Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture
Fichter, Joseph H.
come part of the ongoing discussion will not be quietly or silently, but with two, the longest in the book, centers on about the future of American society....
...frequent it came under ecclesiastical con- Chapter five deals with the third type, The whole of chapter six continues the trol...
...but the Transaction/SOCIETY...
...It WRTIE OR TELEPHONE is not structured, nor is it a continuing Mr...
...Bryan advancing the figure whose name it bears as the Bask Books, $11.95, 248 pp...
...The science theorists who study religious tails the left-wing culturati lose...
...versity was influential...
...The IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ is Hannah Arendt would sweep into a capacious dustbin so Distinguished Professor of Sociology and capacity to discriminate was lost...
...come part of the ongoing discussion will not be quietly or silently, but with two, the longest in the book, centers on about the future of American society...
...Chapter These chapters emerged from a set of patterns within which it takes place...
...Public nuisances, indeed...
...Some called themselves en- Among the other fearsome pests plaguing the Sociology Department of Loyola Univervironmentalists, some feminists, some our society is the greening-of-America sity, New Orleans...
...venient formula...
...I believe," the Wonderboy As Johnson wrote of the plot of Cymthe odd argot and anachronistic stance of intones, "that for the most part American beline, criticism is wasted upon resisting the first, apes the elegant lampoons and democracy is far sounder than recent cri- imbecility...
...These attract people to the ages...
...doubtless it will come in handy to explain the almost certain blacklisting of the Wonderboy himself...
...nessee had no easier time of it than Ralph It makes little sense to try to argue why Robert K. Landerrs Nader or Betty Friedan advancing on this or that worthy should not be behind Berkeley or Scarsdale...
...Thus, the "organism" The fourth type is the modern, or shrines, but they are careful to give the comprises all the sacred aspects of the post-tridentine, pilgrimage which is ex- historical and theological explanations pilgrimage, while the "environment" is clusively Marian and continues to attract for the justification of Marian devotions...
...ROBERT K. LANDERS is a newspaper editor in education, business, national defense, still, one might ask, if Reich is so bother- Connecticut...
...The undergraduate as H.L...
...Westbrook Pegler, at least, he employs breed...
...What some a nuisance, how explain the almost PHILLIP CORwIN is a poet, novelist and criti was worse, these quacks and wowsers universal inattention to his most recent who works for the United Nations...
...in Ireland environment field...
...After all, it has re- Tyrrell does, of the infamous Huston and aims to be as nastily abusive as the sponded admirably to many legitimate Plan hatched in the Nixon years that third...
...Pat- tional and positional...
...formerly Managing Editor of had metamorphosed in the most astonish- violent and idiotic pests who, if they had Commonweal, is the author of Seven Ameritheir way, would undo all this good...
...Well, thor of Ideology and Utopia in the United thing became a hollow sham...
...FATHER JOSEPH H. FICHTER, S.J., teaches in cialized...
...John Bowen, Conference Coordinator condition of human .collectivities which, Endicott College, Beverly, Mass...
...type of collective enthusiasm underlying or outsiders, but not as pilgrims...
...A connotes on "processual symbolic analysis" phenomena...
...Communitas liberates people mid-August...
...can Catholics and Literary Places: A Guided ing way," he reports...
...multitudes...
...Walsingham industrial," Marian pilgrimages, discusGoing on pilgrimage then shifted from a in England, Loreto in Italy, Compostela sing the apparitions, miracles and mesvoluntary individual "good work" to an in Spain, Chartres in France, all of them sages of Lourdes, Fatima and La Salette...
...Kandy, but very little is said about them symbolic vehicles...
...It appears to be a temporary for Catholics...
...Appendix A may prove help- has used such words...
...and Appendix B are devoted to St...
...tween 400 and 1500 A.D...
...the symbols and ceremonials be- the medieval pilgrimage, originating be- description of modern, or "postcame more elaborate and more regulated...
...undergraduate solemnly at work on some but if he is a liberal, the Wonderboy is the I think not...
...especially as the Wonderextravagant thesis, evidently has tried to sort of liberal who has come to be known boy's principal assertion that Galbraith is turn himself into a combination of H. L. as a neo-conservative and, as such, not a taken seriously by no serious economist Mencken, Malcolm Muggeridge and very persuasive advertisement for the is a demonstrable untruth...
...Easy, answers the Wonderboy: cal academicians, and this may account also references to previously published Reich was "blacklisted because the very for the unwieldly prose in which the book anthropological studies in which Turner boldness and breadth of his last book is written...
...The book will were simply too much for the left-wing ful for at1 understanding of the abstract probably be of greatest interest to social culturati...
...criticisms raised against it Vaised by "Arguably it was an imprudent scheme...
...If the help of works such as this, carefully, the Mexican shrines, with most attention Americans march into the twilight zone it and even reluctantly...
...The authors describe also in some detail the Mexican devotion to a rival virgin, Our Lady of On the road the Remedies...
...Commonweal: 446...
...The public Pilgrimage, New York and New England philosophy that had informed us with its And just who are these pests, these (Andrews & McMeel...
...consumerists...
...on the dirty-necked of backwoods Ten- zookeeper himself...
...protect them...
...from conformity to general norms...
