bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Strong Enough To Help Spirituality in Séamus Heaney’s Poetry
Authors: Evans John
Published: July 2007

What is one to make of the phenomenon of Séamus Heaney? Widely praised by academics and critics on both sides of the Atlantic, he has held chairs at Harvard and at Oxford, is the subject of an extraordinary number of theses and studies, and in 1996 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In addition, he has a huge and enthusiastic following among the general public, and his latest volume of poetry The Spirit Level was last year on the best-seller list for several weeks, and this year has won Whitbread awards not only in the poetry section but also as Book of the Year.

Heaney has many very obviously appealing qualities as a person. With his traditional Catholic upbringing in a large family, and his still surviving rural background in Co. Derry, he seems an enviably rooted man. Much of his poetry is direct and accessible, and in the lecture-hall or on the radio he is a relaxed and affable presence. Yet alongside the warmth and ease of manner lies a complex and at times agonised character who has searched deeply both into his vocation as a poet and into the function of poetry itself, and some of his own words about this quest may justify referring to it as a truly spiritual pilgrimage; for example, in an article written in 1978 he describes the poetic vocation as requiring ‘a religious commitment to the ever-evolving disciplines of the art, which the poet has to credit as his form of sanctity’, and it is one of Heaney’s most disarming characteristics that he has not shirked from making known the pressures and tensions of his search.
Sölle, Girard and the Religion of Substitution
Authors: Girdwood James
Published: July 2007

In recent years and in separate spheres Dorothee Sölle and René Girard have developed work relating to a theological account of the Cross of Christ which amounts to a strong refutation of substitutionary atonement. Both these thinkers come from distinct backgrounds. Sölle, a political theologian, was a student of Bultmann and has often referred to his importance for her theological development. Girard is not a theologian as such, but rather, a literary critic with strong sociological influences and considers his work to be influenced by Emil Durkheim. Nevertheless there are strong implications in his work for theology and especially christology. These two thinkers are compared here because their work has consequences for theological praxis which carries us beyond the more ‘privatised’ accounts of the Cross of Jesus Christ in many contemporary religious settings.

The work of both thinkers shall be interpreted here and then a discussion on the relevance of that work will follow. This is especially important when it comes to the issue of violence and religion. Violence is used broadly here and refers not only to physical violence, but also to psychological violence within interpersonal relationships and human communities. Both argue against substitution as a christological concept since it reflects sacred or divine violence. Both see the Cross of Christ as a refutation of violence rather than the sacred justification or sanctioning of that violence. It seems, especially in Sölle, that the Cross is intimately linked to the concept of God, as far as Christian faith is concerned. If one perceives God in the face of the crucified, then it is all too easy to think of God as the one who sanctions the violence done to Christ on the Cross.
Mary, Mother of Jesus: Sketch of a Theology
Authors: Grisez Germain
Published: July 2007

Before God created, he knew what he would reveal and how he would save us. So, he included in creation all the realities he would use to make himself and his plan for us known, and to carry out that plan. Among those realities are sex and the interpersonal relationships that presuppose sex. Thus, God created fathers and sons so that he could reveal himself as Father and Son, and call us to be children in the divine family; he created marriage, so that he could faithfully love Israel as his unfaithful wife, make the Church the Lord Jesus’ spotless bride, and promise an unending heavenly marriage feast. He made both motherhood and virginity possible, so that the incarnate Word could be both the Son of God and the son of Mary, whose virginity points to Jesus’ divine origin and personhood, and whose motherhood manifests his humanity.

The Incarnation, considered as the coming to be of the created humanity assumed by the Word, neither began nor ended at the Annunciation. Part of any human individual's make up and identity is having ancestors, living within a tradition, belonging to a community, and sharing its culture. Thus, the whole history of Israel is necessary for Jesus to come to be as the man he is and to live the life he lives. Mary in particular contributes to Jesus’ make up and very identity. To regard her as simply and absolutely other than the Lord Jesus is either to deny the Incarnation or to suppose that a real human individual can be only contingently related to his or her parents—to suppose that each of us could have had other parents while remaining the same individual.
The Shared Journey
Authors: Grainger Roger
Published: July 2007

It has often been pointed out that drama—and theatre, its focused form—can be liberating to people who find themselves oppressed by what might be called ‘restricted personhood’, conditions of individual belonging which make it hard for them to be both independent and cooperative in their relationships with other people. Because of its combination of a definitive structure with a stimulating imaginative freedom, drama helps those contained within narrow personal boundaries, as in depression, or limited by the absence of recognisable structure, a stable and recognisable image of the self as distinct from other people, as in schizoid thought disorder.

