wake of the 1572 revolt against Spain, the new Dutch Republic outlawed Catholic worship and secularized all church property. Calvinism prevailed as the public faith, yet Catholicism experienced a resurgence in the first half of the seventeenth century, with membership rivaling that of the Calvinist church. In a wide-ranging analysis of a marginalized yet vibrant religious minority, Charles Parker examines this remarkable revival.

It had little to do with the traditional Dutch reputation for tolerance. A keen sense of persecution, combined with a vigorous program of reform, shaped a movement that imparted meaning to Catholics in a Protestant republic. A pastoral organization known as the Holland Mission emerged to establish a vigorous Catholic presence. A chronic shortage of priests enabled laymen and women to exercise an exceptional degree of leadership in local congregations. Increased interaction between clergy and laity reveals a picture that differs sharply from the standard account of the Counter-Reformation's clerical dominance and imposition of church reform on a reluctant populace.

There were few places in early modern Europe where a proscribed religious minority was so successful in remaining a permanent fixture of society. Faith on the Margins casts light on the relationship between religious minorities and hostile environments.

Shaken by the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal, and challenged from within by social and theological division, Catholics in America are at a crossroads. But is today’s situation unique? And where will Catholicism go from here? With the belief that we understand our present by studying our past, James O’Toole offers a bold and panoramic history of the American Catholic laity.

O’Toole tells the story of this ancient church from the perspective of ordinary Americans, the lay believers who have kept their faith despite persecution from without and clergy abuse from within. It is an epic tale, from the first settlements of Catholics in the colonies to the turmoil of the scandal-ridden present, and through the church’s many American incarnations in between. We see Catholics’ complex relationship to Rome and to their own American nation. O’Toole brings to life both the grand sweep of institutional change and the daily practice that sustained believers. The Faithful pays particular attention to the intricacies of prayer and ritual—the ways men and women have found to express their faith as Catholics over the centuries.

With an intimate knowledge of the dilemmas and hopes of today’s church, O’Toole presents a new vision and offers a glimpse into the possible future of the church and its parishioners. Moving past the pulpit and into the pews, The Faithful is an unmatched look at the American Catholic laity. Today’s Catholics will find much to educate and inspire them in these pages, and non-Catholics will gain a newfound understanding of their religious brethren.

Catholic writers have made a rich contribution to British fiction, despite their minority status. Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Muriel Spark are well-known examples, but there are many other significant novelists whose work has a Catholic aspect. This is the first book to survey the whole range of this material and examine whether valid generalizations can be made about it. In charting such fiction from its development in the Victorian period through to the work of contemporaries such as David Lodge, the author analyses its complex relationships with changes in British society and the international Church. There is more than one way of being a Catholic, as Woodman shows, but he also demosntrates that many of these writers share common themes and a distinctive perspective. They often wish in particular to use their religion as a weapon against what they portray as a complacent Protestant or secular society. Their consciousness of writing in the midst of such a society gives a special edge to their treatments of the perennial Catholic themes of suffering, sin and sex. It also has implications for literary form and relates to what has been seen as the extremist mode of Catholic fiction. The final question that Woodman puts is whether the changes in the Church since the Second Vatican Council must inevitably lead to the loss of this distinctive Catholic contribution to the novel.

The Family as Basic Social Unit seeks to take seriously the claim that a family is a basic social unit. As a basic social unit, a family is both internally social, and socially interdependent with other communities. Since a family is a basic social unit, Schemenauer proposes that family life is a location for applying Catholic social teaching. Kevin Schemenauer specifically applies Catholic social principles concerning the dignity of work and peacemaking to household labor and violence among siblings, and he reflects on how individuals feed the hungry and care for the sick when they care for their family members. In the second part of the volume, Schemenauer describes the social interdependence of families. He analyzes the relationship between families and the Church, civil society, the economy, and the state. Schemenauer proposes that the question for families is not whether to engage with other social communities but how to do so well. He explicitly highlights how consumer capitalism creates obstacles for families attempting to live as a basic social unit. Then, employing the categories of infused simplicity and moral cooperation, he provides a framework for discerning family engagement with broader society. Finally, Schemenauer analyzes the relationship between family commitments and social ministry. Working from the family outward, Schemenauer describes how family commitments can motivate broader social service, but then employs the example of families involved in the Catholic Worker Movement to reflect on the joys and dangers of balancing commitment to one’s family with social ministry focused on the urgent needs of those outside of one’s household.

Far Too Easily Pleased was originally published in 1976, although it is just as relevant today. Catholic Education Press is thrilled to be able to bring this book back into print. To summarize the volume we can do better than to excerpt part of Fr. Schall’s introduction to the 1976 edition: This book is intended to be a helpful stimulus to incite the reader to survey the truly exciting literature in this field and to assist in organizing personal reflection about the basic themes of game, play, wonder, rite, contemplation and festivity, themes that the theology of play naturally suggests. For it can be truly said that those who have not yet been initiated into this style of religious and cultural thought have been missing highly liberating and ennobling levels of our heritage. For those who already know what rewards are to be found in play and game, it is hoped that this book can again be a fresh and different approach to wonder and fascination, to the curiously marvelous life we have been given. James V. Schall, SJ, (1928-2019) was an American Jesuit Roman Catholic priest, teacher, writer, and philosopher. He retired in 2012 after a long tenure as a professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University Among his many books are The Universe We Think In; Political Philosophy and Revelation: A Catholic Reading; The Mind That Is Catholic: Philosophical and Political Essays; Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes and At the Limits of Political Philosophy: From “Brilliant Errors” To Things of Uncommon Importance (all CUA Press).

