Catholic Theological
Society of America

It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the next WFTL webinar:

 

Gaza & Middle East: The Theologians’ Global Call and Responsibility

 

January 24th, 2025

11 AM- 1 PM EST

[English-Spanish – translation will be provided)

 

Speakers:
Dr. Kwok Pui-lan (USA)
Dr. Nicolas Panotto (Argentina/Chile)
Dr. Carlos Mendoza Álvarez (Mexico/USA)
Dr. Viola Raheb (Palestine/Austria)

 

The war in Gaza and the Middle East, ignited on October 7, 2023, has global repercussions far beyond geopolitics, intersecting with religion, neocolonialism, and biblical imaginaries. These realities raise urgent theological and ethical questions, demanding a global response.

 

Three non-Palestinian theologians will reflect on how Palestine intersects with their own theological work. Dr. Kwok pui-Lan will discuss the topic from a Asian and American perspective; Dr. Carlos Mendoza Alvarez will do the same, especially from a Mexican perspective; and then Dr. Nicolas Panotto, from an Argentinian and Chilean perspective. How do they figure out their theological responsibility to Palestine, the Middle East, Israel, and justice? In a Liberation perspective, how do they connect Palestine and their own contexts? Then, the Palestinian theologian, Dr. Viola Raheb, will assess what has been presented, exploring its relevancy for the people of Palestine.

 

REGISTER NOW https://bit.ly/GazaWebinarWFTL

 

PLEASE SHARE  https://www.facebook.com/events/770515811926807

 

 

 

Every year, the CTSA invites submissions for the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award for the best academic essay by a new scholar.  If you are a new scholar with an important contribution being made (or know of such a new scholar), please make sure the essay is included in the deliberations of the committee.

Submissions are due by midnight (Eastern) time on January 31, via the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award Submission Form.  

More information on the submission process, prize and criteria for selection can be found on the prize web page.  We look forward to reading your work!

Congratulations to CTSA member John Segun Odeyemi on the publication of his book The Mass: Through Him, With Him and In Him (Released 1/7/25).  

John Segun Odeyemi approaches the question of the Holy Mass (Eucharist) by a triadic system; Sacred Scriptures, the catechesis of Pope Francis on the Eucharist, and the voices of the most contemporary theological American minds.  Even though there are many excellent works on the Eucharist from biblical times, through the Middle Ages to our time, his language, style and theological approach gives a fresh way into approaching this great gift.  According to John Segun Odeyemi, at the very heart of the Church's understanding of the Mass is that it points us to heaven and draws heaven down to the world, a prelude to the banquet of life that is promised.  Odeyemi pays particular attention to situating the actions that takes place at the celebration of the Mass, from the beginning to the end within the framework of the biblical understanding, especially from the Old Testament.  this is not just another book on the Holy Mass, it  is a book about the beauty, sanctity and grace of the sacrament which is also known as "the bread of life" and "food for the journey".  (Citi of Books, 2025).

Amir Hussain, CTSA Member
Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University

Lectures in Catholic Experience Presents 
"A Muslim Theologian Teaching at a Catholic University"
Thursday, January 9, 2025, 7:30 p.m. (EST)
Livestream / In person

Amir Hussain, a Canadian Muslim with a dissertation on Muslim communities in Toronto, found himself some twenty years ago teaching at a Catholic university in Los Angeles. In 2009, he became the first non-Christian scholar to be tenured in his department (which was founded with the university almost 100 years earlier). He then served a term as chair of that Department of Theological Studies. In this presentation, Amir will talk about his journey, from graduate work in a secular department for the study of religion, to first teaching in a large public state university, and then seeking out a position in a Jesuit university’s theology department. He’ll also talk about why he, as a Muslim, couldn’t imagine a better place for him to thrive than at a Catholic university, and also about how non-Christians, not to mention non-Catholics, can contribute to the mission of Catholic universities.

Click here for further details on how to register or livestream the event.

