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In the Name of the Church: Vocation and Authorization of Lay Ecclesial Ministry
William John Cahoy
In the Name of the Church: Vocation and Authorization in Lay Ecclesial Ministry presents insights generated in the 2011 Collegeville National Symposium on Lay Ecclesial Ministry, a gathering designed to prioritize the theological foundations for vocation and authorization in lay ecclesial ministry, and make recommendations to advance excellence in this expanding ministry. The essays presented by seven theologians at the Symposium are included, along with thoughtful input drawn from the experiences of lay and ordained ministers who gathered to “amplify the voice and strengthen the national will to promote effective ecclesial leadership practices identified within Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord.”
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The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life : An Extension and Critique of Caritas in Veritate
Daniel K. Finn
Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is the ''social'' encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, one of many papal encyclicals over the last 120 years that address economic life. This volume, based on discussions at a symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, analyzes the situation of the Church and the theological basis for Benedict's thinking about the person, community, and the globalized economy.
The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life engages Benedict's analysis of ''relation,'' the characteristics of contemporary social and economic relationships and the implications of a relational, Trinitarian God for daily human life. Crucial here is the Pope's notion of ''reciprocity,'' an economic relationship characterized by help freely given, but which forms an expectation that the recipient will ''reciprocate,'' either to the donor or, often, to someone else. This ''logic of gift,'' Benedict argues, should influence daily economic life, especially within what he calls ''hybrid'' firms, which make a profit and invest a share of that profit in service to needs outside the firm. Similarly, development - whether of an individual or of a nation - must be integral, neither simply economic nor personal nor psychological nor spiritual, but a comprehensive development that engages all dimensions of a flourishing human life.
The essays, written by social scientists, theologians, policy analysts and others, engage, extend, and critique Benedict's views on these issues, as well as his call for deeper dialogue and a morally based transformation of social and economic structures. -
A Virtuous Church: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Liturgy for the 21st Century
R. Kevin Seasoltz OSB
Brings together three theological themes: ecclesiology, ethics, and liturgy.
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Monks and Muslims: Monastic and Shi'a Spirituality in Dialogue
Mohammad A. Shomali and William Skudlarek OSB
If Christians and Muslims are to live in peace, encouraging one another to grow in holiness and working together for the good of all God's creation, they must move beyond politicized and often negative images of one another. Monastic/Muslim dialogue - issuing from friendship and focused on revelation, prayer, and witness - is an important component in this effort. Indeed, it is essential. Monastic Interreligious Dialogue is a commission of the Benedictine Confederation that promotes and coordinates dialogue between Catholic monastic men and women and spiritual practitioners of other religious traditions. The organization invited Iranian Shi'a Muslims and Christian monastics to share their faith in a revealing God, their understanding and practice of prayer, and their desire to be witnesses to the world of divine mercy and justice. This book invites readers to listen in and learn from their conversation.
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Dilatato Corde. Vol. 1, January-December 2011
William Skudlarek OSB and Monastic Interreligious Dialogue
"Dilatato Corde is an online publication housed on the [Monastic Interreligious Dialogue's] webstie...At the end of each year a selection of testimonies, reflections, reports, and studies from that volume are published as a book. This is the first of the series"--Book cover.
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Efficacious Engagement : Sacramental Participation in the Trinitarian Mystery
Kimberly Hope Belcher
The long-standing tradition of baptizing infants suggests that the sacraments plunge our bodies into salvation, so the revelation of God’s love in the sacraments addresses the whole person, not the mind alone. In this work, the contemporary Roman Catholic rite of baptism for infants becomes a case study, manifesting the connections between the human body, the ecclesial body, and the Body of Christ. The sacramental life, for children as for adults, is an ongoing journey deeper into the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
By examining the church’s practice of infant baptism, Kimberly Hope Belcher asks how human beings participate in God’s life through the sacraments. Christian sacraments are embodied, cultural rituals performed by and for human beings. At the same time, the sacraments are God’s gifts of grace, by which human beings enter into God’s own life. In this study, contemporary ritual studies, sacramental theology, and trinitarian theology are used to explore how participation in the sacraments can be an efficacious engagement in God’s life of love.
