Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity: Conservation and Development of Doctrine at Vatican II

Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity: Conservation and Development of Doctrine at Vatican II

Author: R. Michael Dunnigan

Publisher: Emmaus Academic

Published: 2023-10-24

Total Pages: 511

ISBN-13: 1645853349

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The Second Vatican Council’s declaration Dignitatis Humanae marks a significant advance over prior magisterial teaching about the right to religious liberty, yet the nature of this advance has long been subject to controversy. Is it a true development, conserving and extending what came before? Or does it instead chart a new course entirely, rejecting and replacing the older teaching? In Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity, R. Michael Dunnigan takes up these pressing questions and offers a careful examination of how the claims of Dignitatis Humanae relate to the magisterial precedents set by the papacy in the nineteenth century. With precision and nuance, Dunnigan analyzes the object, scope, and foundation of the right to religious liberty itself, and his analysis culminates in the proposal that the “right” endorsed by Vatican II is not identical with the “rights” condemned by previous popes. Beyond establishing the claims of Dignitatis Humanae as a true development of prior teaching, Dunnigan shows that its contribution to the question of religious liberty has not yet received full appreciation. Indeed, Dunnigan demonstrates how the Vatican II declaration reaffirms, reinforces, and even revivifies prior magisterial teaching on religious liberty through its emphasis on human integrity, which emerges as a foundational but often overlooked principle of continuity.


The Disputed Teachings of Vatican II

The Disputed Teachings of Vatican II

Author: Thomas G. Guarino

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1467451290

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The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) radically shook up many centuries of tradition in the Roman Catholic Church. This book by Thomas Guarino, a noted expert on the sources and methods of Catholic doctrine, investigates whether Vatican II’s highly contested teachings on religious freedom, ecumenism, and the Virgin Mary represented a harmonious development of—or a rupture with—Catholic tradition. Guarino’s careful explanations of such significant terms as continuity, discontinuity, analogy, reversal, reform, and development greatly enhance and clarify his discussion. No other book on Vatican II so clearly elucidates the essential theological principles for determining whether—and to what extent—a conciliar teaching is in continuity or discontinuity with antecedent tradition. Readers from all faith traditions who care about the logic of continuity and change in Christian teaching will benefit from this masterful case study.


Catholicism and Religious Freedom

Catholicism and Religious Freedom

Author: Kenneth L. Grasso

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780742551930

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The late Pope John Paul II frequently invoked Dignitatis Humanae as one of the foundational documents of contemporary Church social teaching. In this timely new edited collection, Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary Reflections on Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt have assembled an impressive group of scholars to discuss the current meanings of one the Vatican's most important documents and its place in Catholic social thought. The theological issues brought forth in Dignitatis Humanae go to the heart of the contemporary debate about the nature, foundation, and scope of religious liberty. Here, the contributors to this volume give these considerations the serious and sustained attention they deserve.


Christ the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics

Christ the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics

Author: John R. Betz

Publisher: Emmaus Academic

Published: 2023-09-28

Total Pages: 671

ISBN-13: 1949013871

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The Prologue of the Gospel of John identifies Jesus Christ as the eternal Word or Logos of the Father, who became flesh for the salvation of the world. Yet the world that Christ saves is his world from the beginning, for he is also the Logos of creation, the one “through whom all things were made” (John 1:3). This divinely revealed claim has profound implications not only for theology but also for metaphysics, whose relation to Christian doctrine was undermined over the course of the twentieth century, such that the Christian faith has become an increasingly private affair rather than a credible account of reality and an invitation to participate more fully in it. With Christ, the Logos of Creation, John Betz seeks to recover a Christ-centered, analogical metaphysics and to establish the indispensability of such metaphysics for Christian theology and the Christian vision of reality. In Part I, he dispels the fog of confusion about analogical metaphysics and addresses the ecumenical issues posed by Karl Barth’s famous rejection of the analogia entis. Part II demonstrates how analogical metaphysics helps to explain Christian doctrine and sheds new light on the interrelationship between individual doctrines, including Trinitarian theology, Christology and soteriology, and theological anthropology. In Part III, Betz explores how this analogical perspective can aid in resolving a number of theological disputes, including the metaphysical relationship between nature and grace and the issue of divine humility. Finally, Part IV outlines further directions toward a fully Christological metaphysics that is proportionate both to the challenges of modern theology and the reality of our life in Christ the Logos.


