Through the writings of Jean Vanier, this paper encourages Catholic theologians to examine critically their theological sources and their own rhetoric for the context of developmental disabilities. Specifically, this thought experiment is an invitation for the Catholic academy to consider how its theologies of charity can assist the church to reflect on its pastoral ministry to people with developmental disabilities. Some Catholic discourse is built on an assumed one-directional concept of charity that emphasizes the agency and gifts of the giver over the receiver. Such a one-sided model of hospitality tends to emphasize the giver as the person without developmental disabilities, whereas the person with disabilities is described as the receiver of hospitality; their own gifts and agency thereby are either unacknowledged or downplayed. This paper argues, instead, that Catholic theologies of charity, particularly regarding developmental disabilities, should be built on a mutuality that affirms each person's agency to be both a giver and a receiver of charity.

With the celebration of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy indulgences have once again moved to the fore of Catholic imagination, with many pilgrims availing themselves of the opportunity to pass through a Door of Mercy or ‘Holy Door’ and thereby receive the jubilee indulgence. While the practice of indulgences has experienced something of a revival in popularity during recent papacies, the precise doctrine remains largely unrehearsed and unfamiliar, simultaneously evoking strong reactions of distaste and disquiet among many as memories of medieval abuse linger on. This article sets out the precepts of the most recent authoritative teaching on indulgences, itself almost fifty years old, before exploring the theological interpretation offered by Karl Rahner and tracing its gradual and largely anonymous appropriation in papal teaching through the post‐conciliar period. With Pope Francis promoting mercy as a central theme for his papacy and ecclesial vision, the paper closes by considering how he may be proposing a further re‐appropriation of indulgences which shifts attention from their post‐mortem efficacy to their capacity to establish a Franciscan reflexivity of mercy in the contemporary church.

Karl Rahner's theology is essentially spiritual and pastoral. His theology arose from his experience as a Jesuit, living at the heart of the traumas of twentieth-century Europe and, at the same time, interpreting the new academic insights in Church history and the early Fathers, scholasticism and modern philosophy, within the framework of the Church's traditional teaching.

For reasons of academic fashion and ecclesial politics, Rahner is often dismissed as a liberal. Though elements of his thought on the church/world relationship do not date well, and others have been so thoroughly absorbed into the mainstream as to lose their interest, there is a dimension of his thought which remains important and which in fact undercuts typical divisions between liberals and their opponents.

Prominent in much Theology of Religions is the concept of fulfilment (the extension of the fulfilment of the Old Covenant by Christ, to the fulfilment of other religions by Christ). The three Catholic theologians who are the subject of this article – Jean Daniélou, Karl Rahner and Jacques Dupuis – rely heavily on the fulfilment concept in their understanding of the relationship between other religions and Christianity. However, each uses the concept differently. This article outlines and then compares the use of the fulfilment concept in the theology of these three prominent theologians, and in doing so develops a fulfilment typology.

In Benedict XVI's God is Love §1 humanity's relationship with God is described as an encounter with an ‘event’, the Christ‐event. I argue that this shift in Catholic theology towards language of act and event signalled a relationship to existentialism, which, taken broadly, entailed an emphasis upon subjectivity and freedom uncharacteristic of the focus upon objectivity common to neo‐Scholastic thought. As we shall see with Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, however, this newfound emphasis on subjectivity and freedom did not necessitate an abandonment of all the elements of the more ‘objective’ perspective. Rather, the task during the ascendancy of existentialist thought became the integration of human subjectivity with the objective and independent reality of the world and God. I suggest that Rahner and von Balthasar use notions such as act and event as a way of being mindful of the role of the subject's creativity and freedom in its encounter with the world, God, and other persons, without thereby undermining the freedom and creativity of that which is other than the subject.