Steps Toward Vatican III: Catholics Pathfinding a Global Spirituality with Islam and Buddhism - Softcover

Grudzen, Gerald; Raymaker, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761840516 ISBN 13: 9780761840510

Publisher: University Press Of America, 2008

Synopsis

The Catholic Church has a tradition of bridge-building, one founded on Christ and that began with the Apostle St. John and the convert St. Paul. It helped bridge the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman worlds. Later, it helped civilize the tribes that overran Europe. Limits appeared in the Church's bridge-building ability when Europe was confronted with Islam, and later with the secular mentality that arose in Western Europe, as well as in its encounters with China, India, and Africa.

Steps Toward Vatican III examines the present dilemmas facing the Church and humanity in an age of globalization that daily brings people of various backgrounds into close proximity. It offers a "middle-way" to face such issues. It develops a global ethics and a global spirituality that can be incarnated within alert, loving, small Christian communities, as well as in the larger Church structures directed from the Vatican. It builds on Vatican II to find paths that may help bring peace and understanding in the world by a sympathetic evaluation of different world traditions. Such sympathy must be informed by the conversions that Jesus and the Church have demanded of their followers.

About this title

About the Authors

Gerald Grudzen is the founder and president of Global Ministries University. He has worked on educational and development projects in Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt and now in Kenya for the past eight years in addition to his teaching in the United States. He is the author of Pope Francis, Conscience of the World: Building Needed Bridges in a Troubled World.

John Raymaker spent twenty-five years as a missionary in Japan where he worked at the Tokyo Oriens Institute for Religious Research. He taught cultural anthropology and biblical studies at Junshin and Hosei Universities in Tokyo. He is the author of Pope Francis, Conscience of the World: Building Needed Bridges in a Troubled World.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press Of America
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761840516
• ISBN 13: 9780761840510
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 222