This paper argues that being there, actually existing, is a notion that cannot be explicated by formal logicians, cannot be defined in terms of conscious perception, and cannot be satisfactorily explained using the theories of mathematics or natural science. So, must we turn to theology to make up for the deficiencies of the methods so far canvassed? The paper concludes by considering the Thomistic identification of God with existence itself, but argues that it would be a mistake to suppose that the mystery of actual existence is thereby dispelled.

Graham Greene’s novella Loser Takes All has been unfairly ignored in the critical literature. Rather than the mere frivolity it is taken to be, it is a humorous examination of some serious theological issues. By means of an inversion of Pascal’s Great Wager, Greene makes the case that attempts to rationalize the mystery that is the object of our faith will cheapen and diminish that faith. In the course of so doing, he alludes to and has fun with his earlier works, particularly Brighton Rock, and critiques the inversion of the Wager by Albert Camus. He shows the influence of Miguel de Unamuno, who years later would influence Greene’s Monsignor Quixote. Greene also invokes a poem by Charles Baudelaire, which Greene has quoted in many works, that the possibility of damnation adds meaning to life, though it may drift into what von Balthasar called Greene’s indulgence of the mystique of sin.

This paper examines, from a Thomistic perspective, the possible consequences of the twentieth-century reform of the ‘Kyrie eleison’ from ninefold set of invocations to a sixfold call-and-response structure. First, we present Aquinas’s distinctly Trinitarian exegesis of the ‘Kyrie’ in light of the history of troped liturgical texts. Next, we will account for the historical diversity of the troped ‘Kyrie’ genre while emphasizing importance of the Trinitarian elements. The third section recounts recent work on Aquinas’s theory of the passions and their effects of language formation; this leads to the fourth section, which casts a philosophical eye on the role of melisma in the liturgy. To conclude this study, we suggest the restoration of some troped ‘Kyrie’ texts in the Roman Rite.

Given the peculiarly linguistic approach that contemporary philosophers use to apply St. Thomas Aquinas’s arguments on the immateriality of the human soul, this paper will present a Thomistic-inspired evaluation of whether artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) chatbots’ composition and linguistic performance justify the assertion that AI/ML chatbots have immaterial souls. The first section of the paper will present a strong, but ultimately crucially flawed argument that AI/ML chatbots do have souls based on contemporary Thomistic argumentation. The second section of the paper will provide an overview of the actual computer science models that make artificial neural networks and AI/ML chatbots function, which I hope will assist other theologians and philosophers writing about technology, The third section will present some of Emily Bender’s and Alexander Koller’s objections to AI/ML chatbots being able to access meaning from computational linguistics. The final section will highlight the similarities of Bender’s and Koller’s argument to a fuller presentation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s argument for the immateriality of the human soul, ultimately arguing that the current mechanisms and linguistic activity of AI/ML programming do not constitute activity sufficient to conclude that they have immaterial souls on the strength of St. Thomas’s arguments.

Repentance is central to the message of Christianity. Yet, repentance has received little analysis in recent scholarship despite being emphasized by the church fathers. In particular, there has been minimal effort to understand the necessity of repentance in light of Christ’s atoning work. With this as the background, I explore fundamental questions such as repentance’s definition, scope, and role in salvation history. Furthermore, I attempt to more precisely outline repentance’s role in Christ’s salvific work. Underpinning the project is my view that repentance should be understood as metanoia or transformation. This transformation of repentance is ordered toward divine metanoia – participation in Christ. In developing repentance, I put forward a synthesis of Thomas Aquinas’s framework of penance and John McLeod Campbell’s account of Christ’s vicarious repentance. Through this synthesis, I attempt to make sense of the relationship between repentance and atonement. I finish by suggesting that it would be appropriate to conclude that Thomas would endorse a vicarious repentance account of the atonement and hint at how it might fit into broader soteriologies.

Catholic social thought and teaching is sometimes conceptualised using an historical or principles-based approach. This paper proposes an alternative framing, construing Catholic social teaching (CST) as a multi-layered phenomenon that can be grouped into three broad tiers, each with a distinctive role. This framing is not intended to supercede the others, nor is it inconsistent with them. The proposal emerges out of a series of discussions hosted by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a Catholic UK-based development agency, member of Caritas Internationalis, and an official agency of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. The paper operates on two levels simultaneously: it attempts a distinctive reframing of CST using a distinctive source, and it attempts an enactment of CST methodologically and structurally. Construing CST as a multi-layered phenomenon that can be grouped into three broad tiers provides a clarity that empowers us in two ways. First, it clarifies the distinctive role of CST at each level. Second, it makes clear that CST is a work of the Spirit rather than a human phenomenon. Such an understanding of CST brings out with particular clarity a vision of the role, purpose, and even the agency of Catholic social thought in relation to a troubled world.

The development of Thomas’s teaching on Christ’s headship relies upon the principle of the causality of the maximum: ‘the maximum in a genus is the universal cause in that genus’. This principle appears in the fourth way to demonstrate God’s existence. Applied to the humanity of Christ, Thomas argues that Christ, on account of his perfect fullness of grace, is, according to his humanity, the universal source of grace for all the members of the Church, including the angels. How does this cohere with Thomas’s teaching elsewhere in the Summa theologiae that it is only as Word that Christ causes grace in the angels? In this paper, I explore this tension and offer a way of understanding Thomas’s broader approach to the mystery of Christ.