Thesis summary BATISTA, Jefferson Pinto.The social doctrine of the Catholic Church and the foundations of social work: the graduation course of Social Work at PUC Minas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scandal: The Catholic Church and Public Life by Angela SenanderMara Kelly-ZukowskiScandal: The Catholic Church and Public Life Angela Senander collegeville, mn: liturgical press, 2012. 184 pp. $14.95.Angela Senander’s short book on scandal is valuable for scholars and non-scholars alike. She demonstrates how scandal, whose etymology is “stumbling block” (to one’s faith or trust), has been employed by the church as a catalyst and as a rationalization (...) for many decisions. She ultimately concludes that, ironically, many attempts to eliminate threats of scandal have historically caused even greater scandals, as best illustrated in the Roman Catholic Church’s institutional attempt to avoid scandal in the case of clerical sexual abuse (25).Senander begins with a sociological analysis of scandal’s four components: the act, the agent, the announcer, and the audience. This sociological analysis, offered with biblical texts to illustrate each component, provides the background for her discussion of various “sources of scandal,” including divisions within the Church, certain Church teachings, and the Church’s public stance when confronted with scandal.Her main focus is to examine these “obstacles to faith” from a theological and catechetical perspective. She begins with Aquinas, who defines scandal as “something less rightly done or said that occasions another’s spiritual downfall” (15). She notes his observation that not only can one’s wrong actions tempt another to sin but so can actions that only appear wrong, even if fundamentally good (15). This latter category Aquinas attributes to either the malice or ignorance of the audience, labeling it “passive” scandal, and urging education of the ignorant to combat it (17).Senander points out that the description of scandal by both Trent and Vatican II has slightly changed because of such events as dissension over Humanae Vitae; legalization of abortion, divorce, and euthanasia; and cases of clerical sexual abuse. The wording of the Catechism shifted from the traditional “word or deed” to “attitude or behavior.” In response, Senander raises the problems of how one could know another’s “attitude” and the possibility of indicting the agent for another’s malice in misinterpreting potentially good acts as scandalous (e.g., making Jesus responsible for leading the Pharisees into temptation by proclaiming the kingdom of God).Each of Senander’s considerations relating to scandal could serve as the basis for much lengthier treatises. For example, she challenges the Catechism’s endorsement of withholding truth to avoid scandal (27), and questions the [End Page 219] possibility that Pope John Paul II’s changes to the profession of faith—requiring assent to the Church’s definitive doctrine, including the non-ordination of women—might itself prove a stumbling block to many Catholics (37–38). In other chapters, Senander surveys pertinent issues such as religious liberty, homosexuals in the priesthood, and pacifism, arguing that in each case, paradoxically, attempts to avoid scandal can actually cause them. All actions—and even attitudes—can appear as “scandalous” to those opposed to them.Senander concludes with a call to “hope” as the only healthy response for the proliferation of scandals, real or fabricated. This hope necessitates reliance on love, which no attempt to avoid scandal should violate. Thus, one might emphasize fidelity to Catholic teaching without demonizing those who dissent. Such a love would also respect the conscience of the individual (espoused by the Church) and would appreciate the good that the dissenters might do in their personal quest to seek God.One might argue that certain issues could have been explored a bit more, most notably the question of the culpability of the “audience” and “educational” remedies. But on the whole, the book raises important questions about a contemporary and perennial topic and is a fascinating read, also setting the stage for important work that might be pursued by scholars in the future.Mara Kelly-ZukowskiFelician CollegeCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church has had a fatal significance in its history. In addition to the important documents that were adopted by the Council, and then creatively developed by the theorists and practitioners of the Church, Catholicism was enriched with a new awareness of significant changes in the world. The Church acknowledged that there have been radical transformations in the outlook and behavior of people, in particular Catholics, in their attitude to issues of faith, (...) to God, to the relationship between God and man. But perhaps the most influential for the further development of Catholicism in the world was the social doctrine of the Church, which eventually turned into a social doctrine. The latter is understood not only as a list of practical guidelines for solving the "social question", but also not a sum of knowledge in contemporary sociology1, but a set of religious beliefs developed by theologians and endorsed by the whole Church in the form of a body of special documents on the Church's views on society and social issues. In addition to the general theological principles of attitude towards peace and relations with society, the Catholic social doctrine contains the historical work of the Church in solving social problems in different epochs, recorded information about the social challenges of the past and present, eschatological expectations and real forecasts for the future of mankind. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the topic of older people in the world from the perspective of the Social Teaching of the Church. As explained in Christifideles Laici , the Catholic Church believes that the laity is summoned to pave the way for the arrival of God’s Kingdom, and people who are at an advanced age should still respond to God’s calling through their own unique way of contribution. In Familiaris Consortio it is emphasized that (...) the Church should help older people manifest their roles both in families and religious groups. Although it is mentioned in these two apostolic exhortations that older people are blessed with wisdom, it is not explained as they actually acquire such a blessing. In order to address this issue and elaborate on the meaning of older people’s wisdom, Grün’s theory on the nature of older people’s wisdom and where such a blessing comes from is made reference to in this study. Moreover, it is emphasized in the apostolic exhortation of Familiaris Consortio that older people are often marginalized in today’s industrialized and urbanized society and neglected in their families, while also enduring psychological and/or physical pain. Addressing this issue, the value of older people’s work and their unshirkable missions and duties are explained in the present study by examining the nature and value of man’s work as mentioned in Laborem Exercens . Sen’s “capability approach” is also utilized in the present study as a way to examine older people’s values and the deprivation of their capability, allowing an in-depth analysis of this topic. The findings of this study reveal that Grün’s theory of older people’s wisdom being shaped by their life-experiences is significantly complementary to the messages on older people in Christifideles Laici and Familiaris Consortio . While Sen’s capability approach does not offer a complete set of values or cultural system that solves this problem, the approach of “civilization of love” proposed in the Social Teaching of the Church is very useful in helping one contemplate on the problems faced by older people around the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Handbook of Roman Catholic Moral Terms by James T. Bretzke, SJJohn J. FitzgeraldHandbook of Roman Catholic Moral Terms James T. Bretzke, SJ washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 260 pp. $24.95The Handbook of Roman Catholic Moral Terms continues the recent sequence of concise dictionaries published by Georgetown University Press, including the Key Words volumes for various religions and A Handbook of Bioethics Terms. James Bretzke’s (...) contribution is especially welcome as it is the first such English-language reference work in Catholic moral theology since the Second Vatican Council. The author covers fundamental, social, medical, and sexual issues while providing frequent cross-references and further readings. Special attention is also given to scripture and ethics, the history of moral theology, the nature and authority of the Magisterium, canon law, Protestant thought, and moral philosophy. The longest entries are those on dissent (67–70), Humanae vitae (111–16), infallibility (122–24), and the Pontifical Commission on Births (180–82), which in advance of Humanae vitae produced the well-known Majority Report favorable to the use of contraception. The sections on these vexed issues delve into some of the relevant arguments from different sides.Given its space constraints as a portable paperback, the Handbook covers an impressive amount of historical and contemporary ground. The eight-hundred-plus entries are generally clear and irenic, and often illuminating. Consider the page-long entry on just war theory (131–32), which succinctly summarizes its development from Augustine to the present-day Catechism, calls attention to the importance of ius post bellum alongside the traditional categories of ius ad bellum and ius in bello, and outlines four possible critiques of the theory. Particularly helpful throughout are the various examples the author provides. For instance, in the course of explaining that moral norms and human laws may not bind at all times, he suggests that it is justifiable to forgo the duty to sustain life when this can only be done through extraordinary means (140), or to exceed the speed limit in case of a medical emergency (15, 81; see also 183 and 239–40 for other relevant examples).On the other hand, a few key topics are either overlooked or not fully dealt with. This book rightly highlights ecumenical ethics (77–78 and passim), but there is essentially no coverage of Eastern Orthodoxy and very little on pre-twentieth-century Protestant thought. In addition, considering the prevalence of a “morality-of-happiness” perspective in historical and modern-day Catholic thought, and given Bretzke’s own thorough attention to law, the book might have incorporated separate entries on happiness and grace, law’s complement. [End Page 221] (To his credit, he does mention grace several times—a fact that the preface points out—and includes the beatific vision, Gloria Dei vivens homo, and Summum Bonum among his definitions.) And speaking of law, the author’s treatment of the divine law is slightly confusing; he appears to alternately conflate it with and differentiate it from both the eternal law and the law of the Old and New Testaments (70–71, 136, 138).In the end, despite Bretzke’s best efforts to remain above the ideological frays of moral theology, one’s overall evaluation of his book may depend somewhat on one’s place within them. Some will chafe at his suggestions that contraception (116), certain forms of assisted reproduction (198–99), and artificial nutrition and hydration that sustain those in a persistent vegetative state (10, 224–25) remain open questions to an extent. Others will point out, as Bretzke does, that Church doctrine has previously undergone substantial development on other issues, such as religious freedom (65–66, 151, 193, 229) and the charging of interest (107, 241). What most should be able to agree upon is that in many respects the Handbook is a valuable resource, one that will help professionals and students alike come to a much better understanding of the key terms and debates within the field. [End Page 222]John J. FitzgeraldSt. John’s University (New York)Copyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Church youth work is the activities and programs organized by churches for young people. These activities aim to contribute to the religious, spiritual and social development of young people. Church youth work brings young people together and supports them in areas such as religious education, spiritual development, community service, leadership development and active participation in the religious community. It is seen that youth work, which was previously a part of family work, has been organized as a different field of (...) work over time. Churches carry out activities in this field through an organizational structure called youth ministry. Churches generally have a certain systematic and work program in their youth work. Most churches organize their youth programs according to the relevant educational levels. Churches tend to create smaller sub-groups within the youth program and divide young people by grade level. These divisions are usually at the middle and high school level, but youth groups extend to university students and are often referred to as "college and career". Higher education seems to be emphasized in youth work. Many theological faculties offer different postgraduate programs to meet various needs. The quality of youth work is largely determined by the academic studies conducted in this field. Practical theology, which is established as an academic discipline in faculties of theology, both provides the theoretical background that shapes the practice of these studies and provides training to train qualified personnel in the field. The approach to youth ministry can vary, taking into account the different views on the subject, the places where this ministry is provided and the characteristics of people. There are different paradigms in church youth work, especially for young people living in cities. These are called traditional, liberal, activist and prophet-centered youth paradigms. Another pillar of church youth work is spiritual counseling services. Recently, churches have started to employ professional spiritual counselors. Spiritual counseling, a concept that emphasizes the Christian cultural origins of counseling, is now included in youth work. Spiritual counseling is seen as a professional guidance fed by religious and spiritual sources. Church spiritual counselors listen to the problems faced by young people, support them and try to understand them. Spiritual counselors provide guidance based on religious teachings and values to support the personal development of young people. Spiritual counseling conducted by churches can take various forms. These include individual counseling, group counseling, family counseling, online counseling, retreats and workshops. The personnel who carry out the youth work of the churches are also called youth leaders. Accordingly, it is seen that various leadership models in the literature are discussed in this context. Some leadership models that are thought to inspire youth work are: Servant leadership, ethical leadership, spiritual leadership and transformational leadership. In this research, these leadership models are discussed in the context of church youth work. This research aims to reveal the basic approaches and principles in this field by focusing on the studies in the context of non-formal religious education in Catholic Churches. Although it varies from region to region or from church to church, the main problem of this study is to examine the youth work of the Catholic Church in the context of non-formal religious education in general. The research data were obtained through document analysis method. On this occasion, it is thought that this study will also be useful in the context of a comparative evaluation of non-formal religious education in our country. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 1998 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesPeggy StarkeyThe annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando, Florida, on Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21, 1998. The theme for this year’s sessions was “Ritual and Its Connection to Ethical Activity in the World.”The Friday afternoon panel, moderated by John Berthrong (Boston University), focused on Buddhist views. John (...) Makransky (Boston College) argued from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective that ritual/contemplative activity is a more effective paradigm for contemporary Buddhist ethics than that of Buddhist doctrine, which is now regarded by many as the source of Buddhist ethics. Historically, ethics has been the outflow of ritual activity and as such is both available to many more Buddhists than doctrine and draws more fully upon the various resources of the tradition. Furthermore, rituals as communal/universal expressions of ultimate reality, when practiced within the horizon of the concerns of one’s culture, naturally take expression in forms of social engagement. Stephanie Kaza (University of Vermont) provided insight into the connection between ritual practice and ethics through her vivid explanation of specific Zen rituals. One such ceremony, adapted to address human suffering in a specific situation, took place at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. The ceremony prepared people for the difficult decision of choosing or not choosing civil disobedience. Thus, Zen rituals not only provide the invitation for mindful awareness in daily life, but also the possibility, though not the guarantee, for transformation everywhere. Yukio Matsuda (University of Heidelberg) discussed the relation between ritual and social activities in the areas of peace, culture, and education in Nichiren Buddhism as practiced by the Soka Gakkai movement. Chanting the diamoku in front of the gohonzon, for example, enables one to directly touch one’s own enlightened life and encourages not only a responsibility for changing one’s own destiny, but also a commitment to social engagement that works toward the creation of a peaceful society. Don Mitchell (Purdue University), responding from a Roman Catholic perspective, stressed those aspects of the three papers that led him to a better understanding of his own tradition. As in Buddhism, he sees the ritual sacraments in Christianity as providing models for moral behavior, reinforcing faith, and [End Page 175] empowering ethical behavior. He also raised several issues pertaining to the reinterpretation of Buddhist rituals or even the creation of new ones by Western Buddhists.John Berthrong introduced the Saturday morning panel, which focused on Christian views. Nicholas Groves (Chicago Public Library) drew on the history of the Oxford Movement, which he traced from its inception in 1833, for his example of the influence of Christian ritual upon ethics. For this movement, ritual was both an expression of the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity and the basis of an imperative for social justice. For the discussion to follow, he asked, “What is the function of a prophetic and radical reading of a spiritual tradition, either Christian or Buddhist, within the larger community of the Sangha or the Church?” Speaking from a Protestant point of view, Jay Rock (codirector, Interfaith Relations, National Council of Churches of Christ, USA) discussed Christian ritual in terms of the reactualization of the past and of the transformation of the present. Baptism and the Eucharist commemorate past historical events that are made present in the liturgy in such a way that the participating Christians not only receive God’s gift of unlimited love, but also are sent out into the world to live out this love in ethical behavior. Christian ritual confronts the participants with the question, What is now required? Responding from a history of religions perspective, Jan Nattier (Indiana University) raised several questions for discussion: How does ritual—not the theological ideas behind it—empower social action? Would there be Christian social activists without the ritual of the Eucharist? What are the political factors, past and present, that have created a shared sense of the necessity of social action across the boundaries of such radically different traditions as Buddhism and Christianity? The session then ended with a lively discussion.President Paul Ingram presided over... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HERMENEUTICS OF HISTORY IN THE THEOLOGY OF EDWARD SCHILLEBEECKX AGNIFICANT UNDERLYING issue in recent.discussions of the writings of Edward Schillebeeckx, whether in academy or church, is the fundamental question of theological method. In his contemporary work, Schillebeeckx has shifted clearly from dogma to human experience a:s the starting point for theological investigation, a move in which he is certainly not unique. The growing " consensus in theology " 1 (...) which views the theological task as a critical correlation between the Christian tradition and contemporary experience takes a unique shape, however, in each theologian's work. How is Schillebeeckx's developing theological method to be characterized and evaluated? Is his new approach to theology hermeneutical or political or both? 2 Has Schillebeeckx abandoned the earlier metaphysical and phenomenological foundations of his thought or is Thomas Aquinas still the secret mentor of his contemporary writings? 3 Does Schillebeeckx 1 See Consensus im Theology?, ed. Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980). 2 David Tracy's distinction of hermeneutical from political theologies is inadequate in describing Schillebeeckx's " hermeneutics of history " since Schillebeeckx's designation of the theological task a.s hermeneutical includes an explicit political-critical dimension. See Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith (New York: Seabury, 1974), esp. ch. 6-7. See also "Theologisch Geloofsverstaan Anno 1983 " (Baa.rn: H. Nelissen, 1983). For Tracy's distinction see The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 74-75. a In his review of Schillebeeckx's Ghrist, Leo O'Donovan observed that " Schillebeeckx's real master here is still probably Thomas Aquinas, whose theological realism he is transposing into a critical and practical historical language." (" Salvation as the Center of Theology," Interpretation 36 (1982), p. 196). The transportation from metaphysical to historical categories does involve, however, a major philosophical shift as Schillebeeckx notes in Jesus: 97 98 MARY CATHERINE HILKERT, O.P. implement the narrative-practical theology he applauds or does he remain a theoretician? 4 How does dogma fit into his present theological method, if at all? That last question has been of particular interest to Schillebeeckx 's critics. More than one author has contrasted his contemporary writings with his earlier dogmatic works. Jean Galot, an outspoken critic of Schillebeeckx's recent theological writings, acclaimed Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God as an outstanding work of sacramental theology in accord with the traditional doctrine of the church.5 Similarly, Leo Scheffczyck praised a "pre-critical phase of Schillebeeckx's theology " prior to his hermeneutical writings while describing the latter as " critically turned against the dogma of the church." 6 An Experiment in Christology, trans. Hubert Hoskins (New York: Seabury, 1979), p. 619. The question remains whether a theological realism grounded in creation faith and eschatological hope does not ultimately require some sort of philosophical explanation of "the idea of anticipation of a total meaning amid a history still in the making" (Jesus, pp. 618-619). William L. Portier suggests that even in order to negotiate his theological appropriation of ideology critique successfully, Schillebeeckx must retain at least a minimal, fundamentally negative, realist metaphysics from his Thomist past. ("Edward Schillebeeckx as Critical Theorist: The Impact of Neo-Marxist Social Thought on his Recent Theology," The Thomist 48 (July 1984), pp. 361-63). 4 The critique of Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society (New York: Seabury, 1980), p. 79, n.5: "None of the important modern Christologies take this practical structure of Christology as their point of departure. In this sense, they are all idealistic and characterized by a non-dialectical relationship between theory and praxis." Metz includes Rahner, Kiing, and Schillebeeckx specifically in his charge. 5 Jean Galot, "Schillebeeckx: What's He Really Saying About Jesus' Ministry?" The Catholic Register, October 1983, p. 1. 6 Leo Scheffczyk, "Christology in the Context of Experience: On the Interpretation of Christ by E. Schillebeeckx," The Thomist 48 (July, 1984), p. 389. See also The Schillebeeckm Case, ed. Ted Schoof (New York: Paulist, 1984). While the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith drew no definitive conclusions regarding Schillebeeckx's theological method in their investigation of his Jesus book and granted that his Christology could be interpreted as compatible with the doctrine of Nicea and Chalcedon... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY: A REVIEW DISCUSSION [I]t seems to me that Schema 18 [preparatory draft for the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World] needs to rest on a deeper realization of the urgent problems posed by technology.... (The Constitution on Mass Media seems to have been totally innocent of any such awareness.) For one thing, the whole massive complex of technology, which reaches (...) into every aspect of social life today, implies a huge organization of which no one is really in control, and which dictates its own solutions irrespective of human needs or even reason.... I am not of course saying that technology is "bad," and that progress is something to be feared. But I am saying that behind the cloak of specious myths about technology and progress, there seems to be at work a vast uncontrolled power which is leading man where he does not want to go... and in which the Church... ought to be somewhat more aware of the intervention of the "principalities and powers" of which St. Paul speaks. -Thomas Merton, Letter to Bernard Haring (December ~6, 1964) l WHEN A DRAFT of the United States Roman Catholic bishops' proposed pastoral letter on human values was circulated to philos·ophy teachers at Catholic colleges in 1975, one respondent took the occasion to suggest that what was needed was not another geneml restatement of " human values " or a piecemeal analysis of specific issues (unemployment, artificial contraception, abortion, nuclear weapons, etc.) but something intermediate-work toward the development of an ethics of technology.2 Unbeknown i The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, selected and edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985), pp. 383-384. 2 The pastoral subsequently appeared as To Live in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral Reflection on the Moral Life (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, November 1976). 146 TOWARD A RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY 147 to himself, he had voiced a concern similar to that expressed by Thomas Merton a decade earlier. With the publication another decade later of Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technology,3 the proceedings of a workshop for Catholic bishops by the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center (then in St. Louis, now in Boston) there is evidence that this need is being increasingly recognized. Working from cmss-disciplinary analyses of two commonly un-associaited issues-nuclear energy and reproductive technologies (i.e., the ostensibly positive correlates 0£ nuclear weapons and artificial contraception)-Technological Powers and the Person seeks to formulaite general guidelines for the engagement with modern technology. Two specific technologies are rightly seen as related aspects of a global phenomenon, and philosophical anthropology is properly proposed as the foundation for ethical principles. Although aspects of this assessment may well be criticized, the general approach-a.s well as this particular workshop and the form of its final proceedingsdeserve commendation. 'Vhat follows, then, are some comments on format and substantive content aimed at furthering such a project. 1. The workshop itself (which was held in Dallas, Texas) was opened on the evening of January 31, 1983, with a keynote address by Christopher Derrick, a Catholic layman from England who has written on moral and religious issues of cuLture s Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P., Donald G. McCarthy, Edward J. Bayer, S.T.D., Michael P. McDonough, S.T.D., and Larry D. Lossing, eds., Technological Powers and the Person: Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Technologies (St. Louis, MO: Pope John Center, 1983). Pp. xiii, 500. This is the third in a series. Previous proceedings are New Technologies of Birth and Death (196 pages, from a 1980 workshop) and Human Sexuality and Personhood (254 pages, from a 1981 workshop), both published by the Pope John Center; as the titles and pages alone indicate, neither has the scope of the present volume. 148 CARL MITCHAl\1 and eoology.4 Together with a general overview of the workshop by the senior editor, Derrick's address constitutes part ooo of the proceedings. His fundamental question concerns whether there might not be an "inordinate attachment to temporal good... (shrink)

