I argue that the authors of the December 2015 Vatican statement “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable” both present the Jewish Old Covenant as a good covenant (rejecting traditional Christian supersessionism) and nonetheless view Jews’ conversion to the better Christian New Covenant as desirable. I challenge the assumption that post–Nostra Aetate positive views of the Jewish covenant, including the claim that Jews are already “saved,” preclude a desire for Jews to convert to Christianity. On the contrary, I show that the authors’ claim that the New Covenant is the “fulfillment” of the Old Covenant provides a motive for contemporary Christians to emulate the efforts made by those early followers of Jesus who shared the gospel with their fellow Jews. To support my argument, I first carefully study the writings of Cardinal Walter Kasper. The authors of Gifts draw almost entirely on Kasper's nuanced and complex views regarding the desirability of Jewish conversion to Christianity, adopting even his approach to and format for presenting this controversial claim.

Determining whether, and when, to get one's children vaccinated has become an increasingly controversial decision, often leaving parents fearful of making the “wrong” choice. Part of the challenge stems from the fact that what is rationally optimal for an individual is inherently at odds with the best outcome for the community, meaning that if everyone acted out of self-interest with respect to pediatric vaccines, communal health would suffer significantly. Given these tensions, the issue of pediatric vaccines benefits greatly from the nuanced assessment of Catholic social teaching. Specifically, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace's “four permanent principles” of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity highlight the issues involved and help parents navigate this significant medical choice with a more informed conscience and a greater sense of their moral responsibilities. The end result is a fruitful alignment between Catholic social teaching and ethics in ordinary life.

In recent years, discussion has raged within theologies inspired by Continental philosophy of religion regarding the supposed “overcoming” of ontotheology. In this article, I will consider the theological methodology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, a sacramental theologian whose work has been highly influenced by these discussions. For Chauvet, it is the liturgy that provides human beings with the necessary means, not for overcoming ontotheology, but for learning to live with it in a healthy way. Through the liturgy, we learn to work through ontotheology, and thus to hear the call of Being to appropriation and thankful response. This is, however, quite a bit to ask of our liturgies, and I suggest that the only way that Chauvet's method can function is if it is placed in a framework of dialogue. I adopt this framework from Chauvet and expand upon it, which results in an innovative relecture of Chauvet's theology.

My goal in this article is to explicate the perspective of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author, Johannes Climacus, on the leap to faith, based on Climacus’ presentation in Philosophical Crumbs. I will argue that for Climacus, during the moment in which this leap is a possibility, while God must bring to the individual both the truth and the condition for understanding it, the leap is a decision by the individual, an existential decision to believe. In attempting to understand Climacus, it is important to use his definition of faith—namely, that faith is a passion and that it is the condition for understanding the paradox of the Christian conception of the Incarnation (as opposed to a synonym for religiosity), because this allows us to understand why faith is not an act of will but is simultaneously a decision (because belief is a free expression of will).

This theological roundtable discussion on shared communion, presented at the 2018 CTS Convention, reflects twenty-plus years of conversations among theologians: some Catholic, members of the College Theology Society; and some Baptist, members of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, region-at-large. They gather at the annual convention of the College Theology Society not only for intellectual exchange but also for common prayer. Over the decades, the Baptist theologians have always participated in Mass. Their fidelity informed Sandra Yocum's presidential address at the convention, which began with a lament over our Christian disunity reflected in the faces of my dear friends in Christ, these Baptist theologians who with all humility process with the other communicants, but with arms crossed over their chests to signal that they cannot receive Christ, whom they too believe to be present in the sacrament.1 The lament sparked a desire in Curtis Freeman to respond with this careful study of the rules among Baptists and Catholics for intercommunion. The subsequent thoughtful responses from Catholics and Baptists bring to the foreground the painful reality of Christ's wounded Body that neither refraining from nor participating in the Eucharist will fully resolve. Yet, each respondent affirms hope in the Eucharist's healing power and echoes Christ's own prayer “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you” (John 17:21).

As Freeman points out, the 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism generally repeats the criteria from 1972 but drops the reference to “serious spiritual need,” raising the bar to “danger of death” in paragraph 130. I would add here that the 1993 Directory also says nothing about lacking recourse to the sacrament in one's own tradition for a prolonged period of time. The 1993 text states only that the person in question be “unable to have recourse for the sacrament desired to a minister of his or her own Church or ecclesial Community.”

While I am not claiming credit for this year's panel session devoted to the question of intercommunion in the context of College Theology Society's convention with Baptist participation, I am deeply gratified that we as the church's theologians, Baptist and Catholic, are now raising the question in this manner, and that Professor Freeman has made clear for us what the ground rules seem to be for playing the hypothetical game of Baptist-Catholic intercommunion at a CTS convention. I have nothing to add to his spot-on summary of the Baptist “rules” for open communion and the Catholic “rules” for exceptional intercommunion articulated in the documents he has cited.

I begin with thanks to Professor Freeman for a helpful article, and with the admission that I am torn by this topic. On the one hand, I have shared by direct experience and that of friends the same pain Freeman describes of being unable to commune at the Saturday evening mass at the CTS/NABPR convention. I remember Sandra Yocum's words of public lament in her 2014 CTS presidential address. Some of us may remember our convention at Spring Hill in 2005 when the celebrant at the Saturday mass that year, Fr. David Robinson, who grew up a New England Congregationalist, spoke with deep anguish of his deep desire to share communion with the Baptists, coupled with the inability to do so. We had sung Susan Toolan's “I Am the Bread of Life,” hearing in our own voices Christ's promise of being raised up on the last day. And then we sensed how that day was not yet. But we should remember that the “last day” when we will unquestionably be one, if I may borrow words from the poet W. H. Auden, “is not in our present, and not in our future, but in the fullness of time.” So we ask now about the prospects of provisionally—proleptically—embodying that oneness this side of the eschaton.

I am an unapologetic admirer of rules. In fact, one of my friends has dubbed me “the rule follower.” So, I greatly appreciate Curtis Freeman's careful delineation of Baptist as well as Catholic rules for intercommunion and commend his quite appropriate apprehension about “breaking the rules.” To ignore these rules subverts the sacred reality that intercommunion is seeking to promote. But what if, instead of thinking about how to avoid breaking the rules, we gave serious attention to what fulfilling these rules might mean? Is there any circumstance in which faithful Baptists might partake in communion with their equally faithful Catholic brothers and sisters that might actually affirm these rules that guide and limit intercommunion? I take this approach to the question of intercommunion relying on two sources. First, the rules themselves, especially the recognition of “profound spiritual need,” invite spiritual discernment as much as canonical jurisprudence. Second, these rules share an affinity with “Rule,” long in the Christian tradition, understood as a detailed guide for a communal way of life that gradually forms participants into the life of Christ.

I want to begin by expressing my appreciation to Curtis Freeman for his comments. I have been reflecting on this topic since it was first mentioned as a possibility. What Freeman has offered serves us well as a beginning to this very important conversation. Hopefully, I can add to that beginning.