The liturgy has often been a source of conflict within Christian communities. After comparing several recent exhortations by Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI concerning the importance of the unity of the Church, this essay examines resources for articulating an approach of “liturgical irenicism” on the basis of texts from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the Magisterium of the Church.

Thomas Aquinas's use of the terms libero, libertas, and liberum arbitrium in the Summa theologiae gives us a wealth of information about free will and freedom. Human beings have free will and are masters of themselves through their free will. Free will can be impeded by obstacles or ignorance but naturally moves toward God. According to Servais Pinckaers, our freedom can be that of indifference (the morality of obligation) or that of excellence (the morality of happiness). The difference is that of free will moving reason versus reason moving free will. The freedom of indifference is the power to choose between good and evil. The will is inclined toward neither and freely chooses between them. The freedom for excellence is the power to be the best human being we can be. Here the rules, or what makes for a good human being, are the grounding for freedom. One who observes these rules has the freedom to become excellent. According to Aquinas, intellect and will have command over free will. This then is true freedom, and on this Aquinas and Pinckaers agree. We do not have freedom of indifference, we have freedom for excellence. Anything else makes us slaves.

This article examines the retrieval of patristic exegesis in two major figure in Catholic Ressourcement theology: Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar. Henri de Lubac's driving concern in his biblical writings is not so much to chronicle the history of interpretation as it is to explicate the great theological synthesis, which underlies the doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture. For de Lubac, this synthesis, wherein the totality of Christian doctrine and practice is centered in Christ and grounded in the reading of Scripture, is an essential component of Christianity. De Lubac encourages the integration of this theological vision with modern biblical studies, but he does not offer much as to what such an integration might look like in practice. Congar, building upon de Lubac's work, goes beyond de Lubac in making concrete efforts to integrate some of the theory and practice of patristic interpretation with modern exegesis. Important here is Congar's notion of “typological tradition” whereby the divine mystery concealed and revealed in the realities presented by the biblical text, unfold in the tradition, doctrine, and practice of the Church.

John Henry Newman believed that all Christian doctrines must be accessible to all Christian believers, both the intellectually sophisticated and the uneducated. This implied that the intellectually simple must be able to apprehend and assent to mysteries, such as that of the Trinity. This paper discussion what Newman understood by the idea of mystery. Mystery for Newman was primarily a hermeneutical problem. Mystery was a result of the human incapacity and inability to grasp the fullness of truth. In Newman, the hermeutical problematic is one of limitations of language thus leading to submission of intellect to a sublime truth.

This article provides a critique of reason for Anglican eucharistic theology. It examines the mutliformity of theological and philosophical assumptions underlying that theology and recognises the difficulty created in the discourse of the Anglican eucharistic tradition where hermeneutic idealism operates in an exclusive manner. Further, the article uses the insights of Habermas, arguing for a critique of reason for the tradition through a dialogue approach based on the intersubjectivity of communicative action where there is distinction between ‘lifeworld’ and ‘system paradigm’ and where there is subject-subject relationship.