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This special issue Journal of Moral Theology (JMT) collects essays by current or recent members of New Wine New Wineskins (NWNW), an association for early-career Catholic moral theologians. NWNW is not a unified school of thought. Its current and past members come from various backgrounds, are formed in diverse graduate programs, and have differing ecclesial and theological sensibilities. The essays contained in this special issue offer a window into the work of early career Catholic moral theologians, embodying the style and sensibility that has characterized the work of NWNW for over two decades now.

In response to court cases in Italy, Colombia, and elsewhere, in which people and communities have appealed to the legal doctrine of necessity, this essay examines the moral-theological tradition reflection on the law of necessity (ius necessitatis) and its preservation in Catholic social teaching. While it is commonplace in our own day to encounter arguments that Christianity underwrites private property rights, this tradition of reflection understands such defenses as based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of what property is and what it is for, which is to meet the needs of all people, because God gives creation as a common gift. For this reason, claims of need can take precedence over claims of private property; the former does not violate the law but illumines its central purpose. Thus, the aim of this essay is to rearticulate the basic rationale and theological moorings of the law of necessity, as well to show how Catholic social teaching preserves it, especially in relation to what Gaudium et spes calls the common or universal destination of created goods. However, while social teaching continues to preserve the ius necessitatis, this law, and right it attempts to secure, remains a shadowy one because of its complex and oftentimes fraught relationship to positive law.

This special issue of the _Journal of Moral Theology_ collects essays by current or recent members of _New Wine New Wineskins_ (NWNW), an association for early-career Catholic moral theologians. While it is hard to describe NWNW as a school of thought, the association’s work has fostered a distinctive ethos among its members characterized by a sense of vocation, friendship, and a commitment to the Catholic moral tradition. The essays contained in this special issue offer a window into the work of early career Catholic moral theologians, embodying the style and sensibility that has characterized the work of NWNW for over two decades. Cover image: _Holy Family_ by Ade Bethune Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota

This article explores the theme of dignity as it emerges in Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum (1891) and develops within mainstream Catholic social teaching. In expositing the grammar of dignity, I argue that, while the tradition certainly affirms dignity as an equal status pertaining to all people as created in God’s image, dignity is not just a status. In a world damaged by sin, the real drama of dignity is its defense—the practical acknowledgement of dignity and human equality in the midst of our lived experience. Given how conditions in our world so often deny this truth about the human creature, dignity is, therefore, something we must have faith in, as well as constantly fight to make ordinary.

What follows is an extended reflection upon Toward a Better Distribution of Land: that creation is a gift God gives to humankind in common; that dominion names the practice of care for it; and that God’s covenant with Israel and the gathering of those who are grafted into it in Christ preserve these understandings of creation and dominion. The Jubilee year as described in Leviticus 25 is the thread that ties these claims together. At the heart of Toward a Better Distribution of Land is the idea that God’s gift of creation for the sustenance of all creatures expresses God’s dominion, which God invites humans to imitate. My concern is how it gets obscured because it does not attend adequately to sin, the damage it does to creation, and God’s work to repair that damage in Israel and in Christ and to restore the world to its created form.