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The Tasks of Theology in the Proyecto Social of the University's Mission1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Extract
It is a great pleasure and honor to offer this address at the end of my term as president of the College Theology Society. I wish to begin by paying tribute to Sister Vera Chester, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, a graduate of Marquette University, who served as the first woman president of the College Theology Society between 1980–1982. She died on April 22, 2012. I had the good for tune of having Vera Chester as one of my professors when I was an undergraduate student at the College of St. Thomas shortly after the Second Vatican Council. Although I was a philosophy major, I took quite a few classes in theology. In many of those philosophy and theology classes I witnessed my professors working through and acting out the postconciliar debates between the heirs of Neoscholastic Thomism and transcendental Thomism, and I learned a great deal in the process. I experienced a different kind of approach to theology in a course on spiritual autobiographies taught by Vera Chester at The College of St. Catherine. We were introduced to the writings of Augustine, John Henry Newman, Thomas Merton, and (if my memory is correct) Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux. What strikes me about this course now is not only Vera's contagious joyful interest in her subject matter and her students, but also her awareness of the importance of introducing students to theology through the use of narratives, specifically autobiographies that describe spiritual life journeys.
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References
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7 Buckley explores some of these concerns in The Catholic University, 110–11.
8 University of Notre Dame, Mission Statement, http://www.nd.edu/about/missionstatement/.
9 Ibid., 127–28; cf. also 111–12; I am not addressing here the questions raised by modern and postmodern critics of the humanist tradition. Buckley does not engage them in his text, but it seems fair to guess that once raised he would not avoid them. The defense of the mission of the university drawing on the humanist tradition must in fact be able to address the serious epistemological and historical questions raised about the emancipatory aspirations of this tradition and their failures.
10 Brackley, Dean, The University and Its Martyrs: Hope from Central America (San Salvador: Centro Monseñor Romero Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas,” 2004), 28Google Scholar.
11 Ibid.
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19 JustFaith Ministries is sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, Bread for the World, Maryknoll Congregation of Priests and Brothers, Pax Christi, and the Campaign for Human Development. For further information, see http://www.justfaith.org.
20 See JustFaith program for college students, http://www.justfaith.org/programs/collegejusticewalking.html.
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28 See Dominic Doyle, “Transposing Richard McKeon's Philosophic Pluralism into a Theological Key,” (manuscript for a forthcoming Festschrift for Michael Buckley); under the influence of Buckley, also see Doyle's, The Promise of Christian Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope (New York: Crossroad, 2012)Google Scholar.
29 From “Hacia una fundamentacíon,” translated by Burke, Kevin in The Ground Beneath the Cross, 106Google Scholar.
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31 This see-judge-act model has a longer ancestry reaching back to the promotion of study circles by the French lay Catholic democratic movement known as Le Sillon (the furrow) and as far back as lay Catholic movements associated with Frédrick Ozanam and Felicité de Lamennais. Joe Holland reports on the Louvain dissertation research of Stefan Gignacz on the roots of Cardign's see-judge-act model in “Introduction: Roots of the Pastoral Circle in Personal Experiences and Catholic Social Tradition,” in The Pastoral Circle Revisited: A Critical Quest for Truth and Transformation, eds. Wijsen, Frans, Henriot, Peter, and Mejía, Rodrigo (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005), 9–10Google Scholar; also see Bidegain, Ana Maria, “From Catholic Action to Liberation Theology: The Historical Process of the Laity in the Twentieth Century,” Working Paper no. 48, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 1985)Google Scholar.
32 Holland, Joe and Henriot, Peter, Social Analysis: Linking Faith and Justice, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983)Google Scholar.
33 Cf. The Pastoral Circle Revisited.
35 On February 28, 29, March 1, 2008, at Fordham University. See Scharer, Matthias and Hilberath, Bernd Jochen, The Practice of Communicative Theology: An Introduction to a New Theological Culture (New York: Crossroad, 2008)Google Scholar.
36 This assignment takes its original inspiration from a worksheet devised by Sandra Lobo, the director of Fordham's Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice.
37 Weil, Simone, “The Love of God and Affliction,” Waiting for God, trans. Craufurd, Emma (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1951), 111–36Google Scholar; Young, Iris Marion, “Abjection and Oppression: Dynamics of Unconscious Racism, Sexism and Homophobia,” in The Crisis in Continental Philosophy, Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. Dallery, Arlene and Scott, Charles (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 201–14Google Scholar; idem, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 122–55; Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London/Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2004)Google Scholar, idem., Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London/Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2009); Saul Alinksy required that people seeking to promote grassroots democracy set up one-on-one meetings and small group meetings with people in the neighborhood to determine their self-interests and their griefs; see “Interview with Saul Alinsky,” part eight of thirteen parts, “Success Versus Co-optation,” Playboy Magazine, March 1972, at The Progressive Report: Empower People, Not Elites, http://www.progress.org/2003/alinsky9.htm.
38 The original inspiration for my own version of this project is again based on an assignment developed by the Dorothy Day Center, Fordham University.
39 Brackley, , The University and Its Martyrs, 37–38Google Scholar.
40 Young, “Abjection and Oppression.”
41 Miller, Vincent J., “Saving Subsidiarity: Why it is not about Small Government,” America Magazine, July 30–August 6, 2012, 13–16, http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=13510Google Scholar.
42 Jacobsen, Dennis A., Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001)Google Scholar.
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44 Wood, Richard L., Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar, Jeffrey Stout, Blessed are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; also valuable is Warren, Mark R., Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Groody, Daniel G., Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007)Google Scholar; Globalization and Catholic Social Thought: Present Crisis, Future Hope, ed. Coleman, John A. and Ryan, William F. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005)Google Scholar.
47 David Hollenbach points out that promoting concern for justice at Catholic universities in keeping with Michael Buckley's articulation of the humanistic aims of the university will inevitably surface conflicts at the universities themselves pertaining to the socio-economic location of the administrators, faculty, board of directors, staff, and students and the concerns for poor and marginalized communities, including the stakeholders in the community with which faculty and students are forming partnerships. He analyzes the escalating cost of tuition as one clear example. See his “The Catholic University Under the Sign of the Cross” Christian Humanismin a Broken World,” in Finding God in All Things: Essays in Honor of Michael J. Buckley, S.J., ed. Himes, Michael J. and Pope, Stephen J. (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1996), 279–98Google Scholar, at 279–88. Also see Beyer, Gerald J., “Admission Impossible: Preferential Option for the Poor at Catholic Colleges,” U.S. Catholic 77, no. 2 (February 2012), 32–35Google Scholar.
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