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The final issue of the year 2000 treats the theme of justice, alongside the related themes of pardon and justification.

Marc Ouellet shows the ultimate inadequacy of a purely human conception of justice, one cut off from its theological foundation. True justice, he proposes, is fulfilled and surpassed in the event of the cross, wherein God establishes his covenant with man and wherein man thereby finds justification. Antonio Sicari discusses the Church’s confession of her children’s past and present sins as the "narrow gate" through which the pope has asked Christians to pass, as they cross the threshold into the new millennium. Daniel Bell criticizes a dualistic interpretation of eschatology that would neglect the question of justice in the present age, as well as a one-sided politicization of eschatology that would reduce the Church to that order, and argues instead for the paradoxical "insurrectional reserve" that would represent a genuine Catholic Moment. Bruno Forte attempts to explain some of the reasons why the Church has asked for pardon during this Jubilee year, in light of the ITC’s document, "Memory and Reconciliation." Robin Darling Young redresses shortcomings in the standard line of interpreting the patristic understanding of justification through a discussion of the sixth-century Syrian theologian Philoxenos of Mabbugh.

Other articles in this number are gathered under the theme "leisure, contemplation, and religious/aesthetic vision." David Schindler discusses beauty as "the answer . . . to the charge that the order of being has nothing to do with love . . . or again that love has nothing intrinsic to do with being." As such, it is the key to overcoming moralism. Against a wholly immanent view of time, which would dissolve life into purely external activity, Heinrich Beck brings to light the importance of contemplation by revealing the nature of time as an image of, and path to, eternity. Peter Erb compares Aristotle and Newman—particularly in the latter’s understanding of Liberal education—in the way they integrate leisure and work in their understanding of the human being. Giovanni Testori (1923–1993) illuminates the link between art and truth in a consideration of Cézanne’s profound artistic vision.

In Kairos, Paul Murray distills the various elements of Shakespeare’s religious vision in a paper that was delivered this year as Oxford’s annual "Aquinas Lecture." In Retrieving the Tradition, we present a text from the renowned exegete Heinrich Schlier (1900–1978) as a commemoration of the centennial anniversary of his birth. In this text, Schlier meditates on the cross as the ultimate deed on the part of God for man’s justification. An excerpt from a chapter of A Philosophy of Form by E.I. Watkin (1888–1981) discusses the relation between contemplation and a notion of the social order as a free, organic form. In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Calderón de la Barca, we include an essay by the German poet and novelist Reinhold Schneider (1903–1958) that celebrates the world-embracing and -transcending vision of the great Spanish dramatist.

In Notes and Comments, Adrian Walker contrasts the "liberal" and "ecclesial" models of dialogue, and shows why the latter, with its intrinsic connection to martyrdom, is in fact the best model for inter-religious dialogue. On the occasion of the 600th anniversary of Chaucer’s death, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis praises him as "the poet of God’s mercy," who is "able to view humankind and each individual through the eyes of God’s own love, at once lucid and tender."

DCS