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.

Classical accounts of beauty that emphasize harmony, unity, and radiance have come under sustained moral criticism in modern theology and philosophy, particularly in light of historical atrocities. After Auschwitz, such conceptions of beauty have been accused of moral escapism or irrelevance, prompting a turn toward cruciform accounts that seek to secure beauty’s moral salience by locating the paradigmatic manifestation of beauty in the cross of Christ: The cross of Christ reveals a deeper, darker beauty that can subvert the deformity of evil by assuming it into itself. This article uses Jeremy Begbie’s account of beauty as a case study to argue that at least some cruciform accounts of beauty risk conceptually and metaphysically entangling beauty with evil, thereby aestheticizing it. Against this backdrop, the article proposes a rehabilitation of formal beauty understood in classical terms. It argues that formal beauty can be morally salient in a horror-torn world through what is termed contrastive aesthetic insight. Rather than absorbing evil, formal beauty stands over against it, allowing evil to appear more clearly as deformity, lack, and violent disruption of the peace of being. This contrastive function sharpens moral perception and informs agents’ practical and attentional orientation to the world. Beauty, on this account, remains fragile and demanding yet capable of orienting moral vision in a world marked by horror.

This article is a critical examination of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on doctrinal development contained in Dei Verbum 8. Through a survey of preconciliar theological appeals to experience, and by an examination of the conciliar Acta, the article argues that the council’s inclusion of the category of experience was based on a well-trodden Scholastic theological tradition on connatural experience linked to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that the textual amendments sought to eliminate a Modernist understanding of experience and revelation. The article seeks to contribute constructively to ongoing fundamental-theological discourse on revelation and doctrinal development.

The global rise of right-wing authoritarian populism poses a challenge to the Catholic
theology of conscience. For decades, the church has emphasized the connection of
conscience to absolute values in the face of political confrontation with Marxism and
its inchoate totalitarian democratic descendants. But today’s right-wing authoritarian
populist regimes raise different questions: about conscience and relationship,
conscientious objection, and the relationship of the freedom of the church and
freedom of conscience. This article reviews recent literature about this challenge.

Contemporary society’s political dynamics, especially the progressive-conservative divide, shape perceptions of the church and color perspectives on its future. Can ecclesiology provide a compelling alternative to political readings of the church, an alternative that is authentically theological, attentive to context, and conducive to realistic hope for the church’s future? To respond to that question, this article develops an “integral ecclesiology” that encompasses the implications that the church’s relationship to God has for its mission, engagement with history, ongoing conversion, and orientation to an eschatological fulfillment. The article concludes by briefly considering the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality (2021−24) as an expression of integral ecclesiology.

On the Council of Nicaea’s 1700th anniversary, can its creed still be confessed by contemporary Christians in a culture full of “buffered selves” (C. Taylor) and suspicious of long-ago metaphysical worldviews and appeals to transcendence? This essay retrieves the “thinkability” and “experienceability” of the Nicene Creed by (1) considering its place in its usual performative liturgical setting, (2) recalling its provocative historical solution and the still-remaining ontotheological problem, (3) retrieving as much as possible the experience of revelation and salvation that the creed articulates, and (4) applying a performance hermeneutic that considers the creed as analogous to a musical score that needs performance-over-time for its meaning to be thinkable, experienceable, and revelatory.

This Note recaps highlights of the 2024 US presidential election from a Catholic perspective. It is not this article’s aim to pronounce an authoritative postmortem on reasons for the election result, and post-inauguration actions of the second Trump administration are also outside its scope. Instead, this Note lifts up perspectives from recent theological work that shed light on major issues in the campaign. It will reflect on the key events in the election cycle and identify some similarities between the candidates’ positions before assembling theological work dealing with two issues where the candidates markedly differed: abortion and religious nationalism. It will close with some reflections on the semiotics of the candidates’ public personae that point toward calls for future moral-theological work.

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.