Most people believe that animal agriculture for food production is permissible. At the same time, bestiality enjoys neither widespread social endorsement nor practice. It would be surprising, then, if it turned out that a commitment to the permissibility of one implied the permissibility of the other. This is the case that I make in this paper. Given the truth of some very plausible moral premises, I show that in a wide range of possible instantiations, if a social practice of raising animals for food is permissible, then so too is a social practice of raising animals for sex. While I don’t explicitly argue for this, my hope is that this compels readers to reject the permissibility of animal agriculture rather than endorse the social practice of bestiality.

The Catholic Church notably condemns all forms of artificial birth control and advocates natural family planning as the only morally licit means of spacing births. This teaching is presented as the quintessential pathway to the fullness of human sexuality, but many Catholics struggle with it, and the magisterium itself recognizes that this path is not an easy one to follow. This article uses recent developments in Catholic moral theology around the notion of structural sin to examine the structural constraints complicating ordinary Catholics’ pursuit of their tradition’s vision for marital sexuality, demonstrating that larger structural forces can considerably affect the perceived viability of Catholic teaching on contraception. As a result, the article highlights the importance of linking Catholic sexual ethics and social ethics to provide a more credible vision for a more compassionate approach to married life.

Gregory of Nyssa’s critiques of various forms of social injustice hinge on his rigorous theological anthropology. For Gregory, slavery, the accumulation of wealth, and the mistreatment of the poor are evil because they deny the freedom proper to human creatures created according to the divine Image. However, Gregory’s anthropology also contains, we will argue, a distinct account of the ways in which humanity’s difference from God – particularly its poverty and limitation – reveals important aspects of the particular and ultimately Christological mode in which finite humans imitate the infinitude God. The aim of this present essay is to articulate how both likeness and unlikeness to God – mirrors of God and mirrors of death – are integral to Gregory’s theological anthropology as it pertains to various forms of social critique.

The philosophical positing of the necessity of God implies that there is a responsibility placed upon the Church to remind all humankind of our contingency and to speak of God’s presence especially in times of national and international crisis. Recent experience has exposed a certain silence from the Churches and notably from their leadership – notable examples would be the Covid-19 pandemic and the possible perils of continuing conflicts. How does theology prosper an appropriate sense of development and response to changes in culture – both through individuals and wider movements? How can it be made clear that theology is far from being an obsolete discipline in contemporary culture?

This article contrasts the teaching on just war as presented by the 2000 document, ‘Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church’ (Moscow Patriarchate), with the insights provided by a similar social document issued in 2020 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, ‘For the Life of the World: Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church’. The article argues that whenever religion is instrumentalised to justify the political ambitions of church and secular leaders, and especially when they are used as the main driving force behind military conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, it is the prophetic role of theologians and scholars to show that religion offers resources to deconstruct the weaponisation of Christian faith for political gain.

Belarus is one of the least religious societies of the former Soviet Union. Nevertheless, two Christian denominations – the Belarusian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church – do have a specific impact on social discourse, be it through facilitating the discourse on conservative moral values or linking their political and societal strategies to their Russian or Polish mother churches. However, neither of the churches has actively participated in civil protests criticizing the political regime. The protests before and after the Belarusian presidential election in August 2020 affected the churches and seriously challenged their self-perception. This article shows how the churches turned out to be heterogeneous structures with different levels of theological awareness in political crisis, civil self-consciousness, and the ability to mobilize. These findings and the fact that religion became a visible element of the 2020 protests significantly questions the concept of the church as a homogeneous and state loyal institution. Combining both empirical and theological approaches makes it possible to reassess the role of religion in post-Soviet social and political processes.

There has been a resurgence of interest in Mister Rogers, the person behind Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The interest goes beyond stories of a famous television personality. There is a sense that Mister Rogers is needed today. U. S. culture is experiencing high levels of fear and anxiety, divisions and hostilities. Mister Rogers offers more than 'niceness' but a demanding theology. This theology offers tools for both diagnosing and treating our contemporary situation. Rogers believes that people have a need for acceptance and love, a vulnerability that is fundamental to our humanity. When this need is not met, people can turn in on themselves or lash out at others. Their fear can flow out into society and make it increasingly hostile. Rogers' treatment begins with the principle of specialness. People need to know that they are loved and accepted, and the affirmation of specialness meets this need. The principle also calls people to recognize the specialness in others, to love as they need to be loved. Rogers’ principle sets in motion a system of circulating love. Instead of unleashing hostility, Rogers' call to specialness unleashes empathy so more and more people are brought into the dynamics of love.

The essay argues that a Catholic tradition of natural law and its conception of human rights depend on the continuing life of institutions that stand apart from and sustain standards of justice independent from the modern state and its corresponding economy. Christians contribute to a defense of human rights precisely as members of their Churches, through their social and institutional presence across the globe. Catholic social thought deals with matters of human rights from within a tradition of natural law that assumes a common human end, a common good. This ecclesiological tradition of the human good is precisely what Catholics have to offer in a context of pluralism. The Church has a task of sustaining institutions where its practical rationality about human goods offers a practical alternative in a world where the self-interest of states and purely economic interests win the day.