Theological reflection on the problem of consumerism is often guided by the implicit assumption that beliefs and values are the principal causal factors within human action and culture. As a result, the most common tactic for countering consumerism is to contrast its premises and values with those of the gospel. Such an approach comes naturally to theology, a discipline in which the importance of belief is foundational. This approach is inadequate for addressing the problem of consumerism, however, because it overlooks its most fundamental challenge: the commodification of culture. The most pernicious effects of consumerism are manifest not by changes in the “content” of beliefs but in their underlying form. Religious and ethical beliefs are commodified—reduced to objects of exchange and consumption, to shallow, interchangeable commodities. Drawing from the extensive scholarship on the commodification of culture, this essay explores the effects of consumerism upon religious belief and practice. Guided by this analysis it will attempt to reconceive tactics for countering consumerism's negative effects.

Three-fourths of the 180 Centers for Teaching Excellence found in U.S. colleges and universities have been developed over the last decade. Excellence in Teaching has never been discussed more. Yet clarity about what actually constitutes quality in teaching is not at all apparent. This essay suggests a contrast between two ways of conceiving excellence in teaching—an excellence of achievement as compared to an excellence of desire. The one, based on a marketing model of education, stresses measurable outcomes, with an emphasis on the acquisition of information. The other, drawing from themes in the history of Christian spirituality, evokes a wisdom tradition that nourishes unsatisfied desire as a principal goal. In the latter, less importance is ascribed to the teacher's self-conscious need to call attention to his or her particular competence. Set free from “the maintenance of control,” the teacher can be more open to a common search (and excellence) to which everyone contributes.

This article speculates on opening Christology to categories from the comparative study of religion. First, it describes the taxonomical work of scholars like R. Otto, M. Eliade, and G. Van der Leeuw, suggesting how such might be applied to New Testament data. Next, it studies Jesus as a numinous figure, concluding that he manifests the holy in the peculiar modality of love. “Holy Love” to Jesus' signal relation with God. It concludes that such insights are complementary, if not superior, to those from ontological approaches.

The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the College Theology Society naturally turns our focus to what has transpired in these fifty years. In terms of Roman Catholic theology, the two most significant historical realities are the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and the now twenty-five-year pontificate of John Paul II as Bishop of Rome.

In my discipline of moral theology, Vatican II and its document on the training of priests called for the renewal of moral theology with a special emphasis on its Scriptural bases. “Special care is to be taken for the improvement of moral theology. Its scientific presentation, drawing more fully on the teaching of holy Scripture should highlight the lofty vocation of the Christian faithful and their obligation to bring forth fruit and charity for the life of the world.”

John Paul II as pope has written and taught extensively in the area of morality. In the light of the Vatican II mandate to renew moral theology through a greater appreciation of its scriptural roots and bases, this essay will critically evaluate John Paul II's use of scripture in his teaching on morality.

This article introduces the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy to theologians by placing him in critical dialogue with Karl Rahner. It examines how Nancy's deconstruction of Christianity accuses Western reason, including Christianity, of forgetting the body and supporting an ethos of disembodiment. Nancy proposes a new opening of reason (déclosion, “dis-closure”) and a corresponding praxis (“adoration”). This reason and praxis involve an exit from Christianity. Rahnerian essays on matter, spirit, and sacramentality demonstrate that while Christianity has, historically, fallen prey to the pathologies Nancy identifies, it also has thought in terms of something like dis-closed reason and has practiced something like “adoration.” While Nancy's insistence on the need for an exit from Christianity is not necessarily well posed, his deconstruction of Christianity can help Christian theologians as they develop thinking that supports an ethos sensitive to the body—or that keeps the body's sense open.

This essay considers the contribution which spirituality makes to theology and vice versa, using examples from Karl Rahner's work. His spirituality in the sense of lived religious experience is the point of departure for his theological anthropology. Conversely, his theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart critiques and informs a spirituality of the heart of Christ. After discussing the mutual benefits which spirituality and theology provide one another, this paper points out the contemporary relevance of a spirituality of Christ's heart.

This essay analyzes the moral and theological significance of the preoccupation of today's college students with careers and preprofessional training and illustrates how the theology component of the undergraduate curriculum can respond to the moral dilemmas presented by careerism. It contends that careerism is but a symptom of a more fundamental malaise of the social ethos and that by engaging in a critical inquiry into the moral roots of the ethos of liberalism—the ethos that gives rise to careerism—students can be challenged to investigate their own personal career choices in the context of the society in which they live. This can be done successfully only if analytic categories are available that provide a “bridge” between the personal experience of the students and the social experience of the larger society. The Ethics component of the Theology curriculum can provide these categories of analysis. Ethos, narrative, character, and vocation—terms integral to the discourse of Christian Ethics—provide helpful ways of structuring this analysis in the classroom.

The present essay distinguishes two ways to “settle” the problem of evil, “defense” and “theodicy,” as practiced in contemporary Christian philosophical theology. It argues that Christian theology can defend Christian belief from the charge of inconsistency, but that when it attempts to explain why and how God permits or wills evil in his world, it stumbles over denying the reality of evil or the goodness of God. The essay concludes by arguing that the Christian theologian cannot and should not attempt to make Christianity plausible by constructing theodicies but should concentrate on other methods of demonstrating the plausibility of Christianity.

Determining whether, and when, to get one's children vaccinated has become an increasingly controversial decision, often leaving parents fearful of making the “wrong” choice. Part of the challenge stems from the fact that what is rationally optimal for an individual is inherently at odds with the best outcome for the community, meaning that if everyone acted out of self-interest with respect to pediatric vaccines, communal health would suffer significantly. Given these tensions, the issue of pediatric vaccines benefits greatly from the nuanced assessment of Catholic social teaching. Specifically, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace's “four permanent principles” of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity highlight the issues involved and help parents navigate this significant medical choice with a more informed conscience and a greater sense of their moral responsibilities. The end result is a fruitful alignment between Catholic social teaching and ethics in ordinary life.

The article argues that the motivations for Phillips' construal of all theory-making as necessarily foundationalist go beyond the epistemological debate about foundationalism vs. nonfoundationalism and that his construal is rooted in the anthropological assumption that the subjectivity of human persons is inevitably violated by analyses in terms of objective categories that are not derived from the self-understanding of the subjects under study. The article uses the distinction between etics and emics in linguistics and cultural anthropology and a psychoanalytic understanding of the inevitability of transference and countertransference in order to argue that an appreciation of human finitude and contingency should lead Phillips and others to anthropological views in which the inevitability of theory, transference, and the experience of the otherness of oneself and others is construed as not only inevitable but as pleasurable, i.e., as part of the goodness of created human nature.

In the midst of a pandemic, an ongoing global climate emergency, violent white supremacy, economic inequality, and fraying democratic institutions, the work of theologians and religious studies scholars offers a much-needed illumination by attending both to the religious roots of these disfunctions and to religious sources of alternative possibilities. This article argues especially for the importance of religion in providing hope, inspiring unity, warning of perennial human temptations, and encouraging the practices of introspection essential to independent thought. The story of Fr. Félix Varela, Cuban scholar, patriot, and pastor to immigrant Irish in nineteenth-century New York, provides an example of someone whose deep religious faith enabled him to resist common polarizations and to illuminate his time by envisioning and working for a world more just and humane than that imagined by the official Catholicism (or by most of society) in his day.