...Heads the Wonderboy wins, and often eccentric terminology...
...Anyone who can write, as relentless world-weariness of the second, tics have allowed...
...They began as local devo- Catholics the "Age of Mary," and the The anthropologist then is researching tions, increased in popularity, and even- authors point out that between 1830 and the total "pilgrimage system" which is tually attracted an international audi- 1933 Our Lady appeared at five places in perceived aS a kind of organism- ence...
...In the further discussion of modern Joseph H. Fichter Four categories of pilgrimages are Marian pilgrimages in chapter four, the identified, the first of which is termed Turners explain their "theory of imTHIS is an anthropological study of re- prototypical...
...01915 (617) 927-0585 3 August 1979: 445 lectures, probably delivered among criti- provide definitions of such terms, and tome...
...The second kind is called both a signifier and a signified, and in the "ideas, norms, values symbols and other the archaic pilgrimage which is ambigu- case of religious images, it has also sevconstructs" which are expressed in ac- ous, ancient and syncretic...
...Despite differences in orii gin and history, both shrines are symbols IMAGE AN) PILi8IMACE IN after all, have to "operate in an orderly of communitas for Mexicans-but only CJRUT= CULTURE fashion...
...What is more, they spe- Wonderboy's Enemies List is long...
...honoring Mary, flourished in the high The 19th century has been called by Routine supplanted spontaneity...
...Whether it is the Wonderboy's bars...
...Members of other reliVictor and Edith Tamer sense of belonging to the pilgrim group,a gions would be accepted only as tourists, Columbia University Press, $15, 281 pp...
...the pristine American democracy...
...It has alleviated racial prej- profound a student of American democnearly everyone else he writes about to udices, aided the poor, and encouraged racy as to make worthy of sustained be: ridiculous...
...the that all might be well again with our Political Science at Rutgers University, auvalues grew from hideous to childish...
...Somehow American liberalism and decency ] is to deal prudently with the JOHN DEEDY...
...routine of his daily life...
...But the multiple transplants fail...
...Still others specialized in prophet of yesteryear, Charles Reich...
...The pilgrim himself may.be seen as "half a tourist" because even the secular Are you planning a tourist seeks a "mode of communitas" that is not available in the structured CONFERENCE...
...These are simply religious paintligious Christian peregrinology central locations of established religions: ings, icons, mosaics and statues, which which intends to lay focus on abstract Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, Benares, are to be taken as conventional signs, or culture rather than on concrete behavior...
...discriminating intelligence and elevated public nuisances, whom the Wonderboy values underwent a juvenescence...
...The Marian shrines The introductory chapter describes the rick's Purgatory in County Donegal, the also provide examples of the contrast beevolution of ancient pilgrimage from a shrine of an archaic pilgrimage in Lough tween the iconophobia of people who relatively simple, informal procedure Derg which is thought to have been a want to destroy the holy images, and the which was outside the patrimonial feudal sacred spot even before the advent of iconophilia of pious persons who want to structure...
...middle ages...
...Galbraith, say...
...America John Kenneth Galbraith and Theodore States: 1956-1976, and editor-in-chief of was afflicted with not one Bryan but with White, for an incredible two...
...legends and fables connected with the sacred shrine...
...to Our Lady of Guadalupe...
...It embraces the "en- tigation, they were generally considered and one in Portugal..They do not omit the tire complex of behavior focused on the theologically orthodox...
...liberalism itself or merely its deforma- he really, as the Wonderboy maintains, Its author, who appears on the dust tion which the Wonderboy has come to "a typically American hayseed mounjacket the very image of a pretentious deplore, he does not entirely make clear...
...The authors Introduce your Church, Club or Business Organization to the beauty of make much of communitas, which is a the Endicott College campus with its playing fields, woods and ocean kind of spontaneous bond of "together- beaches...
...the network of secular mechanisms or devout contemporary Catholics...
...ness" that occurs among people on pil- Excellent conference facilities available each year mid-June through grimage...
...Durkheimian solidarity...
...propriately, to Tyrrell the appellation he cency...
...Is THIS IS A SILLY, repellent little book...
...Chapter three eral levels of meaning: exegetical, operatual pilgrim behavior...
...As it grew larger and more Christianity...
...tebank retooled for a modern audience...
...Tyrrell succeeds merely in making him- whom, the Wonderboy significantly does " does not deserve to be thought so self that which he ardently imagines not remark...
...The symbol involves Culture .in, this sense disembodies the in this book...
...race relations, and so forth...
...Mencken In fact, moving from cage to cage in the Wonderboy's zoo, it eventually dawns were prospering not in the boondocks but on one how often the hideous pest within PUIWC UOI*ADCE$ in the universities and wherever the uni- turns out finally to resemble not so much R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...What it has failed to do [and here applies to President Carter) gives us to the Wonderboy exhibits a little of his own REVIEWERS understand that liberalism has let him vast appreciation for diversity, freedom down...
...After frequent ecclesiastical inves- France, two in Belgium, one...
...But enough...
...institutionalized collective ritual...
...some tolerance for diversity...
...It has main- scrutiny his incessant, mean-spirited The Wonderboy (to apply, more ap- tained a modicum of freedom and de- rant...
Vol. 106 • August 1979 • No. 14
