BOOKS
Hughes, John Jay & Madaras, Larry & Kelly, James R. & King, Robert L. & Betsky, Celia
A Concise History of the Catholi~ Church THOMAS BOKENKOTTER Doubleday, $10 [431 pp.] JOHN JAY HUGHES Church history as most Catholics have known it died during a dramatic speech on 1 December...
...Berlin is a "daydreame~" whose waking reveries are concerned with making a better world, whose "only goal was to l~ve long enough to establish goals worth living for," and who looks forward to the day when he can stop being afraid...
...R motivates Berlin to bank on hope, and there isn't much more .to get the men through their fantastic ordeal...
...The book works well and can be read by a wide audience, not only by those in professions such as lawyers, doctors, social science researchers and teachers, whose work creates daily dilemmas for truth-telling, but also by many others as well...
...Triumphalism denies any essential departure, thus encouraging self-righteousness...
...This is a lucid and sensible essay in applied ethics, but perhaps two quibbles will be allowed...
...After an excellent ac15 September 1978:602 count of Luther's theology, which rightly emphasizes that much of i,t was the rediscovery of half-forgotten Catholic truths, Bokenkotter ends the chapter lamely by saying that it was Calvinism which came to dominate the Protestant world, without ever describing Calvin's theology or explaining how it differed from Luther's...
...medical school, the country club...
...She rightly observes that if such reasoning were taken seriously, and the criteria of benevolent deception were publicly argued and defended, there would be justification for very, very few acts of deception, whether in medicine, law, social research, or government...
...It teaches the loner his obligation to others, it helps the fearGoing Att~r Caeciato TIM O'BRIEN Delacorte, $8.95 [338 pp.] CELIA BETSKY It is fashionable to play the cynic these days...
...271 pp.] Tom Wioker's anecdotes are often self-deprecating and amusing...
...It begins with God's mighty acts on behalf of people who have done nothing to merit them...
...The story is told from the point of view of Par Berlin, a son of Nick Adams with a twist...
...It complements Liebling and The First Casualty...
...Her discussion is applicable to the dilemmas of everyday life and includes chapters on lying to the sick and dying, lying to children, and lying to protect clients and colleagues...
...The charismatic movement of today, though emphasizing the Holy Spirit rather than the son of God, is similar to the reviv~lism of the nineteenth century because .it also tries to renew the piety of the people by stressing the work of God in the hearts of individuals...
...Boniface VHI substituting "resounding trumpet blasts of Latin" for argument or proof in the Bull Unam sanctam...
...His restless imagination may be what guides the men onwards --O'Brien deals in wishful thinking as much as in realities...
...Bok agreeably and soundly argues that government deception is harmful to a democratic polity and is rarely the only available option, even in times of dire crisis...
...and she is right in her stcategy for a pluralistic society...
...Among these missionaries were Jesuits, Redemptorists, and Paulists who promoted devotional exercises to the Virgin Mary or the Sacred Heart for the purpose of fostering growth by conversions and reentries, restoring parish unity, and rei~orcing the need for a strong authority figure...
...They engage in a pursuit of his childlike innocence, booking onto a Cooks Tour of the mind which takes them from distrust to confidence, from brutality ,to civil~ation, from "running away" to heading towards something...
...Wicker argues that journalism cannot be "objective" and that it therefore must report its reasonable inferences (as the Times failed to do with the Bay of Pigs story...
...Cacciato, a symbolic figure always lurking just Over the horizon, is, as far as can tell from his comrades' derogatory, joking descriptions, a sacred idiot, a "dumb," gum-chewing blob who thinks nothing Of taking off on his incredible journey...
...Commonweal: 605 But a deeper task in our culture must surely be the interpenetration and mutual nourishment of the ethica~l and epistemological realms...
...The self-hatred represented in these developments, as in many others like them in the chaotic decade following the Council, was miles removed from the biblical idea of repentance, which offers the only sound basis for Christian renewal...
...he sees abuses in Kennedy and Ford as readily as in Johnson and Nixon...
...Like some grotesque caravan or a pilgrim band out of Chaucer, they manage to make it half way across the world in the space of six months, encountering ma assortment of characters and a wild variety of adventures along the way...
...In the confrontation with Hitler in 1933 the Vatican did not undercut the Catholic Center Party in Germany, as Bokenkotter states, following one of the many authorities Who gets it wrong...