The article examines the provisions of the catechisms of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church regarding the war and its challenges, as well as the defense of the Motherland. A comparative analysis of relevant thematic instructions in the Catechism “Christ is our Easter” (published in 2011), the Catechism for youth “We walk with Christ” (published in 2021) and the “Catechism of the Christian Warrior” (published in 2022) was carried out. It was determined that the provisions of the UGCC's own fundamental (...) doctrinal documents, its Catechisms, regarding the problems of war and defense of the Motherland, were formed, clarified and supplemented according to the circumstances and needs of the time. The catechism of the UGCC “Christ is our Easter” contains general Christian considerations on the subject under consideration, which are principled, establishing, and refer to how civilized peoples should conduct themselves. The catechism for youth, created in the previous years of the undeclared Russian Federation's “hybrid” war against Ukraine, covers the issues related to the war and the defense of the Motherland in a substantive way and closer to current Ukrainian realities, although it still has some idealistic approach. The Catechism of the Christian Warrior, the preparation of which was completed and the publication was carried out during the full-scale military offensive of the aggressor, is a set of thorough and competent advises for Ukrainian soldiers, where things are called by their names, and there are no provisions that can cause doubts due to experience and be problematically achievable for implementation. Therefore, it is concluded that especially this Catechism, together with and in addition to the two previous ones, is a useful and timely contribution of the UGCC to the instruction of Ukrainians during the war, and therefore to Ukraine's victory over the enemy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. BehrPatrick Auer JonesSocial Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), ix + 259 pp.The status of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum as the origin point of what has (...) come to be called Catholic Social Teaching (CST), or Catholic social doctrine, has been reinforced on the magisterial level by the commemorations of the encyclical by Pius XI, Paul VI, and John Paul II. It should be noted, then, that the tradition of CST is comparatively recent. Indeed, it is nearly coextensive with the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, this short tradition already calls for a ressourcement. As Russell Hittinger has pointed out, reflections on CST often move swiftly to the particulars of social issues without an adequate grasp even of its basic concepts: subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, and the dignity of the person. Further, historical [End Page 1101] developments have had dramatic impact upon the ways in which these principles have been received and developed in the course of this young tradition.In his book Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, Thomas C. Behr provides a major contribution to just such a ressourcement. He does this by presenting an introduction to the thought of the Jesuit scholar whose revival of Thomistic thought in a modern register formed the basis for Leonine social teaching. As Behr explains, Taparelli has remained a somewhat hidden figure in accounts of the genesis and development of CST. He goes unmentioned in the major social encyclicals of Leo and Pius, despite the fact that Leo himself was Taparelli's student. Because of his rhetorically and philosophically potent critique of Enlightenment thought and its effect on mid-nineteenth-century Europe, available to a popular audience through his frequent contributions to the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, Taparelli's name carried baggage for a Church that sought to move beyond the posture of reaction to liberal political orders.However, as Behr shows in the introduction, Taparelli hardly rejected the methods and insights of modern political thought tout court. Behr describes Taparelli's system as a "realist social science." This terminology speaks to the promise which Taparelli found in the sociological analysis of Montesquieu in particular. Though Taparelli judged that Montesquieu held a questionable preference for a republican political form, he greatly admired Montesquieu's ability to, as Behr puts it, "bring political theory into relationship with social theory and historical contingency" (8). Though Taparelli was not familiar with the work of Alexis De Tocqueville, Behr also notes the resonances between Taparelli's work and Tocqueville's political sociology and defense of "intermediary institutions." Yet Taparelli makes up for what the sociological approaches of Montesquieu and Tocqueville lack in the way of natural, teleological principles of politics. Behr alerts the reader from the very beginning of his work that, in approaching Taparelli, he will not find a simple recapitulation of Thomas, but rather a creative approach to political thought which aims to set what is worthy in the modern empirical methodologies on firmer foundations through the recovery of Thomistic-Aristotelian principles.In chapter 1, "Taparelli and the Age of Ideology," Behr situates Taparelli within the political conflicts of the early nineteenth century. Behr sets the scene for Taparelli's renovated Scholasticism by explaining the opposition between Catholic traditionalism (represented especially by Joseph De Maistre and Donoso Cortés) and Catholic liberalism (represented especially by Henri Dominique Lacordaire and his more radical associate Felicité de Lammenais). While the Catholic liberals aimed to convince both [End Page 1102] the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the anticlerical, postrevolutionary governments of Europe that Christianity upheld liberal and republican ideals, the traditionalists argued that Europe's moral and political derangement was the result of a rejection of the norms of tradition—especially of papal and monarchical authority. Remarkably, Taparelli entered neither of these camps. In the opening chapter, Behr stimulates the contemporary reader's interest by showing how Taparelli responded to a crisis of ideologies—progressive and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF RIGHTS LANGUAGE IN PRE-MODERN CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT BERNARD V. BRADY University of St. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC social thought, both in official documents and in commentaries, has focused quite extensively on describing the use, meaning and justification of human rights. Indeed, as one significant contributor has suggested, human rights have become, since the Second Vatican Council, the (...) "central norms of social morality." 1 In all of this concern for the place of rights within Catholic thought, however, very little work has been done to explore the pre-modern roots of this moral category. This essay attempts to address this issue. The essay has three parts. The first section considers characteristics of rights language within the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The second section looks at the use of rights within the intriguing controversy of the late thirteenth century surrounding apostolic poverty. Finally, developments in Catholic rights language found in the work of the Renaissance figures Vitoria and Suarez are studied. The essay narrates the development in the use of rights within the tradition while suggesting certain threads of consistency. Thomistic Characteristics of the Use, Meaning and Justification of Rights Language In the social philosophy of Thomas Aquinas ( 1225-74), the concept " ius," or " right," has an important and nuanced role. 1 David Hollenbach, " Both Bread and Freedom: The Interconnection of Economic and Political Rights in Recent Catholic Thought," in Human Rights and the Global Mission of the Church, ed. Arthur J. Dyck (Boston: Boston Theological Institute, 1985), 31. 97 98 BERNARD V. BRADY Generally, ius suggests an objective reality, as when it is used in the concept of ius naturale, yet Thomas often uses the word interchangeably with "lex", or "law", a word fundamentally referring to the rational expression of such an objective reality.2 Most significantly from a modern perspective, Thomas also describes this objective reality of ius within the context of personal relations. Specific persons have specific rights in accord with their position within society. This section will examine the meaning of the term ius in Thomas. It will be shown that Thomas used ius primarily in an objective sense, that is, in terms of "that which is right," or " that which is fitting." It will also be suggested that Thomas used ius in something of a subjective sense as referring to personal moral claims. This latter use was, however, dependent on a prior understanding of "that which is right." "Right,'' says Thomas, "is the object of justice." 3 Operating from the principle that if one knows the end or the object of a thing one can know the reality of that thing, Thomas introduces his treatise on justice 4 with a consideration of the reality toward which justice tends-the right. As with the other cardinal virtues, justice seeks to actualize the right or the fitting as it orders a person in relation to some object. The distinguishing characteristic of justice is that the object under consideration is another person. He writes, " Accordingly that which is right in the works of the other virtues, and to which the intention of the virtue tends as to its proper object, depends on its relation to the agent only, whereas the right in a work of justice, besides its relation to the agent, is set up by its relation to others." 5 Thomas describes justice as a habit flowing from a rightly ordered self which in turn rightly orders one's relations with others. That is, the just person, through "a constant and per2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 57, art. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 vols. (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947). See also Thomas Gilby, The Political Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprints, 1973), 121. a Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 57, art. 1. 4 Ibid., 2a, 2ae, q. 57-122. 5 Ibid., 2a, 2ae, q. 57, art. 1. RIGHTS IN PRE-MODERN THOUGHT 99 petual will,'' 6 gives to another that which is due in accord with " some kind of equality" 7 "adjusted to or commensurate with... [the other] person." 8 Even as Thomas states, "the act... (shrink)