A surprising history of interfaith collaboration in the Roman Ghetto, where for three centuries Jewish and Christian butchers worked together to provision the city despite the proscriptions of Church law.

For Rome’s Jewish population, confined to a ghetto between 1555 and 1870, efforts to secure kosher meat were fraught with challenges. The city’s papal authorities viewed kashrut—the Jewish dietary laws—with suspicion, and it was widely believed that kosher meat would contaminate any Christian who consumed it. Supplying kosher provisions entailed circumventing canon law and the institutions that regulated the butchering and sale of meat throughout the city.

Kenneth Stow finds that Jewish butchers collaborated extensively with their Christian counterparts to ensure a supply of kosher meat, regardless of the laws that prohibited such interactions. Jewish butchers sold nonkosher portions of slaughtered animals daily to Christians outside the ghetto, which in turn ensured the affordability of kosher meat. At the same time, Christian butchers also found it profitable to work with Jews, as this enabled them to sell good meat otherwise unavailable at attractive prices. These relationships could be warm and almost intimate, but they could also be rife with anger, deception, and even litigation. Nonetheless, without this close cooperation—and the willingness of authorities to turn a blind eye to it—meat-eating in the ghetto would have been nearly impossible. Only the rise of the secular state in the late nineteenth century brought fundamental change, putting an end to canon law and allowing the kosher meat market to flourish.

A rich social history of food in early modern Rome, Feeding the Eternal City is also a compelling narrative of Jewish life and religious acculturation in the capital of Catholicism.

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Twenty-nine in all, these letters cover all but three of Cyril's years as a bishop. The first twelve were published in 2009 (Fathers of the Church 118). The present volume completes the set. Festal letters were used in Alexandria primarily to announce the beginning of Lent and the date of Easter. They also served a catechetical purpose, however, allowing the Patriarch an annual opportunity to write pastorally not just about issues facing the entire see, but also about the theological issues of the day.

Historians have long believed that Catholics were late and ambivalent supporters of the German nation. Rebecca Ayako Bennette’s bold new interpretation demonstrates definitively that from the beginning in 1871, when Wilhelm I was proclaimed Kaiser of a unified Germany, Catholics were actively promoting a German national identity for the new Reich.

In the years following unification, Germany was embroiled in a struggle to define the new nation. Otto von Bismarck and his allies looked to establish Germany as a modern nation through emphasis on Protestantism and military prowess. Many Catholics feared for their future when he launched the Kulturkampf, a program to break the political and social power of German Catholicism. But these anti-Catholic policies did not destroy Catholic hopes for the new Germany. Rather, they encouraged Catholics to develop an alternative to the Protestant and liberal visions that dominated the political culture. Bennette’s reconstruction of Catholic thought and politics sheds light on several aspects of German life. From her discovery of Catholics who favored a more “feminine” alternative to Bismarckian militarism to her claim that anti-socialism, not anti-Semitism, energized Catholic politics, Bennette’s work forces us to rethink much of what we know about religion and national identity in late nineteenth-century Germany.

John W. O’Malley gives us the most comprehensive account ever written of the Society of Jesus in its founding years, one that heightens and transforms our understanding of the Jesuits in history and today. Following the Society from 1540 through 1565, O’Malley shows how this sense of mission evolved. He looks at everything—the Jesuits’ teaching, their preaching, their casuistry, their work with orphans and prostitutes, their attitudes toward Jews and “New Christians,” and their relationship to the Reformation. All are taken in by the sweep of O’Malley’s story as he details the Society’s manifold activities in Europe, Brazil, and India.

In the fourth century a new narrative genre captured the imagination of the faithful—the moving accounts of the lives of Christian saints. Willing to die gruesome deaths or endure constant suffering, saints conveyed a powerful message: God was still present in the world. He continues to manifest His powers and communicate His messages through His special friends—the saints. What kind of Christianity do we find in these stories? In this original and provocative work, Aviad Kleinberg argues that the saints’ stories of medieval Europe were more than edifying entertainment; they retain an alternative theology, often quite different from the formal theology of the Church. By telling and retelling the story of virtue and salvation, by expanding the religious imagination of the West, they were shaping and reshaping Christianity itself.

In this study of stories from the fourth through the fourteenth centuries, we meet the tender Perpetua bidding farewell to her infant son, Simeon Stylites turning himself into a rotting corpse, Francis of Assisi finding joy in suffering, and Fra Ginepro playing the fool, for Christ. We meet holy anchorites, headstrong virgins, fearless dragon slayers, and scheming politicians. Kleinberg unveils the inner contradictions, the subversive ideas, and the deadly power games that lay behind the making of the Western imagination. People, ideas, and passions—often relegated to the back pews—take center stage in this daring book. This is a story of how stories change lives.

