Being Faithful: Christian Commitment in Modern Society - Ecclesiological Investigations 9 (Hardback)

'Building on the best theological, ethical, and social-scientific sources, Dr. Judith Merkle has created a balanced and insightful method for addressing contemporary challenges in three dimensions: the personal, ecclesial, and global. The" "book" "focuses on the virtue of faithfulness in which Christians respond daily to follow Jesus, a calling that impels them to engage in social transformation. The author identifies a pervasive secularity in today's world that challenges the religious belief of individuals, nations, the Church, and moral theology. Other challenges include nuclear war with its links to terrorism, the trafficking of human beings, and the threat of ecological disaster. She delicately balances the treatment of important concepts; for example, being faithful and loving to God and neighbor (the "subject "who is faithful), and being faithful by resisting evil and building just and peaceful structures that enhance the "humanum "(the "object" to which one is faithful). She presents balanced treatments of both grace and sin; personal sin and social sin; and individual conscience and social analysis. The highlight of this book is the author's skilled development of how diverse cultures form the contexts in which moral decisions, ideologies, and public policy are made. Borrowing the four-fold cultural typology from anthropologist Mary Douglas, Merkle interprets how each of the four types has historically shaped the contours of the Church and in doin