ABSTRACTThis paper aims to rebuild the relationship between the Seinsfrage and Catholicism in Heidegger’s meditation and to shed light on his critique to Christianity as a philosophical necessity rooted in his broader critique of modernity in the context of the Black Notebooks. In order to reach these purposes, this contribution will be articulated in two parts: in the first one, I will rebuild Heidegger’s relationship to Catholicism and in the second one, I will focus on Black Notebooks as (...) important tools in understanding Heidegger’s critique to Catholicism, a critique that is built on three levels: historical, speculative and political. The essay will show how the Schwarze Hefte illuminate Heidegger’s attempts to answer the question of Being in an incessant tension with the coeval seven major treatises on the Seinsgeschichte, in which Christianity, metaphysics and nihilism are inextricably tied together. (shrink)

The so‐called “Kierkegaard Renaissance,” which took place in Germany during the interwar period, was not merely the province of figures such as Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger. A number of Catholic thinkers were involved as well. Indeed, after the well‐known Kierkegaard scholar Theodor Haecker converted to Catholicism in 1921, Kierkegaard's thought became a popular topic among the group of Catholic intellectuals known as the Hochland Circle, which included the priest and author Romano Guardini. Such interest, in turn, prompted French (...) theologian Yves Congar to explore the use of Kierkegaard for the renewal of the modern church. Moreover, a trio of notable Jesuit thinkers also entered the discussion: Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In short, as this chapter will demonstrate, Kierkegaard inspired and provoked Catholic thinkers in a variety of areas, from theological anthropology and Christology to ecclesiology and the question of modernity. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several (...) chapters discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

In the middle decades of the twentieth century phenomenology grew from a local philosophy in a few German towns into a movement that spanned Europe. In Converts to the Real, Edward Baring uncovers an unexpected force behind this prodigious growth: Catholicism. Participating in a tightly-knit transnational community, Catholics helped shuttle ideas between national traditions that were otherwise inward-looking and parochial. In the first half of the twentieth century, they wrote many of the first articles and books introducing phenomenological ideas (...) to new contexts. They even organized the rescue of Edmund Husserl's manuscripts out of Nazi Germany in 1938. But the Catholic fascination with phenomenology was intermixed with a profound anxiety. Catholics worried that phenomenological ideas might prove dangerous to the faith, a possibility exemplified by the intellectual trajectory of Martin Heidegger, whose movement away from the Church was facilitated by his reading of Husserl. Converts to the Real uncovers a surprising genealogy for post-war European thought, with important implications for our understanding of the process of secularization and for the set of schools and ideas we now call "continental philosophy."--. (shrink)

The doctor's use of deception in appropriate circumstances has commonly been considered a necessity of the medical art. Resistance to full and frank communication is typical of many traditionally Catholic countries, and particularly of Italy, a western country where Catholicism remains particularly influential. The Catholic teaching on truth and lies, and the problem of telling the truth to a severely ill patient is discussed. It is suggested that the contemporary Catholic model of gradually telling a terminal patient the truth, (...) which looks reasonable and feasible in theory, is rarely followed in practice, as in the majority of cases the truth is not told tout court. Problems stem from the way in which medicine is currently practiced in Italy; from the synergism between Catholicism and the medical tradition's grounded paternalism; and from the ambiguity of the term ?hope?. Catholic ethics in fact recommends that the truth must be told without destroying hope, but the Catholic meaning of ?hope? is very different from its meaning in current language. (shrink)

Contemporary (post-1945) liberalism functions analogously to Roman Catholicism in the decades after 1443. Both ideologies, in their respective periods, represent the hegemonic ideology of Western civilization, despite the fact that both comprise a miscellany of competing belief systems. Both ideologies are dominated by a single hegemonic power—the United States and the Renaissance papacy, respectively—which strives for doctrinal stability. All who reject official “doctrine,” however, are rendered liable to violent suppression. In this, papal Catholicism and American liberalism display an (...) ultra-conservative outlook; but they also evince a powerfully millenarian streak, as evidenced by their dual proclamations of the “end of history” and their zealous missionary responses to macro-historical events in the final decades of the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. For ideologues of both regimes, those events speak to an ultimate harmony of truth and value that only serves to entrench their own dogmatism. This, however, has dire consequences when it comes to war, as can be seen in the “crusading” character of contemporary liberal warfare. Ultimately, the Renaissance papacy proves unable to maintain its monopoly on Christian doctrine; and one has to wonder if a similar fate may befall America's perceived role as the champion of liberalism. (shrink)

Although the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists officially accepted Catholic corporate theory, its primary concerns were aiding trade unionism and attacking Communist influence in the labor movement.

