This article engages the on-going debate over the interpretation of Vatican II's documents. It argues that a careful examination of this dispute reveals that it is not primarily concerned with the existence of “rupture” or “continuity” in the council's texts, but instead is driven by fundamental questions regarding the nature of reception and the character of ecclesial authority. The article outlines the distinctive notions of reception operative in the debate over Vatican II and the way in which such views shape their proponents' hermeneutics of interpretation. To that end, it illumines a determinative link between larger paradigms of ecclesiological structure and related approaches to reception. The final section explores Vatican II's own documents for the ways that they address the authentic nature of reception and the character of legitimate authority. Ultimately, this study argues that Vatican II's affirmation of a dynamic notion of reception points a way forward for its own interpretation and, more broadly, for advancing the Church's overall self-understanding.

Disaffiliation—when members of religious communities leave—has recently become a popular topic for theological and social scientific investigation. Today, fewer Roman Catholics than in recent memory describe themselves as strong members of their church. Many have left to seek other spiritual paths, and many of those who remain do not believe and practice as the Church teaches that they should. These essays propose that the theoretical framework of “deconversion” provides a broader and more effective way to understand forms of religious change that are occurring in contemporary America. In the classroom, teaching theology can take on a specific productive shape when the surrounding culture challenges theologians to take deconversion seriously as an element of, and larger context for, spiritual identity today. Theology remains vital when patient curiosity about the current adventure of religious identity is foregrounded pedagogically. Concluding thoughts sketch some important characteristics of an evangelical church, more concerned with its mission and witness in the world than with maintaining its internal life.

Recent US election cycles, debates about the Affordable Care Act, and a variety of so-called culture war issues have placed the term “intrinsic evil” into public discourse. This issue's roundtable affords readers the opportunity to probe deeply various dimensions of the concept, such as the pedagogical effectiveness of the term, its current use in virtue ethics, and the rhetorical effectiveness of competing moral discourses. The authors' explorations range from consideration of classical questions about the substance and circumstances of acts to a taxonomy for “intrinsic evil” to how social processes affect the discourses available to ethicists.

It is a great pleasure and honor to offer this address at the end of my term as president of the College Theology Society. I wish to begin by paying tribute to Sister Vera Chester, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, a graduate of Marquette University, who served as the first woman president of the College Theology Society between 1980–1982. She died on April 22, 2012. I had the good for tune of having Vera Chester as one of my professors when I was an undergraduate student at the College of St. Thomas shortly after the Second Vatican Council. Although I was a philosophy major, I took quite a few classes in theology. In many of those philosophy and theology classes I witnessed my professors working through and acting out the postconciliar debates between the heirs of Neoscholastic Thomism and transcendental Thomism, and I learned a great deal in the process. I experienced a different kind of approach to theology in a course on spiritual autobiographies taught by Vera Chester at The College of St. Catherine. We were introduced to the writings of Augustine, John Henry Newman, Thomas Merton, and (if my memory is correct) Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux. What strikes me about this course now is not only Vera's contagious joyful interest in her subject matter and her students, but also her awareness of the importance of introducing students to theology through the use of narratives, specifically autobiographies that describe spiritual life journeys.

Recent US election cycles, debates about the Affordable Care Act, and a variety of so-called culture war issues have placed the term “intrinsic evil” into public discourse. This issue's roundtable affords readers the opportunity to probe deeply various dimensions of the concept, such as the pedagogical effectiveness of the term, its current use in virtue ethics, and the rhetorical effectiveness of competing moral discourses. The authors' explorations range from consideration of classical questions about the substance and circumstances of acts to a taxonomy for “intrinsic evil” to how social processes affect the discourses available to ethicists.

The sacraments represent some of the ordinary activities involved in sustaining daily life, activities which are understood to contain meaning and therefore power. These activities are for the most part the province of women in human societies, probably because of the biological role of women in procreation. One of the ways that men have responded to the connection between women and life sustaining activities is to claim the sacramental reenactments of those activities for themselves, and to maintain that the sacramental reenactments, not the ordinary activities, contain meaning and power. The task for the church is to reconnect sacraments with ordinary life by involving men in direct nurture of life and involving women in sacramental administration, so as to demonstrate the reality of divine meaning and power in life.

