front cover of Baptism of Salvation and Christian Salvation
Baptism of Salvation and Christian Salvation
Anthony R. Lusvardi
Catholic University of America Press, 2024

front cover of The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition
The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition
Willmoore Kendall
Catholic University of America Press, 1995
This thought-provoking book contributes important arguments to the fundamental debate over the place of equality in our political self-understanding. It will continue to be of immense interest to all serious students of American political thought.
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Be Opened! The Catholic Church and Deaf Culture
Lana Portolano
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
Be Opened! The Catholic Church and Deaf Culture offers readers a people’s history of deafness and sign language in the Catholic Church. Paying ample attention to the vocation stories of deaf priests and pastoral workers, Portolano traces the transformation of the Deaf Catholic community from passive recipients of mercy to an active language minority making contributions in today’s globally diverse church. Background chapters familiarize readers with early misunderstandings about deaf people in the church and in broader society, along with social and religious issues facing deaf people throughout history. A series of connected narratives demonstrate the strong Catholic foundations of deaf education in sign language, including sixteenth-century monastic schools for deaf children and nineteenth-century French education in sign language as a missionary endeavor. The author explains how nineteenth-century schools for deaf children, especially those founded by orders of religious sisters, established small communities of Deaf Catholics around the globe. A series of portraits illustrates the work of pioneering missionaries in several different countries—“apostles to the Deaf”—who helped to establish and develop deaf culture in these communities through adult religious education and the sacraments in sign language. In several chapters focused on the twentieth century, the author describes key events that sparked a modern transformation in Deaf Catholic culture. As linguists began to recognize sign languages as true human languages, deaf people borrowed the practices of Civil Rights activists to gain equality both as citizens and as members of the church. At the same time, deaf people drew inspiration and cultural validation from key documents of Vatican II, and leadership of the Deaf Catholic community began to come from the deaf community rather than to it through missionaries. Many challenges remain, but this book clearly presents Deaf Catholic culture as an important and highly visible embodiment of Catholic heritage.
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The Beautiful, The True and the Good
Robert E. Wood
Catholic University of America Press, 2015
"Among the foremost Catholic philosophers of his generation. He has utilized the fullness of the Catholic intellectual tradition to brilliantly take the measure of modern philosophical thought . . . This volume is an expression of Robert Wood's singular philosophical outlook." -Jude Dougherty, dean emeritus, school of philosophy, The Catholic University of America
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Beauty and the Good
Recovering the Classical Tradition from Plato to Duns Scotus
Alice M. Ramos
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
In the past twenty years or more, there has been a growing interest among philosophers and theologians alike in the transcendentals and especially in the beautiful. This seems fortuitous since so much of contemporary culture is fixated in many ways on beauty, on what might be called a superficial or man-made beauty, intent on outward appearance, with little or no concern for the human person’s interiority and distinctive nature. The Ancients and the Medievals, on the contrary, were sensitive not only to the beauty of nature and art but also to beauty as intelligible, that is, to the beauty of moral harmony and of metaphysical splendor. While the question of whether the beautiful is in fact a transcendental aspect of being continues to be a subject of dispute in contemporary scholarship, the relationship between the beautiful and the good has been accepted since ancient times and has been attended to in recent publications. None of these publications, however, offers a systematic treatment of this relationship by drawing from the wisdom of both ancient and medieval thought in such a way as to bring together the work of scholars in this tradition. Beauty and the Good intends therefore to make a singular contribution by presenting a richer alternative to the contemporary cult of beauty and appearance on the one hand, and to the concomitant decline of real beauty on the other hand. In addition to highlighting the centrality of beauty in the Aristotelian account of moral virtue, where virtue is kalon and virtuous actions are done for the sake of kalon—an account which is found echoed in the medieval notion of intrinsic goodness (bonum honestum), understood as intelligible or spiritual beauty—this volume will provide the metaphysical and theological grounding for beauty, as influenced in part by Plato and Neoplatonism, together with a much needed account of how we know and judge beauty, and how for the recognition of true good and real beauty we need to be properly disposed. The integration of philosophical and theological reflection on the nature and relationship of beauty and the good, on our perception and judgment of beauty and of the good as beautiful, and on the motivational role of beauty in human action has as its goal to produce a coherent volume of essays.
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Become Like the Angels
Benjamin P. Blosser
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
Become Like the Angels explores Origen's legacy and, in particular, his teachings about the origin, nature, and destiny of the human person. By way of a historical critical approach, Benjamin P. Blosser discusses the influence of Middle Platonic philosophy on the human soul and then compares it with Origen's teaching.
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Becoming God
The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa
Nancy J. Hudson
Catholic University of America Press, 2007
The doctrine of theosis means a salvation that is the deification of the saved. The saved actually become God. This unusual doctrine lies at the heart of Nicholas of Cusa's (1401-1464) mystical metaphysics. It is here examined for the first time as a theme in its own right, along with its implications for Cusanus's doctrine of God, his theological anthropology, and his epistemology.
