ABSTRACT
The author comments on the reception of the programme which calls itself Radical Orthodoxy in the North American context, and to does so from a Catholic point of view. In North America, theology can be pursued as an academic subject in seminaries, university divinity schools, and departments of theology in church-related colleges and universities. Many of these institutions have come to recognise the need for religious studies, and a few such departments even make room for theological inquiry which can find staunch defenders among religious studies faculty members. What appears as a lacuna in university-based theology could become a crippling preoccupation in seminaries, however, where ecclesiastical issues can readily constrain the free-ranging character which theological inquiry needs to pursue its transcendent subject. One way of recognising the import of institutional milieux and of student attitudes in shaping theological inquiry is to see them reflecting the ways in which authentic traditions are ever assimilative.