Amongst the recent documents released by the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the one titled ‘For the Life of the World’, published before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, touches upon an important section of the life of the Orthodox Church, namely, the social one. As a result of the fact that, so far, there is no official document of the aforementioned Church dedicated to this aspect, whilst the Reformed Churches and the Catholic one have already issued similar (...) documents, I consider the existence of such an article, with all its minuses, important. Moreover, it can constitute a bridge and an invitation to dialogue with other Christian traditions or backgrounds. Being aware of this fact, I have decided to analyse this document in this article to emphasise its influence and its elements of novelty and to speak about both its utility and its weaknesses. As a result of the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has had an important contribution to its drafting, I will also try to present this aspect and to show how the ecological vision that he has, amongst other aspects, influenced its content. Contribution: Considering the importance of the recent document ‘For the Life of the World of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople’, I will try to analyse it and to present its social relevance and meaning. (shrink)

Two challenges facing Archbishop John Bede Polding after arriving in Sydney in 1835 were providing for the spiritual needs of Catholics in the colony and managing their affairs in a way that attempted to guarantee a good working relationship with the government. It became apparent to Polding that education was fundamental in developing both these areas. Polding regarded education as a means of social advancement, beneficial to those 'on the lower steps of the social scale'. He wanted a (...) 'native race of priests and statesmen, of lawyers and physicians, of solicitors, and sailors, and artists'. He sought to emulate Downside Abbey's approach to education in Australia; specifically in the field of secondary education that would 'transcend the mere bread-and-butter preoccupations of the masses and prepare an 'elite' from among whom the offices of Church and state could eventually be filled'. Polding's goal was to create schools that would provide a Catholic education for its students founded on the principles of Benedictine ideals. But, as Francesca Fitz-Walter argues, it was the colonial conditions of the time that placed obstacles on Polding's expression of the Benedictine ideal in education. Given that the colonial conditions of the time imposed restrictions on the expression of the Benedictine ideal, Polding still maintained that a lifelong education was significant in developing in the student the ability to make an informed Christian response to whatever circumstance might emerge in the life of that person. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THEOLOGY, PRAXIS, AND ETHICS IN THE THOUGHT OF JUAN LUIS SEGUNDO, S.J. JOEL ZIMBELMAN California State University, Chico Chico, California I. Introduction JESUS OF NAZARETH Yesterday and Today is Juan Luis Segundo's most recent contribution in an on-going effort to forge a distinctive post-conciliar catholic theology.1· This five-volume work establishes Segundo as one of the most prolific, methodologically sophisticated, and constructive Catholic theologians of this century. In (...) these volumes he moves beyond the task of reframing fundamental theology in political and social terms that he began in earlier works and undertakes a full elaboration of the theological method that he introduced in The Liberation of Theology.2 Better than any previous work, the recent effort witnesses to the author's range of interests and strengths, 1 Originally published in the Spanish as El hombre de hoy ante Jesus de Nazaret (Madrid: Ediciones Christiandad, 1982): Vol. I. Fe e ideologia; Vol. II/1 and 2 Historia y actualidad: Sinopticos y Pablo; Vol. II/3 El Cristo de los ejercicios espirituales; Vol. II/4 Lineas actuates de interpretacion de Jesus de Nazaret. English translation Jesus of Nazareth Yesterday and Today, tr. John Drury (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books) : vol. 1 Faith and Ideologies (1984); vol. 2 The Historical Jesus of the Synoptics (1985); vol. 3 The Humanist Christology of Paul (1986) ; vol. 4 The Christ of the Ignatian Exercises (1987); vol. 5 An Evolutionary Approach to Jesus of Nazareth (1988). 2 The Liberation of Theology, tr. John Drury (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1976). For earlier efforts at political and social theology, see A Theology for Artisans of A New Humanity, tr. John Drury (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books): vol. 1 The Community Called Church (1973); vol. 2 Grace and the Human Condition (1973) ; vol. 3 Our Idea of God (1973) ; vol. 4 The Sacraments Today (1974); vol. 5 Evolution and Guilt (1974). 233 234 JOEL ZIMBELMAN including theology and philosophy, hermeneutics and critical social theory, linguistic theory, and biblical studies. Continuing analysis and assessment of liberation theory, and Segundo's recent effort in particular, is warranted for at least three reasons. First, Jesus of Nazareth and particularly its first volume, Faith and Ideologies, clarifies Segundo's constructive project. The volume reasserts much that is already familiar to Segundo's past readers : a deconstructive hermeneutic; the elaboration of the concepts of faith and ideology; and an interpretation of the relationship of faith to praxis, efficacy, and liberation. But it also breaks new and creative ground as it begins to construct the foundations of a moral epistemology and teleology, a more fully developed theory of value appropriation, and an anthropology grounded in transcendental-existentialist and process categories. One can only appreciate the scope and implications of Segundo's thought in a critical analysis of this recent work. Second, Segundo's ·effort calls for further discussion because of its inevitable influence on the development of other constructive and critical Christian theologies. The visions of " geotheology,'' "world Catholicism," and a "liberating theology" advanced by Latin and North American Catholics are no longer the preoccupations of a peripheral minority but reflect the aspirations of conservative, moderate, and progressive voices in the Christian church. As part of this constructive task, a growing number of contemporary thinkers are addressing concerns or appropriating categories and constructs developed or elaborated by Segundo.8 His theological breadth and sophistication means 8 For discussions of this shift, see Alfred Hennelly, "Today's New Task: Geotheology,'' America 18 (January 1975): 27-29; and Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (New York: Viking/ Penguin, 1989). Those either indebted to or engaged in substantial conversation with Segundo include Matthew Lamb, Solidarity With Victims: Toward a Theology of Social Transformation (New York: Crossroads, 1982) ; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, " Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation," Origins: N. C. Documentary Service 15 (17 April 1986): 713-27; Rebecca Chopp, The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1986) ; Alfred Hennelly, Theology for a Liberating Church: The New Praxis of Freedom (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1989). TltOUGB:T OF JUAN LUlS SEGUNbO, S.J. 235 that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 697 Excellent as Sullivan's book is, it has raised a host of questions which, though it cannot be fairly expected to discuss them at length, much less to resolve, are at the heart of ongoing reflections about the possibility of salvation outside the visible Church. Such questions concern the concrete ways in which God works in the lives of peoples of different religions, the unique and normative (...) role of Christ in the history of salvation, the function of non-Christian religions as mediations of salvation, and so on. And the debate on these issues rages on among Catholic as well as non-Catholic theologians! One wishes that Sullivan had given a fuller account of this debate which is central in interreligious dialogue. More directly connected with the method and approach of the book itself are the questions of dogmatic development and the hermeneutics of doctrines. To put it more concretely, was Leonard Feeney, with whose ironic fate the book opens and ends, simply expressing the ancient doctrine of the deposit of the faith concerning salvation in the Church in a negative and imperfect fashion? Or was he (and more importantly, popes and official teachers of the faith) wrong in affirming the exclusiveness implicit in the formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus (which apparently they did)? H the latter, then the issues of infallible magisterium and dogmatic ' development ' raise their ugly heads, and one has to come to terms with them. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN Character. By JOEL KUPPERMAN. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. vi + 193. The two theses of J. Kupperman's Character are "that character is of central importance to ethics and that ethical philosophy will have to be restructured once this is understood " (p. 3). The argument has three stages: the first three chapters explicate the notion of character and its relationship to the notions of the self and of responsibility; the next two consider the dominant, rival theories in contemporary ethics; the last two address the topics of value and the place of character in ethics. In two appendices, Kupperman applies the substantive conclusions of the work to the issues of moral psychology and the education of character. A brief review cannot communicate the many nuances of argument and the precise and lucid style that distinguish the book. While certain parts of the argument seem problematic, or at least in 698 BOOK REVIEWS need of further development, the work deserves the attention of professional ethicists and of inquisitive non-professionals. The opening chapter offers the following definition of character: "X's character is X's normal pattern of thought and action, especially with respect to concerns and commitments in matter affecting the hap· piness of others or of X, and most especially in relation to moral choices" (p. 17). In the second chapter, Kupperman considers three views: Enduring Self (ES), No Self (NS), and Constructed Self (CS). The ES appears to be seH-evidently true. But what exactly is the self and where is it to he found? It is difficult to fix the abiding " I " amid or behind the flux of our self-experience. On the other hand, even Hume's skepticism concerning the self presumes that " we know where to look " for it. The " I " is simultaneously obvious and elusive, stable and unstable (p. 40). Thus, both the ES and the NS are problematic, The third option is the Constructive Self, Kupperman holds that, as children, we begin with a "protoseH." The full-fledged self is often the result of orientations, habits, and traits of character developed before one has even begun deliberating about the kind of character one would like to have. Like the self, character is constructed mostly through unreflective choices. But this raises questions about responsibility, which is the focus of the third chapter. If we have not willed to be the sorts of persons we now are, how can we be held responsible for who we are or what we do? Actions do not " flow from character like water from a pipe " (p, 59). Over long periods of time and through a reorganization of large portions of our life, we can... (shrink)

