Church and choices: a qualitative exploration of lived sexual values in young adult women

This qualitative research article discusses three crucial encounters in the sexuality education experiences of young adult women who were raised Catholic by drawing from the analyzed interview data of 15 such women. Using the framework of lived theologies, the author argues that understanding the impact of these encounters helps theological scholars better understand the way that young adults from religious backgrounds make decisions about relationships and sexuality. The young adult women interviewed for this research highlight a defensive posture in sexual decision-making that reflects poor preparation for the realities of relationships and a lack of opportunities to clarify and specify their own sexual values prior to these occasions.     

Space Exploration: Current Thinking on the Notion of Otherness

Space appears today as one of the major limits of human knowledge and experience. It offers a challenge for philosophy and theology to offer answers to the questions of the other, of origins, of faith, of image of God.     

Disrupting the trans-versus-Catholic dichotomy: An example from a Canadian elementary school policy

ABSTRACT

Background: Mainstream media is increasingly reporting on the relationships between Catholic and trans identities in parochial schools, particularly with regard to gendered washroom use. With greater numbers of trans youth coming out at younger ages, significant educational policy changes are being considered around how Catholic schools can or should include trans youth.

Method: This study applies trans and queer theologies to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in investigating the Wilson case, which was the first known instance of a Catholic school including some affirming policy provisions for trans youth. The authors additionally collected and coded 12 news articles from a variety of platforms to discern and discuss the theological arguments in the public square against more fulsome trans student inclusion in Catholic schools.

Results: The authors found two related theological arguments against full inclusion, namely the notion that (1) Gender is God-given and therefore cannot be chosen or changed, and (2) That transgressive bodies are not sacred parts of the divine gender plan.

Conclusion: Trans theology allowed the authors to disrupt both of the theological claims advanced by the Catholic educators quoted in the Wilson case. This created rich, imaginative space in which to reconsider the relationships between Catholic and trans identities, namely by not arranging them in a binary. Significance for policy-making in parochial schools is discussed.     

Vocation and encounter: A Scandinavian theological reflection on everyday life as Christians

Martin Luther turned from understanding vocation as a Christian praxis of leaving the world to understanding it as a praxis within everyday life. In accordance with such an understanding, historically, vocation in the Scandinavian countries was central for organizing society as a whole. This article discusses a contemporary use of vocation where there is a tension between communal and individual aspects in a Scandinavian context characterized by democracy, gender equality, and migration. I then propose a focus on vocation and encounter.     

Vocation for planetary citizenship: Lutheran liberal arts education in the Anthropocene

The focus question of this article is, “In what ways should Lutheran higher education's teaching on vocation be revised to include the fact that we are living in a natural world massively impacted by human behavior, the Anthropocene Era?” This can be broken down into two more explicit questions: “What is the role of liberal arts education in such a changed context?” and “What resources in the Lutheran tradition can contribute to preparing students to become effective sustainability leaders?” The thesis of this article is that Lutheran liberal arts education, to foster planetary citizenship, must move students from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric understanding of vocation, preparing them to become leaders for a sustainable, interfaith society. This change can be accomplished by reaffirming the value of the liberal arts to foster sustainability education and retrieving Luther's understanding of creation to elicit wonder and appreciation of the natural world.     

Leaving to Love: Filipina Caregivers and The Queer Kinship of Transnational Childcare

This article considers the affective and psychosocial dimensions of transnational childcare. It offers a transdisciplinary engagement with the subjectivity of Filipina caregivers, suggesting that the ways in which their love and care are split across borders and nations “queers” conceptions of family, childhood, and maternal obligation. Specifically, queer theories of kinship and diaspora are employed to offer an affective reading of Canada’s Caregiver Program. D. W. Winnicott’s theory of the “good enough” mother is also engaged in an effort to complicate narratives of maternal obligation, neglect, and love.     

How individual was conscience in the early-modern period? Observations on the development of Catholic moral theology

This article investigates how the notion of individual conscience has to be understood within the early-modern development of Catholic moral theology. It highlights that 16th-century Catholic theologians continued to understand conscience mainly in Thomist terms as a rational judgment. Yet they also came to investigate more deeply questions of intention and individual circumstances that might interfere with the perfect execution of moral reasoning. Particular emphasis is given to the question of probabilism and whether this new method of analyzing moral agency provided a stepping stone towards a more individualized conception of conscience, as some intellectual historians have contended. The article argues that whilst probabilism sharpened the awareness for problems of conscience, this development cannot be disconnected from the culture of counsel of conscience, inscribed into the fundamentally Thomist definition of it.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE KRAKÓW SCHOOL

This article outlines the contributions of the Kraków School to the field of science and religion. The Kraków School is a group of philosophers, scientists, and theologians who belong to the milieu of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. The members of the group are engaged in inquiries pertaining to the relationship between theology and various sciences, in particular cosmology, evolutionary theory, and neuroscience. The article includes a presentation of the historical background of the School, as well as its main original contributions pertaining to the history of the interactions between science and religion, the rationality and mathematicity of the universe, theology of science, and the role of logic in theology.     

MATRIX THINKING: AN ADAPTATION AT THE FOUNDATION OF HUMAN SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND ART

Intrigued by Robinson and Southgate's 2010 work on “entering a semiotic matrix,” we expand their model to include the juxtaposition of all signs, symbols, and mental categories, and to explore the underpinnings of creativity in science, religion, and art. We rely on an interdisciplinary review of human sentience in archaeology, evolutionary biology, the cognitive science of religion, and literature, and speculate on the development of sentience in response to strong selection pressure on the hominin evolutionary line, leaving us the “lone survivors” of complex, multiple lines of physical and cultural evolution. What we call Matrix Thinking—the creative driver of human sentience—has important cognitive and intellectual features, but also equally important characteristics traced to our intense sociability and use of emotionality in vetting rational models. Scientist, theologian, and artist create new cultural knowledge within a social context even if alone. They are rewarded by emotional validation from group members, and guided by the ever present question, “Does it feel right?”     

Advocacy,Political Participation,and Citizenship: Lutheran Contributions to Public Theology1

Abstract : Martin Luther never developed a political theory, but his theology does inform the way Christians live in society, making it both public and political. Luther's “two kingdom theory” often has been misinterpreted to justify passivity and obedience toward civil authorities. Under closer examination, however, his theology applies to the everyday practices of politics, economics, and religious affairs. In the context of nation‐building, a Lutheran theology fosters citizenship not only as individual rights and responsibilities, but as active participation in civil society.