This chapter articulates, first, the power of Catholic popes to punish the sin of clerical sexual abuse. It examines their ability to use canon law, executive orders, and other religious means to reorganize the Church’s infrastructure and reform the governance of its hierarchy and priests. On a second level, it analyzes the popes’ limited role in sanctioning the crime of clerical sexual abuse. It examines the historical right of popes to punish its clerical personnel, protect its privacy, and maintain its sphere of religious authority, matters that have been challenged by the imposition of criminal law, civil lawsuits, and state investigations. Finally, it concludes that papal governance on clerical sexual abuse has often been ineffective, that social and management problems still exist, and that they will impact the papacy’s future moral quandary in Catholic Church–state relations

The chapter addresses the history of the Synod of Bishops, created by pope Paul VI in September 1965 and reformed by Francis I between 2018 and 2023, with an analysis of the different phases: from the proposals emerging from the bishops during the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), to the Synods’ assemblies of Paul VI (r. 1963–78), John Paul II (r. 1978–2005), and Benedict XVI (r. 2005–13). After half a century of its life, the Synod of Bishops has changed, especially during pope Francis I’s pontificate, from an expression of episcopal collegiality (representing the bishops only), useful as a device of papal primacy, to an institution of ecclesial synodality, giving voice to all kinds of members in the Catholic Church, including women and lay people.

This chapter outlines a historiography of the papacy and the environment and begins with several observations. First, papal approaches to the environment are shaped by the historical evolution of the papacy itself. Second, notions of environment and environmentalism are varied across secular, religious, and, by extension, papal discourse and action. Relatedly, these pluriform conceptions are influenced by locations that include geographic, epistemological, and socio-cultural. Thus informed, the chapter engages two distinct periods. The first is the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, wherein papal approaches to the environment were variously shaped by notions of wilderness, classical natural history, anthropocentrism, monastic spiritualities and activities, and expanding ecclesial infrastructure and temporal power. The second period begins with global industrialization around 1750 and continues through to today. Therein, papal environmentalism is especially expressed in modern Catholic social teaching that began with Leo XIII in 1891 and continues through Francis I, especially Laudato si’ in 2015.

The dynamic of simultaneous recognition and restriction of women’s leadership roles in the Church is not new for the papacy. This chapter employs the figures of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary – the two “leading women” of the New Testament – to explore the surprising degree to which popes have recognized the pivotal role of women in salvation history. It also shows, however, that popes consistently crafted the identities of the Virgin and the Magdalene in a manner that de-emphasized any priestly function or Christ-like power. Both Marys, therefore, share traits connected to their lack of suitability for leadership within a male order. In constraining the roles of the Marys, popes have also limited the roles for ordained women in the Church, thereby maintaining their unique claims to primacy.

This chapter examines Samuel Moyn and John Finnis’s heated exchange over Christian human rights. Their diverging methodologies and conclusions are rooted in different fundamental commitments, respectively, historicism and metaphysical realism. Furthermore, the debate implicitly acts out older, deeper tensions between anti-Catholic modernity and antimodern Catholicism. This longer trajectory reached a paradoxical climax after the Second Vatican Council when many Catholics turned toward the modern paradigm just as others were diagnosing its demise. Contemporary reflection on Christian human rights demonstrates how the sufficient reasons of history complicate predictable choices between secular and religious worldviews. One ongoing challenge, then, is to mediate such differences through mutual translation and dialogue.