Naomi Zack’s Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women’s Commonality (2005) begins with an original reading of the paradigm shift from gender essentialism to intersectionality that ended U.S. second wave feminism. According to Zack there has been a crisis in academic and professional feminism since the late 1970s. Her project is to explain the motivation behind the shift from commonality to intersectionality, to outline its harmful effects, and to reclaim the idea that all women share something in common (2005, 2). To accomplish this Zack careful retools essentialism in ways that simultaneously acknowledge women’s differences and dodge what she perceives to be intersectionality’s fragmenting effects. This paper addresses Zack’s critique of intersectionality and her effort to ground a feminist empathy-based solidarity in women’s commonalities. My discussion begins with a basic account of intersectionality. I explore Zack’s reasons for rejecting this popular approach by replying to her two strongest arguments against intersectionality: (1) that intersectionality complicates the category woman by multiplying genders beyond necessity, and (2) that intersectionality has a segregating effect on feminist political movements. I argue that Zack’s inclusive feminism generates an oversimplified account of empathy and thus fails to engage the tensions among feminist movements that intersectionality makes visible. I conclude that her account requires a more robust epistemology of empathy if political solidarity is to be grounded in the FMP category.

This article reviews four papers presented at the 33rd Annual Richard R. Baker Colloquium in Philosophy that was held at the University of Dayton on March 6-8, 2008. The second section reflects on the current form of these papers from a pedagogical perspective that emphasizes the importance of continual reflection on the conceptualization of intersectionality, the importance of reflecting on practices which may prevent us from the practice of intersectional understanding and action, and the theoretical and pedagogical need to continue to be attentive to the discourse of the dominant and how this discourse constructs our social and political realities as well as our individual identities.

“Veiled Resistance” explores the relationship between discourse and power through the figure of the veiled woman. Ingram argues that while veiled women historically have been produced as Other in Orientalist discourse, they also have subverted these dominant representations by manipulating the significations of the veil. Using the example of veiling practices employed by Algerian womenduring the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), as well as the recent actions of Muslim women in Europe who are choosing to defy the law by veiling and, in some cases, re-veiling themselves after a long period without doing so, Ingram examines the veil as a counter-discursive object. While religious, patriarchal, and colonial ideologies attempt to exploit, albeit in different ways, the women’sactions vis-à-vis the veil, these women can be seen to renegotiate the limits of representation through a conscious manipulation of the discourse that has attempted to discipline them and create new possibilities of embodiment.

In this essay I argue for the role of positive, community-based black identities (in the plural) in the creation and maintenance of black solidarity. I argue against Tommie Shelby’s attempts to reduce the notion of black identity as it relates to solidarity from something social or cultural to something entirely political—“thin” black identity. As an alternative, I propose a model for the relationship between “thin” and “thicker” (social or cultural) identities based on Rawls’ contention that the stability of overlapping political consensus isproduced by different groups’ adherence to, rather than denial of, a plurality of comprehensive doctrines. I also discuss the benefits of positive, community-based black identities in terms of “black love” and show why, even if not possessed by each and every black American, such identities are ultimately indispensible to any black solidarity project.

In his book The Unfinished Project, Lorenzo Simpson articulates a hermeneutical model for understanding across difference that stresses the importance of analogies. While noting much that is helpful in his account, in this paper I question Simpson’s emphasis on analogical reasoning. After detailing Simpson’s approach, I explore some problems with analogies as a route to understanding. I examine some assumptions behind the idea that one must analogize from what one already understands in order to expand thatunderstanding. In particular I argue that, while in some cases it can be helpful, it is not necessary to use analogies in order to understand another who does not share one’s social position, culture, or worldview, and, perhaps more importantly, it is never sufficient. Moreover, attempting to locate correspondences between oneself and another may in some cases undermine the ability toform the kind of practical relationship that understanding across difference requires. Understanding another is best described, not as requiring analogies between self and other, but rather as requiring a practical relation, a type of relation that I will detail further in the second half of this paper.

There is a growing discussion of the idea of jus post bellum (jpb) and what it means as an addition to just war thinking. This essay connects jpb to the thought of Augustine and Aquinas, so that jpb appears as integral in that tradition. To make this case, I argue that achieving jpb is key to building a just peace, of which the fundamental characteristic must be human security, and thus defines two approaches to the study of human security that emerges from the theological development of jpb ethics: Michael Schuck’s Augustinian and Kenneth Himes’s Thomistic jpb conceptions. I argue that they both emphasize the importance of human security, as shown by their arguments for building humanitarian norms post bellum, but have different aims and jpb moral implications.

The Yazidis, surely one of the most unknown communities in the Middle East, made it to the front page of international media in 2014 when the Dáesh added them to their long list of victims. However, it was not the first time in history that this community suffered direct attacks and discrimination for their religion. On October 5, Iraq celebrated the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to one of its citizens, Nadia Murad, awarded for her fight against the use of sexual violence as a weapon in armed conflict. With this, Murad placed her people, the Yazidis, a religious minority in northern Iraq, in the center of hundreds of articles in the international press. Murad was also the first Kurd to win the award, which made her, as stated by the leader of the Kurdistan National Party, a symbol of firmness for Kurdish women and youth.

The admissions cheating scandal illustrated how colleges and universities in the US depend upon and reinforce socio-economic privilege. The first part of this paper uses a Reformed Christian approach to moral virtue to analyze privilege in higher education as an ethical problem. Understanding privilege as moral vice clarifies the relationships between practices, attitudes, and intentions we associate with privilege. The second part of this paper contrasts ethical frameworks prominent in the discourse on higher education with a commitment to the common good. Within an ethics of the common good, privilege’s function as vice becomes clear, as does its deleterious effect on US higher education’s “original intent.” Ultimately, cultivation of a “character of inclusion” is the necessary antidote to the vice of privilege, to realign higher education with its historic responsibility to the common good of a just society.

