This paper advances a provisional case denying the attribution of the medieval liturgical sequence Sanctitatis nova signa, written in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, to Thomas of Celano (died c. 1260), who is best known for writing the earliest biography of the saint. The Conventual Franciscan friar and bishop, Pietro Ridolfi, provides the oldest extant attribution of this sequence to Celano. Luke Wadding (died 1657) echoes this point in his Annales Minorum; several recent critical editions of early Franciscan texts, as well as countless secondary sources, cite Wadding for the attribution to Celano. This identification remains problematic, not only due to the lateness of the Ridolfi-Wadding claim; the sequence's use of Dionysian mystical motifs and details unique to Bonaventure's Legenda Major (completed 1262) should exclude the possibility of Celano's authorship. Consequently this study tentatively dates the sequence to the latter part of the thirteenth century. Unlike the earlier sequences for Saint Francis attributed to Pope Gregory IX (died 1241) and Thomas of Capua (died 1243), Sanctitatis depicts Francis as a model Dionysian mystic. This mystical exemplarity becomes the image of unity advanced by the Franciscans to heal the internal crises plaguing the order in the later thirteenth century.

Taking its cue from the story of a Cretan peasant who was reluctant to let go of a handful of his native soil in order to enter heaven, this article begins by exploring ideas concerning the afterlife in which this world is contrasted with the world to come. It then proceeds to discuss how Christians historically have frequently understood themselves to be in the world, but not of it; how dualistic tendencies have often pitted the soul against the body, and how such views have had an influence on how we understand the person of Christ, often preventing Christians from fully accepting the implications of the Incarnation. The article examines instances of a lingering docetic streak within Christianity, which lies uncomfortably with its central claim that God became fully human. Notwithstanding the difficulties some Christians may have with the idea of a fully human Jesus, there is also a very rich tradition within Christianity of bodily engagement with the material world, not only sacramentally, but also within many popular religious practices, including pilgrimage and relic veneration. Finally, the revival of interest in sacred natural sites, even in areas where church attendances continue to fall, is investigated.

The recent resurrection and rediscovery of Gilson's early political writings broaden the traditional view of Gilson by allowing us to see him as a serious, engaged, political thinker. This essay traces the background of Gilson's early political thought, the beginnings of a dramatic change both in Gilson's activity and writings in the late 1920s, possible reasons for that change, and focuses on Gilson's Pour un ordre catholique (For the Establishment of a Catholic Order). This emblematic work of Gilson's early political thought, which is a practical application of his Christian philosophy, remains relevant to addressing serious religious and political issues confronting Catholics today.

An unresolved question in sacramental theology is whether the Mass is to be considered as limited or unlimited in its efficacy, and in what sense. In modern times, this question has been less discussed, in part from a concern that it is incorrect to attempt to speak of spiritual realities in quantitative terms. I defend the use of such quantitative language, and its application to the so-called special fruit of the Mass, understood both ‘intensively’ and ‘extensively’. I then summarise the two principal positions taken on the question of the efficacy of the Mass, referring to an important representative of each, Cajetan and Bellarmine. I argue that neither position is fully satisfying. I note that authors have generally failed to find a coherent position in Aquinas's two treatments of the question. I argue that these two positions are in fact coherent, and when combined allow for a new proposal about the fruits of the Mass, integrating the insights of all parties. This proposal may be summed up as intensive infinitude and extensive finitude. I finish by an analogy between the Mass thus understood and one aspect of Aquinas's Christology.

Reformed Scholastic John Owen's appropriation and adaptation of Thomas Aquinas’ development of the classical ‘disposition’ (Latin: habitus) concept offers practical insight into seventeenth century faculty psychology. This article argues that Owen not only borrows deliberately from Aquinas, he also attempts to simplify and even improve upon Aquinas’ more complicated theological, philosophical, and psychological insights in this important area. While he deals with dispositions of the mind, will, and affections in a way that is broadly similar to Aquinas’ ontological understanding, Owen's most significant contribution to seventeenth century faculty psychology and its theological use is a sustained and consistent emphasis on the necessity of virtuous affections in the pursuit of communion with God. Examining this concept also provides greater context for how the Reformed Scholastics were able to interact with their medieval counterparts. In this we see the Reformed Scholastics’ continuity with the Christian tradition and their depth of understanding regarding human nature.

