Date of Award
5-2025
Document Type
Thesis - SCU Access Only
Publisher
Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2025
Degree Name
Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL)
Director
Léocadie Lushombo, i.t., Ph.D.
Abstract
This thesis explores how Bernard Lonergan's theory of self-appropriation can address the knowledge-action gap in Korean Catholicism, particularly regarding social engagement. Contemporary Korean society faces increasing social fragmentation and hatred, yet the Korean Catholic Church demonstrates limited engagement with pressing social issues despite its rich tradition of social teaching. The research identifies three critical challenges: limited awareness of faith's public dimension, lack of practical methodology to translate Catholic Social Teaching into action, and overreliance on reason-centered ethical discourse.
Through theological analysis and contextual application, this study demonstrates that Lonergan's self-appropriation theory provides a transformative framework promoting personal authenticity and social responsibility. Self-appropriation, as a process of gaining deeper awareness of one's cognitive and emotional processes, enables Catholics to integrate their faith with public responsibility through intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. By attending to the transcendental operations of consciousness— experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding—believers can move beyond privatized faith toward authentic ethical engagement.
The research further identifies how desire functions as the foundation for ethical discernment and how attentiveness to emotions as intentional responses to value can transform ethical judgment. Particularly within the Korean cultural context, which traditionally values integrated emotional, relational, and harmonious approaches, a methodology starting from attentiveness to emotions provides an effective pathway to overcome hatred and discrimination.
This study contributes to theological ethics by providing Korean Catholics with a methodological framework to raise awareness of faith's public dimension and authentically internalize Catholic Social Teaching. Through this approach, believers can cultivate ethical judgment that meaningfully responds to social challenges and fulfill their vocation as transformative witnesses in public life.
Recommended Citation
Jeong, Hongcheol, "Fostering Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan’s Self-Appropriation and Its Impact on Ethical Decision-Making and Social Engagement in Korean Catholicism" (2025). Jesuit School of Theology Dissertations. 149.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst_dissertations/149
