This intriguing study of the conflict between Roman Catholicism and American democracy begins with four lectures, originally published in 1949, by Roman Catholic priest and Harvard professor of church history George La Piana. A member of the Church himself, La Piana became highly critical of its undemocratic aspects after immigrating to the United States from Italy in 1914. A contributor to Foreign Affairs and The Nation, La Piana was often consulted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on church-state issues.

Appended to La Piana's work is an extended afterword by social-ethics activist John Swomley. He brings the ongoing controversy concerning Vatican-U.S. relations up to date, especially in regard to such issues as censorship and academic freedom, abortion, population policy, and the Church as a political lobby group.

For Catholics, non-Catholics, and all those concerned about the future course of American democracy, this authoritative, well-argued book presents much to ponder.

Forming Catholic Communities assesses the histories of Irish, English and Scots colleges established abroad in the early-modern period for Catholic students. The contributions provide a co-ordinated series of case studies which reflect the most up-to-date research on the colleges. The essays address interactions with European states, international networking, educational frameworks, financial challenges, print culture and institutional survival into the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. From these essays, the colleges emerge as unexpectedly complex institutions. With their financial, pastoral, and intellectual networks, they provided an educational infrastructure that, whatever its short-comings, remained crucial to the domestic and international communities they served during more than two centuries.

In Glory of the Logos in the Flesh, Michael Waldstein helps readers of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body enter this masterwork with clearer understanding. Part One, designed for entry-level readers, is a map of John Paul's text, a summary of each paragraph with an explanation of the order of the argument. Part Two reflects on the breadth of reason (logos) in Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Physics, and the Gospel of John, in contrast to the narrowing of reason in Luther, Bacon, and Descartes. Part Three shows how this breadth of reason is at work in John Paul's dialogue with Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, Kant, and Scheler.

Karl Rahner SJ, (1904-1984) was a seminal figure in twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology, and believed that the most significant influence on his work was Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. This book casts significant new light on Rahner's achievement by exploring that influence. It brings out the links between Rahner's theological creativity and the twentieth-century rediscovery of Ignatian spirituality led by his brother Hugo, and throws new light on the relationships in Rahner's thought between grace, christology, and ecclesiology. The study also offers a fresh and contemporary theological interpretation of Ignatian retreat-giving, illuminating the new departures this ministry has taken in the last thirty years, as well as contributing to the lively current debate regarding the relationships between spirituality and speculative theology.

This collaboration between a priest-sociologist and a journalist-author trained in sociology is a natural history of the Roman Catholic Church in America. The view of American Catholicism is all-inclusive--"from classroom to church pew, from dinner table to ballot box, from civil rights picket line to chancery office."

Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of Aristotle has formed the backbone of Catholic theology and teaching to this day. This book is an original new study of Aquinas's ideas in two key areas of ethical thought: the will and human action, with important new insights on a range of theological topics as well - including love, sin, and the moral virtues.

Quid est secretum? Visual Representation of Secrets in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 is the companion volume to Intersections 65.1, Quid est sacramentum? Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700. Whereas the latter volume focused on sacramental mysteries, the current one examines a wider range of secret subjects. The book examines how secret knowledge was represented visually in ways that both revealed and concealed the true nature of that knowledge, giving and yet impeding access to it. In the early modern period, the discursive and symbolical sites for the representation of secrets were closely related to epistemic changes that transformed conceptions of the transmissibility of knowledge. Contributors: Monika Biel, Alicja Bielak, C. Jean Campbell, Tom Conley, Ralph Dekoninck, Peter G.F. Eversmann, Ingrid Falque, Agnes Guiderdoni, Koenraad Jonckheere, Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Stephanie Leitch, Carme Lopez Calderon, Mark A. Meadow, Walter S. Melion, Eelco Nagelsmit, Lars Cyril Norgaard, Alexandra Onuf, Bret L. Rothstein, Xavier Vert, Madeleine C. Viljoen, Mara R. Wade, Lee Palmer Wandel, and Caecilie Weissert.

A distinguished group of international scholars from the disciplines of history, philosophy, literature and art history offer a reconsideration of the ideas and the impact of the abbe Henri Gregoire, one of the most important figures of the French Revolution and a contributor to the campaigns for Jewish emancipation, rights for blacks, the reform of the Catholic Church and many other causes