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10 pages, 216 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Relevance of Thomas Berry for 21st Century Catholicity

by Cristina Vanin

Religions 2021, 12(10), 878; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12100878 - 14 Oct 2021

Viewed by 1716

The ecological crisis continues to be identified as the most significant social breakdown in the world. One of the important foundational influences on the development of an adequate religious response is the thought of cultural historian Thomas Berry. He affirmed the critical role [...] Read more.

The ecological crisis continues to be identified as the most significant social breakdown in the world. One of the important foundational influences on the development of an adequate religious response is the thought of cultural historian Thomas Berry. He affirmed the critical role that the world’s religions have in developing a spirituality that supports the sacrifices, visions, and dreams needed to live in an integral way with the Earth’s community of life. Such a spirituality provides the psychic energies we need to adequately respond to the crisis. The author of this article argues that Berry’s thoughts continue to be relevant, especially in the context of the emergence of a renewed sense of Catholicity. This article presents an overview of the breadth and depth of the study that led to Berry’s articulation of a new human orientation needed to reverse the path of devastation. It offers Berry’s insights into the reasons why it is difficult for Christianity to effectively respond to the present crisis and calls for a new Catholicity that functions out of the comprehensive context of an evolutionary and emergent universe. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

15 pages, 261 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Finding Wholes in the Metaverse: Posthuman Mystics as Agents of Evolutionary Contextualization

by Ryan K. Bolger

Religions 2021, 12(9), 768; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12090768 - 15 Sep 2021

Cited by 46 | Viewed by 9914

Abstract

The Metaverse is a pervasive expression of technological culture whose impact will be global. First, through knowledge, then through social, and now through geo-spatial, AI (the foundation of the Metaverse) will connect all entities on Earth through digital means thereby creating a three-dimensional [...] Read more.

The Metaverse is a pervasive expression of technological culture whose impact will be global. First, through knowledge, then through social, and now through geo-spatial, AI (the foundation of the Metaverse) will connect all entities on Earth through digital means thereby creating a three-dimensional informational and experiential layer across the world dubbed the Metaverse. The Metaverse has four characteristics: augmented reality, lifelogging, mirror worlds, and virtual reality. From the standpoint of Christian cultural engagement, a contextual theology has yet to be developed. In the work that follows, the Metaverse is engaged through a combination of contextualization and wholemaking from the standpoint of posthumanism and mysticism. The study focuses on evolutionary wholemaking as identified by Teilhard/Delio, while being guided by Bevans’ five (early) models of contextualization. The method of contextual wholemaking enables new ways of seeing, embracing, communing, complexifying, and creating within the four spheres of the Metaverse. After exploring the nature of the Metaverse in the first half of the paper, insights were gathered from the dialogue between contextual theology and culture and discussed in the second half of the paper. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

9 pages, 207 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Teilhard’s Catholicity: An Evolution of Consciousness

by Andrew Del Rossi

Religions 2021, 12(9), 728; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12090728 - 06 Sep 2021

Viewed by 2916

Abstract

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit mystic and scientist, was a groundbreaking thinker whose synthesis of evolution and faith challenges the faithful to see God in a more expansive perspective. Teilhard’s vision ultimately posits that the universe is evolving closer in relationship with the [...] Read more.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit mystic and scientist, was a groundbreaking thinker whose synthesis of evolution and faith challenges the faithful to see God in a more expansive perspective. Teilhard’s vision ultimately posits that the universe is evolving closer in relationship with the Divine. Through the increase in material complexity and consciousness, the spiritual power of the cosmos is revealed, identified by Teilhard as becoming personalized in the Cosmic Christ. This article uses the four marks of the Catholic Church—one, holy, universal, and apostolic—to highlight the catholicity, or universality, of Teilhard’s life and vision and its relevance for seekers who probe for God’s presence in all things. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

13 pages, 220 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Holonic Christ: Catholicity as Individuation and Integration

by Robert Nicastro

Religions 2021, 12(9), 686; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12090686 - 26 Aug 2021

Viewed by 1991

Abstract

The paradigm shift ushered in by the new science of the early twentieth century discloses the universe as a dynamic, energetic, and complex web of relationality. In view of this renewed sense of undivided wholeness, this article seeks to advance the growing synthesis [...] Read more.

The paradigm shift ushered in by the new science of the early twentieth century discloses the universe as a dynamic, energetic, and complex web of relationality. In view of this renewed sense of undivided wholeness, this article seeks to advance the growing synthesis of theology and depth psychology by way of a revised meaning of catholicity. Specifically, the article utilizes Carl Jung’s theory of individuation to suggest that catholicity is the conscious movement of the psyche toward wholeness, an outcome that Jung associated with Christ. The article introduces the term “Holonic Christ” to describe Christ as both the regulating principle of wholeness in nature and the co-recipient of the activity of deepening wholeness through the psychological development of the self-reflective individual. In this way, the article contends that catholicity is the process of individuation in its fullest form: a dynamic energy of the psyche that urges us in the direction of a more integrated personality, an ever-expanding community, and an eschatological remediation of divine self-contradiction made possible by human self-actualization. The article concludes with a discussion of the far-reaching religious implications of this study and explains why this new understanding of Christ is valuable to theological discourse. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

11 pages, 227 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evolution and Decline: Making Wholeness in a Time of Ecological Decline

by Neil Ormerod

Religions 2021, 12(8), 662; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12080662 - 19 Aug 2021

Viewed by 1863

Abstract

Drawing on three key elements in Lonergan’s thought—emergent probability, the triad of progress/decline/redemption, and the law of the cross—this paper explores the struggle to remake some sense of wholeness in an era of serve ecological decline and the cost to be paid to [...] Read more.

Drawing on three key elements in Lonergan’s thought—emergent probability, the triad of progress/decline/redemption, and the law of the cross—this paper explores the struggle to remake some sense of wholeness in an era of serve ecological decline and the cost to be paid to turn it around. It identifies political action as the most urgent arena for those seeking to redeem our present situation, while also acknowledging the important of personal and cultural resistance to the forces of decline. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

14 pages, 270 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Re-Membering Catholicity: Higher Education, Racial Justice, and the Spirituality of the Posthuman University

by Jeffrey S. Mayer

Religions 2021, 12(8), 645; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12080645 - 16 Aug 2021

Viewed by 1949

Abstract

In the reinscribing of white supremacy in the United States, the contemporary university as a place of exclusion presents a problem of religion. Approaching religion as “the search for depth” and addressing the “techno-myths” of betterment, longevity, and the rituals of enacting these [...] Read more.

In the reinscribing of white supremacy in the United States, the contemporary university as a place of exclusion presents a problem of religion. Approaching religion as “the search for depth” and addressing the “techno-myths” of betterment, longevity, and the rituals of enacting these myths that capture today’s social imaginaries, this paper proposes an alternative to religious faith in “rising” and the rhetoric of the contemporary American technocratic-meritrocratic paradigm. Adopting the posthumanist methodologies of reflexivity and diffraction, the author argues for an embodied catholicity of the university as a community, an open system rather than a pre-formed locus to which racially minoritized students are “added” or “included”. In advancing the co-creativity of a Catholic-pluriversal university via an ethic of love and care, the author presents a Christian spirituality that is itself a technology that offers the hope of enacting a more life-giving congruence between the sacred and the secular than the myth of Manifest Destiny and the racialized violence that is the continued manifestation of that mythos. Embodied in the posthuman mystic’s practices of “re-memory,” the author presents Christianity as a performative-pluralistic religion of evolution, one of common action with the potential to draw into something new the energies of creativity in today’s university. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

9 pages, 464 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Children of Heaven and Earth: Catholicity through Teilhardian Pedagogy

by Jillian Langford

Religions 2021, 12(8), 637; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12080637 - 12 Aug 2021

Viewed by 1781

Abstract

Beginning with the anthropology of Teilhard de Chardin, this paper explores the need to reimagine education in light of an evolutionary cosmos. Teilhard understood the human person as deeply involved in the meaning-making processes of the cosmos, and as co-creators with God in [...] Read more.

Beginning with the anthropology of Teilhard de Chardin, this paper explores the need to reimagine education in light of an evolutionary cosmos. Teilhard understood the human person as deeply involved in the meaning-making processes of the cosmos, and as co-creators with God in evolution. To progress the human person must choose organization over entropy and develop a deep rooted “zest” for her own evolution. The classroom can provide an important space that allows the student to develop this zest for her own evolution by providing the student with the opportunity to envision the ways in which her own life contributes to the evolution of the world and the life of God. Religious educators and educational systems have the unique task of cultivating spaces in which students are invited to realize their own energetic centers of creativity and how this energy can be used to co-create an evolving world. Through the development of a Teilhardian pedagogy students can ultimately embrace a deeper sense of “wholeness” as God’s presence in an evolving world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

13 pages, 251 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Newman, Catholicity, and the Church Today: On the Development of Christian Principles through Dialogue with the World

by Christopher Cimorelli

Religions 2021, 12(7), 507; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/rel12070507 - 07 Jul 2021

Viewed by 2701

Abstract

This article explores the following question: Given the Roman Catholic Church’s present-day teaching on catholicity, how can St. John Henry Newman’s historically conscious, imaginative view of catholicity assist Catholic Christians today in understanding the concept faithfully, but in a manner ‘open’ to its [...] Read more.

This article explores the following question: Given the Roman Catholic Church’s present-day teaching on catholicity, how can St. John Henry Newman’s historically conscious, imaginative view of catholicity assist Catholic Christians today in understanding the concept faithfully, but in a manner ‘open’ to its potential development in an age of shifting metaphysics? After (1) an introduction to the topic and challenges to the notion of catholicity today, this article then (2) analyzes the present-day view of catholicity as a mark of the church according to the ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’, noting areas of development as well as limitations. The article then (3) investigates Newman’s understanding of catholicity within his sacramental and imaginative worldview. Newman’s understanding of the development of principles and doctrines is particularly relevant for a consideration today of how the church’s view of catholicity might authentically develop from a dialogue between religion and science. The article then (4) synthesizes results in a concluding section that indicates how the fruits of the preceding analysis could be realized through eco-theological dialogue. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholicity in the 21st Century)

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