This article shows how the integral ecology of Laudato Si’ expands the concept of the common good to include the natural world through recognition of and solidarity with human good. It makes this argument in dialogue with the Catholic social thought of M. Shawn Copeland on the problem of the common good in the human community and the manner in which the praxis of solidarity works to resist bias and promote authentic encounter. First, Copeland’s approach, as developing Bernard Lonergan and in dialogue with Charles Taylor, introduces the question of authentic expansion of common good to the others of history. Second, integral ecology expands the problem of the common good to both human and nonhuman others, affirming the interrelated good of human and ecological systems, and recognizing the interrelated agency that contributes to the emergence of value for common good.

Science and technology are not enough in addressing the climate emergency. In his critique of Western Christianity, Lynn White challenged to rethink our religion. Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ underlined the importance of ecological education in ecological conversion. I propose that a change in the way we read, interpret, and teach biblical, religious, and other authoritative texts will help us in meaning-making amid the planetary crisis. In this contribution, I will first examine the interrelation of climate change, psychospiritual health, and meaning-making through the Scriptures. Second, I will succinctly present some simple methodological advances in ecological biblical hermeneutics that can facilitate generating new ideas on the interrelationships between and among the divine, the humans, and the nonhuman/beyond-human creation in biblical and other texts. Finally, I will apply these methodologies on Romans 8:18-30 as a test case for alternative ecological insights and their practical implications as we navigate this post-COVID-19 world.

This article clarifies two choices at two different levels of analysis—that theologians make (often implicitly) in employing social science to clarify how social structures affect moral agency. The first is the choice of a general causal account of how all social structures “work,” where this article endorses the view provided by critical realist sociology. The second is the choice of some particular causal account of the functioning of a specific kind of social structure. It proposes a new definition that applies to all, not simply the most egregious sinful social structures that accounts for both the oppression of the marginalized and the complicity of the privileged. To illustrate the analysis, we end by examining three features important in the transformation of sinful social structures that have received inadequate attention in the literature of theological ethics: nonmoral cognitive categories, bodily practices, and the penalties for noncompliance.

This article examines Teresa of Avila’s articulation of and response to spiritual suffering in the Interior Castle. It applies a feminist hermeneutic to the text in order to locate the resources that contribute to Teresa’s resiliency in the face of this suffering. This approach to the text reveals that Teresa’s use of contemplative prayer and interactions with her community facilitate a direct engagement with her suffering so as to make it manageable. Her successful navigation of the spiritual journey allows her the opportunity to share her insights toward resiliency with her community by speaking honestly about her experience in her writings. This article’s approach to reading the Interior Castle lifts up Teresa’s experience as a potential resource for women today who may have difficulty locating a sense of agency in their own experiences of suffering.

Since its publication, Luis Laso de la Vega’s foundational text, Huei tlamahuiçoltica (1649), continues to influence Guadalupan devotion but has only recently been examined as a theological and pastoral work. Still missing from these treatments is a discussion of the significance of the text’s genre, hagiography. This paper continues to draw out the theological and pastoral depth of Huei tlamahuiçoltica, specifically as the first Guadalupan hagiography. Moreover, it argues for the text to be considered a communal hagiography of sixteenth-century Nahuas that seeks to shape Nahua-Christian identity through Guadalupan devotion.

This article constructively examines the seeming impasse between US Catholic feminist theologies and the Roman Catholic Curia. It proposes that a possible resource for “engaging the impasse” between them can be found in the contemplative processes and practices utilized by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) during the doctrinal investigation of the LCWR undertaken by the (then) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2009. Using a Catholic feminist decolonial lens of analysis, the article argues that there are resonances between the LCWR’s contemplative processes and the “path of conocimiento” found in the work of Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa. Both share the insight that careful listening to ourselves, “others” and the divine (albeit by different names) is one of the first steps toward building understanding between seemingly opposed entities. Together, they can serve as powerful resources for healing the divide between Catholic feminist theologies and the Roman Catholic Curia and, in so doing, offer hope to our often polarized and suffering world.

This article invites readers to consider certain questions too rarely asked: What are we doing when we consider or fail to consider something or someone? What implications, especially theological implications, does our considering or failing to consider have for ethics as reflection on our moral lives? Finally, will considering our considering help us to become more considerate human beings? Three major figures from the Christian tradition—Bernard Lonergan, Bernard of Clairvaux (author of De Consideratione), and Thomas Aquinas—help us to answer these questions in ways that urge us to consider not only their own words and ideas, but also those of others, especially ourselves. As teachers, they also lead us to ask how consideration might become a more frequent focus of education, broadly understood. And in closing, the reader is asked to consider the possibility that everyone, in their serious questioning, or considering, is “theologizing” in a way.

The USCCB statement resourcing lay ecclesial ministry relies on two biblical images; a mixed metaphor pairing an historical reality of the Pauline ecclesial co-worker and a Matthean parabolic narrative of day laborers. Examining this combined metaphor discloses how their tensions mirror the statement’s theological and pastoral divergences on the scope and authority of lay ministry leadership. The metaphor’s meaning and the statement’s text reinforce one another’s ambiguities enough that they can both highlight the vital ecclesial importance of lay ministry, or allow it to be interpreted in a clericalized way which undermines lay ministers’ value. This analysis is contextualized by pandemic-era stresses on lay ministers, even as there are new recognitions of their importance and value by Pope Francis and the synodal process. The status of these important ministers as true co-workers in the Pauline sense remains largely unrealized, highlighting the need for renewed theological and pastoral efforts to encourage their proper agency in the life of the Church.

Many theologians and philosophers have ignored or dismissed the crucial distinction between theodicies and defenses. The distinction was and is of theological and philosophical importance not only to avoid conflating crucial issues in accounts dealing with the goodness and power of God and the reality of evil, but also to getting the challenges of evil to belief in God rightly located. This article revisits the distinction I discussed more than forty years ago in “The Use and Abuse of Theodicy.” The present article analyzes problems in the rhetoric and logic of recent works and their concerns with structural and cultural (social) evil. It focuses on major titles in philosophical theology: Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors; Ross McCullough, Freedom and Sin; and Karen Kilby, God, Evil and the Limits of Theology. Along the way, it seeks to clarify some issues I have taken up, especially in The Evils of Theodicy.