The late Pope John Paul II frequently invoked Dignitatis Humanae as one of the foundational documents of contemporary Church social teaching. In this timely new edited collection, Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary Reflections on Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt have assembled an impressive group of scholars to discuss the current meanings of one the Vatican's most important documents and its place in the Church. Dignitatis Humanae understands itself as bringing 'forth new things that are in harmony with the old.' Today, forty years after its publication, the precise nature of these 'new things' and their relationship to 'the old' remain among the most important pieces of unfinished business confronting Catholic social thought. The theological issues brought forth in Dignitatis Humanae go to the heart of the contemporary debate about the nature, foundation, and scope of religious liberty. Here, the contributors to this volume give these considerations the serious and sustained attention they deserve.

The late Pope John Paul II frequently invoked Dignitatis Humanae as one of the foundational documents of contemporary Church social teaching. In this timely new edited collection, Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary Reflections on Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt have assembled an impressive group of scholars to discuss the current meanings of one the Vatican's most important documents and its place in the Church. Dignitatis Humanae understands itself as bringing "forth new things that are in harmony with the old." Today, forty years after its publication, the precise nature of these "new things" and their relationship to "the old" remain among the most important pieces of unfinished business confronting Catholic social thought. The theological issues brought forth in Dignitatis Humanae go to the heart of the contemporary debate about the nature, foundation, and scope of religious liberty. Here, the contributors to this volume give these considerations the serious and sustained attention they deserve.

Twelve chapters present a wide range of theory and method. Case examples throughout. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

For anyone who practices marriage and family therapy the author says they have one kind of client population that seems to be a modal or predominating type. For three decades he has experienced more marital situations where one of the couple wants "out" of the marriage and the other wants to "stay in" than any other type. The idea for this collection of first-person therapy methodologies developed after two successive national meetings of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), in New York (1985) and Orlando (1986). The cases that were discussed were characterized by the presence of alcoholism, and drug and other addictions, rather than presentations that dealt with a polarized couple wherein the marriage had simply become a devitalized, ho-hum relationship. This volume seeks to address the balance.

We often hear it said that "each person is unique and unrepeatable" or that "each person is his own end and not a mere instrumental means." But what exactly do these familiar sayings mean? What are they based on? How do we know they are true? In this book, John F. Crosby answers these questions by unfolding the mystery of personal individuality or uniqueness, or as he calls it personal selfhood. He stands in the great tradition of Western philosophy and draws on Aquinas wherever possible, but he is also deeply indebted to more recent personalist philosophy, especially to the Christian personalism of Kierkegaard and Newman and to the phenomonology of Scheler and von Hildebrand. As a result, Crosby, in a manner deeply akin to the philosophical work of Karol Wojtyla, enriches the old with the new as he explores the structure of personal selfhood, offering many original contributions of his own. Crosby sheds new light on the incommunicability and unrepeatability of each human person. He explores the subjectivity, or interiority, of persons as well as the much-discussed theme of their transcendence, giving particular attention to the transcendence achieved by persons in their moral existence. Finally he shows how we are led through the person to God, and he concludes with an original and properly philosophical approach to the image of God in each person. Throughout his study, Crosby is careful not to take selfhood in an individualistic way. He shows how the "selfhood and solitude" of each person opens each to others, and how, far from interfering with interpersonal relations, it in fact renders them possible. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John F. Crosby is professor and chair of philosophy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. He has taught at the University of Dallas, the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Rome, and at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. Professor Crosby earned his doctorate in philosophy from the Universitaet Salzburg, Austria, studying with Josef Seifert and having Dietrich von Hildebrand as his master. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "This work is a serious philosophical study full of many rich insights that advance significantly our understanding of the human person."--Norris Clarke, S.J., Fordham University "Crosby makes an invaluable contribution to the future of Catholic philosophy and its intellectual culture in general. This book will become must reading for anyone interested in the relation of John Paul's personalism to the perennial philosophy and to neo-Thomism. For those interested in mediating that relationship, Crosby is their best guide."--Deal W. Hudson, Crisis "John Crosby's books, The Selfhood of the Human Person and the more recent Personalist Papers, deal with metaphysical primitives. This makes them important books. It also makes them courageous books." -- Siobhan Nash-Marshall, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

