Thesis advisor: Lisa Sowle Cahill / This dissertation contributes to discussions of theological method by creating a dialogue between social ethics, familial vocation, and liturgical theology. Informing the entirety of the project, historical analysis provides a framework for exploring an important normative claim: The Eucharist serves, and has always served, to unite families as communities of social transformation. In a Church where the family faces challenging questions of lay identity, gender, globalization, and multicultural awareness, this work aims to be both timely and efficacious. After introducing the shape of the field on social-scientific and theological issues of family and worship (Chapter 1), the project turns to an exploration of the history of the U.S. Catholic family and the Eucharist in the twentieth century prior to Vatican II (Chapters 2 and 3). In a century marked by great social change, documents from social history reveal Catholic programs attempting to resist popular agency, on the one hand, and encouraging the active participation and leadership of laypersons and families, on the other. An exploration of the history and theology of the period during and after Vatican II (Chapter 4) reveals that, confronting the mores of a changed world, the Church chose to align its official pedagogy, Eucharistic and social, with those theologies that supported lay and family agency. This societal and ecclesial trajectory is confirmed and expounded upon through an exploration of the work of John Paul II (Chapter 5) and through an anthropological and theological exploration of Pauline churches (Chapter 6). As the conclusion (Chapter 7) discusses, each of the above chapters seeks to unite historically-grounded concepts of the family, Eucharistic community, and social transformation. The family is to be the Body of Christ, for the sake of its members and for the sake of the world at large. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

This thesis argues that the scope of Richard Hooker’s critique in his Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie extends beyond its ostensive target of Elizabethan presbyterianism to what he saw as a more general dissolution of a framework of human self-understanding rooted in Christian metaphysics and sacramental polity. The foundation of Hooker’s revision of the conformist case, I argue, is not a critique of presbyterianism or Calvinism themselves but of their 14th-century nominalist roots. Whereas recent scholarship has focused on the extent of Hooker’s consistency with the magisterial reformers, I aim to situate Hooker within the broader intellectual developments, beyond merely doctrinal-confessional concerns, that would come to characterize modern thought. Such a broadened approach offers valuable insight into the competing tensions in the intellectual climate of nascent modernity and, more importantly, situates Hooker within the context of the epoch-level stakes that, as I argue, he himself envisioned for his project. I develop this line of interpretation with two case studies—the first on Hooker’s critique of newly developing reforms in logic, the second on his sacramentology. In both cases, Hooker adopts a position whose metaphysical-theological foundations are an explicit departure from the Calvinist-derived consensus framework of the Admonition Controversy. / Graduate

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-57).

England in the late-Elizabethan and early-Stuart period saw a surge of pastoral writings intended to provide lay-readers with information and advice about sacraments. Using sixty-four such texts from the period 1590-1630, this thesis analyses the conceptions of sacraments offered by cleric-authors to their audience. As a group these works had two structural features in common. First they were concerned to outline the ‘qualities’ of a ‘worthy’ receiver of the Lord’s Supper, foremost amongst which were knowledge, faith, newness of life and repentance. Second they tended to divide the concept of worthiness into three temporal chunks comprising the times before, during, and after the Supper. Using these rubrics as guidelines the thesis compares and contrasts the content of the corpus. In opposition to stereotypes of puritans neglecting sacraments, it is found that sacraments were presented by Reformed English clerics as highly efficacious entities, which truly communicated something to the believer. The importance of faith to the Reformed conception of sacraments is affirmed, with the caveat that the dominance of this concept did not prohibit clerics from extolling the sensuous or ceremonial aspects of sacraments. It is further contended that sacraments continued to be seen as spurs to moral amelioration, occasions for charity, and a demonstration of community – and that receiving sacraments did not become a wholly individualised enterprise. Building on this analysis the thesis offers three broader conclusions. Firstly it is shown that sacraments played a key part in the quest to gain assurance of salvation. Secondly it can be seen that in England there was a way of extolling sacraments and their use which is not usually thought about – a species of ‘sacramental piety’ which used mainstream Reformed ideas about sacrament to urge believers to comfort and increased Godliness. Thirdly it is contended that key Reformed theological distinctions were often submerged by the contingencies of pastoral writing.

