Best Theology Book 2004 - Catholic Press Assocation The present crisis in the American Catholic Church stems from a two-fold source: lay people are powerless while the bishops are accountable to no one but the pope and the curia. While the number of lay people exercising ministries in the church has grown enormously over the past thirty years (largely due to the shortage of priests), there has been little or no theological reflection till now on the genuine role of the laity. It is only from such reflection that structural reform of the church will come. The first half of The Liberation of the Laity concentrates on the fortunes of the laity, theologically speaking, between Vatican I (1870) and Vatican II (1962-65). It examines the growth of the "new theology" in France in the 1940s and 1950s and shows how in the work of one of its leading practitioners, Yves Congar, much of the vision of the laity expressed at Vatican II was anticipated. Seeing the years after the council as decades of missed opportunities to recognize the role of the laity, the book then turns to a series of constructive proposals for the liberation of the laity, and thus the liberation of the church. It discusses the importance of "secularity," the need for a "lay liberation theology," and the centrality of the struggles against global capitalism in the mission of the church. It ends with a chapter envisioning dramatic changes in ministry and governing structures, in which accountability will be central, "servant leaders" will include women and married people, and both ecclesiastical careerism and the College of Cardinals will be history.
I hold the Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Chair of Catholic Studies at Fairfield University where I am also Director of Fairfield's Center for Catholic Studies. I have been teaching at Fairfield University since 1981, where I was previously Director of the Honors Program and Chair of the Religious Studies Department. I hail originally from the U.K., England to be precise. I was educated at Oxford University where I "read" (i.e., studied) English Language and Literature, the University of London, where I completed a divinity degree, and Vanderbilt University where I wrote my doctorate. I've written lots of articles and eight books. The most recent are The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church (2003), which received the 2004 Catholic Press Association Award for the best book in theology, Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church, which also won an award from the Catholic Press Association in 2008 and, in October of 2009, Church: Living Communion. In the spring of 2010 Orbis Press will publish my edition of selected writings of Yves Congar, O.P., the greatest ecclesiologist who ever lived.
I am a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Workgroup for Constructive Theology, an independent ecumenical association of constructive and systematic theologians based in Nashville, TN. My academic and research interests include the Catholic Church, the Papacy, religion and literature, and the relations between religious commitment and progressive politics. I live in Trumbull, CT, with my pianist wife and we have one son who is a sophomore piano performance major at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. I attend church on the campus of Fairfield University, where I moved after the pastor of my local parish suggested that I "might be happier somewhere else."
