The Catholic Church answered Reformation-era contestations of the cult of images in a famous decree of the Council of Trent (1563). Art in Dispute revisits this response by focusing on its antecedents rather than its consequences. The mid-sixteenth century saw, besides new scholarship on Byzantine doctrines, heated debates about neo-scholastic interpretations. Disagreement, suppressed at Trent but re-emerging soon afterwards, centered on the question whether religious images were solely signs referring to holy subjects or also sacred objects in their own right. It was a debate with major implications for art theory and devotional practice. The volume contains editions and translations of texts by Martin Perez de Ayala, Matthieu Ory, Jean Calvin, Ambrogio Catarino Politi, and Iacopo Nacchianti, along with a previously unknown draft of the Tridentine decree.

Is it possible to capture, in brief, the fundamental changes that affected the role of religion within modern Western society? For a long time, many scholars would have answered that question in the positive; most of them would certainly have counted increasingly tolerant attitudes towards forms of religion that were once been regarded as unacceptable, as being one of those central features. In the light of the current revision of the established 'truths' concerning modern religion, it is now possible to once again address the wide-spread belief that modernity meant the gradual victory of more 'liberal' religious attitudes without running the risk of being accused of only dealing with commonplaces. Was modernity only dominated by growing tolerance? And if so, what were the forces that prompted that development? What was the nature of that sentiment? This book approaches these questions by studying the popular Protestant British view of John Henry Newman between the time of his secession 1845 and his death in 1890. It draws on a wide range of sources with a particular focus on the newspaper and periodical press. It argues that changes in popular attitudes were integral parts of the internecine religious disputes of, above all, the 1850s and 1860s. A tolerant discourse came henceforth to live side by side with traditional Protestant rhetoric. Nevertheless, and in spite of expanding horizons, accepting attitudes became an effective vehicle for expressing a sense of Protestant superiority.

"The Understanding of Faith" (1974) is certainly Schillebeeckx's most incisive English publication on theological hermeneutics. It contains his principal ideas on this subject, in which he progressively evolved the hermeneutic thinking that he was to apply in due course in his famous Jesus books. The book centres on two issues: how should the Christian message of God's kingdom be read in our day and age, and can a present-day interpretation of that message still be considered Christian? In short, what are the possibilities and limits of the understanding of faith in our modern age? Of course, hermeneutics as such was not new to Christian theology. Exegetes had been exploring interpretive processes for some time. Schillebeeckx's innovation was to extend hermeneutic thinking to the possibilities and limits of interpreting the entire Christian tradition, including its definition in systematic theology. Inspired by the early Jurgen Habermas's 'new critical theory', Schillebeeckx also expands criticism of ideology in various directions. This was to influence generations of theologians after him, right up the present day.

As a result of the publication of "Jesus. An Experiment in Christology" (volume 6) and "Christ. The Christian Experience in the Modern World "(volume 7), Schillebeeckx was accused of denying the divinity of Jesus and the resurrection as objective reality. In this 'interim report' he responds to these criticisms. Schillebeeckx argues that the interpretation of his publications depends to a large extent on what the reader takes as a starting point. This book, therefore, is about presuppositions and methods of interpretation. Schillebeeckx begins by looking once again at the nature of revelation, at the ways in which religious faith is experienced and expressed in the modern world, and at sources of authority. He then discusses specific criticisms. Can he be called a neo-liberal? Does he devalue the church's tradition? Is his Christology inadequate? What does he really believe concerning the resurrection? Then, towards the end, in some poetically powerful passages, he turns once again to the nature of the Kingdom of God, creation and salvation.

It is impossible to understand the early history of the Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church in China without understanding the preeminent role played by the island of Macau in the Jesuit missionary endeavor; indeed, it can even be said that Catholicism would not exist in China if there was no Macau. This book seeks to restore Macau to its proper place in the history of Catholicism and the Jesuit missions in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties by offering a unique insight into subjects ranging from the origins of Jesuit missionary work on the island to the history of Jesuit education and Catholic art and music on the Chinese mainland.

Twenty-nine years old, newly married, and fresh from the Society of Jesus, where he had spent ten years as a novice and scholastic, Bob Kaiser was picked for one of the most exciting jobs in journalism of his era: Time's reporter at the Second Vatican Council. In the words of Michael Novak: "No reporter knew more about the Council; had talked with more of the personalities, prominent or minor; had more sources of information to tap. Sunday evening dinner parties at his apartment became a rendezvous of stimulating and informed persons. In the English-speaking world, at least, perhaps no source was to have quite the catalytic effect as Time on opinion outside the Council and even to an extent within it." Much of inner story of the Council-its personalities, machinations, maneuverings between progressive forces and the old guard-was told in Bob Kaiser's bestseller of the early sixties Pope, Council, and World. This is a different story, one so raw and personal that it could only be told some forty years later in a very different church and by a much matured Bob Kaiser. The heart of the story is how Bob's wife was seduced by his friend, the Jesuit priest Malachy Martin, and how Martin ("a man who could make people laugh in seven languages)" persuaded Kaiser's other clerical friends (including notable bishops and prominent theologians) to send him to a sanitorium. The story is at once hilarious (Martin was one of the great clerical con men of all time) and sobering. The "clerical error"--the refusal to see what Martin was up to--was as much Kaiser's as that of his older clerical friends who defended their fellow priest simply because he was a member of the club. Their naivete and their blindness only mirrors the church's inability to deal realistically with any issue touched by sex: birth control, remarriage after divorce, priestly celibacy, clerical child abuse, or the ordination of women. Bob Kaiser did eventually grow up. He knows the official church has a long way to go.

This is a unique selection of Edward Schillebeeckx' collection, translated into English here for the first time. This is a collection of essays from one of the most eminent Catholic theologians of the late 20th century. Edward Schillebeeckx Collected Works bring together the most important and influential works of the Dutch Dominican and theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) in a reliable edition. All translations have been carefully checked or revised, some texts are presented in English for the first time. The page numbers of earlier editions are included. Each volume carries a foreword by an internationally renowned Schillebeeckx expert. This edition makes Schillebeeckx available for a new generation of scholars and students.