Much of the confusion about the proper interpretation of the carefully formulated definition of Pastor Aeternus on the infallibility of the papal magisterium stems from improper presentations, even immediately after the Council. Only Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore took the time to nuance his presentation. The sympathy evoked worldwide among Catholics for the loss of the Papal States and the freedom of the Roman Pontiff also added to the confusion. The texts of the letters and statements of the bishops are important objects of study for anyone wishing to trace the course of “papal infallibility.”

Because of their communities' experiences and tendencies, New Testament writers such as Paul and Mark stress the death and resurrection of Jesus as the source and model of the Christian life. In the Book of Revelation, John's version of this is that the lion of the tribe of Judah indeed “conquers” but does so as the Lamb who was slain; the Christian witnessing that leads to the victory of Christ's followers may also entail their death. Yet the seer associates the Lamb imagery with that of ancient near eastern and classical versions of the conquest myth. Does John risk subverting his own purposes? The paper examines his presentation of the Lamb and suggests that he does indeed run such a risk, at least for the inattentive reader, but this does not justify neglect of such a creative and imaginative soteriology in which evil is overcome by the word of God.

This paper investigates how character ethicists use rules and principles in their virtue-centered and narrative-dependent theories, and how such limited use fails to appreciate the performative content of Christian doctrine. If they are correct in insisting that Christian ethics begin with the practical import of theological convictions, then they not only limit the description of such beliefs but also the performance of such beliefs. A more “comprehensive ethic” that includes rules, principles, practices, and virtues, when one begins with the performance of doctrine not scriptural narratives. Such an argument unfolds through three states of the article: (a) it describes how character ethics uses rules, norms, and principles in its own moral theory; (b) it further evaluates this theory based on its own procedural starting point; and (3) it constructs how rules and principles can emerge from such a methodological starting point.

Although recent attempts to state the coherence or integrating idea within Catholic Social Thought have contributed much to our understanding of the tradition, the attempts have been based on improper methodological presuppositions. For this reason the authors offering these theories have been unable to justify their selection and emphasis on certain documents; they have not fully considered the challenge to their theories by development in the integrating idea taken as most essential; and they have not been methodologically clear about the role which their own vision plays in the historical retrieval. Recognition of such problems in historical analysis, and the path toward dealing with them today in an historically conscious way, is found in the work of Ernst Troeltsch.

This article analyzes the impact of postmodernism on the meaning, truth, and justification of claims in contemporary theology and ethics. It argues that historicist premises do not lead inexorably from a naïve objectivism in ethics to ethical relativism, as Sheila Greeve Davaney and Richard Rorty suggest. Instead, as the work of Carol Christ and Jeffrey Stout has argued, theologians and ethicists are justified in making indirect, web-of-belief related claims to ontological truth. Christ's theological realism and Stout's modest pragmatism both appear able to support meaningful discussions of truth, while avoiding the related dangers of relativism, skepticism, and nihilism. Paying careful attention to these methodological issues in a course on Religious Ethics and Moral Issues has proved very effective in overcoming student acquiescence to a relativist perspective, and in enabling them to propose and defend their own moral views with greater confidence.

After years of consultation, on August 15, 1990, Pope John Paul II published an Apostolic Constitution, Ex corde ecclesiae. Familiar as the document is to many readers, especially in Catholic higher education, in the sixth anniversary year of its appearance it continues to merit careful review. The document is divided into two parts, with the first section describing the identity and mission of a Catholic university and its mission of service while the second proposes seven General Norms for implementation. In early 1991, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops established a committee of seven bishops and eleven consultants, eight of whom were college or university presidents, to oversee the implementation of the Constitution. Later, in August 1994, a Project Director, the Reverend Terrence Toland, S.J., was appointed.

The College Theology Society had a difficult period of gestation but its birth was relatively easy. A few reminiscences may be in order, even though nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Some current members of the Society were present at a twenty-fifth anniversary meeting at Trinity College, Washington, the site of the first meeting, where some of what follows came to light.

“Seeking God in all things,” was one way Ignatius of Loyola described his pilgrim journey in this world—looking, longing, reaching always further for the "dearest freshness, deep down things" that he would call his Lord, his Majesty, his God. And for many years, even more insecure and inexperienced, in need of certitudes and formulas as I was, I heard the phrase, perhaps first in Hugo Rahner's luminous little book on The Spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, as “finding God in all things.”