Why has purgatory virtually disappeared from Catholic belief and practice since Vatican II? A competitive spirituality, gravitating around the religious vocation of ascetics from the late Middle Ages, enabled the doctrine by extending the temporal horizon within which God’s favorable judgment could be secured, first, in the lifelong practice of ascetics in their spiritual competition

Debate on the resurrection of Jesus tends to focus either on the likelihood of Jesus’ body rising physically from the tomb or on the form in which it appears to the witnesses. The first part of this article provides a snapshot of recent literature on Jesus’ resurrection. The second part argues that there is no

Contemporary debates about the relationship between philosophy and theology may be illuminated by comparing Aquinas’s doctrine of philosophical wisdom to Bonaventure’s. For both, philosophical wisdom apprehends God as creator through the medium of creation; the resultant act is therefore distinct from that of theology, which apprehends God through revelation. But Bonaventure also speaks of the

Alfred Loisy’s enduring significance, in Maude Petre’s view, lay in his struggle to define the relationship between religious faith and facts accessible to historical critics. Arguing from both his understanding of religious faith and his commitment to historical scholarship, he opposed what Petre called the “theologico-scientific presentation of dogma” prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church

The U.S. bishops and the Vatican have reacted critically to Peter Phan’s recent book, Being Religious Interreligiously. This article attempts to address the contended issues from a trinitarian perspective. It argues that the traditional trinitarian theology of East and West, which is largely based on the Fourth Gospel, is unable to handle these issues satisfactorily,

The article contributes to the ecumenical debate on the relationship between the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church, a debate that followed upon the 2007 publication of a series of Responses on Vatican II ecclesiology by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The author seeks to develop a critical understanding of subsistit

The article (1) reviews a variety of magisterial documents and essays concerning the terms “morally ordinary” and “extraordinary” treatment in relation to the provision of assisted nutrition and hydration, particularly for patients in a “permanent vegetative state”; (2) considers how the terms “ordinary” and “extraordinary” are used in both the moral and medical contexts, the

The author argues that Bernard Lonergan’s work provides a useful foil for reconsidering the position of Henri de Lubac on the relationship between natural and supernatural. Lonergan agrees with the basic thrust of de Lubac’s position, but the Canadian’s approach to the interlocking of his thought on God with his analysis of human consciousness and

In his brief, On the Four Wills in Christ, Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) offers a carefully nuanced depiction of Jesus’ human nature that showcases his human capacity for compassion. Hugh is keen, however, not only to underscore Jesus’ human capacity for compassion but also to identify such fellow-feeling as the signature attribute of