Rymarz, Richard An important theme in the contemporary disposition of the church toward the wider culture is the need for a new evangelisation. The thinking was given great impetus by St John Paul II. Whilst a bold strategy, there is little doubt that any attempt to evangelise contemporary secular cultures also presents significant challenges. The church, understood however as an agent of evangelisation not by choice but by its very nature, must carry on its Pauline mission with an (...) eye to more long-term goals and not be discouraged by the task ahead of it. The commitment to engage the wider culture needs to be consistent, realising that the task ahead is difficult but that its difficulty can be mitigated by intelligence and resourcefulness. As Lonergan remarked: 'Ours is a new age, and enormous tasks lie ahead. But we shall be all the more likely to surmount them, if we take the trouble to understand what is going forward and why'. (shrink)

Rymarz, Richard Review(s) of: God calls me Miriam, by Miriam Elizabeth Stulberg, Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications 2009, pp.299, pb.

Rymarz, Richard Review of: Homosexuality and following Jesus, by Paul Flaman,, ISBN 9781926645780, pp.181, pb; The plot to kill god: Findings from the soviet experiment in secularization, by Paul Froese, ISBN 9780520255289, pp.248, pb.

Rymarz, Richard A number of years ago a colleague and I attended the commencement Mass at a large Catholic university. During the service my friend observed that there did not seem to be many students taking part. It is always hard to be definitive here, but a quick glance over the congregation seemed to confirm his view. The following year we both, again, attended the commencement Mass but this time, were a little more aware of those who were (...) attending. To be fair the congregation was not large but if you discounted the students who were providing musical accompaniment and the students were being inducted into some sort of leadership role during the service there did not appear to be a single undergraduate in attendance. A sense of proportionality is important here. I do not think our observations would have been noteworthy if there had been a small number of students present but what struck us was there appeared to be a complete absence of student participation in the liturgy. (shrink)

Rymarz, Richard Review(s) of: Render unto Rome: The secret life of money in the Catholic church, by Jason Berry, (New York: Crown Publishers 2011), ISBN 9780385531320, pp.420.

Rymarz, Richard The most striking feature of any study on vocations in the Catholic Church is the steep decline in many aspects of religious life in recent decades. No group in the world has done more high-quality empirical research on the question of religious life and vocations than the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, and all who work in this area are in their debt. Based at Georgetown in Washington, DC, CARA provides the figures detailed in (...) Table 1 for the United States of America. (shrink)

Rymarz, Richard A significant challenge facing the Catholic Church today is the breakdown in traditional catechetical structures such as the close connection between parish, school and family. A consequence of this is a decline in the number of pathways open to Catholics who wish to strengthen their religious commitment. In light of this a pertinent question is: How can new structures support catechesis? This paper explores the role that New Ecclesial Communities can play in catechesis in a changed (...) cultural milieu. A number of features of these groups are discussed in relation to supporting plausibility. Some of these features include the establishment of reinforcing boundaries and providing an ongoing sense of involvement in a supportive moral community. (shrink)

A key legacy of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II was the concept of the new evangelization. This, amongst other things, was seen as a response to rising levels of religious indifference especially in countries that share a Western culture. This paper discusses the new evangelization in the light of two seminal ideas from the work of Lonergan, namely conversion and transcendence. It argues that these perspectives help explain and enrich the concept of the new evangelization. The second part (...) of the paper explores some of the factors that can assist conversion, especially religious conversion. (shrink)

This paper will seek to explore some of the implications of the new evangelization from an ecclesiological perspective. A key question is, what is an appropriate ecclesiological context for the new evangelization? Any conclusions or recommendations about how to respond and contextualize the new evangelization need to be grounded in an appropriate ecclesiology; one that sits well with contemporary Catholic scholarship, especially in light of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Following Dulles, no single approach to ecclesiology can fully (...) explain the complex nature of the Church. Taking the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium as a departure point a number of perspectives will be addressed, but an argument will be made for understanding the new evangelization within an ecclesiology of communion and of discipleship. (shrink)

A range of studies have pointed toward an overall decline in a series of measures of religious affiliation amongst a variety of groups. The most imperilled group, perhaps, are those younger people who display strong religious salience. Religious salience is understood here as the formative and ongoing influence of religion on beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of adherents. Strong religious salience is associated with high levels of commitment and self-identification and association with a religious community. An important study that distils much (...) of the recent work on religion and younger Catholics was conducted by Christian Smith and his colleagues.4 While noting that minimal expressions of religious affiliation remain more stable amongst Catholics, what are imperilled, in particular, are expressions of strong salience.5 In their study Smith and his colleagues gave the example of a fictional character, Marinella, who encapsulates the type of younger Catholic who does express high salience but is increasingly difficult to find. Marinella practises her faith consistently; for example, she attends Mass regularly and is able to articulate church doctrine and differentiate Catholicism from other religions. She believes most of what the church teaches and is involved in some form of church ministry. After gathering data from a survey of a representative sample of younger Catholics, Smith and others sought to strengthen their analysis by interviewing randomly selected participants from the wider group. In the interviews Smith and his colleagues were unable to identify any participant who approximated the Marinella typology. (shrink)

The Exchange of Words is a philosophical exploration of human testimony, specifically as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. This account weaves together themes from philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this basic human phenomenon.

