Introduction: Reforming the Church
Spring 2024
Reforming the Church
A Blood Transfusion for Theology: Pope Francis’s c’est la confiance, Thérèse, and Teresa
Lisa Lickona“The soul that has confidence in God’s unconditional love relinquishes everything. Then, the merciful God gives himself to that soul in the precise measure that it has dispossessed itself.”
The Historical Impact of Saint John Paul II on the Church’s Doctrine of the Family
Livio Melina“[T]he Christian family . . . is the place where anthropology and faith are mediated, the crucial space where the human fitness of the Gospel is verified, the terminal where, in capillary form, the mission of the Church is realized.”
Confucianism and Catholicism on the Family
Joshua R. Brown“At every turn, the Confucian tradition says we are not our own: we owe every breath not only to God but to the concrete community of the family that gave us life and nurturing.”
The Church’s Universal Apostolicity at the Heart of Ecclesial Movements
Paolo Prosperi“Disdain for the form in the name of the Spirit’s freedom always leads, intentionally or not, to disdain for the flesh of Christ.”
Completing What is Lacking (Col 1:24): A Biblical Exploration of Ecclesial Co-atonement
Nina Sophie Heereman“In the Eucharist, Christ joins our sufferings to the body he gives and the blood he sheds, and he offers them up for the salvation of the world. Our task is to say ‘yes,’ and thereby co-offer him and ourselves; this, our appropriation of the atonement, is itself a participation in its enactment.”
A Theological Reading of the Russian Regime: Sergei Bulgakov and the Theocratic Principle in 1917
Matthew J. Dal Santo“[A] polity built on absolute, atheistic freedom restrained only by law can and should be transcended in the name of a polity built on an order of right and freely self-limiting love, which the order of right naturally inspires because it is genuinely lovely.”
First of All Receptive: Aquinas on the Place of Relation and Receiving in Created Being
Michael Joseph Higgins“Because I exist by being created, I am first of all receptive.”
Retrieving the Tradition
Preface to Love and Responsibility
Henri de Lubac“The teaching laid out by the archbishop of Kraków . . . is the teaching of a man who cares for man, of a pastor of souls who knows both the weaknesses of human nature and the means of grace that come to its aid.”
To Pray in the Holy Trinity
Jean Corbon“The more we consent to be ‘poor in Spirit,’ without our own strength, to the point of being incapable of prayer or love, expecting everything from the Father while remaining in the tomb with his Son, the more the Father will draw us to himself and configure us to Christ by the power of his Spirit.”