Celibate Passion

...What is less well known about her is that she was a: medievalist who translated Dante, and a lay theologian...

...She reminds us that "for whatever reasonGod chose to make man as he is--limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death--he [GOd] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine...

...In this sense, surely, however much married we may be (it admits of degrees, I think), we are all celibate...

...Janie, if you ever come to N.Y., get i~y address from Commonweal--I'd like to meet you...

...O.K...

...For Rahner' s envisionment of our Common dilemma retrieves a doctrinal Christian realism as a contemporary humanism of grace...

...What the author evidently does not mean by celibacy is that bloodless medley of unripe qualities that we may previously have associated with "detached," "religious" behavior...

...While she strongly upholds the human values of commitment and fidelity, she warns that any life-style, when it self-destructs, must be terminated...

...Toward the end of her life, she p~it away the Wimsey-Vane fable 9( which is in reality a morality fable) to devote herself almost entirely to :theology...

...Yet the irreversible word has been spoken, the reality of humanity in the presence of a gracious God really is disclosed in Jesus Christ...

...But I was interested...

...Her reputation as a mystery writer is secure...

...Traces the evolution of the Holy Father's teaching, presenting an impressive array of texts gathered from both the writings and addresses of Paul VI (1964-1977...

...She's 25...

...an unwillingness to relate his own project explicitly to other major alternatives when the issues and Rahner's own position would seem to demand it (sometimes, for example, Karl Rahner sounds, if one may coin a Rahnerian phrase, like an "anonymous" process theologian--yet he never explicitly addresses the issue...

...thought is one of the few contemporary Christian theologies which one can compare with some of the classical expressions of Christian humanism without making the former look slightly ridiculous...

...Having worked in both convents and mixed situations, and aware of the problems in each, she nevertheless has found the personal trust and 10ve engendered when men and women work together, extremely valuable in the work of Christ...

...By the same token, the author warns us against making idols of either state of life...

...First of all, as the title indicates, she thinks that when it is really lived, it is filled with paradox...

...They have been replaced by a sterner, even a pessimistic, humanism: the struggle of spirit with matter, of spirit from matter, of the relentless drive of humanity to greatness, to misery, and to God...

...And, she points out, if we are physically celibate, we had better be "psychologically and spiritually married...

...This young nun, for one, does not find either celibacy or marriage ultimate enough to qualify as a "vocation...

...Both concepts, without denying the genital implications, verge on the metaphysical...

...A wonderful Christmas "stocking filler...

...These weaknesses are real and deserve further study...

...696 alcohol, and divorce...

...and (I would add) full-time human being, can tell you...

...She rejoices in the "thundering assertion 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things;, ',.'~ and from it draws the notunwarranted conclusion that "man is most godlike and most himself when he is occupied in creation:", She insists upon the sacramental nature of work., It is about theIncarnation that Sayers is most eloquent .(and most adamant: she will not countenanceany vitiating of Trinitarian or Incarnational dogma...

...Gift message enclosed at your request...

...But this sister probably knows and accepts the fidgety nuances I hold regarding this position...

...Pain, guilt and death are recognized as the horrors they are to the honest eye...

...For those readers who know only her detective fiction, her'transcendental concerns should come as no great surprise...

...Building on the distinction that Freud, in his later writings, made between eros and libido, the author identifies the erotic as the passion for human relationship--the very opposite of the pornographic...

...The celibate who is immune from...

...Eros, indeed, seeks to maintain the tensions that libido)seeks to dissolve...

...112 pages, $1.95 Available at your local bookstore...

...Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 Please send copies of lnklings 79 (= $2.95 each, plus 85r per address for shipping...

...Drawing r!ch spiritual insight from the heritage of h(~r Russian childhood, the author traces our journey with the Pilgrim Christ, opening immense horizons for prayer and meditation...

...Moreover, this understanding of universal grace bears none of the half-hearted and half-awake quality of much that passes these days for "'humanism," or secular or Christian...

...Rollo May (Love and Will) makes the same point: "Eros is a desiring, longing, a forever reaching out, a seeking to expand...

...Stanley Jaki The author, a world-renowned scholar and lecturer, offers the reader a truly unique insight into the primacy of Peter...

...Values I once held with clarity have now become clouded...

...Celibate, too, in the sense, that each of us, married or not, knows that he will really die...

