William Blake’s theology is expressed in a strange, idiosyncratic idiom that is difficult to pin down. Sometimes Blake is even read as an anti-Christian, proto-Nietzschean thinker. However, in 1910, Chesterton noted Blake’s unusual ‘tenderness’ toward the Catholic faith and even suggested that he was already on the path toward Catholicism. In this paper, I present an interpretation of Blake’s theology, focusing on his early work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and on the ‘fetters’ that he attributes to Milton, implying that he is free of them. I argue that Blake is a sincere Christian – and, as Chesterton suggested, far closer to Catholicism than one might expect. Blake’s profound and insightful reflection on the epistemological and psychological effects of original sin forge a middle way, akin to that of Catholicism, between a ‘Pelagian’ belief in the ability of human beings to redeem themselves through their own efforts and a Calvinist insistence on humanity’s total postlapsarian depravity.

In De ente et essentia, Thomas Aquinas states unambiguously that the essence of a composite substance is comprised of both form and matter. Some Thomistic interpreters conclude from this that the death of the human body entails the loss of matter from the essence, so that the subsisting soul possesses an essence fundamentally different from that of a living human being. This article demonstrates that such a reading is mistaken. By reconstructing Aquinas’ threefold distinction of matter and his account of essence, it shows that while prime and designated matter are lost at death, common matter continues to pertain to the soul’s essence. Consequently, even after its separation from the body, the soul retains an act of existence in and through a human essence and so constitutes the continued existence of a human being in a real ontological sense, even if such an existence is partial and imperfect in virtue of being subject to privation. Thus, Aquinas’ account of matter and essence is incompatible with certain corruptionist accounts of essence and establishes a firm metaphysical foundation for survivalism.

In 1962, Fr Emmanuel Doronzo – a towering figure in preconciliar neo-Thomism – published a seminary textbook containing an 11-page Nota examining whether it can be said Mary belongs proprie ad ordinem sacerdotalem – properly to the sacerdotal order. His answer was yes: Mary can be said to have exercised ministerium proprie sacerdotale – a properly sacerdotal ministry – namely, a unique form of diaconate to Christ the priest.

Far from speculative novelty, Fr Doronzo’s Nota stood within a long-standing tradition – emerging alongside the feast of Mary’s Presentation – attributing to her the grace of Holy Orders. This tradition is reflected across papal teaching, a 7th-century mosaic in the Lateran, authorized devotions, the spirituality of the Sulpicians, approved hymns for the Divine Office, and – arguably – within Lumen Gentium.

Given the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s invitation for continued study on the female diaconate, this long-neglected strand of Mariology warrants fresh attention. Across the centuries, Mary is portrayed as possessing Holy Orders non-sacramentally, by divine prerogative, analogous to her prevenient reception of baptismal grace at the Immaculate Conception. Mary’s plenitude of grace may therefore offer a historically grounded and theologically coherent rationale for reflection on the diaconate’s openness to women – in fidelity to legitimate ecclesiastical authority.

In this paper, I explore the poetic virtue of filmmaking. In the first part, I look at the virtue of art more generally, drawing on Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s Aquinas-inspired conception of poetic virtue. In the rest of the paper, I then map Maritain’s poetic virtue onto the artform of the moving image, its processes of production and reception. Here, I show how poetic intuition is conceived by filmmakers such as David Lynch and translated into the realities of filmmaking in the Sci-Fi mystery thriller, The Silent Messenger, in which I was involved in as producer and performer. Enlisting the help of film philosopher Alain Badiou and film phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack, I claim that for the poetic virtue of film to come into full presence, both filmmaker and viewer need to take responsibility for their moral capacity for gaze. It is only when the viewer loses themselves (their self) in the shared sight of the filmmaker, and the artist respects the audience’s own intellectual creativity, that film can teach us that seeing is always a relational enterprise, one that brings our human relationships – in all its tragedy and beauty – into shared vision.

Contemporary theological engagement with artificial intelligence (AI) has been dominated by applied ethics, focusing on bias, surveillance, and governance. This approach often treats algorithms as external instruments subject to moral regulation. This article argues that predictive systems must be understood as formative environments that shape attention, imagination, and desire through patterned repetition and the strategic management of salience. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas’s account of habitus and the doctrine of the invisibilis missio of the Holy Spirit, I propose that certain algorithmic architectures function as rival ecologies of habituation. These systems pre-structure deliberation by compressing the temporal interval between stimulus and assent and reinforcing probabilistic continuity with the past. Against this extractive economy of attention, sanctification is interpreted not as self-optimisation but as the Spirit’s infusion of charity, which reorders love and restores the temporal spaciousness required for mature freedom. By situating AI theology within pneumatology rather than metaphysical speculation about machine agency, the article reframes the central question: not whether AI can think, but how predictive systems participate in the formation of human desire. It offers a Thomistic grammar for discerning the limits of prediction and articulating a theological account of freedom in an age of algorithmic mediation.

This essay proposes that the relationship between synodality and sacramental participation runs deep – so deep that one cannot be understood apart from the other. This is to say that there is no synodality apart from an understanding of synodality’s sacramental foundations and its own sacramental character and that the economy of sacramental grace cannot be fully realized by and within the ecclesial community without its fuller integration of synodal journeying together.

