Gavin D'Costa deserves great credit for his essay in Mosaic investigating the theological basis for a Catholic Zionism. I admire his careful construction of a bold and suggestive narrative, which begins in the early 1960s with the Second Vatican Council's epochal document Nostra Aetate, proceeds through an evolving high-level Jewish-Catholic dialogue, and culminates in recent progress toward anchoring these efforts in a definitive affirmation by the Church of the Jewish homeland in the state of Israel.
Also welcome is D'Costa's account of the prehistory of this coming-together of Catholics and Jews: a remarkable chapter of intellectual history about which I, too, have written in a review-essay on John Connelly's From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews 1933-1965.
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