This article places Robert Johann's ethics of responsibility within the context of his evolved philosophical position which is decisively influenced by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and John Dewey. Building on a perspective that he called “ontological pragmatism,” Johann began to explore the ethic of responsibility developed by H. Richard Niebuhr in The Responsible Self. However, Johann's version is significantly different from that of Niebuhr. After describing Johann's ethics of responsibility, I conclude by criticizing his moral methodology as insufficiently developed and by charging that his anthropology fails to account for certain crucial dimensions of human experience.

Experimental cinema aside, our culturally typical films are all visual stories. To discover a film's religious meaning, we must do more than interpret dialogue; the cultural context of the film and its overall structure as visual story must be analyzed. American culture has characteristically explored the religious question by exposing the demons in our lives. Thus, our cinema at its recent best has—in the mode of visual parable—been subverting the facile optimism of the American dream by revealing the evil within us and our institutions. It has done this most effectively and artistically, not in its blatant presentations of the demon as persona, but rather through the portrayal of human analogues of the demonic: the satanic heart in man and the pervasive presence of the con man in society.

H. Richard Niebuhr's theological perspective was formed at a time when Protestantism was adjusting to a radically altered position on the American landscape, similar in many ways to the present American Catholic predicament. This essay initiates a dialogue between Niebuhr and Catholic theology at a point that is key to his thought, the theology of revelation. The positions of Niebuhr and Vatican II's Dei Verbum, although developed within different theological frameworks, provide a basis for beneficial discussion. Both view revelation as the self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ to an historical community that is the bearer of that revelatory experience. For Niebuhr, however, revelation of the God of radical monotheism elicits a faith response to the center of being and value that shatters the boundaries of all closed societies and redirects all moral considerations. His development of the theological implications of historical relativism offers a corrective for the Church's henotheistic tendencies to distort its own meaning and mission by fashioning a closed society. Vatican II took steps to extend the vision of the Church beyond the confining barriers of past ecclesiologies. Niebuhr's theology provides one possible framework within which those first steps can be explored toward a more truly catholic understanding of faith.

Both Marxists and phenomenologists have a critical attitude toward religion. For the phenomenologist critique means clarification of meaning; for the Marxist it means the emancipation of men and women from the quasi-natural forces of opaque and ossified traditions, from irrational authorities, and from the ideology which but-tresses unjustifiable dialectical contradictions in civil and socialist society. Marxists such as Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, and Leszek Kolakowski apply ideology critique to the dimension of religion. Lukacs acknowledges not only reactionary, but also progressive aspects in the Catholic and Protestant form of Christianity. For Horkheimer, complete emancipation from faith in a power independent from history and at the same time determining it belongs to the most primitive intellectual clarity and veracity of modern humanity. But Horkheimer continues to read the Bible. He observes and suffers deeply from the immeasurable gap between the moral norms and values which Europeans have acknowledged since the introduction of Christianity and the behaviour of the European Christians, which is the difference between Christian theory and practice. Kolakowski finds the antagonism between the philosophy of the priest and the philosophy of the jester in all spheres of human life, including religion. The priest eternalizes and guards the absolutes acknowledged at certain times in certain societies. The jester, on the other hand, continually questions what societies consider ultimate and doubts everything “given” in any social formation. Finally Horkheimer sums up the whole Western Marxist theory of religion in his assertion that the concept of God kept alive the idea that there are other norms besides those to which the finite world considered as nature, society and history gives expression. The concept of Infinity preserves an awareness of the finality of human life and of the inalterable aloneness and abandonment of humanity. Horkheimer cannot affirm any philosophy or politics which does not also embrace a theological moment. Theology is the hope and the longing that the injustice which characterizes the world as society, state and history today may not have the last word.

That the Commedia of Dante can be a stimulating initiation for undergraduates into the rich and exciting world of Medieval Theology is the conclusion of an experiment at Marquette University. The distinct advantages and some of the hazards encountered by the teacher of this course are shared in this article. Students in this experiment had the opportunity not only of becoming acquainted with the theological insights of the medieval world but were also able to enter into the discipline of Dante that integrated the tasks of poet and theologian.

Education by correspondence is now a quite flourishing enterprise. Penn State presently enrolls about 25,000 persons for credited courses; Brigham Young, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin are universities with comparable programs. In each case, people outside the normal college population are being offered opportunities for further professional or personal growth. My department at Penn State has decided to offer religious studies by correspondence, and I have written the first course: Religious Studies 1: Introduction. What follow are specimens from this course—possible stimuli for your department's consideration of religious studies by correspondence, as well as fillips about the nature of religious studies, Jainism, and Taoism.

The first materials below come from a “General Introduction.” In my total booklet they are followed by general directions from the correspondence division about the preparation of a lesson report (LIF), examinations, final grades, etc. The two sample lessons illustrate typical booklet units based (as correspondence courses usually are) on a core textbook. Following Man's Religions, by John Noss, my course has twenty lessons (see “Table of Contents” appended). Lesson 4, on Jainism, exemplifies the usual commentary. Lesson 9, on Merton's Chuang Tzu, aims at varying the objective fare with something more lyric.

In these twenty units, then, I have tried to compose an equivalent of a regular three credit (quarter system) course. The reading materials amount to about 1,100 ordinary pages, while the student's written work amounts to about 50 typed pages. This surely does not substitute for a live teaching presence, but it may bring ultimate concerns to a new and receptive audience.