Renewing the Church in a Secular Age: Holistic Dialogue and Kenotic Vision

This volume includes the main results of the International Conference that took place in Rome as part of a global effort centered upon a research project on Faith in a Secular Age designed and initiated by Charles Taylor, José Casanova and George F. McLean in 2009. As the research project that anteceded it, the present book focuses on the disjunctions of Church and People identified by Charles Taylor as relating to seekers who have left ecclesial practice in search of the Spirit, the magisterium charged with pastoral responsibilities and its contemporary moral guidance in a world of plural spiritualities. Contributors to the volume were asked to articulate those disjunctions and so delineate the characteristics of a Church that not only listens to the experience of the laity but also discerns the path ahead in the effort of welcoming seekers and serving the broad religious needs of our contemporaries in a context of plural worldviews, diverse values and perspectives on life. The contributions here included, particularly as they evolved out of the work of research teams in Europe and North America (the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the United Kingdom, the United States), and also in East Asia, are deeply supportive of all the efforts to renew the Church, as now under the leadership of Pope Francis, and transform it into an authentic communio of dialogue between men and women in search of Truth and Justice, Beauty and Goodness and all that makes recognizable the emergence of God s Kingdom in human history.