Pascal stressed the importance of ‘reasons of the heart’ in leading us to God, and insisted that the God to whom he turned during his ‘night of fire’ on 23 November 1654 was ‘not the God of the philosophers and scholars’, but the God of the patriarchs and of Jesus Christ. This suggests a very different approach from that of Thomas, who characterises God in seemingly abstract terms, such as ‘being itself’ and ‘goodness itself’. This paper first explores the methodological and epistemological lessons to be drawn from Pascal’s notion of ‘reasons of the heart’ and argues that we have good reason to take them seriously. The second half of the paper discusses Aquinas’s apparently more impersonal conception of the deity, as an ‘infinite ocean of substance’ (John of Damascus) on which all things depend. But it then explores Aquinas’s account of the passage in Exodus where God addresses Moses in personal terms, and argues that this account, together with what Aquinas has to say on the subject of prayer, indicates that the God of his philosophical deliberations can indeed be reconciled with the intensely personal God of Scripture to whom Pascal turned during his night of fire.

Having hope is important for motivation and human agency, especially when it is certain. People with unwavering hope are more likely to succeed in their endeavours than those without. However, in modern debates, hope is usually seen as characterised by vain optimism. Thomas Aquinas, in contrast, argues that the virtue of hope is characterised by certainty – a view that could contribute significantly to these debates. Nevertheless, there seem to be problems with Aquinas’ view. He says that, while certainty essentially concerns the cognitive faculties, it can also concern other faculties by participation, insofar as the cognitive faculties influence them. He adds that hope can only be said to be certain by participating in the certainty proper to faith. But this reference to the certainty of faith and the cognitive faculties seems to imply that faith is endowed with conclusive evidence, since it is this evidence that enables the cognitive faculties to attain certainty. And throughout his writings, Aquinas denies that faith enjoys conclusive evidence. In this article, I will show that one can resolve this difficulty by understanding that for Thomas faith is indeed an intellectual act, but its certainty is different from the certainty of reason. This will enable us to gain an understanding of Aquinas’ view of the certainty of hope, as well as other aspects of his reflections on hope and faith.

This paper explores the enduring tension between rational technique (technē) and creative intuition in art, tracing its origins from Plato’s Ion through Kant’s notion of genius as nature’s unteachable rule-giving via the productive imagination. It then examines Jacques Maritain’s and Étienne Gilson’s complementary Thomistic aesthetics as a unified resolution. Maritain locates creative intuition in the soul’s spiritual unconscious, a pre-conceptual grasp of Being (esse) uniting intellect, imagination, and senses in a metaphysical act mirroring divine creation, where poetry reveals beauty as transcendent radiance. Gilson, conversely, emphasizes art as cognitio factiva: the craftsman’s imposition of intelligible form on matter, producing an ontological entity that manifests Being’s splendor objectively, independent of subjectivity. Addressing modern unbelief, the analysis affirms that beauty depends on Being, not belief; even non-theistic artists intuitively participate in esse through form, yielding works that testify to divine reality despite denial.

In this paper, I present an analysis of purgatory from an issuantist perspective – an approach that seeks to reconcile the concept of a loving God with the doctrine of eternal hell. Issuantism posits that both heaven and hell originate from God’s love, and I extend this framework to purgatory, offering a new interpretation of its eschatological significance. After examining the views of influential figures such as Joseph Ratzinger and Jerry Walls, I argue that purgatory must be understood as a condition outside of time to maintain theological consistency. I propose a model of purgatory located within an aeveternal dimension – an intermediate state between time and eternity – as a way to resolve tensions concerning temporality, moral agency, and the soul’s orientation toward heaven.