These are not the only ways in which psychologically oppressed people are helped by the experience of participating, however sporadically, in an alternative world in which their difficulties no longer exert the same kind of hold upon them. Even those for whom theatricality constitutes a characteristic source of communication about their personal distress—hysteric personalities who act out their problems as an alternative to thinking about them—seem to gain insight from being included in other people’s scenarios. This happens when they take an active part in the proceedings, as in drama, or when the magnetic force of theatre draws them into the action of the play without any conscious effort on their part—unless it be the determination to remain aloof! The most noticeable difference in behaviour occurs among people suffering from what are generally described as anxiety states, particularly social phobias, when the dramatic milieu reproduces the effects of desensitisation techniques within a wider, more realistic context, one which is more easily harmonised with life in the outside world; comprising, as it does, an exercise of imagination in which everyone present co-operates—an interchange of ideas, feelings and expectations which is not merely life-like but is human living.
The Cancellation of International Debt
Authors: Hastings Adrian
Published: July 2007

The success of the Jubilee 2000 Campaign for the remission of the debts of the poorest countries of the world may depend on understanding the implications of certain kinds of unrepayable debt, in a way that relates less to any sort of charity than to an analysis of economic, social and political history. The debts of the poorest countries are unrepayable because of their huge scale in relation to the resources of the debtor, though not so huge in relation to the wealth of the creditors, in most cases the world’s richest countries, principally the G7. We may note to begin with that these debts were largely incurred in the 1960s and subsequent decades by the governments of newly-independent countries, mostly very poor and rather backward, in pursuit of a rapid development in their economies, infrastructure and educational resources, but that this incurring was almost entirely shaped on the advice of the creditors whose apparent expertise, monetary and technical, dominated the whole process. That is to say, western governments, international agencies and private companies presided over a process whereby relatively uninformed politicians in newly-independent countries accepted huge loans for inadequately thought-through projects, oblivious of the long-term consequences for their economies of the need to service such debts in the future. Doubtless the situation was made worse by the corruption and inefficiency of many of the governments concerned, but the effect of such corruption was greatly enhanced by the willingness of western financiers to play along with governments well known for their corruption, the loans of the IMF to Mobutu’s Zaire being just one particularly blatant case.
A Medieval Welsh Dominican Treatise on Mysticism
Authors: Daniel R. Iestyn
Published: July 2007

The aim of this paper is to draw to the attention of readers not conversant with Welsh the significance and importance of a work little known at present outside Wales but deserving of a far wider readership. This is the anonymous medieval Welsh prose treatise on mysticism called Ymborth yr Enaid (Sustenance of the Soul), the third and sole surviving book of a larger work called Cysegrlan Fuchedd (Holy Living). Ymborth yr Enaid has several claims to distinction. First, it is the only example of a medieval Welsh treatise on mysticism, and for that reason, as well as its intrinsic merits, it is important in the context of medieval vernacular mystical writings. Second, it is the work of a man who was not only a considerable theologian and philosopher but also a very gifted artist. Third, the work represents a unique fusion of native Welsh bardic learning and mainstream scholastic theology, a fact which is not only remarkable in itself but also, in this case, far-reaching in its implications for the Welsh prose literature of the period generally, both religious and secular, not least with regard to such fundamental questions as the dating, provenance, and authorship of much of it. Ymborth yr Enaid is a work rich in variety and pregnant with significance.
The Wasteful Steward
Authors: Lee Martin
Published: July 2007

The traditional division of Luke’s Gospel between chapters 15 and 16 conveys a hidden meaning to the reader: a meaning which was not intended by Luke himself who did not make the division. The meaning is roughly: now we have finished with Jesus’s parables on forgiveness; now we are moving on to another topic, the right use of money; here are a couple of parables on that issue.

Luke gives no signal in his text that he sees a change of subject at this precise point. There are signs of a shift at verses 9 and 14 of chapter 16, but this leaves open the possibility that the parable of the wasteful steward might be linked in its meaning to the three parables of chapter 15.

In a sense the parables of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) and the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) are also about money, but everybody agrees that looking after money properly is not the point of these parables. The point of the lost coin story is brought out in verse 10. As regards the prodigal son, the final saying of the father in the story gives the meaning: ‘It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found’ (Luke 15:32). This directly answers the complaint of the Pharisees that Jesus receives sinners and eats with them (Luke 15:2).