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The Third Desert : The Story of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue
Fabrice Blee, William Skudlarek OSB, and Mary Grady
Over the course of its history the Christian monastic tradition has developed a "desert spirituality" of solitude, silence, and self-knowledge that fosters openness to the divine presence and its transformative power. Today the divine presence is manifesting itself anew in the "desert of otherness," that sacred space in which we encounter the other as one whose difference, even of religion and spirituality, can enrich us, rather than as one who must be drawn to and converted to our own "truth." The encounter of Christians with other believers will increasingly become a place of hardship and testing that leads to union with the divine. This "third monastic desert" is, in reality, the nucleus of the Kingdom that is coming into being, where communication becomes communion. Such has been the experience of monastic men and women--Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians--who have engaged in dialogue. Having discovered an unanticipated bond between dialogue and silence, openness to the other and interiority, Christian monks invite the whole Church to join them on this journey into the desert of otherness.
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Vatican I and Vatican II as Coherent Christian Discourse: A Relationship of Complementarity, Continuity and Difference
Kristin Colberg
The relationship between Vatican I and Vatican II is largely unexplored terrain in Christian theology. This lacuna in theological scholarship can be attributed, to a great extent, to the fact that the councils' teachings are widely considered incompatible. The church's inability to harmonize Vatican I's and Vatican II's teachings on ecclesiastical authority inhibits not only a more full reception of each council, but contributes to a sense that the church cannot offer a coherent presentation of some of its most central beliefs. This dissertation demonstrates fundamental compatibility between Vatican I and Vatican II by illustrating that they share many of the same intentions and concerns. It employs a method of distinguishing between each council's aims and the strategies in order to illustrate that the differences between them exist on the level of tone, emphasis and form rather that on the level of doctrine. This allows for a more appropriate understanding of their relationship which advances ecclesial self-understanding and promotes coherent Christian discourse. The first chapter engages the issue of Christian coherence as a means of indicating how understanding the relationship of Vatican I and Vatican II contributes to more effective presentations of the Christian message. The second chapter establishes the context in which Vatican I's documents can be read appropriately. Specifically, it looks at the historical and theological factors which contribute to the underlying intent which inform its texts. Chapter three focuses on the way in which Vatican II emerges from the unanswered questions of Vatican I and, in many ways, represents a continuation of its work, rather than a rejection or an overcoming of it. It argues that the differences which have come to define Vatican I's and Vatican II's relationship must be seen within a larger context of their continuity. Finally, chapter four illustrates that a stronger ecclesial self-understanding, made possible be properly relating Vatican I and Vatican II, can edify questions of reception in general and the contemporary debate over Vatican II's interpretation in particular.
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Wrestling with God
Kilian Mcdonnell OSB
The Bible is full of persons who wrestle with God. As they stumble in their lives, they love and adore their Lord. They also scheme, lie, cheat, steal, quarrel, and fornicate. Abraham, the faith model for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, tells Sarah to lie; Sarah scolds God for ignoring her; Amnon rapes his sister; Judas recognizes Jesus' unconditional love for him; Mary thinks that by distancing himself from her, Jesus hammered a spike into her breast; Peter's wife crawls into their bed and snuggles up; Jesus' relatives think he is crazy. In a word, as seekers of God the biblical characters mirror our lives. Like Jacob we limp away from the wrestling match.
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The Attentive Voice: Reflections on the Meaning and Practice of Interreligious Dialogue
William Skudlarek OSB
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Witness to the Fullness of Light: The Vision and Relevance of the Benedictine Monk Swami Abhishiktananda
William Skudlarek OSB and Bettina Baumer
Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux OSB) was a French Benedictine monk who went to India in 1948 and devoted his life to becoming a bridge between East and West, between Hinduism and Christianity. To mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of this great pioneer of interreligious dialogue, Monastic Interreligious Dialogue sponsored a symposium in January 2010 at Shantivanam, the ashram he and Abbé Jules Monchanin founded in 1950. This volume charts the influence that Abhishiktananda had on Christianity in India, on other spiritual seekers engaging with Hinduism and Christianity, and the continuing importance of his work today.
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Introducing the Practice of Ministry
Kathleen A. Cahalan
Ministry is often examined in terms of who the minister is, not what the minister does. But the vocation to ministry must be understood as a call to identity as well as to practice, one that is rooted in Jesus' life and ministry as well as the Spirit's charisms. In Introducing the Practice of Ministry Kathleen A. Cahalan defines ministerial leadership as carried out through the practices of teaching, preaching, pastoral care, worship, social ministry, and administration for the sake of nurturing the life of discipleship in the community of believers. In her examination of charisms for each of the practices of ministry, Cahalan presents readers with a Trinitarian foundation, noting that "the practices of discipleship and ministry have their origin in the very practices of God."
