Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time

About the Book

What in the world is postmodernity? Is it the dominant reality today? If it is, what does it mean to be a church in a postmodern world? It seems that the church had a difficult time coming to terms with a modern world, an era ruled by the claims of scientific certainty. Having done so, more or less, it is now confronted by the claims of postmodernity, which seem to reverse the whole equation, to say that certainty and objectivity are chimeras. What is truth?" Pilate asked, and postmodernity 'at least as caricatured by its opponents 'responds: "There's no such thing." Gerard Mannion, in Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, addresses the situation of the church in a postmodern world. The fundamental changes in human society and culture wrought by the twentieth century require the church to consider its response in the twenty-first century. What is the church's moral Vision, how does its practice look, what is the nature of its aspiration toward holiness in our times? Mannion believes that since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has been in a kind of limbo, awaiting a Vision of its own life for the future. Rather than focusing on specific controversies, Mannion offers concrete suggestions about how the church can create a better harmony between its own self-understanding, its ecclesiological Vision, and its day-to-day life, its ecclesial practice. Gerard Mannion, PhD, educated at King's College, Cambridge University and New College, Oxford University, is Associate Professor of Ecclesiology and Ethics in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University, UK. He is also the director of Church In Our Times: Centre for the Study of Contemporary Ecclesiology, co-director of the Applied Ethics Initiative at Liverpool Hope, co-chair of the AAR (American Academy of Religion) Ecclesiological Investigations Program Unit and co-ordinator of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network. Mannion is the author of Schopenhauer, Religion and Morality and co-editor of Readings in Church Authority 'Gifts and Challenges for Contemporary Catholicism, both published by Ashgate in 2003, and co-editor of the forthcoming volumes The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church andCatholic Social Justice: Theological and Practical Explorations. "

Table of Contents:

Contents
Preface   ix
Acknowledgments   xv
Part I: A New Paradigm for the Catholic Church?
Chapter One: Church in Our Time: Introducing the Themes and Concerns   3
     Introduction: The Dilemmas of Historical and Ecclesiological Paradigms   4
     On Presenting a “Name”   8
     Theologies in and of Postmodernity   13
     Challenges of Postmodernity   16
          Relativism and Emotivism   17
          Moral Fragmentation   17
          Meaninglessness and a New Context for Theodicy   18
          “Consumerization” of the Church and Religion   19
          Crises of Legitimation   20
          Globalization: a “New” Grand Narrative?   22
Chapter Two: Postmodernity and the Church   25
     Vatican II: An “Unfinished Building Site”   28
     Competing Ecclesiologies in the Postmodern Era   31
     Institutional or Communitarian/Visionary Ecclesiology?   37
Part II: Problematic Ecclesiological Responses to Postmodernity
Chapter Three: From the “Open Church” to Neo-Exclusivism?   43
     Problematic Ecclesiological Responses to Postmodernity   44
     The Hermeneutics of Communio Ecclesiology   52
     “Foundationalist” Communio Ecclesiology in a Privileged Position   55
     Communionis notio: A “Blueprint Ecclesiology”?   63
     The Church and the Churches   71
Chapter Four: The Church and Religious “Other”: Hermeneutics of Ecclesial Identity in Postmodern Times   75
     A Hermeneutical “Refusal”?   75
     Dominus Iesus: Its Purpose and Message   76
     Reactions to the Document: Catholic, Ecumenical, and Interfaith   83
     Theological Debate and Analysis   87
     Attention to Consultation and Method   94
Part III: The Science of Bridgebuilding
Chapter Five: The Science of Bridgebuilding: From Confrontation to Conversation   105
     The “Legacy” of Vatican II?   109
     Dialogue and the Priority of Love   112
     Authority in Dialogue   118
Chapter Six: Preliminaries for an Ecclesiological Methodology for Postmodern Times   124
     True Catholicity and the Dynamics of Tradition and Truth   128
Humility in Method: Learning to Listen, Informing the Debate   132
     Ecumenics: “an attempt to think Christianity as a whole”   134
     Tentative Steps Forward: Some Inspiring Ecclesial Visions   135
          The Necessity of Dialogue   137
          Gregory Baum—“Wider Ecumenism” and the Church as Hermeneutical and Transformative Agent   139
     Ecumenical Investigations—Toward a Wider Ecumenical Engagement for Our Time   146
Chapter Seven: The Promise of Comparative Ecclesiology: Toward “An Ecumenical Intercultural Hermeneutic”   151
     Re-envisioning the Open Church   151
     Overcoming Polarization: Lieven Boeve and Postmodernity’s Ecclesiological “Interruption”   155
     Toward a Comparative and Dialogical Ecclesiology   159
     Embracing a Comparative Ecclesiology   160
     Concluding Remarks: The Promise of Comparative Ecclesial Hermeneutics   171
Part IV: Analogia Ecclesiae: The Vision of a Virtuous Community
Chapter Eight: Analogia Ecclesiae   175
     “Uneasy Existential Alliances”: An Analogical Path Toward Virtuous Being and Witness?   176
     Countering Ecclesiological Confusions and Doctrinal Quandaries   189
Chapter Nine: From Virtue Ethics to a “Virtue Ecclesiology” for Today   192
     Ecclesiological Parallels with Modern and Contemporary Moral Philosophy   192
     Toward a Genealogy of Ecclesiology?   195
     Virtue Rekindled   197
          After Virtue and Beyond   198
          The Virtues   199
     The “Misappropriation” of Virtue Ethics in the Service of Neo-Exclusivistic Ecclesiology   201
     Alisdair MacIntyre’s Own “Solutions” to Modernity’s Ills   212
     A Virtue Ecclesiology   215
Conclusion: Being Concerned with Love: Beginnings of a “Virtue Ecclesiology,” Theological and Practical   223
     Comparative Ecclesiology: As Path Toward Ecclesial Virtue and as Virtue Ecclesiology   228
     “Plea for a Nameless Virtue”   231
     Postscript   234
Index   237

About the Author :
Gerard Mannion serves as chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and is presently a Visiting Senior Fellow of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. The founding director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Ecclesiology, he is also cochair of the Ecclesiology Program Group of the American Academy of Religion. His most recent publications include Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Liturgical Press, 2007) and The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (2007, ed. with Lewis Mudge).

Review :
The creative suggestions offered in this book should encourage its readers to enrich their understanding of the interplay between faith and reason.Horizons Mannion's work offers a good summary of ecclesiology today.The Priest This book will be especially helpful and informative to those who want to keep abreast or read the history of Roman Catholic ecclesiological debates in the last several decades. For those who want to understand some of the questions that ecclesiologists as well as ecumenists are grappling with in our time, this book also provides a very good overview and is written in a commendable way, at once critical but respectful, pointed but never polemical.Anglican Theological Review Mannion's emphasis on the importance of dialogue and love, as well as his desire for the continuance of fruitful ecumenical engagement, make him a thinker for which Protestants can be thankful. Furthermore, the breadth of his style introduces the reader to a plethora of interesting thinkers and their work, as well as to important trends within Roman Catholicism. Ecclesiology and Postmodernity would thus be a helpful text to include in a course or bibliography dealing with ecclesiology from either a Roman Catholic or a Protestant perspective.Reviews in Religion and Theology This is a welcomed contribution to our understanding of the Church.Catholic Library World The seeming ease with which Mannion integrates the thinking of such a wide array of theological minds-ancient, classical, modern and postmodern-is a credit to the author and a veritable treasure for the reader.Connect A breath of fresh air in ecclesiology! Gerard Mannion deftly analyzes the tempestuous and toxic currents associated with postmodernity and the stifling ecclesiological responses that simply compound the problems. His alternative is to fully engage postmodernity by developing an ecclesiology that is genuinely dialogical-ecumenically, interreligiously, interculturally, and, often the most challenging, among leaders and members within the church-and thus provides the basis for a profoundly virtuous ecclesiology that forms individuals into a community of disciples with a dynamic sense of identity as witnesses, prophets, and healers in the world.Bradford E. Hinze, Professor of Theology, Fordham University, New York