Regarding proofs for the existence of God, two things are well known of St John Henry Newman. First, he was chary about aspects of the Christian Evidences, a great accumulation of Christian apologetics in which Paley’s writings occupied a central place. Second, that he favoured an argument from conscience as ‘a proof common to all, to high and low’. This paper examines what might have been behind Newman’s convictions. It argues that metaphysical and epistemological emphases of early modern philosophy had semantic repercussions for ‘standard’ apologetics such as St Thomas’ Five Ways. In a new social imaginary, they suffer distortion and lose vitality as they begin to be reprogrammed to operate according to modern epistemological canons. Similarly, Paleyan arguments from design as they appear in the Christian Evidences were built on an evidential standard perhaps notionally compelling but in reality false to how a person really comes to conviction about belief in God. In the end, this paper argues that there is an odd kinship between Newman’s argument from conscience and St Thomas’ Five Ways, if these latter are read in their intended medieval light rather than in a modern light.

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.

In Sources of Christian Ethics, Servais Pinckaers submits that, contrary to the presumed disjunction between Scholastic theology and mystical spirituality, a harmony historically existed between the two. In support of Pinckaers’ claim, this study proposes that such a harmony may be found between the theological writings of Thomas Aquinas and Catherine of Siena. One key place of convergence is their respective treatments of charity. Christ’s charity figures prominently in the accounts of both Thomas and Catherine, who each describe its pedagogic and exemplary efficacy in relation to the charity of the baptized. When treating the effects of the Redemption, Thomas emphasizes the exemplary efficacy of Christ’s charity to elicit our charity. Similarly for Catherine, Christ’s charity – displayed emblematically by his Blood – enkindles a reciprocal charity in the soul who contemplates it. Furthermore, Thomas and Catherine conceive of charity as the foundation of the moral life, describing it as the ‘form’ of the virtues and the essence of spiritual perfection. Examining these accounts, drawn primarily from the Summa and Dialogue, yields insight into charity’s fundamental place in the theology of Aquinas and Catherine, as well as the complementary insights each offers regarding Christ’s charity and ours.

This paper explores the epistemic foundations of empathy and intersubjectivity in Edith Stein’s analysis, placing it in dialogue with Pope Francis’s reflections on the heart in his last encyclical, Dilexit Nos. Beginning with Stein’s development of empathy, the author examines how empathy grants us an awareness of the other’s inner experience, which is non-primordially present and foreign to the empathizing subject. While this structure reveals a fundamental asymmetry between self and other, it also leads Stein’s account of empathy to an epistemic insufficiency: it can describe the givenness of the other, but not the depth of relational life. At this insufficiency, I turn to Pope Francis’ notion of the heart as a lived space of spiritual life. The heart, in this vision, is where contradictions and polar tensions between self and other are not solved but held – a space of receptivity, affectivity, and interior openness. Drawing on the image of bamboo that survives precisely through its emptiness, I suggest that a spiritually receptive heart allows us to live in the asymmetrical experiences between self and without collapsing the other into abstraction.

Flannery O’ Connor’s mom criticized her for not writing what people would want to read. While O’Connor’s novels are full of freaks and distortions, this article offers some philosophical clues as to why this is so. We explore Jacques Maritain’s influence upon her as she saw herself as ‘cutting her aesthetic teeth upon his Art and Scholasticism’. Key to understanding the grotesque world of O’Connor’s stories is the understanding of Maritain’s notion of artistic imitation and its reliance upon his notion of distortion. It is the latter notion that gives us the central insight into why she distorted her characters and plot. True storytelling for O’Connor plunges the reader deeply into reality, especially into the reality of human persons. Not wanting to stay at the physical surfaces of things, distortion plunges the reader into the depth of human character and their existential aspirations, motivations, decisions, and especially, their responses to the gift of supernatural grace.

The subject of this paper is the personalist political philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950). In this paper, I ask whether personalists should endorse the teaching of personalism in schools, as part of an official curriculum. I begin by discussing the criticism that doing so would violate the principle of Neutrality. I then present Mounier’s arguments against Neutrality, before posing a second objection to the teaching of personalism. By Mounier’s own lights, the authority for doing so requires that teachers know that personalism is true. Briefly, it seems that whatever personalist claims teachers know are uncontroversial but do not provide determinate ethical guidance, and that whatever personalist claims provide determinate ethical guidance are not known. From here, I take up Mounier’s fascination with the cultivation of elites who could implement personalism, and close by considering the difference between authoritarian and liberal variants of personalism.

This article explores how AI-generated music challenges traditional theological understandings of creativity, spirituality, and the soul. By engaging the theological traditions of analogy and participation developed by Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cajetan, and Francisco Suárez, this article reconsiders whether AI-generated music generates emotions and spiritual significances in listeners and whether it might disclose something meaningful about the nature of divine creativity. Rather than arguing AI music is either a technological innovation or artistic threat, this article suggests various frameworks of analogy, participation, and pneumatology to create a better theological discernment on how divine creativity works through secondary causes within creation. The exploration concludes in proposing a ‘theology of digital transcendence’ – a framework for understanding how computational creativity participates in the broader economy of divine creation.

Raïssa Maritain is one of the most compelling Catholic poets of the twentieth century, and yet her work is largely overlooked by literary critics. This short essay explores her mystical reading of darkness as a place of spiritual discernment, intuition, and kenosis and the poetic night vision she developed to negotiate it. The essay reads her as a fire-thief intent on stealing from poetry a light able to illuminate God’s dazzling darkness and the ruinous gloom of war.