Description: The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Melanesia and Micronesia, 1850 to 1875 is the result of Father Ralph Wiltgen's years of archival work in Rome and at the headquarters of religious orders who worked in Micronesia and Melanesia. It follows his first historical book on the subject, The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania: 1825 to 1850, but narrows the focus. The first book dealt with the whole of Oceania and emphasized developments in Polynesia. This book concentrates on Melanesia and Micronesia from 1850 to 1875, the period immediately before the work of...

Description: The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania, 1825-1850 is the first detailed and documentary history of the seminal period of Roman Catholic missionary activity. Beginning with the founding of the Prefecture Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands in 1825 there was continued development in Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia for the next quarter century. By 1850 this vast area of the South Seas could boast of one archdiocese, eight dioceses, and eight vicariates apostolic. This lively, dramatic narrative is told largely through the words of the...

Synopsis: The critique of Jacques Dupuis, SJ, by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the direction of Joseph Ratzinger was met by almost universal dismay by Christian theologians and participants in interfaith dialogue throughout the world. This book is comprised of both responses by Father Dupuis to the Vatican's criticisms (which he was forbidden to publish during his lifetime) and introductory and background material by his friend and editor Bill Burrows, who draws on their many conversations to draw out the deeper implications of Dupuis' work and the background to...

Synopsis: Utilizing resources from Martin Luther and the Lutheran tradition, this study offers an understanding of the gospel as promise as key to addressing the challenge of relating the missio Dei to a generous, constructive approach toward the religious other. In its construction of a Lutheran missiology, it retrieves and reappropriates four resources from the Lutheran tradition: the gospel as promise, the law/gospel distinction, a theology of grace as promise of mercy fulfilled, and a theology of the cross utilizing the hiddenness of God. The law of God as accusing yet webbing humanity to...