The clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is complex. While first and
foremost a terrible violation of victims, it is not only about sex or abuse. It concerns
unchecked, divinely sanctioned patriarchal power and its devastating consequences.
The author reviews the theological issues at stake, including patriarchy, sexuality
and sexual ethics, and sin. She argues that addressing the roots of the crisis calls
for taking seriously the contributions of feminist theologians to the thinking of the
church, especially about establishing relationships of mutuality and equality between
clergy and laity

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 contributes to a theology of childhood in the context of recent research
in the social sciences on children’s lives and the nature of childhood. The clergy sexual
abuse crisis heightens the need for such a theology. First, the author offers an account
of children’s social agency, with particular attention to cognition and sociality, arguing
that an interpretative approach affords the best account. Second, the argument takes
a christological turn, examining Jesus’s welcoming of children and the statement “it
is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14), to consider what
can be learnt about Jesus’s appreciation of children’s agency.

Approaching the subjects of child safeguarding and children through a theological
lens, the author shows the devastating scale, impact, and ramifications of the Catholic
Church’s failures in safeguarding children, which become apparent in the current
child abuse scandals, and how this crisis creates an opportunity to bring the child
(back) into the church’s focus. This leads to a focus on core reasons or factors for
the scandals and how these are linked to a lack of attention given to children in the
scientific thought of the church. There exists a lacuna in systematic theology when it
comes to children, but one can find promising theological grounds for exploring and
promoting a more child-centric theology and church culture.

Histories of theology move seamlessly from late-medieval Scholasticism to the Reformation and bypass the important theological contribution of Renaissance humanists such as Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus. The article will explain the reasons for this oblivion, provide a sketch of the theological achievements of the humanists, and, most important, show how strikingly that achievement anticipated Vatican II.

This article reexamines Jacques Dupuis’s distinction between the action of the
Word as such and the action of the Word incarnate. Against recent critics, I argue
that Dupuis’s Christology is compatible with Chalcedon as interpreted by Leo the
Great. I suggest ways in which this Leonine christological approach needs corrective
amplification, particularly regarding the unity of Christ and the action of Christ in his
risen humanity.

Recent work has improved the understanding of social structures in theological
discourse, but ambiguity persists with respect to structures of sin. Here, a revised
definition of structural sin reconnects this concept with its theological roots, adding
clarity to the nature of structural sin and strengthening the moral weight of the
term. Parallels with fMRI research in the field of moral psychology then refine the
existing account of the operation of structural sin. Together, these insights aid in the
identification of structures of sin and improve efforts to combat their influence.

This article connects the work of M. Shawn Copeland to a dialogue between Bernard
Lonergan and Emmanuel Levinas. Exploring these authors’ insights on intersubjectivity,
alterity, dialectic, and embodiment, the article develops a framework for engaging
and overcoming contemporary crises of relationality. These resources are then used
to reframe questions of otherness in terms of the imitation of Christ, advocating
encounter grounded in open, prayerful engagement with the marginalized.

The recent call by Pope Francis for the church to develop a “theology of women” raises
more fundamental and prior questions about the very nature of gender and sexual
identity. Drawing on the metaphysics developed in Lonergan’s Insight and his heuristic
structure of a scale of values found in Method in Theology, this article explores these
prior questions in a way that avoids the extremes of either gender essentialism or of
complete gender fluidity. It proposes a form of heteronormativity that is statistically
structured allowing for a greater flexibility than suggested by gender essentialism,
while still constraining the social and cultural construction of gender within certain
biological realities. The authors also present Lonergan’s scale of values as a further
heuristic for anticipating the force of this constraint in a differentiated way.

In his address commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the institution of the Synod
of Bishops, Pope Francis expressed hope for a more synodal church. Consulting
recent theological literature aids the discovery of potential—if only partial—steps
towards a synodal church in three areas: spiritualities and structures of discernment;
theological methodologies; and ecumenical gifts of synodality.