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Assisted Death: Historical, Moral And Theological Perspectives Of End Of Life Options, Catherine Bando

LMU Theses and Dissertations

The paper explores historical positions on suicide and philosophical, theological, and moral positions on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. In 1900, most people died from infectious diseases, which have relatively short periods of morbid decline. With advances in the biomedical sciences, people are living longer, and most people die from chronic diseases, which are usually accompanied by prolonged periods of morbid decline. In addition to living longer, people today are generally more individualist and seek methods to control many aspects of life. While assisted death is rarely used, it represents a means to control end-of-life suffering. The paper demonstrates that there …

The Right To Religious Freedom - A Theological Comment, Hille Haker

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Every time I cross the border to the United States, I thank God I am a legal immigrant, white, and a citizen of the European Union and Germany, coming from a country and entering another where I expect my rights to be protected. The laws of the land may in part differ from the European ones, and even clash with some of my religious values and convictions. But since morality and positive laws never entirely coincide, the laws of a nation-state challenge me to reevaluate my convictions as much as I will challenge the rightness of some of the United …

The Unity Of The Virtues In A Missionary Key, Andrew J. Kim

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The thesis of the unity of the virtues—one must possess all of the virtues to possess even one of them—was upheld in different forms by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. However, contemporary moralists almost universally decry this thesis as distorting the nature of virtue as it is materialized in the lives and actions of ordinary people. Unfortunately, academic discourse regarding the unity of the virtues has tended to be either entirely theoretical or narrowly limited to particular individuals or groups as “test cases” regarding the validity of the thesis. It is both significant and reinvigorating, therefore, that in his apostolic …

"Justice And Mercy": The Question Of Discordancy, The Development Of Doctrine And African Catholicism, John Segun Odeyemi

Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium

The call for Justice and Mercy in the teachings of Pope Francis raises critical questions across theological and secular contexts. In the light of the Pontiff’s call for a Jubilee year of Mercy, in Evangelii Gaudium, and references in his teachings to these themes, I intend to investigate the theological meaning of Justice and Mercy and to reconcile these with what Pope Francis means. Then proffer as a concrete example, discordancy in Africa as an opportunity for a doctrinal and magisterial definition on the use of condoms as prophylactics to show a Church that acts mercifully and does justice.

Black And Brown Pauls: A Pauline Case Of Racial Profiling; A Hermeneutical Reading Of Acts 21:27‐40a And 22:23‐29 And The Reality Of The African American And Hispanic Communities In The United States, Dempsey Rosales Acosta

Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium

The present study analyzes the socio-historical context and setting narrated in the canonical episode of Paul’s arrest and his treatment in Jerusalem according to the narrative of Acts 21:27-40a and 22:23-29. The pericopes become the fundamental platform through which it is possible to present both a hermeneutical and theological interpretation of the liabilities and ultimate consequences of racial profiling, especially when it is exercised by the civil authorities, an institutionalized power, or a general culture. The diachronic and synchronic exegetical analysis of the pericopes are combined with the methodological approaches of cognitive semantics and the practical theology that lead to …

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum: October 2017, Karin Maag, Lee Hardy, Matthew Cooke, Bruce Buursma

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum (2002- )

Articles
3 - From the President: What Can Catholics and Protestants Learn From One Another Today? by Jul Medenblik
4 - Reformed and Catholic Worship – Are There Any Points of Convergence? by Karin Maag
7 - Learning about the Lord’s Supper from Roman Catholics by Ronald Feenstra
10 - Christian Ethics, Protestant and Catholic: 500 Years After the Reformation by Matt Tuininga
13 - The Meaning of Martha: Catholics and Protestants on Work and Vocation by Lee Hardy
16 - 500 Years Later: A Conversation Between Catholics and Protestants by Matt Cooke
18 - John Bolt Retires by Bruce …

Contested Moral Issues In Contemporary African Catholicism: Theological Proposals For A Hermeneutics Of Multiplicity And Inclusion, Stan Chu Ilo

Journal of Global Catholicism

Drawing upon the broad work of Vatican II and Pope Francis’ Evangelicum Gaudium the article proposes how a hermeneutic of multiplicity and inclusion could help hold in balance the tension between tradition and innovation, universal principles and specific contextual application for Catholicism in Africa. Among the issues addressed are cultural relativism, natural law theory, and polygamy.

