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Provides a broad and deep survey of Roman Catholic life and thought, updated and expanded throughout
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism provides an authoritative overview of the history, doctrine, practices, and expansion of Catholicism. Written by a group of distinguished scholars, this comprehensive reference work offers an illuminating account of the global, historical, and cultural phenomena of Catholicism. Accessible chapters address central topics in the practice of Catholic theology and the development of doctrine, including God and Jesus Christ, creation and Church, the Virgin Mary, the sacraments, moral theology, eschatology, and more. Throughout the text, the authors illustrate the unity and diversity of Catholic life and thought while highlighting the ways Catholicism overlaps with, and transforms, other ways of living and thinking.
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An informed and engaging intellectual journey through the past and present of Roman Catholicism, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism:
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Second Edition
Frederick C. Bauerschmidt
Loyola University Maryland
James J. Buckley
Loyola University Maryland
Jennifer Newsome Martin
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Trent Pomplun
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
This edition first published 2024
© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Names: Bauerschmidt, Frederick C. editor. | Martin, Jennifer Newsome, editor. | Buckley, James J. editor. | Pomplun, Trent, editor. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.
Title: The Wiley Blackwell companion to Catholicism / Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, James J. Buckley, Jennifer Newsome Martin, Trent Pomplun.
Other titles: Wiley-Blackwell companions to religion
Description: Second edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Blackwell, 2024. | Series: Wiley Blackwell companions to religion | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024005459 (print) | LCCN 2024005460 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119753872 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119754350 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119754367 (epub) | ISBN 9781119754343 (ebook)
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Cover image: © Catherine Leblanc
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Set in 10/12.5pt Photina by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
In memoriam
David B. Burrell, C.S.C (1933–2023)
Angela Russel Christman (1958–2020)
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. (1918–2008)
Mary Aquin O’Neill, R.S.M. (1941–2016)
Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (1948–2013)
Francis Sullivan, S. J. (1922–2019)
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
List of Contributors
Introduction: A Seamless Coat of Many Colors
Part I Catholic Histories
1 The Old Testament
2 The New Testament
3 The Early Church
4 The Middle Ages
5 The Reformation
6 The Baroque Age
7 Modernity and Postmodernity
Part II Catholic Cultures
8 The Holy Land
9 India
10 Africa
11 Europe
12 Catholicism in Britain and Ireland
13 Latin American Catholicism
14 North America
15 Asia
16 Oceania
Part III Catholic Doctrines
17 The Practice of Catholic Theology
18 Scripture in the Making of Catholic Theology
19 The Development of Doctrine
20 God
21 Creation and Human Beings
22 Christology
23 The Holy Spirit
24 Mary
25 Church
26 The Liturgy and Sacraments
27 Catholic Moral Theology
28 The End, or Ends
Part IV Catholic Institutions and Practices
29 The Holy See
30 The Eastern Catholic Churches
31 Catholicism and Consecrated Life
32 Spirituality
33 Liturgy and Ritual
34 Ecumenism
35 Interreligious Dialogue
36 Art and Literature
37 Theology and Politics
38 Justice and Peace
39 Race, Ethnicity, and Catholicism
40 Schools, Charities, Hospitals
41 Care for Creation, Environmentalism, and Ecology
42 Challenges for the Catholic Church
Index
End User License Agreement
CHAPTER 01
Table 1.1 The Canons of Scripture...
CHAPTER 11
Figure 11.1 Country mean scores...
CHAPTER 12
Figure 12.1 “Typical Sunday”...
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction: A Seamless Coat of Many Colors
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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Michael Amaladoss S.J., was born on Dec 8, 1936 in Tamilnadu, South India and joined the Jesuits in 1953. He has a M.A. in Liturgy and a PhD in systematic theology from the Catholic Institute in Paris (1972). He has been Professor of Theology at St. Paul’s Seminary, Trichy (1973-76) and Vidyajyoti Faculty of Theology in Delhi (1973-1983, 1995-2006) and taught in many theological centres across the world: Paris, Bruxelles, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Berkeley, Manila and Thailand. He has published 34 books (English and Tamil), some of them translated into other languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Indonesian, Japanese and Vietnamese). He has edited 8 books and written about 500 theological articles. He also has a degree in Karnatic music and has composed music for about 150 hymns in Tamil, of which about 75 have been recorded.
