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.

The tension between John Neville Figgis’s pluralist political theory and his defence of the truth claims of Christianity in the public square makes it difficult to assess the social implications of his personalism. This article considers Figgis’s theories of classical pluralism and corporate personhood and how they relate to his theological anthropology. God makes humans for membership in group persons, paradigmatically the Church, and also other associations that should be free to pursue their corporate ends and govern themselves. The just state coordinates and ensures peace between group and individual persons and allows them to freely play as they pursue the good. This perspective on the modern state and free associations offers an alternative to the modern tendency towards state centralization and individual atomism. But Figgis’s conceptions of freedom, love, corporate personhood and the state introduce a challenge for the contemporary reader. He implies that the state should be a neutral arbiter among individuals and groups. Joseph Ratzinger argues for the good of Christians living and enacting laws and policies that reflect their Christian consciences. Figgis’s Christian personalism informs and challenges Ratzinger’s social theory.

This paper sets out Joseph Ratzinger’s Christocentric theology of creation as a counter to the increasingly popular naturalist movement anti-natalism. Paradoxically, anti-natalism is parasitic on the doctrine of creation and yet, at the same time, denies creation, for, as Ratzinger argues, the doctrine of creation affirms both the human person and the natural world within which she lives; creation is necessary for self-acceptance. Furthermore, creation and redemption go together. It is with and through the human person, not without, that the natural world is brought to its proper end.

Catherine Pickstock's After Writing sets out to provide an account of liturgical time, subjectivity, and worship which is capable of surpassing the deconstruction of each of these in modernity and postmodernity. Her account of the way in which each of these is treated in the old Roman Rite, however, accentuates elements of ambiguity and deferral which erase two significant elements of traditional Catholic treatments of eschatology. The iterative element of growth and progress in holiness and Christian virtue is subsumed by continuous emphasis on ambiguity and deferral, while the promise of real eschatological novelty - that God seen now only in signs will be seen later face to face - is dissolved by an excessive valorisation of liturgical presence in the mode of signs. In order to avoid a postmodern reduction, then, it is better to embrace the liturgical vision of Joseph Ratzinger, in which liturgy and eschatology are both separated and united as different modalities of the presence of Christ, in which temporal liturgical life not only participates in but is directed towards a greater future fulfilment in the eschatological presence of God.

In this article, the concept of “cognitive dissonance” is used to explain why Pope Benedict XVI resigned, indicating that a massive clash occurred between the theological ideas Joseph Ratzinger holds and the actual situation in which both the Christian faith and the church find themselves. For Ratzinger, the Christian faith is in the first instance about conversion, and the church is called to be a beacon of light and truth, inviting the fallen modern world to conversion. The same church, however, has been weakened by scandals. In the analysis presented in this article, it is precisely because the church closed in on itself to protect itself from a world perceived as inimical that it forgot that it itself is in need of conversion before it can call the world to convert.