Christian discourse tends to treat the concept of ‘priesthood’ univocally, so that ordained priests are seen to share the priesthood of Christ. But a careful reading of Hebrews shows clearly that the priesthood of Christ is unique to him. There are four (even five) types of priest in the New Testament and each of them is distinct and not to be confused.

Rémi Brague in On the God of the Christians gives a defence of the validity of faith against modern presumption that science supplies the model for all knowledge. Brague argues that since God is superpersonal, faith must know God in the way we know persons. Personal knowledge requires the connaturality of a loving will: hence faith in God requires love, utterly unlike any scientific knowledge. In criticism, it is suggested that love is essentially motivated by its object's value, and so presupposes knowledge of the object. What is crucial in faith is not the love the subject brings but the demands of a supremely valuable reality. Since faith is, in the broadest sense, experiential, it has points of contact with scientific rationality.

This paper explores Otto Muck's metaphysical concept of Weltanschauung (world-view). My objective is to argue that world-views can be rational. To this end, I will first explain the notion of Weltanschauung and illustrate its relation to metaphysical convictions. Next, I will defend the meaningfulness of metaphysical assertions against two objections relating to verification and falsification. The core of the paper focuses on the integrative function of world-views and the criteria according to which one can evaluate their rationality, in particular, Frederick Ferré’s criteria for the rationality of metaphysical systems. The thesis is that the rationality of a world-view can be evaluated in terms of the adequacy of the integrative function it performs. Finally, I will show why, within Muck's framework, dialogue between proponents of different world-views is a postulate of rationality.

This paper revisits Aquinas's understanding of theology as a science based on a participation in the divine scientia. Our modern presuppositions (in terms of “autonomous” reason and philosophy as a discipline utterly separate from theology) often appear to render Aquinas's claims implausible. In this contribution it is argued that (a) all sciences are fiduciary in the broad sense (with the exception of those that rely on principles per se nota) and (b) that first principles can only be accepted or rejected, but not refuted or demonstrated within the relevant discipline. From this, two conclusions can be drawn: first, despite its reliance on revelation theology's case is, therefore, not as peculiar as modern readers might initially assume: every discipline operates with key assumptions it simply accepts. Secondly, given the role of first principles, to characterise Aquinas's account of the assent of faith as fideist or voluntarist is beside the point, for you can only accept or reject first principles. The contribution ends by suggesting that assent to the articles of faith is not an extraneous acquiescence in assertions of divine authority either, as a reading of the first question of the Secunda Secundae makes clear. Indeed, the paper hints that we should not read the first question of the Prima Pars without engaging with the first questions of the Secunda Secundae.

Tina Beattie has re-read Aquinas in the light of Lacanian theory and found the later Lacan's transition to what he calls the register of “the Real” to be significant for a revitalised theology beyond traditional intellectual categories. She argues for a maternal Trinity which she believes to lie hidden in Thomas and, in support of this, she contends that Lacan left behind Freud's paternal preoccupations in favour of maternity. This response to Beattie will re-examine Lacan's trajectory from “the Symbolic” register to “the Real” through the lens of what he said in his year-long seminars about Moses, whom he regarded as a representative of “the Symbolic”, and it will demonstrate that paternity remained a constant in Lacan, who even came to see “the Real” itself as a name of the father.

Romano Guardini's theory of oppositions (Gegensatzlehre), which helped him forge a unity within multifaceted realities such as Church and liturgy, also inspired him to achieve a unity between the secular and sacred aspects of the Christian life, as the Second Vatican Council was later to do, particularly in Gaudium et Spes. While Gaudium et Spes 36 concentrated on a Christian view of the autonomy of created realities, Guardini diagnosed the gulf between faith and life in a neglect of the interplay of creation and redemption: ‘to save redemption by the Son, [man] has been forced to abandon creation by the Father’. In a way which was prophetic of later criticisms of Gaudium et Spes and also of fruitful applications and developments of its doctrine, Guardini called for a reflection on the light which the work of redemption sheds on the created world and on man's life within it, that the believer may stand with his faith amid the concrete, actual world, and rediscover that world in his faith.

