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Moral theologians, defense analysts, conflict scholars, and nuclear experts imagine a world free from nuclear weapons At a 2017 Vatican conference, Pope Francis condemned nuclear weapons. This volume, issued after the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, presents essays from moral theologians, defense analysts, conflict transformation scholars, and nuclear arms control experts, with testimonies from witnesses. It is a companion volume to A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament (Georgetown University Press, 2020). Chapters from the perspectives of missile personnel and the military chain of command, industrialists and legislators, and citizen activists show how we might achieve a nuclear-free world. Key to this transition is the important role of public education and the mobilization of lay movements to raise awareness and effect change. This essential collection prepares military professionals, policymakers, everyday citizens, and the pastoral workers who guide them, to make decisions that will lead us to disarmament.

This book explores how a church once known as a force for social justice became known for a few key wedge issues, then looks at the opportunities for change in the \"age of Francis.\" The first non-European pope in more than a millennium, Pope Francis is shaking up a church that has been mired in scandal and demoralized by devastating headlines.

In my seventy-fifth year, as I move towards the end of my working life as priest and bishop, I survey the journey from the Second Vatican Council till now, with Pope Francis beyond the ten-year mark of his pontificate and the Synod on Synodality upon us. In doing so, I survey my own life, or most of it at least, since I was ten when the council was first announced and fifteen when it opened. By the time I entered the seminary at the age of twenty the sessions of the council had ended, and it provided the horizon against which everything was viewed, to the point where I would make my own the words of Pope Francis:

Religious actors and their political concepts are commonly assumed to be conservative, static, and aligned with the private contemplative world. Popes, however, regularly stand out from this narrative. The article contextualizes the papal human rights discourse since the 1940s and contributes a hitherto neglected perspective to the debate on human rights and religion in the international realm, illustrating that religious ideas and configurations change. The research, partially derived using discourse network analysis software, points out three key findings: First, John Paul II dominates the human rights discourse, which has gained traction since the end of the Second World War. Second, although Francis takes an outside role in the papal discourse, he does not differ in principle from the mainstream trajectory of the papal human rights discourse. Finally, third, from the first evocation of human rights by a pope, there has been a persistent trend stressing both individual and collective human rights. Moreover, the article illustrates that political and religious conceptions of human rights are relational, and even contingent on each other. The results offer ample reason to anticipate future papal political conduct based on the trajectory of the papal human rights discourse.

Debates about conscience almost dominated the life of the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century. The word 'conscience' raised questions about church moral teaching and about how it is accepted and observed, but it also raised questions about genuine difficulties of faithful Catholics in such matters. By the time we get to Pope Francis highlighting the church as a 'field hospital' called to bring divine mercy to couples in anomalous marriage situations, there is a backstory to all that.

Did anything happen at Vatican II? anything of significance? These and similar questions have been posed by the historian John O'Malley, who has offered a historical-theological reflection on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and its attendant reception over the years. The council has certainly provoked remarkable commentaries and reactions from scholars who have approached it from various viewpoints, namely, theological, historical, ecclesiological, canonical, moral and pastoral. At the end of the council, what emerged as the Vatican II documents are far from forming a neat and tight theological treatise. Some theological issues were discussed briefly in the documents, but a richer theological interpretation and synthesis were left to be fleshed out by post-conciliar scholars. For any reflection on the council to be taken seriously, it has to feel the pulse and take stock of the church's selfunderstanding in today's world. Fifty-three years after the end of the council, the questions are no longer so much about what happened at Vatican II, but about what is happening now. 'How is the council being received today? Is the council, in its simplicity and depth, still relevant after fifty-three years?'

In one of his most significant addresses before he was elected pope, the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio stated in his 'Pastoral Letter for the Year of Faith': 'Among the most striking experiences of the last decades is finding doors closed'. This seminal letter fuses many of the themes that have appeared in Pope Francis's later writings and addresses, following his election as the 266th pope, on 13 March 2013.

Marco Politi takes us deep inside the power struggle roiling the Roman Curia and the Catholic Church worldwide, beginning with Benedict XVI, the pope who famously resigned in 2013, and intensifying with the contested and unexpected election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, now known as Pope Francis. Politi's account balances the perspectives of Pope Francis's supporters, Benedict's sympathizers, and those disappointed members of the Catholic laity who feel alienated by the institution's secrecy, financial corruption, and refusal to modernize. Politi dramatically recounts the sexual scandals that have rocked the church and the accusations of money laundering and other financial misdeeds swirling around the Vatican and the Italian Catholic establishment. Pope Francis has tried to shine a light on these crimes, but his work has been met with resistance from entrenched factions. Politi writes of the decline in church attendance and vocations to the priesthood throughout the world as the church continues to prohibit divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving the communion wafer. He visits European parishes where women now perform the functions of missing male priests--and where the remaining parishioners would welcome the admission of women to the priesthood, if the church would allow it. Pope Francis's emphasis on pastoral compassion for all who struggle with the burden of family life has also provoked the ire of traditionalists in the Roman Curia and elsewhere. He knows from personal experience what life is like for the poor in Buenos Aires and other metropolises of the globalized world, and highlights the contrast between the vital, vibrant faith of these parishioners and the disillusionment of European Catholics. Pope Francis and his supporters are locked in a battle with the defenders of the traditional hard line and with ecclesiastical corruption. In this conflict, the future of Catholicism is at stake--and it is far from certain Francis will succeed in saving the institution from decline.