...Neither state, in itself, is an adequate symbol of the Kingdom--in which we are all, simultaneously, receptive virgins, and covenanted lovers...

...Sister Janie Gustafson, part-time campus minister...

...Celibacy," she writes, "is that dimension of me which can never be given away, exhausted, or comprehended...

...Paul, himself, acknowledged conditions in which marriage, ideally insoluable, ought to be dissolved...

...If the "cultured despisers" of religion would take the time to come to terms with Karl Rahner they would meet a thinker whom they could not but respect...

...Her hound,of-God sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Wimsey's recalcitrant beloved, the prickly, independent-minded Harriet Vane, 27 October 1978:698 are forever: quoting divine-and-human-love John Donne at each.other...

...At good book. shops, e.ver)'wh.e.re..or, fr0m" . . . . Cahill & Co., 145 Palisade St...

...I'm not...

...88 pages, $2.25 And On This Rock 9 Rev...

...Demonstrates the close relationship between the Church's renewed Rite of Anointing of the Sick and the emerging healing ministry in the Catholic Church, The authors support this theme with moving examples of healing from their own experiences...

...His weaknesses are also present in Foundations: a relative lack of sophistication in the use of New Testament studies of the historical Jesus...

...and Dennis Linn, S.J...

...a failure to develop explicit criteria to determine when the theologian should demythologize and when, in Rahner's judgment, one cannot...

...160 pages, $2.95 Sfrannik 9 Catherine de Hueck Doherty Strannik is the Russian word for "pilgrim," and this inspiring book presents unique perspectives on the pilgrimage that everyone must make back to unity with God...

...Enclosed is my check for $ (Use sew arate sheet for orders for more than one address...

...I have seen . . ~ the beginning of the space program.., the rise of equal rights, the impact of oral contraceptives, and the deliberations of Vatican II...

...The reader should be forewarned that the author uses the" word "celibacy" after the manner in which the later Freud used the word "sexuality...

...So what does she think about the religious life...

...I have other thoughts here as well...

...And if, in the past, we ever "idolized" virginity, let it.be acknowledged that we are more likely now to "idolize" genital fulfillment...

...It is . . . the solitary 'F in any relationship, . my interior freedom to love and to receive love...

...Indeed, Karl Rahner's I I I Receptive virgins and I CELIBATE PASSION Janie Gustafson Harper & Row, $7.95 [133 pp.] Michael Zeik W ~OULD you like to know what our young religious---yes, there are some--are up to...

...In those extraordinary statues, no one can miss the fact that an earlier Renaissance joy and easy confidence in humanity, even in God," are gone...

...I Lord Peter Wimsey as Lord I THE WHIMSICAL CHRISTIAN: 18 ESSAYS Dorothy L. Sayers Macmillan, $8.95 [275 pp.] Barbara Grizzuti Harrison D OROTHY SAYERS is famous--and justly so--for her ingeniously plotted, meticulously crafted mystery novels, delicious comedies of manners which vex earnest people (among her detractors are Auden and Edmund Wilson and James Sandoe...

...12.50...

...A terrible vision for a Christian humanist is real and it is "terrible...

...implicit in the working out of the complex Wimsey,Vane relationship (particularly in the stunning clas...

...This is an interesting book...

...It is not too wild on a conjecture to say that she created Lord Peter in His image...

...Merton's Palace of Nowhere 9 James Finley Author James Finley has mined a rich vein of Thomas Merton's thought--the quest for spiritual identity w offering fresh insights to a major spiritual thinker of our time.., a new look at Merton's approach to prayer and contemplation...

...Our state in life must always be subordinate to God's will for us, which is our human wholeness...

...In the meantime, however, this book deserves a serious reading by all contemporary intellectuals willing really to think about the integrity of a Christianity that is both firmly traditional and believably contemporary...

...She didn't let me down...

...I I covenanted lovers i I Be "I am a child of post-World War II America...

...Leaving the priesthood or religious life," she writes, or "dissolving a marriage, are indeed traumatic choices, but they may be among the most honest, most Christian, and most growth-producing things a person can do...

...Sayers's detective fiction is generally held to be of the first rank, and, indeed, one of her novels, Nine Tailors, is thought by many to be the finest mystery novel of the century...

...All I have ever known is upheaval, transition, and change...

...In the eighteen essays here collected, Sayers keeps circling back to the idea that the creative mind is an image of God the Creator...

