Christians assess the current situation in religion and society—with a viewpoint that, to a certain degree, is shared throughout the world—as the refined product of a gradual secularization that began over 500 years ago with the Protestant Reformation. This has given a definitive cast to our social imaginary and affects both Christian and non-Christian religious traditions. In Western societies, paradoxically, that process of secularization accelerated after the Second Vatican Council, which produced a shift in Catholic culture between the established Ignatian spiritual paradigm and socio-religious reality.
This volume proposes a new model for the relationship between religion and culture, looking specifically at the Ignatian tradition and challenging the framework in which Ignatian scholars have approached this tradition. Its goal is to recover the Ignatian mystical and contemplative tradition and present the contemplative dimension of Christian life from a new Ignatian perspective. It focuses on understanding Christian transformation in terms of decision-making. In this sense, this work proposes an Ignatian Christian Life as a new way of understanding the previous paradigm of Ignatian spirituality.