Image And Virtue In Ambrose Of Milan, Andrew Miles Harmon

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation analyzes Ambrose of Milan’s trinitarian theology and doctrine of human action and argues that a visual logic—that works disclose nature—animates both. Ambrose’s trinitarian theology, on the one hand, trades in scriptural proofs that emphasize the tangible works (opera) of the Son as relevatory of his divinity and indicative of his shared, invisible power with the Father. While Ambrose differs from his Latin and Greek predecessors, he takes up controverted texts in his Christological reflection, many of which are borrowed from anti-monarchian and anti-homoian debates in the several generations prior. To show Ambrose’s consonance with the pre- and pro- …

Tolkien’S Sub-Creation And Secondary Worlds: Implications For A Robust Moral Psychology, Nathan S. Lefler

Journal of Tolkien Research

In his work, “On Fairy Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien offers a detailed account of what he calls Sub-creation, along with the corresponding notions of Primary and Secondary Worlds. In this paper, I suggest that Tolkien’s concept of Sub-creation can be creatively appropriated in the realm of moral psychology and there applied to the fundamental relationship between self and other – or in Judeo-Christian terms, “I” and my neighbor. Through appeal to Tolkien’s thought and to the wider Christian theological tradition, and in constructive tension with the contemporary psychoanalytic attention to “intersubjectivity,” I attempt to elucidate the power and appropriate …

Contemporary Jesuit Epistemological Interests, James G. Murphy

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Apart from an orientation to and interest in the discernment of spirits as laid out in St Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, there does not exist a Jesuit epistemology as such. Compared to the numbers of Jesuit systematic theologians, scripture scholars, metaphysicians, and ethicists, there have been few Jesuit epistemologists.2 In metaphysics, Jesuits have been Thomist or Suarezian, even Platonist. In ethics, they have ranged from proportionalist through deontologist to virtue ethicist. No similar distinctive Jesuit presence is to be found in epistemology....

2017 Graduate Theological Studies Journal And Newsletter

Graduate Theological Studies Journal and Newsletter

Graduate Theological Studies is published by the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA.

Mehr Als Die Weitergabe Von Genen: Eine Neue Ethik Der Elternschaft, Hille Haker

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In den letzten fünfzig Jahren hat sich die Weise, Eltern zu werden, so radikal verändert wie vielleicht noch nie zuvor in der Geschichte. Was bedeutet das für eine theologische Ethik der Elternschaft heute?

White Supremacy, The Election Of Donald Trump And The Challenge To Theology, Susan Ross

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article is a transcript of an interview conducted by Susan Ross on 12 January, 2017, with Professor Bryan Massingale. Following the election of Donald Trump to the US Presidency, there was a surge in the number of racial and ethnic attacks on minorities across the country, and an increased concern over the place of minorities in the United States. During the previous two years, a number of shootings of black men and women had attracted much attention and protest, particularly around the Black Lives Matter movement which began after the killing of Michael Brown in the summer of 2014. …

Sloth: America's Ironic Structural Vice, Conor M. Kelly, Christopher D. Jones

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Individualism is a popular cultural trope in the United States, often touted for its promotion of industriousness and rejection of laziness. This essay argues that, ironically, America's brand of individualism actually promotes a more fundamental form of the very vice it purports to oppose. To make this case, the essay defines the unique form of individualism in the United States and then retrieves the classical definition of sloth as a vice against charity (not diligence), contrasting Aquinas and Barth with Weber to demonstrate that this peculiarly American individualist impulse undermines civic charity by reaping the benefits of civic relationships while …