Despite the classic patriarchy of the Roman Catholic church, American Catholic nuns entered into patriarchal bargains that latently gained them access to resources and status within the system. By means of educational advancement and professional careers, encouraged by the male hierarchy as necessary to performing the works of the church, nuns gained both informal power in the system and an awareness of their disadvantaged position. This article analyzes the shifts that have occurred in these bargains during the past (...) 40 years in terms of the submerged networks of feminist consciousness that have existed in Catholic convents for decades. The article concludes with a description of the current crisis occurring within religious orders as they experience a decline in membership and rapidly increasing median ages of members. (shrink)

The Catholic Church’s Social Teaching dealing with mankind is interested in the person and their way of progressing in the world. As John Paul II stated, Catholic Social Teaching “belongs [...] to the field [...] of theology, particularly moral theology” (SRS 41; CA 55). Polish moralists in the area of social moral theological studies undertake the issue of economic-social life, and in particular its anthropological dimension. Moral reflections from the theological point of view allow (...) for an integral grasping of the involvement of the person in the life of society. The goal of the presented report is to show an integral concept of the person as the fundamental dimension of social-economic life. The principle source of this work is comprised of views presented on the given topic by the nation’s moralists during over a dozen lately held yearly meetings of the Section of Polish Moral Theologians. The contents of the report are divided into three parts: (1) the integrated vision of the person as the principle element of evaluating the social-economic order; (2) threats to the human person in the context of contemporary social-political life and (3) pointing to ways of overcoming these threats. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Catholic Postliberalism in the Ruins of "the Catholic Moment"James F. KeatingA historically conversant reader interested in the current state of discourse regarding Catholicism and American politics will find a good amount of familiar discord. He will discover, for example, that the life issues continue to bedevil. Can a Catholic vote in good conscience for an abortion-rights candidate over a pro-life competitor if that candidate is (...) more supportive of other policies in line with Catholic Social Teaching? This issue has, of course, been with the American Church for some time now, even if it has taken on renewed urgency given the coincidence of the overturning of Roe v. Wade with the presidency of Joseph Biden, the second Roman Catholic to hold that office and a recent convert to pro-choice stridency. The action of the Supreme Court and the battles within the various states will ensure that abortion remains at the political heart of American Catholicism for years to come. One can say something similar about other issues, such as immigration, gun control, and economic justice. None of this will be found to be particularly surprising. The same cannot be said, however, of the return of a more fundamental question, one thought to have been settled since the mid-1960s. That question is whether Roman Catholicism and American liberal democracy are incompatible to the extent that Catholics ought to seek, if possible, another constitutional arrangement, one more friendly to the Catholic cause.Our reader would be familiar with the standard narrative that, while the existence of a medieval Church in a modern polity that upholds religious freedom had been a matter of concern since the dawn of the Republic, it [End Page 991] became serious only in the first half of the twentieth century as the number of Catholics and their influence grew. Until that time, American bishops, such as Archbishop John Ireland (1815–1918), made a special point of speaking publicly on the benefits of American freedom for the Church, just as they made clear that Catholics could be as patriotic as any other citizen. If there were tensions, they came primarily from anti-Catholic bigotry and governmental overreach. Things changed, however, when the point at issue was no longer primarily a religious one of Catholic believers infecting their Protestant neighbors with erroneous doctrine, but rather the threat so many Catholics posed to the fate of American freedom itself. In a postwar America concerned with the spread of Soviet communism, Paul Blanshard found a ready audience for his scholarly anti-Catholic diatribes, American Freedom and Catholic Power (1949) and Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power (1951).1 Without much difficultly, he pointed to various statements of Gregory XVI and Pius IX condemning the separation of Church and state, the freedom of religious conscience, and democracy as the best governmental form. To top things off, he had Leo XIII's Testem Benevolentiae, an 1899 letter to the Cardinal Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, warning him and his fellow bishops not to speak of the constitutional arrangement of the United States as a political ideal. While Leo had positive things to say about the American system, his admonition followed the traditional line: while constitutional protections of religious freedom are necessary when Catholics are in the minority, the ideal situation is a state that officially confesses and supports the Catholic religion. Of more recent vintage, Blanshard could quote the response of America's best-known Catholic theologian, Monsignor John A. Ryan, to the question of whether non-Catholics would be permitted to practice their religion in this ideal state:If these are carried on within the family, or in such inconspicuous manner as to be an occasion neither of scandal nor of perversion to the faithful, they may be properly tolerated by the State,... Quite distinct from the performance of false religious worship and preaching to the members of the erring sects, is the propagation of the false doctrine among Catholics. This could become a source of injury, a positive menace, to the religious welfare of true believers. Against such an evil they have a right of protection by the Catholic State... If there is only one true religion, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science by Ann BlairPeter DearAnn Blair. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp. xiv + 382. Cloth, $45.00.Jean Bodin’s Universae naturae theatrum (1596) is the least celebrated of all the major publications by this outstanding figure of the French renaissance. It lacks the apparent political, historiographical, and philosophical relevance of Bodin’s well-known (...) earlier works (the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem of 1566, Les six livres de la République of 1576, and De la démonomanie des sorciers of 1580, all receiving much more attention then as now). Ann Blair focuses our attention on the Theatrum, as a text whose significance for her book exists on at least three interrelated levels: there is its relation to Bodin’s views in the more famous texts; its advantage as a treatise on natural philosophy about whose author we know much more (intellectually) than those of most such works; and in connection with the last, there is above all its value as a distinguished representative of a genre of natural philosophical writings that was prominent in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.It is the third consideration that motivates Blair’s book most centrally. She declares her wish to enrich our view of the history of science with works, like the Theatrum, that were not made by subsequently regarded stars such as Galileo or Descartes; the very typicality of its genre makes the Theatrum, she argues, a valuable window on contemporary understandings of what natural knowledge was and should be about. Bodin’s enterprise possessed a religious core: natural philosophy was for him a tool to be used in shoring up broadly irenical positions (of the kind associated with the Colloquium heptaplomeres, usually attributed, as here, to Bodin). This kind of “natural theology” avant la lettre characterized a good number of different thinkers and writers on natural philosophy in this period, many of them German (besides their discussion here, Blair is considering such people, and their project of pia philosophia, more fully in her current work). It is a subject that, more than anything, stands at the heart of her study.Bodin, rather conventionally, tried to establish a close liaison between natural philosophy and religious knowledge—that is, between those things to be inferred from experience of the natural world and the central dogmas of faith. Less conventionally, he attempted to demonstrate on occasion truths that were far from orthodox. Regardless of whether Bodin was “really” a Catholic or a Protestant (and Blair observes the great interest in the Theatrum shown by German Calvinists in the first few decades after its original publication), his general religious stance was one of accommodation. Thus good philosophizing could demonstrate (in the weak, rhetorical sense of that term) such doctrines as the existence and providence of God; contentious issues, such as the correct interpretation of the Eucharist, were left aside. Nonetheless, Bodin also argued, at such length and with such vigor as to have the propositions condemned by the Catholic church, that human souls and angels (as well as, more usually, demons) were corporeal beings. The importance to Bodin of this position stemmed from its sociopolitical implications: in particular, if human souls were incorporeal, it became unclear how rewards and punishments—necessary sanctions for restoring the social order threatened by the Wars of Religion—could be meted out after death. Curiously, such a view seems to imply that pleasure and pain are inextricably connected to bodies alone. [End Page 363]Among the historiographical strands informing Blair’s approach is recent literature on the “history of the book,” best known through the work of Roger Chartier. Accordingly, Blair discusses the vicissitudes of production of Bodin’s book in its various editions and emissions, and carefully considers, along with the likely reading practices by the aid of which Bodin came to compose it, the various uses to which its first readers put it. Her major interpretive trope is that of the commonplace book. While acknowledging the lack of direct material evidence for Bodin’s use of such a technique as his chief means of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Martin Luther and Buddhism: The Aesthetics of SufferingPaul O. IngramMartin Luther and Buddhism: The Aesthetics of Suffering. By Paul S. Chung. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002. 434 pp.As a member of the Lutheran community (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), I am struck by the fact that Lutheran theologians—referred to as "teaching theologians" when employed by Lutheran seminaries—seem little interested in religious pluralism in general and interreligious (...) dialogue in particular. There are important exceptions, of course, one being Donald Luck of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Ohio. And the most intense and coherent dialogue between Christians and Muslims now taking place in the United States is located at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. But by and large, Lutheran theology seems unengaged with the realities of religious pluralism. Rather than dialogue, "missionology" is the focus of most Lutheran theological encounter with the world religions, which means that most Lutheran conversation with religious pluralism is best characterized as monologue.It's different for most Lutherans sitting in the pews of local congregations. Most lay persons understand that they must live their faith contextualized by their religiously plural neighborhoods. Lutheran laity are interested the religious practices and worldviews of their neighbors because they are in contact with their neighbors everyday. They desire to meet and know the religious "other" not as "other," but as fellow human beings seeking to live in community. My distinct impression, gained [End Page 235] from teaching adult education courses in local congregations (mostly Lutheran and other mainline denominations), is that Christian lay people are usually miles ahead of their pastors, denominational leaders, and teaching theologians in their encounter with the realities of religious pluralism and their desire for dialogue. For these reasons, Paul S. Chung's book, Martin Luther and Buddhism, is important, and I hope it will be the beginning of specifically Lutheran dialogue with the Buddhist tradition. Again, as a Lutheran, I can only say, "It's about time."Chung's goal is twofold: (1) engaging in critical dialogue with the theology of Martin Luther, and (2) Asian pluralistic theology of religions. Specifically, the author, himself a Korean Lutheran pastor and theologian, places Luther's theology of the Cross in dialogue with Buddhist understanding of suffering (duh.kha). His thesis is that what Christianity and Buddhism have in common is their understanding of suffering, albeit each tradition having different approaches and "solutions" to universal suffering. Accordingly, rereading Luther's theology of the Cross in dialogue with Buddhism's take on suffering, its causes, and its resolution is the center of Chung's hermeneutical approach to Luther.Surely, Chung is on the right track. Buddhism's focus on the experience of universal suffering and its resolution is one of its defining features. Chung's reason for placing Luther's theology of the Cross in dialogue with Buddhism lies mainly in the fact that Luther focused on the suffering of God on the cross incarnated in the suffering of the historical Jesus, which he placed in direct contrast to the "theology of glory" of medieval scholastic theology. Chung's claim is that Luther's understanding of divine suffering is a "liberation theology" that needs be contextualized by contemporary struggle for social, economic, ecological, and women's liberation from systemic structures of injustice. Because justice issues are not religion-specific, Luther's theology of the Cross in socially engaged dialogue with Buddhism should be a source of liberation for both Christians and Buddhists.Chung's work stands in a long line of Asian Christians seeking to translate Christian teachings and practices into the religious traditions foundational to Asian cultures, in Chung's case Korean Buddhism and, to some degree, Confucianism. One immediately thinks of Aloysius Pieris's dialogue with Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Seiichi Yagi and Masaaki Honda's appropriation of Mahayana doctrines in their attempts to relate Christian faith to Japanese cultural experience, or Raimundo Panikkar's interpretation of Christian faith through the lenses of Hinduism and Buddhism. All ofthese theologians note that Anglo-European intellectual and cultural traditions are not easily translatable into Asian cultural experience. Because Western forms of Christian tradition are foreign to Asian cultural values... (shrink)

Skene and Parker1 raise a number of concerns about religious doctrine unduly influencing law and public policy through amicus curiae contributions to civil litigations or direct lobbying of politicians. Oakley2 picks this up in the same issue with an emphasis on the Roman Catholic Church’s interest in preventing the destruction of embryos for embryonic stem cell research. Skene, Parker, and Oakley seem to be concerned mostly with religious views having undue influence on public policy. My concern is the negative (...) effect that such Church influenced public policy may have on the progress of the biomedical research that is itself foundational to the debate. Oakley seems to be particularly incensed that, as he puts it: “Those who support a total ban on embryonic stem cell research sometimes talk as if theirs are the only views based on moral principle”.2 What seems to be at issue here though are not the moral principles of the sanctity and dignity of human life, but the application of those moral principles to biomedical research.The Roman Catholic Church has historically defended the sanctity and dignity of human life to varying degrees at different times. Human life for much of the past 2000 years was defined by the Church as the presence of the soul, which was thought at different times to appear at various different stages during development. Only recently, with the advent of modern biology, has the Roman Catholic Church shifted its position to claim that the fertilised egg also qualifies as the right sort of human life.3 It should be noted that this doctrinal change was fundamentally driven by developments in our understanding of embryology and not the process of ensoulment.The Church’s current position on the embryo is thus based not solely on Church doctrine but also on …. (shrink)