ABSTRACT During the middle decades of the twentieth century, American Catholic scientists experienced a sense of crisis owing to the paucity of scientific research performed either by individual Catholics or in Catholic institutions of higher learning. In 1953 the Rev. Patrick Yancey, S.J., the chairman of the biology department at a small Jesuit college and a member of the newly created National Science Board, led efforts to establish a national organization of Catholic scientists. Subsequently known as the Albertus Magnus Guild, (...) this organization attempted both to improve Catholics’ scientific performance and to refute the widely held notion among non‐Catholic Americans that Catholicism was inherently hostile to science. By reflecting on Yancey’s career as an educator and scientist and on the history of the guild, this article seeks to deepen our understanding of twentieth‐century Catholic science education and reveal the ways in which Catholic scientists approached the issues surrounding the interaction of science and religion. (shrink)

(1996). Catholicism, the peace of Westphalia, and the origins of modern international law. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 734-739.

Moleski responds to reviews of Personal Catholicism by Joseph Kroger and John Apcyznski. He argues that theology is tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge and therefore cannot be fully articulated. He portrays the Roman Catholic tradition as an interpretative framework that differs from scientific frameworks by being bound to a particular revelation made in history which is then preserved by a Specific Authority.

This article focuses on the genesis of liberal Catholicism in England from 1822 to roughly 1848, with particular reference to Cardinal Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Newman’s reflections re...

Latin America is not one, but many. It exists in six different regions with differing forms of Catholicism. This Catholicism had acted from a position of power. The challenge of modernity and independence movements made people anti-Church if not anti-Christian. New missionary priests from North America and Europe changed the face of Latin American Catholicism after the second world war. Yet Catholicism is not deeply rooted in Latin America and thus has had to resort to political (...) means for survival. In the pluralistic world of the future, Catholicism in Latin America will have to live with change. (shrink)

Tianzhu Shiyi is the single most important proselytizing work of Matteo Ricci, the legendary founder of the early modern Jesuit China mission. Controversial since the early seventeenth century, it has been both praised and condemned for Ricci’s claim of a monotheistic affinity between Catholicism and Confucianism. Ricci’s gesture of friendship to Confucianism won him many Chinese friends and posthumously made him famous or notorious in Europe, but as this essay contends, it was never more than a tactical cover for (...) him during his lifetime. Since the real purpose of his cultural adaptation was his unobtrusive engagement with the ancient Chinese philosophical idea of tianren heyi, what is ultimately so instructive about Tianzhu Shiyi is the light cast on Ricci’s intricate relationship with his Chinese friends and on the ironic twists and turns of his complex legacy. (shrink)

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

In September of 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Dignitas Personae, which addresses several newly emerging topics in thearea of biomedical ethics. One of these topics is genetic engineering, which we can define as the intentional manipulation of genetic material so as to produce some desired trait or characteristic. Genetic engineering is discussed in Dignitas Personae, but is done so relatively briefly. In this paper, I explore some of the metaphysical and ethical questions that are key (...) in assessing the morality of this practice by examining other Church documents as well as philosophical literature. Ultimately, I will argue that aside from some instrumental restrictions, questions about the moral permissibility of genetic engineering, the distinction between therapy and enhancement, and what it means to be human are not as easily answered from a Catholic perspective as one might think. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several (...) chapters discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on one of the fundamental democratic freedoms – freedom of conscience – and see to what extent Catholicism is compatible or consistent with it and, by extension, with democracy in civil or political institutions. I draw primarily on recent ecclesial statements on the issue, but also on the philosophical views of Jacques Maritain. First, I outline briefly the view of democracy and freedom of conscience that putatively undergirds modern democratic societies, as well as the (...) understanding of this freedom in Catholic thought. Next, I present the claim that there are some important differences in the way in which this freedom is described in Catholicism as distinct from dominant, secular democratic views. Third, I suggest that these differences, while real, do not sustain the claim of a radical difference in principle between freedom of conscience in recent Catholic thought and that found in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I conclude that not only is the Catholic approach to freedom of conscience compatible with democracy in civil institutions, but democratic government may be an important way to develop values recognized by Catholicism as fundamental. (shrink)

Since the French Revolution the relationship between the Catholic church and modernity has always been very troublesome. First I will describe how the church saw its own position with regard to modernity and how its stance evolved. In a second stage, I will then focus on how modernity `framed' Catholicism: this I will refer to as the modernity and modernization of Catholicism. The insights obtained will be used in a third part in order to get a better understanding (...) of the present and future situation of the church. I will round off with some conclusions concerning Catholic intellectuals and Catholic intellectual traditions from 1800 onwards. (shrink)

