Catholicism and the Spirit

About the Book

The resurgence of Pentecostal, charismatic Christianity—epitomized in the global South—has thrown Catholicism back on itself, and has challenged it to reassess its ecclesial self-understanding. The Catholic Church has been accused of having forgotten the Spirit. Despite the progress made by the Catholic Church to redress this so-called ‘pneumatological deficit’, it nonetheless remains the case that ‘Roman Catholicism’ and ‘charismatic Christianity’ seems to be mutually exclusive. Why and how does the Roman Catholic Church today still lack a fully-developed pneumatological-charismatic ecclesiology?Catholicism and the Spirit sets out to address such questions, and argues that the Church must overcome its ‘ultraconservatism’ and re-envision a robust Spirit-led ecclesiology to meet the demands of ecclesial renewal.

About the Author

Stephen Ebo Annan is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Sunyani, Ghana. He holds a doctorate in Theology and Religious Studies (Ph.D, S.T.D) from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Some of his research has been published as ““Do not Stifle the Spirit”: The Vision of Yves Congar for Charismatic Ecclesiology." New Blackfriars 95 (2014); "‘Make a Complete Break with the Past?’ Overcoming the Ambivalence of African Pentecostal Ecclesiology towards Tradition" In The Shaping of Tradition: Context and Normativity, edited by Colby Dickinson et al. Leuven: Peeters, 2013; "Rethinking the Sacrament of Reconciliation/Healing in the Light of Postmodern Thought." In Ecclesiology and Exclusion: Boundaries of Being and Belonging in Postmodern Times, edited by Dennis M. Doyle et al. New York: Orbis, 2012.