In a painful paradox the word “good” has become forever attached to “Samaritan” by Jesus' Lucan parable (Lk 10:29-37; see 17:16), even while bitter Jewish hostility to this group has continued over the centuries: through the highly redacted polemic against the Samaritans of 2 Kgs 17 (see Sir 50:26) and through Talmudic commentary on it such as that in bKiddushin 75. Dan Jacobson in his recent The Story of the Stories: The Chosen People and Its God sees a “propagandistic … intention” in the parable of the Good Samaritan:

In the first century, as now, the praise accorded this separated Jewish group in the Christian writings must have rankled those Judean, Galilean and diaspora Jews to whose notice it came. It would have confirmed them in their view of the noṣrim as incorrigibly deviant from halakah. The principle of the ancient world was, “Your friends are my friends and your enemies are my enemies.” The favorable notice given to these enemies of the Jews by Jesus' followers could only have set the movement back in Jewish eyes.

This article will outline a feminist interpretation for responses of the Roman Catholic Church to particular events in modern history, and sketch feminist proposals for solving the resulting problems of the Church today. The first section interprets the Church's initial response to scientific and philosophic discoveries and movements of the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment period as responsible for the feminization of the image of Roman Catholicism in the secular mind. The second section interprets the Church's response to liberalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as confirming for the secular, and increasingly popular, mind this feminine image of Catholicism. The third section depicts Vatican II as a contemporary attempt to create a more masculine image for the faith by moving the Church's sphere of action from the feminized private sector to the public world characterized by masculine rationality and technology. The final section sketches some ways in which modern feminist scholarship and its perspective can be a major and necessary contributor to the eradication of this feminine view of religion through the elimination of public/private dualism.

From the manuals of the classicist period, moral theology inherited an understanding of the moral act that is rooted in the classical conception of the human being as a rational animal. However, the new personalist and relational anthropology characterizing contemporary theology requires a corresponding revised idea of the nature of the moral act. This revision, it appears, cannot be definitively achieved unless a holistic material understanding of the moral life first replaces the merely formal and empty concept of it in the manualist tradition. Fortunately, this replacement seems to be occurring. The areas of sexual morality and social consciousness are those that suffer the greatest distortion in ethics based on classicist anthropology and, similarly, admit the greatest revision when transferred into the context of contemporary theological anthropology.

Among the more fundamental—and for that very reason more complex—elements in the present reassessing of women's role in Christianity is the issue of the “masculinity” of God and the masculinity of Jesus. How are women, without conforming to the discriminations inherent in a patriarchal culture, to relate to God as a “he” or to accept as their savior a Christ who has never shared their femininity.

One of the key aspects of this issue, though by no means the only one, is the theological: how does Christian belief address itself to this issue, suggest “solutions,” or perhaps limit the range of acceptable feminist understandings of God. The present essay is meant to explore this theological dimension by relating New Testament understandings of Jesus' “Abba” experience (I) to two questions: How did Jesus' masculinity and his experience of God affect one another? (II) and In Christianity how appropriate is the name “Father” for God? (III).

The negative image of the Pharisees in the Christian tradition since the time of the Gospels is stark, to say the least. Ninety percent of the references to them in elementary Catholic textbooks and seventy-eight percent in secondary Catholic school texts are negative. Because this image is historically unwarranted and because the Pharisees are the forefathers of present-day rabbinic Judaism, correcting that distorted image both in Christian scholarship and popular education is essential to further Jewish-Christian dialogue. With Vatican II there was “turning around” in the official Catholic Church on the image of the Pharisees, and since that time numerous official Catholic documents have called for a balancing of the distorted image of the Pharisees. Some Catholic scholars, mostly in the United States, and to some extent in Germany, have begun that scholarly and popular education process. John Pawlikowski, Eugene Fisher, Clemens Thoma, and Franz Mussner stand out in this work. But much remains to be done to bring that new scholarship into the classroom, books, and liturgy.

The nuclear arms race and increasing possibility of nuclear destruction demands a fundamental recovery of the Christian spirituality of social justice. After discussing common misconceptions of this spirituality, as well as the dead end offered by atheism insofar as it undialectically negates God consciousness, I will show how recovery of the Christian spirituality of social justice offers the possibility of converting the human drama of history away from death and toward life. Such spirituality unites the Mystery of God with the mystery of human personhood and reveals the redemptive solidarity of God with the poor and oppressed victims of history.

Thomas Altizer develops the theme of the death of God as an attempt to reverse the emphasis on transcendence which is central to a more traditional theology. He believes a theology of transcendence establishes a dichotomy between God and humanity which is unfaithful to the meaning disclosed in the Christ event. His concern is to interpret the positive aspect of God's death as an example of a self-giving which, by becoming empty, is able to stand open to all. By making use of themes from Buddhist thought, Altizer develops a richly paradoxical theology whose negations, when properly understood, hold within them even deeper affirmations.

There has been a kind of “turn to the family” on the part of the Christian churches in the past decade, manifesting a concern for what is judged to be the western family in “crisis.” Unfortunately, the voices of religion have had little more effect than the voices of psychology or sociology in either healing or empowering the family, and they have had perhaps less success in interpreting the difficulties which beset the contemporary family as an institution. This failure may represent simply the intractability of the problems which individuals and families face. It may also, however, represent an almost tragic perception on the part of many persons that the Christian tradition regarding family life is today too oppressive to yield a prophetic, a healing or a freeing word.

