The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx Volume 4 World and Church

World and Church deals with the conflict between religiosity and life in the world. Deliberately, Schillebeeckx turns around the order of the words in the idiom 'church and world', thereby stressing the embedding of faith and church life in particular contexts. In the first three chapters he reflects on this tension as he experienced it in burgeoning existentialism and debates between Catholics and Marxists in those turbulent years in Paris, where he was living immediately after World War II. It includes thoughts on pastoral work among the working class and the then popular prêtres-ouvriérs movement. He looks at some social problems and the mutual interrogation of believers and non-believers, also in light of the ideological compartmentalisation ('pillarisation') evident in diverse spheres of European society: education, social work and health care. Schillebeeckx concludes by considering the responsibility of Catholic intellectuals and academics for the future of the world and the church, including the possible significance of a Catholic university.

Edward Schillebeeckx was an internationally known theologian and one of the leading progressives at the Second Vatican Council. He was the author of many books, including God is New Each Moment, published by Continuum. He died in 2010.

1. Religion and the World / 2. Humble Humanism / 3. Priest and Layman in a Secular World / 4. 'The Sorrow of the Experience of God's Concealment' / 5. Church and World / 6. The Church and Mankind / 7. The Ecclesial Life of Religous Man / 8. Supranaturalism, Unchristian and Christian Expectations of the Future / 9. Christians and Non-Christians / 11. Man and his Bodily World / 12. The Intellectual's Responsibility for the Future / 13. The Significance of a Catholic University for the World and the Church