Two qualitative data sets from 2010 and 2016 are compared to explore the respondents’ perceptions of peacebuilding in the wake of the 1998 Belfast Agreement (BA) and the ensuing peace process. Fifty-two Civil Society Organization (CSO) leaders from Londonderry/Derry were interviewed during the summer of 2010 to delve into their perceptions of the BA, and building cross community contact through peacebuilding and reconciliation processes. The International Fund for Ireland and the European Union Peace Fund funded these respondents CSO peacebuilding projects. They held many viewpoints on peacebuilding. Seven grassroots peacebuilders from Derry/Londonderry were interviewed in 2016. These peacebuilders revealed that Northern Ireland has a long way to go to build an authentic and genuine peace. A key stumbling block to the Northern Ireland peace process is heightened societal segregation that results from the BA institutionalizing sectarianism, and the recent fallout from Brexit. Politicians continue to refuse addressing the past that has long-term implications for peace.

The work of liberation theologians, notably Jon Sobrino, has sought to give expression to Christian hope and the eschatological promise of the Kingdom from the context of the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed of history. From these contexts develops an understanding of Christian hope as a distinctly ‘crucified hope,’ emerging from both the sacrificial gift and the scandal of the cross. Building on Sobrino, this article develops an understanding of ‘crucified hope’ from the context of the current migration crisis, arguing that this hope begins where human optimism ends. Trust in the promise of the resurrection to which the Christian community witnesses empowers the crucified to respond to radical injustice and suffering. ‘Crucified hope’ thus shifts the focus of hope from the larger Christian community, participating in taking the crucified down from their crosses, to the crucified themselves and their actions of self-liberation.

Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famously indicted a vision of urban development based on large scale projects, low population densities, and automobile-centered transportation infrastructure by showing that small plans, mixed uses, architectural preservation, and district autonomy contributed better to urban vitality and thus the appeal of cities. Implicit in her thinking is something that could be called “the urban good,” and recognizable within her vision of the good is the principle of subsidiarity—the idea that governance is best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses—a principle found in Catholic papal encyclicals and related documents. Jacobs’s work illustrates and illuminates the principle of subsidiarity, not merely through her writings on cities, but also through her activism in New York City, which was influential in altering the direction of that city’s subsequent planning and development.

While many believe that service should be connected to the religious identity of Catholic colleges and universities, little research has been done to see if this is in fact the case. To test this commonly-held belief, we surveyed students at and gathered information about twenty-six different Catholic campuses in the United States. We find no correlation between students’ frequency of service and their perception of Catholic identity. In addition, we find that students perceive their school to be less Catholic the more institutions link service to Catholicism. The only characteristic of service that is positively correlated with Catholic identity is the percentage of service learning courses offered. In other words, students do not see anything intrinsically Catholic about volunteering, but rather that Catholicism means that you should volunteer more. We believe this suggests how Catholic colleges and universities can link service to their Catholic identity.

Grace is hardly mentioned in the canon of Catholic social teaching. When grace is invoked, it is typically discussed as a gift for personal sanctification, but not a relationship empowering human and divine cooperation for social and ecological responsibility. This essay examines the limited treatment of grace in Catholic social teaching outside of Familiaris consortio and Amoris laetitia before proposing that the traditional emphasis on grace at work in family life can be a model for more intentionally partnering with grace beyond family life. Reclaiming grace as a relationship for cooperation provides a framework for practicing the principles of Catholic social teaching in order to effect change in family life, in local faith communities, and through Catholic NGOs that forge international connections. Grace thus inspires a template for moral formation from the ground up that emphasizes shared practices for participating in “social grace” (in contrast to “social sin”) for integral flourishing as envisioned in Catholic social teaching.

The author situates the question of praxis in theological methodology and Catholic Social Teaching in relation to teaching ethics courses in Catholic higher education. The author uses a genealogical strategy to show that Cardinal Joseph Cardijn’s See-Judge-Act methodology of theological praxis has become canonical in Catholic Social Teaching. The author shows that advocates of Cardijn’s methodology include Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Saint Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, and Pope Francis. In addition, the author shows that Cardijn’s methodology is used by the committee that drafts Schema XIII, the Conciliar document that becomes Gaudium et Spes. Besides its use in a Western European Catholic Context the author explains that Cardijn’s methodology of theological praxis is appropriated at the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano in Medellin, Colombia (1968); Puebla, Mexico (1979); and Aparecida, Brazil (2007). The author also explains how Cardijn’s methodology of theological praxis is integrated in ethics courses in order to develop students’ ability to discern whether a current business, healthcare, or environmental practice is a sign of the kingdom of God or the anti-kingdom. For the author, Cardijn’s methodology of theological praxis leads students to new insight about realities they are unaware and introduces them to the countercultural wisdom of the Catholic intellectual tradition, as well as the importance of moving beyond critical theological reflection and into the realm of social action.

In his 2017 TED Talk, Pope Francis invited his viewers to a “revolution of tenderness” through “love that comes close and becomes real.” Responding to that call, this article argues that Francis’s assertion that “mercy is doctrine” means that the substance of theology and its teaching requires a conversion of the minds and hearts of both students and teachers to paths wherein one might encounter the God of Mercy. After touching upon particular challenges facing teachers of theology in an undergraduate classroom, the article outlines Francis’s theological framework which both stands upon the tradition of Ignatian spirituality and justifies his using the weight of the papacy to reorient the church’s vision toward mercy and the margins. Finally, this article considers Pope Francis’s pastoral call to mercy theology might nourish undergraduate students’ imaginations and make merciful action intelligible, spiritually meaningful, and attractive.