Theology Faculty Books

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The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic Age

Noreen L. Herzfeld

AI is becoming ubiquitous. Whatever its arrival portends for our future, whether riches or ruin, it cannot be avoided. The Artifice of Intelligence explores two questions at the heart of a theological response to AI. Is it possible for human beings to have authentic relationships with an AI? How does the increasing presence of AI change the way humans relate to one another? In pursuing answers to these questions, Herzfeld explores what it means to be created in the image of God and to create AI in our own image. It utilizes and expands Karl Barth's relational understanding of the imago Dei to examine humanity's relationship both with AI and, through it, with one another.

Barth's injunctions--look the other in the eye (embodiment), speak to and hear the other (communication), aid the other (agency), and do it gladly (emotion)--provide the basis for the main chapters, each of which concludes with a case study of a current AI application that exemplifies the difficulties AI introduces into human relationality. The Artifice of Intelligence concludes with an examination of the incarnation, one that points toward the centrality of embodiment for full relationality. [from publisher's website]
Religion, Education, and Peace: Proceedings of an Online International Conference Held in March 2021

Jon Armajani and Wilbert van Saane

This volume contains the proceedings of the international online conference entitled Religion, Education, and Peace, which was organized by Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon, and the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, USA, and was co-sponsored by the Peace Studies Department at the College of Saint Benedict I Saint John's University in Minnesota.

The conference took place on March 4 and 5, 2021. The chapters in this volume analyze religion, education, and peace in various parts of the world in a variety of settings including secondary schools, colleges, universities, governmental agencies, and nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. This book's unique contributions involve its interfaith and interdisciplinary approaches to topics related to peace and religion in educational settings and local communities. [description from back of book]
Interrupting a Gendered, Violent Church

Anna Mercedes

This project brings readers into conversation at the intersections of gender studies and Christian theology--particularly diverse feminist and queer theologies. Interrupting a Gendered, Violent Church develops over three parts to an extended essay that points to the real ways churches foster violence around gender. This volume discusses this violent reality while also exploring church as a nexus for resistance to gender-based violence and sketches the contours of a Christian theology mapped apart from patriarchal heteronormativity's hold on late modern Christian life.

The goal of the Dispatches series is to offer a genuinely creative and disruptive theological-ethical ressourcement for church in the present moment. Volumes illuminate and explore, creatively and concisely, the implications and relevance of theology for the global crises of late modernity. Our authors have been invited to introduce succinct and provocative arguments intended to provoke dialogue and exchange of ideas, while setting in relief the implications of theology for political and moral life.
Shia Islam and Politics : Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon

Jon Armajani

This book argues that ever since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, which established a Shia Islamic government in Iran, that country’s religious and political leaders have used Shia Islam as a crucial way of expanding Iran’s objectives in the Middle East and beyond. Since 1979, Iran’s religious and political leaders have been concerned about Iran’s security in the face of the hostility and expansionism of the United States and other western countries, and the threats from powerful neighboring Sunni leaders and countries. While Iran’s government has attempted to align itself with Shia Muslims in various countries, such as Iraq and Lebanon, against American and Sunni expansionism, the Iranian government has attempted to religiously nourish and politically mobilize those Shias as a matter of principle, not only because of the Iranian government’s desires to protect Iran from external threats. The book analyzes Shia Islam and politics in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon which have among the largest proportional Shia populations in the Middle East and are vibrant centers of Shia intellectual life. The book's clear and jargon-free approach make it especially accessible for students and general readers who would like an introduction to the book's topics. (--Publisher's website)
Guide for Celebrating the Liturgy of the Hours

Anthony Ruff OSB

Throughout the history of the Church, Christians have consecrated time by pausing at various moments throughout the day to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office. Day after day, hour after hour, Christians unite their hearts with Christ and his Church as they pray the Divine Office. This book will assist parish communities and groups of Christians who wish to gather to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.
College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics: The Lives and Longings of Emerging Adults

