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In recent decades, prominent Christian theologians have described Jesus as the “Torah in person.” This article considers whether such a Torah-in-person Christology falls into a kind of Christian supersessionism (i.e., the suggestion that Christianity sits atop or even takes the place of Judaism). To answer this question, I consider David Novak’s distinction between hard and soft varieties of supersessionism, suggesting that there might be an additional “appropriative” variety. Appropriative supersessionism, exemplified by so-called “Christian Seders,” occurs when Christians problematically lay claim to central elements of the rabbinic tradition. Although Torah-in-person Christology eschews hard supersessionism and underlines the Jewishness of Jesus, it arguably operates in an appropriative supersessionist way. I propose that a covenant Christology features the same advantages that motivate the Torah-in-person category while also circumventing its problematic appropriative aspect.

This essay challenges the claim that the practice of Mass intentions is a “Germanic” distortion, foreign to the biblical and patristic tradition. It frames the development of Mass intentions not as a decline narrative but as a natural outworking of the biblical witness to prayer as a divine-human synergy, tracing this development through Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Carolingian liturgical legislation, and Thomas Aquinas.

This essay reassesses the life and legacy of the Salvadoran martyr and saint Óscar Romero, focusing on his relationship to liberation theology. Drawing on his writings before and after becoming archbishop in 1977, I argue that the theological category of liberation forms a consistent thread in Romero’s theology from the early 1970s onward, and that his theology of liberation continues to deepen over the remainder of the decade. In Romero’s mature thought, God’s liberative work centers on forming Christian liberators conformed to Christ’s love—a vision that invites renewed reflection on liberation theology as a diverse and contested tradition.

This article is a critical examination of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on doctrinal development contained in Dei Verbum 8. Through a survey of preconciliar theological appeals to experience, and by an examination of the conciliar Acta, the article argues that the council’s inclusion of the category of experience was based on a well-trodden Scholastic theological tradition on connatural experience linked to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that the textual amendments sought to eliminate a Modernist understanding of experience and revelation. The article seeks to contribute constructively to ongoing fundamental-theological discourse on revelation and doctrinal development.

One prominent plank of the US national creed is American exceptionalism. The roots of this imprecise but influential notion lie in John Winthrop’s portrayal of colonial America as “a city set upon a hill,” intended by God to serve as a light to the world. While this notion has obviously sparked many abuses of arrogant triumphalism, it may nevertheless retain constructive aspects. Catholic social teaching, with its call to universal social concern and even a certain cosmopolitanism of perspective, provides resources capable of salvaging the positive aspects of the double-edged sword of American exceptionalism. While recent events in US foreign policy cast considerable doubt on the ability of a hegemonic America to practice restraint and self-control, a theological evaluation of American exceptionalism, with its supposedly divinely ordained mission for service, nevertheless continues to possess constructive potential.

The idea of American exceptionalism has been present through much of American
history. But the idea is often abstracted: The character and purpose of the United
States are rendered as timeless and glorified attributes apart from the sinfulness
and limits of history. In this response to Thomas Massaro’s essay, I examine the
historicized nature of the idea in both a spirit of criticism and construction. If Catholic
social ethics is to contribute to a renewal of the idea of American exceptionalism, it
must do so in an historicized and contextual key.