Theology
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Ancient ordination rites for women deacons sit in Vatican
Medieval liturgical manuscripts housed in the Vatican’s own library describe women being ordained to the diaconate during Mass, with the laying on of hands, invocation of the Holy Spirit and the placement of the stole by the bishop. Zagano’s research brings these forgotten rites back into focus.
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“Pure-blood” bishops sound more like Harry Potter than the Gospels
Jesus measured faithfulness by whether people fed the hungry and visited the imprisoned, not by tracing clerical lineage. The doctrine of Apostolic Succession, built on mistranslation and selective memory, distracts from the radical simplicity of the Gospel’s own demands.
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Does the Bible give Israel divine rights over Palestinian land?
Genesis texts promising land to Abraham’s descendants are frequently cited to justify Israeli occupation. But modern biblical scholarship and Paul’s letter to the Romans challenge any claim that God permanently favours one people over another.
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Doing theology in times of political crisis
The collision of political sovereignty and ecclesial authority exposes fundamental questions of legitimacy within a fragmented normative landscape. Appeals to tradition obscure irreducible complexity, crisis functions as rhetorical apparatus, and the inexorable dynamics of imperial decline reconfigure authority itself—compelling discernment between authentic moral critique and instrumentalised religion.
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When clericalism becomes narcissism, the altar turns into a stage
Clerical narcissism perpetuates itself when a newly ordained priest is assigned to a pastor who demands unquestioning obedience, creating successive generations of leaders hostile to collaboration.
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The graced life of trees
Trees do far more than grow — they warn, communicate, and heal. Drawing on ecological science and spiritual tradition, God’s graced presence in trees spills outward, cooling cities, filtering air, and offering the kind of quiet healing that many people instinctively seek in nature.
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Grace not an intermittent signal but a constant broadcast
Grace crashes into ordinary life uninvited — the dull commute, the 3am spiral, the grey Tuesday afternoon. Karl Rahner called this the heart of Jesuit theology: God’s presence as an unrelenting lifeline, available everywhere and always.
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The Church is not a ‘she’
Recent Vatican documents on women’s diaconate rely heavily on nuptial theology, arguing that female ordination would compromise the spousal relationship between Christ and church. This reasoning transforms metaphorical language into doctrinal necessity, creating theological problems by literalizing what tradition presents as symbolic representation.
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Women cannot image Christ as deacons – Vatican
Pope Francis elevated the Final Synod Document to magisterial teaching, stating that discernment on women deacons must continue and “what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.” Yet this new commission report attempts to close discussion entirely.
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Beyond rest: envisioning eternal growth
What if eternity isn’t a pause, but a beginning? If heaven is movement, not stillness — a journey deeper into God’s light? Newman’s wisdom still stirs: to live is to change. Perhaps death simply opens the next chapter of transformation.
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