The concept of purely penal law, as developed by the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez in the early seventeenth century, argues that promulgated law is neither morally binding upon the citizen nor conceived as a moral requirement by legislators. Rather, the law is strictly punitive in its intent and function. The theory, which grants the individual the right to determine law’s rational and moral significance, touched off a heated debate that has been renewed at various times in history yet has not resurfaced since the mid-twentieth century. This article argues for the veracity and legitimacy of the concept in light of contemporary legal and penal dynamics. It also argues that the Catholic Church should take notice of its insights in its understanding of the relationship between church and state.

This article reflects on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered
sixty years ago in Washington, DC. It begins by pointing to the concept of “dream”
as it is understood in current language and how Dr. King used it in a theological way.
Next, the essay compares this with what Pope Francis has frequently said about
dreams, including his own. Reflecting on King’s words and the sense that the dream
he spoke about is still not a reality but a horizon of hope that stimulates struggle,
the article presents a comparative study of racism in the United States, according
to King, and Brazil, where structural racism permeates the whole society, delaying
indefinitely the dream of equality and justice. I also show how liberation theology has
been a helpful element in the struggle to keep the dream of equality alive. I

The aim of this article is to rethink the way scholarship conceives Gregory of Nyssa’s so-called mystical theology by directing attention to his account of hostile powers in the Homilies on the Song of Songs. In recent decades, debates on “divine darkness” have governed scholarly readings of Christian progress in the homilies. However, through his allegorical commentary, Gregory also provides an extensive account of the history, ontology, and activity of the devil and demons, while also instructing Christians on how to defeat them. According to this account, only Christ is victorious in the proper sense. Therefore, believers must participate in Christ’s victory by journeying the way of the Homilies on the Song of Songs. This begins with baptism and continues with self-knowing, prayer, pure thoughts, and correct worship. Therefore, these homilies—communicating Gregory’s vision of “divine darkness”— also provide an extensive account of how to overcome adversarial powers whose goal is to prevent the bride’s union with God.

This article explores the connection between the Council of Nicaea and the church in Africa through two main perspectives: geography and the contributions of African theologians as well as theological and christological developments. The first part highlights Africa’s geographical and cultural significance to Nicaea, examining the involvement of African theologians in the council’s outcomes. The second, more detailed section analyzes how themes rooted in Nicaea have continued to influence African Christianity even as modern theological discussions do not explicitly and consistently reference the council. Taken together, these sections trace the enduring impact of Nicaea on the evolution of African theological thought.

This article asks why matters of sex and gender are the nexus of theological and ecclesiological battles to the point of being church-dividing issues. I utilize Mary Douglas’s grid-group theory—her framework for correlating social form, body symbolism, and ritual density—to demonstrate that the body is a symbol of the social world and that different views of the body correspond with different ways of organizing a society. Thus, I argue that gender diversity is being perceived by the Catholic Church as a threat to ecclesial structure as well as to the church’s ritual life.

In their response to the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, many African bishops used culture as an argument to reject the possibility of blessing same-sex couples. This article probes and shows the extent of the inconsistency of the appeal to culture by the African bishops. It uses the issue of polygamy as a point of contrast: appeals to African culture are never used to justify this widespread practice among Africans or any pastoral flexibility toward it. The article also compares Vatican II’s understanding of culture (Gaudium et Spes) with that of the African bishops. It shows that the African bishops’ understanding of culture tends to be narrow and focused on the past. Finally, the article looks at culture as a source of Christian morals and demonstrates that culture can be only a secondary source.

While the writings of Robert Doran exhibit significant ecological awareness, the
present paper argues that the corpus of Bernard Lonergan and Doran’s own work
have overlooked an ecological dialectic that arises naturally from Lonergan’s approach.
This article suggests there is an anthropocentric bias operating that prevents its
recognition, which needs to be identified and overcome if we are to address our
current ecological crises. To that end, this article identifies a double dialectic operating
in the social order. The first dialectic, as identified by Lonergan and expanded by Doran,
is that between intersubjectivity and practical intelligence; however, this dialectic is
embedded in a second larger dialectic between the social order itself and the order of
the nonhuman processes from which the social order itself emerges. The appreciation
of this dialectic has been blocked by our neglect of cosmological meanings and values,
as exemplified by the Indigenous peoples of our world.

This article parallels Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream for civil, economic, and racial equality in the USA with Julius K. Nyerere’s unrelenting liberation struggle for the emancipation of Southern Africa from colonial shackles. I write this article fully cognizant of King’s belief that what united the minority and colonial peoples of America, African, and Asia was the struggle to overcome the legacy of colonialism and racial injustice. I therefore argue that King’s dream was a shared dream, which I analyze through the prism of liberation theology.

This article argues that Ignatius Loyola, in proposing the “hierarchical Church” as norm for judgment and feeling, meant to evoke and commend aspects of the Dionysian tradition—especially its principle of hierarchical mediation and its affective portrait of spiritual perfection. Supporting this interpretation are considerations of the world behind the text (the reforming Dionysianism abroad in Ignatian Paris), the world of the text (the culminating position and concerns of the “hierarchical Church”), and the world in front of the text (its reception by Peter Faber and Jerome Nadal). Interpreted against a Dionysian backdrop, Ignatius’s hierarchical church becomes a charter for ecclesial mysticism.