Re-imagining Religious Life Today, Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM. A series of talks and articles given by the author to religious sisters over the last few years intended to develop a new concept of religious life for women's orders of the future.

God wants to do a new thing in the African American Church. Author, Douglas Powe suggests that the African American church, while once the bedrock of the community, is no longer on the radar for many. During the Civil Rights movement African American churches initiated and even shaped transformation for an entire country, well beyond their own walls. In this post-Civil Rights era the power of many African American churches remains mired in the assumptions and practices of the past, thereby making them invisible to their surrounding communities. New Wine, New Wineskins helps African American congregations understand and benefit from the cultural shifts we are now experiencing. Many African American churches once thought they were immune to the cultural shock waves in our streets and neighborhoods. They simple argued that they have always been all about participation and being relational; yet like many churches, their numbers continue to decline. African American churches must find a way to reclaim their missional orientation, while at the same time remaining true to their historical identity and witness of speaking truth to power. The worthy goals of justice and bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ in this time, requires new practices and fresh ideas—new wine. The old framework just won’t work any more. We need new wine skins.

While speaking out against the status quo of his day, Jesus referred to himself and his message as new wine poured out into new wineskins. Today consecrated life is living a time of deep change and is discovering the "new wine": Where shall we put this wine, in old wineskins or in new wineskins? These guidelines test the wineskins made to preserve the new wines that the Spirit continues to give to his Church, inciting us to initiate changes through concrete action in the short and long term.It is an exercise in "ecclesial discernment" through which consecrated men and women are called to undergo new changes so that ideals and doctrine become real in our lives: systems, structures, diaconia, styles, relationships and language. These guidelines are the product of what emerged from the events held during the Year of Consecrated Life.

Exploring the roots of resurgent evangelicalism in the United States, Stephen Warner tells the story of one small-town church from 1959 to 1982, the Presbyterian Church of Mendocino, California. This book chronicles the actions of the men and women who struggled with and against one another to shape their church.

These Guidelines are brought together as an exercise in evangelical discernment, wherein we strive to recognize - in the Light of the Spirit - a call for religious men and women which God causes to resound in our historical and social situation itself.

The growing shift in Catholic moral theology from reflecting on rules alone to focusing on the identity and formation of persons as moral agents prompts a further question: What impact do recent changes in the identity and formation of Catholic moral theologians themselves have on how that discipline is practiced? Young Catholic moral theologians experience a sharply different professional formation and a changed location of ongoing professional life than prior generations of moral theologians. How do these differences influence the field of moral theology as a whole? New Wine, New Wineskins: A Next Generation Reflects on Key Issues in Catholic Moral Theology addresses these questions and more by offering a snapshot of how a new generation of Catholic moral theologians understands not only topics in the field, but the effects of their own identity and formation on their treatment of those topics. The distinctive contribution of this volume is the interweaving of three key concerns, all of which arise out of a critical self-reflection on the task of moral theology today: the character and adequacy of training and ongoing formation in the field of Catholic moral theology, the purpose and nature of teaching Catholic moral theology, and the fittingness of methodological debates with regard to the needs of the Christian life. Each essay makes a contribution to its specific area of interest-ranging from economic ethics, to Patristic rhetoric, to the nature and development of practical reasoning-while probing what exactly young Catholic moral theologians are doing, and how they can do what they do better.

SINCE 2002, THE SYMPOSIUM NEW WINE, NEW WINESKINS HAS OFFERED AN OPPORTUNITY for young Catholic moral theologians to engage in shared work and conversation. Here, the fruits of these labors are gathered into one collection, which represents the wide scope of the future of Catholic sexual ethics. This volume offers the first collection of a new generation's approaches to Catholic sexual ethics. The collection displays young scholars with diverse views, yet whose work moves beyond the impasses that have beset the field. The volume offers original and engaging essays on a variety of topics, from the hook-up culture and dating violence, to cohabitation and homosexuality, to contraception and natural family planning, to the promises and pitfalls of "the theology of the body." The authors display a fresh engagement with these issues in conversation with the Christian tradition and with contemporary culture. David Cloutier provides an introduction that locates this work within the past decades of Catholic scholarship, and articulates new categories for future work. The essays also offer practical insights and models that will interest pastors and lay ministers, as well as scholars. Contributors include: Fr. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Ph.D., S.T.L., is an assistant professor of biology and an instructor of theology at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. In theology, Fr. Austriaco teaches courses and has research interests in bioethics, sexual ethics, and fundamental moral theology. Jana Marguerite Bennett is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, where she teaches courses in sexual ethics and Catholic moral theology. She has written more about singleness and the relationship between singleness and marriage in her book Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (Oxford UP, 2008). Florence Caffrey Bourg is the author of Where Two or Three Are Gathered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches (University of Notre Dame Press), as well as many articles and reviews on theology of marriage and family. Dr. Bourg taught at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati before returning home to New Orleans. She now teaches at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, and has been a visiting professor at Loyola University and Springhill College. David Cloutier is assistant professor of theology at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, MD. He is the author of Love, Reason, and God's Story: An Introduction to Catholic Sexual Ethics (Anselm Academic/Saint Mary's Press, 2008), as well as a number of essays on Catholic sexual ethics and fundamental moral theology. Jason King is currently chair of the theology department at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA. His works include Save the Date: A Spirituality of Dating, Love, Dinner and the Divine (Crossroad, 2003), Dating: A Practical Catholic Guide (Knights of Columbus Supreme Council Veritas Series, 2007), and "Ecumenical Marriage as Leaven for Christian Unity" in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. He has recently done work for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website For Your Marriage. He is married and has three children. William C. Mattison III is assistant professor of theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. His primary area of research is Thomistic moral theology and virtue ethics. He recently completed an introductory book entitled Introducing Moral Theology: True Happiness and the Virtues (Brazos, 2008). David Matzko McCarthy is the Father Forker Professor of Catholic Social Teaching at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, MD. He is the author of Sex and Love in the Home: A Theology of the Household (SCM Press, 2001, 2004 revised ed.), and The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle Class (Wipf & Stock, 2009). Maria C. Morrow is a doctoral candidate at the University of Dayton whose interests in Catholic moral theology include the interconnection of virtue and sacrament, with particular interest in penance. Christopher C. Roberts is the author of Creation & Covenant: the significance of sexual difference in the moral theology of marriage (Continuum, 2008). He is a research fellow in the ethics program at Villanova University. He graduated from Yale, Oxford and King's College London and is a former PBS television reporter. Julie Hanlon Rubio is associate professor of Christian ethics at St. Louis University. She is the author of A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family (Paulist Press, 2003) and Family Ethics: Practices for Christians (Georgetown University Press, 2010), and co-editor of Readings in Moral Theology No. 15: Marriage (Paulist Press, 2009). She lives in St. Louis with her husband and three sons. Michel Therrien is a professor of Fundamental Moral Theology and the Academic Dean at St. Vincent Seminary. He holds a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Tramau, Austria, and a Doctorate in Fundamental Moral Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Kari-Shane Davis Zimmerman teaches at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University in Minnesota. She specializes in courses that deal with the intersection of family and church life, as well as issues pertaining to sex and work. She received her Ph.D. in theological ethics from Marquette University in 2007.