...A generation which protested ,the war in Vietnam and worried about getting out of the draft now agonizes over getting into law school, Commonweal: 603 ful conquer fear...
...both were composed of itinerant preachers who wanted to convert their audiences...
...In his first book, The Immigrant Church, he traced the impact .of the Irish and Germans in transforming Catholicism from a small minority of 318,000 in 1830 to a sizeable group of 3,103,000 in 1860...
...Those concerned about the church's spiritual health will find it a welcome symptom of returning vigor and sanity...
...Henry IV and Gregory VII at Canossa...
...Her "strategy is to honor the moral gravity of Kant's absolutism while respecting the complexity of life...
...ROBERT L. KING LYINO: Moral Choice In Public And Private Life, by Sissela Bok, Pantheon, $10.95 [315 pp.] Lying by Sissela Bok is a timely book in applied ethics...
...A Concise History of the Catholi~ Church THOMAS BOKENKOTTER Doubleday, $10 [431 pp.] JOHN JAY HUGHES Church history as most Catholics have known it died during a dramatic speech on 1 December 1962, as the exciting first session of Vatican II approached its close...
...The burning of John Hus is called "immensely important," but left unexplained...
...Moved by reflection of this undeserved goodness, the sinner (collective or individual) returns to God, thus rediscovering his mercy...
...Because of the ascending movement of the journeythe trip goes up into the mountains a.nd to LaGs, India, Iran, Turkey, Athens, and Paris--it also conveys O'Brien's conception of progress...
...He is the young Hemingway rebel reversed, longing to go back to the "normalcy" of his Midwestern background, where his mother putters in her garden and stabiBty is building houses' and scouting fish and the stars with his contractor father...
...Tom Wicker is rightly proud of the associations and independence the Times allows him...
...Withou~ detracting from the gusto of his writing, the sweep of his narrative, O'Brien shows how that knowledge can be acquired...
...Sent to Vietnam as an infantryman, he was honorably discharged as a sergeant with seven medals--~ and even more opposed to the war than when he started...
...The account of the eighteenth century Rites Controversy fails to highlight for the general reader the disaster for two centuries of missionary endeavor of the Curia's decision to insist on rigid enforcement of Latin-rite rules in the mission field...
...The "in" word was "historical theology...
...The end product was a docile and obedient laity who paid, prayed, and obeyed...
...His description of Luther at the Diet of Worms, by contrast, falls disappointingly flat...
...Here, I discovered, was church history for the non-speciali s t : reflecting the best of modern scholarship, recounting p o s i t i v e achievements without boasting, drawing attention to failures without wallowing in them, fully aware of the complex historical development in areas such as papacy and sacramental theology where, within living memory, Catholics have attempted to deny any significant development at all...
...She is right in insisting that truth and truthfulness are not identical...
...the Roman populace running amok in the papal wine cellars following the election of Urban IV, the last man to reach the Papacy without being a cardinal...
...wild scenes of disoxder at the Council of Basel, where the leaders of opposing factions "fought hand to hand to seize the rostrum, while their followers during the Mass faced each othez like two armies...
...the holy but inept, if not wholly inept, Celest~ne V, the last Pope to resign his office...
...Selfhatred denies any essential good in the tradition, which induces despair...
...My second quibble is Bok's pragmatic decision to go beyond the notion that epistemology is somehow prior to ethics...
...as a result of his professionalism, his engaging critique rests on a compelling personal authority...
...Which makes Tim O'Brien's novel, Going After Cacciato, an except.ional achievement...
...Catholic Revivalism is an important work _9 deserves a wider audience than usually accorded books from university presses...
...Inevitably there are weaknesses and slips...
...Gregory's Seminary in Cincinnati...
...In Going Alter Cacciato'a...
...L.~RIRY MADARAS ON PKESS, by Tom Wicker, Viking, $10.95...
...Biblical repentance is never self-centered...
...Although Bok is especially concerned with patterns of deception, there is surprisingly little sociological analysis in the book...
...I must confess to taking it up, however, with considerable skepticism...
...It is hard to admire the men he describes, but not to love them, and this is largely due to O'.Brien's Skill as a novelist, his ability to in~use suspense into the most unlikely sit.uar his wise sympathy which evokes laughter at the same times as it taps a pool of feeling...
