Date of Award

10-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD)

Director

Paul Janowiak, SJ

Abstract

The Philippine Basic Ecclesial Communities’ (BECs) ongoing struggle of integrating their Christian faith and worship with their cultural, economic, political lives and spirituality, or their liturgical, developmental, and liberational engagements, stirred the search for an integrative vision to remedy this gap in Christian life integration. A vigorous dialogue between BEC integrative visions and practices and Louis-Marie Chauvet’s interconnected structure of Christian identity, comprising Scripture, sacraments, and ethics, and Kevin Irwin’s liturgical theology, integrating praying, believing, and living, is undertaken to generate the intrinsically interrelated elements of Scripture, liturgy, faith, and ethics. This dissertation argues that these four essential elements constitute the foundation for a holistic vision of BEC life as they integrate BECs’ fundamentally Scripture- and liturgy-centered faith life and Chauvet’s and Irwin’s holistic Christian life and liturgical visions, as well as go beyond them. The strength of these fundamental elements lies in their scripturally and liturgically formed and sustained faith, concretely lived in the ethical witness of love, which verifies the truth of scriptural proclamation, liturgical celebration, and faith profession. This holistic envisioning of BEC life aids their current synodal resolve to orient their activities, programs, structures, and processes to Jesus Christ, faith conversion, and the mission of spreading God’s Kingdom of love.

This research uses Stephen Bevans’ praxis model, embodying an ongoing, forwardmoving spiral of “practice-reflection-practice” process. The process starts with reflecting x on truth-based, committed activities in their concrete circumstances in dialogue with a rereading of biblical and Christian tradition, resulting in a theory deeply rooted in concrete contextual actions, the Bible, and Christian tradition. This theory equips one for more decisive actions (initiating another cycle), which are profoundly faithful to the Bible and tradition, as well as contextually relevant. This work also uses Cardinal Joseph Cardijn’s see-judge-act praxis-oriented method of assessing life realities carefully (see) and bringing them in dialogue with pertinent theological visions from the Judeo-Christian tradition (judge) to craft a praxis-oriented theory that positively transforms the formerly assessed life situation (act).

This research concludes that while Chauvet’s and Irwin’s visions already provide integrative foundations and alternative articulations for holistic BEC living, drawing from them and BEC life elements to form a stronger Scripture, liturgy, faith, and ethics-based integrated Christian living is beneficial. These elements assure that Jesus, the Word, mediated by Scripture and liturgy, is the center of BEC life. Faith, envisioned as a response to God’s self-giving, becomes the overall motivation of all BEC activities. The ethics of authenticating biblical proclamation, ritual memorial, and faith conviction in the actual living of scriptural letters, existential memorial of Christ’s Pasch, and faith living make mission the raison d’être of BECs. The four elements should be envisioned as a symbolic exchange cycle of gift, reception, and return-gift, where the gift of Godself, announced in Scripture, is received in the liturgy, a reception evoking a faith-filled trust, hope, and commitment to God embodied in the return gift of love, which makes the cycle credible.

Download

Available for download on Friday, July 21, 2028

Share

COinS