The article revisits the disputed question of contraception in light of the contemporary renewal of Thomistic virtue ethics. Integrating Thomistic anthropological, action, and virtue theory, the article supports the central teaching of Humanae vitae that contraceptive acts are intrinsically evil. Its argument builds upon the philosophical work of Martin Rhonheimer, transposing it into an explicitly

In 2002 the International Theological Commission wrote that “it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord has established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively” on the question of women deacons. This study discusses the ways by which ancient and contemporary ceremonies for women demonstrate the tradition of the ordination of women as deacons.

Early Latin Pro-Nicenes had described the relationship between the Father and the Son by using an analogy with human fatherhood. Just as human fathers give birth to sons who share the father’s nature, they argued, so too does the divine Father give birth to a Son who shares the divine nature. But using this analogy

Thomas Aquinas’s theory of habitual grace rests on a generically metaphysical account of the faculties of the soul and of the natural and supernatural habits that perfect them. Bernard Lonergan opened up fruitful avenues for rethinking nature, grace, and virtue in a developmental perspective. His intentionality analysis transposes the conception of human nature; the dynamic

The author argues that the liturgical practice of the Church strongly supports the view that translated versions of Scripture are as much verbum Domini as untranslated versions. It follows from this that the words of Scripture, the Lord’s words to his people, are found fully in every version approved for public reading by an episcopal

Bernard Lonergan is not usually associated with the field of Catholic social thought. This article explores Lonergan’s efforts to contribute to it in his manuscripts on history and economics from the 1930s and early 1940s, written in response to Quadragesimo anno’s call for a reconstruction of the social and economic orders. The article describes Lonergan’s

Lumen gentium described biblical Israel as a preparation and figure of the church, the new people of God. Jews do not belong to this people but are ordained to it. In light of Nostra aetate and the ensuing Catholic-Jewish dialogue, the article supplements Lumen gentium’s typological account of biblical Israel as a prefiguration of the

The article proposes, contrary to much of contemporary Thomistic scholarship, that according to Thomas Aquinas’s categorizations of virtue, the person in a state of grace cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. Arguing from Aquinas’s theory of virtue as to why this is the case, the article examines texts that are commonly interpreted to say otherwise,

In response to recent charges that creatio ex nihilo imposes a dubious metaphysics upon biblical theologies of creation, with the result that divine power is valorized at the expense of a creation in process, the author argues that such criticisms misrepresent the doctrine’s logic that illuminates those biblical theologies while making explicit in philosophical terms