From Blind Obedience to a Responsible Faith


Book Description

Author Donald F. Fausel was raised in the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, when prescribed beliefs were rarely questioned and blind obedience to authority trumped following ones conscience. Through a process of developing an informed conscience and learning to think critically, his journey led him to a more responsible faith, while remaining in his Catholic tradition. This memoir recalls Fausels life experiences, his reflections on those events, and how they affected his spiritual journeyfrom his birth in 1929; his formative years; his life in the seminary and ordination in 1957; his nine years in the active ministry, ending with a dispensation from the Vatican in 1972; and his continued journey as a married Catholic. Fausel reflects on a range of faith-related issues: the differences between faith and beliefs; abortion and artificial birth control; the doctrine of infallibility; the danger of relying solely on the magisterium; the charism of celibacy and mandatory celibacy; the place of women in the church and the ordination of women; and the effect of the new cosmology on our image of God. Not only does Fausels memoir frame the events that shaped his life, but provides reflections to help others in their faith journey.




The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes


Book Description

Modern-day Israel, and the Jewish community, are strongly influenced by the memory and horrors of Hitler and the Holocaust. Burg argues that the Jewish nation has been traumatized and has lost the ability to trust itself, its neighbors or the world around it. He shows that this is one of the causes for the growing nationalism and violence that are plaguing Israeli society and reverberating through Jewish communities worldwide. Burg uses his own family history--his parents were Holocaust survivors--to inform his innovative views on what the Jewish people need to do to move on and eventually live in peace with their Arab neighbors and feel comfortable in the world at large. Thought-provoking, compelling, and original, this book is bound to spark a heated debate around the world.




Our New Human Consciousness


Book Description

Every few thousand years, our human culture experiences a massive evolutionary transformation. In the next few years, our consciousness will change very rapidly and move us beyond anything we can presently imagine. This change of consciousness is happening naturally to each of us now, and it will affect every aspect of how we think, how we live, and how we love. We are a culture in search of its spirit, and this change of consciousness is evolutionarily next for humankind on this planet. When the awareness opens, one may search many avenues and attractions for truth and enlightenment and find the search lacking in result. The next step may be the path of Self-discovery. But the direction on this path will not be given to us by a great teacher who comes down from the mountaintop with answers cast in stone, but rather by lots of little great teachers who could be called pathfinders. And to move into this new consciousness, we will transform the mind and the way it works with new mental skills and mental technology. Our success is inevitable. The ease or difficulty with which we achieve this success is still in formation. We will survive the transition physically. The question is whether we will survive psychologically. Psychological survival in this transition depends on only one thing: Developing the ability and inner discipline to completely, instantaneously, unquestioningly and continuously adapt to change.







Religion and Revelation


Book Description

Since first Thomas Aquinas defined theology as revelation, or the rational elucidation of revealed truth, the idea of revelation has played a fundamental role in the history of western theology. This book provides a new and detailed investigation of the concept, examining its nature, sources, and limitations in all five of the major scriptural religions of the world: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The first part of the book discusses the nature of theology, and expounds the comparative method as the most useful and appropriate for the modern age. Part Two focuses on the nature of religion and its early historical manifestations, whilst the third part of the book goes on to consider the idea of revelation as found in the great canonical traditions of the religions of the world. Part Four develops the distinctively Christian idea of revelation as divine self-expression in history. The final part of the book discusses how far the idea of revelation must be revised or adapted in the light of modern historical and scientific thought, and proposes a new and positive theology of revelation for the future. The book includes discussions of the work of most major theologians and scholars in the study of religion - Aquinas, Tillich, Barth, Temple, Frazer, and Evans Pritchard - and should be of interest to many scholars and students of comparative religion and theology, and anthropologists.




The Destruction of the Christian Tradition


Book Description

Concentrating on the post-Vatican II revisions of its teachings, this book tells the story of the destruction of the Roman Catholic tradition, a defining event of the twentieth century.




The Undivided Sky


Book Description

Radio was one of the major weapons used in the Cold War and The Undivided Sky gives a lively and comprehensive account of radio programming and audience responses in the divided Germany of the 1960s by looking at the reportage of major war-crimes trials of the time, issues of the Holocaust and German national identity.




A Ministry of Discernment


Book Description

Both the faithful and bishops are called to learn and to teach. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the faithful of the local church witness to the apostolic tradition with their lives, and so are teachers. Learning to receive and respond to the sense of the faithful is an essential way the bishop grows in his personal ability to teach the church’s faith in authentic and meaningful ways. How is the bishop’s ministry of discernment formed by spirituality, and what structures strengthen it? Ignatian spirituality and the structures of discernment in the Society of Jesus model ways for bishops to cultivate discernment as a spiritual habit and provide insight for renovating diocesan structures to incorporate discerning dialogue with the faithful. In A Ministry of Discernment, Amanda Osheim moves from ecclesiological theory to imagining spiritual practices and church structures in the hope of contributing not only to the academic conversation about the sensus fidelium but also to the ways the church practically lives out our response to the Holy Spirit.




A Not Impossible Religion


Book Description




Bonhoeffer


Book Description

One of the best known Christians of the twentieth century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is admired as a theologian for his unparalleled independence of mind, creativity and brilliance by liberals and conservatives alike. His death at the hands of the Nazis is an extraordinary tale of courage and Christian discipleship. However, Bonhoeffer was also a serious theologian who, while indebted to the liberal tradition of the University of Berlin, was also influenced by the new thinking of Karl Barth that challenged the consensus. Plant has written a critical exploration of Bonhoeffer's writings that illuminates his ethical theology, showing that what linked all his work was the attempt to listen to God's word in, to, and for the secular world.