The Next Stage of Catholic Religious Life

THIS BOOK TRACES THE HISTORY OF CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS LIFE, but it prefers to describe "Religious Life" as "Catholic mystical-prophetic intentional communities." That history has its roots in the foundational early church, which was entirely lay in character, just as Jesus was a Jewish lay teacher. The book shows how both the "clerical state in life" and the "religious state in life" were later legal-cultural additions to Catholic Christianity. Today, at a time when the modern "apostolic" stage of "religious life" is in decline, at least in the 'advanced' industrialized regions, the book argues that a new and postmodern historical stage of Catholic mystical-prophetic intentional communities is now emerging, and that this new stage is both lay and ecological. The book then offers proposals for how declining modern forms of Catholic "religious life" can find new life and growth by sponsoring or engaging with emerging lay-ecological intentional communities, including ecovillages, and by drinking from the living and renewing waters of ecological spirituality. JOE HOLLAND, an eco-social philosopher and Catholic theologian, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy & Religion at St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, as well as a member of the International Association for Catholic Social Thought at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He was the consultant-writer for the 1975 and 1995 pastoral letters of the Catholic bishops of Appalachia, This Land is Home to Me, and At Home in the Web of Life. He is also author of 18 other books, including Modern Catholic Social Teaching and Postmodern Ecological Spirituality.