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Featured researches published by Michael Maher.
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2016
Michael Maher
pursued with intellectual rigor would be obviously worthwhile. There are, after all, significant things to be said, and re-said, about this pope’s moral impact in the political realm. What the author actually does, however, is to force onto her material a spurious thesis : that John Paul II had a ’strategic plan’ to conduct his papacy as a ’prophetic politician’. In determined pursuit of this fantasy, she simply wanders off into the realm of exaggeration to the point of breathless hype. This begins with her claims for the pope’s political achievements -’the person most responsible for bringing about the downfall of communism’ -
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2007
Michael Maher
In 1972 the Reform branch of Judaism ordained the first woman rabbi ever to be ordained in a rabbinical college. The Reconstructionists followed suit in 1974. In 1985 the leaders of the Conservative Movement ordained the first woman rabbi in their community. The article that follows gives a brief account of the processes of study, reflection, and debate that led these three communities to act in a manner that was contrary to the whole of Jewish tradition and to ordain women rabbis. The author also shows that although the leaders of Orthodox Judaism regard the ordination of women as an unacceptable deviation from Jewish tradition, there are those within the Orthodox fold who advocate the ordination of female rabbis in their community.
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2006
Michael Maher
find the most difficult and complex material. It was understandable that the very word did not rest lightly with the Roman authorities with whom Congar had his conflicts. The author is gentle but incisive in his references to these conflicts. He provides a variety of perspectives on Congar’s many-layered efforts to present a charter for a church that is, at the same time, the temple of the Holy Spirit, holy and sinful, from above and from below, resourced from the past and looking to the future, intent on avoiding schism. He makes a valiant effort to integrate the various layers and to provide his own synthesis. Though we are left in no doubt about Yves Congar’s place as one of the great architects of the Council, the book is no starry-eyed description of a religious superman. The portrait that emerges is of a great theologian, some of whose work was fragmentary and in need of further perfecting. Some of his limitations are named. Even with all his pastoral instincts, his own pastoral experience is described as having been woefully inadequate. His work on structure and life has been severely criticized. Though he dissociated himself from Luther’s basic notion of reform, his own work retains some unacceptable Lutheran tinges. His great work on the theology of the laity has its defects. On the topic of ministerial priesthood, some of his views are described as opaque. In the epilogue and afterword, the author clearly shows that he identifies with the great aims of the man he has been so carefully studying. He is aware of and concerned about the fact that, with all the efforts at reform and renewal, the church continues to lose ground. He is urgent in his call for ongoing renewal, reform and conversion. He sees the complexity of the questions that need to be asked about what he calls the inexorable march towards secularization, in a generation with a world view that not merely ignores but often consciously rejects some basic Christian tenets. He sees the need for much new research into the social, psychological and theological dimensions of unbelief. It would be no belittling of Congar to say that his contribution was confined largely to some of the theological aspects, in a way that was time-conditioned. Even while calling for reform and research, Gabriel Flynn quotes with approval the words of Henri de Lubac, a man whose name is often mentioned in the same breath as that of Yves Congar: ‘There is nothing that should be changed in it [Christianity], nothing that should be corrected. ... Insofar as we have allowed it to be lost, we must rediscover the spirit of Christianity. In order to do so we must be plunged once more in its wellsprings, and above all in the Gospel. ... Lord, if the world is seduced by so much enchantment, if there is such an aggressive return to paganism today, it is because we have let the salt of your doctrine lose its savour.’ THOMAS LANE, CM All Hallows, Dublin
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2005
Michael Maher
to unify an ethics of divine command with an ethics of human fulfilment and this without ever consciously attempting to write an ethics of any kind at all! By serendipity, Balthasar, an outsider to the guild, brought off what has eluded those who are Christian moralists by profession. Those Christians who would like to be counted among the theocentric humanists emphasizing both adjective and noun will want Steck’s thesis to be found true and widely disseminated. They can take courage from the author’s evident mastery of a wider literature notably, natural law ethics, the Grisez school, narrative ethics and the revisionist Platonism of the late Iris Murdoch. But as Steck admits in his conclusion, while a Balthasarian approach to theological ethics may give us an appropriate structure for describing the Christian moral life, informing us about its resources, expectations and some at least of its constituent virtues, it still leaves us with much to fill in with regard to particular norms of human conduct. One would like to see
