THE FREEHOF INSTITUTE OF PROGRESSIVE HALAKHAH The Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah is a creative research center devoted to studying and defining the progressive character of the halakhah in accordance with the principles and theology of Reform Judaism. It seeks to establish the ideological basis of Progressive halakhah, and its application to daily life. The Institute fosters serious studies, and helps scholars in various portions of the world to work together for a common cause. It provides an ongoing forum through symposia, and publications including the quarterly newsletter, HalakhaH, published under the editorship of Walter Jacob, in the United States. The foremost halakhic scholars in the Reform, Liberal, and Progressive rabbinate along with some Conservative and Orthodox colleagues as well as university professors serve on our Academic Council.

Reformation in Britain and Ireland is an innovative volume which studies the coming of reform in the sixteenth century more broadly than do traditional national narratives of religious change. It argues for an interactive and comparative understanding of this crucial dimension of British and Irish history. Through the examination of political choices, of ecclesiastical structures, and of individual religious attitudes, it seeks to explain the success or failure of Protestantism in these islands.

This volume deals with the problem of State and Church in the Middle Ages from a new angle. It not only shows how and why the medieval popes pursued a policy of world domination, but also discloses the ideas by which the papal monarchs were primarily influenced.

The polarization in the Church today can be traced back to a more fundamental crisis in theology, one which has failed to connect our mundane experiences and the mysteries of the Christian faith with the person of Jesus Christ. Ecclesial discourse on the so-called 'hot- button issues' of the day too often take place without considering the foundation and goal of the Church. And this is unfortunately due to a similar tendency in the academic theology that informs that ecclesial discourse. In short, much of post-conciliar Catholic theology is adrift, floating aimlessly away from the center of the Christian faith, who is Christ. The Center is Jesus Christ Himself is a collection of essays which anchor theological reflection in Jesus Christ. These diverse essays share a unified focal point, but engage with a variety of theological subdisciplines (e.g., dogmatic, moral, Biblical, etc.), areas (e.g., Christology, Pneumatology, missiology, etc.), and periods (e.g., patristic, medieval, and modern). Given the different combinations of sub-disciplines, areas, and periods, theology is susceptible to fragmentation when it is not held together by some principle of unity. A theology in which the person of Jesus Christ serves as that principle of unity is a Christocentric theology. Together, the essays illustrate not only what Christocentric theology looks like, but also what the consequences are when Christ is dislodged from the center, whether by a conspicuous silence on, or by a relativization of, his unique salvific mission. The volume is published in honor of Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at Boston College, Rev. Dr. Robert P. Imbelli, who dedicated his teaching and writing to bringing Christ back to the center of Catholic theological discourse.

Documenting an audacious Franco-German movement for moral disarmament, instigated in 1921 by war veteran and French Catholic politician Marc Sangnier, in this transnational study Gearoid Barry examines the European resonance of Sangnier's Peace Congresses and their political and religious ecumenism within France in the era of two World Wars.

Sexuality and spirituality are two of the most powerful and creative forces we experience as human beings. This work examines how men of Roman Catholic background have come to understand and integrate their homosexuality into daily life.

Homosexuality is still a topic immersed in myth and mystery. As well as providing accurate information about intimate aspects of gay men's lives such as coping with HIV and practicing safer sex, " Gay Catholics Down Under" seeks to raise awareness about spiritual issues for gay men. Each story told provides a unique perspective of what it means to be of Catholic background in Australasia and attracted to men. Several of those interviewed spoke of having no role models and of the isolation growing up not knowing of other gay people. A final chapter reviews the psychosexual implications of the study, including a model of integration of sexual and religious identification, and implications for the gay community and the Church.

This transnational comparative history of Catholic everyday religion in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the Great War transforms our understanding of the war's cultural legacy. Challenging master narratives of secularization and modernism, Houlihan reveals that Catholics from the losing powers had personal and collective religious experiences that revise the decline-and-fall stories of church and state during wartime. Focusing on private theologies and lived religion, Houlihan explores how believers adjusted to industrial warfare. Giving voice to previously marginalized historical actors, including soldiers as well as women and children on the home front, he creates a family history of Catholic religion, supplementing studies of the clergy and bishops. His findings shed new light on the diversity of faith in this period and how specifically Catholic forms of belief and practice enabled people from the losing powers to cope with the war much more successfully than previous cultural histories have led us to believe.

Which events created the mindset and prepared the policy of the later-to-be Pope Pius XII? This study takes into account the recently declassified documents in the Vatican Archives dealing with the Catholic Church's policy regarding Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, strongly defined by Nuncio in Germany and, then, Cardinal State Secretary Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII). It broadens its view to cover also the Vatican's stance towards other European dictatorships of that time, such as Fascist Italy, Franquist Spain, Salazar's Portugal, and the Dollfuss regime in Austria.

Barnett traces the Christian critique of the Church and its history in Protestant (English) and Catholic (Italian) thought from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. More than 150 years of bitter polemic between the two great confessions and their religious dissidents produced an unprecedented, comparative historical and sociological anticlericalism. In the last decades of the 17th century, English dissenting thought was pregnant with a critique of the Church, which came to be termed the "Deist" view of Church history: by 1700 the cornerstone of high "Enlightenment anticlerical thought" was in ascent. This work is intended for departments of history (courses in early modern European history, intellectual history), religious studies and philosophy.

One of the principal buzzwords of the Second Vatican Council (1963-65), along with collegiality, co-responsibility, full participation, and aggiornamento, was dialogue. This is a history of how the practices of dialogue have actually worked or failed to work at every level of the church over the past forty years. Beginning at the most basic level, that of the parish, the book moves up the ecclesiastical ladder from parish councils, to diocesan synods, to the (Roman) synod of bishops. The book moves laterally as well to include ecumenical and interreligious dialogues. A chapter is devoted to the fractious Call to Action Conference, initiated by the U.S. bishops in 1976; another to the new inclusive style of drafting pastoral letters by the U.S. bishops - "The Challenge of Peace" (1983), "Economic Justice for All" (1986), and the never approved pastoral on women ("Partners in the Mystery of Redemption"). A further chapter is devoted to Cardinal Bernardin's Catholic Common Ground Initiative, which is still going on, though it was initially publicly attacked by four U.S. cardinals. Finally, there is a chapter on what was perhaps the most radical and far-reaching exercise of dialogue of all, namely, the dialogical and democratic processes by which women religious revised their constitutions. This is a cautionary tale, filled with thick description of advances and retreats. In a curious way, the book is a sequel to the multi-volume "History of the Second Vatican Council", edited by Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak If those volumes tell us what transpired at the council, Hinze's volume tells us what happened when the council fathers went home and all the good ideas of the council were either put into effect or left to gather dust in the dead-letter bin. Vatican Council II is an ongoing experiment, and "Practices of Dialogue" is a series of reports from the labs.

Canon Sheehan's writings provide valuable insight into Ireland's difficult process of cultural reconstruction after independence. This astute observer of Irish society was pessimistic about the future of religion. Though himself a man of European culture, he made a case for the isolationism to become reality under the Free State. It is a case which today is easily scorned - but his works allow us to understand why it could command such support, and to appreciate its relative historical justification.

This new volume of essays examines the relationship between Catholicism and homosexuality. Why did so many literary Modernists embrace Catholicism? What is their relationship between historical homophobia and contemporary struggles between the Church and the homosexual? Moving from the Gothic to the late Twentieth-century, from Britain to America and France, "Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives" interrogates what is queer about Catholicism and what is modern about homosexuality. The result is a radical revision of the sacred - in life and art, the body and devotion.