Overview
"What's Left? employs a thoroughly in-house approach in which self-identified liberal Catholics examine various facets of liberal Catholicism.... this book explores some of the most prominent threads of leftist Catholic aspiration and dissent." —Choice
What’s Left? is the most comprehensive study to date of liberal American Catholics in the generation following the second Vatican council (1962-65). The main features of liberal American Catholicism—feminist theology and practice, contested issues of sexual conduct, new social locations of academic theology, liturgy, spirituality, ministry, race and ethnicity, and public Catholicism—are presented here in their historical and social contexts.
Synopsis
"What's Left? employs a thoroughly in-house approach in which self-identified liberal Catholics examine various facets of liberal Catholicism.... this book explores some of the most prominent threads of leftist Catholic aspiration and dissent." — Choice
What's Left? is the most comprehensive study to date of liberal American Catholics in the generation following the second Vatican council (1962-65). The main features of liberal American Catholicism — feminist theology and practice, contested issues of sexual conduct, new social locations of academic theology, liturgy, spirituality, ministry, race and ethnicity, and public Catholicism — are presented here in their historical and social contexts.
Editorials
Choice
This book was originally envisioned as the mirror-image of Being Right (1995), a volume edited by Weaver and Scott Appleby focusing on conservative Catholicism. Instead of adopting the mixed insider/outsider methodology used in Being Right, however, What's Left? employs a thoroughly in-house approach in which self-identified liberal Catholics examine various facets of liberal Catholicism. Contemporary left-wing Catholicism is somewhat fragmented, bound together as much by a common sense of dissent as by any shared program of action. Rather than trying to impose an artificial orderliness on that reality, this book explores some of the most prominent threads of leftist Catholic aspiration and dissent. Fourteen essays are grouped in six sections dealing with feminist theology and practice; personal sexual morality; academic theology; liturgy, ministry and spirituality; race and ethnicity; and public Catholicism. Some essays are relatively broad in purview, such as the Mary Ann Hinsdale and John Boyle piece Academic Theology; others are much more precisely focused, such as Bernard Cooke's on the organization Call to Action. Overall, the essays cover the subject well. David O'Brien's concluding essay provides a fine summary of the history and present state of the Catholic Left. Recommended for upper-division undergraduate students through faculty and researchers, and professionals and practitioners.D. Jacobsen, Messiah College, Choice, October 2000— D. Jacobsen, Messiah College