Thesis advisor: Boyd T. Coolman / The anonymous Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae from the 12th century abbey of St. Victor has often been associated with the tradition of medieval liturgical commentaries, but this dissertation proposes reading it primarily as a general treatise on the spiritual life. Its unique Victorine emphasis on the combination of intellect and affect suggests a particular theology of the sign: the real ontological status of the sign relying not on Dionysian hierarchy but on ecclesial contemplation. Through the newly developed sacramental understanding of res et sacramentum, the Speculum suggests that signs have enduring value as signs that goes beyond their function as signifiers. The attainment of the signified, in other words, is only part of their gift. Their “sweetness” is found in an appreciation of their mode of signification — a signification that, the Speculum suggests, endures somehow even in heaven as a non-necessary gracious source of delight. That is, external and visible things in the Church have value not merely because they point us to particular invisible things (what the signs “mean”) but because they teach us the Church’s economy of grace. The Church, then, and her sacramental economy, are central not just to the practical life of individual salvation, but to the meaningfulness of all creation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Coolman / This study considers the development of Augustine's early soteriology in the years leading up to and including his writing of Confessions. Central to that inquiry is a treatment of his increasing use of the term humilitas. Yet that inquiry necessitates a broader account of the fallen soul and its healing by the Incarnate Savior. The result is a mostly chronological survey that shows Augustine developing clearer connections between his soteriology, Christology, and sacramental theology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-235). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

<p>Eucharistic sacrifice is both a doctrine of the church and a sacramental practice. Doctrinally, it explains in what manner the sacrament is a sacrifice, or at least its sacrificial dimension; liturgically, it refers to the offering that is made in the church's celebration of the eucharist, that is, who and what is offered and by whom. Since the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants have been divided over of eucharistic sacrifice, and for most of its history after the death of the Wesleys, Methodism somewhat uncritically followed in the Protestant tradition. Now, after four decades of productive ecumenical dialogue, Catholics and Methodists seek to discern the points of convergence and divergence between them on this controversial doctrine. In short, where do Catholics and Methodists agree and disagree on eucharistic sacrifice? This dissertation is a work of systematic theology that draws from the insights of several related fields: liturgical theology, historical theology, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and ecumenism. An investigation into what Catholics and Methodists have shared with each other to date in ecumenical dialogue serves to elucidate the state of affairs between the two churches. The traditioning voices of Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley provide instances of detailed teaching on eucharistic sacrifice. Aquinas' theology has continued to inform Catholic teaching, while Wesley's was largely forgotten in nineteenth century Methodism. His theology of eucharistic sacrifice anticipates significantly the convergence that the liturgical and ecumenical movements have achieved on this topic through their attention to the theology of the early church, yet only a handful of contemporary Methodist theologians have explored Wesley's theology of eucharistic sacrifice in detail, and fewer still from an ecumenical perspective. In recent decades, Catholic and Methodist churches have circulated official teaching on eucharistic sacrifice and made significant revisions to their eucharistic liturgies. An analysis of these texts demonstrates how each church currently articulates its doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice and celebrates it sacramentally. The analysis also allows for an assessment of the current degree of convergence between the two churches on eucharistic sacrifice. The conclusion is that, first, Methodism has begun to recover a strong doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice, and greater attention to its Wesleyan heritage can only strengthen it further. Second, the two churches share more on eucharistic sacrifice than is frequently appreciated; indeed, Methodism should recognize in Catholicism a doctrine and a liturgy with which it can fully agree. Third, eucharistic sacrifice necessitates a clearly-formulated ecclesiology, which is a topic in the dialogues where Catholics can continue to prompt Methodists for deeper reflection. Convergence on eucharistic sacrifice, if recognized by both churches, would constitute a significant step forward on the path to full communion between them.</p> / Dissertation