Without explicitly planning to do so, this issue features three articles that dive deeply into twentieth-century French thinkers, providing provocative readings that challenge customary understandings. Christy Lang Hearlson leads off the issue with an exploration of Simone Weil's classic essay “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” For those of us who have struggled to keep the attention of undergraduate students engaged throughout the rigors of the pandemic, Hearlson's article inspires weary professors with “a social vision of education grounded in a more communal theology of Eucharist.” Stephanie Rumpza challenges the conventional wisdom that deems Jean-Luc Marion's use of icons as iconoclastic while Anthony Haynes argues that Jacques Maritain's interpretations of Léon Bloy provide new avenues for thinking about “alternative forms of mystical life among laypeople.”
Elyse Raby and Georgia Keightley complete our article section with ecclesiological investigations. Raby argues for the use of metaphor in ecclesiology in modes that also incorporate insights from other fields (such as the social sciences) and insists that metaphor not be restricted to liturgical and homiletic purposes. Keightley uses the example of the US Catholic Church to suggest that the pastoral goals of the Second Vatican Council remain unachieved.
This issue's two special features provide a wealth of insight into a range of issues concerning inclusion and exclusion in the church. Vince Bantu's editorial essay “‘Is a Cushite Made in the Image of God?’” explores how the social construction of race in Late Antiquity affected and is evidenced in early Christian literature, and he challenges us to decenter Western and white voices in theology. The theological roundtable “Claiming Voice” offers four perspectives on the development of the church and its fluctuations back and forth toward greater inclusion of all its members. The authors of this roundtable examine the roles and actions of the ordained, university students organizing for a voice and leadership in the church with the development of groups such as IMCS-Pax Romana, lay adults attempting to address racial injustice (Friendship House movement), and the efforts of laity to provide authentic ecclesial inclusion and voice for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
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In Thanksgiving
Horizons has been blessed to have Professor Gerald J. Beyer, Villanova University, as an associate editor since late 2015. This issue marks his last issue and enough cannot be said in thanksgiving for all the wisdom, labor, creativity, and generosity of spirit that he has lavished on the work of the journal.
The behind-the-scenes work of a journal's editors is by definition intended to be unseen and unattributed. I would be remiss, however, at his stepping down not to point out Professor Beyer's accomplishments and contributions to the journal in the context of his many other achievements. Editing and producing the journal is time-consuming in ways readers and authors might not imagine. Yet, during his nearly eight years as associate editor, Professor Beyer has managed not only to guide and grow the journal's range of topics and authors, but he has contributed tremendously to the field of theological ethics. While associate editor, Professor Beyer has published two books. His co-edited volume Karol Wojtyła, Katolicka etyka społeczna (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2018) won a 2019 FENIKS Award for “Best Edited Volume” by the Catholic Publishers Association of Poland. Professor Beyer's Just Universities: Catholic Social Teaching Confronts Corporatized Higher Education (Fordham University Press, 2021) has quickly garnered many positive reviews, much attention across the United States, and has been called “a must read” and “essential reading.” In addition, during his time as associate editor, he has published at least eight scholarly articles (in English and in Polish) and has three in press, contributed to public scholarship with approximately nine blogs and newspaper articles, and has presented at least twenty scholarly lectures.
Professor Beyer walks the talk and has served his university on major committees, including, to name only two, the University Mission and Social Justice Committee and the Institute for Teaching and Learning Advisory Committee. He has won a number of grants and awards. His Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts grant, however, demonstrates his constant focus on working for justice and reconciliation. This grant supported his effort to create the international conference “Building Sustainable Peace after Genocide: Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rwanda.”
Professor Beyer's stature as an international scholar has benefited the journal in many ways, but particularly through the manuscript reviewers he recommends and the authors he recruits for special features. As just one example, he conceived a theological roundtable to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the 1995 genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Titled “The Responsibility of Theologians and Scholars of Religion to Confront Genocide,” he brought together scholars from Sarejevo, Kenya, and the United States. Professor Beyer has conceived and organized many other cutting-edge book review symposia and theological roundtables on topics ranging from abortion to university ethics to just peace. And, true to his research, everyone at Horizons could always count on Professor Beyer to be a champion of new emerging scholars.
I offer this accounting as just a small sample of the many, many contributions that Professor Beyer makes in the classroom to his undergraduate and graduate students, in service to his institution, and to the fields of theology and theological and social ethics. His care and work for Horizons is to be celebrated in the context of his broader professional responsibilities and accomplishments. I have often been astounded at all that Professor Beyer does as he simultaneously worked to produce the journal. I am privileged to have worked with him for these many years and happy to have learned from him. I am grateful beyond words for all that he has done for Horizons. Many thanks to you, Professor Gerald J. Beyer, for your work as associate editor of Horizons! All of us at Horizons wish you much success in your future scholarly endeavors.
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As always, I thank our authors for sharing their scholarship with our readers, and I thank all of the members of the Horizons editorial team for their inspiring creativity, diligent work, and unwavering commitment to excellent scholarship.