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Becoming What We Are
Classical and Christian Readings of Modernity
Jude P. Dougherty
Catholic University of America Press, 2023
Becoming What We Are is a collection of essays and reviews written in the last decade by the late Jude Dougherty, which covey a perspective on contemporary events and literature, written from a classical and Christian perspective. These essays convey a worldview much in need of restating when, according to Dougherty, Western society seems to have lost its bearings, in its legislative assemblies and in its judicial systems as well. Dougherty writes as a philosopher, specifically as one who has devoted most of his life to the study of metaphysics. In these pages Dougherty examines the Jacobians, the empirical world of Hume, Locke and Hobbes, and Kant, the metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Aquinas that opens one to God and provides on with a moral compass, and critiques the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and John Dewey. Becoming What We Are spends some time inquiring into the character of a few great men viz. George Washington, Charles De Gaulle and Moses Maimonides. Dougherty draws upon and shows respect for numerous contemporary authors who are engaged in research and analysis similar to his. The intent is, with the aid of others to restate some ancient but neglected truths. But more than that to show that true science is possible, that nature and human nature yield to human enquiry, that science is not to be confused with description and prediction.
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Bede the Theologian
History, Rhetoric, and Spirituality
John P. Bequette
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
Revered by contemporaries and posterity for both his sanctity and his scholarship, Bede (672-735) is a pivotal figure in the history of the Church. Known primarily as an historian for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede was also an accomplished pedagogue, hagiographer, and biblical scholar. Bede the Theologian: History, Rhetoric, and Spirituality takes a fresh look at this classic Christian thinker, exploring the gamut of Bede’s literary corpus. The book investigates key themes, including Bede’s understanding of the theological significance of time, his conception of the relationship between the temporal and eternal orders within history, his theological use of rhetoric, his foray into narrative theology, and his spirituality. The purpose of this volume is to introduce the reader to principal theological themes in Bede’s thought. Bequette’s thesis is that Bede was a theologian writing in continuity with the Christian tradition and yet making creative, original contributions to that tradition for the sake of his contemporaries, both in the monastery and in the culture at large. The method involves a close reading and analysis of key texts within Bede’s corpus of writings. These texts include the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Life of St Cuthbert, and several of Bede’s biblical commentaries (On the Tabernacle, On the Temple) his homilies, and didactic treatises (On the Reckoning of Time, Concerning Figures and Tropes in Sacred Scripture). Bede the Theologian: History, Rhetoric, and Spirituality constitutes a scholarly study of Bede’s thought as an integral whole, identifying key themes and ideas that pervade his writings. Thus, it can serve as an introduction to Bede’s thought for non-specialists in the areas of theology, religious studies, and other areas of the humanities.
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Before Amoris Laetitia
The Sources of the Controversy
Jaroslaw Kupczak
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
The publication of Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia started the most important theological debate in the Catholic Church since the end of the Second Vatican Council. The cardinals, bishops, theologians, priests, lay Catholics found themselves on the opposite sides of this crucial and complicated discussion. This book attempts to shed some light on this debate by tracing its genealogy. Since Amoris Laetitia is a post-synodal document, the large part of the book is devoted to the theological analysis of the two Synods of Bishops convoked by Pope Francis in the first years of his pontificate: the extraordinary in October 2014 and the ordinary that took place a year later. The main topics for the two synods were determined, however, in the speech given by Cardinal Walter Kasper during the cardinals consistory in February 2014 whose main aim was to prepare the possibility of admitting divorced persons who live in second unions to Holy Communion. The arguments of Cardinal Kasper are presented in the first chapter of the book and confronted with the most significant statements of the Magisterium of the Church on the issue of admittance to the Holy Communion. This book is a study at the intersection of Church history, the history of theology, and systematic theology: dogmatic and moral. Kupczak is interested in the chronology of the events connected to the two synods on the family but in the context of theological problems discussed therein: the theological significance of contemporary cultural changes; the relation of the Church to the world; the understanding of the indissolubility of the sacramental marriage and the Eucharist; the methods of ethically assessing human acts, particularly the concept of so-called intrinsically evil acts (intrinsece malum); and the relation of conscience to the general moral norm. The non-partisan ambition of this book is to serve as a “road map”— a help in navigation for the reader in the complicated discussions leading to publication of Amoris Laetitia. The uniqueness of this book consists in combining the historical analysis of the events leading to the publication of Amoris Laetitia with research of the theological discussion that ensued. Since Amoris Laetitia is a post-synodal exhortation, this book rests on the assumption that crucial for its understanding is a thorough analysis of its genealogy. Only in the light of this historical and theological perspective the debates surrounding Amoris Laetitia may be understood.
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Before Truth
Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom
Jeremy Wilkins
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
It’s frequently said that we live in a “post-truth” age. That obviously can’t be true, but it does name a real problem on our hands. Getting things right is hard, especially if they’re complicated. It takes preparation, diligence, and honesty. Wisdom, according to Thomas Aquinas, is the quality of right judgment. This book is about the problem of becoming wise, the problem “before truth.” It is about that problem particularly as it comes up for religious, philosophical, and theological truth claims. Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom proposes that Bernard Lonergan’s approach to these problems can help us become wise. One of the special problems facing Christian believers today is our awareness of how much our tradition has developed. This development has occurred along a path shot through with contingencies. Theologians have to be able to articulate how and why doctrines, institutions, and practices that have developed—and are still developing—should nevertheless be worthy of our assent and devotion.
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Before Virtue
Jonathan J. Sanford
Catholic University of America Press, 2015
Jonathan Sanford finds that despite the common origins of contemporary virtue ethics in Anscombe, the literature varies widely not just in its scope but in its basic commitments. What exactly is contemporary virtue ethics? In Before Virtue, Sanford develops strategies for describing contemporary virtue ethics accurately. He then assesses contemporary virtue approaches by the Anscombean dual standard which inspired them: the degree to which they avoid the pitfalls of modern moral philosophy and the extent to which they exemplify a successful recovery of an Aristotelian approach to ethics.
