The editor has raised what for me is the central present problem of Lonergan studies. His invitation to me is that I provide an etching of the problem, a brief basis for discussion. Immediately I think of Fr. Fred Crowe’s old question, What functional speciality are you working in?, and my reply has to be an honest “none.” This seems to me to be an important but simple aspect of the present problem. If one takes Lonergan’s methodological doctrine, as described (...) in Method in Theology , seriously, then one has to attempt some contribution to its implementation. (shrink)

Philip McShane explores the implications of Bernard Lonergan’s compacted account of ‘what questions’ and ‘what-to-do questions’ for understanding deliberation. The essay provides a fascinating and instructive glimpse into McShane’s own long-continued struggle and dialogue with Lonergan’s achievement.

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The phrase seeing the past as better has an echo for the Lonergan scholar, to whom this effort is primarily addressed, an echo of the dialectic effort. So, it is a reminder of one of Lonergan’s main cultural achievements: thematising functional specialization. Then one might envisage Business Ethics as it is taught as one of the fruits of that specialization. As so envisaged it is not part of the theological process proper but a result of the specialty called Communications: it (...) is an outreach. Then the question rises, How might that external reach vary, improve, with the ongoing genesis of a more adequate eighth specialty? (shrink)

I follow the editor’s suggestion in dividing this essay into sections dealing with a) content, b) context, c) personal context. However, I break the personal reflections into two sections that bracket the presentation of content and context. So, sections 1 and 4 present my personal perspective; section 2 is a shot at a hypothetical expression of the content of Lonergan’s meaning of complete; section 3 handles the context problem. The immediately relevant expressed contexts for the effort here are The Sketch (...) in Insight and page 250 of Method in Theology . The Sketch speaks of content and context of an interpretation; the page pushes discomfortingly for a personal stand. (shrink)

I delight in sharing Cathleen Going’s cloistered imaging, “singer at the heart of the universe,” an image teeming with reachings: who is the singer, the sung, the song, what is the heart of the universe? So I am led to weave into my response a context for such reachings, three poems out of 43 centuries of feminine reaching that divide the reply, that subtly call us to tune into the dark womb of being that is history’s unfinished symphony. There is (...) the scavenging Spirit, there is the Jasmine Lord, there is the Singer axially named the Father, breathing all inward. (shrink)