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The 2024 Presidential Election

This Note recaps highlights of the 2024 US presidential election from a Catholic perspective. It is not this article’s aim to pronounce an authoritative postmortem on reasons for the election result, and post-inauguration actions of the second Trump administration are also outside its scope. Instead, this Note lifts up perspectives from recent theological work that shed light on major issues in the campaign. It will reflect on the key events in the election cycle and identify some similarities between the candidates’ positions before assembling theological work dealing with two issues where the candidates markedly differed: abortion and religious nationalism. It will close with some reflections on the semiotics of the candidates’ public personae that point toward calls for future moral-theological work.

“Why All the Fuss About the Body?” Gender, Ecclesiology, and Mary Douglas’s Grid-Group Theory

This article asks why matters of sex and gender are the nexus of theological and ecclesiological battles to the point of being church-dividing issues. I utilize Mary Douglas’s grid-group theory—her framework for correlating social form, body symbolism, and ritual density—to demonstrate that the body is a symbol of the social world and that different views of the body correspond with different ways of organizing a society. Thus, I argue that gender diversity is being perceived by the Catholic Church as a threat to ecclesial structure as well as to the church’s ritual life.

Confirmation, an Ecclesiological Anamnesis: History, Theology, and Praxis

Two theological models, which John Roberto has labeled the theological-maturity and the liturgical-initiation models, have dominated twentieth- and twenty-first-century interpretations of confirmation. Each is successful in explaining part of confirmation’s complex history and one or more of the various contexts for its practice in the Roman Catholic Church today. In this article, a new look at the theological significance of the early precursors of confirmation in North Africa, Iberia, Rome, and early medieval Europe is used to develop a third theological model. The ecclesial-anamnetic model posits that confirmation sacramentally proclaims the baptized person’s participation in the eschatological mission of the church. In North Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Rome, local contexts and tensions influenced the practices that became confirmation, but in each case, ecclesial visibility was at stake. As contexts emerged in which the visibility of the larger church was obscured at baptism, anamnetic methods for “citing” one’s baptism by means of a gesture used after baptism became important for manifesting ecclesial membership. In fact, a deeper theological examination of anamnesis can ground a model that adequately accounts for both the historical development of confirmation and its many pastoral modes today.

The Ghost of Modernism: Evocations of Anti-Modernist Doctrinal Documents at Vatican II

This article argues that Modernism was the pivotal “ghost” at Vatican II. Evocations
of Modernism and anti-Modernist doctrinal documents on the council floor were
numerous and often heated. Such evocations occurred in virtually every debate
where the development of doctrine was at stake. The council majority’s dismissal,
indeed rejection, of the anti-Modernist paradigm constituted a kind of revolution of
theological methodology. Understanding how anti-Modernist doctrinal documents
were evoked at Vatican II sheds important light on the council and its achievements,
compromises, and failures.

Daring After Hart: Lonergan, Blondel, and Balthasar on the Problem of Human Freedom

This article reconsiders the problem of human freedom in the wake of David Bentley
Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved. It renews and reasserts the crisis of every human
freedom’s eternal destiny. With insights from Maurice Blondel, Bernard Lonergan,
and Hans Urs von Balthasar, the article makes a case for distinctive conceptions of
human freedom, divine agency, and the problem of hell. The article closes by reading
Theo-Drama as a map marking places for further theological exploration.

Economic Sanctions

This note examines the extensive use of economic sanctions in US foreign policy, a development that has grown extensively in the last four decades without regard to presidential leadership. The issues surrounding sanctions include their definition, history, and effectiveness. Distinctions between kinds of sanctions are noted, as well as the consequences of their use, along with difficulties in employing sanctions. Finally, a moral assessment of the practice of sanctions is offered.

The Theology, Ethics, and Spirituality of Parenting

This note provides an overview of emerging theological scholarship on parenting, focusing on publications from the last two decades. The first section maps the role of magisterial teaching in shaping Catholic discussions of parenting as a vocation. The second section surveys literature on pregnancy, birth, and adoption, including recent work on the less socially visible experiences of infertility and pregnancy loss. A third section turns to the task of parenting children, addressing scholarship on family spirituality, the moral formation of children, specific ethical issues facing parents, and the relationship of parenting to the common good. Finally, a fourth section introduces the growing literature on motherhood, where women’s experiences of caregiving have proven generative for revisiting questions about care, embodiment, spirituality, and theological anthropology.