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Being and Predication
Ralph M. McInerny
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
Brings together articles that influenced the scholarly work of Ralph McInerny.
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Being and the Cosmos
Robert E. Wood
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
Robert Wood’s aim in Being and the Cosmos<\i> is to reestablish a speculative view of the cosmos that goes back to the ancient Greeks and that corresponds to the holism of contemporary physics. There are two sets of problems in contemporary thought that militate against any such attempt. Most widespread is scientific reductionism in biology and neuroscience that explains awareness in terms of the mechanisms that underlie it. The second is the widespread attack in philosophy itself on speculative holism by deconstruction and anti-foundationalism.

In Being and the Cosmos<\i>, the tack against both is to make explicit the character of the mind that sees and thinks, that actively takes up commitment to the truth available in the disciplines involved. The basic ground of this position rests upon the functioning of the notion of Being that opens up the question of the character of the Whole and the human being’s place in it. Thus position the treatment of the notion of Being as foundation and as orientation toward the Whole between the attack on reductionism and on deconstruction and anti-foundationalism. Wood concludes with a multidimensional sketch of an evolutionary view of the cosmos whose initial phases contain the potentialities for life, sensibility, and intellect as cosmic telos. The holism of contemporary physics has to be reconfigured in terms of this observation. Both reductionists and dualists should know that matter itself has to be re-minded and that mind itself matters.
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Being Human
Philosophical Anthropology through Phenomenology
Robert E. Wood
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
Being Human is the fruit of many years teaching Philosophical Anthropology, conducting Phenomenological Workshops, and reading classic texts in the light of a reflective awareness of the field of experience. Being Human is intended to look to what is typically assumed but not examined in much of current philosophical literature. Today what typically appear as philosophical are textual studies that draw upon wide-ranging scholarship to learn how past thinkers used to think; or works that tend either to be “high-flying,” operating at levels of abstraction far removed from experience and written in arcane style, and thus, for both reasons, difficult to assess (much of Continental thought); or minutely focused upon particular claims and the arguments that can be advanced for and against them (Analytical thought); or deconstructing texts to show how they do not fully work (the followers of Jacques Derrida). Scholarly study, abstract constructions, refined arguments, and deconstructive strategies are each important in their own way; but all take place within the structure of the field of experience which is typically assumed without paying explicit attention to it. Especially in philosophy of mind, the overall field of experience has too often been ignored, usually in favor of some conjecture as to how our ordinary categories would have to be changed when neuro-physiology will be far enough advanced to explain all our behavior. Robert E. Wood claims that it is best to understand what it is that is supposed to be explained before conjecturing about possible explanations. But when you do that, you will have to come to terms with what it means to seek explanation, what a Who is that seeks it, and why it is sought.
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Being is Better Than Not Being
The Metaphysics of Goodness and Beauty in Aristotle
Christopher V. Mirus
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
In his contemplative works on nature, Aristotle twice appeals to the general principle that being is better than not being. Taking his cue from this claim, Christopher V. Mirus offers an extended, systematic account of how Aristotle understands being itself to be good. Mirus begins with the human, examining Aristotle’s well-known claim that the end of a human life is the good of the human substance as such—which turns out to be the good of the human capacity for thought. Human thought, however, is not concerned with human affairs alone. It is also contemplative, and contemplation is oriented toward the beauty of its objects. In each of the three branches of contemplative thought—mathematics, natural science, and theology—the intelligibility of being renders it beautiful to thought. Both in nature and in human life, moreover, the being that is beautiful through its intelligibility serves also as an end of motion and of action; hence it counts not only as beautiful (kalon), but also as good (agathon). The persistent concern of thought with the beautiful reveals what is at stake for human beings in Aristotle’s larger metaphysics of the good: in the connection between goodness and actuality that structures his natural science and metaphysics, in his explicit claim that being is better than not being, and in his concepts of order and determinacy, which help connect being with goodness. These in turn shed light on his concepts of the complete and the self-sufficient, on his teleological understanding of the four elements, and on the curious role of the honorable in his natural science and metaphysics.
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Being Unfolded
Edith Stein on the Meaning of Being
Thomas Gricoski
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
Being Unfolded responds to the question, ‘What is the meaning of being for Edith Stein.’ In Finite and Eternal Being Stein tentatively concludes that ‘being is the unfolding of meaning.’ Neither Stein nor her commentators have elaborated much on this suggestive phrase. Thomas Gricoski argues that Stein’s mature metaphysical project can be developed into an ‘ontology of unfolding.’ The differentiating factor of this ontology is its resistance to both existentialism and essentialism. The ‘ontology of unfolding’ is irreducibly relational. Being Unfolded proceeds by testing a relational hypothesis against Stein’s theory of the modes of being (actual, essential, and mental being). From the phenomenological perspective, Gricoski examines Stein’s theory of the relation of consciousness and being. From the scholastic perspective, he examines Stein’s account of the relation of essence and existence in material being, living being, and human being. And from both perspectives he considers the relation of divine being to actual being and their essences. This book is limited to Stein’s theory of the meaning of being, without making an explicit confrontation with Heidegger. It offers two primary contributions to Stein studies: a systematic analysis of Stein’s modes of being, especially essential being, and an exposition and expansion of her overlooked concept of unfolding. Being Unfolded also contributes to the broader field of contemporary metaphysics by developing Stein’s theory of being as an experiment in fundamental ontology. While other relational ontologies focus on relations between beings, this exploration of unfolding examines being’s inner self-relationality.