Christopher Altieri holds a PhD from the Pontifical Gregorian University and is a journalist and editor. He has worked and written for several leading Catholic news outlets, including Vatican Radio and the Catholic Herald. He is author of three books: The Soul of a Nation: America as a Tradition of Inquiry and Nationhood (2015, Pickwick), Into the Storm: Chronicle of a Year in Crisis (2020, TAN Books), and Signs of the Times: How to read the news without losing your faith (2021, CTS).
Frederick C. Bauerschmidt is Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland and a deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Among his recent publications are The Essential Summa Theologiae: A Reader and Commentary (Baker Academic, 2022) and No Lasting City: Essays on Theology, Politics, and Culture (Word on Fire Academic, 2023). His book The Love That is God: An Invitation to Christian Faith (Eerdmans, 2020) won the 2023 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing.
Michael J. Baxter is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame (USA). He has also taught at Regis University in Denver, DePaul University, the University of Dayton, and the University of Notre Dame (1996-2011). He has published articles in the DePaul Law Journal, Modern Theology, Communio, Pro Ecclesia, and Nova et Vetera and is completing a book of essays, to be published with Cascade Press, called Blowing the Dynamite of the Church: Radicalism Against Americanism in Catholic Social Ethics.
Kimberly Hope Belcher is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, in Liturgical Studies. She uses phenomenology, postcolonial thought, and ritual theory to study Christian worship.
Jana Marguerite Bennett is Professor of Moral Theology and Department Chairperson at the University of Dayton. She holds a PhD from Duke University and an MDiv from Garrett- Evangelical Theological Seminary. Her most recent book, co-edited with David Cloutier, is Naming Our Sins: How Recognizing the Seven Deadly Vices Can Renew the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), which won first place in the 2020 Catholic Press Association sacraments category. She is also the author of Singleness and the Church: A New Theology of the Single Life (New York: Oxford, 2017). She is married with three children, and directs the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program in her Dayton, OH parish.
Stephen Bullivant is Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St Mary’s University, UK, and Professorial Research Fellow in Theology and Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. His books include Catholics in Contemporary Britain: Faith, Society, Politics (Oxford University Press, 2022; with Ben Clements), and Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2023; with Shaun Blanchard).
James J. Buckley is Professor emeritus from Loyola University Maryland. He has written articles in Modern Theology, Pro Ecclesia. A Journal for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, Theological Studies, The Thomist, and other journals. He authored, with Frederick Bauerschmidt, Catholic Theology. An Introduction (Blackwell, 2017). He now has in mind a project on whether and how Catholics can do systematic theology in an unsystematic world but is also intent on spending time with three grandchildren (Sarah, Xavier, and Kate).
David B. Burrell, C.S.C. (1933 - 2023) was Theodore Hesburgh Professor in Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and also taught in Tantur, Israel; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Kampala, Uganda; and Nairobi, Kenya. From 1982 he worked on comparative issues in philosophical theology in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He is widely published, including Knowing The Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, 1992), Original Peace (with Elena Malits)(Paulist, 1998); Al-Ghazali on Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in Divine Providence (Fons Vitae, 2001); Questing for Understanding: Persons, Places, Passions (Cascade 2012).
Michael M. Canaris, PhD is an Associate Professor of Ecclesiology and Systematic Theology at Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Pastoral Studies, where he helps coordinate the Institute’s programs in the United Kingdom and Rome. He specializes in the intersection of theologies of migration, Ignatian spirituality, and ecclesiology. He was the last Master’s student to write a thesis under Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., and the last doctoral student of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. He has published monographs on both of them.
William T. Cavanaugh is Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author of nine books, most recently The Uses of Idolatry (Oxford University Press, 2024). He is also editor of seven books and co-editor of the journal Modern Theology. Dr. Cavanaugh’s work has been published in seventeen languages, and he has lectured on six continents.
Angela Russell Christman (1958-2020) was Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland. She was the author of “What Did Ezekiel See?” Christian Exegesis of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Church from Irenaeus to Gregory the Great (Brill, 2005) and contributor to Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian Medieval Commentators (The Church’s Bible) (Eerdmans, 2007).
Gavin D’Costa is Head of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol. He advises the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and Vatican City on interreligious dialogue. Recent books include Sexing the Trinity (2000), The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (2000) and Theology in the Public Square (Blackwell, 2005). He is currently researching theological social issues raised by religious pluralism in liberal democracies.
Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, O.P., a native New Yorker, is a Dominican theologian who served as Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was ordained to the episcopacy on 11 July 2009. Archbishop Di Noia is the author of The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective (Catholic University of America Press, 1992); Grace in Season: The Riches of the Gospel in Seventy Sermons (Cluny, 2019); Theology as an Ecclesial Discipline: Ressourcement and Dialogue (Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming); and the co-author of The Love That Never Ends: A Key to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1996). He has written many articles and reviews.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. (1918-2008), who was made a Cardinal by St. Pope John Paul II in 2001, was McGinley Professor of Theology at Fordham University. He authored numerous articles and books, including Models of the Church (1974), The Craft of Theology (1995), The Priestly Office (1997), The Assurance of Things Hoped for (1997), The Splendor of Faith. The Theological Vision of Pope John Paul II (2003), and Newman (2005).
Carlos M.N. Eire is the T. L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. A specialist in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, he is the author of various books, including Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016). His memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003) won the National Book Award and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state – a distinction he regards as the highest of all honors.
Joseph S. Flipper serves as Mary Ann Spearin Chair of Catholic Theology at the University of Dayton with appointments in the Department of Religious Studies and the Race and Ethnic Studies Program. He is the author of Between Apocalypse ad Eschaton: History and Eternity in Henri de Lubac, which examines the French Jesuit Henri de Lubac’s theological account of history in the context of the broad revival of eschatological thinking in the twentieth century. He was a 2020 Fulbright Scholar at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in the Faculty of History, Geography, and Political Science.
Michelle A. Gonzalez (Michelle Maldonado) is Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Scranton. She is the author of multiple books including Sor Juana: Beauty and Justice in the Americas (Orbis Books, 2003), Afro-Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture and Identity (University Press of Florida, 2006), and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: An Introduction to Monotheism (co-authored with Aman De Sondy and William S. Green, Bloomsbury, 2020).
Sr. Gill Goulding, CJ is Professor of Systematic Theology at Regis College at Jesuit School of Theology in Canada and the University of Toronto. She is a member of the Theological Commission of the Conference of Religious in Canada and by appointment of the Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops a member of the Faith and Witness Commission (Theological Commission) of the Canadian Council of Churches. Sr. Gill is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Von Hügel Institute, at St. Edmund’s College University of Cambridge, UK. She was recently appointed by Cardinal Grech to the Theological Commission for the Synod Secretariat.
Elizabeth T. Groppe is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. Her publications include the monograph Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford). Her articles appear in journals including Theological Studies, Worship, and Modern Theology.
Kelly S. Johnson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and holder of the Fr. Ferree Chair of Social Justice at the University of Dayton. Her scholarship focuses on the relationship of the supernatural end and theological virtues to social ethics, particularly on economic practices of the Church. She is the author of The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics (Eerdmans, 2007).
Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins emeritus at Emory University. Books that touch on the subject of his essay are Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church (1996) and The Future of Catholic Biblical Interpretation: A Constructive Conversation, with William S. Kurz (2002), and The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, 3rd edition (2010).
Grant Kaplan is Professor of historical and systematic theology at Saint Louis University. He is the author of Answering the Enlightenment: The Catholic Recovery of Historical Revelation (2006), René Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology (2016), and Faith and Reason through Christian History: A Theological Essay (2022). He received his PhD from Boston College in 2003. His forthcoming projects include a translation of Johann Adam Möhler’s final book and a Catholic theology of tradition.
Rev. Dr. Christiaan Kappes is Academic Dean at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Pittsburgh, PA. There he teaches dogmatics and Scripture, while he is also Professor of Christology and Liturgy at St. Vincent Seminary and College, Latrobe, PA. His research mainly focuses on the Eastern Orthodox reception of Latin Scholasticism and on East-West cross currents through translation and religious-cultural interactions. His publications also include the newest research into Mariology.
Emmanuel Katongole is a Catholic priest in the Kampala Archdiocese, Uganda. He serves as Professor of Theology and Peace Studies in the Keough School, University of Notre Dame, and as Extraordinary Professor of Ecclesiology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Before joining the University of Notre Dame (Jan 2013), he served as Associate Professor of Theology and World Christianity at Duke University, and as founding Co-Director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation. He is the author of several books, including Who Are My People? Love, Violence and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (2022). He is co-founder, and President of Bethany Land Institute in Uganda.
Tim Kinnear is a PhD candidate at St Mary’s University, London. His research focuses on computer coding to analyze cohesion and conflict in large datasets of historical online interactions relating to religion. He has also contributed to Explaining Atheism, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, helping research the role of the internet in secularization.
Matthew Levering holds the James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. He is the co-editor of two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and International Journal of Systematic Theology. Among his numerous authored and edited books are Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology; Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church; and (co-edited with Gilles Emery) The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity. He is the translator of Gilles Emery’s The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God. For the academic year 2021-2022, he served as the president of the Academy of Catholic Theology.