UN Security Council Resolution 1325, popularly known as the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (WPS), was first adopted in 2000, making 2025 its twenty-fifth anniversary. The resolution, later supported by nine additional supporting resolutions, advances four key pillars: participation, protection, prevention, and relief and recovery. Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by violent conflict but are generally excluded from peace processes. The WPS resolutions aim to change that. They are good morality, as they expand the aperture for women’s representation and inclusion in peace and security processes. And they are also good policy, as women’s participation creates more constituents for peace and more durable peace.

This special issue of the Journal of Moral Theology invites essays examining the WPS through the perspective of the Catholic Church, in light of the WPS twenty-fifth anniversary. This may include analyses, criticisms, recommendations, connections, possibilities, or mappings, and it may include perspectives that are local, national, regional, or global.

Full information available here: https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/pages/51-call-for-papers 

Write a book review once or twice a year for intellectual growth. Invite your graduate students to write a review under your direction. 

You select the book, I mail it to you, you send me the electronic review, and I post it (about 1,500 to 2,000 reviews posted since 1997). Write to Hegy@adelphi.edu/   Here is the list of books available in January 2025:

REDISCOVERING THE WISDOM OF THE CORINTHIANS. Paul, Stoicism, and Spiritual Hierarchy by Timothy Brookins (340 pp – Eerdmans.) [The “wisdom” of 1 Cor 1-4 refers to the Stoic philosophy that prevailed in Corinth; some members considered themselves as “wiser” philosophically and “superior” intellectually; this led to conflictive divisions. Paul refutes this philosophical interpretation of his teachings]

CATHOLIC DOGMATIC THEOLOGY: A SYNTHESIS. Book 3. On the Church and the Sacraments by Jean-Hervé Nicolas, OP (750 pp – CUA Press). [Translated from German. First published in 1985]

NATURE, GRACE AND SECULAR CULTURE.  A Comparative Study of John Milbank and Joseph Ratzinger by Christian Irdi. (320 pp – Pickwick). [Milbank is the founder of Radical orthodoxy which takes a critical view on secularity and raises questions about reason and grace in the interpretation of modernity – as did Ratzinger]

ESSENTIAL VATICAN II. The Council for the Future Church edited by Christopher Bellitto (110 pp – Paulist Press). [An introduction to Vatican II for the younger generation. Each chapter on seven major documents is written by an expert and gives a summary of Vatican II and its aftermath]

MORAL DEBATES IN CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC THOUGHT: PARADIGMS, PRINCIPLES, AND PRUDENCE BY James Bretzke, S.J. (228 pages -- Sheed and Ward)

Guiding principles to the basic issues of the death penalty, abortion, gender, immigration and border security, welfare, economics, and faithful citizenship.] DIGITAL COPY

WISDOM FROM THE GLOBAL SISTERHOOD edited by Srs. Joyce Meyer et al. (290 pp – Liturgical Press). [Ten years of articles from the Global Sisters Report about the work of women religious all over the world].

                                                                                                                                         

THE WAY OF THE HEART. The Spiritual Experience of André Louf by Charles Wright (290 pp – Cistercian Publications). [A. Louf was the abbot of a Dutch Trappist monastery who chose to be a hermit the last 10 years of his life, after a having played a prominent role in his order and the post-Vatican II church].

THE JESUIT DISRUPTOR. A Personal Portrait of Pope Francis by Michael Higgins (310 pp – Anansi Press). [Higgins was a Vatican reporter for many years. His portrait is descriptive. Two strong chapters on the sexual scandals and on Synodality].

OUR LADY OF LA ANG. History and Theology of a Vietnamese Devotion by Mary Kim Ahn Thi Tran (220 pp – Pickwick). [History and development of the pilgrimage. On inculturation and the title of Mary, Mother of the Church].

HANS KUNG. A REVALUATION edited by Paul Lakeland (200 pp – Paulist Press). [Eleven revaluations from a variety of perspectives: Susan Ross, Francis Clooney, Roger Haight, Mary Ann Hinsdale and others].

