David L. Schindler on the Contraceptives Mandate

The forthcoming issue of Communio (38.4) includes an editorial from editor David L. Schindler: The Repressive Logic of Liberal Rights: Religious Freedom, Contraceptives, and the “Phony” Argument of the New York Times. (pdf)

David L. Schindler. The Given as Gift: Creation and Disciplinary Abstraction in Science

From the Spring 2011 issue, on the theme of “Ascension and Pentecost”:

David L. Schindler. Creation and Disciplinary Abstraction in Science (pdf).

From the text:

The upshot is that abstractions in science are not and can never be indifferent to the reality of God or a universe under God. Each abstraction in science will imply, even if unconsciously, some conception of the unity or identity of the thing abstracted relative to God and to the universal community of beings. The God-world distinction as disclosed in the act of creation shapes the primitive nature of all distinctions, and hence all abstractions, in the cosmos. Indeed, every distinction and abstraction most basically implies a sense of the God-world relation. . . . (full text)

DAVID L. SCHINDLER (bio) is Provost and Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Also by this author:

Norris Clarke on Person, Being, and St. Thomas. (1993) | Religious Freedom, Truth, and American Liberalism: Another Look at John Courtney Murray. (1994) | Homelessness and the Modern Condition: The Family, Community, and the Global Economy. (2000) | Is Truth Ugly? Moralism and the Convertibility of Being and Love. (2000) | Creation and Nuptiality: A Reflection on Feminism in Light of Schmemann’s Liturgical Theology. (2001) | Toward a Culture of Life: The Eucharist, the ‘Restoration’ of Creation, and the ‘Worldy’ Task of the Laity. (2002) | Biotechnology and the Givenness of the Good: Posing Properly the Moral Question Regarding Human Dignity. (2004) |  The Dramatic Nature of Life: Liberal Societies and the Foundations of Human Dignity. (2006) | In memoriam: Patricia Buckley Bozell. (2008) | The Embodied Person as Gift and the Cultural Task in America: Status Quaestionis. (2008) | Editorial: President Obama, Notre Dame, and a Dialogue That Witnesses: A Question for Father Jenkins. (2009) | Living and Thinking Reality in Its Integrity: Originary Experience, God, and the Task of Education (2010) | The Anthropological Vision of Caritas in veritate in Light of Cultural and Economic Life in the United States.

David L. Schindler. The Anthropological Vision of Caritas in Veritate in Light of Cultural and Economic Life in the United States

From the Winter 2010 issue:

David L. Schindler. The Anthropological Vision of Caritas in veritate in Light of Cultural and Economic Life in the United States.

From the text:

Caritas in veritate takes up the complicated question of technology in its last chapter. Benedict of course acknowledges that technology “enables us to exercise dominion over matter” and to “improve our conditions of life,” and in this way goes to “the heart of the vocation of human labor” (n. 69). The relevant point, however, is that “technology is never merely technology” (n. 69). It always invokes some sense of the order of man’s naturally given relations to God and others. Technology thus, rightly conceived, must be integrated into the call to holiness, indeed into the covenant with God, implied in this order of relations (cf. n. 69): integrated into the idea of creation as something first given to man, as gift, “not something self-generated” (n. 68) or produced by man.

Here again we see the importance of the family. It is inside the family that we first learn a “technology” that respects the dignity of the truly weak and vulnerable—the just-conceived and the terminally-ill, for example—for their own sake. It is inside the family, indeed the family as ordered to worship, that we first learn the habits of patient interiority necessary for genuine relationships: for the relations that enable us to see the truth, goodness, and beauty of others as given (and also to maintain awareness of “the human soul’s ontological depths, as probed by the saints”: n. 76). It is inside the family that we can thus learn the limits of the dominant social media of communication made available by technology, which promote surface movements of consciousness involving mostly the gathering of bits of information, and foster inattention to man in his depths and his transcendence as created by God. It is in the family that we first become open to the meaning of communication in its ultimate and deepest reality as a dia-logos of love that is fully revealed by God in the life, and thus including also the suffering, of Jesus Christ (cf. n. 4). Read the full article.

