Past Book Reviews

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On Women’s Health and Women’s Power: A Feminist Appraisal of Humanae Vitae

Catholic feminism has flourished in the decades following Humanae Vitae. Still, Catholic women do not speak with one voice on the issue of birth control. ...

The Historical and Ecumenical Value of Kenneth Kirk’s Anglican Moral Theology

Anglican moralist Kenneth Kirk is an early twentieth-century forerunner of Catholic revisionism. Kirk critiques the moral manuals and defends a historicist, biblically grounded virtue ethic ...

Sacred Heart, Beatific Mind: Exploring the Consciousness of Jesus

Traditional Christologies have focused attention on the question of Jesus’ beatific knowing. On the other hand, recent explorations into Spirit Christology raise different questions about ...

A Tale of Two Translations: Rhetorical Style and the Post-Conciliar English Translations of the Mass

John O’Malley’s study of the rhetorical style of Vatican II bears also on the question of post-conciliar vernacular translations of the liturgy. This article proposes ...

Style is Substance: Origins of John W. O’Malley’s Contribution to the Interpretation of Vatican II

This article explores three aspects of John W. O’Malley’s contribution to the critical study of the Second Vatican Council: his contention that Vatican II reflects ...

Liturgical Prayer and the Theology of Mercy in Thomas Aquinas and Pope Francis

Thomas Aquinas’ theology of mercy is deeply marked by the liturgical tradition of the Order of Preachers, incorporating many explicit and implicit references to liturgical ...

What the Biblical Scribes Teach Us about Their Writings

A question often posed to biblical scholars is how they can insist that God is merciful and trustworthy when in many Old Testament texts God ...

Amoris Laetitia: Towards a Methodological and Anthropological Integration of Catholic Social and Sexual Ethics

There is a long-noted anthropological and methodological divide between Catholic social and sexual ethics. We argue in three cumulative sections that Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia ...

Moral Discernment in History

The concept of moral discernment is often used to describe the inspired decisionmaking of a conscientious Christian, but Pope Francis uses it relationally in terms ...

Constructing Parenthood: Catholic Teaching 1880 to the Present

This article reviews Catholic theological conceptions of parenthood within magisterial documents since the late nineteenth century and contends that presumptions about parenthood tend to arise ...

Women Deacons and Service at the Altar

What did women ordained to the diaconate do during the celebration of Eucharist? What were they forbidden to do? Why? This article reviews papal edicts ...

Medellín Fifty Years Later: From Development to Liberation

On August 24, 1968, Paul VI inaugurated the Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate. The work sessions were held at the Medellín Seminary ...

Mary Daly’s The Church and the Second Sex after Fifty Years of US Catholic Feminist Theology

In 1968, Mary Daly published The Church and the Second Sex, one of the first monographs in the field of Catholic feminist theology. On the ...

Humanae Vitae: Fifty Years Later

This article considers what has transpired in the Catholic Church on the issue of contraception in the fifty years since the encyclical Humanae Vitae in ...

1918—1968—2018: A Tissue of Laws and Choices and Chance

2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 and Humanae Vitae as well as the centenary of the 1918 Armistice ending the Great War. The negative ...

Not So Unorthodox: A Reevaluation of Tricephalous Images of the Trinity

Among the various iconographies of the Trinity which emerged in Christian art, the three-headed or trifrons image has a contested history. Warned about and censured ...

“Each Creature, Resplendently Transfigured”: Development of Teaching in Laudato Si’

Three stages can be traced in the Catholic Church’s magisterial teaching on the status of nonhuman creatures in the eschatological New Creation. In this article ...

Living Indefinitely and Living Fully: Laudato Si’ and the Value of the Present in Christian, Stoic, and Transhumanist Temporalities

Transhumanism promises to overcome human finitude by indefinitely extending human life, enabling a vast increase in valuable experiences. Yet transhumanism depends on social processes of ...

A Trinitarian Basis for a “Theological Ecology” in Light of Laudato Si’

This article responds to Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’ for an ecological expansion of mission and seeks to provide it with theological support. This ...

Gender Reassignment Surgery: A Catholic Bioethical Analysis

There is no explicit authoritative Catholic teaching on gender reassignment surgery (GRS). Catholic bioethicists have debated the origin of gender dysphoria and the effectiveness of ...
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