Jennifer Beste

What happens at college parties? Why do students dress and behave the way they do? Who has power, and what kind? And are college students happy overall with party and hookup culture? In response to undergraduates’ skepticism of researchers’ accounts of hookup culture, the author engaged 126 college students as ethnographers to observe and analyze this complex social reality at parties. Part I presents their results, revealing a disillusionment with contemporary sexual and relational norms that challenges benevolent or even neutral views of hookup culture. Part II brings students into conversation with Christianity’s narrative of what it means to become fully human and experience genuine joy and fulfillment. The spokesperson for this vision is theologian Johann Metz, whose portrait of Jesus struggling to become fully human by embracing poverty of spirit resonates with today’s college students. Comparing Jesus’s way of being in the world with their college culture’s status quo, many undergraduates discover in Metz’s Poverty of Spirit a countercultural path to authenticity, happiness, and fulfillment. Part III culminates in a call to action: with understanding of contemporary norms gained in part I, and poverty of spirit as explored in part II, these chapters explore obstacles to sexual justice on college campuses, identify key commitments necessary for change, and envision how undergraduates can work to create the college culture they truly desire and deserve.
God’s Word, Your World, 2017-2018: Reflections to Share with Catholic Youth

Jeffrey J. Kaster

Those who work with Catholic teens know that they are a unique group with profound capabilities and tremendous challenges. It is hard to know how to approach teens, and as a result, many parishes wind up retaining a small group of core youth ministry members while the rest of the parish teens seem to disappear. How can parishes talk to teenagers, especially those who don’t seem to be listening? God’s Word, Your World! provides you with the ability to “speak teen,” communicating with all teens in your parish on their level. This CD-ROM contains one-page, Lectionary-based digital reproducible handouts for every Sunday and Holyday of Obligation from the first Sunday in September 2017 through the last Sunday in August, 2018. Each digital reproducible contains a Scripture reflection, a suggestion for action, and journaling questions. They can be printed out for handouts, e-mailed, blogged, put on a parish website, or shared on Facebook. This gives you a way to meet teens where they are and communicate about the things that they are facing in their daily lives.
Empirical Foundations of the Common Good: What Theology Can Learn from Social Science

Daniel K. Finn

The idea of the common good was borrowed by the Fathers of the early Catholic Church from the rich philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. It has been a fundamental part of Catholic thinking about social, political, and economic life throughout the Catholic intellectual tradition, from Augustine and Aquinas to modern Catholic social thought in the encyclicals of popes in recent centuries. Yet this history has been rooted in the traditions of philosophy and theology. With the rise of the social sciences in the nineteenth century as distinct disciplines no longer limited to the methods of their philosophical origins, humanity has learned a great deal more about the human condition. Empirical Foundations of the Common Good asks two questions: what have the social sciences learned about the common good? how might theology alter its understanding of the common good in light of that insight?

In this volume, six social scientists, with backgrounds in economics, political science, sociology, and policy analysis, speak about what their disciplines have to contribute to discussions within Catholic social thought about the common good. Two theologians then respond by examining the insights of social science and exploring how Catholic social thought can integrate social scientific insights into its understanding of the common good. This volume's interplay of social scientific and religious views is a unique contribution to contemporary discussion of what constitutes "the common good."
United in Christ: Preparing the Liturgy of the Word at Catholic Weddings

Leisa Anslinger, Jennifer Kerr Breedlove, Charles A. Bobertz, Mary A. Ehle, Christopher J. Ferraro, Mary G. Fox, Corinna Laughlin, and Biagio Mazza