In September of 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Dignitas Personae, which addresses several newly emerging topics in thearea of biomedical ethics. One of these topics is genetic engineering, which we can define as the intentional manipulation of genetic material so as to produce some desired trait or characteristic. Genetic engineering is discussed in Dignitas Personae, but is done so relatively briefly. In this paper, I explore some of the metaphysical and ethical questions that are key (...) in assessing the morality of this practice by examining other Church documents as well as philosophical literature. Ultimately, I will argue that aside from some instrumental restrictions, questions about the moral permissibility of genetic engineering, the distinction between therapy and enhancement, and what it means to be human are not as easily answered from a Catholic perspective as one might think. (shrink)

Glorification of students, neo-utilitarianism, secular humanism, and a crisis in confidence have all contributed to the declining influence of Catholicism on the Catholic campus.

One of the most important problems for contemporary Catholicism is its dialogue with the contemporary world. In recent years, the leaders of the Catholic Church have been speaking of this with increasing frequency. The Catholic journal La Civiltà cattolica has even written of the need to found a "theology of dialogue" . The recent papal encyclicals - "Mater et Magistra" , "Pacem in Terris" , and "Ecclesiam suam" - express the effort of the leaders of Catholicism to establish (...) more intimate contacts with the world in which the religious people of today find themselves. It is therefore no accident that this problem of dialogue was taken up in discussions at the Second Ecumenical Council and particularly at its third session held in the autumn of 1964. (shrink)

As documented in Part I, monogenism, the descent of all human beings from Adam and Eve, was closely linked to the Catholic doctrine of original sin throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Theological reservations about polygenism, the more scientifically supported account of human origins through a transitional population, was brought to a head by Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani generis. Although the encyclical allowed discussion of human evolution, polygenism was prohibited because “It does not appear how such a (...) view can be reconciled with the doctrine of original sin.” Nevertheless, during and after Vatican II de facto theological acceptance of polygenism became commonplace even though the prohibition was not withdrawn. While some modern conceptions of original sin make a reliance upon monogenism unnecessary, another school of thought emphasizes a spiritual rather than a biological understanding of the concept. It remains to be seen whether polygenism can be unanimously accepted as a scientific phenomenon that is not theologically threatening. Reflection on the Vatican’s long period of ambivalence about the motion of the earth suggests that a similar prospect can be foreseen for polygenism even though it is subject to development in a manner that geostasis was not. (shrink)

A Catholic physician practices in a world that condones the use of contraception. In the effort to be morally consistent, Catholic physicians are faced with questions about the extent to which their participation in providing contraceptives constitutes immoral cooperation in evil. Particular challenges face resident physicians, who practice under attending physicians and within the constraints of local and specialty-wide training requirements. The author examines the nature of the moral act of referring for contraception and argues that, in limited cases, there (...) is a moral distinction between a referral and an intra-residency patient transfer, and the latter may be morally licit according to the principle of material cooperation. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.2 (Summer 2012): 283–309. (shrink)

Infin de siècleArgentina a secularist ideology of science was part of the positivist world view espoused by liberals and socialists. Between the years 1910 and 1935, a period in which the Catholic Church experienced a significant cultural expansion, the activities of the Catholic naturalist Ángel Gallardo and the astronomer and priest Fortunato Devoto challenged the so far prevailing idea of science as opposed to religion. This paper explores the connections between the scientific, religious and political aspects of those figures in (...) order to get some insights into the complexity of the relationships between science and secularization in societies with a Catholic majority. (shrink)

The Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network organized a major international conference at Georgetown University, Washington National Cathedral and Marymount University, in 2015, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. The council, one of the most important events in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, initiated a process of renewal, transition, and openness that affected not only Catholics, but all Christians, adherents of other religions, and the secular world. The Washington conference received worldwide media (...) attention, with highlights including keynote addresses by several cardinals, archbishops, and bishops as well as eminent scholars from a wide and diverse range of backgrounds in terms of geography and expertise alike. This second of three volumes emerging from this event assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. It begins with a contribution from the late President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, followed by a section devoted to exploring the impact, relevance, and promise of the Council's Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate. The volume turns next to explore how Vatican II in general has influenced and helped develop method in both interfaith dialogue and in the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the post-conciliar decades. The final thematic section of this volume is devoted to a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican II’s opening to other faiths. The volume draws toward its conclusion with a moving and evocative reflection from one of the leading pioneers in contemporary comparative theology, Jesuit Francis X. Clooney. (shrink)