Branding has long been seen as an effective means of marketing products. The use of brand-based marketing campaigns, however, has come under intense scrutiny over the past 10 years for its power to facilitate deception and emotional manipulation. As a way of proceeding through the many differing moral assessments, this paper turns for insight to the tradition of writing on social ethical issues within the Roman Catholic Church. The author suggests that Catholic Social Teaching offers (...) a distinctive approach to advertising ethics that charts a middle course between the two poles of the debate on branding. This article introduces readers to the approach to advertising developed within Vatican documents on media, highlighting the basic values at stake and the particular moral norms for advertising that are articulated. The article then applies these values and norms to the case of brandbased advertising, ultimately suggesting that advertisers approach their work through the virtue of solidarity. (shrink)

The Catholic Church’s reflection on and assessment of the Covid-19 pandemic has developed in several areas. Inspired by the tradition of its social teaching, specifically by the values of the dignity of the human person, justice, solidarity, and the common good, a strong sense of responsibility—on the part of all to prevent the spread of the pandemic and care for the affected sick—was called for. This resulted in a series of interventions and documents on the various medical and (...) spiritual issues involved, particularly concerning the vaccines again Covid-19. In this short article, I draw out these insights from the official and universal reference point of the Catholic Church (i.e., Vatican sources in their various expressions and expertise). Interventions from other religions have also played a significant role during the Covid-19 pandemic as exemplified by the close relationship between certain religious actors and the World Health Organization. However, these alternative viewpoints, while important in and of themselves, do not find a suitable place within this work, which focuses on the Catholic Church’s perspective. (shrink)

The ethical implications of the explosion of social media outlets for social work education are explored in this paper. Given that social work education has a dual focus, both of educating students and of socializing practitioners into the profession, the issue of the blurring between what is social and what is professional gains particular salience for both educators and students. Recommendations for educators to ethically address the need to maintain a consistent professional presence online and to (...) avoid potentially harmful dual relationships with students are presented. These recommendations include: abstain from using social media or use only a static professional profile; use only university protected sites to promote collaboration with students in the classroom including all students to avoid any appearance of impropriety; use social media with the utmost discretion mindful of all the risks by creating a very select circle of friends, separating one’s personal site from one’s professional site; develop policies which include not friending any individual student or any current student and inform students about the policies. (shrink)

Under normal circumstances the church would function as an agent of change and transformation, but this article focuses on the church herself that needs radical change if she is to remain relevant in mission and ministry in this current era. Clericalism and the centralisation of hierarchical control can be identified as the root causes of institutional pathology and weakening collegiality. To address clericalism may require the adjustment of seminary training, as in the current system seminarians are nurtured in a sense (...) of separateness, promoting male-ego and feed gender exclusivity and doctrinal self-righteousness. While the seminary was once an instrument of reform in the Catholic Church, established to counter problems such as clerical concubinage and illiteracy, but now it is no longer suitable as it has become the forum that breeds other problems. Priority attention should be paid to purge the church of rampant clericalism, discriminatory scapegoating of gay persons, marginalisation of free thinkers, exclusion of women priests, the perceived moral laxity of family life issues and reception of communion by divorced Catholics without the benefits of annulment. Discrediting the personal authority of the pope is hardly an enlightened option. What ought to be transformed is the centralisation of control and allowing increased localised dominion whereby crises such as sexual abuse scandals could be addressed and solved more speedily and liberally, and limit the need to go to the top for solutions. To wait for centralised, hierarchal structures to deal with urgent issues is not desirable, as speedy accountability is needed to address issues that hurt the church in its entirety. (shrink)

Teaching ethics is crucial to health sciences education. Doing it well requires a willingness to engage contentious social issues. Those issues introduce conflict and risk, but avoiding them ignores moral diversity and renders the work of ethics education irrelevant. Therefore, when (not if) contentious issues and moral differences arise, they must be acknowledged and can be addressed with humility, collegiality, and openness to support learning. Faculty must risk moments when not everyone will “feel safe,” so the (...) candor implied in psychological safety can emerge. The deliberative and social work of ethics education involves generous listening, wading into difference, and wondering together if our beliefs and arguments are as sound as we once thought. By forecasting the need for candid engagement with contentious issues and moral difference, establishing ground rules, and bolstering due process structures for faculty and students, a riskier and more relevant ethics pedagogy can emerge. Doing so will prepare everyone for the moral diversity they can expect in our common life and in practice. (shrink)

Using relevant encyclicals issued over the last 100 years, the author extracts those principles that constitute the underpinnings of Catholic Social Teaching about the employment relationship and contemplates implications of their incorporation into human resource policy. Respect for worker dignity, for his or her family's economic security, and for the common good of society clearly emerge as the primary guidelines for responsible human resource management. Dovetailing these three Church mandates with the economic objectives of the firm could, in (...) essence, alter the firm's nature because profit motivations would be constrained by consideration for worker and societal welfare. Integration of Church teaching with current corporate goals should therefore impact greatly on a variety of human resource policies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System. By AVERY DULLES, S.J. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992. Pp. x + 228 with index. $22.50 (cloth). The catholicity of Avery Dulles's method in The Craft of Theology is best demonstrated by the broad compass of his self-chosen label, "postcritical theology." Postcritioal theology, he states, puts no un· fair demands on the reader to conform to the (...) spirit of the age nor does it imply that previous approaches (precritical, critical, paracritical) are obsolete. Postcritical theology seeks to make the ecclesial character of theology more recognizable than has most Catholic theology since the Second Vatican Council (viii). Postcritical theology takes its cues from a variety of sources: Polanyi's attention to the tacit dimensions of knowing, Lonergan's understanding of the dynamics of conversion, the "sense of the faithful" in Johann Adam Mohler, the recovery of the tradition in John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel, and the postliberal theology of Albert Outler and George Lindbeck. Alongside these more traditionally oriented sources, The Craft of Theology also explores the social and symbolic dimension of ·the divine self-com· munication (22). To this end, Dulles employs Ricoeur's theory of the symbol in order to extract " the latent meaning of the classical doctrine of the hypostatic union " and Habermas's notion of an ideal speech situation in his anthropological analysis of the symbolism of sin as "anti-communicative" (27, 33). Dulles's latest work is a carefully structured synthesis of the typologies and constructive proposals which his readers have encountered in previous works. Even though the twelve chapters were originally composed for different occasions, Dulles intends the work " to have greater unity than a simple collection" (ix). The first four chapters are devoted to questions of theological method, including the develop· ment of fundamental theology or apologetics. The next two chapters deal with Scripture and tradition as sources of theology. The seventh chapter specifies the role of the ecclesiastical magisterium in systematic theology and includes a discussion of " the delicate problem of theological dissent." This is followed by two chapters on the relationship of theology to two cognate disciplines, philosophy and physical science. Without calling for a specifically Christian or Catholic philosophy, 513 514 BOOK REVIEWS Dulles nonetheless raises the question of whether " the intimate connection between systematic theology and the type of metaphysical realism that was embodied in scholasticism, both medieval and modern " can ever be adequately surpassed (ix-x, 133). Chapters ten and eleven pick up the thread of chapter seven by addressing the place of university theology in the service of the Church and the question of academic freedom. The final chapter develops the argument that ecumenism -both interreligious and intra-Christian-is best understood not as a separate branch of theology but as a dimension of all good theology. As in Models of Revelation (1983), his fundamental theology derives principally from a theory of symbolic mediation of doctrines. In The Craft of Theology, Dulles is prudent to address the charge of subjectivism commonly made against his theory of symbolic mediation and analysis of models (50-52). His theory of symbolic mediation, he states, is closer to the symbolical theology of Karl Rahner than to the less dialectical " experiential-expressive " theory exemplified by Schleiermacher 's statement that " Christian doctrines are accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech" (18). As with Rahner, symbolic realism for Dulles rests upon a theological anthropology that takes corporeal existence in a historically constituted, communal body as a real, symbolic expression of the human spirit. Dulles's theory of symbolic communication is supposed to accord greater cognitive import to religious symbols than does the view that symbols are merely expressions of the inner sentiments of the faithful (17-18). In Models of Revelation, Dulles defined the cognitive value of the symbol as surpassing the passing mood of the subject and " giving rise to thought" (137, 153). In The Craft of Theology, however, Dulles frequently reverts to a less nuanced position. Sometimes he equates symbolical theology with critical reflection upon a non-discursive human evocation of an interior state: [R] ecognition of the symbolic or evocative character of revelation can... (shrink)

Christian preaching, the main purpose of which is to educate a person in the spirit of the Christian worldview, should answer the questions of the present, give believers concrete recommendations and patterns of behavior in life situations. At the same time, the sermon is based not on the personal opinion of a priest or pastor, but expresses a confessional point of view on one or another problem of modern life facing believers. This point of view, as a rule, is formulated (...) in special documents of confessions, the totality of which is called "Social doctrine of the church". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Dialogue:Moving ForwardThomas Cattoi (bio) and Carol S. Anderson (bio)The San Francisco Bay Area is an interesting location in which to ponder Buddhist-Christian relations. The website UrbanDharma.org lists more than a hundred institutions affiliated with Buddhist organizations—a density higher than in the Beijing metropolitan area. Some of these centers have a clearly ethnic and denominational character, serving a predominantly immigrant population. Some, like many of the Tibetan organizations, function (...) as cultural centers but also attract a considerable Western clientele. Others, like the San Francisco Zen Center or Spirit Rock in Marin County, belong to the first wave of historical Buddhist centers established in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. A few more are trying to establish new forms of enculturated Buddhist practice that are more suited to Western sensitivities and are only loosely affiliated with the cultures of traditional Buddhist societies. At the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, alongside schools training Jesuit priests, Dominican friars, and Protestant ministers of various denominations, the Institute of Buddhist Studies prepares students from different walks of life to work as Buddhist chaplains in hospitals and educational institutions. Buddhism, in its various forms and manifestations, is no longer an exotic import from a little known “elsewhere,” but is part and parcel of the local spiritual landscape.For students and scholars practicing in such a diverse environment, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that for the greatest part of its history, most of Christendom was largely unaware of the very existence of the Buddhist tradition. While Clement of Alexandria and Jerome do mention Buddhism, and references to its practice can be found in the writings of medieval travelers such as Marco Polo, most European Christians lived in a world where the role of the religious “other” was played by Judaism and Islam. It was only in the early modern era, with the beginning of the European colonization of Asia, that non-Abrahamic religious traditions gradually entered the intellectual horizon of Western intellectuals and scholars. Around the year 1740, a French Jesuit named Jean-François Pons (1688–1752), otherwise remembered as a pioneer of Sanskrit studies in the West, came to the startling realization that many of the religious practices that missionaries and travelers had come across in regions as far apart as China, Japan, Nepal, and Mongolia were actually all parts of the same religious tradition. In his correspondence with his fellow Jesuits in France, he coined the [End Page vii] term Bauddhamatham—teaching of the Buddha—to refer to what would eventually be known as Buddhism. In the early years of the nineteenth century, many Sanskrit and Tibetan texts started to be catalogued and translated into the major European languages, bringing about the first encounter between Europe’s intellectual elites and this utterly foreign religious tradition.The nineteenth century also saw the beginning of a more existential engagement with the Buddhism tradition, albeit one that was limited to intellectual elites who were highly critical of institutional Christianity. In his work The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer found in Buddhism many echoes of his own philosophical insights. Many of the members of the Pāli Text Society, established in London in 1871, had rejected Christianity and thought they would find in Buddhism a moral framework in a society where the normativity of the Christian tradition had already started to be questioned. At the same time, we also see the beginning of the first comparative studies, where Buddhism and Christianity are compared from a speculative and doctrinal perspective. In 1880, Ernest de Bunsen claimed that if one made an exception for the crucifixion, many of the fundamental moral teachings of Buddhism and Christianity were virtually identical. This was just the beginning of a slew of similar studies.While the Christian churches were initially uninterested or outright skeptical about engaging in dialogue with non-Christian religious traditions, this attitude started to shift in the decades following the Second World War. The Second Vatican Council, for instance, marked an important shift in the Catholic Church’s attitude toward other religions. Before the 1960s, Catholic theology departments did not offer courses on other religious traditions or on interreligious dialogue... (shrink)

Author analyses the teaching of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church over importance of democratic elections. The principles, which Church proposes as background to participation in elections, are explored.