Bruce D. Marshall is Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine in the Perkins School of theology at Southern Methodist University, where he has taught since 2001. He is the author of Trinity and Truth (2000) and Christology in Conflict (1987), and is presently completing a book entitled The Primacy of Christ: Faith, Reason, and the Cross. For the 2018-19 academic year he served as Rev. Robert. J. Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture at Providence College, and is a past president of the Academy of Catholic Theology.
Jennifer Newsome Martin is an Associate Professor of systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame with joint appointments in the Department of Theology and the Program of Liberal Studies (Great Books/Core Texts). She is the author of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) and has published articles in Modern Theology, Communio: International Catholic Review, The Newman Studies Journal, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and in a number of edited volumes.
Claire Mathews McGinnis is Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland, and currently serves as director of its Catholic Studies program. She received her PhD in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament from Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies. She is the author of Defending Zion (BZAW, Walter De Gruyter) and co-editor of As Those Who Are Taught: The Interpretation of Isaiah from the SBL to the LXX (SBL Symposium Series, Scholars Press.) She has published essays in edited collections, and contributed the entry on Amos to the Paulist Biblical Commentary and on Jonah to the Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century. She is currently writing a commentary on Exodus for Smyth & Helwys’ Reading the Old Testament series.
Andrew Mercer received his PhD from Southern Methodist University. He is currently the Director of Religious Education at the O’Reilly Catholic Student Center and an affiliate faculty member at Missouri State University and Saint Louis University. His main area of research is theological anthropology in the patristic era.
Emmanuel Perrier O.P. is a Dominican priest of the Toulouse Province (France). He is director of the Institut Saint Thomas d’Aquin (ISTA, Catholic University of Toulouse) and Professor of dogmatics. He is the author of L’Attrait divin. La doctrine de l’opération et le gouvernement des créatures chez Thomas d’Aquin. 2019. (Paris: Parole et Silence).
Peter C. Phan, who has earned three doctorates, is the inaugural holder of the Ignacio Ellacuría Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, USA. His research deals with the theology of the icon in Orthodox theology, patristic theology, eschatology, the history of Christian missions in Asia, liberation, inculturation, and interreligious dialogue. He is the author and editor of over 40 books and has published over 300 essays. His writings have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Vietnamese, and have received many awards from learned societies. He is the first non-Anglo to be elected President of the Catholic Theological Society of America and President of the American Theological Society. In 2010 he received the John Courtney Murray Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Catholic Theological Society of America for outstanding achievement in theology. He has also been awarded four honorary doctorates.
Trent Pomplun is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He is the author of Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Mission to Tibet (Oxford, 2010) and a handful of academic articles. His interests include medieval and modern Roman Catholic theology, the history of Catholic missions in Asia, and Indo-Tibetan religion and culture.
Philip Porter is Assistant Professor of Theology at Saint Louis University--Madrid. He studied theology at Loyola University Maryland and Duke University, receiving his doctorate from Duke after completing a dissertation on the theology of death. In addition to death, Porter’s research interests include Latin Patristics, dogmatic theology, and Ordinary Language Philosophy.
Maria Power is a Senior Research Fellow in Human Dignity at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford where she is the Director of the Human Dignity Project. She is also a Senior Research Fellow of the William Temple Foundation. Maria is the author of From Ecumenism to Community Relations: Inter-Church Relations in Northern Ireland 1980-2005 (Dublin, 2007), Catholic Social Teaching and Theologies of Peace in Northern Ireland: Cardinal Cahal Daly and the Pursuit of the Peaceable Kingdom (Abingdon, 2021) and The Bible and the Conflict in Northern Ireland, (Abingdon, forthcoming 2024) and the editor of a number of collections of essays, including Building Peace in Northern Ireland, (Liverpool, 2011), Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts (London, 2023) with Rev. Dr Helen Paynter (Bristol Baptist College), Catholic Lay Societies in Britain (Woodbridge, 2023) with Dr Jonathan Bush (Durham) and Human Dignity Across the Islamic and Catholic Traditions, (London, forthcoming 2024) with Dr Afifi al-Akiti (Oxford) and The Far Right and Its Claim to Christianity, (London, forthcoming 2024) with Rev. Dr Helen Paynter (Bristol Baptist College).
Michael Root is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, USA. He earlier taught at various Lutheran seminaries in the United States and served ten years as a Research Professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. He was received into the Catholic Church in 2010. He served on various ecumenical dialogues for both Lutheran churches and the Catholic Church. He has written extensively on ecumenical and other theological topics.
