This article engages the on-going debate over the interpretation of Vatican II's documents. It argues that a careful examination of this dispute reveals that it is not primarily concerned with the existence of “rupture” or “continuity” in the council's texts, but instead is driven by fundamental questions regarding the nature of reception and the character of ecclesial authority. The article outlines the distinctive notions of reception operative in the debate over Vatican II and the way in which such views shape their proponents' hermeneutics of interpretation. To that end, it illumines a determinative link between larger paradigms of ecclesiological structure and related approaches to reception. The final section explores Vatican II's own documents for the ways that they address the authentic nature of reception and the character of legitimate authority. Ultimately, this study argues that Vatican II's affirmation of a dynamic notion of reception points a way forward for its own interpretation and, more broadly, for advancing the Church's overall self-understanding.

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.

Disaffiliation—when members of religious communities leave—has recently become a popular topic for theological and social scientific investigation. Today, fewer Roman Catholics than in recent memory describe themselves as strong members of their church. Many have left to seek other spiritual paths, and many of those who remain do not believe and practice as the Church teaches that they should. These essays propose that the theoretical framework of “deconversion” provides a broader and more effective way to understand forms of religious change that are occurring in contemporary America. In the classroom, teaching theology can take on a specific productive shape when the surrounding culture challenges theologians to take deconversion seriously as an element of, and larger context for, spiritual identity today. Theology remains vital when patient curiosity about the current adventure of religious identity is foregrounded pedagogically. Concluding thoughts sketch some important characteristics of an evangelical church, more concerned with its mission and witness in the world than with maintaining its internal life.

If greater intelligibility is to be achieved in the study of religious figures, the work of symbol in the life of individuals should be probed. Method grounded in sociological and psychological theory holds this possibility. Three considerations center this approach to understanding: (a) the religious figure is formed as he intersects with a symbol system, a process of creative resymbolization; (b) the religious figure is differentiated from others and understood within one of many distinct fields of experience, each field having significant psychological effects on spiritual development; (c) the understanding one achieves is contained by the questions brought to the datum. When more personalistic questions are raised of the religious figure within his symbol system, important differences in meaning result. Taken together, these meanings may approach integral understanding.

Process philosophers and theologians have long been critical of the traditional (Thomist) doctrine of divine immutability (Section I); yet until quite recently their protests had been largely ignored in Roman Catholic circles. The purpose of this present article is to draw attention to the fact that a number of contemporary Roman Catholic theologians have begun to take the Whiteheadian-Hartshornean challenge seriously, indeed to the extent that they have felt pressed, in response, to seek and exploit implicit, latent resources within Thomas' texts in order to explicate a more adequate Thomist conception of God's interrelationship with his creatures (Section II). Process metaphysics is defended versus several criticisms raised by Roman Catholic writers (Section III).

This article analyzes today's global values crisis as a matter of both personal and institutional failure. Social disintegration constitutes humanity's greatest challenge at the turn of the millennium. A viable future requires a new social project which embodies a new ethos—one which includes both traditional and liberal values and which avoids their vices along with the traps of authoritarian socialism. In order to spell out this new social project, the article describes the essential features of the traditional ethos and the liberal ethos: their economies, the understanding of nature, religion, history, politics, and ethics. This article argues that the needed participatory radical ethos incarnates Christian values for our time.

This essay argues that the reformed epistemologists (William Alston, Alvin Plantinga) have not (yet) sustained claims in religious epistemology significantly more extensive than William James did in the Varieties. It argues that even if reformed epistemologists show that religious belief can have a positive epistemic status, their approach may finally lead to relativism (given that religious traditions generate contradictory religious beliefs) because it offers no method for finding which, if any, concrete religious beliefs might be preferable to hold or in which religious practices one should engage, if any, and because it fails to distinguish between original and derived religious belief. I suggest that more attention must be paid to “social epistemology” if religious epistemology is to go significantly beyond James's accomplishments.

Jack Bonsor's essay as well as his interpretation of Karl Rahner and especially of Rahner's appropriation of Martin Heidegger's philosophy raises a central issue of theology today. His essay raises the issue of the relation between transcendental and hermeneutical approaches. Are they radically opposed? Or can they be synthesized into a unity?

This issue has become particularly acute within contemporary theology influenced by the contemporary philosophical scene. The American philosophical debates on relativity, realism, and pragmatism have challenged traditional transcendental approaches to philosophy. In addition, hermeneutics has taken a new turn. Previously hermeneutical theory underscored the authority and binding claims of classics. Now literary critical theory and post-structuralist French philosophy emphasize instead the deconstruction of classical texts. This shift entails a further turn away from metaphysics and transcendental philosophy to relativism—a turn exemplified in Richard Rorty's critique of transcendental and metaphysical philosophy. His critique appeals to the hermeneutical tradition of Heidegger and Gadamer, to the pragmatic philosophy of James and Dewey (neglecting Peirce), to the deconstructivism of Derrida, and to a literary theory influenced by Nietzsche.

Another move toward relativism is the emerging debate about modernity that contrasts post-modernity with what modernity represents. The critics of modernity argue that the universalism of transcendental philosophy is a relic of modernity. They label transcendental universality a false universality of a dominating and oppressive reason. They label it a repressive reason for it suppresses the particularities of ethnic, gender, social, and economic groups. Their criticisms of traditional metaphysics and transcendental rationality are often so trenchant that the title of a Richard Bernstein's recent essay seems deserved: “The Rage against Reason.”

Traditional Catholic apologetics is currently experiencing a revival in U.S. Catholic thought. Modeled in part on the apologetics of the preconciliar Catholic Literary Revival, the new Catholic apologetics draws strategically from the intellectual world of the pre-Vatican II church. Responsive to the conditions of postconciliar Catholicism and later-twentieth-century U.S. culture, the new apologists also exploit the resources of contemporary popular culture to advance a critique of secular society and the status quo in American Catholic life. While defending traditional Catholic doctrine, the new generation of apologists has contributed to the creation of a novel form of American Catholicism—technologically sophisticated, uniquely ecumenical, and aggressively separatist. Utilizing the lecture circuit, the print media, audio and video recordings, cable television, and the internet, the new apologists have made apologetics a vibrant industry of the conservative Catholic subculture in America.

“Theology as Biography” is a course jointly offered by the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, team taught by Elena Malits, C.S.C., David Burrell, C.S.C., and Stanley Hauerwas. It is one of a collection of course descriptions and essays on teaching, Teaching Religion to Undergraduates: Some Approaches and Ideas from Teachers to Teachers (ed. Luke Johnson, available for $2.50 from the Society for Religion in Higher Education, 363 St. Ronan St., New Haven, Conn. 06511). It offers an example of the kind of sharing of specific course ideas Horizons will attempt to feature in each issue. Please send along to us ideas on approaches to courses that you would like to share. By the way, all these course ideas need not be unusual. A really well-conceived approach to a basic undergraduate course could be quite valuable. – B.P.P. and R.V.A.