The Salvation Of The Cosmos: Benedict Xvi's Eschatology And Its Relevance For The Current Ecological Crisis, Jeremiah Vallery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has elements of a cosmic eschatology embedded in his theological oeuvre that have not heretofore been extensively systematized. This dissertation fills this gap by contextualizing Benedict’s cosmic eschatology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, examining his Logos theology and his view on the fate of the cosmos, exploring his cosmic liturgy, and evaluating his concept of human ecology and pneumatology. Benedict insufficiently links his cosmic eschatology to his papal teachings on the environment; however, his cosmic eschatology can be developed in fruitful ways. After providing a thorough articulation of Benedict’s cosmic eschatology, I offer my own …

The Spirit Of A Weak God: Reimagining Divine Providence After The Critique Of Ontotheology, Wendy Theresa Crosby

Dissertations

The question of this dissertation is whether and how divine providence can function within the framework of a weak God theology. While theories of divine providence traditionally depend on a powerful God capable of bringing all to a good end, I argue that providence remains essential to Christian hope and participation even if God is rethought as weak. This dissertation develops a concept of providence within weak God theology through an understanding of the Holy Spirit which is non-totalizing and dependent on creation's response. Therefore, providence empowers human action rather than ensuring victory despite our actions.

The dissertation begins by …

Transcending Liberalism – Avoiding Communitarianism: Human Rights And Dignity In Bioethics, Hille Haker

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Contemporary bioethics is caught in the Scylla of political liberalism that presupposes a concept of a sovereign and independent individual, thereby more and more promoting a “consumer patient” in the realm of medicine, and the Charybdis of communitarian ethics, here spelled out as care ethics, arguing for the acknowledgment of embeddedness and interdependence and interpreting care as a right and a responsibility. Both approaches, I argue, fall short to provide moral criteria that define the scope or limits of the rights and responsibilities, and they both lack a comprehensive understanding of the moral agency. I argue that the concept of …

Die Genveränderung Von Embryonen Bürdet Kindern Eine Unzumutbare Last Auf, Hille Haker

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Die Forschung an menschlichen Embryonen unterliegt in den meisten Staaten einer besonderen Kontrolle, die auch in den bestehenden internationalen Rechtsinstrumenten festgelegt ist. Angesichts der nun möglichen Keimbahnveränderungen durch das sogenannte «Gene Editing» oder «Genome Editing» ist eine öffentliche Diskussion aber nicht nur dringend notwendig, sondern überfällig. Die Wissenschaftsethik muss dabei eine grössere Rolle spielen, als dies derzeit der Fall ist. Meine Überlegungen in diesem Artikel betreffen ausschliesslich die reproduktive Anwendung, die ich einer ethischen Analyse unterziehe. Darüber hinaus steht jedoch eine Diskussion auch zu den anderen Anwendungsfeldern aus, so etwa zur Embryonenforschung insgesamt und zur embryonalen Stammzellforschung, zum Einsatz des …

Jesus And The World Of Grace, 1968-2016: An Idiosyncratic Theological Memoir, William L. Portier

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This article offers an impressionistic look back over the past five decades, from 1968 to 2016, in Catholic theology in the United States. At the heart of this story are Christology, the world of grace, and their relationship. This memoir unfolds in three parts: “Running on Empty, 1968–1980”; “Jesus and the World of Grace, 1980–2016”; “Can Liberal Catholics Come Back?” It identifies the most neuralgic question left to us from this period: How is Christ related to the world of grace?

Review — Morality Truly Christian, Truly African: Foundational, Methodological, And Theological Considerations, By Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, C.S.Sp., Alex Mikulich

Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Moral Theologian In The Church: A Proposal In Light Of Amoris Laetitia, Conor M. Kelly

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia recast pastoral decisions in terms of conscience and discernment and asked moral theology to do the same. Such a request invites reforms for moral theology, requiring a shift from the traditional role of the moral theologian as an external judge to a more personalist role as a counselor for conscience. This change entails prioritizing the process of discernment ahead of the definition of rules, specifying the place of the ideal in Catholic morality, and attending to the ethics of ordinary life.

Compromise Or Quit Medical Practice: Is There Another Option For Catholic Health Care Professionals, John Morris

Conference on Philosophy and Theology

More and more, medical practitioners are being told that they must either compromise their beliefs and provide whatever services patients demand or they should quit medical practice. This paper will explore other options that would offer a more just and respectful solution for our pluralistic society.