By studying the parish mission under the rubric of revivalism the author claims that revival religion enjoyed widespread popularity in the American Catholic community in the second half of the nineteenth century. This conservative tradition had a wider appeal and exerted a greater influence among the bulk of Catholics than the liberal progressive gospel of Americanization.

The parish mission had its roots in Europe and was introduced to the U. S. by various religious orders, the Redemptorists and Jesuits in particular. By comparing the parish mission with Protestant revivals the term Catholic revivalism emerges as the most apt description for the religion fostered at the mission.

To illustrate the meaning of revival religion among Catholics the author studies handbooks for Catholic revivals, sermons of mission preachers and newspaper accounts of the mission. In particular he concentrates on the sermons of Redemptorist and Paulist preachers. From these sources the article argues that Catholics were being nurtured in an evangelical piety that stressed individual conversion; the preachers proclaimed a theology of individualism that was rooted in the theme of repentance and pressed upon the people in an urgent, emotion-filled manner. The moral qualities of right behavior were also stressed and chief among these was the spirit of temperance. A notable difference from Protestant revivalism was the Catholic emphasis on the sacrament of penance in the personal experience of conversion. Catholic revivals encouraged a sacramental evangelicalism that emerged as a major motivating force in the religion of American Catholics in the nineteenth century.

If greater intelligibility is to be achieved in the study of religious figures, the work of symbol in the life of individuals should be probed. Method grounded in sociological and psychological theory holds this possibility. Three considerations center this approach to understanding: (a) the religious figure is formed as he intersects with a symbol system, a process of creative resymbolization; (b) the religious figure is differentiated from others and understood within one of many distinct fields of experience, each field having significant psychological effects on spiritual development; (c) the understanding one achieves is contained by the questions brought to the datum. When more personalistic questions are raised of the religious figure within his symbol system, important differences in meaning result. Taken together, these meanings may approach integral understanding.

How different from each other are transcendental method and reconstructive hermeneutics as approaches to foundational theology? Not so different that there is no room for dialogue between Bernard Lonergan and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza. Some parallel areas of concern which Lonergan and Schüssler Fiorenza develop idiosyncratically include the self-correcting process of learning, the role of faith in foundational theology, the relationship between experience and interpretation, and the specific connection within Christian foundational theology of inferiority with the data on Christianity. Imagining how the authors could be open to each other's theory yields points of complementarity.

“Theology as Biography” is a course jointly offered by the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, team taught by Elena Malits, C.S.C., David Burrell, C.S.C., and Stanley Hauerwas. It is one of a collection of course descriptions and essays on teaching, Teaching Religion to Undergraduates: Some Approaches and Ideas from Teachers to Teachers (ed. Luke Johnson, available for $2.50 from the Society for Religion in Higher Education, 363 St. Ronan St., New Haven, Conn. 06511). It offers an example of the kind of sharing of specific course ideas Horizons will attempt to feature in each issue. Please send along to us ideas on approaches to courses that you would like to share. By the way, all these course ideas need not be unusual. A really well-conceived approach to a basic undergraduate course could be quite valuable. – B.P.P. and R.V.A.

Process philosophers and theologians have long been critical of the traditional (Thomist) doctrine of divine immutability (Section I); yet until quite recently their protests had been largely ignored in Roman Catholic circles. The purpose of this present article is to draw attention to the fact that a number of contemporary Roman Catholic theologians have begun to take the Whiteheadian-Hartshornean challenge seriously, indeed to the extent that they have felt pressed, in response, to seek and exploit implicit, latent resources within Thomas' texts in order to explicate a more adequate Thomist conception of God's interrelationship with his creatures (Section II). Process metaphysics is defended versus several criticisms raised by Roman Catholic writers (Section III).

The question of the sources for Christian Ethics has been a perennial problem. In the first part of this study a heuristic continuum is set up in order to examine briefly six ways of relating faith and morality at the level of sources for Christian ethics which some theologians have actually adopted (e.g., Karl Barth and James Gustafson). In the second part, the author's own constructive proposal is offered along with a critical analysis of the previous positions. It is argued that a critical-dialogical relation between faith and morality offers the best possibilities both for preserving the relative autonomy of each and for utilizing the resources of faith and morality in the discipline of Christian ethics.