...She offers a "principle of veracity" which contends that only where a lie is a last resort can one even begin to consider whether it is justified...
...For that one can only .be deeply grateful...
...What followed upon this discovery ~as ~q c~:.~c,~s~;~ ,~.:,,ole as it was unfortunate...
...The first of this trinity was a new coinage...
...O'Brien's journey has more of the surreal.ism of Donald Barthetme's The Dead Father, another novel about a grottp search, than of the grim facts of Gloria Emerson or Michael Herr, yet tt is his faetuality that gives the book its eeriness...
...He fears that the 15 September 1978:604 press, eager to stay in the Establishment, "shirks its responsibilities" through an excess of caution, oRen in deference to "that magic phrase . . . national security...
...No, it's not...
...The speaker was a Belgian, Emil Josef De Smedt, Bishop of Bruges and a former professor of dogma...
...The most important thing his men learn---and it is precisely what they, and others, were prevented from learning in Vietnam--is to tell good from evil...
...Arrested several times as deserters or spies, they remain true to their own pragmatic legitimacy, pointing up that "deception" is all on the other side...
...In the decade following the Council many Catholics were frankly ashamed of their heritage...
...So apt was the term, however, that overnight "triumphalism" was on everyone's lips, and we began finding it everywhere...
...To be apathetic, too...
...But in the meantime we should listen to Bok and be cheerful and honest and heed Mark Twain's advice: When in doubt, tell the truth...
...It turns ou L they haven't seen any...
...the anti-Pope, John XXH.I, "a moral and spiritual cipher," at the Council of Constance, where upwards of seventy thousand visitors were crammed into thirty-two thousand beds...
...And in his concluding account of post-Conciliar developments Bokenkotter concentrates on social issues, without mentioning the renewed world,vide interest in prayer and spirituality, of which the charismatic renewal is a symptom...
...Mission" is another term which changes from military lingo into a mystical, almost religious task, without becoming freighted with the over-weight symbolism O'Brien used in his earlier work...
...It may be warmly recommended to students of theology and to the educated general +reader...
...Before I was halfway through the volume, these doubts had been dispelled...
...Is it not, she candidly asks herself, arrogant and myopic to compare such different types of deception as bargaining in an Eastern bazaar, the polite white lies of everyday life, the lie for national defense, and the lie to thieves and enemies...
...268 pp.] Jay Dotan is a "new social historian" who writes history from the bottom up rather than from the top down...
...Too many works of church history, we discovered, were infected with this vice...
...I don't need to see another Vietnam movie," people say...
...The other soldiers don't even know his first name...
...Moreover renewal, to be successful, must always appeal to the best in the past, thus helping people to return to the authentic tradition from which they have departed...
...There is not enough attention to the ecology of power in Lying...
...The simplicity of O'Brien's language and statements, the dry remoteness of his tone, are deceptive, for they encompass a range of private emotions and universal conditions...
...Either the account must be highly selective, and hence incomplete...
...Penetrating the glamor of power, Wicker distinguishes personalities from character...
...It will confound your enemies and astound your friends...
...Thomas Bokenkotter's new book avoids both pitfalls and points the way to genuine renewal...
...His case is impressive because he clearly loves his "trade" and because his telling examples are among the great stories of our time: My Lai (rejected by the press for over a year), the Glomar Explorer (wherein William Colby manipulated the press to cover up a CIA.failure), the Pentagon Papers and the Supreme Court (a "victory" for the press that could rebound against free expression and in favor of prior restraint), Daniel Schorr and the Pike Report (in which Schorr's losing his job could well intimidaee other reporters...
...On balance, however, the book is a notable success...
...sities...
...at least for Bok...
...Both traced their origins back to seventeemh and eighteer~ century Europe...
...How could one possibly cover two thousand years of church history in four hundred pages...
...As always with O'Bfien, "the issue, of course, [is] courage...
...But his account of Vatican II succeeds in conveying the excitement felt by so many at the time...
...Moral ideals are never entirely autonomous and, as Max Weber observed, in order to be effective .they must appeal either to ruling groups or groups who are ascending...
...his inside accounts of editorial decisions, fascinating, but beyond their attractive personal emphasis, they generally illustrate a larger point about the duties and limitations of the press...
