News release from the University of Saint Francis:
USF Professor authors new book
(February 8, 2011) – The University of Saint Francis School of Arts and Sciences announces that Adam A. J. DeVille Ph.D., assistant professor of theology, is the author of a new book, “Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity.” Published by the University of Notre Dame Press, the book will be out in March.
In “Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy,” Dr. DeVille provides a comprehensive look at the papacy from an Orthodox viewpoint and proposes a way around the most widely acknowledged obstacle to unification of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church—the question of the papacy. His analysis includes a detailed plan for Orthodox-Catholic unity.
Dr. DeVille is a member of the university’s Department of Philosophy and Theology. His focus in teaching, writing and editing is the Orthodox Christian East (Byzantine and non-Byzantine), and he is especially interested in issues of ecclesiology and ecumenism, particularly the papacy. He serves as editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies and is the author of more than 100 articles and reviews published internationally.
The University of Saint Francis, founded in 1890 as a comprehensive university in the Catholic Franciscan tradition, offers 60 undergraduate and 13 graduate programs in five schools: The School of Health Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Keith Busse School of Business and Entrepreneurial Leadership, School of Professional Studies and School of Creative Arts. More than 2,300 students from a broad geographic region attend USF for its academic programs and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics basketball team, the 2010 Division II national champions. The university has a regional campus in Crown Point, Ind.
And from the University of Notre Dame Press:
Forthcoming in March 2011; Available for pre-ordering now.
Among the issues that continue to divide the Catholic Church from the Orthodox Church—the two largest Christian bodies in the world, together comprising well over a billion faithful—the question of the papacy is widely acknowledged to be the most significant stumbling block to their unification. For nearly forty years, commentators, theologians, and hierarchs, from popes and patriarchs to ordinary believers of both churches, have acknowledged the problems posed by the papacy.
In Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity, Adam A. J. DeVille offers the first comprehensive examination of the papacy from an Orthodox perspective that also seeks to find a way beyond this impasse, toward full Orthodox-Catholic unity. He first surveys the major postwar Orthodox and Catholic theological perspectives on the Roman papacy and on patriarchates, enumerating Orthodox problems with the papacy and reviewing how Orthodox patriarchates function and are structured. In response to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 request for a dialogue on Christian unity, set forth in the encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint, DeVille proposes a new model for the exercise of papal primacy. DeVille suggests the establishment of a permanent ecumenical synod consisting of all the patriarchal heads of Churches under a papal presidency, and discusses how the pope qua pope would function in a reunited Church of both East and West, in full communion. His analysis, involving the most detailed plan for Orthodox-Catholic unity yet offered by an Orthodox theologian, could not be more timely.
Adam A. J. DeVille is assistant professor of theology at the University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“In Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity, not only does Adam A. J. DeVille give a historical and theological background to the thorny problem of the papacy in ecumenical dialogue; he also outlines what a reintegrated Church would look like by suggesting a way the papacy could function. Taking what both Orthodox and Catholic ecumenists have said, he paints a practical portrait of a unified Church. This is a novel and important contribution.” —David Fagerberg, University of Notre Dame
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