Orbis Books Research Articles

Notes from the Road More Traveled: Doing Theology in a US Cultural Context

One of the most significant consequences of Vatican II has been the worldwide effort at inculturation and contextualization of the Christian tradition, particularly at the level of foundational theology and method.This process implies drawing on the unique patterns of thought, social structures, cultural narratives, and rituals to develop new theological and pastoral sensibilities.This process, termed “prophetic dialogue” by Steve Bevans and Roger Schroeder,[1] seems to be dramatically underway practically everywhere in the Roman Catholic world except, most notably, in the United States.While Hispanics/Latin@s, African Americans, Asian Americans, feminists, etc., have continuously served with an awareness of the need for contextualization, Euro-American academic and ecclesial theology has largely failed to analyze, articulate, and critique its own US cultural context and to engage it in a serious evangelical and theological dialogue. In this article, I propose to offer what I believe are four significant insights about to the task of inculturation/contextualization as it relates particularly to Euro-American theology in the church and academy in the coming decade.[1] Stephen B. Bevans And Roger P. Schroeder, Constant in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004, 385-95.See also Bevans and Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011.

Changing the Questions: Explorations in Christian Ethics by Margaret A. Farley, edited with an introduction by Jamie L.Manson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), xiv + 352 pp.

Changing the Questions: Explorations in Christian Ethics by Margaret A. Farley, edited with an introduction by Jamie L.Manson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), xiv + 352 pp.

Structures of Grace: Catholic Organizations Serving the Global Common Good by Kevin Ahern

Reviewed by: Structures of Grace: Catholic Organizations Serving the Global Common Good by Kevin Ahern Margaret Kowalsky Structures of Grace: Catholic Organizations Serving the Global Common Good. By Kevin Ahern. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015. 224pp. $35.00. Kevin Ahern’s book is, at heart, a testament to the power of Christian social organizations to bring about social transformation. In a time when leaders of Christian organizations are struggling to retain mission, Ahern’s description of “structural grace” seeks to strengthen our theological understanding of collective social action. His book also affirms the importance of having well-trained scholars of religion at the table with senior leadership in Christian social organizations – what a colleague at Catholic Relief Services refers to as the need for “in-house theologians.” This book has three parts. In Part I, Ahern presents three cases – Jesuit Refugee Services, Young Christian Workers, and Ploughshares – selected for their contrasting features, such as leadership structures and modes of church affiliation. He describes the founding, development, and accomplishments of each organization over time, giving particular attention to each organization’s theological roots. In Part II, Ahern lays out the modern history of the social mission of the church, focusing on the intersections of Catholic Social Teaching and areas such as liberation theology. After Vatican II, there developed less individualistic ways to understand sin in moral theology: so-called structural sin. In brief, Ahern wants the post-Vatican II generation of theologians to develop a conception of “structural grace,” which is to say an account of how God’s love heals and transforms via social collectives. Interestingly, this trend toward not letting institutions off the hook is mirrored in the wider secular world of international NGOs – by movements for transnational advocacy, community-driven programming, and sustainability. Part III of the book turns to how an organization can discern its mission and identity today in light of its history and current standing. This part of the book reads like theologically-informed organizational strategy. The upshot of Ahern’s analysis seems to be that, in order to locate grace, one needs to engage in mission-informed discernment. [End Page 75] Ahern’s book, especially chapter 7, would be an enlightening read for leaders developing institutional mission. It takes Ahern until well into the conclusion to give examples of some of the more controversial challenges associated with retaining mission today. Christian organizations need, for example, to employ non-mission sensitive experts, to hire people without preference for creed or sexual orientation, and to work in partnership with entities that do not share or fully adhere to the social positions of the Church. It would be most interesting for Ahern to write a book describing these challenges in more detail. Also, it might be illuminating to incorporate more voices representing women, environmental concerns, and other under-represented perspectives in theology today – voices that Ahern and many of his readers care deeply about. Margaret Kowalsky King’s College Copyright © 2016 American Catholic Historical Society