An interesting aspect of the Nicene Creed is that it asks its adherents to not only affirm their belief in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit but also their belief in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. The call to believe in the Church raises at least two interrelated questions: (1) What does it mean for the Church to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic? (2) What ought to be the nature of the Christian’s faith in the Church? This paper explores these two questions by drawing on Anselm of Canterbury’s ecclesiology and his well-known approach to the relationship between faith and reason, fides quaerens intellectum. While many have discussed the importance of faith seeking understanding for Anselm as it pertains to God, this paper will focus on how Anselm’s understanding of the interworking of belief and understanding can help us think about what it means to believe in the Church.

The study will focus on the German philosopher, Richard Schaeffler (1926–2019). Schaeffler wanted to create a new transcendental philosophy by developing Kant’s thought and thereby a new form of Christian philosophy. In his texts, he not only sketched the contours of a possible Christian transcendental philosophy, but his philosophy is already just such a philosophy. The aim of the study is to answer two questions: How did Schaeffler understand Christian philosophy, and what is specific about his Christian philosophy? In answering these questions, I will briefly compare Richard Schaeffler and Gianni Vattimo, who considered his philosophy to be Christian. The specific character of Christian philosophy – not only of Schaeffler’s – will be highlighted against the background of Vattimo’s philosophy, and the limits and deficiencies of Vattimo’s ‘Christian philosophy’ will be shown against the background of Schaeffler’s thought.

The thesis of this article is that the understanding of the vocation of an artist in the writings of Jacques Maritain emerges as to develop habitus (practical virtues of the intellect) in order to direct their inspirations in order to make beautiful things that convey the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization and inspire others to contemplate God. This vocation to be an associate of God in creating beautiful works is a powerful reminder of the close relationship between all personal vocations and the common good. First I explore Maritain’s conversion to Catholicism, including through the arts. I next clarify Maritain’s Thomistic understanding of art as one expression of the illuminating intellect. I then review Maritain’s writings about the arts in education. I conclude with theological and pastoral reflections on the vocation of an artist.

Recent debates in moral philosophy have placed significant emphasis on personal conscience, often elevating individual autonomy above all other considerations. This overemphasis has paradoxically led to the suppression of another’s conscience in situations where two moral agents must act together toward a shared goal, as in the physician–patient relationship. Critics of conscientious objection argue that recognizing its legitimacy fosters moral relativism or subjectivism. How, then, can conscience be properly formed and understood in a way that safeguards against relativism while upholding its rightful role in conscientious objection? This article argues that Aquinas’s integration of natural moral law, conscience, prudence, and virtue offers the most coherent and original framework for addressing these challenges. By grounding conscience in truth and sustaining it through virtue, Aquinas provides a robust basis for defending conscientious objection while safeguarding human dignity and moral integrity. While primarily theoretical, this study also draws practical implications for healthcare and institutional ethics, showing how a Thomistic understanding of virtue and conscience can inform dialogue and policy in pluralistic contexts.

Theology has traditionally been understood as a speculative discipline centered on God. However, the increasing dominance of historical methods in modern theological inquiry raises a fundamental question: Has theology shifted from being a science of God to a study of historical documents? This article examines how four early 20th-century Dominicans from the Saulchoir—Antoine Lemonnyer, Mannès Jacquin, Marie-Benoît Schwalm, and Ambroise Gardeil—responded to this challenge. Writing in the context of the Modernist crisis, they defended the primacy of speculative theology while integrating historical studies within a Thomistic framework. Their work articulated a synthesis in which historical research serves theology without displacing its speculative and supernatural character. These insights remain relevant for contemporary theological discourse, offering a model for balancing historical inquiry with the contemplative and systematic study of God.

For the most part, the ongoing Thomistic debate over the nature of lying presupposes that speech has one primary end: to reveal the speaker’s mind or soul. Within this framework, a lie is disordered speech. In this paper, I formulate a polyvalent Thomistic theory of speech acts that affirms that human vocalizations have multiple ends in the order of nature, including functions that do not involve signification, a claim supported by evidence from studies of primate vocalization and by evidence from studies of contemporary speech act theory in the philosophy of language. With this theory in hand, I propose that not every deliberately willed spoken falsehood constitutes a lie, including false claims made to enemy spies and Nazi officers, because not every spoken falsehood involves disordered speech.

