Now that more than five decades have passed since Nostra Aetate initiated a new relationship between Jews and Catholics, it has become possible to identify certain basic principles—predicated on an appreciation of ongoing Jewish covenantal life—that are emerging in Catholic ecclesial statements. Such a “theology of shalom” seeks “right relationship” with the Jewish people and “wholeness” in terms of the church's own self-understanding. The article proposes three fundamental axioms. A theology of shalom (1) sees Jews and Christians as co-covenanting companions; (2) respects and reckons with Jewish self-understanding; and (3) focuses on final fulfillment in the future. It elaborates three subpoints for each principle to elucidate several implications and questions. The article concludes with the suggestion that the maturing Catholic-Jewish relationship may be moving into one of mutuality in which both communities can study and learn from their respective covenantal ways of walking with God.

Female bodies as sexual and reproductive are subject to much scrutiny in Western societies and the church. Mysteriously missing from discourses related to such scrutiny is the reality of menstruation and its place in theology and females’ lives. From within a feminist theological perspective, this article aims to recover menstruation and menstrual awareness, and to advocate for the positive possibilities of widespread recognition and acceptance of, and engagement with, these realities to advance female presence in sexual theology and related discourses. In engaging contemporary social discussions, Jewish and Christian histories of menstruation, contemporary sexual theologies, and varied feminist theologies, this article proposes a robust view of menstruation in the sexual lives of faithful females.

Thanks to the explosion of methods and hermeneutical frameworks that have surfaced in biblical studies since the 1970s, the discipline looks very different today than when Catholic scholars were first openly permitted to engage it. Among these approaches are those that foreground the complex role the real flesh-and-blood reader plays in interpretation. Recent discussion on what makes biblical interpretation “Catholic” reveals it to be a contested topic. Through an analysis of the Pontifical Biblical Commission's The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church and Frank M. Yamada's article “What Does Manzanar Have to Do with Eden? A Japanese American Interpretation of Genesis 2–3,” the present article enters the discussion over what constitutes Catholic biblical interpretation to argue that it must integrate hermeneutical approaches that foreground real readers within the context of lived realities.

The Black Lives Matter movement has received little scholarly attention from Catholic theologians and ethicists, despite the fact that it is the most conspicuous and publicly influential racial justice movement to be found in the US context in decades. The author argues on the basis of recent field research that this movement is most adequately understood from a theological ethics standpoint through a performativity lens, as a form of quasi-liturgical participation that constructs collective identity and sustains collective agency. The author draws upon ethnographic methods in order to demonstrate that the public moral critique of the movement is embedded in four interlocking narratives, and to interrogate the Catholic theological discipline itself as an object of this moral critique in light of its own performative habituation to whiteness.

The phenomenon of organizing a civic candlelight vigil in the face of violence and tragedy, while striking and powerful in addressing the moment, can be also religiously ambiguous in some circumstances, and insufficiently therapeutic in others. Keeping vigil in the Christian tradition is markedly different from its contemporary expressions. This article explores and evaluates—through the use of contemporary examples and the psychological and ritual analyses of Gotthard Booth and Victor Turner—the purpose and goals of vigils held in the public square with the nature and impact of keeping vigil in the Christian tradition, especially as celebrated in the Easter Vigil. This expository and diagnostic study suggests that a full expression of keeping vigil serves as an articulation of how believers are challenged to confront pain and suffering with a more profound theological and liturgical response that stands in stark contrast to contemporary cultural and social mechanisms.

Theological and evolutionary anthropological analysis of the role of song in human and (some) animal communication can help to expand our understanding of the ways that language functions as mediator of the divine-human relationship. This article considers the role of a musical protolanguage in the evolution of human language, demonstrating the connections between contemporary human language and the songs or calls of other animals. Consideration of the broader category of communication in the place traditionally held by a more narrow understanding of language can help to highlight the role that emotion, instinct, and relationality play in the relationship that humans have with God. Such a realization opens the doors to further theological questions about the role of humanity in a suffering creation, the relationship between God and nonhuman creatures, and the role of song in liturgical celebration.

