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Essays

In Christ’s Name: Christian Zionism and the Liquidation of the Gaza Ghetto

The Western inability to recognize Palestinians as fully human is often attributed to Islamophobia, framed as a post-9/11 construct that portrays Muslim violence as a threat to the liberal West. However, this perspective remains superficial. To truly understand the roots of Western hatred, we must look deeper—beyond contemporary narratives—into the ideological foundations of Western thought.

From Teaching My Class to Catholic Social Teaching: Reflections on Extending the Reach of Nonviolence

It is imperative to respect the claims of conscience behind the pacifist convictions often associated with the rejection of the modern state. But if Catholic social teaching is going to incorporate nonviolence more fully, it also must develop the connection between nonviolence and modern politics.

Beyond Blood

One alternative to a disorienting retributive hierarchy … is repentance, offered to the living, not the dead. This is the honest acceptance of one’s own sin that leads to a turning from the destructive habits of assigning greater or lesser guilt to others. The activity of repentance, in turn, becomes the basis for the possibility of reconciliation between God and offender, between offender and the offended.

Some Resources from the Margins to Center Nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching

The notion of quality of life, an extended conception of common good, and the solidarity with the victims can move nonviolence from the margins of Catholic Social Teaching to its center.

PTNCON25: Call for Seminar Streams

The Political Theology Network invites proposals for seminar streams for PTNCON25 to be held in Nashville, TN.

Citizens of Heaven

Heavenly citizenship for Paul is certainly not about escaping social responsibility within this life. The path that follows Christ is a path that moves one’s focus from earthly things to heavenly.

The Practice of Nonviolence and Catholic Social Teaching: Exploring the Intrinsic Link

The virtues and practices include confronting the issue rather than the person, practicing forgiveness, tolerance, and reconciliation, embracing the enemy as a child of God, and protecting human dignity and the common good. It explores how the combination of CST and nonviolence can address human actions that sustain marginalization, racism, conflicts, oppression, domination, and diverse forms of social exclusion.

Lived Liturgy? A Call for Papers from Catholic Re-Visions and the Journal of Global Catholicism

In turning away from more abstract debates about liturgy to those that center on its lived and material dimensions, we hope to enliven a conversation about ‘lived liturgy’ to consider what practices uphold, challenge, or fail to account for the global political order.

A Life of Virtue Demands Disruptive Moments of Awareness

We all experience our own wildernesses in our lives… What we do with the experience is what matters. Do we use it as a foundation to be altruistic in how we live our lives, or do we end up embodying the same mindset of those who hurt us?

The “Small Things” and Social Change

[P]romoting justice and defending human dignity need not only hinge on grand self-sacrificial gestures…. That social structures are sustained by social practices suggests that the everyday is consequential too and dispels the notion that smaller or more mundane acts are too paltry and thus powerless to effect the kind of structural change justice requires.

The Freedom of the Spirit

The Spirit is the decisive factor in any ethical and political existence that would strive for truth, for justice, and for a mode of persuasion that can challenge the world’s assumptions of what is possible without rhetorically pulverizing those who do not yet agree or pretending that we are better or wiser than we really are.