United in Christ: Preparing the Liturgy of the Word at Catholic Weddings is perfect for parish staffs to provide couples with a high quality and pastoral resource for preparing all aspects of the Liturgy of the Word for their wedding. This includes:
- Full texts of the readings from The Order of Celebrating Matrimony in sense line format
- Pastoral Scripture commentary written by married Catholic scholars and liturgical ministers
- Reading suggestions for a cohesive and unified Liturgy of the Word
- Reasons a couple might select a particular reading
- Guidance for writing the Prayer of the Faithful with sample texts
- Full texts of the consent, blessing and exchange of rings, and the Nuptial Blessing
- Selection form to turn in to the pastor, deacon, or liturgist
United in Christ presents a focused and simple resource to help couples select the most necessary parts of the wedding liturgy. The commentaries explain the meaning of the Scripture text through the lens of the needs of the couple.
The Gospel of Mark: A Liturgical Reading

Charles A. Bobertz

Long before the Gospel writers put pen to papyrus, the earliest Christians participated in powerful rituals that fundamentally shaped their understanding of God, Christ, and the world in which they lived. This volume offers a liturgical reading of the Gospel of Mark, arguing that the Gospel is a narrative interpretation of early Christian ritual. The Gospel begins with Jesus's baptism by John and ends with Jesus and his disciples gathered for the Lord's Supper. In between, the narrative story of Jesus unfolds as the beloved Son is sent to gather not just the Jews but Gentiles and women to the table of the one loaf. This fresh, responsible, and creative proposal shows how cultural anthropology and ritual studies elucidate ancient texts, revealing how the rituals of baptism and the Lord's Supper shaped the earliest Christians and impacted their understanding of Jesus. In addition to scholars, professors, and students, its ecclesial and pastoral ramifications will be of interest to pastors and church leaders.
Vatican I & Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition

Kristin Colberg

Vatican I and Vatican II represent two of the three ecumenical councils in modern times, yet relatively few studies have sought to understand their relation to one another. In fact, the councils are often positioned as mutually exclusive so that one must choose either Vatican I's or Vatican II's presentations of church and ecclesial authority. Failing to understand the relationship between these councils inhibits the church's self-understanding and risks misinterpreting key aspects of its own tradition; further, it limits the church's ability to teach effectively on topics of concern to modern women and men, such as authority, freedom, and ecclesiology. Vatican I and Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition uses the questions of what, why, and how the councils taught to frame and demonstrate significant points of continuity, complementarity, and difference between them. It argues that only by seeing both Vatican I and Vatican II as communicating vital dimensions of the Christian faith can the church's living tradition be fully appreciated and speak meaningfully to modern Christian women and men.
Youth Ministry

Jeffrey J. Kaster

All church ministries are oriented toward fostering missionary discipleship. Youth ministry focuses this mission on young people. In this new book in the Collegeville Ministry series, Jeffrey Kaster explores leadership for youth ministry, Christian discipleship, conversion, the theological foundations for youth ministry, the importance of community and belonging, and vocational discernment. Kaster looks at the practice of vocational discernment and how it encourages youth ministry to continually help young people discern their gifts, connect them in service to meet the world's deep needs, and foster Christian discipleship. Youth ministry at its best mobilizes the faith community to support young people as they learn to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Hear the Word of the Lord: The Lectionary in Catholic Ritual

Martin Connell

Steeped in the history and composition of the New Testament, Connell demonstrates the way in which a listening assembly serves as an essential component of both our experience and our understanding of Scripture. In offering a practical overview of the Lectionary, he guides readers to a greater appreciation for liturgical proclamation, which requires both a proclaimer and a listener to hear the word of the Lord
Water Shaping Stone: Faith, Relationships, and Conscience Formation

Kathryn L. Cox

The Catholic Tradition requires the faithful to form and follow their conscience. This is the case even with the recognition that consciences can be malformed and one can make errs in practical judgments. Water Shaping Stone examines various aspects of this tradition regarding conscience by using, among other sources, twentieth-century magisterial documents, theologians' works, and Scripture.