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Betting on Freedom
My Life in the Church
Carinal Angelo Scola
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
In this wide-ranging conversation with the Italian journalist Luigi Geninazzi, Cardinal Angelo Scola discusses both the salient moments of his own life and the path and situation of the Church and society in Europe over the last half-century. The Cardinal recounts his life, speaking of the extraordinary gift of particular friendships he has had, starting with Luigi Giussani, founder of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation (CL), and moving on to discuss Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri De Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger. A figure who bridges the past three pontificates, Scola discusses his relationships with St. John Paul II, by whom he was nominated a bishop at the relatively young age of forty nine; Benedict XVI, with whom he has had an intense intellectual friendship for decades; and Pope Francis, of whom he speaks with affection and hope. At the center of this rich fresco of anecdotes and reflections stands a crucial question: what is the true path of the Church today? Between those who reduce Christianity to a mere civil religion and those who propose a purist return to the Gospel, the cardinal indicates a "third way" by betting on the freedom of the human person to recognize the supreme value of Christ. This is at the same time a bet on the active commitment of believers to contribute, starting from faith, to the birth of a new Europe, inevitably more diverse but no loss of its identity.
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Between God and Man
Pope Innocent III
Catholic University of America Press, 2004
The sermons presented in this rich collection cast a clearer light on Innocent's concept of what his duties were as priest and bishop.
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Between Human and Divine
The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature
Mary Reichardt
Catholic University of America Press, 2010
Between Human and Divine is the first collection of scholarly essays published on a wide variety of contemporary (post 1980) Catholic literary works and artists. Its aim is to introduce readers to recent and emerging writers and texts in the tradition.
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The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology
Christopher A. Beeley
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
The past thirty years have seen an unprecedented level of interest in early Christian biblical interpretation, from major scholarly initiatives to more popular resources aimed at pastors and general readers. The fields of Biblical Studies and Patristics/Early Christian Studies each arrived at the study of early Christian biblical interpretation largely from their own standpoints, and they tend to operate in relative isolation from one another. This books aims to bring the two fields into closer conversation, in order to suggest new avenues into the study of the deeply biblical dimension of patristic theology as well as the contribution that patristic exegesis can make to contemporary views of how best to interpret the Bible.

Based on a multi-year consultation in the Society of Biblical Literature, The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology features leading scholars from both fields, who bring new insights to the relationship between patristic exegesis and current strategies of biblical interpretation, specifically with reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. Following an account of how each field came to study patristic exegesis, the book offers new studies of Trinitarian theology in Old Testament, Johannine, and Pauline biblical texts and the patristic interpretation of them, combining the insights of modern historical criticism with classical historical theology. It promises to make a valuable contribution to both fields, suggesting several new avenue into the study of early biblical literature and the development of Trinitarian theology.
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The Bible on the Question of Homosexuality
Innocent Himbaza
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
The Bible on the Question of Homosexuality addresses the hotly debated topic of whether the Bible condemns homosexuality by a close reading of the biblical texts without taboo or prejudice, without personal or church interpretation
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Biblical and Theological Foundation of the Family
Joseph C. Atkinson
Catholic University of America Press, 2014
This ground-breaking work establishes a solid biblical and theological foundation on which a theology of the family can be constructed. It thus fills a critical lack in the current literature on the family. The wide range of sources, including Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, give this work a genuine ecumenical dimension. Biblical and Theological Foundations of the Family will become indispensable for anyone wanting to engage in serious study of the structure and meaning of the family and its place in the salvific will of God.
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A Biblical Path to the Triune God
Jesus, Paul and the Revelation of the Trinity
Denis Farkasfalvy
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
This short volume, finished just before Denis Farkasfalvy’s death in 2020, serves effectively as his last theological testament. Throughout his scholarly career, Farkasfalvy aimed to reconcile and unite theological disciplines that had increasingly become isolated from each other, most notably the biblical, patristic, and systematic. In A Biblical Path to the Triune God, the Cistercian abbot identifies the earliest biblical witnesses to the Church’s teaching about God, formulated at the Council of Nicaea, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus’ famous praise of the Father, found almost word-for-word in Matthew 11:25-27 and Luke 10:21-22, is Farkasfalvy’s point of departure for his bold assertion that in the earliest sources, we find abundant evidence that “it was not Jesus who revealed his own divine sonship; rather, the Father revealed it to those whom Jesus had chosen and were open to respond in faith.” Farkasfalvy demonstrates that Jesus reveals his relationship to the Father in terms of intimate and experiential knowledge, transforming the procreative metaphor of filiation from the physical (as in the Psalms and 2 Samuel 7) to the epistemological realm of knowledge, what he calls “love within cognitive dimensions.” Just decades after Jesus’ ministry, numerous independent apostolic witnesses, from the Synoptic Gospels and John to Paul (especially Romans 1:1-4 and Galatians 1:15-16), indicate a robust and widespread understanding of the Father’s self-disclosure in Jesus the Son. Farkasfalvy concludes his brief but intense reflection by outlining how a single organic process of revelation binds together the Father and the Son, and then extends that loving communion to believers in the Spirit, a communion made possible only by the incarnate Son’s crucifixion and subsequent glorification. This book accomplishes the admirable feat of showing that far from being the invention of later centuries, the Trinitarian doctrine of the Church is firmly rooted in the very first reflections on Jesus’ ministry and mystery by the biblical authors.