The very next verse is: ‘He also said to the disciples...’ Luke 16:1). The natural way to read this is: here is a follow up story on the same theme, but directly aimed at the situation of the disciples rather than the complaint of the Pharisees.
‘They are as Angels in Heaven’: Jesus' Alleged Riposte to the Sadducees (Mark 12: 18–27; par. Mt 22:23–33, Lk 20:27–40)
Authors: Robinson Bernard P.
Published: July 2007

I have long been puzzled by the Gospel prediction that at the resurrection I shall become like an angel in heaven. What does it mean, and did Jesus really say it? What follows is an attempt to settle the matter. I shall be arguing that the passage in its original form envisaged a non-corporeal existence (contrary to the view of some recent writers), but that it does not go back to Jesus.

After routing the Pharisees and Herodians and turning on the scribes, Mark’s Jesus in 12:18-27 slaps down the Sadducees. The Sadducees, who disbelieve in the doctrine of a resurrection, argue that Moses would never have prescribed levirate marriage (Deut 25:5-10) if he had believed in an afterlife, because of the confusion it would cause in extreme cases, such as that of a woman who married seven brothers in succession.1 Jesus defends the doctrine with the hard saying, ‘They are as angels in heaven’ (12:25), and goes on to argue for the doctrine of the resurrection on the strength of what to the present-day reader is very tendentious exegesis of an Old Testament passage: the fact that God calls himself ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ in Exodus proves that the dead rise.

My prime purpose here is, as I have said, to examine the meaning of the words ‘They are as angels in heaven’ and to see whether it is likely that they go back to Jesus. It will be necessary, however, to look at the passage as a whole. The words attributed to Jesus in Mk 12:24-27 are:

(24) This is surely why you are deceived—because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God. (25) For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in maniage, but are as angels in heaven. (26) As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in [the passage known as] the Bush, how God spoke to him saying, “I am the God of Abraham and [the] God of Isaac and [the] God of Jacob”? (27) He is God not of the dead but of the living. Therefore you much deceived.
Prepapal Influences on John Paul II's Thought
Authors: Grondelski John M.
Published: July 2007

Any attempt to understand the various influences which have shaped the thinking of Pope John Paul II on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination must reckon with the 32 years of Karol Wojtyla's priesthood prior to his papal election in 1978. Indeed, in total honesty, one must also probe the 26 years of Wojtyla's youth and early adulthood prior to his ordination November 1, 1946. Someone with even a basic knowledge of the thought of Karol Wojtyla has to acknowledge the profound degree of continuity between the prepapal thought of Karol Wojtyla and the papal thought of John Paul II. Unfortunately, Karol Wojtyla's prepapal thought remains a neglected field of study, less so among philosophers than among theologians in the United States, but still a field worthy of more attention than it has received. In this essay I want to discuss some of the influences of Wojtyla's thought during those Polish years, influences which in my judgment have left lasting marks on his thought. I identify seven such factors, though I would not claim that this list is exhaustive. These seven factors are rather convenient points around which to arrange the prepapal influences on John Paul Il's thought. These seven are: (1) the interwar Polish ethos; (2) Polish literature; (3) Carmelite mysticism; (4) Neoscholastic Thomism; (5) Lublin Thomism and phenomenology; (6) interwar and postwar Catholic thought in Poland; and (7) the Second Vatican Council.
Agreement and Disagreements: Thomas Reid and Emmanuel Lévinas
Authors: Purcell Michael
Published: July 2007

The prospect of meetings provokes a variety of responses: dread, despondency, lethargy, scepticism, cynicism, and, occasionally, hope and the prospect of progress. Much of the natural aversion, it seems to me, centres on the inherent capacity of meetings to engender disagreement. Disagreement, however, so often ignores yet still rests upon a more fundamental agreement among participants, an agreement which very often only comes to the fore, discretely, when the air of the meeting clears and the assembly adjourns for lunch. By reflecting upon Emmanuel Lévinas and Thomas Reid, this paper argues that more attention, and attentiveness, needs to be given to the proto-agreement upon which any subsequent (dis)agreement rests.

Lévinas opens Totality and Infinity by simply stating in the Preface that ‘[e]veryone will readily agree... (on conviendra ais?ment...)' and then proceeds to argue the priority of ethics, with its thought of the infinite, over knowledge understood as a counterpart to ontology’s reductive comprehension of the other to the same. The problem, however, is that not everyone does readily agree with Lévinas, as is evident in Derrida’s criticism of the rationality of Lévinas’ position. In Violence and Metaphysics, Derrida draws attention to ‘the theoretical incoherence of the notions of pure infinity and absolute otherness, or exteriority.’ Like a ‘square circle,’ the concepts of an ‘absolutely other’ or an ‘otherwise than being’ are empty intuitions and are meaningless. Lévinas’ relation with absolute alterity is a thought which one cannot think, a logical contradiction inviting a sceptical response.
Why did the crowd think St Peter was drunk? An exercise in applied sociolinguistics
Authors: Crystal David
Published: July 2007

