The Cathedral of Being: Re-enchantment and the Writings of the Popes

A rarely discussed issue that bears upon the topic of education is that which takes seriously the relationship between medium and message; how is the content of what is taught shaped by the way in which it is taught? It is a question of especial pertinence today when in all areas of pedagogy we find people advocating the use in education not only of computers but on-line access and the wonders of the virtual world as well. The argument of this paper, via the writings of the recent Pontiffs (and more secular authors with a philosophical and political interest in the area), is that the use of computers and on-line technology is deleterious to all education, but especially to Catholic education. This is because, while the understanding of real presence and mediation are fundamental to the faith, the idea of insubstantiality and friction-free immediacy are of a piece with virtual technology. As a medium of dissemination the latter cannot help but invest the content of the former with its understanding of presence. The paper also touches upon the economic factors at play in the use of virtual technology as well as the utopian hopes this technology gives rise to, hopes that are fundamentally inhuman and therefore at odds with the Catholic faith. The paper argues its point using the trope of fairyland and the opposition between, on the one hand, enchantment, and on the other, glamour

God So Loved the World...Ministerial Religious Life in 2009

The Leadership Council invited me to speak about “vowed Religious Life” following an earlier and complementary presentation on the subject of Associates. In a sense, this is a bit like talking about “wet water” because the terms “vowed” and “Religious Life” are mutually implicating though not co-extensive. As all water is wet but not all wet things are water, so all Religious Life is vowed life but not all vowed life is Religious Life. Furthermore, there are many forms of vowed Religious Life such as monastic, mendicant, or apostolic and much that applies to one does not apply to another. So, to focus our discussion, I am going to circumscribe the topic in the hope of better contributing to our community project of meaningful discussion about our identity and relationships. My precise focus, therefore, will be on Religious Life, in 2009, of women who have made (or are preparing to make) perpetual public profession of the vows of consecrated celibacy, poverty, and obedience in the IHM Congregation, and who live out its charism, as articulated in the 1982-1988 Constitutions, in community and ministry.1 So, our topic is vowed Religious Life in the IHM Congregation in 2009. In what follows I have two objectives which will be given different amounts of space and emphasis but which will also intertwine throughout. First, I do want to supply a certain amount of data that might be useful in our ongoing discussions and which will already be well known to some people but perhaps less familiar to others. A colleague of mine once pointed out, as he reached for a dictionary, how much discussion time would be saved if people agreed not to argue about facts, but to look them up. So, I’ve tried to do some of the “looking up” for us and to include the results in this presentation. However, my second and more important objective is to interpret the data in a way that will illuminate our current experience and supply resources and energy for what lies ahead. I will do that interpretation as responsibly as I can within the limits of my own areas of competence but this is where you have to be the judge of what seems to flow legitimately from the data and to match your own experience. Any interpretation is only as good as it is persuasive. Two further points will affect these remarks. I am focusing this talk on IHM experience but very little of this experience is absolutely unique to us. Our current process of development is fairly common to many if not most Congregations of women Religious in the so-called “developed world”2 and much of my reflection is influenced by that common experience. Finally, we are working under tight time constraints this afternoon and Religious Life is one of those phenomena in which everything implies everything else. There is not time to make all the interconnections, much less explore them, so this presentation is necessarily selective. Please keep track of what needs to be brought up in later discussion

Christianity and interfaith engagement

Early in the twentieth century the Christian Church began to question long-held exclusivist and negative assumptions toward other religions. By mid-century far-reaching changes were underway: other religions and their peoples were honoured as dialogue-partners and viewed as co-religionists capable of common cause action. Since the 1960s the official stance of the Vatican is one of goodwill, high valuation, and respect toward other faiths. Christian perspectives on religious diversity changed from vexed problem to celebrated phenomenon. However, the global resurgence of religion and allied ideologies such as fundamentalism provide new challenges to the age-old question of Christianity and other faiths

The Importance of Protestantism in Max Weber's Theory of Secularisation

In this article, I review my recent book Protestant Modernity. Weber, Secularisation and Protestantism, which reconstructs Weber's theory of secularisation and argues that this is formulated within a liberal Protestant framework. I argue that this theory is a part of his Protestant account of modernity. I also sketch some of the major issues involved in developing a Catholic account of modernity and provide some worked through examples of the sociological implications of this change of confessional presuppositions

Shepherding Electric Sheep: A Roman Catholic Response to the Emerging Challenge of Transhumanism

Transhumanism is a philosophical, political, and social movement that asserts that human well-being will be dramatically improved through the radical integration of new technologies into the human body and/or through the replacement of the organic human body with a synthetic \u27body.\u27 Ray Kurzweil, a dynamic, articulate, and leading transhumanist, offers an anthropological understanding that represents the main strand of transhumanist though about the human person: humans are patterns of information that can adjust themselves, and overcoming limitations is the defining human characteristic. This anthropology is implicit in many aspects of Western civilization already: law, medicine, and the military are a few examples of where it currently exists. This anthropology is attractive to modern people because of its promise of self-enhancement, but it is dangerous because it objectifies the human person, especially the body. The Roman Catholic Church\u27s anthropology, as explained in the document Gaudium et spes, offers a more authentic understanding of the human person, and the Church must act now to share its anthropology with both Catholics and non-Catholics in order to better fulfill its mission

Responses to the Religion Singularity: A Rejoinder

Since the publication of Kenneth Howard’s 2017 article, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity,” there has been an increasing demand to understand the root causes and historical foundations for why institutional Christianity is in a state of de-institutionalization. In response to Howard’s research, a number of authors have sought to provide a contextual explanation for why the religion singularity is currently happening, including studies in epistemology, church history, psychology, anthropology, and church ministry. The purpose of this article is to offer a brief survey and response to these interactions with Howard’s research, identifying the overall implications of each researcher’s perspective for understanding the religion singularity phenomenon. It explores factors relating to denominational switching in Jeshua Branch’s research, social memory in John Lingelbach’s essay, religious politics in Kevin Seybold’s survey, scientific reductionism in Jack David Eller’s position paper, and institutional moral failure in Brian McLaren’s article