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Biomedicen and Beatitude
An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics, Second Edition
Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
This timely and up to date new edition of Biomedicine and Beatitude features an entirely new chapter on the ethics of bodily modification. It is also updated throughout to reflect the pontificate of Pope Francis, recent concerns including ethical issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, and feedback from the many instructors who used the first edition in the classroom.
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Biomedicine and Beatitude
An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics
Nicanor Pier Giorgio AUSTRIACO
Catholic University of America Press, 2011
Besides ethical questions raised at the beginning and the end of life, Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., discusses the ethics of the clinical encounter, human procreation, organ donation and transplantation, and biomedical research.
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The Bishop's Burden
Reforming the Catholic Church in Early Modern Italy
Celeste McNamara
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
In 1563, the Council of Trent published its Decrees, calling for significant reforms of the Catholic Church in response to criticism from both Protestants and Catholics alike. Bishops, according to the Decrees, would take the lead in implementing these reforms. They were tasked with creating a Church in which priests and laity were well educated, morally upright, and focused on worshipping God. Unfortunately for these bishops, the Decrees provided few practical suggestions for achieving the wide-ranging changes demanded. Reform was therefore an arduous and complex process, which many bishops struggled to accomplish or even refused to undertake fully. The Bishop’s Burden argues that reforming bishops were forced to be creative and resourceful to accomplish meaningful change, including creating strong diocesan governments, reforming clerical and lay behavior, educating priests and parishioners, and converting non-believers. The book explores this issue through a detailed case study of the episcopacy of Cardinal-Bishop Gregorio Barbarigo of Padua (bp. 1664-1697), asking how a dedicated bishop formulated a reform program that sought to achieve the Church’s goals. Barbarigo, like other reforming bishops, borrowed strategies from a variety of sources in the absence of clear guidance from Rome. He looked to both pre- and post-Tridentine bishops, the Society of Jesus, the Venetian government, and the Propaganda Fide, which he selectively emulated to address the problems he discovered in Padua. The book is based primarily on the detailed records of Barbarigo’s visitations of rural parishes and captures the rarely-heard voices of seventeenth-century Italian peasants. The Bishop's Burden helps us understand not only the changes experienced by early modern Catholics, but also how even the most sophisticated plans of central authorities could be frustrated by practical realities, which in turn complicates our understanding of state-building and social control.
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Black Catholic Studies Reader
History and Theology
David J. Endres
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
This first-ever Black Catholic Studies Reader offers an introduction to the theology and history of the Black Catholic experience from those who know it best: Black Catholic scholars, teachers, activists, and ministers. The reader offers a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach that illuminates what it means to be Black and Catholic in the United States. This collection of essays from prominent scholars, both past and present, brings together contributions from theologians M. Shawn Copeland, Kim Harris, Diana Hayes, Bryan Massingale, and C. Vanessa White, and historians Cecilia Moore, Diane Batts Morrow, and Ronald Sharps, and selections from an earlier generation of thinkers and activists, including Thea Bowman, Cyprian Davis, and Clarence Rivers. Contributions delve into the interlocking fields of history, spirituality, liturgy, and biography. Through their contributions, Black Catholic Studies scholars engage theologies of liberation and the reality of racism, the Black struggle for recognition within the Church, and the distinctiveness of African-inspired spirituality, prayer, and worship. By considering their racial and religious identities, these select Black Catholic theologians and historians add their voices to the contemporary conversation surrounding culture, race, and religion in America, inviting engagement from students and teachers of the American experience, social commentators and advocates, and theologians and persons of faith.
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Black devil and iron angel
the railway in nineteenth-century German realism
Paul A. Youngman
Catholic University of America Press, 2005
Black Devil and Iron Angel examines how the railway was received and represented by a variety of nineteenth-century German and Austrian realist authors including Berthold Auerbach, Theodor Fontane, and Gerhart Hauptmann.
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Blessed Mary and the Monks of England, 1000-1215
Matthew J. Mills
Catholic University of America Press, 2024
In the study of historical Mariology, the monastic communities of England before and after the Norman conquest receive too little attention. Classic surveys, such as Hilda Graef’s, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion (2 vols, orig. 1963, 1965), highlight key figures and developments; and a fine book by Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (1990), takes scholarship as far as the early-eleventh century. The present volume, building upon such works, delves more deeply into the prayerful, intellectual and artistic contemplation of Mary during the age of monasticism, roughly the two hundred years prior to the advent of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. In the history of England, this was a time of high drama: conquest, power struggle, martyrdom; for English monasticism, it was marked by suppression, reform and renewal, patronage, and new currents of prayer and thought. Against this backdrop, Matthew Mills uncovers many vibrant contributions to Marian doctrine and devotion by theologians and communities living according to the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict: the Benedictines and their successors, the Cistercians, who arrived in England in 1128. In a thematic unfolding of Mary’s life and identity, from conception to assumption and intercession, a picture emerges of a Mariology shaped by the constant of monastic liturgy, anchored in deep biblical and patristic wisdom, cherished and transmitted by the Englishman, St Bede (d. 735), and animated by profound love. Towering figures, St Anselm (d. 1109) and St Ælred (d. 1167), are placed within a wider landscape, alongside lesser-known but still significant individuals, including the Cistercian abbot, John of Forde (d. 1214), royal confessor and pioneer of Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs. England’s monastic Mariology was colored by Greek as well as Latin influences and touched by key experiences of the contemporary church at large: apocalyptic disappointment, eleventh-century reform (sometimes called, ‘Gregorian’), sacramentalism, intense yearning for salvation. This book also sheds light upon the significance of Mary for medieval monks’ understanding of their own profession; their mother and their lady, she was, in addition, their icon and exemplar of life in St Benedict’s ‘school for the Lord’s service’ (Rule, Prol. 45).
