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Recalling the Biblical and Patristic roots of the Church's sacramental identity, the Second Vatican Council calls the Church the 'visible sacrament' of that unity offered through Christ (LG 9). 'Sacrament' in this sense not only describes who the Church is, but what she does. In this regard, the Council Fathers were careful to establish a strong connection between the symbolic nature of the Church's sacraments and their effect on those who received them.

Reginald Lynch is concerned with the cleansing of the heart—a phrase borrowed from St. Augustine and employed by Aquinas, which describes the effects that natural elements such as water or bread have on the human person when taken up by the Church as sacramental signs. Aquinas' approach to sacramental efficacy is unique for its integration of diverse theological topics such as Christology, merit, grace, creation and instrumentality. While all of these topics will be considered to some extent, the primary focus of The Cleansing of the Heart is the sacraments understood as instrumental causes of grace. This volume provides the historical context for understanding the development of sacramental causality as a theological topic in the scholastic period, emphasizing the unique features of Aquinas' response to this question. Following this, relevant texts from Aquinas' early and later work are examined, noting Aquinas' development and integration of the idea of sacramental causality in his later work. The Cleansing of the Heart concludes by contrasting alternatives to Aquinas' theory of sacramental causality that subsequently emerged. The rise of humanism introduced many changes within rhetoric and philosophy of language that had a profound effect on some theologians during the Modern period. This book provides historical context for understanding the most prominent of these theories in contrast to Aquinas, and examines some of their theological implications.

In The Coloniality of the Secular, An Yountae investigates the collusive ties between the modern concepts of the secular, religion, race, and coloniality in the Americas. Drawing on the work of Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Sylvia Wynter, and Enrique Dussel, An maps the intersections of revolutionary non-Western thought with religious ideas to show how decoloniality redefines the sacred as an integral part of its liberation vision. He examines these thinkers’ rejection of colonial religions and interrogates the narrow conception of religion that confines it within colonial power structures. An explores decoloniality’s conception of the sacred in relation to revolutionary violence, gender, creolization, and racial phenomenology, demonstrating its potential for reshaping religious paradigms. Pointing out that the secular has been pivotal to regulating racial hierarchies under colonialism, he advocates for a broader understanding of religion that captures the fundamental ideas that drive decolonial thinking. By examining how decolonial theory incorporates the sacred into its vision of liberation, An invites readers to rethink the transformative power of decoloniality and religion to build a hopeful future.

With a vigor and passion rarely found in a scholarly text, Manlio Bellomo has written a broad history of the western European legal tradition. It is now made available to an English-speaking audience in an elegant and lucid translation from the original Italian.

An authoritative critical edition

The discovery and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls transformed our understanding of the life and history of ancient Jewish communities when both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity were emerging. As part of this rich discovery, the Community Rule serves to illuminate the religious beliefs and practices as well as the organizational rules of the group behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, there is no single, unified text of the Community Rule; rather, multiple manuscripts of the Community Rule show considerable variation and highlight the work of ancient Jewish scribes and their intentional literary development of the text. In this volume, Sarianna Metso brings together the surviving evidence in a new edition that presents a critically established Hebrew text with an introduction and an English translation.

Features:

• A critical apparatus and textual notes
• All the surviving evidence of the Community Rule
• A new method for presenting complex developments and transmission history of ancient texts

The Complementarity of Women and Men provides a Catholic Christian case that men and women are in certain respects quite different but also have a positive, synergistic complementary relationship. Although differences and their mutually supporting relationships are focused on throughout the volume, men and women are assumed to have equal dignity and value. This underlying interpretation comes from the familiar, basic theological position in Genesis that both sexes were made in the image of God. After a cogent philosophical introduction to complementary differences by J. Budziszewski, this position is developed from theological, philosophical, and historical perspectives by Sr. Prudence Allen. Next Deborah Savage, building upon the writings of St. John Paul II, gives a strong theological basis for complementarity. This is followed by Elizabeth Lev’s chapter presenting new and surprising art history evidence from the paintings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel supporting the complementarity interpretation. A final chapter by Paul Vitz documents and summarizes the scientific evidence supporting sexual difference and complementarity in the disciplines of psychology and neuroscience. As a consequence of both the individual chapters and the integrated understanding they present The Complementarity of Women and Men is a significant contribution to the important, complex, contemporary debate about men, women, sex, and gender.