The paper argues for the centrality of believing the speaker (as distinct from believing the statement) in the epistemology of testimony, and develops a line of thought from Angus Ross which claims that in telling someone something, the kind of reason for belief that a speaker presents is of an essentially different kind from ordinary evidence. Investigating the nature of the audience's dependence on the speaker's free assurance leads to a discussion of Grice's formulation of non-natural meaning in an epistemological (...) light, concentrating on just how the recognition of the speaker's self-reflexive intention is supposed to count for his audience as a reason to believe P. This is understood as the speaker's explicitly assuming responsibility for the truth of his statement, and thereby constituting his utterance as a reason to believe. (shrink)

In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

Richard Swinburne offers an original treatment of a question at the heart of epistemology: what makes a belief rational, or justified in holding? He maps the rival accounts of philosophers on epistemic justification ("internalist" and "externalist"), arguing that they are really accounts of different concepts. He distinguishes between synchronic justification (justification at a time) and diachronic justification (synchronic justification resulting from adequate investigation)--both internalist and externalist. He also argues that most kinds of justification are worth having because they are (...) indicative of truth; however, it is only justification of internalist kinds that can guide a believer's actions. Swinburne goes on to show the usefulness of the probability calculus in elucidating how empirical evidence makes beliefs probably true. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a powerful new case for substance dualism and for libertarian free will. He argues that pure mental events are distinct from physical events and interact with them, and claims that no result from neuroscience or any other science could show that interaction does not take place. Swinburne goes on to argue for agent causation, and claims that it is we, and not our intentions, that cause our brain events. It is metaphysically possible that each of us (...) could acquire a new brain or continue to exist without a brain; and so we are essentially souls. Brain events and conscious events are so different from each other that it would not be possible to establish a scientific theory which would predict what each of us would do in situations of moral conflict. Hence, we should believe that things are as they seem to be: that we make choices independently of the causes which influence us. It follows that we are morally responsible for our actions. (shrink)

This paper explores some aspects of the relation between different ways of achieving a consensus on the judgemental values of a group of indviduals; in particular, aggregation and deliberation. We argue firstly that the framing of an aggregation problem itself generates information that individuals are rationally obliged to take into account. And secondly that outputs of the deliberative process that this initiates is in tension with constraints on consensual values typically imposed by aggregation theory, at least when deliberation is modelled (...) as process of learning from others compatible with Bayesian updating principles. (shrink)

Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a "what next?" question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and (...) unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action. Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views. (shrink)

This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators.... The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of anicient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence... that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve (...) anti-Aristotelian marterial which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they presented Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian Church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators, that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. --From book jacket. (shrink)

Philosophy and literature enjoy a close, complex relationship. Elucidating the connections between these two fields, this book examines the ways philosophy deploys literary means to advance its practice, particularly as a way of life that extends beyond literary forms and words into physical deeds, nonlinguistic expression, and subjective moods and feelings.

_Heidegger_ is a classic introduction to Heidegger's notoriously difficult work. Truly accessible, it combines clarity of exposition with an authoritative handling of the subject-matter. Richard Polt has written a work that will become the standard text for students looking to understand one of the century's greatest minds.

This classic, provocative introduction to classical metaphysical questions focuses on appreciating the problems, rather than attempting to proffer answers.

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

Richard Kilvington (ca. 1302-1361) was one of the most original and influential thinkers among the Oxford Calculators. His impact on late medieval philosophy and theology remains unquestionable. His physical, logical, and ethical solutions were extensively debated and referred to, paving the way for new approaches in philosophy and theology. This volume presents a critical edition of question 4 from Kilvington's Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum, complete with an introduction to the edition and a guide to Kilvington's theological concepts.

The sixteen essays in this volume confront the current debate about the relationship between philosophy and its history. On the one hand intellectual historians commonly accuse philosophers of writing bad - anachronistic - history of philosophy, and on the other, philosophers have accused intellectual historians of writing bad - antiquarian - history of philosophy. The essays here address this controversy and ask what purpose the history of philosophy should serve. Part I contains more purely theoretical and methodological discussion, of such (...) questions as whether there are 'timeless' philosophical problems, whether the issues of one epoch are commensurable with those of another, and what style is appropriate to the historiography of the subject. The essays in Part II consider a number of case-histories. They present important revisionist scholarship and original contributions on topics drawn from ancient, early modern and more recent philosophy. All the essays have been specially commissioned, and the contributors include many of the leading figures in the field. The volume as a whole will be of vital interest to everyone concerned with the study of philosophy and of its history. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

This Element, written for researchers and students in philosophy and the behavioral sciences, reviews and critically assesses extant work on number concepts in developmental psychology and cognitive science. It has four main aims. First, it characterizes the core commitments of mainstream number cognition research, including the commitment to representationalism, the hypothesis that there exist certain number-specific cognitive systems, and the key milestones in the development of number cognition. Second, it provides a taxonomy of influential views within mainstream number cognition research, (...) along with the central challenges these views face. Third, it identifies and critically assesses a series of core philosophical assumptions often adopted by number cognition researchers. Finally, the Element articulates and defends a novel version of pluralism about number concepts. (shrink)

Disagreement is common: even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This volume examines the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: but this will be the first book focusing on the general epistemic issues arising from informed (...) disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written essays which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic. (shrink)