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2005
Michael Maher
However, clearly, the benefits of the book outweigh its problems. The book’s most helpful and unique point appears in his detailed examination of Aristotle’s account of practical reason, and how proportionalists have confused two aspects of the account. This has led proportionalists to confuse craft and virtue. Thus Kaczor demonstrates how a closer look at history can prevent problems, even as he lends a hand to that end with this very work. NANCY M. ROURKE St John’s University, New York
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2005
Michael Maher
&dquo;Happiness&dquo; comes because the psalms turn one toward God, the Lord of the universe. Ps 150 urges again and again that every living being is to respond wholeheartedly to God in the vast cathedral of the cosmos.’ These lines form a very appropriate ending to a two-volume work that not only sets the psalms in their historical context and explains their literary qualities, but also draws out the theological and spiritual riches that are to be found in Israel’s ancient treasury of songs. Clifford’s compact commentary will provide a reliable guide for pastors, students and members of faith communities who wish to come to grips with the Psalms and their message. MICHAEL MAHER, MSC Mater Dei Institute, Dublin
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2004
Michael Maher
cism by attempting to show the harmony between the Song of Songs, the positive source of teaching about mystical union, and the Dionysian corpus as the negative source. To this end he wrote three commentaries on the Song (two survive) and three on the Dionysian writings. The first of these was a series of explanatory glosses that Gallus called the Exposicio, finished by 1233. He followed this with the longer Extracio, a kind of paraphrase and simplification of the corpus. This work was to have wide diffusion due to its
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2004
Michael Maher
Edwards is most obviously at home. Here again, the object is to defend Origen from accusations of Platonism made by some modem scholars who see this system of thought lying behind his use of allegory in the interpretation of Scripture. The defence is made on several counts: by explaining what the allegorical method entails (’a hermeneutic lens through which one seeks the universal in the particular’ p.125); its purpose, which is to ’[mediate] between the corporeal/literal reading of the text and the spiritual divination of its mysteries’ (p.125 ); since ’all obscurity in the Scriptures is contingent ... nothing was designed to remain concealed from those who persevere in seeking’ (p.133); and its antecedent tradition with Philo and Clement. In focusing on Origen’s threefold exegesis of the body, soul, and spirit of Scripture that is, the literal, moral, and spiritual sense of the written Word Edwards is able to give due recognition to his sacramental understanding of Scripture as the continuing embodiment of Christ, a concept which would find no parallel among Platonists. Just as Christ became incarnate in history in order to
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2003
Michael Maher
every contribution to this collection of articles. In 1954, Bischoff published an article, which in its English translation received the title ‘Turning-Points in the History of Latin Exegesis in the Early Middle Ages’. This article itself proved to be a tuming-point in the study of biblical exegesis in Ireland in the period between 600 and 900. Until the publication of Bischoff’s article, there had been little or no scholarly interest in the contribution made by Irish writers to biblical study during these centuries. Bischoff’s great achievement in the article just mentioned was to list and discuss about two dozen biblical commentaries that had been unknown until then. These com-
Irish Theological Quarterly | 2003
Michael Maher
Down through the centuries, the psalms have provided Jews and Christians with a reservoir of inspiring hymns and prayers, and they have enabled countless believers to bring a theological dimension to the art of responding to the ups and downs of life. However, believers in different ages have understood the psalms in different ways, and scholars have brought different approaches to the task of interpreting them. Our modem understanding of the psalms has been strongly influenced by the creative insights of the German scholar Hermann Gunkel, who, in the early decades of the twentieth century, classified the psalms according to their ’types’ (hymns, laments, etc) and their literary features. Since Gunkel’s days, the psalms have been the subject of detailed literary scrutiny, with the result that we have come to appreciate the poetic beauty and the theological richness of these ancient poems in a manner that is essentially different from the way in which they were understood in earlier centuries. On reading the book under review,