The Catholic Church cannot, at present, find sufficient clergy to staff its parishes and this is provoking a massive pastoral, and so a liturgical, reorganization. However, these changes are not primarily driven by the demography of the actual churches, communities of people, but are solely the result of a decline in clerical numbers. Most attempts to deal with this turn on seeking to increase the number of deployable persons in presbyterial orders (e.g. seeking clergy from Africa or India), making a wider use of deacons, and scaling up the size of liturgical communities, irrespective of the nature of that liturgy, so that areas are ‘covered.’ But this assumes that actual communities, when gathered for the eucharist, are a function of the number of clergy; but surely the number of ministers is secondary to the location and size of the communities who are in need of ministry? This paper seeks to ask fundamental questions about the nature of liturgical ministry in keeping with the conference's theme of ‘who ministers what to whom?’ What is the basis of liturgical ministry? Does it exist independently of a worshipping community? Is it primarily as an individual's ‘vocation’ to ‘be a priest’, who then ministers, or a community need provided from within that community in union with the larger church? This ‘bottom up’ approach affects how we see not only actual liturgical ministry, but the priesthood of the Christ, the priesthood of all the baptized, and our pneumatology of vocation within actual churches.

Aquinas's articulation of the eight ‘integral parts’ of prudence can serve as a manageable, practical focus for ongoing human development. Although Aquinas holds that there is an infused Prudence, this does not render acquired prudence redundant, because (1) God moves things in ways that befit their natures, and it is our nature to have dominion over our actions; (2) human beings have free will, characteristically exercised in electio, choice of means; (3) grace perfects nature; (4) some scholars have defended the complementarity of the acquired and infused virtues, and there is widespread agreement that the psychological structures needed by acquired virtue persist in the life of graced virtue.

The ‘integral parts’ of a Cardinal Virtue must concur for its perfect acts. Aquinas examines them in detail, and offers methods of building ‘memory’ through human effort; he leaves to our diligence the discernment of how to build other parts of prudence. He explains how the parts are deployed in the acts of deliberation, judgment and command.

Aquinas's consideration of the vices opposed to prudence and its parts enables him to warn us about what impedes prudence, and to help us distinguish false from legitimate concerns for bodily goods, superfluous from proportionate solicitude, etc.

This paper presents some comparative themes examining the anthropologies of Bernard Lonergan, René Girard and the four noble truths in Buddhism. It also engages some specific aspects from the Tibetan lineage of Buddhism represented by Pema Chödron (Canada), following her teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

The approach of the paper invokes the structure of John Thatamanil's The Immanent Divine: diagnosis, etiology, prognosis, prescription (solution) as an organizational way of presenting material on such diverse thinkers. Following an overview of these thinkers, I will highlight some of the themes such as suffering, violence, healing, compassion, and the role of affectivity in its relation to desire. It should become clear that such a practical approach to Buddhist-Christian dialogue provides a fruitful starting point and underscores the value of learning other religious traditions.

This paper considers the grace of the gift of tongues both as it is currently practiced among many members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) and how it has traditionally been understood in medieval and post-medieval theology. The paper especially considers the perspective of Francisco Suárez on the subject insofar as he, as in most matters, is able to frame the status quaestionis of the topic and presents a uniform view of the Catholic theological tradition's understanding of the gift. Ultimately, I point out that there are significant points of divergence between the nature of this gift as the CCR understands and practices it and as it has traditionally been understood historically.

In this essay I explore the resources Thomas Aquinas provides for enquiries concerning the psychological abilities of nonhuman animals. I first look to Aquinas's account of divine, angelic, human, and nonhuman animal naming, to help us articulate the contours of a ‘critical anthropocentrism’ that aims to steer clear of the mistakes of a naïve anthropocentrism and misconceived avowals to entirely eschew anthropocentrism. I then address the need for our critical anthropocentrism both to reject the mental-physical dichotomy endorsed by ‘folk psychology’ and to articulate a more adequate ‘commonsense psychology’ that acknowledges most embodied animal behavior is observable psychological behavior. Next, I argue that we can develop Aquinas's doctrine of estimation and conation to formulate an account of nonhuman animal action that more adequately characterizes the purposeful behaviors of nonhuman animals. To do so, we first need to recognize a wider range of nonhuman animal behaviors that are captured by Aquinas's ‘estimative sense’, and that all of these behaviors are specified by a finite variety of particular goods confined to the animals’ environmental niches. But we also need to supplement Aquinas's account of human and nonhuman animal agency by exploring the ontogeny and ecology of how humans and other animals become attuned to affordances within these different environmental niches. I argue that we should look to Aquinas's account of nonhuman animal capacities in ST I-II 6-17 for subtle insights that can expand our understanding of how nonhuman animals engage in purposeful behavior by exercising analogous nonrational and imperfectly voluntary forms of intention, deliberation, choice, execution, and enjoyment. I conclude with an outline for how future enquiry can seek to explain the nonrational purposeful problem-solving competencies of chimps, canines, corvids, cetaceans, cephalopods, and other nonhuman animal species.

