Critical Intersections: Religion and Society

Life is all about intersections. Living is where sorrow meets joy, where pain encounters ecstasy, where the weakness of the flesh is buoyed by the strength of faith, where love conquers all doubts and betrayals. Marriage is for better and worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health; it is for life and death. Spirituality is the arduous integration of life's dispositions and tendencies, of one's urges and habits, for the whole to reach out in transcendence to one's fellow human beings and to God. Growth to Christian maturity is actualizing the intersecting, because cruciform, demands of love of God and love of neighbor, which follows the path that leads from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Academic life is also becoming one of intersections. After the increasing structural differentiation and functional specialization characteristic of modernity, academic disciplines are critically intersecting and cross-fertilizing with each other for integration, enrichment, and further enlightenment. The behavioral sciences need genetics and biology for a more adequate explanation of human behavior. Homo oeconomicus of neoclassical economics is complemented by the realities of power of homo sociologicus. Theology calls on the social sciences, in addition to its ancient ancilla, philosophy, to make moral sense of social and global problems. Interdisciplinary courses try to make connections between the disciplines students have studied, and to integrate the breadth and the depth of knowledge they have been exposed to. These essays also represent intersections - between religion and society, between theology and social science, between living as a Catholic and making a living as an academic, between being Filipino and becoming an expatriate in the United States.