Kathryn Lilla Cox argues that while the Magisterium retains teaching authority, and a responsibility to help form consciences through its teaching, focusing only on the Magisterium leads to incomplete formation. A more holistic vision of conscience formation means considering the formation of the moral agent to be a multifaceted process that draws on, for example, teaching, prayer, rituals, Scripture, practices, and virtues, along with relationships with the Triune God and communities of accountability. This vision of conscience formation retains the magisterial teaching authority while acknowledging discipleship as the theological basis for making and assessing practical judgments of conscience.
Christ's Gift, Our Response: Martin Luther and Louis-Marie Chauvet on the Connection between Sacraments and Ethics

Benjamin Durheim

Sacramental theology has often been a challenging area of conversation between Catholics and Protestants. In Christ’s Gift, Our Response, Benjamin Durheim envisions a collaborative way forward, forging a conversation between two contemporary approaches to the connection between sacraments and ethics.

Drawing primarily from Louis-Marie Chauvet and the Finnish school of Luther interpretation, Durheim constructs a mutually enriching theological dialogue. Beyond comparison and contrast, this is an attempt to draw these theologies
The Theology of Cardinal Walter Kasper: Speaking the Truth in Love

Kristin M. Colberg and Robert A. Krieg

Cardinal Walter Kasper's contributions to theology, ecumenism, Jewish-Christian relations, and the pastoral life of the church have shaped Catholicism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Acknowledging this, Pope Francis has praised Kasper's “profound and serene” theology. In The Theology of Cardinal Walter Kasper: Speaking Truth in Love, leading theologians from across the United States and Canada explore the full scope of Kasper’s thought on topics such as the character of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, Christology, theological method, and the nature of the church-world relationship. Kasper himself presents four previously unpublished texts: on the interpretation of Vatican II, on forgiveness, on Christian hope, and on the approach to theology today. This volume originated at a conference, at which Kasper was an active participant, in honor of his eightieth birthday. It provides an introduction to Kasper's thought and also an overview of major issues in contemporary Catholic theology.
Stewardship: Living a Biblical Call

Bernard F. Evans

In Stewardship: Living a Biblical Call, Bernard Evans presents an accessible and easily understood biblical and theological foundation for giving that both parishioners and stewardship leaders will find practical and valuable. In focused chapters, the many aspects of stewardship are named and described, assisting readers in recognizing gifts and actions that make practicing stewardship far more than a financial proposition. Grounded in years of practical work in this area with parish leaders, Evans adeptly ties the Catholic invitation to stewardship to biblical foundations as well as the social teaching of the church. A clear, concise, readable work, Stewardship: Living a Biblical Call also engages key questions of the age, such as ecological stewardship and care for body, mind, and spirit. Evans explores the communal and personal actions that help every believer proclaim the reign of God.
Distant Markets, Distant Harms: Economic Complicity and Christian Ethics

Daniel K. Finn

Does a consumer who bought a shirt made in another nation bear any moral responsibility when the women who sewed that shirt die in a factory fire or in the collapse of the building? Many have asserted, without explanation, that because markets cause harms to distant others, consumers bear moral responsibility for those harms. But traditional moral analysis of individual decisions is unable to sustain this argument.
Distant Harms, Distant Markets presents a careful analysis of moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today.
Because of its individualistic methods, mainstream economics as a discipline is not equipped to understand the causality entailed in the long chains of social relationships that make up the market. Critical realist sociology, however, has addressed the character and functioning of social structures, an analysis that can helpfully be applied to the market. The True Wealth of Nations research project of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sociologists, economists, moral theologians, and others to describe these causal relationships and articulate how Catholic social thought can use these insights to more fully address issues of economic ethics in the twenty-first century. The result was this interdisciplinary volume of essays, which explores the causal and moral responsibilities that consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.
The Way Forward: A Collection of Benedictine Inspirations