Paul Natorp, John Dewey and Sergius Hessen are usually considered to represent three different philosophical and pedagogical doctrines developed at the turn of the Twentieth century. These are, respectively: neo‐Kantianism, pragmatism and humanistic pedagogy widely rooted in Wil‐ helm Dilthey’s philosophy. Contrary to this common classification, Hessen himself described his own concept of pedagogy as an applied philosophy as a continuation of Natorp’s thought. However, Hessen also noted that an approach very similar to his one can be found in John (...) Dewey’s theory. In this case, the fundamental issue is to determine the relationship between philosophy and pedagogical theory and practise. The main part of this article will identify the specificity of this relationship: the specificity implied by the concept of pedagogy understood as applied philosophy. The concept of pedagogy, understood as an applied philosophy in its theoretical and practical aspects, is the basis for critical reconstruction of social life in general. It is the opinion shared by all three philosophers that this type of reconstruction should be based on the communal dimension of basic social interactions, that is, on the communal dimension of work. The only way for the renewal of a different form of social life leads through regaining through them an essential communal dimension of human work. All three authors agreed that to regain the communal dimension of human work by another form of social interaction would only be possible when certain conditions are present; that is, when work will be permeated by individual creativity. The presence of such conditions shall be ensured by the educational community. Thus, the educational community should be a starting and end point for any critical social reconstruction as well as for the pedagogy understood as an applied philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 161-181 [Access article in PDF] Translating Liberty in Nineteenth-Century Japan Douglas Howland A concept of liberty was but one element of the Japanese engagement with western political theory after the Perry intrusion of 1853, when United States warships led by Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to negotiate a commercial treaty with the U.S. This scandal, which ultimately led to the Meiji (...) Restoration of 1867, immediately reorganized scholarly priorities among those intellectuals interested in western knowledge and technology. Western learning under the "feudal" Tokugawa regime (1603-1867) was organized as "Dutch studies" because the Dutch were the sole European trading partner of Japan from 1641 to 1854. Dutch studies paid particular attention to European mathematics, astronomy, geography, natural history, and the Dutch language. The Perry intrusion, however, prompted the rise of "western learning": language study quickly expanded to include English, French, and German; and the content of learning emphasized European law and political philosophy. But the concepts that defined this content of western thought did not translate well; they did not fit naturally with existing Japanese concepts. Hence the translation of western political theory necessitated the invention of new terminology with which to engage the new political language. Accordingly, Japanese efforts to translate western political theory must be understood as both problems of language, the creation and circulation of new concepts, as well as problems of action, and the usage of new concepts in debates about the programs and policies to be implemented in a "westernizing" Japan. 1 [End Page 161]The scholars who figure in this essay--Kato Hiroyuki, Tsuda Mamichi, Nishi Amane, Kanda Takahira, Fukuzawa Yukichi, and Nakamura Keiu--were all key figures in the intellectual passage from Tokugawa to Meiji, from Dutch studies to western learning. They began their careers in the Tokugawa institute for Dutch studies; most traveled to Holland, England, or the United States during the 1860s; and after the Meiji Restoration they became intellectual and educational leaders under the new administration. 2 In addition to founding private academies or filling prominent government posts, they created the first literary society, the Meiji Six Society (named after the year of its founding, the sixth year of the Emperor Meiji's reign, 1873), which sponsored public debates, published these proceedings in the Meiji Six Journal, and so hoped to promote enlightenment among the Japanese people. In addition to introducing public debate to Japan, this transitional intelligentsia was involved in the fundamental work of creating the language in which to raise issues of constitutional form or personal freedoms. In their translations of western texts and original texts about western law and political philosophy they created the neologisms to translate western concepts and participated in the standardization of terminology that made western knowledge coherent.The two concepts discussed in this essay, which were among the first to figure prominently in intellectual debates of the early 1870s, were "liberty" and "religion," the pairing of which in the debate over freedom of religion from 1872 to 1874 was crucial in defining a Japanese conception of liberty. Although religious liberty arose in western Europe as a result of the conflict between church and state authorities, the issue in Japan was a direct challenge to the new central government's attempt to decree a national Shinto doctrine in 1868. As the sole case of unanimous support for personal liberty among the transitional intelligentsia, the debate over freedom of religion determined key distinctions between private and public behavior that defined the Japanese conception of "liberty" for the duration of Japan's imperial constitution (to 1945). As a right of individuals, liberty resided in the exclusively private domain of thought, conscience, and religious faith. As a public matter the people's liberty necessarily gave way to government maintenance of public order.In part this essay responds to the work of Japanese philologists who study the translation and standardization of modern Japanese vocabulary. Much of this work is based on dictionaries; a word is said to have become standard as it appears in greater numbers of Japanese-Chinese, Japanese... (shrink)

Introduction -- Overview of the contemporary global context : life stories -- Data on poverty, hunger, and inequality in an age of globalization -- The goals and structure of this book -- Development theory and practice : an overview -- Origins of the concept of development -- Modernization theory -- Modernization theory and U.S. aid policy -- The impact of modernizationist development -- Structuralist economic theories -- Dependency theories -- Basic needs approach -- New international economic order -- Alternative development (...) -- The impact of reformist thought on development policy -- Neoliberal resurgence and structural adjustment policies -- Current debates in development studies -- The failures of modernizationist development : a closer look -- The impacts of colonialism and slavery -- Post-WW II development policies and the third world debt crisis -- Consequences of debt and structural adjustment -- Responses to the debt crisis -- United States opposition to social change in the third world -- Summary of major structural influences on the third world -- Catholic social teaching and development -- CST prior to Pope John XXIII -- Early reflections on development : John XXIII and Vatican II -- The pivotal contributions of Paul VI, the Latin American bishops, and justice in the world -- John Paul II : the centrality of solidarity -- The social ethics of Benedict XVI -- Summary of catholic social teaching on development issues -- Catholic social teaching and political economy : neoconservative and radical critiques -- Neoconservative reflections on CST -- Radical reflections on CST -- Evaluation of neoconservative, radical, and CST views -- Grassroots critics of development and neoliberal globalization -- Rejecting the quest for development - Vandana shiva : the violence of development and reductionist science -- Further issues in the development/globalization debates -- Reclaiming the commons : the positive visions of development critics -- Catholic social teaching, the radical tradition, and development critics -- Grassroots action and policy alternatives -- Grassroots organizations in the third world : an overview -- The impact of grassroots organizations -- Development policies : follow the nic model -- Alternative development policies -- Differing visions : alternative development vs. regeneration -- Prospects for the adoption of alternative policies -- Re-envisioning C atholic social teaching -- The contributions of CST to the development debate -- Enhancing Catholic social teaching -- Structural analysis of capitalism -- Women, development, and CST -- CST, modernization, and cultural diversity -- CST and ecology - CST, grassroots movements, and social struggle -- The church and social change -- Social criticism and pioneering creativity : how Christians can constructively address issues of development and globalization -- Education -- Lifestyle choices -- Responsible purchasing -- Responsible investment -- Organizing, activism, and aid provision -- Direct service/solidarity -- Responsible parenting -- Applying CST in the life of the church -- Concluding reflections -- Theological epilogue: The path of discipleship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Awe-Inspiring, in Truth, Are the Mysteries of the Church":Eucharistic Mystagogy and Moral Exhortation in the Preaching of St. John ChrysostomDaria SpezzanoWe entrust to You, loving Master, our whole life and hope, and we ask, pray, and entreat: make us worthy to partake of your heavenly and awesome Mysteries from this holy and spiritual Table with a clear conscience; for the remission of sins, forgiveness of transgressions, communion of the (...) Holy Spirit, inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, confidence before You, and not in judgment or condemnation.—Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom"Awe-inspiring, in truth, are the mysteries of the Church; awesome, in truth, her altar."1 St. John Chrysostom was a founding figure in the development of the Byzantine mystagogical tradition, not only because he is associated with the Divine Liturgy,2 but also because of his preaching on [End Page 413] the Eucharistic mysteries, woven throughout the scriptural exegesis of his liturgical homilies.3 The themes he sounded, in particular the continual exhortation to his hearers to be mindful and properly disposed for the terrible and awe-inspiring mysteries, would become part of the fabric of Byzantine liturgical spirituality. But Chrysostom's influence extends to the West as well, for instance to Thomas Aquinas, who, it is said, would rather have Chrysostom's homilies on Matthew than be lord of Paris,4 and who shares with Chrysostom the title of "Doctor of the Eucharist."5 While the promotion of reverence in liturgical celebration and the demands of social justice are sometimes perceived today as being in tension with each other, for Chrysostom they are inseparable. In accord with the Second Vatican Council's teaching in Sacrosanctum Concilium that the Eucharist is "the source and summit of Christian life," the Catechism of the Catholic Church chooses a quote from Chrysostom to instruct that "the Eucharist commits us to the poor."6 It does so with good reason. Chrysostom urgently and vividly preaches to his wealthy congregation that not only must they approach the altar with awe and holy fear, but they must care for the poor in order to receive the Eucharist worthily. Here his characteristic moral exhortations to almsgiving find their deepest source: without care for the poor, one eats and drinks the Eucharist, like Judas at the Last Supper, to one's own condemnation.Chrysostom's Eucharistic MystagogyChrysostom's preaching on the Eucharist is profoundly rooted in Scripture and shaped by his theological and pastoral concerns. Mystagogy, as Jean [End Page 414] Daniélou has pointed out, is an exegesis of the rites: "It consists of reading in the rites the mystery of Christ and contemplating under symbols the invisible reality."7 The mystagogy of the Greek Fathers is shaped by local traditions, as is their scriptural exegesis. While the distinction risks being overdrawn, Alexandrian mystagogy is characterized by anagogy, while Antiochene mystagogy—including Chrysostom's—by a focus on the relation of the liturgy to the historical events of Christ's earthly life.8 Unlike his contemporary Theodore of Mopsuestia, however, Chrysostom is not concerned to assign to each liturgical action a specific mimetic meaning. Chrysostom everywhere "reads in the rites the mystery of Christ," exemplifying Daniélou's observation that this mystery is the one object of the Christian faith, subsisting under different modes:It is prefigured in the Old Testament; it is accomplished historically in Christ's life on earth; it is contained in the mystery of the sacraments; it is lived mystically in souls; it is accomplished socially in the Church; it is fulfilled eschatologically in the heavenly kingdom.9For Chrysostom, the entire liturgy has a "mystery character," because it is "so much an anamnesis of the saving work of Christ and a revelation of heavenly reality that its earthly form is wholly irradiated by these aspects."10 Chrysostom uses the term "mystery" in relation not only to the sacraments, but more fundamentally to the entire economy of redemption, flowing from the Paschal mystery, in which they operate. The mystery is a secret except to faith; it expresses a relation between, on the one hand, a historic event of salvation history or a material element of the... (shrink)

The vision of cooperation between the Catholic Church and the state authorities was firmly established in the consciousness of the Polish society in the interwar period. In the collective memory there is no recollection of sharp disputes between the Church and the political and social activists about the scope of recognition of Catholic principles as the basis for lawmaking. Before 1926, the government officials were not directly involved in the disputes. This changed after the May Coup, which (...) is discussed in the text. The source basis is constituted exclusively by documents produced by the state and Church offices and institutions regarding the presence of religious education and teaching in schools. Of particular cognitive value are the state documents and drafts of legal documents, memoranda of the Polish Episcopate and correspondence between state authorities and the School Committee of the Polish Episcopate and the ordinary bishops of individual dioceses. Programs published by educators and education officials associated with the ruling politicians are also an important element for learning about the views of state officials on the place of religion in the Polish school system. Apart from propaganda works written by communist educators, there is virtually no literature on these issues. Consequently, this text is a source dissertation. Thus, according to a principle accepted in the humanities, it uses the methods of analysis and synthesis. Even a cursory review of the documentation on state-church relations in matters of education and upbringing reveals the change in their character after the May Coup. Without destroying the legal order adopted in Poland, those in power and the officials subordinate to them, through a series of minor changes, tried to subordinate the Church to the state, hoping that it would become a tool for building a new citizen — the subject of the state. The sharpness of the sharpness of disputes was particularly evident in the matters of teaching and education during the 1932 school reform and the enactment of the new constitution in 1935. (shrink)

I want to argue…that to read Rossetti’s religious poetry with understanding requires a more or less conscious investment in the peculiarities of its Christian orientation, in the social and historical particulars which feed and shape the distinctive features of her work. Because John O. Waller’s relatively recent essay on Rossetti, “Christ’s Second Coming: Christina Rossetti and the Premillenarianist William Dodsworth,” focuses on some of the most important of these particulars, it seems to me one of the most useful pieces (...) of scholarship ever written on the poet. The essay locates the special ground of Rossetti’s religious poetry in that peculiar Adventist and premillenarian context which flourished for about fifty years in mid nineteenth-century culture. In point of historical fact—and it is a historical fact which has enormous significance for the aesthetic character of Rossetti’s poetry—her religious verse is intimately meshed with a number of particular, even peculiar, religious ideas.18 From the vantage of her strongest poetry, the most important of these ideas were allied to a once powerful religious movement which later—toward the end of the century—slipped to a marginal position in English culture.The whole question [of premillenarianism] was overshadowed first and last by the Tractarian Movement, Anglo-Catholicism, and the resulting Protestant reaction. And we can see in retrospect that all through the years [1820-1875] the theological future actually belonged to liberal, or Broad Church, principles. By the middle 1870s, apparently [the issues raised through the premillenarian movement] were no longer very alive.19­­In this context we may begin to understand the decline of Rossetti’s reputation after the late nineteenth century, when she was still regarded as one of the most powerful and important contemporary English poets. Her reputation was established in the 1860s and 1870s, when Adventism reached the apogee of its brief but influential career. Thereafter, the availability of religious poetry was mediated either through the Broad Church line or through the High Church and Anglo-Catholic line . The premillenarian and evangelist enthusiasm which supported Rossetti’s religious poetry had been moved to the periphery of English culture when the canon of such verse began to take shape in the modern period.To read Rossetti’s poetry, then, we have to willingly suspend not only our disbelief in her convictions and ideas but also our belief in those expectations and presuppositions about religious poetry which we have inherited from those two dominant ideological lines—Broad Church and High Church and Anglo-Catholic. Waller has drawn our attention to the general premillenarian content of her work, and I should like to follow his lead by emphasizing another crucial and even more particular doctrinal feature of her poetry. 19. Waller, “Christ’s Second Coming,” p. 477. For a general discussion of millenarianism in the early nineteenth century, see J. E. Harrison, The Second Coming, Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850 . Jerome J. McGann is the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of Humanities at the California Institute of Technology. His two most recent books are The Romantic Ideology. A Critical Investigation and A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism . His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again” and “The Meaning of the Ancient Mariner”. (shrink)