Gathered here for the first time are the stories of Enid Dinnis, who lived and wrote in London throughout the first half of the 20th century. Enid Dinnis moved widely in the London literary world but she was also Mother Superior of a ‘hidden’ religious order, The Daughters of the Heart of Mary. Few in London’s literary scene knew that Dinnis was a nun but she lived most of her life in a small convent in Wimbledon with other well-known figures from the period, including Maud Petre. Dinnis wrote Catholic stories for readers of all ages. She is one of the finest lost authors of the Catholic Literary Revival. Dinnis’s intervention in the short story genre is considerable. She weaves together fairy tale, myth, Catholic mysticism, epiphanic dialogue and everyday characterization to produce stories that are both simple and complex, both light-hearted and profound. Always concerned with ‘the wonderful resourcefulness of the love of God’, her stories proclaim the presence and workings of divine grace in the everyday lives of all people—old and young, sceptics and seekers, farmers and priests. Dinnis’s stories show that God’s love is the answer to all human struggles and quests. They illustrate what it means to receive love – human and divine – and to pass it on. Her work is filled with visions and confessions, miracles and conversions – but it is never overly pious or saccharine. Her characters are real people experiencing the truths proclaimed by the Catholic faith, which is always as marvelous as it is every-day. Enid Dinnis’s stories reenchant the post-enlightenment world along Catholic lines. Her stories put the supernatural firmly back into the world in a way more needed than ever.

The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, vol. 1 inaugurates a multivolume documentary edition that will, for the first time ever, provide the complete collection of everything Dickinson published on public affairs over the course of his life. The documents include essays, articles, broadsides, resolutions, petitions, declarations, constitutions, regulations, legislation, proclamations, songs and odes. Among them are many of the seminal state papers produced by the first national congresses and conventions. Also included are correspondences between Dickinson and some of the key figures of his era. This edition should raise Dickinson to his rightful place among America’s founding fathers, rivaled in reputation only by Benjamin Franklin before 1776. Dickinson was celebrated throughout the colonies, as well as in England and France, as the great American spokesman for liberty, and the documents in this edition evidence his tireless political work and unmatched corpus.

John Dickinson’s entry into public life in Delaware and Pennsylvania is a highlight of the ninety-eight documents written over four years printed in Volume Two of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson. The volume opens with Dickinson’s legal notes as he established himself as one of the most prominent and learned lawyers in colonial British North America. His cases dealt with, among other issues, interpretation of wills, disputes over land, sailors suing for wages, a fine on a Quaker who refused military service, and a notorious murder in a prominent Philadelphia family. It concludes with Dickinson offering thoughtful advice to a young man who was considering the arduous work in becoming a lawyer. “I think,” he wrote, “those must be infinitely the most happy, whose fatigues are softend by a conscious Benevolence of mind wishing & endeavouring to [pro]mote the Happiness of others as well as their own.”
 
Dickinson’s hard work on behalf of his clients brought him success in other areas of his public life. In October 1759, he was elected to his first public position as a representative for Kent County, Del., the following year he was elevated to the position of speaker, and in 1762, he became a representative for Philadelphia County, Pa. As a legislator in two colonies, learning his craft as a global war unfolded, he contributed to bills on military and defense, Indian relations, infrastructure improvements and city management, and served on various committees. The death of George II occasioned debates over laws and judges, in which Dickinson participated. This era concludes with Dickinson playing a central role in managing the unfolding Paxton Riots, in which frontiersmen massacred peaceful Indians and threatened the Quaker leadership of Pennsylvania.
 
