Abstract
Publishers in North America that serve Catholic Christianity offer a wide range of books on social justice. They may bring together local churches and peace movements, challenge the distortions of power and sex, or relate Catholic higher education to papal insights on immigrants. Fullness of Life and Justice for All is a collection of essays in an original format that lets ecology, spirituality, and urban change be pondered from a wider perspective: the fullness of life. They also give an opportunity to see theologies and ministries at work outside the United States. These authors and their ecclesial ministries come mainly from Europe: largely from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, but also from Italy, Guatemala, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
Sections join “Fullness of Life” with six areas: pluralism, ecology, justice, embodiment, spirituality, and society. Each area has two or more essays—both theological and pastoral—and ends with a practical example of how a particular ministry puts ideas into praxis. The reader finds interesting descriptions of ministries in the struggles and alterations of society at the present time. There is too, in broad and limited strokes, a background from Dominican thinking and spirituality, one developed largely from aspects of Thomas Aquinas’s theology. This collection offers new sources, new ideas, and new challenges at work in varied cities, neighborhoods, and churches. The book is sponsored by two Dominican institutes—one in Berlin and the other in Amsterdam.
The editors’ introduction emphasizes that people should be seen as both spiritual and material, not as “souls” awaiting an angelic life. Deformities coming from social and political forces injure not simply an aspect of morality but the fullness of life, personal and political. The pages aim at joining theory and praxis through the themes illumined by fullness of life. There is an interplay between theology, its personalization in spiritualities, and the challenges of society.
One of the sections—to offer an example—links justice with fullness of life. In so doing, the section goes beyond aspects of ethics or civil law to a wider enterprise. The opening essay suggests three sources for expanding justice. The first source is the Flemish theologian Edward Schillebeeckx’s writings on the presence and activity of the Kingdom of God in the church. Second, there is a valuable recollection of Louis-Joseph Lebret, whose ministry among the exploited fishermen of Brittany in the 1940s led to a first dialogue in Catholic circles between economics, social structure, and theology. Lebret advocated the idea of a development in the local society of the whole person and every person. Thirdly, the author links these two theologians to the writings of Pope Francis, in which ecology, society, and dignity meet. In the second essay, Ulrich Engel selects the problem of refugees and movements of populations as a global challenge to the dignity of life. Distinguishing between migration in general and forced migration in its violent forms, he too develops Jesus’s teaching on the Kingdom of God. That Kingdom is a gift, a reality, and a help destined by God for all. The next essay’s topic is the connection of homelessness with other kinds of radical neglect of one’s fellow citizens. The final essay discusses how neighborhoods and parishes where populations are changing, moving, and declining can be looked at as potential centers not only of spirituality and liturgy but also of the arts. The concluding practical exercise comes from grade-school students at work on their own theologies stimulated by explaining the ordinary phrase, “What Can I Do for You?”
In both theology and pastoral ministry, the book is a concrete presentation and inspiring impetus for ongoing efforts to revivify and to expand ministries in the Catholic Church. The editors conclude: “This vision is not merely a prospect, but is already realizing itself. God is present where people resist and fight current dehumanizing situations and where positive glimpses of a new future appear. Societal and historical processes and developments are manifestations of this divine presence and incarnation” (x). In the last analysis, the volume is about the universality and variety of ministry as St. Paul proclaimed it, and as the Church around the world is seeking to realize it anew.