Moral theologians, defense analysts, conflict scholars, and nuclear experts imagine a world free from nuclear weapons

At a 2017 Vatican conference, Pope Francis condemned nuclear weapons. This volume, issued after the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, presents essays from moral theologians, defense analysts, conflict transformation scholars, and nuclear arms control experts, with testimonies from witnesses. It is a companion volume to A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament (Georgetown University Press, 2020).

Chapters from the perspectives of missile personnel and the military chain of command, industrialists and legislators, and citizen activists show how we might achieve a nuclear-free world. Key to this transition is the important role of public education and the mobilization of lay movements to raise awareness and effect change. This essential collection prepares military professionals, policymakers, everyday citizens, and the pastoral workers who guide them, to make decisions that will lead us to disarmament.

In 1965 the Second Vatican Council declared that God loves the Jews. Before that, the Church had taught for centuries that Jews were cursed by God and, in the 1940s, mostly kept silent as Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. How did an institution whose wisdom is said to be unchanging undertake one of the most enormous, yet undiscussed, ideological swings in modern history?

The radical shift of Vatican II grew out of a buried history, a theological struggle in Central Europe in the years just before the Holocaust, when a small group of Catholic converts (especially former Jew Johannes Oesterreicher and former Protestant Karl Thieme) fought to keep Nazi racism from entering their newfound church. Through decades of engagement, extending from debates in academic journals, to popular education, to lobbying in the corridors of the Vatican, this unlikely duo overcame the most problematic aspect of Catholic history. Their success came not through appeals to morality but rather from a rediscovery of neglected portions of scripture.

From Enemy to Brother illuminates the baffling silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, showing how the ancient teaching of deicide—according to which the Jews were condemned to suffer until they turned to Christ—constituted the Church’s only language to talk about the Jews. As he explores the process of theological change, John Connelly moves from the speechless Vatican to those Catholics who endeavored to find a new language to speak to the Jews on the eve of, and in the shadow of, the Holocaust.

The claim that evolution undermines Christianity is standard fare in our culture. Indeed, many today have the impression that the two are mutually exclusive and that a choice must be made between faith and reason—rejecting Christianity on the one hand or evolutionary theory on the other. Is there a way to square advances in this field of study with the Bible and Church teaching? In this book—his fourth dedicated to applying Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s wisdom to pressing theological difficulties—Matthew Ramage answers this question decidedly in the affirmative. Distinguishing between evolutionary theory properly speaking and the materialist attitude that is often conflated with it, Ramage’s work meets the challenge of evolutionary science to Catholic teaching on human origins, guided by Ratzinger’s conviction that faith and evolutionary theory mutually enrich one another. Pope Benedict gifted the Church with many pivotal yet often-overlooked resources for engaging evolution in the light of faith, especially in those instances where he addressed the topic in connection with the Book of Genesis. Ramage highlights these contributions and also makes his own by applying Ratzinger’s principles to such issues as the meaning of man’s special creation, the relationship between sin and death, and the implications of evolution for eschatology. Notably, Ramage shows that many apparent conflicts between Christianity and evolutionary theory lose their force when we interpret creation in light of the Paschal Mystery and fix our gaze on Jesus, the New Adam who reveals man to himself. Readers of this text will find that it does more than merely help to resolve apparent contradictions between faith and modern science. Ramage’s work shows that discoveries in evolutionary biology are not merely difficulties to be overcome but indeed gifts that yield precious insight into the mystery of God’s saving plan in Christ.

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.”

Fundamental Theology examines the light by which the mysteries of Christ and the Church, the Trinity and the Sacraments, are revealed to us. That light we call "revelation," and fundamental theology examines in the first place what this light shows about itself, and how it is sustained in the world. Or again, fundamental theology considers what the word of God has to say both about itself and what it has to say about where in the world it is to be heard. So, first it is a theology of Revelation (chapter 1), and second, a theology of the transmission of Revelation in Tradition, Scripture, and the Church (chapters 2, 3, and 4). Why must Revelation have the shape it does, and why must it be constituted by both word and event? Why is Tradition prior to Scripture, why must the word of God be written down, and why must Scripture come to us in two testaments? And why must the message conveyed in Tradition and Scripture have a living interpreter in the Church?

Since no word is spoken unless it is heard, fundamental theology also investigates the conditions of hearing the word of God, the very hearing itself in the assent of faith, and a necessary consequence of this hearing. The remote conditions of hearing are also what theology calls our ability to come to the knowledge of the preambula fidei- the things about God than can be known by the natural light (chapter 5). The immediate condition of hearing is the credibility of the word (chapter 6). Hearing is faith (chapter 7). And true hearing gives the hearer to recapitulate what is heard in his own wondering and thankful voice in theology (chapter 8). The introduction to theology in the last chapter is by way of considering the history of Catholic theology in the 20th century.