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 GRS. A further ethical question is whether some forms of GRS involve “mutilation in the strict sense.” The principle of totality does not apply to GRS as the reproductive organs are a cause of distress only because the object of distress. This analysis leaves open the status of GRS which does not compromise biological function.

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.

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 what Pope Francis calls rapidification and sociologists call social acceleration, which are causing people to experience a lack of time, driven by increasing speed of work and fears of missing out on opportunities for enjoyment. In contrast, Francis and the Stoics encourage people to confront finitude by flourishing through a qualitative transformation of character marked by a temporality focused on God’s providential presence and on serving the present needs of others.

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 I ask three questions: which, why, and how: Which creatures are in the new creation, why are they part of the New Creation, and how will they be there? I argue that Laudato Si’ gives a new magisterial answer to these three questions and constitutes an important new development in the teaching on New Creation.

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 by two popes, Urban VIII and Benedict XIV, this iconography, despite condemnations, was applied, however, by leading Renaissance artists and survived into the nineteenth century in folk art. This article considers its pre-Christian background, the sixteenth-century theological debates, and, finally, in a detailed engagement with a range of tricephalous images, it critically reevaluates and seeks to demonstrate the disputed orthodoxy of this iconography from a theological, artistic, and aesthetic perspective.

Fathers, saints, and Doctors of the Church interpreted the woman of Luke 15:8-10 as a representation of Christ—and identified her with Woman Wisdom (ḥokmāh/sophia), whom they saw as divine. Medieval theologians related Luke 15:8-10 to other Scripture passages representing God in feminine form, and reflected on the appropriateness of portraying God as a woman. After the close of the Middle Ages a variety of publications continued to reinscribe this interpretation of the woman seeking her lost coin. Altogether, this illustrates one way in which belief in the divinity of Woman Wisdom survived throughout much of Christian history.

Nostra Aetate initiated a revolutionary shift in Catholic theology, opposing supersessionism and affirming that Jews remain in a salvific covenantal relationship with God. However, this shift raises for Catholics a deep tension regarding the value of this “Old Covenant” vis-à-vis the “New Covenant,” as this article illustrates using the statements of Walter Kasper and The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable. While speaking positively about the Old Covenant, both deem it essential to maintain the superiority of the New Covenant as universalistic, fulfilling the promises in the Old Covenant and transcending its limitations. The author demonstrates how they seek to reduce this tension by characterizing the two covenants as good and better covenants, rather than as bad and good covenants, thereby avoiding a lapse into supersessionism.

This article explores the evocations of the Synod of Pistoia (1786) at Vatican II, arguing that Pistoia was a “ghost” on the council floor, that is, a key moment in the Church’s collective memory which influenced drafting and debate. This is apparent in Bishop Carli’s evocation of Auctorem Fidei (the 1794 bull condemning Pistoia) during debates surrounding the theology of the episcopacy. This article concludes by arguing that the historical contextualization of Pistoia by figures like Cardinal Silva Henríquez was ultimately successful, as Auctorem Fidei did not exert a strong “controlling function” over Vatican II’s ecclesiological debates.

Since Vatican II was convened as an ecumenical council, most Orthodox autocephalous churches initially refused to send observers without full voting rights. For non-theological reasons, Russia was the exception that sent observers to the first session. Other Orthodox churches followed suit at later sessions. Despite their inability to vote or speak at plenaries, Orthodox delegates contributed to the Council’s documents, ecumenical openness, attitude towards communism, and from a humanitarian perspective. By granting Orthodox observers a prominent role, Vatican II represents a model of ecumenical integration in the conciliar process.

As part of the Catholic reform after the Council of Trent, the Jesuits Francisco de Toledo, Gregorio de Valencia, and Gabriel Vázquez further developed the theological innovations of the School of Salamanca. Their commentaries on the Summa Theologiae (ca. 1563–1604) are marked by a creative retrieval of Aquinas and other theological sources as well as by openness toward current questions. This new method of theological argumentation related past authorities and articulations of the faith more effectively to the present, in order to better preserve the ecclesial community through time.