The trauma that results from violence against women presents a challenge to theological reflection on the meaning of suffering. The mysticism of suffering unto God in the theology of J.B. Metz offers an essential contribution to this reflection. There is a remarkable compatibility between women's experiences of trauma and healing and Metz's understanding of suffering unto God, especially in its refusal to glorify suffering. Further, Metz's understanding presents a much needed mystical-political dimension to theological reflection on violence against women, because of its capacity to nurture on going resistance to the victimization of all women, past and present. Metz's mystical stance, holding together both anguish and radical hope, challenges feminist theology, in its treatment of violence against women, to attend to the relationship between the mystical and political.

Genesis 2–11, or the primeval history of the Yahwist tradition, has been assessed theologically in several ways by biblical commentators over the years. The author suggests that this portion of the biblical text may be analyzed from the perspective of a process theological hermeneutic to gain new insights. In particular, one may observe the progressive involvement of Yahweh in the creative activity of establishing a world order, which is not always perfect in its developmental advance. Such a portrayal reflects not an omnipotent deity of classical theology, but rather a personal deity deeply related to the on-going creative processes of this world. Such perceptions of God dovetail well with the assumptions of process theology.

This essay traces the revival of the concept of domestic church from Vatican II to the present. It identifies areas of preliminary consensus, as well as unresolved issues, which surface explicitly or implicitly in discussion of domestic church. Using Rahner's thought, the potential significance of domestic churches in ecclesiology is examined in more depth.

Buddhist thinking centers not on a transcendent God, but on the nothingness and emptiness of Sunyata. Nevertheless, Masao Abe's reflections on the symbol of God as self-emptying can enhance our understanding of what God means. Abe interprets the self-humbling and self-sacrificing act of Jesus as a manifestation that God has vacated the transcendence of otherness in becoming world. These reflections allow us to consider a religious perspective that centers not on God, but on world and the continuum of living-dying-relatedness that represents the reciprocal and mutual interrelatedness that is world. In being returned to world, we are invited to participate in the original and originating activity of God as giving of self in compassion to one another. God is to be experienced not as a transcendent center, but as the fundamental meaning of world and its context of interrelatedness.

This essay envisions the meaning of providence according to recent feminist and process theologies of power and attempts to distinguish the meaning of providence from the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It compares the classical meaning of providence with those elements in modern and contemporary thought that warrant changes in our understanding of these themes, while it maintains the continuity of Christian tradition. In doing so, it offers some reflection on the relationship between theology and spirituality, and suggests a new synthesis between the immanence and transcendence of God in the experience of Christians today. In light of the biblical idea of justice as right relations, the mystical and political are integrated.

This essay describes an intensive eight-month long interdisciplinary faculty seminar which brought together faculty from the social sciences and humanities to explore, with different methodologies, the nature and traditions of Catholicism. It describes the way in which the seminar was organized, the participants selected, the syllabus chosen and how the discussion unfolded. It concludes with an evaluation by the author of what was learned, and then provides a brief description of the research projects undertaken by the seminar participants.

To introduce so dear a friend and so esteemed a colleague, I repair for help to five distinguished, tone-setting keynoters. Each of these keynoters touches themes that reflect the life and the theological mission of Charles E. Curran.

My first keynoter is Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. In his Presidential Address to the Catholic Theological Society of America he said that Vatican II “implicitly taught the legitimacy and even the value of dissent.” The council, said Dulles, conceded “that the ordinary magisterium of the Roman Pontiff had fallen into error, and had unjustly harmed the careers of loyal and able theologians.” He mentioned John Courtney Murray, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar. He could surely add the name of Charles E. Curran. Dulles said that certain teachings of the hierarchy “seem to evade in a calculated way the findings of modern scholarship. They are drawn up without broad consultation with the theological community. Instead, a few carefully selected theologians are asked to defend a pre-established position….” Dulles aligned himself with those theologians who do not limit the term “magisterium” to the hierarchy. He spoke of “two magisteria—that of the pastors and that of the theologians.” These two magisteria are “complementary and mutually corrective.” The theological magisterium may critique the hierarchical magisterium.

Many oppose the mandatum as a threat to the academic freedom of Catholic scholars and the autonomy and credibility of Catholic universities. But the imposition of this juridical bond on working theologians is also in tension with Catholic Social Teaching on the rights and dignity of labor. Work is the labor necessary to earn our daily bread. But it is also the vocation by which we realize ourselves as persons and the profession through which we contribute to the common good. Thus, along with the right to a just wage and safe working conditions, Catholic Social Teaching defends workers' rights to a full partnership in the enterprise, and calls upon the church to be a model of participation and cooperation. The imposition of the mandatum fails to live up to this standard and threatens the jobs and vocations of theologians while undermining this profession's contribution to the church.