In private, Dickinson lost the two most prominent male figures in his life in 1760, his father, Samuel, and soon thereafter, his mentor, colleague, and friend, John Moland. In honor of Moland, Dickinson published a poem and became a proxy head to Moland’s large family. Though his extant correspondence during this period is small, he exchanged letters with Mary Cadwalader Dickinson, Israel Pemberton, William Allason, George Read, Thomas McKean, and others. Perhaps most significant, he wrote a lengthy, unpublished essay on the flag-of-truce trade and also maintained commonplace books as he considered his place within the British Empire, opening up the next phase in Dickinson’s life as a leader of the resistance against Britain.

Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

During the years 1764 through 1766, John Dickinson became a leading figure in the Pennsylvania Assembly and in the growing American resistance to unjust British taxation. The documents in this volume show that, in both roles, he sought to protect the fundamental rights of ordinary Americans. In the 1764 Assembly, after working to punish those responsible for the slaughter of peaceful Indians, Dickinson challenged Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Galloway in their plan to abolish Pennsylvania’s unique Quaker constitution that secured liberty of conscience and place the colony under the control of the Crown. Then, in 1765, he served as primary draftsman at the Stamp Act Congress in New York, producing the first official American documents of the Revolutionary Era. In his private capacity, Dickinson continued to write through 1765 and 1766, publishing, among other documents, the first practical advice to Americans on how to resist Great Britain. The present volume also contains draft legislation, fascinating case notes from his legal practice, and personal correspondence.

In 1767, John Dickinson began publishing his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which earned him international celebrity as the leader of the American resistance to Britain. They educated Americans about their rights and how to defend them without violence. Importantly, they also taught the colonists to unite and understand themselves first and foremost as Americans rather than as Britons. He followed with letters on religious liberty in the Episcopal controversy and America’s first patriotic song, the “Liberty Song.” This volume documents the overwhelming public response around the Atlantic World to his writings. It was largely positive, with readers paying tribute to him in numerous ways, beginning with the Massachusetts circular letter to the other colonies advocating a nonimportation agreement. Most of the negative responses came from Dickinson’s enemy from the 1764 royal government controversy in Pennsylvania, Joseph Galloway, who orchestrated a smear campaign against “the Farmer.” Dickinson’s legal notes from this period include several interesting cases, such as his defense of a mixed-race servant woman charged with infanticide. Although there is limited extant correspondence, it includes letters concerning his courtship of his future wife, Mary Norris.

This collection of essays constitutes the fruit of a scholarly conference held in Rome in April 2023, which was organized by the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and the Angelicum Thomistic Institute. The essays offer a scholarly reflection on various historical and doctrinal aspects of Aquinas’s concept of ius, and on the extent to which this concept helps to illuminate his account of the nature of law, that is, of the juridical phenomenon. Each essay addresses, from the viewpoint of its specific topic, the implications of the Angelic Doctor’s description of ius as the object of justice, as presented in the Secunda secundae of his Summa theologiae (starting from question 57, article 1). Following Aquinas’s own insights, the focus on the virtue of justice is thus deemed crucial for understanding the essence or the ontological fabric of law. Justice is simultaneously analyzed as always remaining inherently connected to its moral and divine-salvific aspects. The volume is divided in three parts. The first part of the collection contains essays that are dedicated to the analysis of Aquinas’s concept of ius in a historical perspective. The second group of essays in this collection examine some further doctrinal and contextual issues pertinent to the essence of ius. Each attempt to elucidate the ontology of law should be supported by the aptitude of the resulting accounts of law’s nature to provide workable platforms for legal practices. This line of reasoning represents the rationale for the third part of this collection, which focuses on the matters of applying Aquinas’s concept of ius in systemic and practical legal settings of State law and canon law.

“After Auschwitz to write even a single poem is barbaric.” The Conflagration of Community challenges Theodor Adorno’s famous statement about aesthetic production after the Holocaust, arguing for the possibility of literature to bear witness to extreme collective and personal experiences. J. Hillis Miller masterfully considers how novels about the Holocaust relate to fictions written before and after it, and uses theories of community from Jean-Luc Nancy and Derrida to explore the dissolution of community bonds in its wake.

After a concise introduction that defines the two schools of theology, Richard Costigan examines the thought of nine major theologians on the subject: Bossuet, Tournely, Orsi, Ballerini, Bailly, Bergier, La Luzerne, Muzzarelli, and Perrone.