This article is an inter-textual study of the play Angels in America (Part One), Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate and key Catholic writings on homosexuality. I hope to show how the play might inform future Catholic understandings of self-identity, self-acceptance and self-love and how in turn, Catholic writings on the nature of love, sexuality and holiness can assist audiences to understand more deeply the themes and dilemmas in the play. The Catholic Church is immensely forgiving of the human failure to live up to the lofty demands of love and has a strong tradition of asceticism concerning the positive and transformative effects of self-control. However, due to the cognitive dissonance set up by its teaching on homosexuality, and in particular, its claim that there is an incompatibility between gay identity and ordained priestly identity, the Church has tended to retreat into a world of silence about the importance of self-knowledge to assuage the dissonance it feels. The dramatic deleterious consequences seen in the play about the failure to love oneself are a stark warning to the Church that this might not be the best or most pastoral path to take.

This paper explores the claim made by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 3 that ‘sacred doctrine’ is ‘scientific.’ After reviewing some of the key historical commentators on the question, I propose an examination of Thomas' treatment of the gift of prophecy as providing an important clue into discerning more clearly his evolution from an Aristotelian understanding of knowledge or ‘science’ (scientia) to a fuller sense of the term scientia as used by Thomas. Chief among these is a clue into how Thomas resolves the difficulty between necessity and history. His treatment of prophecy in the Summa Theologiae gives one a glimpse into how Thomas is a historical thinker, despite weighty authorities such as Etienne Gilson arguing otherwise. Closer attention to prophecy permits one to rethink Thomas' account of sacred doctrine in Question One and appreciate how pivotal the fact of divine revelation having been made to prophets in history is for its ‘scientific’ character.

This article is a personal reflection on the twelve-year experience of being a parish without a resident priest. The article offers a socio-historical picture of St. Joseph's Parish, Bunhill Row, London EC1. It considers how some Church documents refer to ‘parish’, including the Code of Canon Law; the 1980 National Pastoral Congress; and Pope Francis’ vision of ‘parish’ in ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ and some other addresses. It concludes with some personal reflections.

Gavin D'Costa has distinguished himself as a leading voice in the field of theology of religions, and not just among Roman Catholics. His Trinitarian approach to the subject has also garnered respect among Protestants, such as Reformed theologian Tan Loe-Joo. Yet Tan is concerned that D'Costa compromises the Trinitarian framework of his approach by conflating universal salvific will and salvific grace, and that his use of limbo falls short of satisfying the scriptural principle that faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17). This article is an evaluation of D'Costa's theory as it relates to the former issue concerning salvific will and grace. I seek to show that Tan's worry stems more from an incomplete theological delineation of grace than from an actual shift in D'Costa's theological position. I then suggest a solution that provides some common ground from which both Catholic and Protestant theologians can seek a resolution to the latter issue concerning the principle of faith by hearing.

Since Vatican II the restored Permanent Diaconate in the Latin Church has played an increasingly important role in the life of the Catholic Church, particularly in Western Europe and North America. Is there a theology of the diaconate, and if so what are the contentious issues? How far is the diaconate really distinct from the priesthood and the ministry of laypeople? A way forward is to revive the subversive character of διακονία, both in practical pastoral ministry and in serious engagement with Catholic Social Teaching; this necessitates major changes to diaconate formation programmes. A clearly defined diaconate would be able to help the Church renew and reform its understanding of ministry.