... And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others mocking said, They are filled with new wine’. But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, ‘Men of Judaea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day ... ’

People have puzzled over the nature of the miracle reported in Acts 2 for centuries, and the passage is especially intriguing if you are a linguist. Did Peter really find himself speaking in languages he did not know?
Jesus and the Star Folk
Authors: Echlin Edward P.
Published: July 2007

As science finally eliminates the moon as a living habitat telescopes probe ever further for extraterrestrial vitality. NASA expects, barring terrestrial catastrophes, to probe Mars every two years eventually recovering Martian rocks for laboratory investigation. These, with Martian fragments already found in Antarctica, may soon resolve whether or not life has existed, lives now, or will evolve on that frigid, thin atmosphered planet. The European Space Agency anticipates launching early next century an ‘Interferometry Observatory’ to seek signals of life from relatively earthlike planets. These explorations from both sides of the Atlantic, with advances in astronomical science, the popularity of space fiction, art, and para-religious phenomena make certain that, for the foreseeable future, people will wonder about extra terrestrial life, its possibilities, its traces, its evolutionary potential, and its unnoticed presence even now.

Humans have wondered about star folk for a surprisingly long time. In the golden age of Greece philosophers debated the possibilities of a plurality of worlds including planets with intelligent life. In the 5th century BC Pythagoras thought the moon, visible from earth then as now, was inhabited. So did Epicurus and famously somewhat later the prolific essayist and biographer Plutarch. Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle dismissed pluralism. But some early church Fathers, including Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Jerome, were open to possibilities of stellar life. Aquinas, like Augustine, thought this earth alone was habitable but resolutely affirmed Divine omnipotence. Three years after Thomas’ death the Bishop of Paris (Etienne Tempier) in 1277 fuelled speculation about extraterrestrials by condemning the proposition ‘that the First Cause cannot make many worlds’.
Early Voices for Justice
Authors: Finn Richard
Published: July 2007

Preachers often find it difficult to make themselves heard. Humbert of Romans emphasised the need for a measured delivery in a strong voice, but getting a hearing has always been more than a matter of mere audibility. The first Dominican chapels were small, built on the cheap in the expectation that the friars would find a welcome and a pulpit in others’ churches. They had not reckoned on the hostility of parochial clergy. It was soon discovered that they would have to build large churches of their own. From its earliest years the Order of Preachers had to adopt new ways of communicating the Gospel, or go unheard. A certain ingenuity and willingness to copy a good idea is traditional for us, where we do not decline. In Florence not only the church but also the piazza outside Santa Maria Novella would have to be enlarged after 1245 to accommodate the crowds who attended the open air sermons. And now the Dominican Family has its presence on the Internet.
The Parish, the Bible and Everything Else: Scripture and Our Common Quest to Make Sense
Authors: Davies Gordon F.
Published: July 2007

A metaphor is implied when one speaks of a person of “culture”, a “cultivated” person. The word “culture” here derives from agriculture, the tilling and planting of the soil to yield a harvest of nourishing things.

Culture in this broad sense means simply, as Jacques Barzun defines it, “the interests and abilities acquired by taking thought.” Any thoughtful person is potentially a person of culture. Culture is not bookish or remote, not the province of the idle, the rich or the overeducated. On the contrary, it is essential to a meaningful life.

The Church clearly has a mission in the world of culture in the broad sense of ‘taking thought’ about things that matter. But such discussion often neglects the fact that most adult Mass-goers commonly relate to the Church through their parish. Since parish life is how most people experience the Church, one can legitimately ask what it is about parishes that touches culture. In what way do they carry on as communities, not only of the heart and spirit, but also of the mind?

How do laity work in the world, as Gaudium et Spes mandated them? How do parish priests “interpret the signs of the times” as the Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests directs? Paul VI said throughout Evangelii Nuntiandi that we must pay attention to the culture in which we immerse ourselves and not react to it passively but creatively. How, at the broadest level?