...She characterizes a utilitarian ethic as shallow but she is also uncomfortable with an absolutist Kantian prohibition against all acts of deception...
...R is a highly idea$istic work and a surprisingly ly.rical one, offering a grittily beautiful picture of a war none of the participants seem to support or understand, and a vision of peace, of transcendence, which turns American involvement in Vietnam i r~to merely a hellish way station on the road to potential salvation...
...By focusing on the parish instead of the diocese and on priests instead of bishops, Dolan told us how Catholics praoticed their faith in the nineteenth century...
...Much of his bitterness was contained in his two earlier works, I/ 1 Die in a Combat Zone (1973) and Northern Lights (1975), but this one is different...
...Catholic Revivalism is the story of the "Parish missions" and priests who came from Europe to preach the gospel of acceptance to the faithful...
...When they were not exalting Catholic accomplishments, they were uncritical of questionable developments, or defensive about defects too glaring to be denied or overlooked...
...not the courage to face the enemy, but to confront reality and push it closer to one's dreams and ideals, to accomplish the impossible...
...De Smedt spoke on the three great Vices of the modern church: triumphalism, clericalism, juridicism...
...Progressive theologians became adept at the Quantum Leap: from the New Testament (interpreted, often, in terms minimalistic enough to satisfy any old-fashioned liberal Protestant) to liberation theology, the death-of-God, dialogue with Marxism, or what-have-you...
...The book contains many colorful vignettes: the trial of Dioscoros at Chalcedon...
...Students of theology seemed to assume that for nineteen centuries the church had been in a clark tunnel, from which it emerged only in 1962...
...The "enemy" is not the Vietcong but the cruelty of a battalion promotion board or the debilitating sameness of the war, which "robs men of their sense of time and their ability to feel...
...But Lying is a work of applied ethics, so Bok does not allow her readers to inspect solely the rarely noble and usually self-serving deceptions of those in high places...
...He strips words of their ordinary meanings like a plane spraying defoliant and then pumps new life into them...
...The book is judicious in both the practical and philosophical sense...
...Not only does "going after Cacciato" mean escape, liberation, it makes the men learn together, experience love and responsibility...
...Most Americans would be astonished to know how many European bishops, even today, gained reputations as Scholars before being called to the episcopate--a state of affairs paralleled in this country only amongst the leaders of major univer...
...He seems no less committed than his protagonist to a moral evaluation of the world, of war, valor, peace, dedication, boredom...
...The patient has been cured of his triumphalism----but also of the amnesia to which, for a brief moment, it seemed he might succumb...
...The real spinner of dreams in all of this is O'Brien himseSf, who imparts to his storeyteH, ing, be the journey real _9 or not, the magic of travel through space and time...
...The timing is right since, according to some national polls, 69 percent of the American people agree that over the last ten years their political leaders have consistently lied to them...
...He creates a twentieth century picaresque, replete with comic touches (a doctor feeding a wounded soldier M&Ms for medioiae), hairbreadth escapes, and people representative of the spectrum of humam~y...
...both placed an "emphasis on personal religion and a rigorous, indivichlal moral code (which) overshadowed any attempt at a reconstruction of the social order...
...Images gleaned from books and travel brochures joU into _9 reality, the word becomes fles'h in both enjoyable and horrifying ways in the hands of a writer conversant wRh bruta,l facts as well as with the spirit_9 ual means (o transform them...
...JAMES R. KELLY 15 September 1978:606...
...IN BRIEF CATHOLIC REVlVALISM: THE AMEalC~ EXPEnmNCE, 1830-1900, by lay P. Dolan, Notre Dame, $10...
...A priest of the archdiocese of Cincinnati with a Louvain doctorate and a previous '.book on Newman, Bokenkotter has taught church history for a deoade at St...
...motley group of soldiers of the "Third Squad" are sent after one of their number who has calmlygone AWOL in the direction of Paris...
...Even "church history" became, in Catholic academic circles, a term of opprobrium...
...Dolan points out the similarities between Catholic and Protestant revivalism...
...His students are clearly fortunate to have had a teacher who knows how to make history come alive...
...or it must sink to a relentless chronicle of facts, dates, names, "trends," thus making history a crashing bore...
...Why should I go see Coming Home...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 18
