While the writings of Rahner and Hartshorne are based upon very different metaphysical foundations, the purpose of this article is to bring to light some of the important similarities (and to clarify some of the significant differences) with respect to their understandings of death and eternal life. We seek to contribute some new insights to the important ongoing dialogue between process theists and theologians rooted in the Thomistic tradition.

Dorothy Day's sense of herself as a woman and as a mother feature prominently in her writings. In light of recent inquiries into gender identity and gender ideology, and given Dorothy Day's prominence as editor, social activist, anarchist, pacifist, and religious author, questions about her views regarding woman's role and related feminist concerns invite investigation. The paper argues that although Dorothy Day did not become a vocal advocate nor public ally of the women's movements in twentieth-century American life because of some fundamental differences in viewpoint and loyalty, she did share a number of affinities with feminist perspectives. To investigate her thought on this topic enables us to understand Dorothy Day more fully and to bring a critical eye to selected features of feminism, discerning (from Day's standpoint) both strengths and weaknesses.

At least since the Enlightenment, religious thinkers in the West have sought to meet the “evidentialist” challenge, that is, to demonstrate that there is sufficient evidence to warrant a rational affirmation of the existence of God. Alvin Plantinga holds that this challenge is rooted in a foundationalist approach to epistemology which is now intellectually bankrupt. He argues that the current critique of foundationalism clears the way for a fruitful reappropriation of the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition's assertion of the “basic” nature of belief in God and its concomitant relegation of the arguments of natural theology to marginal status. After critically assessing Plantinga's proposal—especially its dependence on a nonfoundationalist theory of knowledge—this essay shifts to an analysis of the transcendental Thomist understanding of the rational underpinnings of the theist's affirmation of God's existence, with particular emphasis on the thought of Joseph Maréchal. It is argued that the latter position is better equipped to fend off possible nontheistic counterarguments—even in our current nonfoundationalist atmosphere—and, in fact, can serve as a necessary complement to Calvin's claim of a natural tendency in human beings to believe in God.

This essay critically assays four recent attempts to furnish a moral justification for nuclear deterrence: the success thesis, the just war thesis, the argument from the “supreme emergency,” and the exceptionalist thesis. By entering into critical dialogue with representatives of these arguments I hope to show that the current confidence in the morality of nuclear deterrence is ill-conceived. Chief among the logical and practical difficulties plaguing these arguments are the following. (1) The success thesis rests on the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning. Nor does the assertion of the past success of deterrence furnish guarantees of future effectiveness. (2) Representatives of the just war thesis either establish conditions for accepting deterrence that are incoherent with their judgments about use (e.g., U.S. Catholic bishops) or develop a theory of deterrence that cannot be morally institutionalized (e.g., David Hollenbach). (3) The argument for the supreme emergency eclipses moral convention in the nuclear age. (4) The attempt to salvage the supreme emergency according to a classical theory of community rests on a fundamental disanalogy between the Aristotelian polis and modern nation-states. Moreover, it opens the door for a double standard to evaluate the methods of war.

This essay claims that some recent discussions of moral positions based on a principle of innocents' immunity, “The direct killing of an innocent person is never morally justifiable,” ignore two different meanings of “innocence”: “innocence” as applied to agents and “innocence” as applied to those upon whom the agents act (“patients”). It shows how neglecting this distinction distorts some discussions about abortion and justifiable war. Some recent philosophical analyses are used and developed (1) to argue that “patient innocence” is not dependent on “agent innocence,” but on how the role of “;patients” relates those “patients” to prospective or actual agents, and (2) to show the theoretical importance of distinguishing “excuses” from “justifications” of actions. This approach provides an alternative to traditionalist and revisionist accounts by suggesting how Catholicism's “inconsistent ethic” might be developed into a more coherent, multifaceted vision.

Interpreters of Reinhold Niebuhr generally ascribe the inconsistencies in his view of history to either his changing mind or inadequacies in the development of Christian realism. These perspectives can be insightful but they neglect larger and more systematic questions about the relation of Niebuhr to the specific historical period he addresses, that of liberalism. This essay argues that Niebuhr's work both draws more deeply on liberal assumptions and poses sharper historical criticism than is often recognized. The analysis provided below demonstrates that while Niebuhr identifies the rationalized self-legitimation in the liberal teleology of progress, his view of the historical development of individuals and societies reproduces the idea that liberal society is the culmination of all previous historical periods. The difficulties Niebuhr has in overcoming the limits of liberal categories are instructive regarding the complexity of criticizing a society of which we are a part.