Viri Dignitatem: Personhood, Masculinity and Fatherhood in the Thought of John Paul II

Viri Dignitatem: Personhood, Masculinity and Fatherhood in the Thought of John Paul II

Author: David H. Delaney

Publisher: Emmaus Academic

Published: 2023-10-30

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 1645853594

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In numerous works both before and after his papal election, John Paul II offers ample reflection on the themes of personhood, relationality, and sexual complementarity, but while he advances a clearly articulated theology of femininity and motherhood, as in his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, he might seem to offer no equivalent treatment of masculinity and fatherhood. In Viri Dignitatem, David Delaney seeks to surface and systematize the rich but often overlooked theology of masculinity and fatherhood that is found dispersed throughout John Paul II’s writings, demonstrating its essentiality for understanding his larger anthropology. In the first part of the study, Delaney treats the foundations of this anthropology, establishing John Paul II’s thought on personhood, relation, and human action. Building on this, the second part considers sexual differentiation, drawing out from John Paul II’s teaching on the body, femininity, Mary, and the Church his corresponding perspective on masculinity, which is itself rooted in nuptial complementarity and the revealing work of Christ. The third part focuses on John Paul II’s theology of fatherhood, which Delaney presents as both a natural and spiritual vocation that is based on the Fatherhood of God as this is manifested and imaged by the incarnate Son. Finally, the fourth part provides a synthetic assessment of this theology of masculinity and fatherhood, showing its coherence and addressing contemporary criticisms and misinterpretations. At a time of accelerating crises of sexuality, the family, and fatherhood, Delaney’s Viri Dignitatem provides a welcome and important elaboration of John Paul II’s teaching on the dignity and vocation of man.


Saved as through Fire: A Thomistic Account of Purgatory, Temporal Punishment, and Satisfaction

Saved as through Fire: A Thomistic Account of Purgatory, Temporal Punishment, and Satisfaction

Author: Luke Wilgenbusch

Publisher: Emmaus Academic

Published: 2023-10-24

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1645853373

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In contemporary considerations of purgatory, there is increasing ecumenical agreement among Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants about the need for spiritual purification and healing before a soul can enter into the glory of God’s presence in heaven. Yet for the broader tradition of the Church, this account of what souls require from God is paired with a complementary account of what God, in his justice, requires of the soul, including satisfaction of its “debt of punishment” (reatus poenae). Although the transformative and retributive aspects of purgatory are often seen today as being at odds with one another, Fr. Luke Wilgenbusch proposes in Saved as through Fire to recover their proper and traditional harmony. Taking Thomas Aquinas as his primary guide, Wilgenbusch identifies and explores the full array of the consequences of sin—both immanent and extrinsic—that purgatory resolves. Through an attentive retrieval of Aquinas’s teaching on sin, its effects, and its remedy in Christ, Wilgenbusch clarifies how purgatory indeed heals and purifies souls from their guilt and disordered attachments, and how it simultaneously serves as a form of punishment and a means of satisfaction, enabling souls to contribute, in union with Christ, to the restoration of the divine order of creation damaged by their sin. Beyond shedding valuable light on the doctrine of purgatory, the integrated vantage on purification, punishment, and satisfaction provided by Saved as through Fire holds promise, too, for a better understanding of the Church’s practices of penance, reparation, and the offering of indulgences.