Whatever the activity of the parish, whatever the spirituality of the laity and priests there, Scripture is a part of their experience.
Difference and Otherness: A Non‐Western Conversation
Authors: Dawson Andrew
Published: July 2007

In the opening chapter of the book On Naming the Present, David Tracy engages with three “conversations” upon “difference and otherness” currently on stream in the West. Reflecting upon the “bourgeois subject” of modernity, the “communal subject” of anti-modernity and the “nonsubject” of post-modernity, Tracy concludes that the wealth of insight offered by these conversations still falls short of supplying the “Western centre” with the hermeneutical perspective necessary to a contemporary discernment of God’s presence among us. Holding such a perspective to be had subsequent to a multiplicity of conversations taking place, Tracy remarks upon the West’s need to “listen to other [i.e., non-western] conversations” which transcend the interpretative framework of our modern, anti-modern and postmodern narrative traditions. Only by opening ourselves to the discourse of those engaged “in the concrete struggle for justice against suffering and oppression and for total liberation” will we in the West be allowed “once again” to hear “the healing and transformative message of the Christian gospel.” (p. 18)

Responding to the findings of Tracy, and guided by his subject-centred focus, the following material endeavours to sketch the contours of a conversation currently under way among the Latin American community of liberation theologians. Focussing upon a theological understanding of the human subject as person, this particular conversation offers a valuable source of insight to those in the West who are concerned to ensure that the subjectivity which our own discourses narrate remains free from cultural solipsism and ever open to the novum by which the Divine is so often encountered in our own context.
The Decline And Fall of the Second Millennium‐Final Chapter or New Beginning for Christianity?Alexander Robertson Lecture, 1998
Authors: Grey Mary
Published: July 2007

Introduction: Choosing Disneyland instead of Promised Land?

I begin by putting the question to you: is it not true that Disneyland has become not only our Euro-N. American playground but a metaphor for contemporary culture? That is, without any sense of criticising culture's need for leisure and—maybe theologians need more play and less books—nor to ignore the efforts made by Euro Disneyland to become environmentally politically respectable—but to see such glittering theme parks as one symptom of a cult of the superficial, a selling short of humanity in terms of our dreams and our hopes for the future. Harvey Cox began to hint at this so many years ago, in his book Seduction of the Spirit, when he warned us that Disneyland has no tomorrow, no future to offer: it offers only brighter, more technologically sophisticated and more luxurious versions of today. And now, when confronted with the most extravagant theme park of all, the Millennium Dome, the existence and contents of which are, to put it mildly, contentious, is it not timely to reflect on the meaning of this cultural artefact in terms of its highly ambiguous promise in the context of the end of a century and the end of a millennium?

My argument in this lecture is that the characteristics of this waning millennium offer parallels with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and the onset of the Dark Ages. (You probably remember Alasdair MacIntyre's call for a new St Benedict in this, the new Dark Ages of Europe).
The Latest Vatican Statement on Christianity and Other Religions
Authors: Hick John
Published: July 2007

Last year the Vatican issued a document, Christianity and the World Religions, prepared by its International Theological Commission and approved by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document arises from a recognition that ‘The question of the relations among religions is becoming daily more important’, and that circumstances today ‘make interreligious dialogue necessary’. Accordingly, the Commission sets out to ‘clarify how religions are to be evaluated theologically’ by offering ‘some theological principles which may help in this evaluation’. And the Commission adds that ‘In proposing these principles we are clearly aware that many questions are still open and require further investigation and discussion’ (3-5).

Although the Report’s title continues the traditional conceit that Christianity is not itself one of the world religions, these opening statements suggest a tentative and relatively undogmatic approach which contrasts with the 1996 address by Cardinal Ratzinger himself, in which in presenting the traditional absolutist position he attacked two theologians extensively by name, seriously misrepresenting their views as a result of not having read their writings for himself. His Eminence’s failure to check the accuracy of the tendentious secondary source on which he relied is all the more surprising in view of the accurate and up-to-date section on the state of the discussion, based on a wide knowledge of the existing literature, in this Report of his own Theological Commission. Here all the main competing schools of thought, both Catholic and Protestant, are included and discussed. The Report was first drafted in 1993 and its expertise must have been available to the Cardinal, had he wished to have more reliable information.
Sexing the Trinity
Authors: Loughlin Gerard
Published: July 2007

For George Batailie (1897-1962) the world is ‘purely parodic'. Each thing we see is ‘the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form’ (Batailie 1985: 5). For Batailie, everything in the world is ultimately relatable to everything else, everything can be substituted for another thing, in a ceaseless process of metaphoric exchange. It is the circulation of language that makes this possible; and since it is possible in language it is possible in the world(s) that language constitutes. The coupling of words performs the copulation of bodies.

For Batailie, parody utterly eroticises the world, so that in the running of the ‘locomotive’s wheels and pistons’ he sees the world's ‘two primary motions’ of ‘rotation and sexual movement'. In the image of the steam engine's pounding pistons and turning wheels, he sees the coupling of animals and the movements of the planets, always moving from ‘their own position in order to return to it, completing their rotation'. These ‘two motions'—the thrusting of sexual frenzy and the circling of the stars—are ‘reciprocally transformed, the one into the other', so that the turning of the earth ‘makes animals and men have coitus’ and—since ‘the result is as much the cause as that which provokes it'—the coupling of animals and men turns the earth (Batailie 1985:6).