It has been said that John Henry Newman ""stands at the threshold of the new age as a Christian Socrates, the pioneer of a new philosophy of the individual Person and Personal Life."" Newman's personalism is found in the way he contrasts the ""theological intellect"" and the ""religious imagination."" Newman pleads for the latter when he famously says, in words that John F. Crosby takes as the motto of his book, ""I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God...but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice."" In The Personalism of John Henry Newman, Crosby shows the reader how Newman finds the life-giving religious knowledge that he seeks. He explores the ""heart"" in Newman and explains what Newman was saying when he chose as his cardinal's motto, cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). He explains what Newman means in saying that religious truth is transmitted not by argument but by ""personal influence."" Crosby also examines Newman's personalist account of what it is to think; he explains what it is for a person to think not just by rule but by his ""spontaneous living intelligence."" Crosby examines the subjectivity of Newman, and shows how the modern ""turn to the subject"" is enacted in Newman. But these personalist aspects of Newman's mind, which connect him with many streams of contemporary thought, are not the whole of Newman; they stand in relation to something else in Newman, something that Crosby calls Newman's radically theocentric religion. Newman is a modern thinker, but not the modernist he is sometimes mistaken for. The inexhaustible plenitude of Newman derives from the union of apparent opposites in him: the union of his teaching on the heart with his theocentric teaching, of the subjectivity of experience with the objectivity of revealed truth. Crosby writes for a broad non-specialist public just as Newman did.

What are values? How do we come to know them? How are values re lated to morality? How is it possible to act against ones better knowl edge? How can one become blind to values? How important is requit ed love for human happiness? These are just some of the questions to which Dietrich von Hildebrand offers profound and original responses. He arrives at these answers not primarily by a critical discussion of oth er thinkers (classical or modern) but by turning to the "things them selves," that is, to the reality of moral life. Von Hildebrand's keen sense for categorization, crucial distinctions, and systematic philosophizing does not reduce the rich and complex sphere of moral phenomena to a few abstract principles or rules. On the contrary, it allows the reader of his works to see the moral data with new clarity and explicitness. Although von Hildebrand's importance as an early phenomenol ogist and a moral philosopher has been generally recognized for de cades, The Moral Philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand is the first full-fledged monograph on von Hildebrand's moral philosophy available to date. Despite this pioneering effort, its aim is not to treat all the themes belonging to this area with equal depth and breadth. Rather, it focuses on the themes indicated by the aforementioned questions and relates them according to their inner systematic links rather than according to how and when they appear in von Hildebrand's works. It also engag es von Hildebrand in a critical dialogue, particularly with the ethics of Plato and Aristotle. This book will serve as a very good introduction not just to von Hildebrands moral philosophy but to his thought in general.

