This essay considers the contribution which spirituality makes to theology and vice versa, using examples from Karl Rahner's work. His spirituality in the sense of lived religious experience is the point of departure for his theological anthropology. Conversely, his theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart critiques and informs a spirituality of the heart of Christ. After discussing the mutual benefits which spirituality and theology provide one another, this paper points out the contemporary relevance of a spirituality of Christ's heart.

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.

The undergraduate course described introduces the academic study of religion. It summarizes basic Christian teaching on God, Salvation, Jesus Christ, Trinity, Church and Sacraments, Eschatology; promotes objective intellectual reflection on basic Christian teachings and on the religious experience that inspired them; introduces the student to academic religious literature, promotes informed dialogue among students of various religious traditions.

I must be honest from the start and confess the summary of my six years of teaching undergrads and five years of graduate students: being a “creative teacher” of spirituality in a system of education that is destructive both of spirituality and creativity is impossible. Education, like religion itself, cannot afford to succumb to privatization as if a “loneranger” teacher in spirituality could endure or carry on without a structure and a program that is based in sound theory and practice that itself sustains creativity and spirituality.

A recent graduate of our Institute in Creation-Centered Spirituality is now pursuing doctoral studies in theology, and his comment after his first semester at a renowned university was: “There is no spirituality in upper academia.” What he was experiencing was the absence of sensitivity to both right and left brains as sources for learning; the absence of sensitivity to making connections and therefore to the artist in self and society; the absence of synthesis or interdependence on the part of curriculum or faculty. What he was also undergoing was a deep experience of the malaise that education finds itself in today in the West—a crisis that, if attended to, also reveals an opportunity of staggering dimensions.

John Henry Newman's thoughts about education extend far beyond that philosophy of university education which is developed in his famous Idea of a University. He was acutely aware that the relationship between teachers and learners is fundamentally a social relationship, and one that can take various social forms. What he most admired was a highly personal and deeply sympathetic relationship, and what he most feared was its replacement by impersonal institutional structures. His convictions in this regard have deep roots in his personal experience, as well as in his interpretation of history and theology. To examine those roots both enlarges one's appreciation of Newman's educational wisdom and sharpens one's insight into his complex personality.

This essay is divided into two sections. Part I analyzes and compares in detail the arguments of Schubert Ogden and Hans Küng for the existence of God. Essentially, both Küng and Ogden argue that certain characteristic human activities (especially moral choices) presuppose a confidence (Ogden) or a basic trust (Küng) that our lives and reality of which our lives are a part are meaningful. They continue to argue that this confidence or this basic trust are only justifiable on the condition of belief in God. Hence, they conclude that a belief in God is presupposed by our moral choices. Part II critically evaluates the above argument by drawing on distinctions made by analytic philosophers (Baier, Nielsen, Ayer) in their discussions of what conditions are necessary and sufficient to make a life (or life) meaningful. The discussion with analytic philosophy is important because neither Küng nor Ogden take any notice of the arguments raised there.

Once the need to reform Catholic ethics became manifest with the Second Vatican Council, revision and adaptation of moral theology, the science that had served since the Council of Trent as official Catholic ethics, was often presented as the theological path to renewal. Scrutiny of philosophical, ethical, and theological presuppositions, however, discloses that the foundations of moral theology differ radically from those on which contemporary theological ethics must be based and that, accordingly, the way to true reform is not revision and adaptation of moral theology but the replacement of this self-contained science through construction of a fundamentally different kind of ethics, theological relational ethics as an essential, integral part of a reconstituted holistic theology.

In the midst of a pandemic, an ongoing global climate emergency, violent white supremacy, economic inequality, and fraying democratic institutions, the work of theologians and religious studies scholars offers a much-needed illumination by attending both to the religious roots of these disfunctions and to religious sources of alternative possibilities. This article argues especially for the importance of religion in providing hope, inspiring unity, warning of perennial human temptations, and encouraging the practices of introspection essential to independent thought. The story of Fr. Félix Varela, Cuban scholar, patriot, and pastor to immigrant Irish in nineteenth-century New York, provides an example of someone whose deep religious faith enabled him to resist common polarizations and to illuminate his time by envisioning and working for a world more just and humane than that imagined by the official Catholicism (or by most of society) in his day.

This article introduces the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy to theologians by placing him in critical dialogue with Karl Rahner. It examines how Nancy's deconstruction of Christianity accuses Western reason, including Christianity, of forgetting the body and supporting an ethos of disembodiment. Nancy proposes a new opening of reason (déclosion, “dis-closure”) and a corresponding praxis (“adoration”). This reason and praxis involve an exit from Christianity. Rahnerian essays on matter, spirit, and sacramentality demonstrate that while Christianity has, historically, fallen prey to the pathologies Nancy identifies, it also has thought in terms of something like dis-closed reason and has practiced something like “adoration.” While Nancy's insistence on the need for an exit from Christianity is not necessarily well posed, his deconstruction of Christianity can help Christian theologians as they develop thinking that supports an ethos sensitive to the body—or that keeps the body's sense open.