In this article I want to trace the similar parodying of the erotic in the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar. While Batailie couples the sun and moon with the sea, with clouds and plants, with the coitus of animals and the ‘amorous frenzy’ of men and women (Batailie 1985: 5)
Von Balthasar and the Dialogue with Karl Barth
Authors: Quash Ben
Published: July 2007

Karl Barth suits the role of a kind of theological Petruchio. Petruchio, you will recall, bursts upon the stage in The Taming of the Shrew, with the ‘shrew’ herself, Katherina, in his sights. He is determined to win the right to the hand of a maiden whom he construes as hostile, just as Barth (the early Barth at least) saw the theological establishment representing all the arrogance and vanity of a liberal theology in thrall to bourgeois complacency. He invades this hostile world in the name of the Word of God; he elects to be ‘rough, and woo not like a babe’, as Petruchio puts it. And as much of the theological establishment in Europe at the beginning of the 1920s reeled back in shock at Barth’s onslaught in The Epistle to the Romans, so Katherina is thoroughly taken aback by this

‘ ... one half lunatic A mad-cap ruffian and a swearing Jack,

That thinks with oaths to face the matter out’. (II i)

Petruchio will not deal with Katherina on her own territory. He whisks her away to his own remote and inhospitable house, and then turns her every expectation on its head. This is ‘crisis wooing’. Just as, in the early Barth, for the world of the creature to cross over the threshold into the divine world would entail its destruction and immolation, because of the utter difference of God’s ways and humanity’s ways, God’s eternity and humanity’s time, God’s holiness and humanity’s sin, so Katherina’s entrance into Petruchio’s house is entry into an environment in which all her expectations and routines tire altered.
‘Great Cemeteries Under the Moon’: Bernanos and the Spanish Civil War
Authors: Cervantes Fernando
Published: July 2007

It is not often that a single work of literature can be earmarked as a watershed in its author’s intellectual development, but Les grands cimitieres sous la lune seems to offer an almost incontestable case for such an honour. Before its publication in 1938, its author, Georges Bernanos, had been widely known as conservative royalist who had had no qualms about openly supporting Charles Maurras and L'Action franqaise, even after their condemnation by the pope in 1926. Thus it was only to be expected that a book by Bernanos, inspired by the Spanish Civil War, would at least echo the staunch support that Maurras and his followers were giving General Franco. Yet Les grands cimitieres was not only bitterly critical of Franco and the Falange, but it also wasted no opportunity to launch some especially vitriolic attacks on Maurras himself, attacks which signalled a definitive break with the French conservative establishment. How could Bemanos’ outlook and central convictions have undergone such a radical transformation?

I shall argue that to pose the question in such terms can prove highly misleading. For if it is true that Les grands cimiti?res marks a watershed, it is no less true that it was primarily the scandal that the book caused among Bernanos’ French readers, rather than any fundamental change in Bernanos’ basic thinking, that caused such a watershed. Indeed, as the emphatically reluctant tone of the book attests, Bernanos himself was acutely conscious of this danger. ‘I am not a writer,’ he tells us, ‘The mere sight of a blank page fills me with anguish.”
Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999 IV — Francisco Vitoria: The Rights of Enemies and Strangers
Authors: Ruston Roger
Published: July 2007

Under the heading ‘Vitoria, Founder of International Law’ Blackfriars of October 1946 devoted a whole issue to the Spanish Dominican who had died 400 years earlier. The timing could not have been more appropriate: what one might call the ‘legal audit’ of the Second World War was in full swing. Uppermost in the minds of the contributors were the Nuremberg Trials (verdicts delivered that month). Article 6 of the Tribunal Charter defined crimes against ‘humanity’ (the contemporary, secularized version of natural law) in terms that would have been recognizable to Vitoria, and indeed—via 400 years of development—owed much to his original concept of the law of nations. Then there were the atomic bombs used the previous year. The end of the world war had left a legacy of guilt about the practice of destroying whole cities by strategic bombing, culminating at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This put the principle of non-combatant immunity—fully integrated with just war theory for the first time by Vitoria—at the centre of the arguments for and against the new weapons. Further, the revival of international law in the first half of the twentieth century had issued the previous October in the United Nations Charter and would lead in 1948 (just 50 years ago last month) to the signing of the Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention; and three years later, in 1949, there was to be the first of the Geneva Conventions on the limitation of warfare.
John XXIII and Just Cause for Modern War
Authors: Kane Brian M.
Published: July 2007

Although other ages have seen a multitude of wars, in the twentieth century, we have developed a chilling efficiency for aimed conflict which seems to rise in intensity with each passing year. Historically, Catholic thought on the moral justification for war has tended to accept the possibility that, in strictly defined circumstances, a state has the right to engage in warfare. Yet, in recent years, papal statements have tended to severely limit even the few circumstances which have traditionally been permitted for the moral use of warfare by the state. In particular, John XXDI is often cited as an example of this trend.

