Welcome to Radical Catholicism

This blog is a site of exploration. Here we will be examining Catholic life, theology, spirituality, and practise. I have titled the blog as Radical Catholicism in reference to a few things. First, radical denotes the key quality of the Christian gospel, in that it is a critical challenge, a question mark, an uncontrolled calling placed upon all – something very much like that which is witnessed to by the desert mothers and fathers who left behind everything for a life of dispossession and prayer. Rooted in the apocalyptic death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is a transvaluation of being, life, and practice.

That 'radical' qualifies the word 'Catholicism' here is to gesture to what I take to be the form or shape of life together in the gospel, which is to say that it is catholicos, universal. It is Catholic in the ecclesial sense, mainly on the basis of the affiliation of the moderator to the Roman Catholic Church; that will, obviously, inform the basic flavour of the explorations here: what is Catholic theology and practice? Of course, at the same time, the great stream of the 'catholic' tradition expressed in the east (i.e., Orthodoxy) and even the churches of the Protestant world will be the subject of much the conversation. In this, we will attend to the wisdom of the mothers and fathers across the spectrum of East and West, with special attention to the patristic and medieval traditions, the theologians, monastics, mystics, and anchorites.

Radical Catholicism, even more, is an expression of a commitment to critical questioning of how catholic life together is to be lived and catholic theology practised; this will be conducted along several horizons: what is the gospel of Christ and how do we live faithfully in accordance with that? What does the living tradition of the church have to say to us in the contemporary world? What does it mean to be formed and shaped by the liturgy and sacraments of the church? What is the life of prayer and how do we practise it? What does the gospel mean for the world and how are we to serve this? These questions, particularly the latter, have significant consequences on a host of issues. At times, the answers may take us in unexpected directions, especially in regard to social, political, and economic structures. What does justice, righteousness, equality, and hope look like as unleashed by the cross, resurrection, and reign of Christ? We will explore such things in dialogue with the great thinkers of the church – from the NT, patristics, and medievals to the modern theologians of the 20th c., from the Council of Nicaea to Vatican II.