Tracey Rowland holds the St John Paul II Chair of Theology at the University of Notre Dame (Australia). She was a 2020 winner of the Ratzinger Prize for Theology and is a Member of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences.
Francis A. Sullivan, S.J. (1922-2019) taught ecclesiology at the Gregorianum for 36 years, serving also as dean of the faculty of theology from 1964 to 1970. After being declared emeritus in 1992, he came to Boston College, where he was an Adjunct Professor of theology. He is the author of eight books, the most recent of which is Creative Fidelity. Weighing and InterpretingDocuments of the Magisterium (1996) and From Apostles to Bishops. The Developement of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (2001).
John E. Thiel is Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University where he has taught for 45 years. His most recent books are Icons of Hope: The “Last Things” in Catholic Imagination (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), which was awarded the 2014 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Prize in Theology, and Now and Forever: A Theological Aesthetics of Time (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022). He served as President of the Catholic Theological Society of America in 2011-12.
Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP is Professor of New Testament at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem, where he serves as the director of the research programme “La Bible en ses Traditions” (bibletraditions.org). He is the author of a trilogy on literature, scripture, and theology (Thomas d’Aquin, poète-théologien, [Geneve: Ad Solem 2003- 2009]) adapted in one volume in English: A Poetic Christ: Thomist Reflections on Scripture, Language and Reality, transl. Kenneth Oakes and Francesca Aran Murphy (London: T&T Clark, 2019). He regularly publishes in the fields of literature, aesthetics, biblical studies, systematic theology, and interreligious studies.
Matthew Philipp Whelan is an Assistant Professor of Moral Theology and Social Ethics at Baylor University. He is the author of Blood in the Fields: Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform (Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Matthew writes on Catholic social teaching, Latin American theologies, and ecological theology. His articles have appeared in Modern Theology, Journal for the Society of Christian Ethics, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Journal of Moral Theology, Communio, and Nova et Vetera, among other venues.
Susan K. Wood, SCL, earned a MA in French at Middlebury College and a PhD in theology at Marquette University, where her dissertation was on the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac. She was President of the Catholic Theological Society of America in 2014-2015 and received the John Courtney Murray Award from that society in 2021. Prof. Wood’s ecumenical experience includes the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue (1994-2019), the North American Roman Catholic-Orthodox Theological Consultation (2005-present), the International Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue (2008-2019). Most of her writing explores ecumenism and the connections between ecclesiology and sacramental theology.
Wendy M. Wright is Emerita Professor of Theology at Creighton University and Affiliate Faculty at Oblate School of Theology Institute for Study of Contemporary Spirituality. Professor Wright’s areas of expertise include the early modern Salesian spiritual tradition, the history of Christian spirituality, family spirituality and Catholic devotional traditions. She is the author of seventeen books, the most recent of which is the co-authored Nineteenth Century Salesian Pentecost (Paulist Press Classics of Christian Spirituality Series).
Sandra Yocum, Ph.D., is University Professor of Faith and Culture at the University of Dayton. Her teaching and research focus on the history of Christianity, especially in the United States, and the Christian tradition of prayer.
Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, James J. Buckley, Jennifer Newsome Martin, and Trent Pomplun
In his classic 1947 work, Catholicism, the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac sought to present a picture of Catholicism, not as a body of dogmas or a set of institutional structures, but as a living social organism that “grows under the action of a single life-force” and whose “scope remains God’s secret” (de Lubac 1988, 47). Confronted with a Church grown defensive in the face of modern Western culture, a Church that deployed its doctrines and structures to fend off a hostile world, de Lubac sought to remind his readers that the doctrines and structures of the Church are not ends in themselves, much less weapons, but rather are part of a dynamic social process that we might call “being Catholic.” This activity of being Catholic is the subject of the Companion.
Like any complex phenomenon, “being Catholic” resists reductionist accounts. For example, as with most religions, Catholicism involves a set of beliefs. But being Catholic involves more than just believing, and there are some senses (both sociological and canonical) in which one remains a Catholic even if one ceases believing. Likewise, Catholicism is an organization, with its own leadership, bureaucratic structures, durable assets, and so forth. But most people who count themselves as Catholic spend relatively little time interacting with this organization beyond attendance at Sunday Mass and, as with belief, one can abandon even this minimal level of public participation and still count as Catholic in some sense. And yet “being Catholic” does seem to have some meaning, even if it is not easily specified solely in terms of beliefs or institutional belonging. Part of what we intend in the diverse chapters gathered in this Companion is to give some sense of what goes in to “being Catholic.”