In 2025, the Catholic University of Leuven celebrates its 600th jubilee. For this occasion, the XVth LEST-conference (Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology) will address the challenges and opportunities for the future of the Catholic university. The conference is organised in collaboration with the Australian Catholic University. It will focus on the qualitative concept of catholicity in its plurality of forms and functions within the university.

The university: reconsidering its tasks and purpose

The university is an institution characterised by a specialisation of disciplines and a variety of methods. It is a ‘laboratory’ where arguments are advanced, experiments executed, histories explored, and conversations conducted. Sometimes this leads to surprising synergies and even syntheses, although a marriage of disciplines seems to be further out of sight than ever before. The university has become an organisation of research and instruction, shaped by interests, insights and values characteristic of ever more particular methods, theories, and political identities. It is therefore also an arena of intellectual and social power, where criteria of quality are applied and standards of accountability and purpose are set, and these are not always shared by the different branches of knowledge and fields of inquiry.

In a time of growing specialisation and pluralisation, one could conclude that the contemporary university is a multiversity: a convenient, mostly administrative collaboration between schools and research institutes, each having its own educational task and professional aim. Questions then remaining concern the nature and goal of learning and formation, and discovery and exploration. If the university is regarded a universitas magistrorum et scholarium, a community that searches for possibilities in the real, serves the public interest, and pre-pares for life in the future, then the question arises what the universitas of the university is: uniformity, universality, commonality, or something else?

Catholicity: thinking towards a qualitative wholeness

Catholic universities have formulated answers to this question in the past, and according to the task of the university, they should continually renegotiate these answers and reformulate new ones. The term ‘catholic’ could shape and inform these tasks. The etymological sense of the term ‘catholic’ is ‘according to the whole’ and refers to a quality of something being open to a wholeness that is greater than itself. It seems a good starting point for exploring the idea, function and task of the university, as a space of thinking together the particular and the common, the individual and the collective, and the self and the cosmos in a coordinated and dynamic, and mutually implicating way.

The history of catholicity in this sense, however, has frequently been one of instructive failures, most often privileging the universal over and at the expense of the particular, with the whole trumping the part. A solely and simplistically quantitative approach has not been the only or most fruitful way of thinking the term, despite being dominant in the popular imagination. In the patristic, medieval periods and again since the 19th century a more interesting theological family of qualitative or intensive senses can be perceived: these are understandings which emphasise the qualities of fullness, integrity, and wholeness, which fed into the serious broadening of ecumenical, interreligious, intercultural and secular encounter and dialogue following the Second Vatican Council.

Theology: reconfiguring its place in the university

Recent theological notions of catholicity, most notably in the ressourcement tradition, are marked by a heightened attention to alterity and different kinds of difference. As a consequence, catholicity has become an instrument for understanding the apophatic, conjectural, and future-oriented dynamic of fundamental relations, for example between reality and knowledge, God and the world, revelation and truth, faith and reason, and the Church and the churches. Can this nuanced, dynamic, and differentiated theological interpretation of catholicity serve as a model for understanding the complex synergy of the diverse branches of knowledge in the university, and their variety of relating to reality?

Theology has different positions and roles in universities worldwide. In some parts of the world, its confessional and traditional foundations are contested, while in other parts its search for understanding, wisdom and beliefs is valued and flourishing. In a multiversity of particularist identities and theories, theology could at best find its place in the margin of the academy and content itself with a supporting role of understanding meaning and life within specific religious traditions. In a university that seeks to reformulate the nature and purpose of formation and exploration, however, theology might well have to play a significant, lead-ing role in critically constructing and intermediating concepts employed in other academic disciplines, for example, the world, origin, nature, life, time, power, humanity, and so on. In a Catholic university, a theological expansion of catholicity could be instrumental to explain, not only what it means for a university to be distinctly, yet penultimately Catholic, but also what it means to be a university tout court, and thus be an example of a laboratory of culture, in pursuit of, and dedicated to the truth.

