Exploring the role of the Holy Spirit in the evolutionary unfolding of the church throughout its history, distinguished theologian James Coriden skilfully articulates two principles: first, the Holy Spirit is the internal dynamic in the evolution of the church, the force that propels the Christian communities forward and in converging trajectories; and second, the reign of God, renamed here "God's project for the world," powerfully pulls the church's evolution forward.Coriden envisions changes, sometimes radical, in the church's structure, teaching, ministry, and sacraments. Here is a book that will be part of a sea change that already marks "the Francis revolution."

Catholic sacramental doctrine has lost much of its credibility. Baptized people leave the church, adolescents stop attending shortly after they are confirmed, supposedly indissoluble marriages regularly dissolve, few go to confession, and many do not believe in transubstantiation. Drawing upon his decades-long study of the sacraments, Martos reveals how teachings that seemed rooted in the scriptures and Catholic life have become unmoored from the contexts in which they arose, and why seemingly eternal truths are actually historically relative. After carefully constructing Catholic teaching from the church's own documents, he deconstructs it by demonstrating how biblical passages were misconstrued by patristic authors and how patristic writings were misunderstood by medieval scholastics. The long process of misinterpretation culminated in the dogmatic pronouncements of the Council of Trent, which continues to dominate Catholic thinking about the church's religious ceremonies. If the sacraments are released from their dogmatic baggage, Martos believes that the spiritual realities they symbolize can be celebrated in any human culture without being tied to their traditional rites.

An up-to-date overview of the functions and contexts of penance in medieval Europe, revealing the latest research and interpretations.

According to longstanding tradition, theology can be thought of as 'faith seeking understanding.' Ecclesiology, then, seeks to understand the theological reality we call church. Re-Visioning the Church, the outcome of nearly two decades of research and writing towards constructing a systematic historical ecclesiology, applies a social scientific and historical outlook to the story of the emergence, development, and ongoing mission and ministry of the church. Establishing a critical framework for understanding the structures of the church, the work is a wide-scale exploration of the religious, cultural, and social dimensions of what it means to be the church and what structures and ministries form the fundamental parts of ecclesial life in its relationship to the kingdom. The heart of the project is a detailed account of the history, development, and change across the centuries of the church that takes the story from the apostolic band of witnesses to the dramatic global event of the Second Vatican Council.

What are the sacraments, really? For centuries, the religious lives of Catholics and other Christians have revolved around church rituals with generally accepted individual and social effects. What, precisely, are those effects, and how are they produced? Traditional theology used Greek philosophy to understand the sacraments and how they work. But is there no other way to understand them? In fact, there are a number of ways, and this book invites you to look at the sacraments through a variety of lenses: psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, morality, and spirituality. As the introduction to this volume challenges, "If you read this book, and especially if you engage in the interactive study to which it invites you, your understanding of sacraments will be changed forever." To help personalize your investigation, the author has created a web site with thought-provoking questions that encourage you to interact with the ideas being proposed in this volume. To engage these topics more deeply, see www.TheSacraments.org.

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned," says the penitent to open the dialogue in Catholic confessionals across the globe and throughout the ages. Along with the priest's words, "For your penance . . ." this encounter is an icon of Catholic life. But does the script, and the practices it signifies, have any relevance beyond the confessional? In The Politics of Penance, Michael Griffin responds yes. He explores great figures of the Christian tradition--the early Irish monks, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Pope St. John Paul II--to offer surprising insights for social repair. The result is a new ethic, which Griffin applies to contemporary crises in criminal justice, truth and reconciliation, and the treatment of soldiers returning from war.