Theologians have recently been criticizing the notion of an immanent Trinity as idle speculation and focusing their attention exclusively on the economic Trinity. The change thus proposed is at once too radical and not radical enough. It is too radical in that it seems to set aside almost two thousand years of careful theological reflection on the reality of God as derived from Scripture and Tradition. It is not radical enough in that it does not grasp the deeper issues involved here. For, what is really needed is not a move away from ontology toward phenomenology, but rather a conscious shift in ontologies, a move, in other words, from a metaphysics of being to a metaphysics of becoming as the appropriate conceptuality for an understanding both of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the God-world relationship.

Following the work of gender theorists who find the terms “male” and “female” to be socially constructed, feminist theology has tended to repudiate essentialism. The position that results is one of agnosticism about biological sexuality, a position that is only reinforced by the essentialist excesses that ground the discussion of the “psycho-physical structure” of women found in official Catholic teaching. This article suggests that the polarity of feminist theology and official Catholic teaching on questions of sex and gender can be overcome by using the framework of a “critical essentialism,” a position that retrieves the Catholic theological tradition of reflection on “male” and “female” while allowing its claims to be appropriately winnowed by the insights of gender theorists.

Understanding and celebrating the Eucharist does not take place in a vacuum, but depends at least in part on our ability to grasp and be moved by the fundamental symbols of food, body, and table. And yet in contemporary America we increasingly find ourselves in a culture characterized by distorted experiences and notions of all three of these. How, then, does our growing obsession with dieting, nutrition, and efficiency, as well as the increasing disparity of our national and global tables, challenge or undermine our experience of breaking, sharing, and eating the Body and Blood of Christ? And how does the Eucharist speak to and challenge some of the distortions of “Diet America” regarding the humanizing characteristics of food, the importance of embodiment, and the demands of table fellowship?

This article draws on some of the interpretive strategies of the ancient Rabbis as well as the exegetic writings of some modern literary theorists to present the Book of Amos as an unfolding story of a man of titanic courage who excoriates the powerful of society because of their rebellion against the divine will. Living in the eighth century B.C.E., Amos entered the royal sanctuary at Bethel in the Northern Kingdom to deliver his prophetic message. Speaking in the name of the Lord, he condemned the perversion of justice and the disdain of righteousness. He threatened that a day would come in which all the oppressors would be “plucked out of the land” leaving only a remnant of the people Israel. This remnant, however, will know what the Lord requires: that the weak be sustained and the fallen uplifted, that the stranger be protected and the widow and orphan cared for. Henceforth, a new age will prevail, an age in which the soil will be blessed and all will share in the abundance.

On August 12, 1996, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago († November 14, 1996), released a statement entitled “Called to Be Catholic Church in a Time of Peril,” which concretized an initiative called the Catholic Common Ground Project. This project is to be staffed by the thirteen-year-old, New York-based, National Pastoral Life Center, which was originally established under the auspices of the Administrative Committee of the U.S. Bishops' Conference. The peril which is the project's concern is the polarization that has developed in the Catholic Church in the United States in the course of the thirtyodd years elapsed since the close of the Second Vatican Council.

This essay discusses spirituality as opening toward the experience of interconnectedness which forms the world. It interprets God as an empowering presence within the gracious quality of being reaching toward us through the connectedness. The essay draws upon Masao Abe's notion of sunyata and Heidegger's description of the everyday world to discuss the interdependency which finds us within one another's care, though this is generally taken for granted and lies hidden. Spirituality experiences this connectedness as gift and opens the possibility of care. By associating care with the empowering presence of God, we move beyond the dualism which otherwise sets apart God and world, God and humans.