A Bride Adorned: Mary–Church Perichoresis in Modern Catholic Theology

A Bride Adorned: Mary–Church Perichoresis in Modern Catholic Theology

Author: John L. Nepil

Publisher: Emmaus Academic

Published: 2023-09-28

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1645853314

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Starting in the early to mid-nineteenth century, Catholic theology witnessed a profound retrieval of patristic reflection on the interrelationship of the Virgin Mary and the Church. This dynamic reached a doctrinal high point with the declarations of Vatican II and Pope Paul VI concerning Mary as “type of the Church” and “Mother of the Church,” and it also provided the impetus for further theological exploration of the deeper unity of the Mother of Christ and his mystical body. In A Bride Adorned, John L. Nepil examines how this interrelationship has been formulated in modern theology in terms of perichoresis, a notion of unconfused reciprocity or interpenetration drawn from Christology and Trinitarian theology first applied to Mary and the Church by the nineteenth-century German theologian Matthias Scheeben. In the first part of the study, Nepil treats the foundations of this formulation, outlining its historical background and creative articulation by Scheeben. The second part tracks developments of Scheeben’s insight in the thought of twentieth-century theological luminaries Charles Journet, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, and Leo Scheffczyk, each of whom distinctively articulate the shared conviction that neither Mary nor the Church can be understood apart from each other. The third part draws out the far-reaching doctrinal and pastoral implications of this deepened account of the Mary–Church relation, establishing its vital importance for ongoing theological and ecclesial renewal. Through his careful engagement with these figures, Nepil shows how Mary and the Church are to be understood as two realizations of a single mystery. This vantage on Mary and the Church sheds new light on the vision of the Council Fathers at Vatican II, and it charts a course for the Church’s flourishing via a return to her Marian heart.


The Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council

Author: Gerald O'Collins

Publisher: Liturgical Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0814683118

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"This book presents and explores Vatican II's developments in doctrine about divine revelation; the nature, mission, and collegialilty of the Church; religious freedom; and the divine grace that reaches all human beings. It takes up the profound significance of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which opened the way for the Council's subsequent teaching." -- back cover.


The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty

The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty

Author: Michael Davies

Publisher:

Published: 2015-05

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9781937843748

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RIGHT AND WRONG CONCEPTIONS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOMMichael Davies writes that St. Thomas Aquinas summed up the fundamental principle upon which the traditional Catholic teaching of the Church is based in this quotation from the Angelic Doctor: " Now the end of human life and society is God." From this fact our author draws the conclusion: "The State, therefore, has no right to be "secular." It must, as a State, recognize the Kingship of Jesus Christ and do Him homage; and, of course, so act that there is no contradiction between the laws it passes and the laws of God.BECOME AWARE OF THE RECENT CHANGES IN THE CHURCHThis book deals with the right and wrong conceptions of religious freedom. Special emphasis is placed on the weaknesses and confusions of the (non-infallible) Declaration on Religious Freedom of Vatican II, which contains a number of questionable assertions which have greatly added to the confusion of Catholics and others since it was approved by Vatican II in 1965. This makes The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty indispensable for any Catholic who is aware of the recent changes in the Catholic Church.Michael Davies is an author of amazing industry and power. Between the years 1976 and 1983, he published "Cranmer's Godly Order"; a two-volume Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, "about an Archbishop unpopular in his time but with views well worth pondering today;" "Pope John's Council," "Pope Paul's New Mass," "The Order of Melchisedech," on the priesthood, "Partisans of Error," on Modernism, and "Newman Against the Liberals," besides nine pamphlets - all written when he was still quite young, teaching school in England, and supporting a growing family. Today these volumes are as readable and useful as they were then - and uncomfortably prophetic.


Vatican II

Vatican II

Author: Matthew L Lamb

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-04-30

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 0199887225

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From 1962 to 1965, in perhaps the most important religious event of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council met to plot a course for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. After thousands of speeches, resolutions, and votes, the Council issued sixteen official documents on topics ranging from divine revelation to relations with non-Christians. In many ways, though, the real challenges began after the council was over and Catholics began to argue over the interpretation of the documents. Many analysts perceived the Council's far-reaching changes as breaks with Church tradition, and soon this became the dominant bias in the American and other media, which lacked the theological background to approach the documents on their own terms. In Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition, an international team of theologians offers a different reading of the documents from Vatican II. The Council was indeed putting forth a vision for the future of the Church, but that vision was grounded in two millennia of tradition. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that Vatican II's documents are a development from an established antecedent in the Roman Catholic Church. Each chapter contextualizes Vatican II teachings within that rich tradition. The resulting book is an indispensable and accessible companion to the Council's developments, one that focuses on theology and transcends the mass-media storyline of "liberal" versus "conservative."