DAVID L. SCHINDLER (bio) is Provost and Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

David L. Schindler on Experience and Education

Living and Thinking Reality in Its Integrity: Originary Experience, God, and the Task of Education, by David L. Schindler (bio).

From the Summer 2010 issue. From the text:

Charles Péguy once said that the integrity of man and his work demands “staying in place,” and suffering and silence. Just as the right relation between eternity and time demands silence, in other words, so does it demand “staying in place.” “Staying in place” in the first instance does not mean simply not moving around in a physical sense. For if God as Creator can be found anywhere in his creation, then he can surely be found when one moves from one place to another. However, we must avoid confusing the finding of God anywhere with finding him nowhere in particular. We do so only by truly being in a place, through the interior stillness that alone permits depth of presence. “Staying in place,” in a word, is but stillness now expressed in the form of space: it signals the depth, hence genuine incarnation, of presence, which occurs only in singular persons in singular times and places, in the opening of these singularities to eternity. There is no access to heaven except by sinking proportionately more deeply into the earth, taking on its flesh here and now. . . . [full text]

 

Summer 2010 Communio: Experience

The Summer 2010 Communio treats the theme of “The Nature of Experience.” The issue publishes a collection of the papers presented at the conference by the same name that took place at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC in December 2009.

Contributors include:

David L. Schindler • Reinhard Huetter • Antonio Lopez • Conor Cunningham • D.C. Schindler • David S. Crawford • Steven A. Long • Jose Granados • Joseph Atkinson • Margaret Harper McCarthy • Michael Maria Waldstein •  Martin Rhonheimer.

View the entire issue here. Subscribe to Communio here.

The Paschal Mystery

The current issue of Communio focuses on the Paschal Mystery. Read the Introduction here. Articles include:

José Granados. Risen Time: Easter as the Source of History
Jean-Pierre Batut.  Believing in the Resurrection, or: The Logic of Love
Denis Farkasfalvy. Reconstructing Mariology
Keith Lemna. Mythopoetic Thinking and the Truth of Christianity
Philippe Richard. Romans 8 in Under Satan’s Sun: Bernanos’ Vision of Man and the World
Hans Urs von Balthasar. Vocation (Retrieving the Tradition)
Thomas Esposito. The Way From Emmaus to Us (Notes and Comments)
David L. Schindler. Regarding Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Unions (A Word From the Editor)

Spring 2010. Vol. 37, no. 1

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David Schindler on Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Unions

The Spring, 2010 edition of Communio publishes the following text from editor David L. Schindler, Regarding Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Unions. From the text:

It is important for the Church to say why she opposes recognition of a legal right to same-sex unions. It is insufficient for her to base her opposition simply on her own right to religious freedom and fidelity to her own beliefs and tradition. Why? Complete text.

A selection of additional articles by David L. Schindler:

Norris Clarke on Person, Being, and St. Thomas. (1993) | Religious Freedom, Truth, and American Liberalism: Another Look at John Courtney Murray. (1994) | Homelessness and the Modern Condition: The Family, Community, and the Global Economy. (2000) | Is Truth Ugly? Moralism and the Convertibility of Being and Love. (2000) | Creation and Nuptiality: A Reflection on Feminism in Light of Schmemann’s Liturgical Theology. (2001) | Toward a Culture of Life: The Eucharist, the ‘Restoration’ of Creation, and the ‘Worldy’ Task of the Laity. (2002) | Biotechnology and the Givenness of the Good: Posing Properly the Moral Question Regarding Human Dignity. (2004) |  The Dramatic Nature of Life: Liberal Societies and the Foundations of Human Dignity. (2006) | In memoriam: Patricia Buckley Bozell. (2008) | The Embodied Person as Gift and the Cultural Task in America: Status Quaestionis. (2008) | Editorial: President Obama, Notre Dame, and a Dialogue That Witnesses: A Question for Father Jenkins. (2009)