This article discusses the pro-environmental theology of two contemporary Christian leaders. The first is the current ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. The second is Roman Catholicism's Pope Francis. Both leaders seek to support members of their respective churches who are working to protect the environment, and also to speak globally across cultural and religious lines. Both Bartholomew and Francis believe the crisis of climate change has deep roots in modern culture's anthropocentric ethos, and hence there must be an “apocalypse” or an unveiling of this ethos as a betrayal not only of nature but also of God the Creator. Contrary to some religious environmentalists, therefore, both Bartholomew and Francis are careful to distinguish cosmocentric theology (pantheism and animism) and theocentric cosmology (monotheism centered on the Incarnation of the Trinity in creation). Francis in particular aims for a retrieval of Saint Francis of Assisi's relationship to the natural world as it was expressed by Saint Bonaventure, and later developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola into a discipline (ascesis) of learning to see all created things as expressions of God's glory. In rivalry with the ascesis of modern capitalism, which could be described as “disciplined avarice in action,” Bartholomew and Francis advocate the classical monastic-Franciscan-Ignatian spiritual ethos of “disciplined contemplation in action.”

Pregnancy loss (miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion) is an age-old, and typically hidden, part of women's lives, yet only in recent years has it started to receive recognition to match its prevalence. Based on ethnographic research, this article analyzes liturgical and memorial practices developing within American Catholicism to acknowledge and commemorate pregnancy losses. Growing efforts have emerged as parishes, dioceses, and other Catholic organizations across the country have developed rites and memorials that provide formal ways to attend to grief that often accompanies experiences of miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion. The memorials range from “miscarriage masses” to public monuments to postabortion ministry retreats. This article argues that these memorial practices seek to change how pregnancy-loss experiences are understood or “known” by ritual participants by reframing them within Catholic narratives of forgiveness and healing, thereby transforming situations of isolating loss into stories of grace, community, and shared sorrow.

In his work Poverty of Spirit, Johann Metz depicts Jesus Christ as embodying three aspects of poverty of spirit required to become fully human: (1) an affirmation of interdependence on God and others, (2) self-love (accepting human finitude and one's unique calling), and (3) love of neighbor as self. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 150 students’ reflections on poverty of spirit within the context of party and hookup culture, this article explores the challenges US undergraduates face in following Christ's path of full humanity. Undergraduates’ own insights issue an urgent call to Catholic universities to respond proactively to the dehumanization, injustices, and forms of violence present in party and hookup culture. At stake is the integrity of Catholic higher education's mission to care for the whole person and form students into men and women “for others” who are committed to justice, solidarity, and the common good.

Five hundred years after the start of the Protestant Reformation, what are the possibilities for individual and ecclesial ecumenism between Protestants and Catholics? What are the possibilities for common prayer, shared worship, preaching the gospel, church union, and dialogue with those who are religiously unaffiliated? Why should we commemorate or celebrate this anniversary?

When the young Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, affixed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church on October 31, 1517, calling for the reform of the church, he could hardly have anticipated the succession of events that would lead to the division of Western Christendom. Luther had no intention of creating a “Lutheran” Church, nor could he have foreseen that his initiative would give rise to an ecclesial divide that would persist for half a millennium. The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism, which acknowledged the need for continual reform and renewal in the church, created the conditions for the Catholic Church to enter in earnest into a dialogue “on equal footing” with other Christian communities. The Lutheran-Catholic Commission on Unity, as it is known today, was established in 1967 and was the first commission for official bilateral dialogue. Thus, as we commemorate five hundred years since the Reformation, we also mark with gratitude fifty years of official dialogue and growth in communion.