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Blessing the World
Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion
Derek A. Rivard
Catholic University of America Press, 2009
In Blessing the World, Derek A. Rivard studies liturgical blessing and its role in the religious life of Christians during the central and later Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the blessings of the Franco-Roman liturgical tradition from the tenth to late thirteenth centuries.
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Blood in the Fields
Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform
Matthew Philipp Whelan
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
On March 24, 1980, a sniper shot and killed Archbishop Óscar Romero as he celebrated mass. Today, nearly four decades after his death, the world continues to wrestle with the meaning of his witness. Blood in the Fields: Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform treats Romero’s role in one of the central conflicts that seized El Salvador during his time as archbishop and that plunged the country into civil war immediately after his death: the conflict over the concentration of agricultural land and the exclusion of the majority from access to land to farm. Drawing extensively on historical and archival sources, Blood in the Fields examines how and why Romero advocated for justice in the distribution of land, and the cost he faced in doing so. In contrast to his critics, who understood Romero’s calls for land reform as a communist-inspired assault on private property, Blood in the Fields shows how Romero relied upon what Catholic Social Teaching calls the common destination of created goods, drawing out its implications for what property is and what possessing it entails. For Romero, the pursuit of land reform became part of a more comprehensive politics of common use, prioritizing access of all peoples to God’s gift of creation. In this way, Blood in the Fields reveals how close consideration of this conflict over land opened up into a much more expansive moral and theological landscape, in which the struggle for justice in the distribution of land also became a struggle over what it meant to be human, to live in society with others, and even to be a follower of Christ. Understanding this conflict and its theological stakes helps clarify the meaning of Romero’s witness and the way God’s work to restore creation in Christ is cruciform.
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Boethius and Aquinas
Ralph McInerny
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
In this study of the relationship between Boethius and Thomas Aquinas, Ralph McInerny dispels the notion that Aquinas misunderstood the early philosopher and argues instead that he learned from Boethius, assimilated his ideas, and proved to be a reliable interpreter of his thought.
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The Bonds of Love
St. Peter Damian's Theology of the Spiritual Life
Gordon Mursell
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
St Peter Damian (1007-1072) is an exceptional example of a paradox that is found in many saints and thinkers through the ages (St Jerome, St Bernard, St Bridget of Sweden, St Teresa of Avila and Thomas Merton come to mind) – of a lifelong tension between two competing vocations: the call to solitude and holiness and the call to prophetic social and ecclesial engagement. The author has explored this tension throughout his adult life, both in his published work and in his own life as an Episcopalian/Anglican priest and later bishop. Damian’s “The Book of ‘The Lord be with you’” is a profound exploration of the spirituality of solitude, whereas his “Book of Gomorrah” is an intense attack on clerical sexual abuse which has helped to give Damian a new recent prominence in the light of the huge challenges facing the Church today. The Bonds of Love shows that the paradox at the heart of Damian's life and everything he cared about was rooted in the remarkable theology of love which finds expression across the whole of his work and gives it both coherence and dynamism. His life and spirituality are of far more than academic interest, and will make a major contribution, not only to those committed to ecclesial reform and renewal, but to all who struggle to live with the kind of competing tensions that made St. Peter Damian who he was.
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Bonds of Wool
The Pallium and Papal Power in the Middle Ages
Steven A. Schoenig
Catholic University of America Press, 2016
The pallium was effective because it was a gift with strings attached. This band of white wool encircling the shoulders had been a papal insigne and liturgical vestment since late antiquity. It grew in prominence when the popes began to bestow it regularly on other bishops as a mark of distinction and a sign of their bond to the Roman church. Bonds of Wool analyzes how, through adroit manipulation, this gift came to function as an instrument of papal influence. It explores an abundant array of evidence from diverse genres - including chronicles and letters, saints' lives and canonical collections, polemical treatises and liturgical commentaries, and hundreds of papal privileges - stretching from the eighth century to the thirteenth and representing nearly every region of Western Europe. These sources reveal that the papal conferral of the pallium was an occasion for intervening in local churches throughout the West and a means of examining, approving, and even disciplining key bishops, who were eventually required to request the pallium from Rome.
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The Book of Acts
Charles Raith II
Catholic University of America Press, 2019
The Book of Acts brings together leading Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical theologians to read and interpret the book of Acts from within their ecclesial tradition, while simultaneously engaging one another in critical dialogue. Combining both theological exegesis and ecumenical dialogue, each chapter is uniquely structured to facilitate a rich reading of Scripture and an engaging though critical dialogue across the traditions. Each chapter begins with a main essay by either a Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical theologian on a section of the book of Acts; the main essay is followed by responses from theologians of the other two traditions. The chapter concludes with a final response from the main author. Readers are thus provided with not only a deep and engaging reading of the book of Acts but also the unfolding of a rich theological-ecumenical dialogue centered on Scripture. Anyone interested in understanding how our ecclesial traditions inform our reading of Scripture would do well to read this book, as would anyone interested in the book of Acts, ecumenical dialogue, and the theological interpretation of Scripture
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The Book of Divine Works
Nathaniel M. St. Hildegard of Bingen
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
Completed in 1173, The Book of Divine Works (Liber Divinorum Operum) is the culmination of the Visionary’s Doctor’s theological project, offered here for the first time in a complete and scholarly English translation. The first part explores the intricate physical and spiritual relationships between the cosmos and the human person, with the famous image of the universal Man standing astride the cosmic spheres. The second part examines the rewards for virtue and the punishments for vice, mapped onto a geography of purgatory, hellmouth, and the road to the heavenly city. At the end of each Hildegard writes extensive commentaries on the Prologue to John’s Gospel (Part 1) and the first chapter of Genesis (Part 2)—the only premodern woman to have done so. Finally, the third part tells the history of salvation, imagined as the City of God standing next to the mountain of God’s foreknowledge, with Divine Love reigning over all.