This article will explore the thought of John XXIII on the particular issue of his interpretation of the criterion of just cause. This particular element of the set of criteria which govern the prospective use of lethal force by the state against another state, jux ad bellum, is significant for any discussion of modem just war theory. This criterion judges the moral end of the use of lethal force by the state. Traditionally, three reasons have been advanced as just causes: ad vindicandas offensiones (to gain justice over a completed offense), ad repetendas res (to retake property which has been stolen) and ad repellandas injurias (to resist an armed attack which is in progress). The trend of modern just war theories have been toward excluding the first two reasons and giving grudging acceptance to the third.

John XXIII unlike his predecessor, Pius XII, was not explicit concerning the moral permissibility of self-defense.
John Caird‐Theologian and Philosopher
Authors: Mander W. J.
Published: July 2007

John Henry Muirhead once said that British Idealism was from the first in essence a philosophy of religion. He saw it as an appeal to the ideas of the German Post-Kantians for the purpose of defending religious belief against the many new challenges mounted to it during the second half of the nineteenth century, challenges which had rendered untenable the less critical faith of preceding generations. Muirhead’s interpretation could be disputed, for it is not clear that it accurately describes the principal motivation of all members of the British Idealist school, but if there is truth in it, and I think that there is, nowhere is this more so than in the case of the Scottish theologian and philosopher, John Caird, for Caird’s entire oeuvre revolved around the project of reconciling Christianity and Idealism.

A celebrated preacher, then innovative professor of theology and finally much respected Principal of Glasgow University, John Caird was in his time a well-known and highly regarded figure. Today however his work is almost entirely forgotten, along with that of many others in the idealist movement; such ways of thinking having passed from favour as completely as they once held dominance of the intellectual scene. Yet we run the risk of misunderstanding our history, and thus our own present, if we insist on simply turning our faces from certain eras of thought or movements of ideas and deeming them fallow or uninteresting. For that way we simply construct a history which reflects our current prejudices but never can challenge them. In this paper I shall outline the work of John Caird in an attempt to show why it deserves to be remembered, but first let me provide just a few biographical details.
Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999: V ‐ The New World: Bartolomé de las Casas and “the option for the poor”
Authors: Smith Austin
Published: July 2007

If you look in a popular atlas for the world of Las Casas—in other words, Central and South America and the West Indies—you will find it tucked away at the end. An afterthought, you might say. Our atlases very much help to shape our mental geography.

In fact the world of Las Casas covers one-sixth of the earth’s total land surface and now contains over 500 million people, the vast majority of them Catholics (they account for almost half the world’s Catholic population). However, still nearly half of the people in that world are illiterate, and nearly half of them are landless peasants; there is, in other words, still a huge gap between the rich and the poor. Las Casas would be broken-hearted to know that today at least some of the ugly consequences of the colonisation which began five centuries ago are still there for every discerning foreign tourist to see. But who was Las Casas?

Men like Dominic and Francis in varying ways powerfully articulated timeless questions in the lights of their times, and we call them men of vision. We must not claim too much for them, for they were in and out of their times. At the same time, we must keep them alive in our collective memory in a living historical conversation rooted in discernment and interpretation. They took hold of the past, immersed themselves in a living experience of their present, decoded from all that some of the timeless questions of humanity, and humbly suggested a possible and perhaps better future by word and action.
Was there a Bishop of Rome in the First Century?
Authors: Jones David Albert
Published: July 2007

The aim of this paper is to examine the historical question as to whether mono-episcopal government existed in the local Church in Rome in the first century AD. It is not intended to engage upon the related task of theological reflection upon the role of bishops within the Church and their claim to be successors to the apostles in this role.

