In this collection, invited authors craft responses to this question, which emerged from editor John Haughey's award-winning Where Is Knowing Going? The Horizons of the Knowing Subject (2009): “What is the whole you are seeking to name, confect, be?” (ix). A brief preface and epilogue frame the collection's two parts, “Whole as Task,” and “Whole as Identity,” each of which contains six independent essays, several written by authors who will be well known to Horizons readers. As a whole, the collection both demonstrates and develops the living fruitfulness of the Catholic intellectual tradition in distinctly diverse, mature reflections. Across a variety of institutions and academic disciplines, including theology, philosophy, science, administration, and business, these authors have been shaped by and continue to contribute significantly to this tradition.

Not surprisingly, given Haughey's own contributions to the tradition, the most pervasive intellectual influence imbuing the collection is Lonergan, whose insights are taken up and explored in a range of thought-provoking and inspiring ways. These include understanding work for justice as emergent, implementing changes in adult education, providing opportunities for faculty development through ecumenical and interdisciplinary conversation, personal formation as a teacher/scholar through building communities of learning in classrooms, and a holistic understanding of business ethics. While Lonergan's influence is clear, it does not constrict the collection. Substantive theological dialogue is also developed with other Catholic dialogue partners whom authors identify as formative, including John XXIII, Charles Taylor, Saint Bonaventure, Teilhard de Chardin, and Thomas Berry.

Significantly, the collection also includes strong and memorable voices that speak from and to the fruitful, continuing dialogue of the Catholic intellectual tradition with others, and in expansive ways. The philosophy of Charles Taylor is included in this way. Two of the authors take up ecological concerns, one by integrating Saint Bonaventure and Teilhard de Chardin to develop a Christocentric vision, the other by tracing the development of Berry's thought as formative in her own theology and life. In particular, masterful essays by Cynthia Crysdale and Michael Amaladoss engage the Catholic tradition with other aspects of these authors’ theological formation and identities. Crysdale integrates Lonergan and Sharon Welch's ethic of risk to develop a profoundly inspiring pedagogical vision. Amaladoss's concise story of what it means to be Hindu-Christian is theologically rich and deeply engaging. Despite the title's reference to searching, and despite one essay's fecund observation that “a lot of the best things . . . can be expected to come out of the dark and the cold” (177), most of the essays in this collection do not take readers into dark or cold places, because most do not explore struggle as part of the search for wholeness. Struggle does figure prominently, however, in essays by the more liminally placed authors.

University libraries will want to secure this collection of essays. A few selections may be useful in courses for upper-level undergraduates.