Marquette Studies in Theology – serie

This study aims to call attention to the contemporary significance of Catholic Social Teaching and to investigate what is meant by a number of central ideas that regularly surface in these essays.

Thomas Bredohl's study of the Rhenish Center Party founded in 1871 to represent the interests of German Catholics concentrates on the period from the early 1890s to the First World War. Concerned with ways in which industrialisation and integration into the Second Empire were felt in Catholic politics, he examines the organisation of the party; its courting of Catholic workers; hindrances to the drive for democracy; and the place of the party in German politics.

Everyone familiar with Rahner’s great 23-volume Theological Investigations knows the series is hard to use because it lacks a key. The titles often fail to describe the contents of the essays accurately; there is no cumulative index in English; the existing indices at the end of each volume are tedious and failed to distinguish significant discussions of a topic from casual references; and short of wading through an entire essay there is no way to know quickly whether it contains the material one is looking for. This book attempts to address these problems.

In his address to Congress in September 2015, Pope Francis surprised many when he included Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton along with Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr, as examples of four “great Americans” he wished to extol. While perhaps better known than Merton, adding Day to the pantheon of great figures in American history was certainly significant. Indeed, since her death in 1980, there has been a steadily growing recognition of the importance of Dorothy Day along with a steadily growing body of scholarship on her. All of which has only been bolstered by the renewed move to have Day canonized. Unfortunately, absent from all this study and promotion of Day and her causes has been much attention on Fr. John Hugo and “the retreat” that exerted such a profound effect on her in the 1940s, bringing about her “second conversion.” There are very real reasons why these important theological sources have been overlooked or even ignored, reasons largely rooted in the context of early twentieth-century American Catholicism. Called to be Saints offers a theological and historical analysis of the role that Hugo and the retreat play in understanding Day and the radical Christianity she put forth—a notion of the Christian life that remains relevant today.

Today’s overlapping social and ecological crises portend Bernard Lonergan’s memorable remark that “the world lies in pieces before us and pleads to be put together again.” The calls of Catholic social teaching for a ‘humane globalization’ and, more recently an ‘integral ecology’ only heighten the urgency of this task. Inspired and aided by Lonergan’s thought, this volume presents an array of essays that collectively aspire to answer these pleas. Engaging theology, philosophy, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, the volume’s authors hope to show how in fact ‘everything is interconnected’ in the church’s ongoing task of caring for our common, though fragmented, home. This volume stands as the first publication of the International Institute for Method in Theology. Launched in 2017 by Fr. Robert Doran, S.J. — and through the joined efforts of the Marquette Lonergan Project, the Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College (University of Toronto), and the theology faculty of the Gregorian University (Rome) — the Institute aims to implement Bernard Lonergan’s ‘generalised empirical method’ across disciplines through global collaboration.

The wealth of reflection of the contributing authors of this volume—often relatively young—confirms that the influence of Lonergan's thought continues to expand in the areas of philosophy, theology, and the social sciences. It also reveals how Robert M. Doran has expanded on the thought of Lonergan on issues such as psychic conversion and the four-point hypothesis and that these developments are being widely received in diverse interdisciplinary areas including systematic theology, interreligious dialogue, priestly formation, ecology, scriptural hermeneutics, world Christianity, theopolitics, sociology, etc. This collection of essays is relevant not only to Lonergan scholars but to all who are curious about the relevance of Lonergan and Doran studies to contemporary issues.With essays by Brian Bajzek, Jeremy W. Blackwood, Lucas Briola, Anne M. Carpenter, John P. Cush, John D. Dadosky, Darren J. Dias, Gregory P. Floyd, Joseph K. Gordon, Jonathan Heaps, Ryan Hemmer, Christopher Krall, SJ, Cecille Medina-Maldonado, Joseph C. Mudd, Jacob M. Mudge, Joseph Ogbonnaya, Cyril Orji, Gordon Rixon, SJ, Josephat John Rugaiganisa, Eugene R. Schlesinger, Andrew T. Vink, Gerard Whelan, SJ, and Jaime Vidal Zuñiga.

The interview, held between September 17 and October 1, 2020, gives a rare insight into the life and times of Fr. Bob. It explains in his own words the background to his reading and interpretation of Bernard Lonergan, especially his inclusion of psychic conversion to Lonergan's intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. It tells the story of Fr. Bob's ministry among people with HIV\/AIDS in Toronto, Canada, his leadership of the Lonergan Research Institute in Toronto, his movement back to Marquette in 2006, his founding of the Marquette Lonergan Project, the setting up of Lonergan Resource, a digital platform that made Lonergan's archival papers available to people all over the world, and more.

With this volume, Robert Doran completes his three volume work The Trinity in History, aimed at showcasing the relevance of the doctrine of the Trinity in concrete history. In addition to the analytic and synthetic steps toward theological understanding, the author proposes a more distinct and comprehensive theological synthesis grounded in the impact of the Trinity in history.