In Personalist Papers, John F. Crosby continues the discussion of Christian personalism begun in his highly acclaimed book, The Selfhood of the Human Person. Trained in phenomenology, Crosby stays close to our experience of persons, so that what he says finds a deep resonance in the personal existence of the reader. In his exceptionally clear style, he explores the unrepeatability of persons, drawing out the unique worth and dignity of each individual person. Crosby also explores interpersonal relation, giving an original account of how persons can achieve empathic understanding of others, and where the limit of empathy is reached. He sketches out a personalist philosophy of religion, defending against Freud the encounter with God that occurs in conscience when we acknowledge some serious obligation and awaken in our personal existence. Crosby discusses as well the embodiment of persons, sharply criticizing the dualism of person and body that is found in much personalist thought. And he discusses the place of consciousness in the makeup of the human person, showing against Locke and others that, fundamental as consciousness is for personal existence, there is more to a person than consciousness. Crosby also discusses the solidarity in which all persons are established, the fundamental freedom of persons, giving and receiving personal influence, and the man-woman difference. In these investigations Crosby draws especially on the work of Max Scheler, Dietrich von Hildebrand, John Henry Newman, and Karol Wojtyla. What emerges is an enhanced understanding of, and reverence for, the mystery of the human person. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John F. Crosby is Professor of Philosophy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. He has taught at the University of Dallas, the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Rome, and at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "Crosby's book is critically important, being especially well-timed with the world still at the beginning of its long haul through the 21st century...Crosby reflects on a century of struggle over the human person, using his considerable gifts to shape the debate in favor of a proper anthropology for the 21st century." -- Bradley J. Birzer, Crisis Magazine "These collected papers, by an eminent philosopher at Franciscan University of Steubenville, are recommended as perhaps the best introduction to personalism in any language. . . . Crosby is painstakingly clear and, in a personalist style that takes the reader as an interlocutor, he anticipates objections with patience, always seeking what is right about alternative views and aiming to take this appropriately into account."--Michael Pakaluk, Christian Social Thought "The nature of persons is one of the most important yet neglected topics in American philosophy. Crosby is one of the few philosophers whose work presents a unified vision of the mystical basis for the value of persons. I highly recommend this collection."--Professor Linda Zagzebski, Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, University of Oklahoma "As one of the leading and original contemporary philosophers of the person, John Crosby shows throughout his work great openness and faithfulness to a rich experience of the person, always following the phenomenological maxim 'back to things themselves, ' in its realist and metaphysical understanding. I recommend this new book to any reader interested in the topic not only because of its rich philosophical content and genuinely philosophical spirit but also because of its elegant and accesible prose."--Professor Josef Seifert, President of the International Academy of Philosophy, Liechtenstein "John Crosby's books, The Selfhood of the Human Person and the more recent Personalist Papers, deal with

Who among us is so wise, so knowledgeable, so insightful, so self-aware, so well put together, so hip, so cool that he or she can choose a mate at the age of seventeen, twenty-three, or even fifty-something, who will prove to be a true and loving companion, friend, and lover over the next twenty to seventy years? Yet this is what our society and our elders expect us to do. The implicit message is that we should choose a mate and enter a relationship that will be vital and dynamic and sexually stimulating for a lifetime. In Grounds for Marriage, Crosby challenges the reader to consider what is myth and what is practical reality. Much of the social-cultural belief about love and marriage is nothing more than romantic folklore. "I am appalled at how little preparation in the choice of a mate our educational and religious establishments give our children and young people...," he writes. This book is a no-nonsense and well-reasoned approach to the conscious and unconscious dynamics in the choice of a mate. As such, it is a first step in preventing the sad lament expressed by thousands, "If only I had known." John F. Crosby is a retired professor of marriage/family studies and therapy.

This book presents a correspondence between two friends who disagree about how to answer the question, "What does it mean to be a Christian?" Crosby argues that Christians understand themselves as hearing a definitive word of revelation spoken by God and intended for all human beings. But Betty sees Christianity as one of several options, usually the preferred way for those born in the faith, but no more unique or special than Hinduism or Buddhism. It is a debate over the kind of initiative the Christian God takes, or does not take, toward human beings. Throughout the debate Crosby alleges that Betty's God is a very finite god, an all-too-human god, and for that very reason is something different from the God venerated by Christians, while Betty maintains that his theism remains within the Christian orbit and is a much needed corrective to a religion with exclusivist tendencies.The debate between the two friends is presented here in the form of a correspondence they conducted over a period of two years (and did not originally intend for publication). It has undergone very little editing and revision; the authors have wanted to preserve the spontaneous give and take of their exchange. Together they have produced a work of philosophical dialogue that is unusually fruitful in its ability to clarify some fundamental issues of religion.