Process Catholicism: An Exercise in Ecclesial Imagination

Process Catholicism offers an imaginative alternative to the present Catholic ecclesiology that the church in the U.S. currently struggles with, which derives from a one-sided determination of how church relationships should be understood, structured, and carried out. Process thought consists of a dynamic, organic, empirical, aesthetic, and panentheistic worldview that is applied to Jesus' relationships and Vatican II's treatment of the church, utilizing the basic concepts of Alfred North Whitehead's notion of a society. Kinast develops the concept of process Catholicism in terms of an ecclesial environment, a preferential option for novelty, a presumption in favor of new developments and movements within the church, and a process treatment of the major test cases facing the Catholic church, such as the ordination of women, inculturation, and public theological dissent.