There has been a resurgence of interest in Mister Rogers, the person behind Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The interest goes beyond stories of a famous television personality. There is a sense that Mister Rogers is needed today. U. S. culture is experiencing high levels of fear and anxiety, divisions and hostilities. Mister Rogers offers more than 'niceness' but a demanding theology. This theology offers tools for both diagnosing and treating our contemporary situation. Rogers believes that people have a need for acceptance and love, a vulnerability that is fundamental to our humanity. When this need is not met, people can turn in on themselves or lash out at others. Their fear can flow out into society and make it increasingly hostile. Rogers' treatment begins with the principle of specialness. People need to know that they are loved and accepted, and the affirmation of specialness meets this need. The principle also calls people to recognize the specialness in others, to love as they need to be loved. Rogers’ principle sets in motion a system of circulating love. Instead of unleashing hostility, Rogers' call to specialness unleashes empathy so more and more people are brought into the dynamics of love.

This paper begins with two preliminary forays, the first into creation theology and its deployment in environmental ethics, and the second sketches some implications for ‘integral ecology’ of reading theological ethics through the lens of human freedom and autonomy. The third and main focus of the paper is an exploration of aspects of the philosophy of technology, thinking in terms of the ‘technocratic paradigm’ and human ‘agency in context’. This analysis points to the potential for reimaging technologies for a sustainable planet and presents two examples: one new, the management of drone technologies and bird habitat; and one old, rethinking city transport though reinterpreting cycling as development at all income levels. This article is also intended as a contribution to the ongoing development of the concept of ‘integral ecology’ and its application: a concept that has now been added to related key principles of the common good in the Catholic social tradition: solidarity, subsidiarity, participation.

This paper examines the document of Giving the Best of Yourself by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, and presents an appreciation of the document and builds a case for sport as a practice of ascetical theology approached in terms of ‘everyday holiness’. Sports are argued as bringing together discipline and joy, and aesthetics and asceticism. The importance of the mean in diverting pathologies in sport is argued. Appreciation of sports is set in contexts of holistic lifestyles for its transformational and sanctification aspects to be appreciated. Sports are presented as beneficial life-long activity, and not simply for the young and physically advantaged. The article brings sport to theological articulation that is incarnational and christological and that leads to culturally situated implementations as applied ascetical theology.

Theorists with strongly communal understandings of the common good frequently criticize the modern liberal state for failing to provide for the common good and for interfering with local communities. These critics, however, are less clear about what role, if any, the state should play in modern life. In order to trace a middle ground between liberal attempts to justify the state and too hasty communitarian condemnations of it, I develop a two-tiered theory of political justification. All political justification is to be seen in relationship to the common good of a community. While only local communities have a common good and a direct claim to political authority, the state can still have an indirect and derivative authority. After examining how this theory applies to thinkers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Charles Taylor, I propose an appropriate model for the relationship between local communities and the state.

Both within and without the Church, contemporary political discourse is haunted by the question of ethnicity and identity. Many thinkers further have sounded the death knell of the liberal world order, which promised the eventual abolition of ethnic ties and the coalescence of the brotherhood of humanity. At the same time, there is a rising tide of ‘ethnonationalism’, which (over-) emphasizes the importance of ethnic identity at the expense of recognition of a shared common humanity among all people. Happily, St. Thomas Aquinas presents a remedy in his work, noting the importance of ethnic identity and kinship, which the Angelic doctor places within a wider framework of charity.

