A research project sponsored by:
Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology
Hales Corners, WI
Partially supported by a grant jointly awarded by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Biblical Association. This project is undertaken with the approval of the Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects of Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology.
The
Analogical
Imagination
The Parables Project examines concrete means by which priests and deacons can create stimulating homilies on the gospel parables which activate the analogical imagination of their parishioners in order to intensify their awareness of Christ’s presence in the celebration of the Mass and in their daily lives.
Faith reflection is most profoundly communicated at the level of the analogical imagination, which involves encountering and embracing the continuity (analogy) and discontinuity (dialectics) between human experience and the divine reality. Parables are particularly potent vehicles for engaging the analogical imagination: they are simultaneously commonplace yet surprising; elastic but familiar, comforting and challenging.
The goal of The Parables Project is to determine the preaching strategies that most productively unpack the surplus of meanings within the parables, in a manner that elucidates their relevance to the faith journeys and contemporary issues faced by parishioners.
Further, the project strives to contribute to the adult faith formation of the Catholic laity by examining how effective preaching on the parables can promote the movement from a fundamentalist or literalistic understanding of Scripture to a more contextual and analogical framework.
The project seeks to achieve these goals through a mixed method study consisting of exegetical, quantitative, and qualitative research methods.
Click on the appropriate button above to join the study by taking the survey, and be sure to check back here for results and conclusions when the study has been completed.