Theological Studies

Pre-Vatican II theological anthropology focused attention on the exercise of human freedom as embodied in time and oriented to community. Post-Vatican II theology has deepened this trajectory by reflecting on the specific conditions and experiences of human embodiment, as well as the cultural and historical contexts that ground efforts to realize the ideal of persons-in-community. This article explores the contributions of theological anthropologies that take seriously gender, race, history, and culture in theology, and argues for further contemporary, enculturated, and embodied reflections on sin and grace.

In an age when rhetoric about alleviating conditions of poverty is rightly suspect, this study offers a reassessment of the power of non-modern, christological rhetoric through parallel examples of the preaching of Augustine and Pope Francis. Demonstrating how both practice a version of prosopopeia, this study shows how Augustine’s “exchange” and Francis’s “encounter” function as performative Christologies by which rhetoric is meant to effect reality concerning the poor. The study suggests revision of binary formulations of the relation of rhetoric to reality and proposes a non-binary, incarnational method.

Chronic and recurring depression presents challenges to theologians working on the doctrine of grace. First, its frequent misrepresentation inhibits accurate perceptions of God’s loving presence in this context. Second, like all suffering, it threatens the affirmation of divine benevolence upon which the doctrine is predicated. Third, the moral complexities of depression obfuscate grace’s healing effects. To meet these challenges and clarify the contextual work of grace, the author draws on depression narratives to identify the effects of grace as gratuitous, elevating, and healing expansions of possibility that many sufferers experience as depression persists.

The sexual abuse crisis has long-term consequences: not only on the victims and survivors of abuse, but also on the theological standing and balance of the Catholic Church throughout the world. Theological rethinking in light of the abuse crisis is necessary: not only from the lens of those who have suffered, but also from the lens of the changes caused by this global crisis in the history of the whole Catholic community. The article examines the consequences of the abuse crisis on different theological disciplines, with particular attention to the history of the Catholic Church, liturgy, ecclesiology of reform, and church–state relationships.

The need for reform of the Catholic Church’s structures features prominently in discussion of the clerical sexual abuse scandal. Less common has been reflection on the challenge that the crisis presents to ecclesiology, to considering the church theologically. This article addresses that challenge. It engages three tasks—facing the church’s brokenness; understanding the church in terms of grace and human freedom; and facilitating the participation of all the church’s members—that are necessary for an ecclesiology able to be both realistic and hopeful in the current circumstances.

Catholic tradition provides resources for understanding morally legitimate anger as ordered to the good of survivors and their wider communities, a way of conceiving of forgiveness as a caritas-inspired decision to willing what is authentically good for an offender, including just retributive measures, and support for employing practices of restorative justice as a means of addressing clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up.

The clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is complex. While first and foremost a terrible violation of victims, it is not only about sex or abuse. It concerns unchecked, divinely sanctioned patriarchal power and its devastating consequences. The author reviews the theological issues at stake, including patriarchy, sexuality and sexual ethics, and sin. She argues that addressing the roots of the crisis calls for taking seriously the contributions of feminist theologians to the thinking of the church, especially about establishing relationships of mutuality and equality between clergy and laity.

The Council of Trent teaches that the sacrifice of the Mass is identical to the sacrifice of Calvary, but with the crucial difference that the Mass is unbloody (nonviolent). By considering the Last Supper traditions and the theologies of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bernard Lonergan, this article constructs an understanding of sacrifice as a transformative pedagogy. The sacrifice of the Mass allows us to reconfigure even terrible acts of violence within a nonviolent framework without denying their reality. This provides a crucial theological resource for responding to the scandal of clergy abuse.

This article contributes to a theology of childhood in the context of recent research in the social sciences on children’s lives and the nature of childhood. The clergy sexual abuse crisis heightens the need for such a theology. First, the author offers an account of children’s social agency, with particular attention to cognition and sociality, arguing that an interpretative approach affords the best account. Second, the argument takes a christological turn, examining Jesus’s welcoming of children and the statement “it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14), to consider what can be learnt about Jesus’s appreciation of children’s agency.

Approaching the subjects of child safeguarding and children through a theological lens, the author shows the devastating scale, impact, and ramifications of the Catholic Church’s failures in safeguarding children, which become apparent in the current child abuse scandals, and how this crisis creates an opportunity to bring the child (back) into the church’s focus. This leads to a focus on core reasons or factors for the scandals and how these are linked to a lack of attention given to children in the scientific thought of the church. There exists a lacuna in systematic theology when it comes to children, but one can find promising theological grounds for exploring and promoting a more child-centric theology and church culture.