Dignitas Infinita highlights “the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person in Christian anthropology” and warns of “ambivalent ways in which the concept is understood today.” Among those “ambivalent ways” are plural definitions of human dignity in official Catholic teaching. There is ambivalence in definitions of Catholic sexual human dignity and Catholic social human dignity, which lead to inconsistencies in the foundation and justification of moral doctrine. In this article, we first present Catholic definitions of social and sexual human dignity. Second, we explain Pope Francis’s anthropological nuances that provide an alternative definition of human dignity, which we label holistic human dignity. Third, we evaluate and describe the harm deriving from statements in the document and by Pope Francis, a harm that results from inconsistent definitions of human dignity in doctrinal teaching.

During the prelude to the First Vatican Council, the idea of a heretical pope was
used as the primary argument against the solemn definition of papal infallibility.
The medieval canonists and conciliarists had allowed for the notion of papal heresy
by making a strict distinction between the apostolic seat itself and the individual
occupants of the throne of Peter. However, when we examine the text of Pastor
Aeternus in light of the contents of the official Relatio, which was drawn up at the
council to explain the meaning of this document, we find that the above distinction
used by the conciliarists was formally proscribed with an anathema. This article will
argue that in doing so, the Council Fathers definitively excluded the possibility of a
heretical pope.

We need a nonviolent soteriology that honors scriptural and theological traditions about enemy-love, suffering, sacrifice, and satisfaction and refuses to further harm victims of violence and oppression. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Bernard Lonergan’s way of understanding Christ’s satisfaction by analogy with the sacrament of reconciliation disclose one way suffering can be redemptive: When nonviolent activists “present their very bodies,” they expose the violence latent in unjust situations. Similarly, when Christ presents his body, he exposes the violence at the heart of sin. Like Christ, activists “become sin” (1 Cor 5:21)—not because they take responsibility for the sin, but because sin becomes visible in the wounds it leaves on innocent bodies. Once visible, healing can begin. Further, both men argue for a proper unfolding of the extension of love to enemies, lest victims be further harmed and injustice ignored.

This article brings Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of “self” and “borderlands/mestiza consciousness” into conversation with M. Shawn Copeland’s call to “turn theology toward persons.” After tracing Anzaldúa’s critical rethinking of José Vasconcelos’s understanding of mestizaje, as well as the political implications of borderlands/mestiza consciousness as theorized in the work of María Lugones and others, the article examines Copeland’s engagement of decolonial theory in her attempt to “turn” theology. Both Copeland’s and Anzaldúa’s writings teach nos/otrx that theology can only be both transformed and transformative if the persons doing theology engage in critical self-reflection and build this critical reflexivity into the theologies they create.

The state of democracy is declining worldwide, and that includes the United States, the oldest constitutional democracy. Various scholars have proposed theories regarding the growth and decline of democracy in the twenty-first century. Many commentaries point to a new threat to democracy that goes by a variety of names. This essay aims to understand the cause of the democratic decline and the Catholic Church’s role in supporting democracy.

This article proposes an ecumenical understanding of Christian tradition that valorizes the pluralism of Christian confessions as virtuous efforts to receive the gift of divine revelation. Its argument culminates in an eschatological ecclesiology that might serve as an aesthetic for appreciating the role of tradition in ecumenical dialogue.

Several themes are as fundamental in Buddhist thinking as they are in the ancient and modern debates about the teaching of the Council of Nicaea (325). This article argues that if the interreligious dialogue urged by Vatican II had been more energetically sustained, a Buddhist-Christian conversation about the legacy of Nicaea could have been a significant ecumenical event, overcoming the monopoly of Eurocentric perspectives.

Dissent, understood as a public rejection of the authoritatively pronounced rules, verdicts, and truth claims within a given community, although disruptive, can offer multiple benefits to the life of the community. However, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) effectively leaves no other option for dissenters than to adopt a stance of obedient silence. This article emphasizes a need for a shift in the magisterial attitude toward dissent, one in which Catholic truth claims can bear the collective scrutiny and questioning expressed through dissent and thus be more fully integrated into the life of the community. To do that, the article divides the discussion into two parts. First, the article offers an analysis of the concept of dissent, its potential benefits, and its entanglement with the other concepts more broadly. Second, it scrutinizes the construction of power, tradition, and dissent in the RCC specifically.

Large-scale and widespread social and ecclesial upheaval results in the experience of “dislocation,” a feeling of homelessness flowing from the loss of certainty and stability. This article considers how dislocation might provide an opening to creativity and hope, especially in the life of the ecclesial community. Synodality can be an instance of such creativity and hope, even though, paradoxically, synodality itself can be a catalyst for dislocation. To make its case for synodality, the article highlights the church’s eschatological orientation, its graced pilgrimage of faith.