We welcome papers on the following subthemes:

• Theological and philosophical notions of catholicity
• Catholicity in ressourcement theology
• Realizing catholicity through diverse charisms: the contribution of the religious orders and congregations
• Qualitative catholicity and other concepts of the universal, fullness, or wholeness in academic disciplines
• Theological and philosophical reflections on the university
• The place of theology in the university
• The organisation of knowledge: from hegemonic wholes to fragmented silos, artificial intelligence, and beyond
• The role of unknowing and nescience in the academic disciplines
• Current debates on the Catholic university: contextual, political, and religious issues
• The role of power and identity in the university: dispute, debate, and dissent
• The purpose of education: faith, formation, and flourishing
   
• Papers of 20 minutes are invited on the conference theme
• Please submit abstracts via the registration form on the website of LEST XV: https://theo.kuleuven.be/en/lest/lest-xiv/proposal-form
• Deadline for submission is May 15, 2025
• A selection of the papers will be published after peer review.

"Women’s Leadership in the Climate Movement"
A symposium honoring the life of Sr. Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN (1931-2005)
Friday, 10 January 2025
15:00-17:00
Aula F007, Pontifical Gregorian University and on zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7652053630 

Moderator: Fr. Prem Xalxo, SJ, Coordinator of the Joint Diploma in Integral Ecology and Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Theology, Pontifical Gregorian University
Welcome: Fr. Mark Lewis, SJ, Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University
Opening remarks: Sr. Mary Johnson, SNDdeN, Ph.D., Congregational Leader
Panelists:

• Sr. Maamalifar Poreku, MSOLA, Co-Executive Secretary of the Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Commission, UISG/USG
• Dr. Emilce Cuda, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America
• Dr. Gianni LaBella, Professore Ordinario, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia; Community of Sant’Egidio
• Dr. Laurie Johnston, Professor of Theology, Emmanuel College, Boston; Community of Sant’Egidio

Organizers:
Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue
Emmanuel College Department of Theology, Boston
Joint Diploma Program in Integral Ecology, Pontifical Gregorian University

Following the symposium, all are cordially invited to a Vespers service held by the Community of Sant'Egidio to honor Sr. Dorothy Stang at 20:00 at the Basilica of San Bartolomeo sull’Isola. A relic of Sr. Dorothy will be presented by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur for permanent installation and display in the Sanctuary of the New Martyrs. She will be the first woman from the United States to be honored in this way.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/165hAmEpueX_8-RO3teUIVTEd43kbcwlh/view?usp=sharing

As Mary Jane Ponyik noted in her recent email, Volume 78 of the Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America was published late last month and can be found here. If you would like to order a print edition of the this year's Proceedings--or any previous volume of the Proceedings--you may do so here.

Thank you to all of this year's contributors for their work to make this year's volume of the Proceedings a reality.

At the suggestion of the Board, I will continue to provide some data about the readership of the electronic version of the Proceedings periodically throughout the year. Those updates will be posted here, on the CTSA Newsfeed. If you have questions or comments about or suggestions for the Proceedings, please feel free to reach me at proceedings.ctsa@gmail.com.

The academic blog WIT: Women in Theology recently announced a call for new regular contributors. We welcome applications from any women with graduate-level academic experience, including current graduate students. We are looking for women who engage "the Christian tradition in a theological way" and have a commitment "to the liberation of persons, particularly women, from all forms of oppression."

Regular contributors write at least 4 blog posts in a given calendar year. We are especially interested in women who might do comparative theology, as that is an area that the blog does not currently have a strength in, but all women are welcome to apply.

The initial application is due January 15, 2025 and consists of responses to four questions, submitted via email. If selected to move to the next round, we will ask for a sample blog post that we can use to evaluate your writing.

For more information about the initial application and our search, see: https://womenintheology.org/2024/12/01/are-you-a-woman-in-theology-wit-is-again-seeking-to-add-new-regular-contributors/