Classical philosophy listed art as a virtue perfecting the intellect’s practical activity (recta ratio factibilium). As virtuous, human art or skill must follow a measure or mean of its activity. For classical thought, the natural order provided this measure. This is the origin of the dictum that ‘art imitates nature’. Yet, the claim that the work of creative artists must imitate nature has not gone unchallenged in modernity. This essay claims that a retrieval of the robust notion beauty as integrity, proportion, and clarity not only provides an anchor to tether the work of the creative artist to the natural order but also liberates the artist’s creative intuition from the isolation of mere taste and into the realm of the transcendent. For the creative artist, the integrity, proportion, and clarity of the natural world opens a window into a beauty that unites into one community all those who see it.

William Blake’s theology is expressed in a strange, idiosyncratic idiom that is difficult to pin down. Sometimes Blake is even read as an anti-Christian, proto-Nietzschean thinker. However, in 1910, Chesterton noted Blake’s unusual ‘tenderness’ toward the Catholic faith and even suggested that he was already on the path toward Catholicism. In this paper, I present an interpretation of Blake’s theology, focusing on his early work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and on the ‘fetters’ that he attributes to Milton, implying that he is free of them. I argue that Blake is a sincere Christian – and, as Chesterton suggested, far closer to Catholicism than one might expect. Blake’s profound and insightful reflection on the epistemological and psychological effects of original sin forge a middle way, akin to that of Catholicism, between a ‘Pelagian’ belief in the ability of human beings to redeem themselves through their own efforts and a Calvinist insistence on humanity’s total postlapsarian depravity.

In 1962, Fr Emmanuel Doronzo – a towering figure in preconciliar neo-Thomism – published a seminary textbook containing an 11-page Nota examining whether it can be said Mary belongs proprie ad ordinem sacerdotalem – properly to the sacerdotal order. His answer was yes: Mary can be said to have exercised ministerium proprie sacerdotale – a properly sacerdotal ministry – namely, a unique form of diaconate to Christ the priest.

Far from speculative novelty, Fr Doronzo’s Nota stood within a long-standing tradition – emerging alongside the feast of Mary’s Presentation – attributing to her the grace of Holy Orders. This tradition is reflected across papal teaching, a 7th-century mosaic in the Lateran, authorized devotions, the spirituality of the Sulpicians, approved hymns for the Divine Office, and – arguably – within Lumen Gentium.

Given the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s invitation for continued study on the female diaconate, this long-neglected strand of Mariology warrants fresh attention. Across the centuries, Mary is portrayed as possessing Holy Orders non-sacramentally, by divine prerogative, analogous to her prevenient reception of baptismal grace at the Immaculate Conception. Mary’s plenitude of grace may therefore offer a historically grounded and theologically coherent rationale for reflection on the diaconate’s openness to women – in fidelity to legitimate ecclesiastical authority.

In this paper, I explore the poetic virtue of filmmaking. In the first part, I look at the virtue of art more generally, drawing on Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s Aquinas-inspired conception of poetic virtue. In the rest of the paper, I then map Maritain’s poetic virtue onto the artform of the moving image, its processes of production and reception. Here, I show how poetic intuition is conceived by filmmakers such as David Lynch and translated into the realities of filmmaking in the Sci-Fi mystery thriller, The Silent Messenger, in which I was involved in as producer and performer. Enlisting the help of film philosopher Alain Badiou and film phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack, I claim that for the poetic virtue of film to come into full presence, both filmmaker and viewer need to take responsibility for their moral capacity for gaze. It is only when the viewer loses themselves (their self) in the shared sight of the filmmaker, and the artist respects the audience’s own intellectual creativity, that film can teach us that seeing is always a relational enterprise, one that brings our human relationships – in all its tragedy and beauty – into shared vision.

