In a recent issue of L’Osservatore Romano Karl Becker argued that, contrary to a common interpretation of the change made in the drafting of Lumen gentium no. 8 from est to subsistit in, Vatican II never departed from its original affirmation of total identity between the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church. Fellow
Scholars and the public are well aware of the ethically controversial nature of euthanasia, artificial nutrition and hydration, and embryonic stem cell research. Moral theologians have extensively analyzed these issues, and religious leaders have publicly made them tests of orthodoxy. Literature on death and dying is therefore the main concern of this article, which also
The survey examines writings in three areas: (1) the causes and cures of the rise of religious violence and terrorism, with particular attention to how Christian theology and the Bible contribute to or challenge this violence; (2) the ethical challenges of terrorism and the need to find a moral response to this threat; and (3)
In September 2005 this journal published an article by Thomas Shannon and James Walter on the Catholic tradition surrounding assisted nutrition and hydration (ANH) in end-of-life care. Responding to this essay, moral theologians John Paris, James Keenan, and Kenneth Himes take exception to what they perceive as a proposition promoted in that article, that John
The authors suggest that their esteemed colleagues misunderstood the central argument of their Theological Studies article, which tried to make clear that, among a variety of documents written during John Paul II’s papacy, four significant and unacknowledged shifts were made that cumulatively appeared to challenge, but not alter, the long-standing Catholic tradition on the use
Recent emphasis on the continuity of Vatican II with the Catholic tradition runs the danger of slighting the aspects of the council that were discontinuous. Among those aspects are the literary genre the council adopted and the vocabulary inherent in the genre, different from that of all previous councils. Examination of these aspects yields tools
The article examines the thought of the fifth century theologian, Vincent of Lérins, particularly his claims that there is great progress and development in Christ’s Church, and that this progress and development must be in fundamental continuity with what preceded it (eodem sensu eademque sententia). The author argues that Vincent’s hermeneutical principles have been theologically
In his epochal work, L‘Évangile et l’Église, Alfred Loisy claimed to offer a purely historical refutation of Adolf von Harnack’s Das Wesen des Christentums (1900). Harvey Hill demonstrates that Loisy drew L‘Évangile et l’Église from a larger unpublished work, “Essais,” that combined history, apologetics, and a reform agenda, and shows that, Loisy’s claims to the
The author’s survey of the writings of moral theologians over the past five years shows a deep concern about both the nature of moral theology and the role of moral theologians. A certain urgency animates much contemporary reflection calling the moralist to be challenged by the vocation to serve the Church and to explore better
[To provide order to the welter of metaphors employed in Christian soteriology, the authors study them within their underlying systems or “models.” The “prophetic” model, in which salvation is effected within history through human instruments, appears in Isaiah and Luke as well as in Irenaeus. In the “liturgical” model, the divine presence is safeguarded by
