From his poems and reflections composed in prep school, where he first crossed paths with John Fitzgerald Kennedy (with whom he would graduate from Harvard in 1940), to a private meeting in his last days arranged at Pope Benedict XVI’s personal request, the book explores a theological topography that includes truly monumental figures and events of the modern era. As the product of perhaps the most influential American Catholic theologian in history, Dulles’s writings continue to inspire and shape the way theology has been studied and practiced in academic institutions throughout the United States and the world.

Having worked closely with Cardinal Dulles, the editors have compiled an exhaustive bibliography of his works and have included a series of essays that shed light on the twilight of his life, one that intersects with ecclesiastical, theological, philosophical, and political leaders of every stripe and worldview.

Contributions include Dulles’s farewell lecture as McGinley Professor of Religion and Society with a stirring response by Robert Imbelli; a reflection on the cardinal’s last days by longtime research assistant Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P.; and the moving homily given at his funeral by Edward Cardinal Egan.

The book also chronicles Cardinal Dulles’s relationship with Fordham University, where he began his academic career as a Jesuit regent, teaching philosophy (1951–53), and where, for the last twenty years of his life, he held an endowed chair named in honor of a former president of Fordham, Laurence J. McGinley, S.J. This text will serve as a liminal passageway into the splendid mansion of Dulles’s thought for theologians, scholars, believers, and all thinking men and women of goodwill.

Respectful of traditional biblical scholarship, the collection of essays moves beyond it; alert to contemporary trends, the volume returns venerable interpretive tradition to center stage. Most significantly, it is interfaith. Despite the fact that Jews and Christians share a common text in the Hebrew Scripture, the two communities have read their Bibles in isolation from one another, in ignorance of the richness of the other's traditions of reading. Scrolls of Love brings the two traditions into dialogue, enriching established modes of interpretation with unconventional ones.

The result is a volume that sets rabbinic, patristic, and medieval readings alongside feminist, psychoanalytic, and autobiographical ones, combining historical, literary, and textual criticism with a variety of artistic reinterpretations—wood cuts and paper cuts, poetry and fiction. Some of the works are scholarly, with the requisite footnotes to draw readers to further inquiry: others are more reflective than analytic, allowing readers to see what it means to live intimately with Scripture. As a unity, the collection presents Ruth and Song of Songs not only as ancient texts that deserve to be treasured but as old worlds capable of begetting the new.

For more than a generation, the University of Dayton has invited a prominent Catholic intellectual to present the annual Marianist Award Lecture on the general theme of the encounter of faith and profession. Over the years, the lectures have become central to the Catholic conversation about church, culture, and society.

In this book, ten leading figures explore the connections in their own lives between the private realms of faith and their public calling as teachers, scholars, and intellectuals.

This last decade of Marianist Lectures brings together theologians and philosophers, historians, anthropologists, academic scholars, and lay intellectuals and critics.

Here are Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., on the tensions between faith and theology in his career; Jill Ker Conway on the spiritual dimensions of memory and personal narrative; Mary Ann Glendon on the roots of human rights in Catholic social teaching; Mary Douglas on the fruitful dialogue between religion and anthropology in her own life; Peter Steinfels on what it really means to be a “liberal Catholic”; and Margaret O’Brien Steinfels on the complicated history of women in today’s church. From Charles Taylor and David Tracy on the fractured relationship between Catholicism and modernity to Gustavo Gutiérrez on the enduring call of the poor and Marcia Colish on the historic links between the church and intellectual freedom, these essays track a decade of provocative, illuminating, and essential thought.

James L. Heft, S.M., is President and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and University Professor of Faith and Culture and Chancellor, University of Dayton. He has edited Beyond Violence: Religious Sources for Social Transformation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Fordham).

The essays in this important book take bold steps forward to answering these questions. The fruit of a historic conference of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars and community leaders, the essays address a fundamental question: how the three monotheistic traditions can provide the resources needed in the work of justice and reconciliation.

Two distinguished scholars represent each tradition. Rabbis Irving Greenberg and Reuven Firestone each examine the relationship of Judaism to violence, exploring key sources and the history of power, repentance, and reconciliation. From Christianity, philosopher Charles Taylor explores the religious dimensions of "categorical" violence against other faiths, other groups, while Scott Appleby traces the emergence since Vatican II of nonviolence as a foundation of Catholic theology and practice. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia, discusses Muslim support of pluralism and human rights, and Mohamed Fathi Osman examines the relationship between political violence and sacred sources in contemporary Islam.

By focusing on transformative powers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the essays in this book provide new beginnings for people of faith committed to restoring peace among nations through peace among religions.

This book brings together original essays by leading experts who reflect on Teilhard’s legacy for today’s globalized world. They explore such topics as: the idea of God and the person; quantum reality and Teilhard’s vision; spiritual resources for the future; politics and economics; and a charter for co-evolution.

These statements are not in vacuo of a Roman Catholic and Protestant position. They were drafted in the midst of the religious conflict that was then dividing Europe. And they reflect too the temperaments and personal histories of the men who wrote them. Sadoleto’s letter has an irenic approach, an emphasis on the unity and peace of the Church, highly characteristic of the Christian Humanism he represented. Calvin’s reply is in part a personal defense, an apologia pro vita sua, that records his own religious experience. And its taut, comprehensive argument is characteristic of the disciplined and logical mind of the author of The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Here, brought together for the first time in one volume, are the talks Cardinal Dulles has given twice each year since the Laurence J. McGinley Lectures were initiated in 1988, conceived broadly as a forum on Church and society. The result is a diverse collection that reflects the breadth of his thinking and engages with many of the most important—and difficult—religious issues of our day.

Organized chronologically, the lectures are often responses to timely issues, such as the relationship between religion and politics, a topic he treated in the last weeks of the presidential campaign of 1992. Other lectures take up questions surrounding human rights, faith and evolution, forgiveness, the death penalty, the doctrine of religious freedom, the population of hell, and a whole array of theological subjects, many of which intersect with culture and politics.

The life of the Church is a major and welcome focus of the lectures, whether they be a reflection on Cardinal Newman or an exploration of the difficulties of interfaith dialogue. Dulles responds frequently to initiatives of the Holy See, discussing gender and priesthood in the context of church teaching, and Pope Benedict’s interpretation of Vatican II.

Writing with clarity and conviction, Cardinal Dulles seeks to “render the wisdom of past ages applicable to the world in which we live.” For those seeking to share in this wisdom, this book will be a consistently rewarding guide to what it means to be Catholic—indeed, to be a person of any faith—in a world of rapid, relentless change.