The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Believers, Seekers, and Those in Between by Kaya Oakes

Reviewed by: The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Believers, Seekers, and Those in Between by Kaya Oakes Christine E. McCarthy The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Believers, Seekers, and Those in Between. By Kaya Oakes. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015. 208pp. $22.00. Today, the rise of the Nones – the religiously unaffiliated – constitutes, by voting with their feet, a growing challenge to the future of institutional religions. Yet author Kaya Oakes offers room for hope [End Page 81] to those who bemoan the exodus from organized religion. While unaffiliated, Nones are hardly uniformly nonreligious: a 2015 Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study indicates 61 percent of Nones – which include atheists and agnostics – report belief in God while 33 percent do not. Some Nones are seekers. In The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Believers, Seekers, and Those in Between, Oakes goes to the margins of faith and even beyond religion “to the seekers, to see what we would find” (16). With breadth and depth, Oakes frames and fleshes out the already multifaceted matrix of seekers within the one-third of the U.S. young adult population (those in their twenties, thirties, and forties) that self-identifies as religiously unaffiliated. Oakes’s engagement with her own “God bothered” generation churns up refreshing, fleshy portraits of those who live in the liminal spaces of faith and doubt, seeking spiritual truth, acceptance, and community. The interviews selected for inclusion in the monograph reflect highly religiously literate Nones who voice with valuable academic nuance the complex realities of their spiritual journeys. Catholic in its hopeful arc, The Nones are Alright ends with a snapshot of “guerrilla” seekers today who, despite their fraught relationship with institutional religion, continue to organize together outside official constructs to “talk, relentlessly, about doubt and faith and social structures, about the broken world and what we can do to repair it, about how we can be better, and what we can do to become good” (198). The book is helpfully organized into eleven brief chapters with an introduction and afterword, each section evenhandedly telescoping between her interviewees’ narratives, Oakes’s own experiences, and a broad range of publications. Citing statistics, mystics, the Catechism, theology, and reportage, Oakes writes from her own home base as a liberal, justice-oriented Catholic who has known spiritual drifting firsthand, becoming a “boomerang” Catholic herself when she returned to be confirmed as an adult. Oakes draws on the experiences of Nones from religiously diverse backgrounds including atheists and multiple religious belongers. However, so many Catholics responded to her [End Page 82] interview requests that the second half of the book culls from the lives of “God haunted” Catholic Nones, reverts, and those at the margins of the religion, addressing familiar Catholic tropes of hierarchical clericalism, lack of gender parity, callousness toward the queer community, and distant priests (94). This is an excellent book that belongs in many libraries and that will inform conversations on the state of faith in the modern United States. The volume should be required reading for those in parish and young adult ministries and chaplaincy. High school and undergraduate instructors will find several of the short chapters if not the whole book especially germane to discussion and reflection. Still, I have to register my own qualm with the title and the impression it gives: are all Nones really alright? It seems they are inasmuch as they are seekers or even nonbelievers without misgivings working with religious institutions, but not all Nones are seekers or “God bothered.” In fact, the same November 2015 Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study mentioned above shows that the religiously unaffiliated are increasingly less religious and more secular, with a full third of Nones reporting no concern with religion at all; at that, seven-in-ten young Millennials (born 1980–1996) with no religious affiliation report that religion and God are not important to their lives. A similar percentage says they never pray and 42 percent saying they do not believe in God at all. While religious affiliation or belief do not exactly correlate with societal levels of religious literacy, sociologists of religion like R. Scott Appleby would express concern over what...

La Verdad: A Witness to the Salvadoran Martyrs. By Lucía Cerna and Mary Jo Ignoffo. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books and Santa Clara University, 2014. Pp. xxvi, 186. Foreword by Michael E. Engh, S.J. Preface by José M. Tojeira, S.J. Introduction. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographic essay. Index. Epilogue by Jon Sobrino, S.J. $14.98 paper.

