Paul Lakeland – författare

In this unique book, readers are taken on a journey to explore the role of the imagination in the face of mystery, whether it be the mystery of God, whose full reality lies beyond our earthly horizons, or the deepest mysteries of life hinted at in the work of fiction. By attending to a series of novels, Paul Lakeland proposes serious fiction as an antidote to the failure of the religious imagination today and shows how literature might lead the secular mind at least to the threshold of mystery.

Drawing on the wisdom and teaching experience of highly respected theologians, the Engaging Theology series builds a firm foundation for graduate study and other ministry formation programs. Each of the volumes 'Scripture, Jesus, God, Anthropology, and Church 'is concerned with retrieving, carefully evaluating, and constructively interpreting the Christian tradition. Comprehensive in scope and accessibly written, these volumes, used together or independently, will stimulate rich theological reflection and discussion. More important, the series will create and sustain the passion of the next generation of theologians and church leaders.

Paul Lakeland's recent award-winning books on the place of the laity in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church have prepared him well to take on this ecclesiology from below." While paying close attention to the classical "marks of the Church, "Lakeland's focus is on what we can learn about the nature of the Church as living communion by examining the values and practices of ordinary believers. Following the advice of Bernard Lonergan, Lakeland adopts a resolutely inductive approach to ecclesial reflection. He explores ten questions that the Church must address, both those that affect the internal workings of the faith community and those that have to do with its relationships to other groups, religious and secular. Finally, he offers a constructive proposal for a contextual ecclesiology of the U.S. Catholic Church that utilizes the images of hospice, pilgrim, immigrant, and pioneer.

Lumen Gentium, Vatican II''s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, changed how the church thinks about the laity, holiness, baptism, and even the nature and purpose of the church itself. In A Council That Will Never End, the highly regarded ecclesiologist Paul Lakeland marks the fiftieth anniversary of this document''s promulgation by taking up three major themes of the constitution, analyzing the text, and identifying some of the questions with which it leaves us. These themes are

Lakeland is convinced that Lumen Gentium leaves much unfinished business (as any historical document must), that attending to it will take us beyond much of the now sterile ecclesial divisions, and that the ecclesiology of humility it implies marks the way that theology must guide the church in the years ahead.