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The Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna (Medieval Texts in Translation)
Deborah Mauskopf Agnellus of Ravenna
Catholic University of America Press, 2004
This translation makes this fascinating text accessible for the first time to an English-speaking audience. A substantial introduction to Agnellus and his composition of the text is included along with a full bibliography
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Bound for Beatitude A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics
Reinhard Hütter
Catholic University of America Press, 2019
Bound for Beatitude is about St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology of beatitude and the journey thereto. Consequently, the work’s topic is the meaning and purpose of human life embedded in that of the whole cosmos. This study is not an antiquarian exercise in the thought of some sundry medieval thinker, but an exercise of ressourcement in the philosophical and theological wisdom of one of the most profound theologians of the Catholic Church, one whom the Church has canonized, granted the title “Doctor of the Church,” and for a long time regarded as the common doctor. This exercise of ressourcement takes its methodological cues from the common doctor; hence, it is an integrated exercise of philosophical, dogmatic, and moral theology. Its specific theological topic, the ultimate human end, perfect happiness, beatitude, and the journey thereto—stands at the very heart of St. Thomas’s theology. Far from being passé, his theology of beatitude is of urgent pertinence as the crisis of humanity and of creation and the exile of God seems to approach its apogee. By way of a presentation, interpretation, and defense of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of beatitude and the journey thereto, Bound for Beatitude advances an argument based on four theses: (1) The loss of a theology of beatitude has greatly impoverished contemporary theology. In order to succeed and flourish, theology must recover a sound teleological orientation. (2) In order to recover a sound teleological orientation, theology must recover metaphysics as its privileged instrument. (3) Thomas Aquinas provides a still pertinent model for how theology might achieve these goals in a metaphysically profound theology of beatitude and the beatific vision. Finally, (4) Aquinas’s rich and sophisticated account of the virtues charts the journey to beatitude in a way that still has analytic force and striking relevance in the early twenty-first century.
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Bread from Heaven
An Introduction to the Theology of the Eucharist
Bernhard Blankenhorn
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
Bread from Heaven offers a contemporary theological synthesis on the Eucharist that brings together classical and critical biblical exegesis, debates on the early history of the Christian liturgy, patristic doctrine, the teachings offered by the Councils of Florence, Trent and Vatican II, and the Church’s lex orandi, all within a framework provided by the Eucharistic theology of Thomas Aquinas. The volume begins with Christ’s Bread of Life discourse in John 6, in light of the Old Testament theme of the manna, and the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper. These biblical texts offer solid foundation for a theology of Eucharistic sacrifice, presence and Communion. It then continues with a historical and systematic study of the institution of the Eucharist by Christ, with special attention given to the emergence of the first Eucharistic prayers. Then follows a survey of key Christological and ecclesiological themes which undergird Eucharistic theology. The chapters on Eucharistic sacrifice and presence form the heart of the work. Here, the focus moves to key conciliar, patristic and Thomistic insights on these themes. Bread from Heaven clarifies misunderstandings of Eucharistic sacrifice and renders transubstantiation accessible to beginners. Blankenhorn concludes with a study of the consecration, the minister of the Eucharist and the fruits of communion. The chapter on the debate over the words of institution and the epiclesis gives a fresh perspective that integrates both eastern and western tradition. The study of the Eucharistic celebrant strikes a balance between a spirituality of the priest as acting in persona Christi and of the priest as praying in persona ecclesiae. The concluding chapter centers on the Eucharist’s unitive, mystical fruits in the Church. This textbook is ideal for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course on Eucharistic theology. It also seeks to advance the debate on several controversial historical and speculative issues in sacramental theology.
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Breaking the Mind
Kristian S. Heal
Catholic University of America Press, 2014
This collection of sixteen new critical essays offers fresh perspectives on the Book of Steps, adding greater detail and depth to our understanding of the work's intriguing picture of early Syriac asceticism as practiced within the life of a local church and community.
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A Bridge Across the Ocean
Luca Castagna
Catholic University of America Press, 2014
A Bridge across the Ocean focuses on the relations between the United States and the Holy See from the First World War to the eve of the Second, through the combination of American, Italian, and Vatican sources. More than an overall picture of the American and Vatican foreign policy during the first half of the twentieth century, the book analyzes the U.S.-Vatican rapprochement in a multifaceted way, considering both the international and the internal sphere. A Bridge across the Ocean discusses the spread of anti-Catholicism in the United States during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and its repercussions on the American administrations' behavior during and after the Versailles Conference, together with the changes that occurred in the Holy See's attitude toward the American church and the White House after the election of Pope Pius XI. Luca Castagna explores the convergence of the New Deal legislation with the church's social thought, and demonstrates how the partial U.S.-Vatican rapprochement in 1939 resulted from Roosevelt and Pacelli's common aim to cooperate, as two of the most important and global moral powers in the struggle against Nazi-fascism.