Grief as Epiphanous

Developments like COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter have exposed the distinctive
challenges to grief in our contemporary context. This article invites readers to see
grief as a choice that leads to revelations about the depths of human connectedness
that need to be recognized as integral to the moral life. After studying lament in Black
Lives Matter, we focus on what it means to grieve by pursuing three main topics: the
Bible and grief, anticipatory grief, and learning to move forward in grief. We conclude
by offering five different passageways of grief.

New Horizons for Justice in Theologies of Childhood and Children

Catholic theologians have called for a more robust theology of childhood and children in light of global clergy sexual abuse. While affirming the need to develop more substantive theological reflection about children, I express concern that Catholic thought on this topic has been adultist, solely reflecting adults’ perspectives and concerns to the detriment of children. To relate to children justly and engage in theological scholarship that fosters a child-safe culture, theologians must undergo a conversion to a childist orientation and methodology. This article examines how Karl Rahner’s theology reflects adultist aspects common to the broader Christian tradition but also offers positive resources for inspiring conversion. Drawing on Rahner’s theology, Margaret Farley’s account of justice, and my child-centered research, I offer preliminary ideas on the features and benefits of a childist orientation in theology.

El Cristo Roto: The Inverse Mutuality of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and in the Poor and Afflicted

Catholic Christian faith affirms that Christ is present both in the Eucharist and in the poor and afflicted. Yet theological reflection on the relation between these modes of presence remains considerably less developed than their prominence in the lived practice of the faithful would suggest. On an epistemic level, the same eyes of faith and love that recognize Christ in the Eucharist perceive Christ in the poor and afflicted, and vice versa. But this reciprocity issues in different, even contrary responses. Whereas the first mode of presence mediates the riches of participating in divine life and calls for worship and celebration, the second exhibits a privation that calls perceivers to unbind and repair the plight that provoked its appearance. As mutually entwined, both modes work in tandem to induce the church from inverse directions toward the just peace and reconciled love of the whole Christ.

Theological Ethics and Moral Helplessness in the Anxious Present: Responsibility and Repair

Theological ethics has inadvertently contributed to the diminished autonomy many
feel amid the anxieties of daily life. The shift from act-based ethics to totalizing ethics,
and Vatican II’s universal call to social justice, urged Christians to work for earthly
justice without offering tools for assessing one’s moral goodness when these projects
fail. Virtue ethics that is attentive to moral luck can help combat moral helplessness
by observing moral agency in action patterns that shape the self’s dispositions.

A Decided Vision of the World: Pope Francis and Ignatius of Loyola

This article serves as an often-overlooked reference point, containing, for example, rich concepts that are attested in Emmanuel Falque’s lesser-known works. However, this article is important because it helps readers grapple with the shape of his thought, not only as it incorporates key elements of Catholic spirituality but also as it shows how Falque the philosopher sometimes discerns his thought by “thinking with the church” in a very Ignatian sense. Falque believes that writing is a personal disclosure, and his reflections on Pope Francis demonstrate this by highlighting his own interest in the Jesuit and Franciscan charisms.

Contra Silentium Obsequiosum: On the Roman Catholic Approach to Dissent and Tradition

Dissent, understood as a public rejection of the authoritatively pronounced rules, verdicts, and truth claims within a given community, although disruptive, can offer multiple benefits to the life of the community. However, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) effectively leaves no other option for dissenters than to adopt a stance of obedient silence. This article emphasizes a need for a shift in the magisterial attitude toward dissent, one in which Catholic truth claims can bear the collective scrutiny and questioning expressed through dissent and thus be more fully integrated into the life of the community. To do that, the article divides the discussion into two parts. First, the article offers an analysis of the concept of dissent, its potential benefits, and its entanglement with the other concepts more broadly. Second, it scrutinizes the construction of power, tradition, and dissent in the RCC specifically.

