Annual Themes

The human body—the “thing” that accompanies us wherever we go—is central to most of the burning questions in our culture’s collective mind. The body is just there. And, for that very reason, we are putting it to the test as we reject, starve, exploit, re-build—chemically, surgically, digitally, cybernetically—and finally incinerate it. Though we have been at this for centuries, what has become clearer in recent years is that the dominion of nature at large has at last become the dominion of our incarnate nature. This four-part series addresses major contemporary issues concerning the body, including pornography, virtual reality, beauty, cremation, gender identity, sexuality, infertility, courtship and dating, as well as suffering, illness and death.

This four-part series begins with a reflection on what work is, and continues--in the second issue--with looking at the link between work and vocation, whether this be marriage or religious life. The third issue will speak to the idea of good work and true rest, while the fourth and last addresses the question of work and justice.

Man is at once a part of nature and its steward, and natural ecology and “human ecology” therefore stand or fall together. This four-part series explores major themes in the contemporary ecological debate: man’s relationship with his environment, the land he was instructed to “till and keep”; animals, which can either be companions or dinner; the relationship we have with “stuff” and whether we have too much of it; and the place of the body in creation.

This four-part series takes up what Benedict XVI called the “emergency” of education. A child of course, has to be brought up, and led out (e-ducare) into the world. But what does this mean against the dominant backdrop of calling into question the essential features of childhood, including, especially now, the fact of being a boy or a girl? What exactly is the child’s relation to the world, and how exactly is that relation mediated by the “first educators” of the child? What then, does it mean to be schooled in the disciplines? Is education merely “vocational training” or training in a vocation, and learning how to be awakened by (called by) reality in its many fascinating dimensions? Finally, what is the place of technology in education at all its levels?

The Church's teaching on the beginning and end of human life is not a collection of arbitrary rules, but a mystagogical initiation into the sacred vision of triune generosity shining through human birth, reproduction, and death. It is no wonder, then, that the attack on the human person in contemporary society most often coincides with one of these milestones at which we are the most vulnerable, indeed, the most human. This four-part series examines these themes, as well as the particular vulnerability and ability found at the heart of disability. Included here are the papers from the 2014 conference "The A.R.T. of Reproduction: Re-conceiving the Human Person."