A unique and engaging resource for all who feel drawn to explore a calling to consecrated celibacy and know that life in a traditional religious order is not for them.
Contemporary culture provides conflicting and confusing messages about the meaning and purpose of human sexuality. This book provides much-needed pastoral guidance in addressing moral issues of sexuality in both the Catholic Church and broader culture today.
Sexuality as life journey, including: - Christianity and sexual violence - Impact of feminism and gay thought on male heterosexuality - Incarnating feminist theology - Reconstruction and deconstruction of marriage - Celibacy; a subversive proclamation of Christian freedom, or sexual repression?
"Fr Christian Cochini has made a thorough examination, based on years of extensive research, of the topic of clerical celibacy in the first seven centuries of the Church's history. ...." [from back cover]
Following the Second Vatican Council, when each Religious Institute was encouraged to research its charism, some Institutes experienced a tension between their charism and their mission, or even difficulty identifying what their charism was. This book is a study of the theological understanding of charism and of mission in relation to Religious Life within the Catholic Church. While this topic has featured in much Roman Catholic theological literature since Vatican II, there appears to be a dearth of in-depth studies. This book addresses this apparent lacuna. It draws particularly on the work of two major theologians, Jean-Marie Roger Tillard OP and Sandra Marie Schneiders IHM, who have reflected at length on charism and mission in the period leading up to Vatican II and on the implementation of its documents with respect to Religious Life. The very significant contributions of Tillard and Schneiders on the topic provide Religious, as well as others who want to know and understand Religious Life, with an interesting and motivating insight into charism and mission in Religious Life. Within the Roman Catholic Church, a “Year of Consecrated Life” has just drawn to a close, and this book forms a background and a response to Pope Francis’ Apostolic Letter to “all Consecrated People on the occasion of the Year of Consecrated Life” (November 2014), which invited Religious to reflect on these aspects that are essential to the life they have chosen to live.
This remarkable study offers a comprehensive explanation of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the sacrament of marriage. Incorporating the rich insights found in St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Dr. Cahall presents a theology of marriage that incorporates the biblical, systematic, pastoral, and historical traditions which have shaped our understanding of this sacrament.
Preface. Introduction. Part I Celibacy, Patriarchy, and the Priest Shortage. 1 Celibate Exclusivity Is the Issue. 2 Compulsory Celibacy and the Priest Shortage. Part II Social Change in Organized Religion. 3 Toward a Theory of Social Change in Organized Religion. 4 The Transpersonal Paradigm. 5 The Special Character of Organized Religion. 6 Forces for Change in Catholic Ministry. Part III Conflict and Paradox. 7 Unity and Diversity. 8 Immanence and Transcendence. 9 Hierarchy and Hierophany. Part IV Coalitions in the Catholic Church. 10 Bureaucratic Counterinsurgency in Catholic History. 11 Pri.
The book addresses the intriguing problem of human self-realization precisely because of the diverse uses of the term, which ranges from abstract philosophical-theological theories to practical psychological-spiritual applications. Jennifer Slater draws the concept from Karl Rahner, the twentieth German theologian, who uses the term self-realization in his theology on freedom and symbolism, relating it to the basic free choice, which the human person makes to be for or against God/Divine. Jennifer Slater explores this fundamental free choice, which is at the same time a basic choice about oneself. She writes from the understanding that the human person is radically free to become the choices she or he makes and freedom is the capacity for definitive self-realization. In the book, she shows that in the exercising of freedom, humans, precisely as historical beings, are also transcendent beings. Jennifer grapples with the perception that since human self-realization involves the power to make decisions, which in reality actualizes a persons own reality, how then does this self-realization come about and where does the Divine fit into the process? If self-realization is related to the human self and to the Divine Self, she then questions what constitutes the self and self-realization? This struggle practically employs the woman in general and in particular the woman consecrated to a vowed life. The pervasive question throughout is: What constitutes the self-realization of a human/woman being?
A burning theological and pastoral issue of our times is that of vocation - not only priestly and religious vocations (or the lack of them) but also marriage and singlehood. In Called by God, Francis Kelly Nemeck and Marie Theresa Coombs offer an invigorating theology of the mystery of vocation and lifelong commitment from an evolutionary and relational perspective. They first reexamine the mystery of God's will as it bears on vocational discernment. Next they explore several biblical notions converging on that theme: chosen, called, and consecrated. The authors then discuss at length the development of vocation and the unfolding of vocational consciousness necessary for a lifelong commitment. Lastly, Nemeck and Coombs present insights into further vocational progress, once mature commitment has been established.