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This article reviews the changes in discourse and responses to the clergy sexual abuse crisis from 2004 to 2023. It highlights the difficulty of talking about sexual violence and the silencing of those who have spoken out as a secondary moral harm and an epistemic injustice. It also mentions that the renewal of sexual morality, the diversity of theologies, and the issue of the use and abuse of power have become more urgent today. The article examines the Christian response to sexuality throughout history, especially in relation to pastoral power and its impact on Western concepts of sexuality and subject formation. It also addresses issues related to the legal framework within the Church and the relationship between Canon Law and Civil Law. The importance of prioritizing the well-being of individuals over the well-being of the institution is emphasized. The text addresses the issue of sexual abuse committed by clergy and the need to distinguish between individual assaults and repeated abuses. Additionally, the importance of feminist ethics in studying responses to clergy sexual abuse is mentioned, and the need to reflect on the structures and governance of the Church is highlighted. The article also addresses two opposing views within the Catholic Church regarding the clergy sexual abuse crisis and concludes that the Church must reform to have a future in liberal democracies. [Extracted from the article]

This essay reviews the major themes of the 3/2004 Concilium Issue "Structural Betrayal of Trust," exploring changes in the discourse and responses to the clergy sexual abuse crisis since then. In addition to the continuing difficulty to speak in the aftermath of sexual violence, the silencing of those who have spoken up is now discerned as a secondary moral injury and epistemic injustice. Whereas the understanding of priesthood and the structure of the Church dominated the earlier issue, currently the renewal of sexual morality, the diversity of theologies, and the question of use and abuse of power have become most urgent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vulnerability as a critique of the one-sidedness of the principle of autonomy is at risk of overemphasizing the positive dimension of vulnerability. Moreover, in the discourse on vulnerability, the threat of dehumanization (or moral vulnerability) has not been scrutinized enough ethically. Therefore, the ethics of vulnerability is insufficient when faced with the force of war that requires the conceptualization of vulnerability for political-ethics. The Russian war in Ukraine demonstrates this weakness in a striking way: the called-for openness to the other as well as an active form of nonviolence, as promoted by Judith Butler, may not be an option in times of war. Continuing Jessica Benjamin's psychoanalytic approach to mutual recognition, the essay shows that the task of morality does not rest upon broadening one's vulnerability, but rather in understanding vulnerable agency as the dialectic of vulnerability and agency. For the further development of this dialectic, the triadic figuration is emphasized, complementing the dyadic relation of self and other. While the Third can take multiple figurations in the psychoanalytical setting, I understand the Third within the politicalethical context as the possibility of a "moral world" of nonviolence and respect. During war, the role of the bystander is to become a witness who, through the process of witnessing, advocacy, diplomacy, and justice, allows for the moral Third to reemerge. Among others, the ethics of vulnerability must spell out the price for the failure of taking on this responsibility, namely the eclipse of morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exemplary of both the self's loss of sovereignty and a new paradigm in ethical thought, which could be called 'ethics after autonomy,' is the dialogue about the self-other relation in [...]

Epigenetics renders the proposed egg cell nuclear transfer approach in preventing mitochondrial diseases with an uncertain outcome and, thus, untenable as a controllable and low-risk method of germ-line gene therapy. However, egg cell nuclear transfer is legitimized by the therapeutic option that it represents. It is a therapeutic option for women who want to bear a child genetically related to them but wish to prevent inheritance of mitochondrial diseases and for the future child's well-being and, if it is a girl, for future offsprings.

Basándose en la tradición de la nueva teología política y la teología de la liberación, decolonial y feminista, este artículo explora las consecuencias de una epistemología decolonial de la teología para la teoría ética. Introduce una ética política crítica que coincide con la teoría crítica, postestructural y decolonial de que el conocimiento y la ética están necesariamente situados mientras se mantienen firmes en su orientación ética hacia la liberación de la injusticia. En todos estos enfoques, la cuestión de la libertad tiene una importancia central para el desarrollo de la ética política, y tanto la teología política como la teoría crítica plantean la cuestión de la autoridad. Más que presuponer el concepto liberal de autonomía o la libertad moral de Kant, la ética política crítica distingue cuatro dimensiones de la libertad, a saber, la libertad trascendental, la existencial, la social y la política. Para la ética, el reajuste de la teoría y la práctica políticas significa que la solidaridad con el individuo y/o el grupo que sufre no solo es el criterio del juicio moral sino también una prioridad de acción. Sin embargo, además, la ética política crítica sitúa la ética teológica en la tradición de los testigos de la fe que sirven de referencia para una reimaginación creativa de las prácticas morales y políticas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon the tradition of the New Political Theology and liberation, decolonial, and feminist theology, this article explores the consequences of a decolonial epistemology of theology for ethical theory. It introduces a critical political ethics that concurs with critical, post-structural, and decolonial theory that knowledge and ethics is necessarily situated while standing firm in their ethical orientation towards liberation from injustice. In all these approaches, the question of freedom is of central importance for the development of political ethics, and political theology as well as critical theory raise the question of authority. Rather than presupposing the liberal concept of autonomy or Kant's moral freedom, critical political ethics distinguishes between four dimensions of freedom, namely transcendental, existential, social, and political freedom. For ethics, the realignment of political theory and practice means that solidarity with the suffering individual and/or group is not only the criterion of moral judgment but also a priority of action. Additionally, however, critical political ethics situates theological ethics in the tradition of witnesses of faith that serve as reference for a creative reimagination of moral and political practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]