In Mary's Bodily Assumption, Matthew Levering presents a contemporary explanation and defense of the Catholic doctrine of Mary's bodily Assumption. He asks: How does the Church justify a doctrine that does not have explicit biblical or first-century historical evidence to support it? With the goal of exploring this question more deeply, he divides his discussion into two sections, one historical and the other systematic. Levering's historical section aims to retrieve the rich Mariological doctrine of the mid-twentieth century. He introduces the development of Mariology in Catholic Magisterial documents, focusing on Pope Pius XII's encyclical Munificentissimus Deus of 1950, in which the bodily Assumption of Mary was dogmatically defined, and two later Magisterial documents, Vatican II's Lumen Gentium and Pope John Paul II's Redemptoris Mater. Levering addresses the work of the neo-scholastic theologians Joseph Duhr, Alois Janssens, and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange before turning to the great theologians of the nouvelle theologie-Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Joseph Ratzinger-and their emphasis on biblical typology. Using John Henry Newman as a guide, Levering organizes his systematic section by the three pillars of the doctrine on which Mary's Assumption rests: biblical typology, the Church as authoritative interpreter of divine revelation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the fittingness of Mary's Assumption in relation to the other mysteries of faith. Levering's ecumenical contribution is a significant engagement with Protestant biblical scholars and theologians; it is also a reclamation of Mariology as a central topic in Catholic theology.

Maryknoll Catholic missionaries from the United States settled in Peru in 1943 believing they could save a "backward" Catholic Church from poverty, a scarcity of clergy, and the threat of communism. Instead, the missionaries found themselves transformed: within twenty-five years, they had become vocal critics of United States foreign policy and key supporters of liberation theology, the preferential option for the poor, and intercultural Catholicism. In The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943-1989, Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens explains this transformation and Maryknoll's influence in Peru and the United States by placing it in the context of a transnational encounter Catholics with shared faith but distinct practices and beliefs. Peru received among the greatest number of foreign Catholic missionaries who settled in Latin America during the Cold War. It was at the heart of liberation theology and progressive Catholicism, the center of a radical reformist experiment initiated by a progressive military dictatorship, and the site of a devastating civil war promoted by the Maoist Shining Path. Maryknoll participated in all these developments, making Peru a perfect site for understanding Catholic missions, the role of religion in the modern world, and relations between Latin America and the United States. This book is based on two years of research conducted in Peru, where Fitzpatrick-Behrens examined national and regional archives, conducted extensive interviews with Maryknoll clergy who continued to work in the country, and engaged in participant observation in the Aymara indigenous community of Cutini Capilla. Her findings contest assumptions about secularization and the decline of public religion by demonstrating that religion continues to play a key role in social, political, and economic development.