Pope Francis, Dignitas Infinita, and an Evolving Catholic Anthropology: Doctrinal Implications

Dignitas Infinita highlights “the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person in Christian anthropology” and warns of “ambivalent ways in which the concept is understood today.” Among those “ambivalent ways” are plural definitions of human dignity in official Catholic teaching. There is ambivalence in definitions of Catholic sexual human dignity and Catholic social human dignity, which lead to inconsistencies in the foundation and justification of moral doctrine. In this article, we first present Catholic definitions of social and sexual human dignity. Second, we explain Pope Francis’s anthropological nuances that provide an alternative definition of human dignity, which we label holistic human dignity. Third, we evaluate and describe the harm deriving from statements in the document and by Pope Francis, a harm that results from inconsistent definitions of human dignity in doctrinal teaching.

“This Is Not Our Culture”: Probing the African Bishops’ Use of the Cultural Argument

In their response to the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, many African bishops used culture as an argument to reject the possibility of blessing same-sex couples. This article probes and shows the extent of the inconsistency of the appeal to culture by the African bishops. It uses the issue of polygamy as a point of contrast: appeals to African culture are never used to justify this widespread practice among Africans or any pastoral flexibility toward it. The article also compares Vatican II’s understanding of culture (Gaudium et Spes) with that of the African bishops. It shows that the African bishops’ understanding of culture tends to be narrow and focused on the past. Finally, the article looks at culture as a source of Christian morals and demonstrates that culture can be only a secondary source.

A Most Novel Continuity: Correlating the Theologies of History of Bernard Lonergan and Henri de Lubac

In terms of their interests and methodologies, Bernard Lonergan and Henri de Lubac seem at first blush to be incommensurable worlds apart. Closer examination shows their basic positions on the theology of history to be not only compatible but also complementary. Both place Christ’s redemptive act as the constitutive meaning of history, with all that follows as the expansion of this act through Christ’s Mystical Body. De Lubac’s account of Christ as the bestower of novel meaning provides a more intensive christological focus to Lonergan’s construal of the unified continuity of human agency. Lonergan, in turn, provides greater theoretical controls of meaning to the Lubacian account.

Ecclesiology via Ethnography: Studying the Church through a Discernment of Concrete Ecclesial Life

Pope Francis’s 2023 motu proprio, entitled Ad Theologiam Promovendam (“To Promote Theology”), calls for theology to be rethought methodologically and epistemologically in light of existential wounds. In response, I argue that the developing field of ethnographic ecclesiology presents one important theological method for studying the synodal church in a more synodal manner. By reorienting the ethnographic habits of participation, reflexivity, and listening to the synodal vision of communal discernment, the theologian is better able to perceive the trinitarian imprint that shapes the witness and discipleship of distinct ecclesial contexts that constitute the global church in via.

Synodality and Charisms: A Pentecostal Perspective on Hierarchical and Spiritual Gifts in the Life and Mission of the Church

The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship of synodality and charisms in
Catholic teaching from a Pentecostal perspective. Although a consideration of the
charisms is implied in the discussion on synodality in Catholic documents, there
exists no comprehensive theology of the nature and function of charisms in their
contribution to the synodal journey. A critical identification of the role of charisms,
specifically in conversation with the role of hierarchical gifts, and brought into
dialogue with the new charismatic movements and communities within Catholicism
and Pentecostal Christianity, reveals an imbalance in the exercise of hierarchical and
charismatic gifts in the church that presents a foundational problem for the future of
synodality

Healing and Creating in Christian-Muslim History: Charles de Foucauld, Louis Massignon, Christian de Chergé

Focusing on the Christian side, the author applies Bernard Lonergan’s three-fold structure of progress, decline, and redemption to Christian-Muslim history. The author identifies moments of each vector in the wider history—Arab-Christian apologetics (progress), demonization of Islam (decline), nonviolent witnesses (redemption). The author then highlights a twentieth-century example of development-progress and redemption, namely the cumulative insights of Charles de Foucauld, Louis Massignon, and Christian de Chergé, which led to and built upon the Vatican II statements about Muslims-Islam.

Interpreting the Signs of the Times: Fostering Social Goods and Historical Transitions

Signs of the times are best understood as significant historical transitions, motivated by social goods, which the church must discern and respond to in the light of the Gospel. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Charles Taylor’s interpretive understanding of historical transitions is expounded. Second, Chenu’s and Vatican II’s understandings of the signs of the times are examined, and Taylor’s approach to historical transitions is applied to Chenu’s and Vatican II’s central insights about signs of the times. The third section considers the movement for gender equality as an example of a sign of the times.

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