Thesis advisor: Dominic Doyle / Thesis advisor: Richard Lennan / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale Divinity School, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-46).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale Divinity School, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-46).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale Divinity School, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-46).

Thesis advisor: Felix Palazzi / Thesis advisor: Dominic Doyle / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Zugl.: Bonn, University, Diss., 2005.

Thesis advisor: O. Ernesto Valiente / Thesis advisor: Richard Lennan / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis advisor: John R. Sachs SJ / This dissertation explains how divine grace, that is, God's self-communication to humanity, is a communitarian reality specifically in its participative, dialogical, and prophetic core as well as its manifestations, characteristics, and consequences. It draws from two main sources: Karl Rahner's understanding of grace and the pastoral statements and reflections of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conference (FABC) from 1974 to 2010. Religious and cultural pluralism and the abiding poverty in Asian communities are the realities that frame the discussion both of the FABC documents and the main theme of this dissertation. The FABC believes that in order to respond to God's call for the Asian Church to be "a communion of communities", the Asian Church--hierarchy, religious, and laity--must reckon with these permanent realities through which God reveals divine self and will. They must therefore figure significantly upon the Church's ways of evangelizing, theologizing, and living in community. For this reason, the FABC understands being a communion of communities as God's call for the Church to be more participative, dialogical, and prophetic in evangelization and attitude with and towards other communities. The life-giving relationship in the experience of grace does not remain restricted to God and individual persons. God gives Godself gratuitously not simply to individuals but to the whole human community. Divine self-giving creates loving, self-donating persons in communion with Godself and one another. The community is therefore a privileged place where one experiences grace especially in the shared effort to respond to God's unifying presence and call to greater participation, dialogue, and prophetic action with other communities. As the ground of grace, God's presence and activity in the world is always participative in human realities, dialogical with persons, and prophetic in its thrust for the poor. The response to this grace also takes on communitarian characteristics, that is, participative, dialogical, and prophetic attributes. Self-consciousness and self-forgetfulness form a significant dialectic that takes place in the experience of grace--both on the side of the Giver and of the recipients of the gift. A community that enjoys God's grace is constantly aware of the fact that the grace is due to God's gratuitous, selfless love for all. At the same time, grace empowers a community towards self-forgetfulness as God's self-communication always calls forth shared self-denial and servanthood as witnessed to by the total self-outpouring of Christ to the world. The grace of God therefore becomes clearly manifest in a community whose members willingly participate in fostering well-being, when they strive for deeper harmony through constant and open dialogue, and most of all, when they take care of their poor sisters and brothers. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis advisor: John R. Sachs / Catholic theology asserts that the human person is the unity of the physical body and the spiritual soul. Several important doctrinal documents of the Church, a number of liturgical texts, and Catholic practice—particularly in relation to the deceased—express this theological anthropology. Developments in biblical studies over the last century and advances in modern science, particularly in the field of neuroscience, have led theologians to raise several questions regarding the makeup of personhood, especially the role of the human soul. These inquires have posed challenges to longstanding Catholic anthropological understandings of the person. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

This thesis offers an interpretation of the life and work of Karl Rahner with the specific purpose of introducing and recommending him as an important source for contemporary initiatives in spiritual formation. The guiding notion through which this thesis is developed is that of a perceived ‘spirituality of silence’. This notion is explored and developed with reference to Rahner’s biography, his Ignatian spiritual roots, his first and most widely read book of prayers and his theologies of mystery, word and sacrament. Finally, the thesis facilitates an extended discussion between the dimensions of ‘spirituality of silence in Rahner’ and the contemporary spirituality of Western culture and the place and role of the church. An extended version of this summary is offered in the introductory section of the thesis proper.