The reviews consider how Catholic faith can engage American political modernity without surrendering its transcendent claims. Matthew L. Lamb, Cardinal Francis George, George Weigel, Michael Novak, and others debate whether the American founding remains compatible with natural law, whether philosophic liberalism’s emphasis on autonomy tends toward moral indifference and despotism, and how the Church might preserve democracy’s genuine goods while grounding freedom in God. The discussion also criticizes nominalism, voluntarism, Lockean individualism, and forms of Puritanism for separating faith from reason and leaving freedom without a transcendent purpose.

A review of Marcus Plested’s Orthodox Readings of Aquinas challenges the stereotype of an absolute East–West theological opposition. Aquinas’s debt to Greek patristic thought and Gregory Palamas’s engagement with Latin theology support a more historically informed dialogue and a rejection of modern Orthodox “theology of opposition.” Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love proposes an Augustinian civic ethic joining love of God and neighbour to political responsibility while acknowledging sin, coercion, and the limits of earthly politics; the review notes its limited treatment of sacramental, liturgical, and ecclesial formation. Anthony Briggman’s study presents Irenaeus as a sophisticated theologian of the Holy Spirit, especially through the “Two Hands” account. The final review welcomes an English edition of the Enchiridion Symbolorum but criticizes recent Denzinger editions for excessive non-doctrinal material, omitted qualifications, and insufficient historical context.