St. Mary's Seminary and University

As educators, we recognize the centrality of humanness above and beyond everything else in our professional practice. As such, the affective aspects of instructional engagement rest at the center of language learning and teaching. Through this paper, four educators from the US explore the ways the affective side of language learning and use shows up in their work in Palestine. Drawing from feminist epistemologies, critical race theory, and liberatory practices, the authors trace the trajectories of their professional practices, and explore the ways they learned to center the affective aspects of instruction, leveraging culturally sustaining practices, and highlighting various ways to engage in solidarity. Through four vignettes, set at four distinctly different Palestinian institutions of higher education, each contributor highlights a unique experience that exemplifies centering the affective aspects of language teaching and learning. / Keywords: Palestine, affective, relationships, solidarity, occupation

The Traditional Natural Law (TNL) considers the political community a good human beings desire as one of the greatest goods of practical life, while those within the New Natural Law (NNL) camp argue instead that the political community is an instrumental good. Neither side has been able to offer a decisive refutation of the other, despite each offering strong arguments supported by both philosophical argument and textual evidence. In response, I will present Alasdair MacIntyre’s approach to practical reason and political community in hopes of shedding new light on this debate. From a MacIntyrean perspective, the TNL and NNL disagreement is more apparent than real, because the two sides in fact address different objects. MacIntyre presents political community as a constitutive aspect of excellent practical reasoning, but he denies the modern nation-state can be such a community.

In celebrating Paul Farmer’s many contributions to global health care, his praxis of accompaniment—sharing in the everyday experience of those he treated—is often overlooked. While Farmer saw hours spent in the company of the poor as key to pragmatic solidarity, conventional medical wisdom views unguarded closeness to patients as ill-advised, a waste of time. Farmer’s praxis is examined through the author’s own experience as a physician, then through the words of Paul Farmer, David Hilfiker, Gustavo Gutierrez, Roberto Goizueta, and Emmanuel Levinas, and finally through relevant passages from scripture. Drawing on the work of John Swinton, opposing views of Farmer’s praxis are seen as arising from irreconcilable ways of experiencing time: as a scarce resource to be used as efficiently as possible or as God’s gift to be given away. Farmer is presented as a doer of the word (James 1:22) whose insights on the proper use of time might inform health care professionals, theologians, and the Church.

Abstract While scholars might acknowledge that Paul assumes Christ’s ascension, it has been all but invisible in Pauline studies. This article looks at 2 Corinthians through the lens of ascension understood in four dimensions. Cosmologically, Christ has ascended into heaven and so is absent, yet accessible on earth. This is seen in 2 Corinthians as being away from and longing for Christ, and in various signals of proleptic participation in Christ’s presence with God. Christologically, Christ’s session as prophet, priest, and king continues his completed work, signaled in 2 Corinthians by Christ speaking in Paul, the Corinthians’ chrismation into Christ’s reign, and our participation in Christ’s priestly “Amen.” Anthropologically, Jesus’s ascension envisions humanity’s goal, signaled in 2 Corinthians in Jesus’s glory as the image of God, his risen life made visible in our mortal bodies, and the enigmatic “building not made with hands.” Eschatologically, Christ’s ascension creates the overlap of ages, visible in 2 Corinthians’ focus on the new, on the now, and on Paul’s apostolic identity, the very ground on which Paul stands and the goal toward which he goes.