Classical models of the God–world relationship tend to emphasize the transcendence of God at the expense of God's immanence to the world of creation. Neo-classical or process-oriented models, on the other hand, tend to emphasize the immanence of God within the world process at the expense of the divine transcendence. Using the distinction originally made by Thomas Aquinas between person and nature within the Godhead, the author offers a modified process-oriented understanding of the God–world relationship in which the transcendence of the triune God to creation is assured but in which creatures derive their existence and activity from the divine nature or ground of being along with the divine persons. Ultimate Reality, therefore, is not God in a unipersonal sense, nor the three divine persons apart from creation, but a Cosmic Society of existents, both finite and infinite, who are sustained by one and the same underlying principle of existence and activity.

Recurrent debates about the church and higher education in the United States involve differing understandings of the nature and purpose of the church as well as differing understandings of the university. Catholic colleges and universities remain important but underutilized resources for the American church as it pursues its mission. Institutional, communitarian and servant models of the church must be examined more rigorously before they are used to prescribe changes in higher education. None is without problems. In a pluralistic and free society, a public church,” self-consciously mediating the tensions between Christian integrity, Catholic unity, and civic responsibility, provides an altogether appropriate stance for Catholic colleges and universities as well. It points not to a neat resolution of outstanding difficulties but to ongoing dialogue among the publics to which both church and higher education must address themselves.

Clifford Geertz is acclaimed today to be one of the most important theorists in the anthropology of religion. He has approached the subject-matter of religion from the perspective of a humanist seeking to come to an analytical understanding of the nature of culture as an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in a complex of symbol-systems. This approach, i.e., defining anthropology as a science of meaning-analysis, nurtures the study of culture as a meaning-system. Religion, too, says Geertz, is a cultural system and necessarily conveys meaning. Therefore, both culture and religion are meaning-systems and, we can conclude, both anthropology and theology attempt to analyze systematically these meaning-systems. The interfacing of the disciplines of anthropology (systematics of culture) and theology (systematics of religion) is made possible by the utilization of the category of “meaning” as a hermeneutical key to the understanding of both religion and culture as meaning-systems.

After brief explanations of constructive postmodern science and its epistemology, and the most widely accepted cosmological theory, the Big Bang, this essay explores their potential for theological reflection on the Christian God of creation. Attention is given to the Christian doctrine creatio ex nihilo; concordism of it with the Big Bang is ruled out. The potential for consonance of postmodern Big Bang cosmology with the Christian God of creation is examined. In a revisionist move, an abstract, unipersonal theism is rejected as not true to Christian trinitarian revelation and therefore inappropriate for an exploration of consonance with Big Bang cosmology. Consonance of major elements of cosmic process, made intelligible by postmodern cosmology, with the exocentric Trinity “immanent to the world” is proposed.

A survey of recent Christian literature on the dialogue with Buddhism reveals a conversation which is new in both spirit and content. This article summarizes these new directions in five areas: (1) the methodology of dialogue; (2) the nature of the Ultimate and of religious language; (3) religious experience as an experience of selflessness; (4) the value and need of acting in the world, and (5) the unique, salvific mediation of Jesus and Gautama. In each of these areas, suggestions are offered as to how the new insights from the dialogue with Buddhism might aid in clarifying questions and incoherencies in present-day Christian doctrine and practice.

This article will evaluate five comparatively recent books dealing with fundamental moral theology. Anthologies or books treating specific topics in special moral theology will not be discussed. The purpose is to consider various contemporary approaches to fundamental moral theology and to evaluate these works both in themselves and in their utility as textbooks. The authors to be considered are: O'Connell, Maguire, McDonagh, Häring, and Böckle.

As might be expected there are strengths and weaknesses in all these works. The primary interpretive key to be employed in this article is the Sitz im Leben of the book. The particular Sitz im Leben of each author helps to understand better what the book is trying to accomplish and at the same time serves to indicate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the particular volume.

A number of religious thinkers have uncritically made use of psychoanalytic object relations theory. I argue that this uncritical appropriation is dangerous to religious thought because object relations theorists tend, implicitly, if not explicitly, to deny the reality of the object of religious faith or Mystery. I analyze the defenses against Mystery in object relations theory in order to uncover what is denied by them. This critical analysis allows object relations theory to be reappropriated by religious thinkers as a valuable source of insights into the ways Mystery manifests itself in human life.

Theology of religions, which grounds a theological approach to non-Christian traditions, has become widely dismissed recently as irrelevant, and even challenged to be inimical to authentic dialogue. This article addresses the critiques and defends the viability and even necessity of a theology of religions. It does so by showing how postmodern insights provide the key to break the deadlock previously constraining theologies of religions.

Recent social studies have show that there are, especially among young American Catholics, different conceptions of what constitutes a Catholic. Factors contributing to this new understanding of Catholic identity include religious pluralism and the divergent conceptualizations of catholicity and Catholicism in contemporary theology. As a consequence, different criteria are used to define what it means to be a Catholic. These variations pose serious challenges to religious educators whose task is to shape the religious identity of the students.

The study begins with a survey of the history of the concept of catholicity as well as of the criteria for Catholic identity. In view of the variations in the understanding of catholicity, the work discerns four challenges for religious education with its task of fostering Catholic identity: how to maintain a fruitful balance between Vatican II's recognition of the ecclesial nature of non-Catholic Christian communities and its claim that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of the means of salvation; between Vatican II's call for dialogue with non-Christian religions and its insistence on the distinctiveness of Catholic beliefs and practices; between the legitimate concerns of “communal Catholics” and the necessity for all Catholics to participate fully in the Catholic symbol and ethical system; and between the spiritual and institutional, the invisible and visible elements of the church. The article concludes by suggesting an indirect method to develop and strengthen Catholic identity by means of the “deep structures” of the Catholic faith, with particular focus on Christian doctrines.

The religious epistemology of John Henry Newman offers an avenue, unexplored by scholars, for interpreting moral doctrine today. Although he did not write any work on moral theology, a systematic account of the interaction between conscience and moral law in his writings can illumine foundational concerns about personal morality and episcopal authority in the Roman Catholic Church. In reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment Newman had remarkable confidence in the capabilities and trustworthiness of the personal, historical reasoning of individuals and ecclesial communities alike—a type of reasoning that he recognized as the driving force for the genesis and the application of moral law. Not surprisingly, his concern for historical moral consciousness, with its emphasis upon subjectivity, generated a significant shift from abstractness to concreteness in theological method, a shift that would later influence the thought of Bernard Lonergan. To illustrate the contemporary relevance of Newman's commitment to personal reasoning in theology, his explanation of the legitimate authority of conscience and doctrine provides the basis for an instructive critique of the document On the Interpretation of Dogmas (1989) from the International Theological Commission.

This essay, an autobiographical narrative reflecting on my awareness of racism and white privilege in my theological journey, has not been an easy paper to write. In the last few years, I have become somewhat educated about racism and white privilege. I have to face the reality that I barely recognized the problem of racism in my own somewhat extensive writings and was blithely unaware of my own white privilege.

The references to racism in my writings are very few, and there is never any concentrated discussion of the issue. This lack is especially telling in a moral theologian who often dealt with social ethics. Other theologians because of the focus of their discipline might not have the same opportunities to discuss and evaluate racism.

In my 1982 monograph, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth Century Approaches, I analyzed and critiqued the writings of five figures in Catholic social ethics. The index has seven references to race discrimination and racism. The two most extended discussions (at best, a few pages each) deal with Paul Hanly Furfey and John A. Ryan. Looking back now on what I wrote then, I am both embarrassed and uncomfortable.