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)

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we (...) examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research. (shrink)

Implicit processes almost certainly preceded explicit processes in our evolutionary history, so they are likely to be more resistant to disruption according to the principles of evolutionary biology [Reber, A. S. . The cognitive unconscious: An evolutionary perspective. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 93–133.]. Previous work . Knowledge, nerves and know-how: The role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 343–358.]) has shown that implicitly learned motor skills remain (...) stable under psychological pressure and concurrent cognitive demands, and recently [Poolton, J. M., Masters, R. S. W., & Maxwell, J. P. . Passing thoughts on the evolutionary stability of implicit motor behaviour: Performance retention under physiological fatigue. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 456–468.] showed that they also remain stable under conditions of anaerobic fatigue that would have significantly challenged the survival skills of our ancestors. Here we examine the stability of an implicitly learned motor skill under fatigue conditions that primarily tax a different physiological system , but which have equally strong evolutionary connotations. Participants acquired a throwing task by means of an errorless learning method or an errorful method. Motor performance in the errorless condition, but not the errorful condition, remained stable following an exhaustive VO2 max. running test. Our findings replicate and extend the work of Poolton et al., providing further support for Reber’s evolutionary distinction between implicit and explicit processes. (shrink)

The ethics review system of research is now well-established, at least in the developed world, although there are many differences in how countries view it and go about managing it. The UK specifically is now seeking to revise its system by speeding up the process of ethics approval but only for some studies. It is proposed that only those studies which pose “no material ethical issues” should be “fast-tracked”. However, it is unclear what this means, who should decide and what (...) should be included in this category. In this paper, we go some way towards answering these questions. While we are certain that the debate is only just beginning, we are equally certain that it will continue to run long after the system has been reformed. To stimulate this conversation and to inform a pilot project of the new system directly, we review two candidates to help give some substance to the notion of “material” ethical issues. Firstly, material could mean a certain type or degree of risk. Second, material could mean how physically invasive the research is. We conclude that there is still much work to be done on making the system of governing health and social care consistent and practicable. (shrink)

It is obvious that bringing to light the founding murder completely rules out any compromise with the principle of sacrifice, or indeed with any conception of the death of Jesus as sacrifice.If anyone says that a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God in the Mass … let him be anathema.René Girard's thought has produced both admiration and unease among Catholic sacramental theologians struggling to come to grips with what his theory of scapegoating and sacrifice implies for "the (...) holy sacrifice of the Mass." The language of sacrifice permeates the liturgy itself, official Church teaching—including the documents of Vatican II—and centuries of Eucharistic theology, so Girard's critique has the potential to... (shrink)