I once quipped in a class that I wondered if the Martin Luther portrayed in some books would even be able to recognize the Martin Luthers of other works. Would Erik Erikson's sexually repressed, rebellious Luther recognize the confident and assertive Luther of the recent popularly aimed biography How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World? The five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation seems an apt moment to reflect a bit on the place and significance of Martin Luther in the Reformation and the church. The anniversary year will see at least a half-dozen new biographies, numerous conferences, and nearly ubiquitous commemorations. As we mark this year, what portraits are now being drawn? What conclusions? Is there any hope of synthesis and common representation, or shall we each have our own Luther, few of whom recognize the other? Since the last centennial of the Reformation, scholarship on the Reformation generally and Luther specifically has emerged from the tight quarters of confessionalized history. In 1917, there were no commemorations. Luther was celebrated by Protestants and lamented by Roman Catholics. There was little in the way of neutral ground between those two poles. In 1999, the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican issued a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. In 2016, Pope Francis traveled to Sweden to participate in a joint commemoration of the Reformation with a Lutheran (and female) bishop. Such would have been unthinkable in 1917, or 1817, or 1617. As Luther has been released from the confessionalized walls that held him so long, what image do we see now? In what follows, I would like to reflect on three aspects of the “new” or “newer” Luther that has emerged.

To assess the present state and future possibilities of personal and ecclesial ecumenism between Protestant and Catholic Christians is a difficult task. On the one hand, the diversity among Protestants is so great few generalities hold for all of them. The challenges involved in Catholic relations with the Church of England are quite different than those involved in relations with the Southern Baptist Convention, and different in yet other ways from those involved in relations with a Pentecostal church in South Africa. In a broad sense, one can think of a spectrum of Protestant churches, some with whom Catholic relations might be close, and then a series of churches at a greater distance from Catholicism with whom relations would be more limited. That picture is only partially true, however. On many social issues, Catholics can work more closely with Evangelicals, with whom there are deep differences over sacraments and ecclesiology, than they can with more socially liberal representatives of, say, the Lutheran or Anglican traditions. In this brief reflection, I will be concerned with the Protestant communities with whom the greatest possibilities of a wide spectrum of closer relations seem to exist, such as the Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed churches.

“Today's challenges are no longer defined by local or national borders. They are glocal, both global and local. Borders are no longer what they used to be. That should not scare us. Because at the center of Christianity, there is a God crossing the most dramatic border of all: the one between divine and human. Transgression of borders always entails ‘Berührungsangst,’ the anxiety of touching and being touched by what is different, strange, other. As people of faith, we can live with these anxieties, remaining centered in the Gospel of the incarnated Christ and open, very much open, to the world. And so, united in prayer for God's creation and the church of Jesus Christ, we say with confidence: Veni Creator Spiritus, Come Creator Spirit.”

I am honored to participate in this theological roundtable on the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. I do so as a lay Lutheran church historian. In spite of the editors’ “prompts,” the topic reminds me of that apocryphal final exam question: “Give a history of the universe with a couple of examples.” “What do we think are the possibilities for individual and ecclesial ecumenism between Protestants and Catholics? What are the possibilities for common prayer, shared worship, preaching the gospel, church union, and dialogue with those who are religiously unaffiliated? Why should we commemorate or celebrate this anniversary?” Each “prompt” warrants a few bookshelves of response. The “Protestant Reformation” itself is multivalent. The term “Protestant” derives from the 1529 Diet of Speyer where the evangelical estates responded to the imperial mandate to enforce the Edict of Worms outlawing them. Their response, Protestatio, “testified” or “witnessed to” (pro testari) the evangelical estates’ commitment to the gospel in the face of political coercion (see Acts 5:29). It was not a protest against the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrine. Unfortunately, “Protestant” quickly became a pejorative name and then facilitated an elastic “enemies list.” “Reformation,” traditionally associated with Luther's “Ninety-Five Theses” (1517, hence the five-hundredth anniversary), also encompasses many historical and theological interpretations. Perhaps the Roundtable title reflects the effort in From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 (2013) to distinguish Luther's reformational concern from the long historical Reformation (Protestantism), so that this anniversary may be both “celebrated” and self-critically “commemorated.”