In the individual, social, and political dimensions, the shaping of the liberal tradition has met up with and will continue to meet up with the presence of the Roman Catholic Church with its own philosophy. Yet has this always led to sharp conflict between Catholicism and liberalism? Has the social thinking of the Church evolved in its assessment of the liberal tradition and vice versa? Have there been points in common in the two systems of thinking? In (...) contrast, where have sparks appeared? Does Catholicism support the stability of liberal democracy? A response to these questions comprises the primary aim of the work at hand. Herein is a presentation and appraisal of one of the most interesting and continually lively clashes, accompanied by a portrayal of both Catholicism and liberalism. Analysis will be conducted at the level of social philosophy, through incidental political practice, and from the historical perspective – all of which together will enable illustration of the dynamic relationship between Catholicism and liberalism. Due to the scope of liberalism, the analysis of the Catholicism-liberalism relationship will be limited solely to the philosophy of politics and of economics. Such a restricted social philosophy involves the following issues: the genesis, essence, and characteristics of social policy; its ultimate justification or lack thereof; the relationship between the political society and its members; the types of structured political communities; the genesis, nature and duties of political authorities; the definition of the law, its foundations and limitations; the essence and properties of economic life; types of ownership; and, finally, the relations taking place between politics and economics. The problem inherent in an encounter between the social thinking of the Roman Catholic Church and liberalism appear to be especially meaningful in the context of the Polish discourse regarding the new order, its theoretical bases and institutions, projects for the realization of individual freedom, and the superiority or inferiority of values in today’s pluralistic universe. This matter is of great consequence and significance – not only intellectually but above all practically – and manifests itself in political, economic, and cultural life. Nonetheless, for decades now, Polish research into this issue has been entangled in occasional conflicts of a worldview and political nature. In turn, there is a lack of understanding and objective theoretical reflection on the subject. In fact, there are no publications which attempt to understand liberalism and assess the validity of the accusations against it. The vast amount of literature devoted to this problem most frequently opens, right from the start, with arguments stemming from either a Marxist or Catholic apologetics. The liberal credo is not identified with the philosophy of politics, but rather the theory of pro-capitalist economics. This, as a result, not only misrepresents the crux of liberalism, but also narrows the catalogue of responses by the Church on this very topic – starting with the encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) by Pope Leo XIII. In order to resolve this problem, the analysis will be rooted in the broader philosophical and historical context. In other words, it will look into liberalism on the one hand, and into those Church documents in which that institution first spoke of liberalism on the other. The discussions and deliberations contained within this volume are laid out in an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction includes the theoretical bases and methodological assumptions of this work, taking into account the principles of philosophical reflection and analysis. The fundamental chapters present the evolution of an attitude towards liberalism in the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church – from Pius VI to John Paul II – taking under consideration the key moments and figures in the development of liberalism (e.g., John Locke, John Stuart Mills, John Rawls). In this time period four stages of a Catholic reference to liberalism will be distinguished. The first three constitute: 1) animosity and condemnation (from Pius VI to Pius IX), 2) criticism accompanied by tolerance (from Leo XIII to Pius XII, and 3) criticism accompanied by limited concord (from John XXIII to Paul VI). Today, and with increasing frequency, voices are heard speaking of the teachings of John Paul II as marking a new caesura in the Catholic-liberalism relationship. Hence it is worth re-evaluating and re-analyzing if such opinions are justified. The volume closes with a conclusion comprising an attempt to answer the following questions. Are Catholic accusations addressed at liberalism correct or not? Has liberalism turned out to be a philosophy open to criticism and capable of modification as the weak points in liberal theory and practice are disclosed? Can Catholic values enrich the liberal political order? Can Catholic moral-religious norms, introduced into the realm of political responsibilities, endanger the foundations of the liberal system? Reviewing the evolution of Catholicism as well as liberalism, has Catholicism found its place amidst the pluralistic harmony of liberal democracy? Kształtowanie się tradycji liberalnej napotykało i będzie napotykać na promowaną przez Kościół rzymskokatolicki filozofię, zarówno w wymiarze indywidualnym, społecznym, jak i politycznym. Czy zawsze prowadziło to do ostrego sporu między katolicyzmem a liberalizmem? Czy społeczna myśl Kościoła ewoluowała w swojej ocenie tradycji liberalnej i vice versa? Czy w obu systemach myślowych istniały punkty wspólne? Czego dotyczyły ogniska zapalne? Czy katolicyzm wspiera stabilność liberalnej demokracji? Te pytania sprawiły, że głównym celem niniejszej pracy jest prezentacja i ocena jednego z najbardziej interesujących i wciąż aktualnych sporów, a pośrednio przedstawienie dwóch filozofii – katolicyzmu i liberalizmu. Analiza tego sporu prowadzona jest na płaszczyźnie filozofii społecznej, incydentalnie – praktyki politycznej w ujęciu historycznym, co umożliwia ukazanie dynamiki relacji między katolicyzmem i liberalizmem. Z powodu zakresu liberalizmu w analizie relacji katolicyzm – liberalizm praca ta ogranicza się jedynie do filozofii polityki i filozofii gospodarki. Tak okrojona filozofia społeczna interesuje się następującymi problemami: genezą, istotą i cechami społeczności politycznej, jej ostatecznym uzasadnieniem lub brakiem takowego oraz relacjami między społeczeństwem politycznym a jego członkami, typami ustrukturyzowania wspólnoty politycznej, genezą, naturą i zadaniami władzy politycznej, definicją prawa, jego podstawą i ograniczeniami, istotą i właściwościami życia gospodarczego, rodzajami własności, stosunkami zachodzącymi między polityką a ekonomią. Problem spotkania myśli społecznej Kościoła katolickiego z liberalizmem wydaje się szczególnie znaczący również w kontekście polskich dyskusji o tworzącym się ładzie, jego teoretycznych podstawach i instytucjach, projekcie realizacji indywidualnej wolności oraz wyższości i niższości wartości w dzisiejszym, pluralistycznym uniwersum. Problem ten ma olbrzymie znaczenie nie tylko intelektualne, ale przede wszystkim praktyczne, objawiające się na poziomie życia politycznego, ekonomicznego i kulturowego. Jednak od wielu dziesięcioleci polskie studia nad tym zagadnieniem są uwikłane w doraźne konflikty o charakterze światopoglądowym i politycznym, natomiast brakuje rozumiejącej i obiektywnej refleksji teoretycznej na ten temat. Właściwie nie ma publikacji próbujących zrozumieć liberalizm i ocenić zasadność stawianych mu zarzutów. Ogrom literatury poświęcony temu problemowi najczęściej zawiera prace już na wstępie wychodzące z pozycji apologetycznie marksistowskich czy katolickich. Utożsamia się w nich credo liberalizmu nie z filozofią polityki, lecz z teorią ekonomii prokapitalistycznej, co nie tylko zakłamuje istotę liberalizmu, lecz także zawęża katalog wypowiedzi Kościoła na jego temat, rozpoczynając je od encykliki Rerum novarum (1891) Leona XIII. Aby sprawę wyjaśnić w niniejszej książce, analiza jest umieszczona w szerszym kontekście filozoficznym i historycznym, czyli „ma wgląd”, z jednej strony w liberalizm, z drugiej – w dokumenty Kościoła, w których on po raz pierwszy zabrał głos w sprawie liberalizmu. Rozważania zawarte w niniejszej pracy podzielone są na wstęp, cztery rozdziały i zakończenie. We wstępie prezentuję podłoże teoretyczne i założenia metodologiczne rozprawy, przestrzegając zasad refleksji i analizy filozoficznej. Rozdziały przedstawiają ewolucję stosunku do liberalizmu w społecznej nauce Kościoła rzymskokatolickiego, od czasów Piusa VI do Jana Pawła II, z uwzględnieniem ważniejszych momentów rozwoju myśli liberalnej (John Locke, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls). W omawianym okresie wyróżniam cztery etapy katolickiego odniesienia do liberalizmu: pierwszy – wrogości i potępienia (od Piusa VI do Piusa IX), drugi – krytyki, ale zarazem tolerowania (od Leona XIII do Piusa XII), trzeci – krytyki, choć i ograniczonej zgody (od Jan XXIII do Pawła VI) i czwarty – powszechnie oceniany jako przełom w katolickiej percepcji liberalizmu (pontyfikat Jana Pawła II). Całość rozważań zamknie zakończenie, którego treścią jest próba odpowiedzi na pytania: czy katolickie zarzuty pod adresem liberalizmu są trafne czy też nie? Czy liberalizm okazał się filozofią otwartą na krytykę, zdolną do modyfikacji pod wpływem ujawniania słabych stron teorii lub praktyk liberalnych? Czy wartości katolickie mogą wzbogacić liberalny porządek polityczny? Czy też katolickie normy moralno-religijne, wprowadzone w obręb obowiązków politycznych, zagrażają fundamentom ustroju liberalnego? Czy zarówno wobec ewolucji katolicyzmu, jak i liberalizmu katolicyzm odnalazł się w pluralistycznej harmonii liberalnej demokracji? (shrink)