In May 2021, at Pentecost, a joint Pastoral letter was issued by the Catholic Bishops Conferences of England and Wales and of Scotland. This letter linked the feast day to the urgent need to care better for creation in the months leading to the G20 summit later in the summer and the COP-26 conference in Glasgow in November of that year. This paper looks at the letter, taking some account of reactions to it, and begins to explore ways in which our theology of the Holy Spirit can inform our theology of care for the created order as a developing part of Catholic Social Teaching. Some ‘footprints’ of the Spirit: First, the witness of patristic theologians encourages us to see rationality pointing to order in creation as a fruit of the Spirit. Second, the picture of unity in diversity formed by the Spirit in the New Testament points to the need for cooperation in our response to the current crisis. The last footprint is urgency: in the scriptures the Spirit's activity is constantly seen as urgent, sometimes in an extreme way. This picture suits the urgency of the current crisis in relation to climate change and biodiversity.

Yves Congar's impressive theology of tradition is, rather paradoxically, a post-traditional attempt to rediscover, conceptualize, and account for tradition. A critical element of Congar's post-traditional work on tradition is his retrieval of a ‘Thomistic’ theology of history. This article explores the ontology and hermeneutics of Congar's theology of history, focusing in particular on some of the dynamics and internal tensions of Congar's mediation of Thomistic sacra doctrina to distinctively modern theological questions. I first discuss Congar's hermeneutics of reception, with particular attention to the influence of Marie-Dominique Chenu. Second, I sketch the main features of Congar's theology of history, with particular attention paid to how it is informed by his ressourcement reading of Thomas. By way of conclusion, I offer an appraisal of and critical response to Congar's post-traditional hermeneutics and ontology of history

In this essay, I argue that Thomas Aquinas's and Herbert McCabe's soteriological paradigms are immensely compatible with one another. In contrast to the presuppositions held by certain interpreters of Thomas, I contend that Aquinas, like McCabe, rejects a primarily juridical/transactional understanding of Christ's Passion, and, in light of this fact, it is a mistake to assert that his soteriology is a precursor to later penal-substitutionary conceptions of the atonement. Once Aquinas's and McCabe's teachings are correctly situated within a relational/friendship rather than juridical context, their similarities and mutual aversion to penal-substitutionary atonement becomes explicit. Likewise, after appropriately identifying McCabe's indebtedness to Aquinas's thought, one can perceive his unique and substantial contribution to the Church's understanding of Christ's salvific work. The comparison between Aquinas and McCabe, in particular, provides clarity to a proper conception of the intrinsic disordering of sin and the essential character of Christ's meritorious love and obedience offered to God the Father.

Whilst philosophers have argued that musical experience provides evidence for theism, their discussions often fail to consider the aesthetic properties which give musical experience its distinctive character, or ways in which musical experience might support the beliefs of particular religious traditions. This paper begins to remedy this omission by examining how attention to liturgical music can provide rational support for Christian faith. I first explore music's emotional nature and impact, and its ability to embody Christian narratives and doctrines. In light of this discussion, I then introduce two probabilistic arguments for the truth of Christian orthodoxy, arguing that liturgical music can provide distinctive evidence for their premises.

In this paper, I explore Kant's much-studied critique of the ontological argument, seeking to place Immanuel Kant and Anselm of Canterbury more directly in contact with one another; I do this in two ways. First, I discuss the historical reception of the ontological argument in Kant's eighteenth century context. Second, I move the discussion away from the first Critique, and look towards Kant's Pre-critical discussion of the ontological argument in The Only Possible Argument, where he initially sets out his primary objection. By shifting the focus towards these areas of Kant's thought, I aim to achieve three interrelated goals. First, I show that Kant had a limited knowledge of the history and origins of the ontological argument, which was transmitted to him through Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, who put a Cartesian spin on it. Second, I provide textual evidence which shows that Kant's objection does not succeed against Anselm's argument. Third, I elucidate that Kant's identification of God as the ens realissimum is compatible with Anselm's identification of God as ‘something than which nothing greater can be thought’.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, some Americans have claimed that U.S. governments have superseded their jurisdiction and violated individuals’ human rights in the use of government mandates. Many citizens and politicians have also claimed that governments are utilizing the pandemic as a smoke screen to take individual rights away from citizens to gain further power. In light of such claims, I provide a Thomistic response to argue that state and local political authorities’ use of public health mandates were other-regarding in seeking to protect the common good in an unprecedented health crisis. Further, I argue that the characterization of individual rights atomized from community has led to an improper understanding of political authorities, individual rights, and our duties to our communities. Rejecting the reductive, skeptical, individualistic, and atomistic views that many Americans have engendered, I provide a Thomistic political orientation that more adequately helps us think about political authorities’ and citizens’ responsibilities within our political communities.

