The church’s teachings on just war place limits on the permissible methods to bring someone to justice. So too does international law, and hiding explosives in everyday items like pagers and walkie-talkies is a violation of the 1899 Hague Convention, which prohibits “treacherous killing.”
Theology
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Thomas Pynchon, famous novelist…and theologian?
Thomas Pynchon is best-known as the reclusive author of some of our most famous postmodern novels. But is he also a discerning judge of our spiritual health?
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Martyrs for the earth
In ‘Ecomartyrdom in the Americas: Living and Dying for Our Common Home,’ Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo invites us to look carefully at the lives of modern ecomartyrs as a guide to help us “re-imagine and re-embody the relationship between human beings and the earth.”
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
For Catholics to overcome our differences, we must embrace the ‘grace of self-doubt’
The God who has subordinated himself to the human condition in the historical figure of Jesus is the perfect exemplar of epistemic humility, and hence discipleship of Jesus entails the free acceptance of the grace of self-doubt.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
A brief history of the corporal works of mercy
The works of mercy are the practices that Christian disciples collectively engage to respond to the needs of others. Both the Beatitudes and the works of mercy are our pathways, one inner, one outer, to lead us into fellowship with the poor in spirit.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Remembering Edward Schillebeeckx: the theologian working from the shadows of Vatican II
Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., wasn’t officially a ‘peritus’ at the Second Vatican Council, but that didn’t stop him from having a powerful influence on the council and on church theology for decades afterward.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
Heaven and hell in post-Vatican II Catholicism: How to move from fear to love
There is no bigger question for Catholics today than this: Why should anyone become or remain Catholic?
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
‘If we don’t get Jesus right, we won’t get the church right’: The life and teaching of Gerald O’Collins, S.J.
Gerald O’Collins, S.J., the Australian Jesuit theologian who died last week, was a prominent writer in Christology, ecclesiology, spirituality and more in an academic career that spanned seven decades.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
The historical Jesus is worth our study—but don’t expect it to solve all our theological questions
In this 1971 article, the late theologian Gerald O’Collins, S.J., treats the search for the “historical Jesus”—and its potential shortcomings and pitfalls.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
How Jacques Maritain went from antisemite to Catholic champion of the Jewish people
The intertwined stories of Jacques Maritain and ‘Nostra Aetate’ underscore the need for Christians, now more than ever, to repudiate and combat antisemitism.