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.

This article names the three most urgent issues today in ethics: first, climate crisis and its impact on the poor and marginalized; second, the tragic banality of contemporary political leadership; and third, racism and antiblackness. Examining this last injustice reveals our failure in moral agency, for the first two crises derive from the incapacity of the American conscience, which has never acknowledged how racist and privileged our conscience has become. While arguing for conversion, the article also offers ways for imagining a more responsible expression of moral agency to rectify each present moral failure.

The Trump administration’s immigration measures and attendant dehumanizing rhetoric have fanned the flames of nationalism and sown fear in communities. Its internal enforcement strategies are bolstered by manipulative narratives that perpetuate myths and reflect facile analyses of complex dilemmas, focusing on symptoms rather than causes of migration. Reducing immigration questions to the locus of border crossers alone eclipses from view transnational actors responsible for economic instability, violent conflict, or labor recruitment, and also eclipses their accountability. Recent developments in migration ethics help illuminate significant historical and structural contexts of migration as well as models of justice and norms for negotiating duties of reception that better reflect such relationships. Attending to underlying fears and idolatries that contribute to exclusionary dynamics also emerges as critical for advancing just policy reforms and cultivating civic friendship moving forward.

The widely publicized British case of Charlie Gard became an international cause célèbre when the treating physicians petitioned the British courts to prevent the parents from taking their dying child to America where a physician held out promise of an unproven experimental therapy. The case became more sensationalized when the press reported that Pope Francis had intervened in the case against the position of the Vatican’s Academy for Life on the appropriate response to a patient with a lethal genetic disorder for which there was no known treatment. A review of the centuries-long teaching of Catholic moral theology on care of the dying demonstrates that the pastoral concern of Pope Francis for the grieving parents did not signal a change in church teaching on the care of the dying patient or reveal a disagreement between Pope Francis and the Academy for Life’s position on the appropriate care of Charlie Gard.

This article argues that the call in Laudato Si’ for an integral ecology can also be understood as teaching about the church. It first excavates the theological presuppositions on which the practical teaching of the encyclical rests, that the interrelation between church and context is constitutive of ecclesial tradition. It suggests that Laudato Si’ provides

Theologians have demonstrated curious restraint in assigning theological meaning to the parish. I argue here for a renewed attention to the parish as an “ecclesial place,” that is, a geographical site situated in particular contexts where ecclesial relationships of communion unfold by the power of the Holy Spirit for the sake of God’s mission. Simply

Vatican II envisioned a revived permanent diaconate modeled on Christ the servant. That view, well grounded in subsequent church documents and widely appealed to in theological reflection, is criticized increasingly as lacking theological integrity or practical guidance for ministry. This article examines the metaphor itself and its application to the diaconate, concluding that the office

There exist very different accounts about the attitude of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI to interreligious dialogue. Does interreligious dialogue aim at truth and intertwine with mission, or is it an impossibility that needs to be replaced with an intercultural dialogue about peaceful coexistence and common values? This article traces the complex history and relationship of

This article reconsiders the relationship between vision and faith, recuperating an understanding of the “ray of darkness” accented by Church Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius for a fuller understanding of the beatific vision. Vision and faith are not ultimately two opposite movements, but rather two inseparable aspects of one dynamism leading to