Though it is true, as both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas noted, that a word’s etymology is not its meaning, it might be helpful to recall that the word “catholic” comes from the Greek kata holos, meaning “according to the whole” or “universal.” The term “catholic church” occurs already in the early second century in Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Smyrnaean (8.2), in the midst of a discussion of the role of the bishop in unifying the Church. It later gets deployed by Christians of the fourth century as a way of allying themselves with the church throughout the world, as distinguished from various sects and splinter groups who would reserve the name “Christian” for themselves. Augustine wrote of the Donatists of North Africa, “The heavens thunder that the house of God is built throughout the whole world; and the frogs croak from their swamp, ‘We alone are Christians!’” (Enarrationes in Psalmos 95.11). To the East of Augustine, Cyril, the bishop of Jerusalem, spoke of the catholic nature of the Christian community not only in geographical terms, but also in terms of the comprehensiveness of its teachings, the kinds of people it encompassed, and its virtues and spiritual gifts (Catechesis 18.23).
This broad sense of catholicity is picked up by later thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, in his discussion of the “marks of the Church” found in the Nicene Creed: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. He notes three ways in which the community that claims the title “catholic” is universal. First, it is universal regarding its location, since the gathering of believers (congregation fidelium) occurs throughout the world, and persists even in purgatory and heaven. Second, it is universal in terms of the human condition, welcoming all sorts of people, both lord and servants, men and women. Finally, it is universal regarding time, stretching from its prefiguration in Abel the Just to its consummation in heaven at the end of time. Any account of the complex phenomenon of being Catholic ought to attend at all these aspects of catholic universality (Sermons on the Apostles’ Creed lec. 12).
With this in mind, we begin this volume with how people have been Catholic over time. Since we desire to emphasize the dynamic nature of being Catholic, beginning with Catholic histories serves as a reminder that Catholicism is a reality within time and that people have been Catholic in different ways at different times, and that this is part of the universality of Catholicism. The authors of our essays could not, of course, make even passing mention of every significant event in the period about which they write, but we hope that their essays provide a high-level view of what being Catholic has meant in a particular era. We also hope that these essays, taken together, offer not simply a chronicle of events, but an interpretation of how Catholicism has responded to changing circumstances while yet remaining the story of a people identifiable over time as Catholic.
People have likewise been Catholic in different ways in different places, and so the essays in our second section explore the diversity of Catholic cultures. The purpose of these essays is not so much to review the history of Catholicism in different places (though history cannot be entirely ignored) as it is to provide a snapshot of how people go about being Catholic in particular cultural settings, and how these people have developed distinctive Catholic cultures. Taken together, these essays provide a picture of the diverse universality that characterizes the global experience of being Catholic.
While being Catholic is not simply a matter of giving assent to doctrines taught by the Church, Catholics over the centuries have developed a rich body of teachings or doctrines that are meant to form the hearts and minds of the faithful. These teaching are “catholic” not only in the sense of being taught by the Church, but also because, taken together, they address the entirety of the Christian story and form a more-or-less coherent worldview. Though the authors of each chapter would not necessarily agree with each other on every theological issue – the Church’s doctrine doesn’t claim to settle every question – there is within this diversity an overall “shape” to Catholic teaching that we hope readers will be able to discern.
Finally, being Catholic involves a wide range of practices that take place within a variety of settings, from prayers and devotions carried out in the home, to works of charity exercised in soup kitchens and hospitals, to the education and nurture of young people in schools and universities. It has involved lives consecrated to solitary prayer and those devoted to life in the world. For some, being Catholic has involved creating great works of art; for others it has involved prophetic protest on behalf of the poor or against war or for promoting racial justice; for still others it has involved scientific inquiry into the structure of God’s creation (and, in some cases, being Catholic has not prevented people form failing to do all these things). The chapters in the final section of this volume will offer a sampling of key Catholic practices and the institutional contexts in which they take place, but one should bear in mind that, even taken together, they remain only a sampling. Part of the catholicity of Catholicism is that the different ways in which one might go about being Catholic are inexhaustible.
