Ecclesiology and Exclusion: Boundaries of Being and Belonging in Postmodern Times edited by Dennis M. Doyle, Timothy J. Furry, & Pascal D. Bazzell (review)

The concern of this book is the considerable range of marginalized and excluded people today – immigrants, refugees, the homeless, women, people of color, gays and lesbians, other Christians – and what Gerard Mannion sees as a growing "neo-exclusivism" on the part of church leaders and ministers, such as those bishops who seek to exclude from the Eucharist Catholic politicians whose voting records on abortion are deemed less than adequate. Even liturgies can be excluding. As Vincent Miller notes in his Retrospective, these issues are not just social, but profoundly ecclesial. This book collects the papers of the fifth international conference of the Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network (EI), organized by Dennis Doyle and held at the University of Dayton in April 2011.

The opening section takes up ecclesiology and exclusion in a postmodern context, using a book panel on Mannion's Ecclesiology and Postmodernity. This is followed by a section on immigrants and the homeless. The next two sections focus on race and gender, helped by panels on Bryan Massingale's Racial Justice and Catholic Church and Phyllis Zagano's Women & Catholicism: Gender, Communion, and Authority. The last three sections take up church, sacraments, and ecumenism. The contributors are both international and ecumenical, and most of their papers are relatively short and easy to digest. Many are very challenging. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator asks if racism has yet appeared as a theological and ethical priority for the church. Orthodox theologian Vladimir Latinovic quotes John Zizioulas's remark that there are no theological reasons for not ordaining women, only historical ones. Stephen Annan, writing on sacramental reconciliation from an African context where non-sacramental marriages keep many from the sacraments, asks if a sacrament is to be considered a reward for righteous or a medium through which God encounters our feeble humanity. Massimo Faggioli sees the new Catholic movements (Communion and Liberation, Focalare, the Neocatecumenal Way, Regnum Christi, etc.) as post-conciliar rather than conciliar phenomenoa. With a universalist ecclesiology, they look primarily to their founders and the papacy, providing the latter with disciplined, elite troops who avoid debated questions in sexual ethics, inculturation, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, rather than to the local church, with its bishop and the concerns of its laity.

Many questions are left unanswered, and the contributors do not all speak with the same voice. Does inclusion trump doctrine or belief? Not all are convinced that exclusion is always a bad thing. Dennis Doyle asks if there are any disagreements that are legitimately church-dividing. Barry Harvey asks whether the church needs to practice a kind of exclusion precisely for the sake of greater inclusivity, while Mary McClintock Fulkerson, stressing the Eucharist as hospitality, seems to call for an open communion which does not require even baptism. Comparing Italy and the United States on immigration, Gioacchino Campese argues like Pope Francis that our ecclesiology is often too inward looking, too concerned with internal issues to the neglect of the real world to which the church has been sent. Some take issue with the idea of the church as a "contrast society," arguing that such a vision does not grow out of solidarity with immigrants and refugees but reflects rather the church's own cultural disestablishment. The questions the book raises could facilitate challenging discussions in graduate courses on ecclesiology or pastoral practice.