In retrospect, a decade flashes by. So it has been with my decade as editor in chief of this journal; the incoming editor waits in the wings. My predecessor, Michael Fahey, in his last editorial (December 2005), sketched the journal’s development from a journal aimed largely at Catholic seminary faculty and students to a Catholic
This issue’s lineup of articles prompts the question: Would it have been possible even to fantasize about this lineup back in 1965? I think not. Fifty years ago, on September 14 (Exaltation of the Cross), Vatican II’s fourth and final session opened and, by closing time, promulgated 11 of the council’s 16 documents. Important as
Robert Doran’s article in this issue derives from his Emmett Doerr Lecture entitled “A New Project in Systematic Theology” delivered at Marquette University on October 24, 2014. Astonished at his vision, I asked him to consider converting his paper into an article for Theological Studies.
“Redeeming Conscience,” the title of James Keenan’s moral note in this issue, startled me. Why would conscience need redeeming? Then I recalled Friedrich Schleiermacher’s definition of conscience: “We use the term ‘conscience’ to express the fact that all modes of activity issuing from our God-consciousness and subject to its prompting confront us as moral demands,
W. H. Auden’s eclogue, The Age of Anxiety (1947), depicts the cultural temper in the age of war and modernity. He identifies what much of the world has suffered since the Great War and continues to suffer today in the innumerable outbreaks of local wars streamed to our digital devices. Chronic anxiety is not new.
Theological Studies was founded in 1940 while the effects of the papal condemnation of Catholic Modernism were still lingering, while Europe was already in the throes of World War II, but the United States was debating, before Pearl Harbor, whether or not it should enter the war. In these parlous circumstances, American Jesuits hesitated about starting
Over the last several weeks of this past summer I found myself mulling over three dates: 1855, 1949, and 2005. The special pertinence of these three years is completely personal. They have no particular relevance to others. All three of these dates are connected with Ireland, and their combination is significant only for my own
As a long-time student of Vatican protocol, I had been regularly updating my database regarding the papal elector cardinals and reviewing procedures established by Universi dominici gregis(1996) so that, following the death of the reigning pope, I could assist local TV anchors, journalists, and radio commentators who felt intimidated by the complexities of the conclave. As
Before the closing days of 2004, I venture to estimate that only a small group of world inhabitants knew the meaning and correct pronunciation of the Japanese term “tsunami” (from tsu, harbor; and nami, wave). Yet, overnight, following the horrendous earthquake of December 26, the term became a household word conjuring up dread and fear. In the
I write these reflections in mid-October 2004, several weeks before the U.S. presidential election. It is also some six weeks before the celebration of American Thanksgiving and even further removed from the Christmas liturgical season during which subscribers may be reading these lines and this issues articles and book reviews. The editorials early deadline explains
