The article is divided into two parts. The first deals with the subject of spiritual discernment in Christian tradition: its nature, importance in the spiritual life, and the aspects of the spiritual life on which it bears. The second part deals with Catherine of Siena's particular approach to the subject of discernment: an explanation of the three images she uses to illuminate the meaning and operation of discernment and an exploration of the theological sources of her teaching on this subject.

In his recent works Michael Novak offers an affirmation of “democratic capitalism” based on a Christian personalist perspective. Novak's scholarship has received increasing attention since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, and particularly since the recent encyclical Centesimus Annus. In that encyclical John Paul II offered a qualified affirmation of market economies. This article addresses an important question: to what extent can a Christian personalist social theory be used to offer an affirmation of a market economy, and how might it offer vision and constructive critique? I initiate a creative dialogue between the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and Michael Novak's presentation of democratic capitalism. I argue that Novak has shed important light on the positive moral aspects of a market system, but I identify and emphasize the important remaining areas for moral concern.

Both Native American shamans and mind-cure practitioners dispel disease by visualizing it in symbolic form and enable recovery by invoking symbols of well-being. This paper shows how comparative study of shamanism and mind-cure furthers understanding of the techniques of symbolic healing characteristic of each religious tradition. Mind-cure techniques of hypnotic suggestion illumine the Native American idea that prayers, songs, and stories are spiritual forces. Conversely, the performing arts practiced by Native American shamans contribute to further understanding of the effective healing techniques practiced by Mary Baker Eddy and her teacher, Phineas P. Quimby. The paper also comments on the implications of studying particular forms of Christian theology and practice, such as the mind-cure movement, in light of shamanism.

Interreligious dialogue, like all else, is having its own way in Asia and reveals its own theology of religion. This has to be seen against the background of what transpires in the Western patriarchate in the same field of theology. Here I will focus on one particular model which has created tension between the two magisteria that function dialectically in the church today: the “academic magisterium” of the theologians and the “pastoral magisterium” of the bishops and in particular the bishop of Rome. They differ in their responses, but they begin their theology of religion by asking almost the same question.

This essay clarifies the foundation for a discipleship of equals by bringing feminist scholarship to bear upon conflicting religious assumptions regarding women. To this end, it surveys significant scholars as well as issues: past, present, and future. It evaluates the outcome of the three phases of study in women's history (I); it urges present action in four areas which are essential for equality in the Church (II); and it speaks words of hope for difficult times to come (III).

This essay explores the formulation of Catholic social teaching as a form of ministry structured in relation to charism. After situating the concept of charism theolgically, it addresses the significance of charism as an organizing principle for the ministry of Catholic social teaching, referring in particular to the experiences of Oswald von Nell-Breuning and Dorothy Day. Finally, it suggests a form of ecclesial participation, such as the retrieval of mystagogy, that would facilitate the free and full exercise of charisms by all those called and gifted to serve the church in the formulation of Catholic social teaching.

The Catholic Worker Movement, widely known for its critique of violence and capitalism in American culture, has largely neglected racism. This seems surprising because its urban houses of hospitality, staffed mostly by middle-class whites, provide material resources disproportionately to impoverished African Americans. The movement's embodiment as a white movement and the failure of its founders (Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin) to prioritize racial justice has impeded its ability to adequately confront racism. This article contrasts the ways in which racism was addressed by the founders with the way it was addressed by two prominent African American Catholic Workers. The article includes a new Catholic Worker narrative to explain the movement's relationship with racial justice and offer suggestions for ways the movement can mine its own rich resources to become an authentically anti-racist movement.

The sweeping movement of student protest over racial discord on university campuses reflects intractable divisions in the public square. Catholic higher education is obligated by its mission to address this interpersonal situation with practices of healing as integral to its formational end. This article approaches Thomas Groome's shared Christian praxis as a “pedagogy of caritas” in light of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The focusing activity and five movements of shared Christian praxis enact the dynamic structure of Bernard Lonergan's cognitional and existential interiority. Friendship praxis sets the conditions for the possibility of self-transcendence and healing for a commodified and increasingly diverse community of learners. A pedagogy of friendship is a promising integrative teaching strategy for a Catholic university in our divided time.

Contrary to what may appear in a superficial understanding of his spirituality, John of the Cross strongly affirms the goodness of creation and its capacity to mediate the presence of God. He specifically identifies the web of mutual interactions among creatures as a primary manifestation of divine love, and he affirms that the more a person participates in God, the more he or she participates fully and joyfully in this community of creatures. Activation of creation's full capacity to mediate divinity, however, depends on the full fruition of the human person in God. Experientially, this involves a lengthy process of a back-and-forth rhythm between the glimpse of God in creation and the complete renunciation of dependence on creaturely knowledge in favor of faith. John's writings invite us to participate in the healing of the natural world by pursuing this contemplative rhythm all the way to its fruitional climax.

Despite Pope John Paul II's call for “intense dialogue” between theology and science that excludes “unreasonable interpretations” of Scripture, ecclesial statements on gender and sexuality—including John Paul II's own works—deploy an interpretation of the literal meaning of Genesis to perpetuate a complementarian anthropology that contradicts scientific insights about the human body. After illustrating the implications of this hermeneutical inconsistency, this article presents Jesuit astronomer William Stoeger's theological method and hermeneutics of the full flourishing of life as an alternative approach, which fulfills John Paul II's vision for dialogue and paves a way toward reimagining church teachings on gender and sexuality.

In the light of what appears to be a growing consensus that historicist and postmodern thought undermines the credibility of appeals to women's experience as a source of theological and moral knowledge, I assess whether these criticisms do indeed discredit appeals to experience as a legitimate source of knowledge and norm for feminist theology. While such critiques pose insightful challenges to assumptions underlying the appeal to experience, I argue that they do not definitively discredit the appeal to experience itself. Drawing on trauma theory and the work of Margaret Farley and Martha Nussbaum, I seek to show how women's experiences can be defended as a credible source of knowledge and a norm for feminist theology.