Dialogue Derailed
Joseph Ratzinger's War against Pluralist Theology
by Ambrose Mong
Paperback (No longer our product)
(May 2017)
ISBN: 9780227176405
5.98 x 9.02 inches
Price: $53.00
In stock
A critique of Joseph Ratzinger’s opposition to religious pluralism, showing how it fails to engage with the experience of the church in Asia.
Joseph Ratzinger has shaped and guided the church’s mission to proclaim the good news, as well as to forge good relations with non-Catholic Christian communities, other religious traditions, and the secular world at large. Through a critique of Ratzinger’s theology, this book draws attention to the importance of theological discourses originating from non-European contexts. Mong highlights the gap between a dogmatic understanding of faith and the pastoral realities of the Asian church, as well as the difficulties faced by Asian theologians trying to make their voices heard in a church still dominated by Western thinking. While Mong concurs with much of Ratzinger’s analysis of the problems in modern society – such as the aggressive secularism and crisis of faith in Europe – he brings attention to the realities of religious pluralism in Asia, which require the church to adopt a different approach in its theological formulations and pastoral practices.
- By (author) Ambrose Mong
"Mong's analysis of Joseph Ratzinger's fight against the 'dictatorship of relativism' is comprehensive and penetrating, enough to recommend the book to anyone who cares about the contours of contemporary Catholic theology."Scott Steinkerchner, Blessed Sacrament Priory, Madison, Wisconsin"If theologians, like Ratzinger, begin from a perspective of the priority of the universal church over the local; if they emphasise the vast cultural riches of the West and have a Western aesthetic, they will end up at odds with theologians - particularly those from Asia - who work from a conviction of the local church's autonomy and cultural validity. Mong carefully and respectfully presents Ratzinger's entire theological system and argues that as brilliant as it is, it is unable to dialogue with the cultural and religious context of Asia, or any place except the developed West."Stephen B. Bevans, co-author of Contextual Theology for the Twenty-First Century"Ambrose Mong leaves us greatly in his debt for introducing us to the rich interrelationships, not only between liberation theologies from different continents but also between different faiths." John Riches, The Expository Times, Volume 129, Number 10, July 2018."In this readable and informative work, Ambrose Mong, a Chinese Dominican friar and academic, presents a lucid and scrupulously fair exposition of Ratzinger's thought, as well as a serious critique of it.While noting Mong's penetrating critique, we must also be grateful for somebody who, throughout his long life, has always wanted to stand up for such central Christian truths, and steadfastly refused to negotiate or relativise them away."Ven. Dr Edward Dowler, Church Times, 25 May 2018."this book is well researched and provides a much-needed Asian perspctive on some of the growing pains within the Catholic Church as today it grapples with its mission in a globalised world"Patricia Madigan, OP, The Australasian Catholic Record, vol.95, issue 4, October 2018
—
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Hoghe minne es deen vor dander
Essays on the Christian Mystical Tradition in Honour of Rob Faesen SJ
Volume 122
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
On Becoming a Theologian of the Cross
Revisiting Luther’s theologus crucis from the Heidelberg Disputation to the Genesis Lectures
Pre-Christian Religions, Rituals, and Beliefs in Central and Northern Europe
Interdisciplinary Investigations
Volume 5
Reforming Good Works in Geneva
Bénédict Pictet’s Doctrine of Good Works and His Place in Late Reformed Orthodoxy
Volume 85