After an explanation of salient points of Wayne Meeks's construction of a social history of Pauline Christianity, this essay explores his concept of ritual efficacy with attention to what it might lend to a fuller understanding of ritual/sacramental efficacy in the contemporary churches. Because the communities of l'Arche of Jean Vanier are constituted by a great diversity of persons who are vastly unequal, at least in terms of intelligence, they provide a contemporary reference for investigating Meeks's claim that the function of Christian ritual is to socialize persons of various strata into a communitas in Christ. No definitive resting point is reached, the conclusion being that in light of various social factors facing the churches, Christian ritual needs to socialize persons into communitas more effectively than it usually manages to do. Suggestions for doing so are offered.

The author argues that the Kyoto school of modern Japanese Buddhist philosophy can contribute much to Christian reflection on the problem of a transcultural theology. Starting with the work of Nishida Kitaro in the early part of this century, the Kyoto school has attempted to express Mahayana Buddhist thought in Western philosophical categories. Articulating his own “logic” based on the Mahayana notions of emptiness and nothingness, Nishida went on to advance a fully developed philosophy of religion which offers a unique interpretation of Christian theism while presenting the Mahayana tradition in a critical and systematic language accessible to a Western readership. Nishida's colleagues in the School include Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, Takeuchi Yoshinori, and Abe Masao among others. A review of the literature available in Western languages is offered, as well as a discussion of some of the salient theological problems raised by this Mahayana critique of Christian theism and its contribution to the problem of a transcultural theological standpoint.

This essay analyzes the moral and theological significance of the preoccupation of today's college students with careers and preprofessional training and illustrates how the theology component of the undergraduate curriculum can respond to the moral dilemmas presented by careerism. It contends that careerism is but a symptom of a more fundamental malaise of the social ethos and that by engaging in a critical inquiry into the moral roots of the ethos of liberalism—the ethos that gives rise to careerism—students can be challenged to investigate their own personal career choices in the context of the society in which they live. This can be done successfully only if analytic categories are available that provide a “bridge” between the personal experience of the students and the social experience of the larger society. The Ethics component of the Theology curriculum can provide these categories of analysis. Ethos, narrative, character, and vocation—terms integral to the discourse of Christian Ethics—provide helpful ways of structuring this analysis in the classroom.

Bernard Lonergan's importance to Catholic theologians is existential as well as theoretic. For many he bridged the culture and the church. Three of the themes prominent in his recently published A Third Collection exemplify his service to his colleagues: community, history, and praxis. Lonergan shared the burden of alienation of his fellow Catholics from the culture, and in his struggle to understand and change, illuminated a path for them. Recent literature displays his influence: David Tracy's Plurality and Ambiguity, Tad Dunne's Lonergan and Spirituality, Vernon Gregson's Lonergan, Spirituality, and the Meeting of Religions, Hugo Meynell's The Theology of Bernard Lonergan, and the essays in the Festschrift, Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan.

The so-called “Oriental religions” dismissed only a century ago as primitive and pagan have registered in recent times a steep ascent to prominence not only in terms of their proven capacity to articulate the cultural ego of some of Asia's decolonized nations, but also as spiritual movements now seeping into Western cultures, threatening to be respectable alternatives to traditional Christianity. Disturbing news of Western youth streaming into Asia like a river flowing backward to its source is given wide coverage in the media.

The moral theologian's work is related to moral magisterial teaching as science to pastoral address. Speaking from a juridical perspective regarding faith and morals, the two Vatican Councils can be misinterpreted to mean that the relation of the magisterium to faith is the same as its relation to morals. These relations, however, are only analogically the same. The relation of the magisterium to moral theology, accordingly, is different from its relation to systematic theology. Nor can its relation to contemporary moral theology be identical with its relation to the preconciliar version. For its part, moral theology does not include “theological dissent,” since dissent is a personal and social but—apart from a single possible exception—not a scientific act. The tension between moral theology and the magisterium can be removed only on the basis of mutual understanding of their respective responsibilities and limitations.