Victor J. Klimoski

We must listen well to those who truly encourage and inspire us, especially those who, by their presence and their authenticity, consistently extend to us the invitations we need to become more deeply who we are. They help us find our footing within a larger spiritual tradition. Victor Klimoski is one such person. He employs the written word, especially in poetic form, to escort us into Mystery and to help us give expression to our encounters with God. As a man shaped by learning and ministering among Benedictines, he refuses to let us imagine that the wisdom we encounter is confined to any single generation. He helps us draw upon centuries of spiritual insight and practice as we discern the call to discipleship in today’s world, challenging us to undertake that call for the sake of those who will follow. Klimoski encourages us to examine our present context in light of an enduring monastic tradition, and inspires us to live what one of his poems calls “the way forward.” "The Way Forward" is a selection of Klimoski’s writings, edited by Samuel Rahberg and featuring seven original poems. The reflections have their roots sunk deep in monastic spirituality and are assembled on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Benedictine Center of St. Paul’s Monastery, and upon the celebration of Klimoski's retirement from Saint John’s School of Theology•Seminary in Collegeville, MN. Those new to Benedictine wisdom will encounter the invitation to move closer to a discerning life guided by the Gospel. For those who already know well the Benedictine Way, these prayerful readings demonstrate the application of monastic values and provide encouragement for the long journey.
Christian Economic Ethics: History and Implications

Daniel K. Finn

What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today.
Modern Islamist Movements : History, Religion, and Politics

Jon Armajani

"Modern Islamist Movements provides a clear and accessible examination of the history, beliefs and rationale of Islamist Groups and their grievances with the West and governments within the majority-Muslim world, while examining some of these groups' visions for a global Islamic empire. A clear and accessible text that examines the history, beliefs and rationale for violence emerging from Islamist movements, while examining some of these groups' visions for a global Islamic empire. Examines Islamist grievances against the West and modern governments in the majority Muslim world, while providing an overview of Islam's relations with the West from the period of the Crusades to the modern age. Discusses the historic development of Islamism in Egypt, the West Bank and Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Explains classic Islamic understandings of jihad and Bin Laden's, al-Qaida's, and other Islamists interpretations of this concept. Offers an historical account of the formative relationship between al-Qaida, other Islamists, and Islamic intellectual trends beginning in the eighteenth century. Appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as interested general readers."--Publisher's website
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.
Angels and Demons: A Christian Primer of the Spiritual World

Michael Patella OSB

The supernatural world is prominent in many of today's movies, television shows, novels, and the popular imagination. But some of what is presented as grounded in a Christian worldview is in fact far from that. In Angels and Demons, Michael Patella, OSB, offers an accessible and fascinating look at supernatural realities as they really are presented in the Bible and Christian tradition. Among the topics Patella explores with a valuable combination of pastoral wisdom and academic rigor are: the role of angels in the ministry of Jesus; the apocalyptic battle in Revelation; the occult, possession, and the work of Satan; what angels are and what they're not; the Last Judgment: how? when?

Readers will appreciate Patella's level-headed appraisal of the views of the supernatural world in the various sections of the Bible. They will be engaged by his lucid account of "Who's Who in Hell." They will be both comforted and inspired by his foundational conviction that Christ has claimed creation for the forces of good, evil is on the run, and there is no chance of the tide ever turning the other way, evil actions and human suffering notwithstanding.
Canticum Novum: Gregorian Chant for Today's Choirs

Anthony Ruff OSB

The book contains 100 hymns and antiphons with psalm verses for every season and occasion. Word-by-word English translations of the Latin responses are provided to aid the singers’ understanding. The psalm verses are in Latin and English on facing pages with easy-to-follow pointing to match the psalm tones. The English psalm verses are from the Revised Grail Psalms. A demonstration recording of chants from Canticum novum is also available.

Primarily Latin antiphons with psalm verses; with nine strophic hymns. Chants shown in four-line notation, five-line notation, and lineless neumes of the St. Gall school.
Sung Gospels for Major Solemnities in Multiple Voices

Anthony Ruff OSB

Proclaim the gospel in song for Christmas, Easter, Epiphany, Pentecost, solemnities, and other special feast days with these settings written for two- or three-part voices, adapted for the English language from settings found in medieval manuscripts. These settings are ideal to make the gospel the high point of the Liturgy of the Word.