To what extent can Aquinas' philosophy of truth accommodate ambiguity? If an ambiguous object is that which exhibits multiple conflicting meanings, and truth, as ‘the conformity of thing and intellect', has its source and purpose in the divine, does the ambiguous lead us away from God? If so, how do we square this with the experience of the ambiguous, such as in art, that appears to draw us towards the divine? The paper explores this aporia by an analysis of the first two questions of De Veritate in conversation with Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics and Pickstock's Truth in Aquinas. Drawing on these three sources, truth is posited as a translation of being. However, it becomes clear that any translation is imperfect, given the difference between the medium of the existence of the thing and the medium of truth in the intellect. Hence, multiple, sometimes contradictory, propositions are needed in order to express the being of the thing. Moreover, it is shown how the ambiguous can prompt recursive returning to the singular, drawing us beyond merely identifying ‘what' a thing is, and beyond propositions, to share in the divine actualization of existence.

The article constructs the emergence of environmental ethics and eco-theology, referring to ecumenical discussions and influences. It then focuses on the difference between two types of eco-theology: one that may be called eco-centric, the other theo-centric. Following the second model and rooted in Karl Barth's approach to creation theology, the argument is put forward that a dogmatic approach today has to be based on the concept of ‘creatio ex nihilo’. Creation is not a commodity but utterly dependent on God's ongoing creative speech-act. A revision of the doctrine of election focuses on creation in a Trinitarian perspective. Creation is an eschatological and soteriological category that is grounded biblically in the post-exilic hope for a new creation. As a promise, it is a critique of all utopic and dystopic claims in human history. This has two consequences. First, the need to regain a realistic concept of the political that allows for conflicting aims and that challenges the concept of dominion. And second, to regain a realistic approach to ‘nature’ that defines the ethical concern as ‘habitability’. The fundamental challenge is to live in a disenchanted world while waiting for the world to come. This tension is enacted in the Eucharist.

This essay investigates one aspect of the relationship between contemporary apologetics and cultural studies. It begins with a consideration of Avery Dulles’ famous History of Apologetics. While noting the many virtues of Dulles’ work, it critiques his lack of attention to the role of imagination, emotion, narrative, and personal testimony. The essay argues that Dulles’ work shows how constricted the study of apologetics has often been in comparison with its practice. The essay goes on to note recent developments in research into apologetics which have begun to apply recent philosophical and theological interest in narrative, imagination, and the emotions to this field. It explores the increasingly sophisticated conceptual apparatus available for this task, in particular the concepts of the Social Imaginary and the Overton Window. Finally, the essay attempts a dialogue with certain aspects of secular advocacy, in relation to the role of emotion in the public square. It concludes that the use of conceptual resources from other disciplines, and engagement in dialogue with secular advocacy, may be of benefit to apologetics.

In the tradition of both Cicero and Hume, this paper explores the nature of God in dialogic form. Set at the tomb of Thomas Aquinas, in a church that is now a museum, the dialogue focuses on the central question of divine hiddenness, offering a novel alternative to both the atheistic interpretation of hiddenness in terms of divine amoral aloofness and the theistic account of hiddenness in terms of human indolence. Phenomenologically speaking, God the creator, in order to be God the creator, must be hidden to creatures. Divine hiddenness is, therefore, natural and does not necessarily call into question the moral status of God or of humans.