In spite of many indications to the contrary, not least the tenor of the times which includes both the remnant left after the "death of God" as well as the rise of New Age religiosity, this thesis proposes, using feminist and feminine archetypal thinking, that the theory of culture that Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, formulates, is more relevant than ever for the culture it had a part in creating. Within the frame of Christian value reality, a "religion of relatedness" is centred on the Great Commandment which orders loving relatedness to God, then to oneself, and finally to others. What this has to mean in practice is that our relatedness to others depends on our relatedness with ourselves which depends on our relatedness to a beneficent God. Our relatedness to ourselves and to God can be appreciated and evaluated through the lens of Jungian thought - in particular Jung's theory of individuation. Our relatedness to others and the success of that as expressed in the health of our cultural milieu can be appreciated and evaluated through the lens of Lacanian discourse theory. Both individual and cultural growth are part of a developmental and maturation process leading to the "paradox, depth and intergenerational responsibility" that Fowler (1981) describes as characteristic of a Stage 5 level of faith in his Stages of Faith model. That complexity in Stage 5 understanding is seen as essential for growing out of the social and environmental problems that beset human life at this point in its history.

The geographic isolation of populations can result in a metapopulation effect where regional dynamics of extinction and colonization are more important to population viability than local dynamics of individuals' birth or death. When this partial isolation is maintained for many generations genetic variability can be geographically structured. Populations of temperate-zone anuran amphibians are often considered to be geographically isolated on relatively small spatial scales due to the animals presumed high site fidelity and strict dependence on moisture for respiration and breeding. As a result, temperate, pond-breeding anuran amphibian populations are considered likely candidates to test hypotheses of metapopulation theory, movement and phylogeography. Using data from the Fowler's toad, (Bufo fowleri) I test the applicability of metapopulation theory, the likelihood of limited movement and the strength of phylogeographic structure. Specifically, I show that the generalization of the amphibians-as-metapopulations paradigm, due to their limited dispersal capabilities, is not supported (I). Bufo fowleri movement is well described by an inverse power function. Whereas most individuals do not move, some move long distances. There is no sex bias to this movement and I propose the hypothesis that the animals moving the longest distances are aided by the passive action of lake currents (II). B. fowleri juveniles are not a dispersal stage. They move neither farther nor faster than adults. The observation of predominantly juvenile contribution to a dispersal pool is due to their abundance---there are simply many more juveniles than adults (III). My observations of amphibian population turnover do not support the predictions of two specific metapopulation models when parameterized on a local (<10km) or regional scale (~300km) (IV). B. fowleri populations in Canada exhibit both shallow and deep phylogeographic structure. The shallow divisions are geo

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