How does a minority come to be? In an unusual project, a notable group of French and American scholars take the view that minorities are socially constructed. Their original studies of specific historical examples produce a series of stimulating and provocative essays useful and enjoyable for specialists and the general reader alike.Spawned from a conference organized by the journals Annales and Comparative Studies in Society and History in concert with the Center for Historical Research at l'EHESS in Paris and the Department of History at the University of Michigan, this collection contrasts studies of Afro-Americans in the United States, French Protestants, notables in Renaissance Florence, religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Muslim and Chinese traders in Southeast Asia, the native peoples of Spanish America, lower-caste Indians, ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union, Australian aborigines, and American and French responses to AIDS to reveal valuable information about how minorities come to be constructed within societies. Some of the minorities considered are identified primarily in terms of their ethnicity, some by social class, and some by religion (Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim); a final essay asks whether the victims of AIDS constitute a minority at all.With its cross-cultural emphasis, this book will be a valuable addition to courses on diversity, ethnicity, and cultural comparison. It is destined to be a useful reference for undergraduate and research libraries and a much-consulted work for specialists on each of the societies considered.André Burguière is Research Director, l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (l'EHESS) in Paris. Raymond Grew is Professor of History Emeritus, University of Michigan.

Many studies have shown that images—their presence in the daily lives of the faithful, the means used to control them, and their adaptation to secular uses—were at the heart of the Reformation crisis in northern Europe.  But the question as it affects the art of Italy has been raised only in highly specialized studies.

In this book, Alexander Nagel provides the first truly synthetic study of the controversies over religious images that pervaded Italian life both before and parallel to the Reformation north of the Alps. Tracing the intertwined relationship of artistic innovation and archaism, as well as the new pressures placed on the artistic media in the midst of key developments in religious iconography, The Controversy of Renaissance Art offers an important and original history of humanist thought and artistic experimentation from one of our most acclaimed historians of art.

An illuminating look at the concept of the generic and its role in making meaning in the world.

From off-brand products to elevator music, the “generic” is discarded as the copy, the knockoff, and the old. In The Copy Generic, anthropologist Scott MacLochlainn insists that more than the waste from the culture machine, the generic is a universal social tool, allowing us to move through the world with necessary blueprints, templates, and frames of reference. It is the baseline and background, a category that orders and values different types of specificity yet remains inherently nonspecific in itself. Across arenas as diverse as city planning, social media, ethnonationalism, and religion, the generic points to spaces in which knowledge is both overproduced and desperately lacking. Moving through ethnographic and historical settings in the Philippines, Europe, and the United States, MacLochlainn reveals how the concept of the generic is crucial to understanding how things repeat, circulate, and are classified in the world.

The correspondence between Bishop John Carroll and Fr. Charles Plowden offers an “insiders’” look at the establishment of the Catholic Church in the United States and the circumstances of the project of bringing about English Catholic emancipation. Carroll was the chief architect of the former; Plowden was a spirited, and public, and published, participant in the latter. Their correspondence is filled with details about their activities, and mutual encouragement, as each of these ex-Jesuits encountered the upheavals precipitated by wars (American Revolution, French Revolution, Napoleonic); the contemporary intellectual, theological, philosophical challenges of the Enlightenment and Age of Reason; anti-Catholic (and anti-Jesuit) sentiment and prejudices; the long wait for renewal of the Society of Jesus; the situation (and prerogatives) of the papacy; and the vagaries of early modern postal service. The Carroll side of this correspondence has been printed (although not completely accurately), but the Plowden side, far more strident and provocative, has mostly been unnoticed. Plowden’s letters, and published writings, with Carroll’s comments on them all, provide significant insights into the intricacies of the English Catholic excitement, including internal tensions, accompanying the early modern crusade for religious emancipation in Britain.

