Theological Studies

What is the relationship between the conversion (1) of the elements into the (real) Body of Christ and (2) of the participants into the (mystical) Body of Christ? When we bring this and related questions to the early church, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation, we find that the conversion of the eucharistic elements has indeed been understood by unimpeachably sincere Christians in a broad variety of ways. In contrast, there has been a remarkably constant convergence regarding the all-importance of the conversion of the participants. Were this taken as the starting point, we might discover that we have much more ecumenical unity regarding the Eucharist than is usually thought to be the case.

Christian theologians assume that systematic theology should make use of the language and methodology of natural science wherever possible to set forth contemporary understanding of Christian doctrine. To this end Joseph Bracken employs the notion of open-ended systems of entities in dynamic interrelation as the basis for an evolutionary understanding of the cosmic process within the natural sciences to give a new more socially oriented understanding of three key beliefs: the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity in the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth; the overall God–world relationship; and Christian eschatology.

This article looks to Wisdom-Sophia as a lyric name and memory of God who brings hope for human beings and for suffering creation. The irruption of the feminine divine into Thomas Merton’s consciousness is followed by a consideration of witnesses to the divine Presence emerging from Holocaust narratives and Jewish feminist post-Holocaust theology. Building from a poetic and narrative description of theological hope in a sophianic key, the article concludes with implications for spirituality, the theology of God, and discipleship: What would it mean to “live together with Wisdom” in the practices that shape our daily lives in the world and church?

In Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) Bernard Lonergan described the dynamic of human history as “a compound of progress and decline [in which] the flight from understanding” results in violence. His philosophical analysis of this dynamic was complemented by a theological analysis, “Understanding the Mystery: The Law of the Cross” (1960), thought by many to be his most important theological work. This article reveals how he drew from reflections on mathematics and science for a comprehensive understanding of violence before, in, and after Insight.

The theme of mercy stands at the heart of Jon Sobrino’s theological project, fundamentally shaping his Christology, anthropology, martyrology, ecclesiology, and much else. This essay analyzes Sobrino’s conceptualization of mercy as a development within the Catholic theological tradition. Drawing upon Thomas Aquinas’s influential account of mercy this article argues that Sobrino’s thought is consonant though not identical with earlier thought on mercy. Sobrino offers accounts of divine and human mercy that are faithful to the Catholic tradition and which productively push the tradition forward in response to both the biblical witness and contemporary challenges.

The Argentine theology of the people turns to the religion of the “faithful people of God” as a key source for theological reflection. The theology of the people was developed in the church of Argentina in conversation with diverse strands of Latin American theology of liberation as well as local political circumstances and movements. The influence of the Argentine school on Pope Francis is especially evident in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium. Moreover, the theology of the people also provides an elucidating point of departure for interpreting the gestures and tonalities of Pope Francis’s ongoing call for a Church that is poor and for the poor.

Catholic social teaching has long affirmed the existence of sinful social structures but without describing them or how they operate. This article reviews magisterial teaching on sinful social structures and turns to critical realist sociology for an analysis of structures as having causal influence through the free choices of persons within them. Theologically, social structures (whether markets or parishes) can be “sinful” in an analogous sense, similar to original sin. A typology of inclusive and extractive economic institutions exemplifies how this analysis can apply to sinful social structures today.

Since Vatican II, moral theologians have revisted the topic sin time and again. After considering the treatment by the manualists of moral theology of sin, and especially sins in violation of the sixth and ninth commandments, this article proposes four strands of theological argument since the Second Vatican Council that lead to a more robust, pervasive, and social understanding of sin than previously held. As these strands of argument converge we see the possibility of a better appreciation of human capacity and freedom as well as a summons to love and solidarity.

Virtue ethics has an expanded role in contemporary moral theology. While continuing to engage the work of Thomas Aquinas and other historical sources to take up fundamental theological questions such as the relationship between human agency and divine grace, contemporary virtue ethics also provides a helpful framework for examining the interplay among social context, personal formation, and social change. There has been growing interest in virtue in the fields of neuroscience and anthropology. The author surveys examples of how theologians have drawn fruitfully from those fields, arguing that a more expansive interdisciplinary engagement would enhance theological understandings of virtue, formation, and social transformation.

This article anticipates the 125th anniversary of the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum novarum (May 15, 1891) by briefly surveying modern Catholic social teaching (CST) and recent, related scholarship in four areas, focusing on the US context: CST on political economy; work and worker justice; labor unions, with attention to recent controversy over unionization of adjunct instructors at some Catholic colleges and universities; and gender and justice issues surrounding political economy’s relationship with the paid and unpaid labor in the so-called “care economy.”