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Green Monasticism: A Buddhist-Catholic Response to an Environmental Calamity
Donald W. Mitchell and William Skudlarek OSB
In May 2008, Buddhist and Christian monastics gathered at Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky, to discuss how their respective religions conceived of our relationship with the planet, and what they felt was the responsibility of their faith traditions, orders, and individual communities toward healing both our inner and outer ecology. Green Monasticism collects the wisdom of these scholars and practitioners in a volume that reflects both deep engagement with and critical thinking about protecting the environment.
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God's Harp String : The Life and Legacy of the Benedictine Monk Swami Abhishiktananda
William Skudlarek OSB
In 1948, the French Benedictine monk Henri Le Saux (1910-1973) visited India for the first time and began a twenty-five year long quest to fathom the depths of Vedanta and the Upanishads. Abhishiktananda ("Bliss of the Anointed One"), as Le Saux renamed himself, sought to retain his abiding Christian faith while personally immersing himself in Hindu spirituality. He also encountered some of the extraordinary sages of the Indian subcontinent, such as Sri Ramana Maharshi and Gnanananda.
These articles about Abhishiktananda, gathered on the one hundred anniversary of his birth, provide not only personal recollections of this remarkable man, but examine the legacy of the life and work of one of the first practitioners of Hindu-Christian dialogue.
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God Drops and Loses Things
Kilian Mcdonnell OSB
Out of a lifetime of familiarity with the great biblical narratives, Kilian McDonnell draws a portrait of the biblical God charged with vitality, at once prodigal in mercy and ruthless, thunderous, and painfully silent. It is dangerous to love this God, who exacts of "the God-mad Abraham" a faithfulness beyond sanity: "If God makes a covenant in blood with you, why are you surprised to see your flesh upon the altar?" Despite our longing, such apparent capriciousness can be reconciled only in the mysterium tremendum invisible to human eyes; for Father Kilian, such is "fire's absolute autonomy that scolds me / for putting dirty sandals on glowing cinders, / but invites me to approach barefoot." Equally compelling is the character of Jesus Christ as a true son of God hungry for human contact, who likes hanging out with a fallible humankind and often happens to drop by at mealtime. The children of God who people these poems have God's own murderous prodigality in their genes. They are jealous, weak, and proud. They compete, lie, steal, cheat, betray, repent, and despair; and God loves them. Conscious of their dignity as children of God, they are quick to take exception. Father Kilian says of the poems themselves, "I am contending with God." In God Drops and Loses Things, his third collection, the poems are by turns edgy, affectionate, gentle, deeply moving, and always compassionate.
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Sharing Sacred Space: Interreligious Dialogue as Spiritual Encounter
Benoit Standaert OSB and William Skudlarek OSB
If interreligious dialogue is to bear fruit—the fruit of mutual understanding, respect, and peace—it needs to be rooted in the specific spiritual space or milieu of each religious tradition. For Christians, that milieu is "Jesus space," a space shaped by faith in the paschal mysteries and nurtured by prayer, study, and love. With Jesus space as his starting point Benoît Standaert invites us to join him as he visits different religious spaces—those of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and agnostics. If we are willing to enter into and even dwell for a time in another spiritual space, we will be able to return to the space we call home, enriched by the gifts we have received and prepared to live in peace with those who dwell in a spiritual space that is very different from our own.
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Vote Catholic? Beyond the Political Din
Bernard F. Evans
Voting your conscience can be a challenge. In our emotionally charged political environment, many people are asking about the role of faith in elections. Of course, faith should inform the political choices we make and the way we use our time to try to improve the world. It seems the loudest Catholic political voices fall in one of two choruses-that of "the left," advocating for social justice issues, and of "the right," claiming abortion as the single most important issue. In Vote Catholic, Bernard Evans helps us get beyond the sometimes deafening din of these choruses. He takes us to the heart of an important third voice-Catholic social teaching-and shows how this teaching can inform Catholics as they wrestle with political choices. Without putting forward a particular platform or advocating particular candidates or positions, he presents a clear set of principles from the teachings to guide our decision-making process. With special attention to the Catholic position on life and human dignity, Evans shows that the issues and the solutions are more complex than our "headline news" world suggests. Complex though the issues are, Evans's straightforward presentation will help readers go to the polls with faith and confidence.