Whether we are talking about being Catholic as something extended in time or spread out in space, as a worldview shaped by a body of teachings or a diversity of practices and institutions, we are confronted with Catholicism as a phenomenon marked simultaneously by unity and diversity. Since the first edition of this book, the diversity of Catholicism has only increased, symbolized by the election of Francis, the first non-European Pope since the eighth century. One hears anxious voices raised as to how much diversity Catholicism can endure before it fragments into pieces that can no longer claim to be Catholic. But Catholicism has no choice but to embrace the diverse ways of being Catholic, even while seeking unity amid that diversity. De Lubac wrote of the Church, “she is Christ’s seamless coat, but she is too – and it is the same thing – Joseph’s coat of many colors” (de Lubac 1988, 296). Our hope is that this one volume, gathering together a diversity of authors who employ diverse methodologies, can convey some sense of how a seamless coat can only ever be a coat of many colors.
Six of the authors who contributed to the first edition of this book have, since its publication, passed through death’s veil. Four of them, their essays revised and updated by colleagues, remain contributors to this edition, expanding its diversity of authors to include those who have, we hope, joined the Church Triumphant. To the memory of all of them we dedicate this second edition.
de Lubac, H., SJ. 1988.
Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man
. Translated by L. Sheppard and E. Englund. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Claire Mathews McGinnis
Christian sacred Scripture – the Bible – consists of two major sections, the Old and the New Testaments, both of which are composed of a collection of compositions or “books.” The books of the Old Testament were produced by the ancient Israelite community out of which Judaism emerged. The collection of books was written primarily in Hebrew, except for small portions written in Aramaic and Greek.
The literature of the New Testament is woven through with allusions and explicit references to texts of the Old Testament. That this is so reflects the attempts of the very earliest followers of Jesus to comprehend the significance of his life and death by means of their (Jewish) Scripture. It also equally reflects their conviction that the “gospel” or good news of Jesus Christ is integrally related to the good news of what God had done heretofore. Once the canon of the New Testament took shape, the Old Testament continued to be important in its own right, but it was now read in light of the New Testament and what it proclaimed about Jesus as the fullest revelation of God. Reading the Old Testament typologically, such that events in the Old serve as types that are “fulfilled” in the new – an approach begun in the New Testament writings themselves – continued as one important means of relating the two Testaments. One example is the story of the manna (Exod 16:13–35) which serves as a type of Christ, the “Bread from Heaven” (John 6:30–34), and of the Eucharist. By the Middle Ages Christians understood Scripture to have four senses; first, the literal or plain sense, and second, the spiritual sense, which was further specified as the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses (that is, having to do with the end or our final hope.)
The Catholic Old Testament includes more than seven books not found in either the Hebrew Bible or the Protestant Old Testament, a fact that bears some explanation. The various compositions that became the Jewish Scripture evolved into a collection or “canon” over time. Before the books in the canon were firmly stabilized, it was necessary to translate the Hebrew texts into Greek for the sizeable population of Jews living in the Greek-speaking Diaspora after the sixth century BC. New Testament and early Christian writers primarily depended on the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which came to be known as the Septuagint because of a legend, recorded in The Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates, of its translation by seventy-two elders (or alternately, by seventy, hence its abbreviation as LXX). The Septuagint contained seven books that were ultimately not counted in the Jewish canon, as well as portions of Daniel and Esther found only in the Greek version of those books. From the settling of the Jewish canon onward, Christian writers variously preferred either the longer (Greek) or shorter (Hebrew) canon of Old Testament books, but even those who preferred the shorter canon continued to quote from those books contained in the longer list. The reformer Martin Luther rejected as Scripture those books in the Septuagint not found also in the Hebrew canon, but did publish these additional works in his German Bible as Apocrypha (non-scriptural works). However in 1546 at the council of Trent the Roman Church officially recognized a list of biblical books based on the Septuagint, resulting in a longer Old Testament canon for Roman Catholics than for Protestants. In the Catholic tradition these additional books are referred to as deuterocanonical rather than apocryphal books.
A comparison of the contents and order of books in the Old Testament, based on the Hebrew Bible and on the Septuagint, is found in Table 1.1. The table illustrates the following differences between the canons of the Bible of Judaism and the Old Testament of the Christian Churches. First, both the Jewish and Christian canons begin with the five books of Moses (The “Torah” or “Pentateuch”) and follow the same ordering of books through the “former prophets,” ending with II Kings. In the Hebrew Bible, however, what follows is the collection of latter prophets – three larger and a grouping of twelve smaller prophet collections; this collection of latter prophets comes last in the Protestant and Catholic canons. Second, while the Protestant canon contains the same number of books as the Hebrew Bible, the books are published in the same ordering as that of the Catholic canon. Third, the books of the Hebrew Bible that constitute the Writings appear in a slightly different order than in the Christian canons. The canons of the Orthodox Christian Churches, like the Roman Catholic Church, use the Septuagint as their bases.
