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.
This note provides an overview of emerging theological scholarship on parenting, focusing on publications from the last two decades. The first section maps the role of magisterial teaching in shaping Catholic discussions of parenting as a vocation. The second section surveys literature on pregnancy, birth, and adoption, including recent work on the less socially visible experiences of infertility and pregnancy loss. A third section turns to the task of parenting children, addressing scholarship on family spirituality, the moral formation of children, specific ethical issues facing parents, and the relationship of parenting to the common good. Finally, a fourth section introduces the growing literature on motherhood, where women’s experiences of caregiving have proven generative for revisiting questions about care, embodiment, spirituality, and theological anthropology.
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.
Divine providence, as traditionally conceived, keeps historical time subordinate to
God’s sovereignty so that the divine plan for it is fulfilled. This article argues that
the starting point for theologizing about providence ought to be the logic of radical
generosity in play when the divine Thou creates historical time as a reality unto itself
by giving it an unprecedented future. Providence does not protect the historically
conditioned universe from this future; it draws the universe into it. The human
experience of grace offers us a paradigmatic example of this.
This article offers a theological vision of how nonviolence contributes to Catholic social teaching, and offers a crosscutting, intersectional praxis related to two destructive waves in the US: the public health crisis of COVID-19 and systemic racism. First, this article will describe some basic intersections of these two waves, and then draw on a theological description of nonviolence to analyze their intersectionality. Finally, this article will illustrate how nonviolence offers a praxis for a more sustainable transformation.
Drawing on the spiritual autobiography of the nineteenth-century Black female preacher Zilpha Elaw, this article argues that it should be included in the canon of Christian mystical texts because it sheds light on questions about race and gender relevant to current conflicts in both church and society. Elaw’s story demonstrates that while the grace of divine union promotes social transformation, it may not immediately free one from structures of sin. Mystical spirituality requires ongoing critical discernment.
The idea of American exceptionalism has been present through much of American
history. But the idea is often abstracted: The character and purpose of the United
States are rendered as timeless and glorified attributes apart from the sinfulness
and limits of history. In this response to Thomas Massaro’s essay, I examine the
historicized nature of the idea in both a spirit of criticism and construction. If Catholic
social ethics is to contribute to a renewal of the idea of American exceptionalism, it
must do so in an historicized and contextual key.
Given how moral subjectivity and action are constituted within networks of interpersonal and social relations as they negotiate emerging questions and insights, this moral note addresses (a) enduring, individualistic signs of the times in cultural, ecclesial, and methodological contexts; (b) models of agency that center our social and finite dimensions; and (c) what such contexts and scholarship suggest for an agenda for moral agency today. It proposes that deeper attention to the function of internalized structures, the graces of failure and disorientation, and responses to ambiguity are warranted to meet the moment, between the times.
