We need a nonviolent soteriology that honors scriptural and theological traditions about enemy-love, suffering, sacrifice, and satisfaction and refuses to further harm victims of violence and oppression. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Bernard Lonergan’s way of understanding Christ’s satisfaction by analogy with the sacrament of reconciliation disclose one way suffering can be redemptive: When nonviolent activists “present their very bodies,” they expose the violence latent in unjust situations. Similarly, when Christ presents his body, he exposes the violence at the heart of sin. Like Christ, activists “become sin” (1 Cor 5:21)—not because they take responsibility for the sin, but because sin becomes visible in the wounds it leaves on innocent bodies. Once visible, healing can begin. Further, both men argue for a proper unfolding of the extension of love to enemies, lest victims be further harmed and injustice ignored.

This article brings Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of “self” and “borderlands/mestiza consciousness” into conversation with M. Shawn Copeland’s call to “turn theology toward persons.” After tracing Anzaldúa’s critical rethinking of José Vasconcelos’s understanding of mestizaje, as well as the political implications of borderlands/mestiza consciousness as theorized in the work of María Lugones and others, the article examines Copeland’s engagement of decolonial theory in her attempt to “turn” theology. Both Copeland’s and Anzaldúa’s writings teach nos/otrx that theology can only be both transformed and transformative if the persons doing theology engage in critical self-reflection and build this critical reflexivity into the theologies they create.

This article draws upon the theology of Johann Baptist Metz, placing it into discussion with insights from theological aesthetics and political ecology. It does so to examine how it is that evil comes to appear as glamorous, giving particular attention to the evil shaping and sustaining the contemporary planetary emergency. The first part of the article considers the obfuscating and trivializing power of evil. The second part reflects upon the distortions of affection caused by the lust for domination. The article concludes with a reflection on the potentiality of hope to interrupt the mastery of sin.

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 state of democracy is declining worldwide, and that includes the United States, the oldest constitutional democracy. Various scholars have proposed theories regarding the growth and decline of democracy in the twenty-first century. Many commentaries point to a new threat to democracy that goes by a variety of names. This essay aims to understand the cause of the democratic decline and the Catholic Church’s role in supporting democracy.

This article proposes an ecumenical understanding of Christian tradition that valorizes the pluralism of Christian confessions as virtuous efforts to receive the gift of divine revelation. Its argument culminates in an eschatological ecclesiology that might serve as an aesthetic for appreciating the role of tradition in ecumenical dialogue.

Several themes are as fundamental in Buddhist thinking as they are in the ancient and modern debates about the teaching of the Council of Nicaea (325). This article argues that if the interreligious dialogue urged by Vatican II had been more energetically sustained, a Buddhist-Christian conversation about the legacy of Nicaea could have been a significant ecumenical event, overcoming the monopoly of Eurocentric perspectives.

Dissent, understood as a public rejection of the authoritatively pronounced rules, verdicts, and truth claims within a given community, although disruptive, can offer multiple benefits to the life of the community. However, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) effectively leaves no other option for dissenters than to adopt a stance of obedient silence. This article emphasizes a need for a shift in the magisterial attitude toward dissent, one in which Catholic truth claims can bear the collective scrutiny and questioning expressed through dissent and thus be more fully integrated into the life of the community. To do that, the article divides the discussion into two parts. First, the article offers an analysis of the concept of dissent, its potential benefits, and its entanglement with the other concepts more broadly. Second, it scrutinizes the construction of power, tradition, and dissent in the RCC specifically.

Large-scale and widespread social and ecclesial upheaval results in the experience of “dislocation,” a feeling of homelessness flowing from the loss of certainty and stability. This article considers how dislocation might provide an opening to creativity and hope, especially in the life of the ecclesial community. Synodality can be an instance of such creativity and hope, even though, paradoxically, synodality itself can be a catalyst for dislocation. To make its case for synodality, the article highlights the church’s eschatological orientation, its graced pilgrimage of faith.