Table 1.1 The Canons of Scripture as based on the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint.
Hebrew Bible (= Protestant OT)
Septuagint (= Catholic/Orthodox OT)
Torah (5 Books of Moses)
(5 Books of Moses)
Genesis
Genesis
Exodus
Exodus
Leviticus
Leviticus
Numbers
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy
Prophets
(Historical Books)
Joshua
Joshua
Judges
Judges
1 and 2 Samuel
Ruth
1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Samuel
Isaiah
1 and 2 Kings
Jeremiah
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezekiel
Ezra
The Book of the Twelve Prophets
Nehemiah
(Traditionally written on a single scroll)
Tobit
Hosea
Judith
Joel
Esther
Amos
1 and 2 Maccabees
Obadiah
Jonah
(
Wisdom Books)
Micah
Job
Nahum
Psalms
Habakkuk
Proverbs
Zephaniah
Ecclesiastes
Haggai
Song of Songs
Zechariah
Wisdom
Malachi
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
Writings
(Prophetic Books)
Psalms
Isaiah
Job
Jeremiah
Proverbs
Lamentations
Ruth
Baruch
Song of Songs
Ezekiel
Ecclesiastes
Daniel
Lamentations
Hosea
Esther
Joel
Daniel
Amos
Ezra
Obadiah
Nehemiah
Jonah
1 and 2 Chronicles
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
A Catholic perspective on the divine inspiration of scripture is set forth clearly in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, published during the Second Vatican Council. This document, more commonly known as Dei Verbum, recognizes that the books of the Old Testament were written by human authors who “made full use of their faculties and powers,” while, at the same time, were also writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus, although the books are written “through human agents and in human fashion,” they also “have God as their author” (DV 11–12, Béchard 2002).
This understanding of the inspired nature of the biblical books has important implications for how Catholics approach them. On the one hand, it is important to understand the texts as the work of human authors, paying attention to their culturally conditioned ways of communicating – to language, genre, and modes of narration, for instance. On the other hand, if the Old Testament is to speak as a living text – as the word of God – then the mind of the reader must also be illumined by the work of the Spirit. This means that the task of understanding a biblical text on its own terms, as a document from a particular people, place and time, is necessary to the process of interpretation but it is not sufficient. Scripture must also be interpreted in light of the Spirit that inspired it, and from this it follows that a reader must pay attention also “to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture” (DV 12).
As the living word of God, the Old and New Testaments offer nourishment for the faithful. Not surprisingly then, the reading of, and preaching on, Scripture plays a central role in Catholic worship. A Catholic Mass includes both a Liturgy of the Word and a Liturgy of the Eucharist. The former will typically include a reading from an Old Testament book, recitation of a Psalm, a reading from a New Testament epistle or book other than a gospel, and a reading from a New Testament gospel, followed by a homily which expounds on the Word. Personal study of the Scripture is also encouraged for individual Catholics, “For ignorance of the Word is ignorance of Christ” (St. Jerome). However, the interpretation of Scripture is never a wholly personal affair for Roman Catholics, as a reader must also take into account “the entire living Tradition of the whole Church” attending to the coherence of the truths of faith that have grown out of that tradition (DV 12).
The earliest Christian interpretation of the Old Testament is that found in the compositions of the New Testament. The interpretive techniques used by the various New Testament writers were generally no different than those of the writers’ Jewish contemporaries. For instance, it was not uncommon to read the words of prophetic texts as addressing the situation of one’s own day, or to interpret one passage of scripture by means of another. In as much as nascent Christianity was a Jewish sect rather than the distinct religion that it became, and in as much as the early Christian communities struggled to define themselves in relation to Judaism, it was quite important for the early Christians to search the scriptures for those passages that illumined their experiences of the crucified and risen Lord, and to articulate the ways in which in him was found the fulfillment of the prophetic hope expressed in the Hebrew Bible. As important as this was however, the Old Testament was not used simply as a prophetic pointer to Christ, but for ongoing instruction. Both ways of reading the Old Testament, christologically and otherwise, are evidenced in subsequent Christian interpretation. (For a fuller history of the evolution of Christian interpretation in general, see the following essay on the New Testament.)
Unlike the New Testament which is uniquely Christian Scripture, the Hebrew Bible continued to serve as the Scripture of Judaism, and so alongside the Christian tradition of interpretation of the Old Testament stands a lively and robust tradition of Jewish interpretation of those same books, recorded, most prominently, in the Talmud, but also in rabbinic commentary on the non-legal texts of the Bible. The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible