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Pope Francis consistently addresses economic issues with the concept of idolatry, but Gaudium et spes treats the economy as an autonomous, secular realm amenable to technocratic solutions guided by principles of right reason. Cavanaugh accounts for this difference by examining changes in theories about secularization from the 1960s to the present. He argues that today we are less likely to see the secular realm as neutral and devoid of belief, and more likely to see it as enchanted and idolatrous.

(2012). Dorian Llywelyn, SJ, Toward a Catholic Theology of Nationality. Political Theology: Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 388-391.

Today the most significant misunderstanding of the Christian liturgy is that it is sacred. Let me clarify. The problem is that “sacred” has been opposed to “secular,” and the two are presumed to de...

Christian ethicists often assume that the state is the agency whose purpose it is to protect and promote the common good. This conclusion is based on a series of assumptions of fact: that the state is natural and primordial, that society gives rise to the state and not vice-versa, and that the state is one limited part of society. In this essay I examine the origins of the state and the state-society relationship according to those who study the historical record, and argue that the above assumptions of fact are untenable in the face of the evidence. The essay concludes by registering a theological challenge to the state's sometimes overreaching claims to be the keeper of the common good and the repository of sacred values that demands sacrifice on its behalf. In the face of these tendencies, one of the church's urgent tasks is to demystify the nation-state and to treat it like the telephone company—i.e., as a provider of goods and services that contribute to a certain limited order.

This essay uses the life, death, and writings of Oscar Romero to explore the connection between eucharist and martyrdom, and how to tell the difference between dying for the eucharist and being killed by it. The essay begins by examining the logic of martyrdom, then shows its connections with the eucharist, and concludes with some comments about the situation of first-world Christians in a relatively safe church. The essay suggests that the eucharist can bring judgment if Christians do not attend to those who suffer in their midst.

This essay explores Eucharist as resistance to late-capitalist “globalization.” Globalization is often touted as the first true realization of catholicity. Globalization is seen as the demise of the nation-state which has caused so much division among peoples. In contrast, I argue that globalization does not signal the decline of the nation-state but the perfection of the modern state's subsumption of local communities under the universal. True catholicity is based in the practice of the Eucharist, which realizes a universal communion but does so only in local Eucharistic communities, thus overcoming the dichotomy of universal and particular.

In September of 1993, the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago issued a declaration called "Towards a Global Ethic" meant to locate ethical values common to the world's religions. One of the most emphatic parts of the statement is that condemning wars waged in the name of religion. "Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate and xenophobia—even inspire and legitimize violent and bloody conflicts. Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war. We are filled with disgust." Is the Parliament of the World's Religions taking a pacifist stand? Well, no. While violence in general is condemned, the document stops well short of calling religious people out of the armies of the world. Only killing in the name of religion is damned; bloodshed on behalf of the State is subject to no such scorn. What is wrong, then, with killing in the name of religion? The answer can be derived from the definition of "religion" implicit in the declaration. Religion is assumed to be a matter pertinent to the private sphere of values. The individual's public and lethal loyalty belongs to the State. My purpose in this essay will be to focus on the way revulsion to killing in the name of religion is used to legitimize the transfer of ultimate loyalty to the modern State. Specifically I will examine how the so-called "Wars of Religion" of sixteenthand seventeenth-century Europe are evoked as the founding moment of modern liberalism by theorists such as John Rawls, Judith Shklar, and Jeffrey Stout.1 will let Shklar tell the familiar tale

Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott and Timothy Shah, God's Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011, 276 pp., $25.95, ISBN 978-0-393-06926-6 Anytime a poli...

Acknowledgements. Introduction. Part I: Torture and Disappearance as an Ecclesiological Problem:. 1. Torture as Liturgy. 2. Torture and Fragmentation. 3. The Striptease of Power. 4. Habeas Corpus. Conclusion. Part II: The Church Learns How to be Oppressed:. 5. Christians for Socialism. 6."Torture Isna t Everything". 7. The Stubborn Monkey. 8. "I Am Jesus, Whom You Are Persecuting". 9. The Church as Russia. Part III: The Ecclesiology of a Disappearing Church:. 10. An Amiable Divorce. 11. The Rise of "Social Catholicism". 12. Catholic Action in Chile. Part IV: A Distinction of Planes:. 13. Maritain Among Us. 14. The Minimum of Body. 15. New Christendom. 16. The Disappearance of the Church. 17. The End of the Story. Part V: The True Body of Christ:. 18. The Mystical and the True. 19. Until He Comes. 20. Re--membering Christ. 21. Making the Body Visible. Part VI: Performing the Body of Christ:. 22. "But Father, Look at This Body". 23. Knitting the Social Fabric. 24. Mysterious Channels. 25. Torture and Eucharist. Index.