This essay proposes that the relationship between synodality and sacramental participation runs deep – so deep that one cannot be understood apart from the other. This is to say that there is no synodality apart from an understanding of synodality’s sacramental foundations and its own sacramental character and that the economy of sacramental grace cannot be fully realized by and within the ecclesial community without its fuller integration of synodal journeying together.

Regarding proofs for the existence of God, two things are well known of St John Henry Newman. First, he was chary about aspects of the Christian Evidences, a great accumulation of Christian apologetics in which Paley’s writings occupied a central place. Second, that he favoured an argument from conscience as ‘a proof common to all, to high and low’. This paper examines what might have been behind Newman’s convictions. It argues that metaphysical and epistemological emphases of early modern philosophy had semantic repercussions for ‘standard’ apologetics such as St Thomas’ Five Ways. In a new social imaginary, they suffer distortion and lose vitality as they begin to be reprogrammed to operate according to modern epistemological canons. Similarly, Paleyan arguments from design as they appear in the Christian Evidences were built on an evidential standard perhaps notionally compelling but in reality false to how a person really comes to conviction about belief in God. In the end, this paper argues that there is an odd kinship between Newman’s argument from conscience and St Thomas’ Five Ways, if these latter are read in their intended medieval light rather than in a modern light.

Discussion of the relationship between art and liturgy is nearly as old as the Church itself. At root it is a matter of the theological seriousness of the liturgy, balanced against the distinctive aesthetic demands of art making and those individuals gifted with the ability to produce works of art. Notwithstanding a glorious heritage of sacred art and music in the Church, tensions have historically manifested, and still do. Equally, the stipulation that art must serve the liturgy can engender a sense that it is an addendum: helpful, even beautiful, but ultimately subservient. In this essay, I set aside more familiar arguments as to why the Church and art need each other. Instead I consult three important twentieth-century figures: Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), Joseph Ratzinger (1927–2022), and David Jones (1895–1974), who provide a range of complementary reasons why the two spheres should be intimately connected. For Maritain, who holds an expansive view of Christian art, liturgy is a transcendental archetype. Ratzinger insists that art and music should apprehend and portray the cosmic significance of Christ in the liturgy; and Jones gives an anthropological basis to the uniquely work-making character of the person – supremely articulated in sacramental action.

Flannery O’ Connor’s mom criticized her for not writing what people would want to read. While O’Connor’s novels are full of freaks and distortions, this article offers some philosophical clues as to why this is so. We explore Jacques Maritain’s influence upon her as she saw herself as ‘cutting her aesthetic teeth upon his Art and Scholasticism’. Key to understanding the grotesque world of O’Connor’s stories is the understanding of Maritain’s notion of artistic imitation and its reliance upon his notion of distortion. It is the latter notion that gives us the central insight into why she distorted her characters and plot. True storytelling for O’Connor plunges the reader deeply into reality, especially into the reality of human persons. Not wanting to stay at the physical surfaces of things, distortion plunges the reader into the depth of human character and their existential aspirations, motivations, decisions, and especially, their responses to the gift of supernatural grace.

This paper explores the epistemic foundations of empathy and intersubjectivity in Edith Stein’s analysis, placing it in dialogue with Pope Francis’s reflections on the heart in his last encyclical, Dilexit Nos. Beginning with Stein’s development of empathy, the author examines how empathy grants us an awareness of the other’s inner experience, which is non-primordially present and foreign to the empathizing subject. While this structure reveals a fundamental asymmetry between self and other, it also leads Stein’s account of empathy to an epistemic insufficiency: it can describe the givenness of the other, but not the depth of relational life. At this insufficiency, I turn to Pope Francis’ notion of the heart as a lived space of spiritual life. The heart, in this vision, is where contradictions and polar tensions between self and other are not solved but held – a space of receptivity, affectivity, and interior openness. Drawing on the image of bamboo that survives precisely through its emptiness, I suggest that a spiritually receptive heart allows us to live in the asymmetrical experiences between self and without collapsing the other into abstraction.