Editorial

Abstract:
With this issue, Pacifica witnesses the end of an era. At the beginning of 1999, our Book Review Editor, Professor Francis J. Moloney S.D.B., will take up an appointment as Professor of New Testament in the Department of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. After having taught at Catholic Theological College in Clayton, Frank became the foundation Professor of Theology at the Australian Catholic University. His prestigious new appointment, succeeding Professor John P. Meier, will free Frank from a substantial burden of administration and enable him to devote much more time and energy to his research and writing. Though he will surely be missed by Pacifica and by his colleagues in Australia, we cannot but recognise the honour this appointment represents and we rejoice with Frank that at the height of his powers as a scholar of the New Testament he is to have the opportunity to make an even more substantial contribution to biblical studies than he has already done. With Frank’s departure for Washington, Pacifica farewells the last of the three editors (John Honner and Mark Coleridge were the other two) who together founded it and then saw it through its first ten years, helping it become established on a firm footing as one of the foremost ecumenical journals of theology in Australia. Those who now follow them know only too well the debt they are owed. Beginning with the first number of 1999, Dr Maryanne Confoy R.S.C., a member of the faculties of Jesuit Theological College and Boston College, will take over the task of Book Review Editor. Maryanne is already a valued member of the Editorial Board and we are grateful to her for accepting this appointment. The last issue of Pacifica was devoted to the major papers for the conference Beyond 2000: Theological Education in an Ecumenical, Global and Plural Context, and it served as the basic text for the discussions there. One of the most engaging of these was the session in which Professor Mark Brett of Whitley College responded to Frank Moloney’s “To Teach the Text: The New Testament in a New Age”. Frank himself then offered a response to Mark’s paper. We present both of these contributions in this issue, but hope that these will not be Frank’s last words in Pacifica.