Religious booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES Holy folks & heavy tomes Lawrence S. Cunningham It has been unfashionable for some time to speak of the "Counter Reformation" because historians now believe that the events...
...Faith on the Edge is a mixed bag, but, on balance, I would give it high marks for the creativity and passion of its theological vision...
...That not everyone shares his vision does not gainsay the creative insights that he provides...
...Hence, my desire to note two reference books within reach of many pock-etbooks...
...Rahner speaks, in these pages, of his intellectual development, his hopes for the future, and of his theology and its reception...
...Always an independent thinker, Rahner was able to balance a great love and respect for the church with a voice that could be critical and challenging...
...My firm conviction is that one cannot possess too many reference books...
...In the post-Reformation period they made a mighty contribution to that invasion mystique of which the late Henri Bremond spoke...
...European cities...
...There is an entry on marriage in Islam but none on the other major religions...
...Nichols is probably correct that Congar's theological style recaptures that kind of theology which was done, preeminently in the East, before the rise of the universities...
...Lenten observances...
...Conceived by Evangelical scholars, it is The Dictionary of Christianity in America, edited by Daniel Reid...
...edited by Paul Imhofand Huliert Biallowons, Crossroad...
...on its complex religious and social life...
...He combined, in a magisterial fashion, the insights of contemporary philosophy with a grasp of Christianity which was deeply mystical and fundamentally indebted to his lifelong encounter with The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola...
...In the same vein, I would second his conviction (his detractors will be surprised by this...
...Congar's most attractive trait is his ability to combine an enormous erudition and a genuine sense of the church with an adventuresome openness to dialogue and reconciliation...
...Saint Teresa is one of two women who have been named "Doctors of the Church" (the other is Saint Catherine of Siena whose spirit is not absent from this story) and a premier Christian mystic...
...It must be seen against the background of the confraternities which were so much a part of the late medieval and early modern spiritual landscape...
...that any theologian who claims the name must master the tradition, from the Bible to the statements of the magisterium before all else...
...Above all, there is the austere voice of Rahner himself: Catholic to his depths yet adventuresome of mind...
...He never lacked a sense of the Catholic church but he was open to the insights and gifts of other Christians in constructive ways...
...Boff puts into practice a kind of theology that looks back to the past and toward a still unclear but hope-filled future...
...His work is an intensely interesting piece of social history which any educated history buff would enjoy...
...there is an entry on Christian missions but none on Islamic missions...
...regular confession and frequent Communion) was a result, not of the formal implementation of the teachings of the Council of Trent mediated through canons or preaching, but because of the example of these sodalities who vainly sought to re-Christianize LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM is a professor of theology at the University of None Dame...
...One factor of that religious revival was the custom, nurtured by the Jesuits, of forming religious sodalities of lay people who were expected to lead a certain form of life, engage in both private devotions and public manifestations of piety, and involve themselves in a range of charitable and educational works which covered everything from the care of prisoners to the redemption of prostitutes...
...Some pieces show their age...
...The "wintry season" of the book's title refers to a phrase that Rahner used as early as the 1970s (he died in 1984) to describe the climate of our culture...
...Intervarsity Press, $39.95.1305 pp...
...Since the current publisher did not update the work, a few entries are out of date (for example, the entry on "canon law" does not take into account the new code), but not many...
...Given the bulk one does get and the modest price demanded, this is a buy not to be missed...
...Rahner could be critical of theologians like Hans Kiing or amateurs like Ernesto Cardenal for their disrespect for ecclesial authority while, at the same time, feeling free to criticize Roman authority when authentic teaching was not the issue...
...He saw a future when authentic believers might live in a totally rational technical culture which would call on great holiness for survival and witness...
...Readers interested in this lay piety may well wish to read, in tandem with Chatellier's work, two studies which discuss these confraternities in Italy and Spain respectively: Christopher Black's Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989) and Maureen Flynn's Sacred Charity (Cornell, 1989...
...His most recent book, from Crossroad, is Catholic Prayer...
...Despite such moments, there is much in this work to admire...
...generalization is counterintuitive...
...Chatellier studies the life and activities of these sodalities (of which there was a dense network by 1600) in different The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society, by Ltmis Chatellier, Cambridge University Presi...
...One could multiply such instances but only to carp...
...I recommend his book but would suggest reading it in tandem with Fifty Years of Catholic Theology: Conversations with Yves Congar (Fortress, 1988) where the man rather than the doctrine shows forth a bit more vividly than is true of Nichols's study...
...What Bilinkoff does exceedingly well is to give us a genuine feel for the city both before and after Teresa's lifetime...
...It is a useful volume with entries written by some very fine scholars (the one on Christianity, for instance, was done by Martin Marty) and The Perennial Dictionary or World Religions, edited by Keith Krim, Harper and Raw, $22.95,830 pp...
...Leonardo Boff, like Rahner and Congar before him, has suffered at the hands of authority but in Boff's case it was not during the gelid days of Christian orthodoxy but in the more immediate past...
...The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions is a reprint of a dictionary published in 1981 under the title The Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions...
...Again, like Rahner and Congar, he is a prolific author with only a portion of his work translated from his native Portuguese...
...Nichols has helped me understand why it is profitable to go back to Congar and why we learn so much from him...
...19.95,212 pp...
...The Dictionary of Christianity in America is a wonderfully useful volume...
...a comprehensive resource on the religious life of this country...
...sible: write on this topic without ever once mentioning Teresa's friend and confidant, Saint John of the Cross...
