Book Description

SINCE 2002, THE SYMPOSIUM NEW WINE, NEW WINESKINS HAS OFFERED AN OPPORTUNITY for young Catholic moral theologians to engage in shared work and conversation. Here, the fruits of these labors are gathered into one collection, which represents the wide scope of the future of Catholic sexual ethics. This volume offers the first collection of a new generation's approaches to Catholic sexual ethics. The collection displays young scholars with diverse views, yet whose work moves beyond the impasses that have beset the field. The volume offers original and engaging essays on a variety of topics, from the hook-up culture and dating violence, to cohabitation and homosexuality, to contraception and natural family planning, to the promises and pitfalls of "the theology of the body." The authors display a fresh engagement with these issues in conversation with the Christian tradition and with contemporary culture. David Cloutier provides an introduction that locates this work within the past decades of Catholic scholarship, and articulates new categories for future work. The essays also offer practical insights and models that will interest pastors and lay ministers, as well as scholars. Contributors include: Fr. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Ph.D., S.T.L., is an assistant professor of biology and an instructor of theology at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. In theology, Fr. Austriaco teaches courses and has research interests in bioethics, sexual ethics, and fundamental moral theology. Jana Marguerite Bennett is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, where she teaches courses in sexual ethics and Catholic moral theology. She has written more about singleness and the relationship between singleness and marriage in her book Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (Oxford UP, 2008). Florence Caffrey Bourg is the author of Where Two or Three Are Gathered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches (University of Notre Dame Press), as well as many articles and reviews on theology of marriage and family. Dr. Bourg taught at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati before returning home to New Orleans. She now teaches at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, and has been a visiting professor at Loyola University and Springhill College. David Cloutier is assistant professor of theology at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, MD. He is the author of Love, Reason, and God's Story: An Introduction to Catholic Sexual Ethics (Anselm Academic/Saint Mary's Press, 2008), as well as a number of essays on Catholic sexual ethics and fundamental moral theology. Jason King is currently chair of the theology department at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA. His works include Save the Date: A Spirituality of Dating, Love, Dinner and the Divine (Crossroad, 2003), Dating: A Practical Catholic Guide (Knights of Columbus Supreme Council Veritas Series, 2007), and "Ecumenical Marriage as Leaven for Christian Unity" in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. He has recently done work for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website For Your Marriage. He is married and has three children. William C. Mattison III is assistant professor of theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. His primary area of research is Thomistic moral theology and virtue ethics. He recently completed an introductory book entitled Introducing Moral Theology: True Happiness and the Virtues (Brazos, 2008). David Matzko McCarthy is the Father Forker Professor of Catholic Social Teaching at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, MD. He is the author of Sex and Love in the Home: A Theology of the Household (SCM Press, 2001, 2004 revised ed.), and The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle Class (Wipf & Stock, 2009). Maria C. Morrow is a doctoral candidate at the University of Dayton whose interests in Catholic moral theology include the interconnection of virtue and sacrament, with particular interest in penance. Christopher C. Roberts is the author of Creation & Covenant: the significance of sexual difference in the moral theology of marriage (Continuum, 2008). He is a research fellow in the ethics program at Villanova University. He graduated from Yale, Oxford and King's College London and is a former PBS television reporter. Julie Hanlon Rubio is associate professor of Christian ethics at St. Louis University. She is the author of A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family (Paulist Press, 2003) and Family Ethics: Practices for Christians (Georgetown University Press, 2010), and co-editor of Readings in Moral Theology No. 15: Marriage (Paulist Press, 2009). She lives in St. Louis with her husband and three sons. Michel Therrien is a professor of Fundamental Moral Theology and the Academic Dean at St. Vincent Seminary. He holds a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Tramau, Austria, and a Doctorate in Fundamental Moral Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Kari-Shane Davis Zimmerman teaches at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University in Minnesota. She specializes in courses that deal with the intersection of family and church life, as well as issues pertaining to sex and work. She received her Ph.D. in theological ethics from Marquette University in 2007.