Sometimes reading the proceedings of a conference is better than being there. One can never attend all the simultaneous sessions at a conference, but one can read all the papers when they are collected in a book. This volume collects over thirty papers from the Fifth International Conference of the Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network held at the University of Dayton in 2011. The papers are of varying length and quality, but it is easier to skim through an uninteresting essay than it is to skip out of a boring presentation—another advantage of the printed format. Topics cover a wide variety of ecclesiological exclusions including those that affect racial groups, immigrants, women, homosexuals, religious movements, sacramental practices, and interfaith activities.
Three sections include multiple essays on recent books. In the discussion of Gerard Mannion's Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, Dennis Doyle compares exclusivist, inclusivist, pluralist, and neoexclusivist orientations as categories for locating various ecclesiologies past and present. Paul Lakeland focuses on the grace of self-doubt as essential for ecclesiological honesty in inter- and intra-church dialogue. And Mark Chapman insightfully describes postmodern pluralism in the Anglican Communion.
In the discussion of Brian Massingale's Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, Leslie Picca examines the difficulties in using categorical terms such as black, white, African American, and color-blind. And Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, writing from an African perspective, reviews the history and impact of institutional racism in American Catholicism.
In the discussion of Phyllis Zagano's Women and Catholicism, Miriam Haar gives an overview of the book, interweaving the categories of juridical authority, sacramental authority, and women's leadership with historical and contemporary examples of women's exclusion. Sandra Mazzolini reviews the same categories, comparing the ecclesiology implicit in Vatican II documents with explicit church practices. And Vladimir Latinovic compares Catholic and Orthodox traditions regarding married priests, female deacons, and women's ordination, showing that the differences should not always be framed as opposites.
A number of individual contributions are also worthy of mention. Gioacchino Campese draws on the experience of Hispanic immigrants in the United States and African immigrants in Italy to argue that the understanding of church must be expanded if ecclesiology is going to reflect the actual diversity of the Christian community. Pascal Daniel Bazzell makes a similar argument with regard to homeless communities. Massimo Faggioli gives an insightfully compact analysis of the so-called new Catholic movements, such as Communion and Liberation, Focolare, the Neocatechumenal Way, Cursillos de Cristianidad, Regnum Christi, and the like. Susan Wood and Stephen Annan wrestle with exclusion from the Eucharist and other sacraments in two different cultural contexts, American and African, with both urging a rethinking of such practices in the future.
As with any such collection of essays, the individual rewards are mixed, but this one conveys a strong sense of the earnestness and frankness that are motivating theologians to address problems that are glaringly obvious to some and painfully overlooked by most of us. All in all, the volume expands the horizons of what can and should be included under the rubric of ecclesiology.
