Homiletics at the threshold: Pope Benedict XVI’s invitation

Publication Type	Thesis
Year of Publication	2008
Author	Mele, Joseph M.
Academic Department	McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
Pages	244
Publisher	Duquesne University
Place Published	Pittsburgh, PA
Work Type	Diss
Language	English
Advisor	Arnett, Ronald C.
Keywords	affliction (malheur) attention beauty Christianity decreation Pope Benedict XVI sacraments individualism love of God
Annotation	Mele states in the introduction, that he will use Weil's works in "the conversation conducted at the threshold between cosmopolitanism and provincialism where contemporary Catholic teaching must take place if it is to be heard effectively today". (p. iv). In the first chapter he offers a brief overview of Weil's life and work and an explanation as to why he wants to bring her and Pope Benedict XVI together. The next two chapters contain in-depth discussion of Catholic homiletics. Chapter Four is entirely devoted to Weil. Here, in a lengthy, somewhat hagiographic discussion, Mele focuses on Weil's status as an outsider to the church and the challenges to it, her stance presents. He follows this with a somewhat romantic biographical overview of Weil, drawing on a number of carefully selected secondary sources about her. He then turns to a brief discussion of her work beginning with the concept of attention, and then moving on, after a brief mention of her political writing, to look at her notions of the 'hiddenness of God', decreation. In the fifth chapter, Mele draws comparisons between Weil and Benedict's thought, especially on 'individualism', placing them he says 'in conversation with each other'. Later in the chapter he touches upon Weil's views on beauty, 'the implicit love of God' and her 'theory of the sacraments', again comparing her views to Pope Benedict's. Mele briefly discusses Weil's essay "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a view to the Love of God" in the final part of the chapter. Finally Weil's metaphor of the Christian as 'slave' is briefly touched upon in the sixth and last chapter of the dissertation.