Catholic health care has long been a key place where the Church embodies its social doctrine. However, the moral methodology that shapes Catholic bioethics relies on an act-based approach to decision making, which is rooted in the pre–Vatican II manualist tradition, focusing primarily on clinical issues related to the beginning and end of life. This essay argues that given the doctrinal status of Catholic social thought, Catholic bioethics must revisit its scope and methodology. (...) It proceeds in three steps: a meta-analysis of traditional Catholic bioethics, validating the claim made above; an overview of the limited literature published since 1980 engaging Catholic bioethics and CST; and a map of a Catholic bioethics informed by CST generated from a dual starting point. The essay concludes by focusing on both the places where marginalized persons encounter Catholic health care and the ethical issues presented, including race, health care disparities, immigration status, and gender inequality, as well as the interrelated perspective of the common good, expanding the array of issues to include environmental degradation, unions, health care financing, and more. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 695 Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response. By FRANCIS A. SULLIVAN. New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992. Pp. i + 224. $12.95 (paper). The subtitle of the volume describes well its purpose and content. The author surveys in chronological order, beginning with the earliest ecclesiastical writers and ending with John Paul II, the various interpretations of the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus. (...) What prompted Sullivan to undertake a historical rather than systematic approach in his volume is the conviction that without taking into account the historical and cultural factors that conditioned the formulation of this axiom it is impossible to make sense of the shift from the exclusivism of the pre-Vatican II Church to the inclusiveness of Vatican II and post-Vatican II theology with regard to the salvation of those who are not members of,the Roman Catholic Church. The principle that guides Sullivan's attempt to disclose the meaning embodied in the manifold formulations of the axiom " there is no salvation outside the Church" is Pope John XXHI's distinction between " the substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith " and " the way in which it is presented," and the more recent emphasis of the Declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) on the historical condition affecting the expression of divine revelation. As a historical study, Salvation Outside the Church? is an excellent continuation of Louis Caperan's two-volume work Le probleme du salut des infideles, which is still unavailable in English. Obviously an over· view of almost two thousand years of theological discussion of this problem has to be highly selective if one is not to miss the forest for the trees, and Sullivan's choice of authors as well as of historical periods for discussion is judiciously made. If a complaint is to be made in this regard, it is that he has focused too much attention on magisterial documents, and Roman documents at that, and not enough on contemporary theology. True, he devotes a chapter to the theory of " anonymous Christians," espoused mainly by Karl Rahner (chapter 10), and defends it against criticisms by Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hans Kiing, and Max Seckler. He is well aware that Rahner's theory has become the position of mainstream Catholic theology and cites authors who support it in one way or another (p. 181). However, a book that claims to present " the Catholic response " to the problem posed by the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus should, one would expect, have discussed in greater detail the various positions of contemporary Catholic theologians on this issue. It is to be fervently hoped that Sullivan will take up this task in his next book. 696 BOOK REVIEWS Sullivan's basic thesis is that the substance underlying the various negative formulations of the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the positive belief ithat " God has assigned to the church a necessary role in the accomplishment of his plan for the salvation of humanity " (p. 12). Such a thesis is, of course, neither new nor startling. Hans Kling had already said that much in his 1967 Die Kirche (English translation, p. 318). What is helpful in Sullivan's account is his explanation of both the intent of those who affirmed this axiom with its apparent exclusiveness and the limitations that prevented them from perceiving the universality of God's saving grace. With regard to intent, Sullivan shows con· vincingly that the patristic usage of the axiom is intended as a warning for those Christians who had separated themselves from the catholica either by schism or by heresy that they must remain within it in order to be saved, whereas ithe medieval usage is intended to warn pagans and Jews that they should accept the message of the Gospel now that it had been announced to them. With regard to limitations, Sullivan singles out two: the geographical and the psychological. On the one hand, there was before the discovery of America the conviction that the world was identical with Christian Europe. This belief led theologians to postulate that the Gospel had been spread throughout the world. On the other hand, their ignorance... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ARE THERE ECONOMIC RIGHTS? I 1]HE ISSUE OF whether there are any so-called " soia ~-~cono~ic r~~~ts," in addition to the so-called " civilpohtical nghts, · is not a new one. In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations app11oved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms that both those two types of claims are human rights. Since then some philosophers have been debating the issue of (...) whether claims to basic social-economic goods are rights at all. American Christians and theologians in general have not paid much attention to this until only recently, when the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued,a pastoral letter on Catholic social teaching and the U.S. economy (entitled Economic Justice for All), which gained much attention from the media. In this pastoral letter the U.S. Catholic bishops also affirm that every human being in every society has economic rights against all members of society, all private-sector institutions and government.1 As a Christian philosopher, in this paper I want to probe into the issues of whether there are economic rights from a Christian and philosophical perspective. This paper is intended to he both critical and constructive-on the one hand I shall criticize some positions which I find unconvincing, and on the other I shall attempt to articulate my own thought on this issue. Some clarification of terminology is necessary before I embark on my project. Ever since Wesley Hohfeld's monumental 1 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for AU: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1986), see sections 79-84. 703 704 PING-CHEUNG LO work in 1919 (Fundamental Legal Conceptions) it is a general practice among philosophers to distinguish claim-rights from liberty-rights. Throughout this paper, unless otherwise specified, the word "right" is used to designate claim-rights. Moreover, I am concerned only with moral rights rather than with legal rights, and largely with in rem rights (i.e., rights against individuals in,society or the world at large) rather than with in personam rights (i.e., rights against determinate individuals ). Therefore by "a right to x" I mean a morally valid or justified claim to x against individuals in society or the world at large as my entitlement or my due. Furthermore, the term " human right " is used to denote those moral rights that a person, simply as a human being, can have. They are usually supposed to include both civil-political rights (e.g., right to life, liberty, security) ·and social-economic rights (e.g., the right to food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, work, social security). As far as I know, there have been two major philosophical moves in criticizing the ideas of social-economic rights. The first one is set forth by Maurice Cmnston in the sixties.2 Besides giving a "political objection," he raises a three-fold "philosophical objection": social-economic rights do not possess the characteristics of (i) practicability, (ii) universality, and (iii) paramount importance, which he deems are the si,ne qua non of human rights. Though his criticisms are rather crude, most recent advocates of social-economic rights take them seriously and attempt to rebut his views.3 I do not have 2 Maurice Cranston, "Pope John XXIII on Peace and the Rights of Man," Political Quarterly 34 (Oct.-Dec. 1963), 380-90; "Human Rights, Real and Supposed," in Politioal Theory and the Rights of Man, ed. D. D. Raphael (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 43-53; "Human Rights: A Reply to Professor Raphael," in ibid., pp. 95-100. s D. D. Raphael, "Human Rights, Old and New," in ibid., pp. 54-67; David Hollenbach, Olaims in Oonftict: Retrieving and Renewing the Oatholic Human Rights Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 31-33; John Langan, "Defining Human Rights: A Revision of the Liberal Tradition," in Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus, ed., Alfred Hennelly and John Langan (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1982), ARE THERE ECONOMIC RIGHTS? 705 the time to go into these arguments here. I just want to,say that I find... (shrink)

The article of Volodymyr Moroz ―Normative character of the principles of Social doctrine of Catholic Church: an evolutional way of formation - is devoted to the analysis of Catholic Church’s Teaching over the human dignity. Author explores also the process of settling of the principles of common good, subsidiarity and solidarity in the Teaching of Catholic Church. Mentioned principles are investigated in the case of orientation to provide a reverence to transcendent human dignity. Author sums up (...) that all three principles have normative character. That is to say the principles are called to guarantee certain coordination between the social reality and the verities, which were declared by the Social doctrine of the Church. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TROELTSCH'S TREATMENT OF THE THOMIST SYNTHESIS IN THE SOCIAL TEACHING AS A SIGNAL OF HIS VIEW OF A NEW CULTURAL SYNTHESIS * WENDELL s. DIETRICH Brown University Providence, Rhode Island WITH RESPECT TO the new Western cultural synthesis he envisages in the final phase of his authorship, Ernst Troeltsch counts the medieval Thomist synthesis both as a formal model and a source of content. That is the principal (...) contention of this essay. Or to look at the matter from the perspective of successive phases of Troeltsch's authorship, Troeltsch 's treatment of the Thomist synthesis in The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches 1 provides a signal of his subsequent view of a new cultural synthesis. In arguing that case, I propose to focus first on Troeltsch's exposition of the Thomist synthesis in The Social Teaching, taking into account as well that running commentary which Troeltsch simultaneously presents on the magisterially sponsored repristination of the Thomist synthesis in late nineteenth century neoThomism. That task completed, I will lay out briefly my under- *An earlier version of this paper was contributed as a presentation at the Nineteenth Century Theology Working Group, AAR Annual Meeting, 1991. I would also like to express my gratitude to the participants in my Brown University graduate seminar on Troeltsch's The Social Teaching, 1989-90: Vaughn Allen, David Aune, James Gubbins, Mark Hadley, and Richard Wright. They aided me immeasurably in clarifying my mind. 1 Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, Gesammelte Schriften Band 1 (Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1965). Hereafter cited as Die Soziallehren. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon, 2 vols. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931). Hereafter cited as The Social Teaching. 381 382 WENDELL S. DIETRICH standing of Troeltsch's conception of a new contemporary cultural synthesis, especially the version of that conception worked out in Der Historismus und seine Probleme.2 Furnished with this grasp of what Troeltsch means by a new cultural synthesis, I will assay an appraisal of how the treatment of the Thomist synthesis in The Social Teaching is a signal of things to come and an appraisal of the limited but genuine ways in which Troeltsch counts classic Thomism and neo-Thomism as formal model and source of content for his new cultural synthesis. But before the main thesis can be plausibly defended a major objection must be dealt with head on. On the face of it, it is highly improbable that Troeltsch should count the medieval Thomist synthesis as either a formal model or a source of content for a present-day Western cultural synthesis. After all, the medieval cultural synthesis articulated conceptually by Thomas is the culmination and classic statement of the " unitary conception of truth ", a conception Troeltsch repudiates in the name of modern historical consciousness and the awareness of a plurality of truths. On behalf of the Western medieval church, Thomas asserts that Christian truth is unitary, that the magisterium authoritatively teaches it, and that the truths of reason and revelation are one in a hierarchically ordered synthesis. Troeltsch rejects such claims. A comparable issue is at stake in the case of Troeltsch's appraisal of the magisterially sponsored revival of neo-Thomism in the nineteenth century. Troeltsch is very much aware of the disputes between the neo-Thomists and the Roman Catholic Modernists. He is positively attracted to the work of Alfred Loisy as a major representative of the Modernists and registers substantial agreement between Loisy and himself in their common espousal of "the modern historical conception of truth ".8 2 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, Gesmnmelte Schriften, Band 3 (Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1961). Hereinafter cited as Der Historismus. 3 For a detailed analysis of Troeltsch's appraisal of the dispute between Loisy and Harnack over the "essence of Christianity", see Wendell S. Dietrich, "Loisy and the Liberal Protestants," Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 14 (1985) : 303-311. TREATMENT (ff THE THOMIST SYNTHESIS 383 I. Troeltsch on the Thomist synthesis But despite rejection of a unitary conception of truth, Troeltsch does count the medieval Thomist synthesis both as a formal model and as a source of content for a contemporary cultural... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference Edited by James F. Keenan, and: The Social Mission of the US Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective by Charles E. CurranDaniel CosacchiCatholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference EDITED BY JAMES F. KEENAN Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011. 337 pp. $40.00The Social Mission of the US Catholic Church: A Theological (...) Perspective CHARLES E. CURRAN Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011. 196 pp. $29.95To read both Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future and The Social Mission of the US Catholic Church is to take a whirlwind tour—theological, historical, and geographical—through the Roman Catholic ethical tradition. Both volumes present wonderfully rich material and invaluable resources for the study of Christian ethics. Charles Curran and James Keenan are two of the foremost Catholic ethicists in the United States today. Keenan’s case is to be applauded for convening the 2010 conference in Trento, which brought together some six hundred Roman Catholic ethicists from around the world. His book, which assembles that conference’s thirty-one plenary addresses, does justice to this tremendous feat. Curran, for his part, has produced a text that focuses acutely on the Church in the United States and will benefit ethicists for years to come.Keenan uses the introduction to Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future to provide an overview of the Trento conference and its attendees and proceedings. Keenan expertly identifies a common theme among the 240 diverse papers at the conference, noting that ethicists “always begin with the premise that there is a deficit in our location, and, therefore, we need to work together to find a way to remedy it” (6). What follows in the remainder of the book boldly moves toward remedies for many of the world’s ills. A few of these essays deserve particular mention.The conference and the collection of essays share the basic organizational principle of looking to the past, the present, and the future of Catholic theological ethics. Unsurprisingly, the Council of Trent played a foundational role in understanding the “past” of Catholic moral theology. Laurenti Magesa [End Page 216] (Kenya) explains that the African experience of the Council of Trent has remained largely unchanged since the conclusion of that council: “The Catholic Church in Africa is essentially a Tridentine church” (57). This essay makes clear that in Africa, the dominant voices are Western males. The missing voices, then, are given attention by Antônio Moser (Brazil), Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike (Kenya), and Bryan Massingale (United States). Massingale’s essay was most impressive, addressing the role of racism in our culture and concluding that Catholic ethicists “need to lament, mourn, and grieve our history” (121). This, he claims, is both a fruitful way to act in the present and a hopeful way to look toward the future.In focusing on the present, the strongest subsection of the book attended to political ethics. Here David Kaulemu’s (Zimbabwe) essay, “Catholic Social Teaching at a Crossroad,” has the potential to open the eyes of any reader. He writes, “It is frustrating and discouraging to the lay faithful to be inspired by Catholic social teaching and yet receive no recognition or support by ‘official’ church structures” (177). This highlights a serious problem to which all Catholic ethicists must attend. As for the future, Julie Hanlon Rubio (United States) points to a tripartite vision for marriage in the twenty-first century that sets high standards not only within the marital unit itself but also for the impact of the spouses on the larger society. Julie Clague (Scotland) presents a wonderful essay on the burgeoning relationship between moral theology and gender.Among the wealth of positive features of this collection is the great geographical diversity of the authors. This affirms that Catholic theological ethics is very healthy throughout the entire world and that on each continent there are voices of women and men willing to contribute fresh ideas to the discipline. In a time when there is so much tension between theologians and bishops, we should also be grateful that there are two essays from members of the episcopacy (Archbishop Bruno... (shrink)

Kevin Murphy’s essay “Christians and the New Food Movement” (Autumn 2011) rightly warns about introducing non-Christian ideas associated with certain environmental movements into church practices. However, the essay embraces several errors that ultimately conflict with the Catholic faith. Catholic social doctrine, rooted in the universality of Christ’s salvific act, requires viewing food, agriculture, and the economy through a moral lens. A refusal to engage in such issues because they might bring the Church into contact with heterodoxy (...) leads to a form of protectionism that embraces a reductionist view of creation and, ultimately, the human person. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.2 (Summer 2012): 217–226. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Poverty is a social problem. Its alleviation has been one of the major issues that occupy a significant place in the scale of preference of developmental policies of several nations, international organizations, church and other interested stakeholders. Thus, the thrust of this work centers on poverty alleviation strategies of selected Churches in Anambra State: namely how this institution participates in some economic activities, skill acquisition programmes, and empowerment programmes, among others in view of controlling the scourge of poverty. (...) The research methods employed here are: both qualitative and quantitative - survey and documentary research methods of data collection. The survey method collects data through designed research questionnaire and oral interview with some respondents respectively, while in qualitative approach is the content analysis of written sources such as books, journal articles and online sources that are relevant to the research. The findings of this research show that poverty is human-induced problem manifested in the mismanagement of resources and other forms of ills. Selected churches in Anambra State has reduced the effects of poverty through its collaboration with the State and Non-Governmental Organizations in poverty reduction programmes. (shrink)