The Council of Trent teaches that the sacrifice of the Mass is identical to the sacrifice
of Calvary, but with the crucial difference that the Mass is unbloody (nonviolent).
By considering the Last Supper traditions and the theologies of Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, and Bernard Lonergan, this article constructs an understanding of sacrifice
as a transformative pedagogy. The sacrifice of the Mass allows us to reconfigure even
terrible acts of violence within a nonviolent framework without denying their reality.
This provides a crucial theological resource for responding to the scandal of clergy
abuse.

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 support comes by way of a trinitarian rendition of the missiological concept missio Dei. Drawing from Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan’s accounts of the trinitarian missions, it articulates a theological ecology (as opposed to an ecological theology), in which the traditional doctrine of God is the controlling motif. Through the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit, God transforms the moral-intellectual-volitional comportment of humanity and recruits them into a shared mission of environmental concern.