La Verdad: A Witness to the Salvadoran Martyrs. By Lucía Cerna and Mary Jo Ignoffo. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books and Santa Clara University, 2014. Pp. xxvi, 186. Foreword by Michael E. Engh, S.J. Preface by José M. Tojeira, S.J. Introduction. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographic essay. Index. Epilogue by Jon Sobrino, S.J. $14.98 paper.

Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith by Tom Roberts

Reviewed by: Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith by Tom Roberts Sandra M. Schneiders IHM Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith. By Tom Roberts. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015. 248pp. $28.00. This in-depth biography of Sister Joan Chittister, a Catholic nun, member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA, and a very active public participant in the ecclesial and cultural life of the contemporary church is written by Tom Roberts, well-known to many progressive Catholics as a long-time editor and now editor-at-large of the prizewinning independent weekly newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter. Roberts is also the author of the perceptive analysis of post-conciliar Catholicism, The Emerging Catholic Church: A Community’s Search for Itself (2011). His interest and expertise in this subject of contemporary ecclesial renewal influences his approach to Joan Chittister’s life and work and emerges explicitly in one of the most important sections of the book, chapter 10, “Into Uncharted Waters.” In this thoughtful concluding chapter, he places Chittister’s life in the context of the renewal of the church and especially of U.S. women’s religious life in the post-conciliar period, showing her to be not only one of its major catalysts but also a striking exemplar of both its challenges and its promise. It is this larger focus which will make the book of interest not only to Catholic insiders, especially women religious and those who have profited from Chittister’s broad contributions to the spiritual, ecclesial, and justice agenda of the church, but also to those interested in developments in the wider sphere of religion in the second half of the twentieth century. The Chittister biography began in a routine assignment. Roberts was asked to “refresh the file” of the NCR on the well-known activist nun, that is, be sure the paper had an up-to-date resource in case an [End Page 71] obituary for Chittister were needed on short notice. Chittister, born in 1936, turns 80 this year but this book certainly suggests that her life story is far from over. She remains in high demand as a writer and speaker and deeply involved in the ongoing renewal of religious life, the Catholic Church, and the world. The initial contact of Roberts with Chittister, with its very limited objective, led to a lengthy process of wide-ranging and even intimate interviews and extensive research that became the material for this fascinating biography of one of the most influential women in the contemporary Catholic Church and indeed among social activists of our time within and outside the church. The work is somewhat unusual in the “life-story” genre. The subject, Joan Chittister, is not only alive but highly active and deeply involved in the contemporary Catholic scene. What she will do and become in the years ahead is in no sense pre-determined or predictable. So, this is neither a completed biography nor exactly a “memoir” although it involves a great deal of deep reflection on her part, shaped by Roberts’s probing interviewing and interpretation, about the significance of much that has transpired in her life and in the church and world, especially in the fifty years since Vatican II. Nor is the book a “vicarious autobiography” because Chittister did not read the manuscript prior to its publication. Consequently, this is the story of Chittister, a woman religious, interpreted by Roberts, a lay man, which raises some interesting questions about interpretations of some aspects of religious life, at least for this reviewer. And, although there is no fudging of the more unsavory aspects of the institutional church’s treatment of women in general and intelligent, influential women like Joan Chittister in particular, there is nothing vindictive in Chittister’s account, even of the patent injustice and psychological violence to which she and her community were subjected by the Vatican’s curial office charged with the oversight of religious congregations which treats Chittister as not simply an irritant but as a threat to its absolute authority. The book is not a “tell all” or “get even” manifesto in any sense although it renders a real service in the agenda...

From Vatican II to Pope Francis: Charting a Catholic Future. Edited by Paul Crowley SJ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. xxv + 190 pages. $28.00 (paper).

From Vatican II to Pope Francis: Charting a Catholic Future. Edited by Paul Crowley SJ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. xxv + 190 pages. $28.00 (paper).

Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality. By Diana L. Hayes. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. xi + 228 pages. $22.00 (paper).

Forged in the Fiery Furnace: African American Spirituality. By Diana L. Hayes. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. xi + 228 pages. $22.00 (paper).

Mysticism and Spirituality: Mysticism, Fullness of Life. Vol. 1, part 1 of Opera Omnia. By Raimon Panikkar. Edited by Milena Carrara Pavan. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. xxv + 286 pages. $75.00.

Mysticism and Spirituality: Mysticism, Fullness of Life. Vol. 1, part 1 of <i>Opera Omnia</i>. By Raimon Panikkar. Edited by Milena Carrara Pavan. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. xxv + 286 pages. $75.00.

A Virtuous Church: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Liturgy for the 21st Century. By R. Kevin Seasoltz. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. vi + 250 pages. $38.00 (paper).

A Virtuous Church: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Liturgy for the 21^st Century. By R. Kevin Seasoltz. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. vi + 250 pages. $38.00 (paper).

Social Identities between the Sacred and the Secular ed. by Abby Day, Giselle Vincett, Christopher R. Cotter, and: Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins by Miguel A. De La Torre, and: Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians by Miguel A. De La Torre (review)

Reviewed by: Social Identities between the Sacred and the Secular ed. by Abby Day, Giselle Vincett, Christopher R. Cotter, and: Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins by Miguel A. De La Torre, and: Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians by Miguel A. De La Torre Hans Harmakaputra Social Identities between the Sacred and the Secular. Edited by Abby Day, Giselle Vincett, and Christopher R. Cotter. Ashgate AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Series. Farnum, Surrey, U.K., and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2013. Pp. 237. $99.95. Miguel A. De La Torre, Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins, 2nd ed., rev. and exp. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014 (orig.: Orbis, 2004). Pp. 362. $35.00, paper. Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians. Armchair Theologians Series. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013. Pp. 168. $17.00, paper. The two books by De La Torre are concerned with liberation theology, one of the contemporary approaches that emerged in the twentieth century. Liberation theology has suffered rejection and criticism, but it has radically changed what it means to do Christian theology. In Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians, which is part of larger series of introductory books, De La Torre does a wonderful job in presenting what liberation theology is in a simple way. As a part of the Armchair series, the book is purposely written for the novice with no theological training. De La Torre introduces the historical background from which liberation theology emerges, the South American context that strongly influences the discourse, and the important figures, and he explains how liberation theology put more emphasis on orthopraxis than on orthodoxy. Liberation theology comes from the margins and uses the eyes of the margins to interpret the whole of Christian theology. It seeks to liberate society from structural oppression. The forte of this book is its daring attempt in disclosing how theology is never unrelated to reality. Rather, theology is either about helping the oppressors and their endeavors in maintaining the status quo or about becoming a fuel to subvert the system and transform the society. [End Page 612] De La Torre defends liberation theology from an accusation that it is a form of Marxism because it incorporates sociopolitical analysis into its methodology. He states that “Marx may be one of many conversation partners, but he can never be the sole guide into the future” (p. 61). Since the book is introductory, it would not really be useful for scholars. Further, the author covers only the older generation of liberation theologians, neglecting recent developments or younger theologians. Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins is revised and expanded from the 2004 original and is specifically dedicated to elaborate Christian ethics from the lens of liberation theology. It is an attempt by De La Torre to shift the discourse of Christian ethics by integrating a hermeneutical mode of liberation theology. If Christian ethics begins with certain “truth” derived from dogmatic or biblical precepts, and ethics is treated as an endeavor to apply the “truth,” De La Torre emphasizes praxis that could redefine what is perceived before as the “truth.” The first way reflects an approach from the center, while the second comes from the margins. He believes that Christian ethics could really embody God’s will only through using the eyes of the margins. The hermeneutical circle proposed in this book has five steps. The first step is “observing” where Christians identify the problem. The second is “reflecting,” which includes social analysis as a tool to scrutinize injustice and oppression. Third is theological and biblical analysis on the problem or “praying.” Fourth, ethicists must formulate an actual plan for implementing praxis or “acting.” The last step is “reassessing” where new ethical perspectives emerge. The bulk of this book contains an analysis on using this five-step hermeneutical lens on various issues that he differentiates in three clusters: global, national, and business. Those are examples of how Christian ethics from the margins could be done in the context of the United States. This book is an excellent example of how liberation theology impacts on Christian theology, particularly in the field of ethics. It also shows how Christian ethics should impact real life...