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Volumes 4 and 5 of the Library of Early Christianity, The Correspondence of Theodoret of Cyrus: The Collectio Sirmondiana, present a text and translation of the largest of three collections of Theodoret’s letters that have come down to us (first edited by the Jesuit father Jacques Sirmond, Paris 1642). Though pastor of the remote see of Cyrus in Syria, Theodoret was one of the major teachers of the eastern Christian church of the late fourth and early fifth century. These 147 letters place before us the myriad concerns, both spiritual and secular, of a late-antique bishop: Theodoret expounds theological and moral issues for fellow churchmen, begs imperial officials for tax relief for local landowners, provides for the sustenance and safety of refugees from the Vandal war in Africa, thanks a friend for a gift of wine. The edition of the Greek text is the work of John Petruccione. A textual introduction explains the relationships among the manuscripts, and the critical notes the choices made where the text is uncertain. The historical / theological introduction is the work of István Pásztori-Kupán, one of the foremost expositors of the thought of Theodoret and of his Antiochene predecessors and contemporaries. Two maps locate for the reader the place names mentioned in the letters, and three indices (a Scriptural Index, General Index, and Index of Modern Authors) complement the notes attached to the text and translation.

Volumes 4 and 5 of the Library of Early Christianity, The Correspondence of Theodoret of Cyrus: The Collectio Sirmondiana, present a text and translation of the largest of three collections of Theodoret’s letters that have come down to us (first edited by the Jesuit father Jacques Sirmond, Paris 1642). Though pastor of the remote see of Cyrus in Syria, Theodoret was one of the major teachers of the eastern Christian church of the late fourth and early fifth century. These 147 letters place before us the myriad concerns, both spiritual and secular, of a late-antique bishop: Theodoret expounds theological and moral issues for fellow churchmen, begs imperial officials for tax relief for local landowners, provides for the sustenance and safety of refugees from the Vandal war in Africa, thanks a friend for a gift of wine. The edition of the Greek text is the work of John Petruccione. A textual introduction explains the relationships among the manuscripts, and the critical notes the choices made where the text is uncertain. The historical / theological introduction is the work of István Pásztori-Kupán, one of the foremost expositors of the thought of Theodoret and of his Antiochene predecessors and contemporaries. Two maps locate for the reader the place names mentioned in the letters, and three indices (a Scriptural Index, General Index, and Index of Modern Authors) complement the notes attached to the text and translation.

Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith had both millennial and temporal aspirations for the organization he called the Council of Fifty, named after the number of men who were intended to comprise it. Organized a few months before Smith’s death in June 1844, it continued under Brigham Young as a secret shadow government until 1851. Minutes from the earliest meetings are closed to researchers but contemporary accounts speak of a deliberative body preparing for Christ’s imminent reign. It also helped to sponsor Smith’s U.S. presidential bid and oversaw the exodus to present-day Utah.

One member downplayed the significance of this secret legislative body in 1849 as “nothing but a debating School.” On the contrary, a typical meeting included decisions regarding irrigation, fencing, and adobe housing, after which the group sang a song written by Parley P. Pratt: “Come ye sons of doubt and wonder; Indian, Moslem, Greek or Jew; … Be to all a friend and brother; Peace on Earth, good will to men.” Two weeks later, the council called for “blood to flow” to enforce its laws.

As the nineteenth century waned and the LDS Church moved toward the American mainstream, ending its emphasis on the imminent End of Days, there was no longer a need for a Church-managed municipal group destined to become the millennial world government. The council became irrelevant but survives today as a historical artifact available in fragmented documentary pieces which are presented here for the first time. 

Do professional historians and New Testament scholars use the same methods to explore the past? This interdisciplinary textbook introduces students of the New Testament to the vocabulary and methods employed by historians. It discusses various approaches to historiography and demonstrates their applicability for interpreting the New Testament text and exploring its background. Overviews of the philosophy of history, common historical fallacies, and the basics of historiography are followed by three exegetical studies that illustrate the applicability of various historical methods for New Testament interpretation.

The Crisis of Western Education, originally published in 1961, served as a capstone of Christopher Dawson's thought on the Western educational system.