...Yet, despite that bleak prospect, these pages demonstrate a hope-filled vision as the old theologian hammered at his most basic conviction: God's grace is fundamental and ubiquitous...
...Done mostly at the end of his life, the interviews collected in this volume (the third of such collections) illustrate that delicate balance...
...There are interviews with Marxist philosophers and young students as well as scholarly probes into the maturation of his theology...
...49.95.270 pp...
...Yves Congar is one of the truly seminal figures of the contemporary Catholic theological world...
...examination of conscience...
...He was a prophetic figure who, in his earlier career, had suffered from official suspicion and removal from teaching only to find, as was true of a number of his continental colleagues, that he was vindicated at the council...
...There are very full chapters on the demographics of the town (it was quite small...
...Faith on the Edge: Religion and Marginalized Existence, by Leonardo Boff, Harper and Row...
...Every student of religion in America will wish to own this carefully edited and unfailingly well-written volume.ted and unfailingly well-written volume...
...Jodi Bilinkoff's study of the city of Avila (and its most famous citizen-Teresa of Avila) is so unremittingly focused on its topic that it manages to do the near imposThe Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth Century City, by Jodi Bilinkoff, Cornell University Press, $24.95,218pp...
...When asked about the style of the current pontiff, for example, Rahner drily answered that one could obey but one need not applaud...
...Boff, it is clear, has done this hard work and, as a result, his theology can bring forth "old things and new" as the Scripture says...
...They are not only useful for checking facts but they make a wonderful browse for those who revel in the idle turning of pages with the expectation of coming on an odd fact or two...
...There was, as the subtitle of Chatellier's interesting study indicates, a Catholic reformation that was not motivated solely by the events connected with Protestantism...
...The late Karl Rahner was one of the most fecund speculative theologians of this century...
...Faith in a Wintry Season: Conversations and Interviews with Karl Rahncr...
...Yves Congar, by Aidan Nichols, O.P., Morehouse-Barlow, $19.95 (cloth), $12.95,224pp...
...Never mind...
...His interest was in the richness of the ecclesial tradition and the great christological and pneu-matological forces which it mediates...
...Like all dictionaries, this one includes eccentricities...
...Recent world events make us think that such a sweeping (Marxist...
...Aidan Nichols's study of Congar is a reliable and well written guide through the major works of Congar...
...it reached 12,000 inhabitants at the end of the sixteenth century...
...Writing from the perspective of the Latin American scene, he can be as critical of progressive European theology as that of its conservative antagonists...
...More than adequate attention is paid both to Roman Catholic and Orthodox topics, but the real strength of this work rests in its capacious treatment of Protestantism...
...Bilinkoff is quite good on what was new in Saint Teresa's Carmelite reforms (e.g., her understanding of poverty...
...The Jesuit sodality was not a totally unique invention...
...her shift from vocal to mental prayer) and what underpinned them: the poverty-centered theology of the Franciscans and the Erasmian-inspired (via the devotio moderna) shift to inferiority...
...and finally, a good feel for the popular piety and theological influences of the age...
...I very much like Boff's reflections on the nature of theology, especially his telling question: To what cause is a particular theology committed, that is, what is its ideological underpinning...
...It is an edifying book and one that I recommend with enthusiasm...
...Those interested in liberation theology should have it on their shelves...
...there is no extended entry on religious education...
...It also has some very useful maps and some adequate illustrations...
...This work is a pastiche taken from works published in Brazil as early as 1977...
...Europe but ended up only (only...
...The editors assembled an ecumenical group of contributors (truth in advertising compels me to admit to writing some short entries) so the Evangelical slant of the sponsors is not obtrusive...
...RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES Holy folks & heavy tomes Lawrence S. Cunningham It has been unfashionable for some time to speak of the "Counter Reformation" because historians now believe that the events subsequent to the Protestant Reformation were not only a reaction to that great upheaval (although they were surely that in part) but an independent revival of religious life within Catholicism...
...There are some wonderful long articles (I especially liked Mark Noll's contribution on the Bible and American culture), but the real value of the volume is in its coverage of the eddies and byways of the whole panoply of the Christian presence in this country...
...One wonders, for example, if, in the light of current events, Boff is still adamant in his conviction that socialism is the inevitable next step in human history with the demise of capitalism as part of the dynamic of "objective history...
...Although Congar was a Thomist to the depths, his Thomism was historically rooted and rarely speculative...
...in shaping the ways generations of Catholics practiced their faith...
...Readers of this great saint's work will be enriched by this careful piece of social history which gives background and nuance to an encounter with those works...
...Those who charge that the liberationist theologians practice politics with a theological patina should read a volume like this...
...This is part of that "toil" which Thomas Aquinas says daunts those who seek to do theology...
...its range of topics is wide indeed...
...As chance would have it, I had just reread Congar's Tradition and Traditions (Macmillan, 1966) a few months before coming on this work...
...In chapters which discuss his theological, historical, and ecumenical interests, Nichols manages to do justice to Congar's thought and the abiding themes which recur in his work...
...The theologian would find the work even more interesting because of Chatellier's conclusion, to wit, that a good deal of what became the spiritual style of modern Catholicism (daily prayers...
...All of the intricacies of American religious history are covered, from movements and persons to doctrines and manifestations of popular religion...
...His distinguished career as an ecumenist, ecclesiologist, and historian of theology largely shaped the eccle-sial vision of the Second Vatican Council...
...22.95, 207 pp...
Vol. 117 • June 1990 • No. 12