...5 Go Reasons toVisitYour Local Boolcstore...

...this intense thirst for human intimacy, this yearning for real living, i s -a caricature...

...An extremely helpful guide to understanding and evaluating Catholic teaching and attitudes on the Holy Spirit and the Charismatic Renewal...

...The human spirit can risk letting go because we are already caught up in the incomprehensible and graced mystery that is human existence...

...CWI Name Address Zip [] I am interested in quantity discount rates for organizations...

...Memory is irrelevant to the problem...

...Sister Janie Gustafson qualifies...

...Soon in paper, $4.95 University of Toronto Press 33 E Tupper St, Buffalo, NY 14203 9 I I...

...Combining years of research with on-site study in the Holy Land, he provides fascinating new perspectives on the crucial role of the Church as an institution in the plan of salvation...

...Edited by Gerard Reedy, SJ., Fordham University, New York...

...Indeed its very strength is that sturdy vision of an anguished and grace-filled terribilitd at the heart of human existence expressed classically in the "unfinished" sculptures of Michelangeloexpressed anew in the "unfinished" system of Karl Rahner...

...How growth-producing" was the crucifixion...

...128 pages, $2.95 Pope Paul and the Spirit 9 Ray...

...She loved Christ not least because he "took women seriously, rebuked without querulousness:, never patronized, condescended, nagged, flattered, coaxed, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female...

...That's not bad--' 'paradox" being one of the synonyms for Christianity...

...a seeming impatience in relating the secondorder concepts of the doctrines not only to contemporary philosophy and experience but also to the first-order religiotls language of the Scriptures...

...We have only one vocation," she writes: "to become whole...

...More than one critic has acidly remarked on Lord Peter's resemblance to an Anglican version of God: Sayers herself said of the imperturbably urbane Wimsey that his exquisite courtesy sometimes suggested "God Almight condes...

...Choices which once were simple have now become complex...

...Frank Coleman argues that the philosophical roots of the American political system are in Hobbes and not, as is usually thought, in Locke, and that such a system is fundamentally incapable of resolving social conflict...

...Very...

...h~,;,tt,dhv C.5.L Handsome 1979 wall calendar with room for making notes and with words for daily Christian living taken from the writings of C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, and others...

...If we are legally and visibly married, we had better also be "psychologically and ,spiritually celibate...

...Whatever game:he is playing with his creationl he...

...We do not "live on" in the memories of our children or our children's children...

...Sayers died in 1957...

...For her, finally, the most profoundly thrilling and terrifying mystery drama of all was God-madehuman: ,The Christian faith," she writes, "is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man--and the dogma is the'drama '. Her work is of a piece: The impeccable logic and the reasoned feminism that informed her mysteries also inform her 9 ogy...

...Austerely intelI I ligent, witty, and erudite, her detective fiction not only satisfies our hunger to return to the sanguine naivet~ of happy-ending nursery fables, but serves the requirements of morality as well: Sayers's mysteries reveal a passion for balance and order, a determination to right th e wrong, and a Severely logical mind...

...I have also known the violence of riots . . . the murder of national leaders, the disintegration of marriage, the legalization of abortion . . . . In the past eleven years I have moved a dozen times . . . My family has been torn apart by drugs, 27 October 1978...

...Edward O'Connor, C.S.C...

...Perhaps the classical expression which most evokes in image what Rahner attempts to articulate in word is Michelangelo: more exactly, the great unfinished sculptures ("The Prisoners") of his later work...

...The struggle of authentic spirit is unyielding, but never finally achieved...

...Opens to 8V2 by 23 inches...

...Ave Maria Press.Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 Commonweal: 697 In addition to other well-argued positions, Janie Gustafson makes an articulate case for mixed (male and female) communities of religious...

...272 pages, $4.95 To Heal As Jesus Healed Barbara Shlemon, Matthew Linn, S.J...

...i comprehensible mystery at the heart of our existence, his stern integrity in stating some of our century's deepest desires and fears...

...With that disclosure the human struggle must continue along its fascinating, creative, frightening, and, above all, its radically graced route...

...cending to a black beetle...

...part-time writer, composer, artist...

...ics Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon) is Sayer's dearly held belief that love of a person.is capable of leading one into love of God, because romantic love convinces one so intensely of the reality and power of Divine love...