From Vatican II to Pope Francis: Charting a Catholic Future ed. by Paul Crowley, S.J. (review)

Reviewed by: From Vatican II to Pope Francis: Charting a Catholic Future ed. by Paul Crowley, S.J. Thomas P. Rausch S.J. From Vatican II to Pope Francis: Charting a Catholic Future. Edited by Paul Crowley, S.J. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. 190pp. $28.00. The papers in Crowley’s edited book were given in a ten week class at Stanford University, originally planned for a two day symposium marking the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. But just as they began preparing to publicize the course, Pope Benedict XVI resigned and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Pope Francis. The first pope ordained after the council concluded, his language from the time he assumed the Chair of Peter led many to hope that the vision that marked Vatican II would be experienced again in the church. How might that vision be reclaimed? This is the concern of Crowley’s book. Three chapters put the council’s documents in a contemporary context, five apply them to contemporary issues, and the final three attempt to imagine some future directions. While all are thoughtful, some are particularly noteworthy. Thus, Stephen Schloesser argues that the council responded successfully to the centuries of change that preceded it, but its response to what he calls the “biopolitics” of the twentieth century – contraception, abortion, gay rights, and stem cell research as well as “companionate” marriage and the nuclear family as an emotional rather than an economic unity – was woefully inadequate. He comments that much of the church’s energies since the controversy over Humanae vitae has been spent trying to reconcile the lives of the non-celibate laity with a magisterial authority reserved to celibate males. Sally Vance-Trembath argues that the genius of the council lies more in its methods than in its texts. Its theological anthropology is ready to be forged into new ways of being church, while the church itself [End Page 71] cannot seem to let go of a preconciliar anthropology that defined women in terms of their capacity for motherhood. Jerome Baggett suggests that the council’s very openness to other faiths accounts at least in part for so many Catholics leaving the church. Similarly, many are reluctant to make judgments about religious matters; they are unsure about fundamental doctrines and their belonging or not is based on subjective reasons such as “feel comfortable with.” Archbishop John Quinn suggests that the council’s doctrine of collegiality means a decentralization that has not been realized, using the new translation of the English Sacramentary as an example. Kristin Heyer and Bryan Massingale note how Gaudium et spes challenged the church’s defensive stance towards the world and called Catholics to identify with the poor and the marginalized. But where the constitution stressed the limited competence of church leaders in church and society, such humility is lacking in the more recent church, where authority does not hesitate to teach moral truths on difficult subjects virtually in isolation from the laity. In reviewing issues like abortion, contraception, the treatment of divorced and remarried, and pastoral care of same-sex parented families, they quote Pope Francis that “Thinking with the Church does not mean thinking with the hierarchy of the Church.” In a particularly wise chapter, Catherine Cornille argues that Nostra aetate left open the question of the salvific efficacy of other religions. While she rejects the popular idea that there are equal ways to salvation, a popular approach that avoids the problem of conflicting truth claims and practices, she notes that the later church documents such as the Vatican’s Dialogue and Proclamation (1990) recognize the possibility of learning from other religions. Looking ahead, Paul Lakeland joins Pope Francis in viewing baptism as a call to mission; it cannot reduce church membership to liturgical celebration and an ethical life. In an Epilogue, Albert Gelpi and Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi reflect on Pope Francis’s efforts to extend the infallibility of the church to embrace the sensus fidelium, asking what kind of institutional structures might be needed to include the opinions of the laity. The ignoring of the laity is a theme running though the book. It will be helpful...