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Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries
Helen Rolfson OSF, Rik Van Nieuwenhove, and Rob Faesen
This book contains translations and introductions to some of the major representatives of the spiritual tradition of the Low Countries from ca. 1350 onwards.
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Demythologizing Celibacy : Practical Wisdom from Christian and Buddhist Monasticism
William Skudlarek OSB
When St. Benedict compiled his Rule for Monasteries in the early decades of the sixth century, the Buddhist monastic code had already been in existence for about nine hundred years. Since monastic life is shaped by spiritual practices that are very similar across different religious traditions, it should not be too much of a stretch to suggest that Christians can learn from the accumulated wisdom of Buddhist monasticism.
For Buddhists, celibacy, accompanied by skillful reflection on their personal reactions to it, is a means of letting go of attachment to sensory pleasure. Buddhist monks do not marry; they strive to relinquish the desire for sexual pleasure because this form of gratification obstructs the "one-pointed stillness" that leads to insight.
For Christians, celibacy-like marriage-is ultimately about love: responding to God's love for us and expressing selfless love for others. In light of the Christian understanding of marriage as an authentic-indeed, the ordinary-path to holiness, Skudlarek proposes a demythologized view of celibacy, presenting it as an alternate and equally valid spiritual practice for those who choose not to accept the demands of a committed sexual relationship.
Drawing on the monastic interreligious dialogue, Skudlarek considers the Buddhist view of celibacy, which is not mythologized as a response to a divine call or as a superhuman way of life. He examines their regard for it as simply-and profoundly-a path to freedom, peace, and happiness. As Christians become aware of the benefits of celibacy for monks who observe it without reference to the Gospel, they may be able to appreciate all the more its importance and value for those who wish to followChrist as celibates, and in this way come to share in the freedom of the children of God.
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Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations
Anthony Ruff OSB
Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform is a high-level study of liturgical music in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Anthony Ruff, a preeminent scholar of liturgical music, proposes a hermeneutic for understanding the Second Vatican Council's teachings on worship music: a balanced 'inconsistency' rather than absolutist and rationalistic coherence. Ruff's focus in this study is on preservation and renewal, arising from the Council's decrees mandating, on the one hand, the preservation of the inherited treasury of sacred music (the thesaurus musicae sacrae), and, on the other hand, the adaptation and expansion of this treasury to meet the changed requirements of the reformed liturgy. Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform, with an extensive index essential for any student of liturgical music, also explores controversies surrounding liturgical music and provides a historical context for the musical changes in the Church. Drawing on the musical and liturgical history that led up to and informed the statements of the Council, Ruff offers a centrist interpretation of Vatican II's teachings on worship music and in the process seeks to reclaim and redefine the 'center.' This is an essential text for all professors and students of liturgical music, as well as music directors.Anthony Ruff, OSB, is a member of the Music Subcommittee of the Bishop's Committee on Liturgy and has numerous articles published in Antiphon, The Hymn, and Pastoral Music, among others. Father Ruff is currently an assistant professor of theology and liturgical music at St. John's University.
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God's Gift Giving : In Christ and through the Spirit
R. Kevin Seasoltz OSB
Beginning with the notion of gift giving, this book serves as a mediation on the central mysteries of the Christian faith - the trinity, redemption, the eucharist, human participation in the divine life and solidarity with one another - in a contemporary idiom
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Eternity Today: On the Liturgical Year. Vol. 1, On God and Time, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Candlemas
Martin Connell
Aims to recover the theology and spirituality of the Christian year. As an aid to reflection, this book incorporates numerous selections of contemporary poetry, thereby demonstrating how secular poets can often hit upon a point that finds its echo in Christian life and ritual.
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Eternity Today: On the Liturgical Year. Vol. 2, Sunday, Lent, The Three Days, The Easter Season, Ordinary Time
Martin Connell
Aims to recover the theology and spirituality of the Christian year. As an aid to reflection, this book incorporates numerous selections of contemporary poetry, thereby demonstrating how secular poets can often hit upon a point that finds its echo in Christian life and ritual
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