The Soul Of The Drone Operator: The Place Of The Cardinal Virtues In Drone Warfare, Lazarus Ejike Onuh

Theology Graduate Theses

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter

1. The Value of Human Life and the Paradox of War
2. The Nuts and Bolts of Drones
3. The Moral Landscape of Drone Warfare and Its Implication on the Just War Theory
4. The Cardinal Virtues and the Drone Operator
5. The Victimhood of the Drone Operator
6. Beyond Moral Injury; Soul Wound and Repair

Conclusion

Bibliography

Theological Foundations For Devotion To The Hearts Of Jesus And Mary According To St. John Eudes (1601-1680), Robert Fastiggi

Marian Studies

St. John Eudes united devotion to Mary with devotion to her Son, Jesus Christ. For Eudes, the hearts of Jesus and Mary are inseparable. He recognized that the union of their two hearts is the most intimate union that ever existed. The heart of Jesus dwells in his Mother’s heart, forming a perfect union of the two hearts as one mystical heart. Eudes promoted the Feast of the Admirable Heart of Mary and the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to express the mystical union of the two hearts.

The Return Of The Prophetic Ministry Of The Western Church Within The Context Of Liberation Theology And The Prophets, Cedric D. Starr

Life of the Scholar Multidisciplinary Conference

While there may still be churches in the West that take up the prophetic call against injustice their voices are the minority. Generally speaking, the prophetic church in Western Christendom is dead. Its prophetic voice has become mute. Its prophetic vision has diminished. Its prophetic call has vanished from the ears of its members. The Western Church has lost its prophetic role in the Global World. The prophets of the West have vanished. However, the prophetic call has been taken up by a new church tradition that rises upward from the ruin of oppression. The Southern Church of the developing …

"Puritan Hypocrisy" And "Conservative Catholicity" : How Roman Catholic Clergy In The Border States Interpreted The U.S. Civil War., Carl C. Creason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how Roman Catholic clergy in the Border States—Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland—interpreted the United States Civil War. Overall, it argues that prelates and priests from the region viewed the war through a religious lens informed by their Catholic worldview. Influenced by their experiences with anti-Catholicism and nativism as well as the arguments of the Catholic apologist movement, the clergy interpreted the war as a product of the ill-effects of Protestantism in the country. In response, the clergy argued that if more Americans had practiced Catholicism then the war could and would have been avoided. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates …

Driven By God: Active Justification And Definitive Sanctification In The Soteriology Of Bavinck, Comrie, Witsius, And Kuyper., Jae-Eun Park

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

For more than two millennia believers have struggled with the antinomy of God’s absolute sovereignty over and man’s ultimate responsibility in justification and sanctification. For at least the past several hundred years theologians have used some version of the terms “active justification” and “definitive sanctification” in an attempt to illuminate this mystery. However, in the past decade scho lars have begun to criticize these concepts, saying that they are unsupported in Scripture, lead to theological confusion, and are of no practical benefit to believers. Through the work of theologians from the broader Dutch Reformed tradition, especially Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), Alexander …

New Evangelization, New Families, And New Singles, Jana Marguerite Bennett

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

When Pope Francis issued his calls for a synod in 2013, he stated that he wanted bishops to discuss the “pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization,” surely also a link to the recent calls for a “New Evangelization.” Evangelization has long been tied to Catholic understandings of family. Parents are deemed the original source of Christian evangelization and witness for their children, and thus the family is assumed to be at the center of any kind of broader evangelization that happens. It makes sense, then, that family becomes a central topic of conversation for bishops in …

Catholic Moral Traditions And Energy Ethics For The Twenty-First Century, Erin Lothes Biviano, David Cloutier, Elaine Padilla, Christiana Z. Peppard, Jame Schaefer

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Intertextual Reception: Re-Thinking The Concept Of Revelation In Light Of Divine Immanence And The Dignity Of The Person And The Cosmos, Thomas Hughson

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.