Nathan A. Scott, Jr. is identified as a leading figure in the development of the interdisciplinary field of theology and literature. This essay presents an interpretation of his methodology and scholarly development over a thirty-year period (1952-1981). Paul Tillich's theology of culture is understood as the major methodological and theological influence on Scott's early work. Martin Heidegger's philosophy (preeminently the essays on aesthetics) is the major influence in the development of Scott's mature scholarship. Scott's methodology has a seven-step structure and the textual analysis of his works is presented in a chronological manner. The central foci in the shift in Scott's inquiry are the type of literature he analyzes and his understanding of the role of the poet. The essay concludes with an evaluation of Scott's contribution to this field of study and suggestions for its future development.

It should warm the self-righteous cockles of Catholic hearts to read Protestant theologian Emil Brunner's remark that “while the Catholic Church, drawing on centuries of tradition, possesses an impressive systematic theory of justice, Protestant Christianity has had none for some three hundred years past.” The cockles, however, are in for a chilling with the realization of how little we have done, particularly in the United States, to give this noble tradition salience and application in Catholic thought, or to give it voice and currency in national and international political discourse. With such an in-house treasure as Brunner noted, why were we content to live as misers responding so little to the poverty in justice theory that scars our national setting? There were some notable exceptions, but they never became mainstreamed in American Catholic life. Why?

The principal reasons, I submit, are these: Catholic thought was (I) prone to conflate the just and the juridical; (II) distracted by charity to the neglect of justice; (III) insufficiently nourished by the justice preoccupations of the Bible; (IV) inattentive to the need to clarify and develop the theories underlying our social justice tradition.

This article will evaluate five comparatively recent books dealing with fundamental moral theology. Anthologies or books treating specific topics in special moral theology will not be discussed. The purpose is to consider various contemporary approaches to fundamental moral theology and to evaluate these works both in themselves and in their utility as textbooks. The authors to be considered are: O'Connell, Maguire, McDonagh, Häring, and Böckle.

As might be expected there are strengths and weaknesses in all these works. The primary interpretive key to be employed in this article is the Sitz im Leben of the book. The particular Sitz im Leben of each author helps to understand better what the book is trying to accomplish and at the same time serves to indicate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the particular volume.

Contrary to widely held assumptions, American Catholics in the nineteenth century made some interesting and even original contributions to religious thought. This essay serves as an introductory resource for this significant body of writing. Surveying the period between 1840 and 1907, it identifies distinctive and self-aware American Catholic contributions to theology in three areas, the church question, Catholic Americanism, and modernism. Finally it draws attention to some of the unfinished agenda left to us by this largely forgotten tradition.

Considering that History and Religious Studies are two of the areas in which feminist scholars have been most active, it is surprising how very little information is compiled in the area of American Catholic Women's History. Catholic Church historians, of course, have never found the laity of great interest, and the contemporary feminist movement has been strongly secular. Protestant and Jewish materials are more easily available, and even those books which purport to address women in American religion in general give only brief attention to Catholicisim, often by dealing solely with women in religious orders. So work on American Catholic women remains to be done.

The one exception is books dealing with individual religious orders, partly because of the accessibility of the materials, though I have been gently admonished not to overestimate the order in convent archives. Studies moving wider to focus on sisters in general are still very few, and attempts to integrate these materials with lay women's history have barely begun. People interested in this field will find help in Elizabeth Kolmer, A.S.C., “Catholic Women Religious and Women's History: A Survey of the Literature,” American Quarterly 30 (1978), 639-51, and in the forthcoming book by Evangeline Thomas, C.S.J., Women Religious History Sources: A Guide to Archives (New York: Bowker).

In the early 1970's women's studies emerged as an independent discipline. In all areas of scientific knowledge courses and research projects were developed to expand our knowledge of women's cultural-scientific contributions as well as to challenge androcentric texts, scholarly frameworks, and scientific reconstructions that overlooked or marginalized women. Women's studies in religion participate in these intellectual and educational goals of the Women's Studies movement, while feminist theology and feminist studies in religion share in the liberative goals of the feminist movement in society and church. In the context of this two-fold movement, feminist Biblical studies have moved from the concentration on what men have said about women in the Bible and from the apologetic-thematic focus on “women in the Bible” to a new critical reading of Biblical texts in a feminist theological perspective. In this process we have moved from discussing statements of Paul or the “Fathers” and Rabbis about women to the rediscovery of Biblical women's leadership and oppression as crucial for the revelatory process of God's liberation reflected in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

Anyone who plies the noble art-science of social ethics (moral theology, Christian ethics), while taking no account of the feminist turn of consciousness, is open to charges of professional irresponsibility and incompetence. No. That is not an overstatement or an overblown rhetorical lead-in. The history of ethics is turning an epochal corner. To miss the turn is to be lost and useless.

Feminism is concerned with the shift in roles and the question of the rights that have been unjustly denied women. But all of that, however important and even essential, is secondary. The main event is epistemological. Changes in what we know are normal; changes in how we know are revolutionary. Feminism is a challenge to the way we have gone about knowing. The epistemological terra firma of the recent past is rocking and as the event develops, it promises to change the face of the earth.

The main impact of feminism will be felt in the area of moral knowledge. That, of course, is broader than ethics since all of the social sciences are heavy with moral assumptions and evaluations. Economics, politics (simplistically called political science), education, journalism, business administration, engineering, et al. are all intra-familial siblings of social ethics, although educational systems have treated them as separable strangers. (This mischievous separation, indeed, is a natural target of the emerging feminist consciousness.)