Book Review: William Stringfellow: Essential Writings

William Stringfellow: Essential Writings. Selected with an Introduction by Bill Wylie-Kellermann. Modem Spiritual Masters Series. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2013. 256 pp. $22.00 (paper).Surprisingly little has been published about William Stringfeilow since he died in 1985, despite his seminal influence on such thinkers and activists as Walter Wink, Jim Wallis, and Elizabeth McAlister. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, a Methodist pastor and activist who serves an Episcopal parish in Detroit, has offered arguably the best introduction to date to the life and work of the radical Episcopal lawyer and lay theologian who articulated a biblical theology of the powers and served many of his generation as a prophetic voice against the ubiquitous forces of domination afflicting church, society, and politics. Wylie-Kellermann, who edited a longer Stringfeilow anthology two decades ago, more recently helped direct the project to reprint the works of his friend and mentor through Wipf and Stock.The introduction briefly sketches Stringfeilow s life, setting up the judiciously selected primary text excerpts to follow. Raised in New England by working class parents, Stringfeilow studied debate at Rhodes College and became a leader in ecumenical student Christian work. After earning a Harvard law degree, he spumed more lucrative prospects to practice street law in East Harlem, where he confronted the principalities of racism and poverty head on. During Karl Barths U.S. visit in 1962, the young attorney stunned the Swiss theologian and the audience at a panel discussion with his penetrating questions on the vocation of the churches amid the contemporary American political scene. A cradle Episcopalian, Stringfeilow immersed himself, often notoriously, in controversies that roiled the denomination in the 1960s and 70s: he defended his friend Bishop James Pike when brought up on heresy charges, and advised the first women ordained to holy orders. Racked by health problems and desiring to live a more monastic existence, in 1967 he moved with his partner, the poet Anthony Towne, to Block Island, Rhode Island, where he became a gadfly to local politicians. Stringfeilow and Towne sheltered the Jesuit peace activist Daniel Berrigan, who was pursued by the FBI for his role in the 1968 draft-records-buming protest in Catonsville, Maryland. Berrigan and Stringfeilow piloted an underground seminary to empower a radical discipleship of resistance and of the rehumanization of those on the margins. Such commitments shaped Stringfellows most systematic and influential treatise in moral theology, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1974). He performed a public exorcism of the Nixon administration after the Presidents second inauguration, and his final book was a scathing critique of the ersatz bourgeois spirituality of the Reagan years. …

Catholic Moral Theology &amp; Social Ethics: A New Method by Christina A. Astorga (review)