A Pact of Love with Criticism, A Pact of Blood with the World

Building on the legacy of Fernando F. Segovia, the pioneering essays in this volume redefine the intersection of biblical studies and geopolitics. Through a thorough exploration of how ancient texts and modern readers influence and reflect geopolitical dynamics, each contributor reveals how biblical narratives have shaped and been shaped by historical power structures, territorial conflicts and climate changes, and cultural exchanges. Essays employ contemporary geopolitical concepts that move beyond traditional readings to offer fresh insights into the strategic and ideological forces behind scriptural texts. An annotated interview with Fernando F. Segovia traces his immigration journey as an adolescent and its indelible imprint on his scholarship as a postcolonial critic. Contributors include Efraín Agosto, Amy Lindeman Allen, Reimund Bieringer, Mark G. Brett, Ahida Calderón Pilarski, Greg Carey, Jorge E. Castillo Guerra, Jin Young Choi, Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, Gregory L. Cuéllar, Musa W. Dube, Neil Elliott, Eleazar S. Fernandez, Bridgett A. Green, Leticia A. Guardiola-Sáenz, Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Knut Holter, Ma. Maricel S. Ibita, Ma. Marilou S. Ibita, John F. Kutsko, Sung Uk Lim, Francisco Lozada Jr., Luis Menéndez-Antuña, Rubén Muñoz-Larrondo, Robert Myles, Wongi Park, Mitri Raheb, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Fernando F. Segovia, Yak-hwee Tan, Ekaputra Tupamahu, Gerald O. West, Hans (J. H.) de Wit, and H. Daniel Zacharias.

What is papal diplomacy and what role does it play on the larger geopolitical stage? Why does it matter what popes say to a global audience? "As John Tanyi points out, papal diplomacy has followed a trajectory all its own over the years.  In today’s globalized world, the Holy See stands out as an important communicator with a widely respected moral voice.  It is often said that 'When the Pope speaks, the world listens.'  What sets the diplomatic voices of the Holy Father and his envoys apart from all others is that they speak and act for the good of humanity––not just for the sovereign entity they represent, and not just for Catholics.  As a former foreign minister of the Holy See, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, once described the mission of papal diplomats:  'Our duty is to promote and defend not only the freedom and rights of Catholic communities around the world, but also to promote certain principles without which there is no civilization.'" 
     The particular example of Pope John Paul II is a groundbreaking example of the critical nature of ecclesiastical diplomacy and why popes as diplomats are playing at a greater level than other statesmen. As George Weigel notes, popes must combat all the problems of the world, but also importantly what he calls the 'tyranny of the possible'––that is, in all things compromise and complacency will play a part. It is the position occupied by one man, the heir of St. Peter, to know when to defy the entirety of global politics (and sometimes what seems like common sense) to say 'yes' and 'no' definitively in light of unchanging truths.  

 

Volume 1 focuses on the Draupadī cult’s own double mythology, moving from its stories about Draupadī’s “primal temple” near the capital of the medieval South Indian Kingdom of Gingee to its version of the Mahābhārata war on the North Indian plain of Kurukṣetra. Throughout, Hiltebeitel intertwines “regional” data, gathered from both oral and written sources, with the “epic,” drawn from the cult’s own performative traditions as well as from classical versions of the Mahābhārata in both Tamil and Sanskrit. Pivotal to the overlap of these Gingee and Kurukṣetra mythologies are two folk figures unknown to classical epic traditions: Draupadī’s two guardians, Pōttu Rāja and Muttāl Rāvuttaṉ.
 

Volume 2 looks at the cultic rituals and argues that these rituals cannot be interpreted independent of other Hindu traditions. Hiltebeitel draws upon his recent fieldwork to demonstrate the remarkable regional and local variations in the practice of the Draupadī cult rituals, from the core area around the ancient center of gingee to the thanjavur area just to the south. He brings to the forefront the differences between the complex rituals of cities, towns, and villages and discusses variations related to their proximity to the central temple in gingee and to the castes from which their customs are derived. using as its model the festival of the Tindivanam temple, Hiltebeitel’s study follows the order of the festival itself and investigates in turn the festival’s four interrelated arenas: the Draupadī temple, a drama stage, a ritual battlefield (paṭukaḷam), and a firewalking area. He explains how the Draupadī festival orchestrates movements back and forth between these arenas to produce a “ritual of battle” in which Draupadī emerges as the victorious goddess.