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A Brief Life of Aquinas
The Theologian in His Context
Jean-Pierre Torrell
Catholic University of America Press, 2024
Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, who has already written the most highly-regarded contemporary two-volume introduction to the life and works of Saint Thomas, has composed a shorter book that captures the essence of the career of the Angelic Doctor for a more general audience. Torrell follows a biographical outline of the saint, although he also includes brief accounts of what the author takes to be the most important features of Aquinas's teachings. Part biography, part travelogue, part theology, Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP’s A Brief Life of Thomas Aquinas is a multi-faceted look at the life and the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Torrell’s hope is that his biography of the doctor communis intertwined with his theological examination of Aquinas’s writings will enable the reader to understand the person behind the writer and the writer behind the person. Aquinas’s life, Torrell claims, can shed light on his work with respect not only to their number, or to the varied topics he writes about, but to their content as well. It would be inaccurate to view Aquinas hiding behind a mountain of books in the cells he occupied in the various houses he inhabited around the Dominican world. He taught, he preached, he debated, he faced a number of conflicts of ideas that were not of his own making, but out of which would come some of his best-known writings. Torrell’s unique approach makes accessible one of the greatest minds of our tradition and the richness of the legacy he left the Church.
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A Brief Quadrivium
Peter Ulrickson
Catholic University of America Press, 2023
Mathematics holds a central place in the traditional liberal arts. The four mathematical disciplines of the quadrivium-arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy-reveal their enduring significance in this work, which offers the first unified, textbook treatment of these four subjects. Drawing on fundamental sources including Euclid, Boethius, and Ptolemy, this presentation respects the proper character of each discipline while revealing the relations among these liberal arts, as well as their connections to later mathematical and scientific developments. This book makes the quadrivium newly accessible in a number of ways. First, the careful choice of material from ancient sources means that students receive a faithful, integral impression of the classical quadrivium without being burdened or confused by an unwieldy mass of scattered results. Second, the terminology and symbols that are used convey the real insights of older mathematical approaches without introducing needless archaism. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the book is filled with hundreds of exercises. Mathematics must be learned actively, and the exercises structured to complement the text, and proportioned to the powers of a learner to offer a clear path by which students make quadrivial knowledge their own. Many readers can profit from this introduction to the quadrivium. Students in high school will acquire a sense of the nature of mathematical proof and become confident in using mathematical language. College students can discover that mathematics is more than procedure, while also gaining insight into an intellectual current that influenced authors they are already reading: authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante. All will find a practical way to grasp a body of knowledge that, if long neglected, is never out of date.
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The Business Francis Means
Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy
Martin Schlag
Catholic University of America Press, 2017
Pope Francis, generally speaking, has thus far chosen to concentrate his papacy on social justice issues, as opposed to doctrinal or liturgical issues. This has led to Francis being hailed as a hero to many on the left, while it has made some conservative supporters of St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI disappointed and uncomfortable, even as they love and appreciate his person and gestures of mercy and compassion. Some find his teachings difficult to embrace, especially those concerning business and the economy. Pope Francis has spoken of building bridges as part of what it is to be Christian, but aspects of his message seem to be just constructing walls between the Holy Father and groups of the faithful.

The Business Francis Means aims to break through these walls, showing that Pope Francis has something to say to all Christians. His message, taken as a whole, keeps us from dividing the “seamless garment” of Christ: he reminds the conservatives of the problems of inequality and poverty, and the liberals that social justice is not enough – the Church is the bride of Christ, not a social institution or an NGO.

Monsignor Martin Schlag summarizes and explains the message of Pope Francis on business and the economy in this compact volume. The Business Francis Means will be of great interest to the Catholic layperson, especially one involved in political or economic life.
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By knowledge & by love
charity and knowledge in the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas
Michael S. Sherwin
Catholic University of America Press, 2005
By Knowledge and By Love represents a major contribution to Thomistic moral theology and philosophy by providing a thoughtful examination of Aquinas' psychology of action and his theology of charity.
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By Their Fruits
Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign
Ann FARMER
Catholic University of America Press, 2008
Though controversial in subject, By Their Fruits presents an important examination of not only the history of abortion legislation but also the history and impact of the Eugenics movement.
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By Those Who Knew Them
French Modernists Left, Right, and Center
Harvey Hill
Catholic University of America Press, 2008
By Those Who Knew Them illuminates the lives of several key figures involved in the modernist movement--the movement for intellectual and structural renewal in turn-of-the-century Catholicism
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The Byzantine Empire (Revised Edition)
Robert Browning
Catholic University of America Press, 1992
This classic study presents the history of the Byzantine Empire from the sixth to the fifteenth century in terms of political events, art, literature, and thought. It is addressed to the general reader of history as well as to students and scholars.
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A Byzantine Monastic Office, A.D. 1105
Jeffrey C. Anderson
Catholic University of America Press, 2016
This book centers on a Greek text that was likely compiled in Constantinople, in 1105, for use in one of the monasteries located there. The book is a liturgical psalter, containing the fixed structure (the ordinary) in both the Greek original and in English translation, as well as a description of the hours themselves. The extensive commentary explains the development of the monastic office, and the particular history of the translated manuscript, while brief notes clarify and explain, in a way suitable for non-liturgists, the more-technical aspects of the offices.
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