Reviewed by: Catholic Moral Theology & Social Ethics: A New Method by Christina A. Astorga Maureen O’Connell Catholic Moral Theology & Social Ethics: A New Method. By Christina A. Astorga. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. 571pp. $50.00. Although patterns of Catholic moral theology after Vatican II point to the centrality of moral vision for the moral life, the tradition continues to be relatively short-sighted in this regard. Christine Astorga attempts to bring moral vision into better focus by developing a new method for moral theology, one which she describes as an integration of “an ethics of holistic reasoning” and virtue ethics. Her method includes attention to the cultural context of moral agents; an insistence on narrative hermeneutics; feminist, liberationist and global interpretations of fundamental theology from which moral theology grows; compatibility between moral norms and virtues; and three modes of Ignatian discernment. She asserts this integrative method can bridge all sorts of limiting divides in contemporary Catholic theology: between ethics and dogmatic theology, between Western historical preserve and contemporary applications coming from the margins, between principles and virtues, between reason and affectivity. While perhaps targeted for an academic audience either familiar with or new to the many strands of the Catholic tradition that she weaves together, Astorga insists on the practical urgency that drives her method: “We have to live the ordinariness of our lives with a profound sense of transcendence. The moral choices we make are not discrete acts; rather, they enter into the shaping of the fundamental orientation of our lives. And with our lives so deeply intertwined with other lives, our choices have far-reaching consequences” (233). [End Page 86] Astorga painstakingly develops her method over the course of ten chapters, organized around themes of “vision,” “norm,” and “choice,” and each of which incorporate classic figures and texts, and introduce insights of those on the leading edge. To that end, the book is an exhaustive survey of theological landscape of the twentieth century. However, Astorga’s eye for patterns or trends that come to the fore when we approach moral theology as a kind of vision, helps the reader to discover what she sees as the trajectory of the tradition: that the moral life is about individual and collective affectivity that arises when we engage the wisdom of religious stories incarnated in the particularities of culture, rather than simply a response to directives or norms. To develop her method, she relies on paradigmatic thinkers in Catholic systematic and moral theology (Rahner, Johnson, McCormick, Grisez, Cahill, Keenan), as well as those in and beyond Catholicism who contribute to its growing edges (Gilkes, Hauerwas, De La Torre). She also reviews the evolution of the fundamental components of moral theology (fundamental concepts such as love, grace, community; modes of biblical interpretation, moral norms; virtue ethics) and social ethics (central documents of Catholic social teaching, as well as theological methods (feminist, liberationist, Ignatian) making the text a helpful primer in moral theology or Christian ethics for graduate students. Of particular note is Astorga’s emphasis on the importance of culture in shaping moral vision and moral choice, both in terms of acknowledging religion as a particular source of culture and in embracing a diversity of cultures in which moral agents are formed. She invokes Tillich, Henriot, and Bellah in calling for “cultural exegesis” in methods of moral theology that will effect change in individual and communal lives, and offers an example of such a cultural interpretation in her review of the Filipino’s People’s Power Revolution in the first chapter. She notes, “Only when the cultural symbols and values of a people are taken seriously is their creative potential in the process of social change unfolded” (89). Attention to cultural diversity, and not simply the diversity of individual experience, through what she calls a [End Page 87] “hermeneutic of appreciation” is an innovative way of contextualizing moral theology in an increasingly diverse church. While exhaustive, Astorga’s presentation of her method is also at points somewhat exhausting in light of the copious thinkers and components of the moral tradition she incorporates. A tremendous amount of material is brought forward, and at times it is difficult to track what is...

Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church. Edited by LindaHogan and Agbonkhianmeghe E.Orabator. Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. Pp. xi + 300. $42.00.

Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church. Edited by LindaHogan and Agbonkhianmeghe E.Orabator. Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. Pp. xi + 300. $42.00.

In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez. Edited by Michael Griffin and Jennie Weiss Block. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. xv + 206 pages. $24.00 (paper).

In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez. Edited by Michael Griffin and Jennie Weiss Block. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. xv + 206 pages. $24.00 (paper). - Volume 42 Issue 1

Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church. Edited by Linda Hogan and A. E. Orobator. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. 283 pages. $42.00 (paper).

Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church. Edited by Linda Hogan and A. E. Orobator. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. 283 pages. $42.00 (paper).

In Quest of the Jewish Mary: The Mother of Jesus in History, Theology, and Spirituality. By Mary Christine Athans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. xxviii + 210 pages. $19.00 (paper).

In Quest of the Jewish Mary: The Mother of Jesus in History, Theology, and Spirituality. By Mary Christine Athans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. xxviii + 210 pages. $19.00 (paper).

The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation. By MarkHathaway and LeonardoBoff. Pp xxvi, 419. Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books [Ecology and Justice Series], 2009, $35.00.

The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation. By MarkHathaway and LeonardoBoff. Pp xxvi, 419. Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books [Ecology and Justice Series], 2009, $35.00.

After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice. By Mark J.Allman andTobias L.Winright. Pp. xii, 220, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 2010, $20.00.

After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice. By Mark J.Allman andTobias L.Winright. Pp. xii, 220, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books, 2010, $20.00.