There has been a development in the Church’s understanding of ministry and authority, just as there has been a development in the Church’s understanding of the Trinity or the Incarnation. Leo the Great was as certain of the authority of the Petrine office, as he was of the reality of the two natures of the one person of Christ. The task of showing whether such developments were legitimate is ultimately a theological one, though it is one that will involve reflection upon history. It is not prima facie obvious that a high doctrine of the papacy does require that a single bishop exercised magisterial authority in Rome in the immediate post-apostolic age. Yet this question is only raised at this point so that it may be set aside. Here we consider the simpler historical question as to whether the evidence available requires, suggests, or excludes the supposition that Christian ministry in Rome in the latter part of the first century was mono-episcopal.
How to edit, how to read
Authors: Poole Roger
Published: July 2007

At last Søren Kierkegaard is beginning to get the attentive reading he deserves. Hegel and Marx, Nietzsche and Freud have all had their day, but Kierkegaard has always rolled along as a kind of fifth wheel. It was suspected that he was as great as the others, but no-one could quite say why. That was partly because he existed, for decades, only in the hasty and sometimes impressionistic translations of the Rev. Walter Lowrie, who began to translate him in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. These translations were indeed ‘works of love’. Lowrie’s translation of The Concept of Dread, for example, was completed ‘in a month of thirty-one days, working twelve hours a day’. In the 1980’s however, the Princeton edition called Kierkegaard’s Writings, edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong began to appear, and these are scrupulously academic translations, with a plethora of learned notes. The edition is complete now—the last of the 26 volumes appeared in 1998.

In all this, the Danes themselves played little part. For them, Spren Kierkegaard was an irritation almost too great to borne while alive, and a bore to talk about ever since. The Danes could never understand why, from the 1950’s on, there was a steady stream of scholars and philosophers, coming to Copenhagen, nosing around the second-hand bookshops in the hope of finding first editions of Spren Kierkegaard. Only in the 1990’s did the penny finally drop. A huge grant was made in 1993 by the Danish National Research Foundation, to the tune of 27,500,000 Danish kroner, and a Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre was set up at the University of Copenhagen, under the direction of a handful of Danish scholars, with the aim of setting up and publishing a critical edition of his complete works. Thus, only 138 years late, the Danes took official cognisance of their greatest literary son. The edition, in 55 volumes, with an electronic version to follow, is about to roll off the press. The first five volumes of text and commentary were available as of 10 October 1998.
The Invisible Made Visible: Angels from the Vatican
Authors: Buckley James J.
Published: July 2007

How do we make the invisible visible? How do we see, or touch, what others have made visible? Such questions can, of course, mean different things. They might be questions about how technology such as telescopes and microscopes have made visible the previously invisible things, and what (if anything) such technology leaves invisible. They might also be political questions about how previously invisible groups are made visible, and how invisible we can make ourselves to each other without ceasing to be. And there are equally important philosophical questions about whether the invisible is, if so what it means to make it visible, and whether in so doing we perfect or destroy it. Such questions are on the back burners of this essay.

But my focus is more specific. An exhibition Angels from the Vatican. The Invisible Made Visible has been touring the United States. These are artifacts of angels from the Vatican museum. Embattled church politicians might regard the title as oxymoronic; they would also not be surprised that it is sponsored by the Chrysler Corporation. But I think it is the sub-title rather than the title of the exhibition that raises (perhaps from the dead) many old and new questions about angels, precisely by considering angels under the rubric of “The Invisible Made Visible”.’ The exhibition, in its version at the Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Maryland), consists of four galleries and a lengthy balcony-corridor of about one hundred paintings, sculptures, and other artifacts ranging from a sixth century before Christ Assyrian “winged genius” to a twentieth century painting by Salvador Dali.
Was there a Bishop of Rome in the First Century?
Authors: Duffy Eamon
Published: July 2007

David Albert Jones’ article purports to address a strictly historical question: did the Church in first-century Rome have a single presiding bishop? His argument is designed to examine and refute the view (found in my history of the popes among other places) that the rule of a single bishop was slow to develop in Rome, and that, consequently, the later Roman episcopal lists (most notably that provided by Irenaeus towards the last quarter of the second century) represent a retrospective tidying up of what had been in fact a messier and more complex situation.

Behind this apparently straightforward agenda, however—the sorting out of the facts as far as we can discover them—Fr Jones has another and more pressing objective. He wants to suggest that those like myself who hold that the emergence of the monoepiscopate in Rome was a post-apostolic development, still incomplete at the beginning of the second century, do so not on the basis of the evidence, but because they are in the grip of an unCatholic mindset which colours—and in his view distorts—historical judgement. So, on the first page of his article, he identifies the position he is criticising as “the classic Protestant account of the matter dating from at least as far back as Harnack”. I am intrigued by that adjective “Protestant”. What work is it doing in the fabric of Fr Jones’ argument? It is of course true that Harnack read the evidence in this way: but then so did his older contemporary Louis Duchesne, a Catholic priest with a fair claim to be considered the greatest of all Catholic Church historians, and certainly the greatest nineteenth- century historian of the early Papacy.