Reviewing the Forties
Scott, Nathan A. Jr.
poem by the strategic juxtaposition of ("Corsons Inlet," "The' City Limits") judiciously selected lyrics. Whether by gain new dimensions in this new context. intent or not, this...
...On p. 51 he indeed mentions the review to call Kelly's book "impossi- The situation is much too serious to terrible phrase (prefixing it with a signif- ble," "tortured," "ludicrous," "ill- dismiss it with a clever phrase or, worse icant "not...
...plain Hughes's list of vituperative adjec- of "Good old days of Cardinal But Kelly made no such statement at tives...
...I find it Associate Director former Apostolic Delegate given the significant that Kelly himself does not Associate Director of an Office of Re"alias" "Acognani," the investiture of complain of misrepresentation on this search and Planning for a West Coast Dubuque priest Clarence Friedman in the point...
...The period Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, to collect these fugitive pieces...
...growth of a sec- that Kelly "calls the Eucharist 'a repeti- follow the desert way...
...He fears the shrewd and telling...
...buoyed by interest in the clash between Many of his most important Varuna's "chlorophyll philosophy" and Kelly misread letters have only recently the "adrenalin mystique" of Earth's de- Washington, D.C...
...American Catholics need to see fore publication...
...Marxist parties...
...As a kind of bonus for Western readwith condescension to the people it is novelists of her time...
...with links of rationality...
...Kanke Road 23/303, Ranchi 834008, Father Lawler defends Kelly from the JOHN JAY HUGHES India (Airmail: 310...
...views I have tried, wherever possible, to things more deserving of investigation give information about the author's per- and exposure today than the enormous Arpilleras sonal background...
...She speaks, for published in her old age four remarkable situation will continue without end unexample, despite his great fascination books-Do I Wake or Sleep, The less the evil is first identified as inimical with Eastern mysticism, of the worldli- Christmas Tree, Many Mansions, and to the Gospel, then halted on that ground...
...ship, Clement Greenberg and James A vast number of these reviews are KING JAMES VERSION Edited, with an Agee, B. H. Haggin and Reinhold devoted to books-Arnold Manoff's Introduction and Notes, by Niebuhr and Harold Laski, as its regular Telegram from Heaven, Betty Baur's ROLAND MUSHAT FRYE contributors, were giving it an authority The White Queen, Michael De Capite's approached by no other weekly of the Maria, Charles Mills's The Choice, The convictions of the Bible time...
...63c, six times...
...by pointing out to the reader the positions of "pre-conciliar," "deficient," "crip- indulging in personal invectives...
...Chile, Oxfam America is selling these caricature of it...
...the princiElizabeth Bowen and numerous others...
...Trilling succumbed to the great indebted, that the writer wishes to set fact that the Eucharist is perceived not as temptation afflicting reviewers "to over- certain populations free...
...REV...
...10016...
...institutionalized and ghettoish...
...He will find that the adjectives book "the most complete statement of to which he takes exception were all care- the conservative position in the church fully chosen to describe specific features Health Center that has yet been written, or that is likely of the book, for which I am prepared to to be written for years to come...
...It remains in this country church's present crisis presents a unique year round...
...Its Declaration both the story and Michael Davidson's impressive fashion the flowering of conscience in on Christian Worship, quoted at length, futuristic theology toward awful climax...
...Order from: by-point reply, he may have it when I am I have seen (Baltimore Catholic Review OXFAM AMERICA, 302 Columbus Ave., again able to deal with correspondence in July 6, p. B-2), which however calls the Boston, Mass...
...edge may be...
...Trilling offers in the Old and New Testaof the "climate" of moral and political will some day need to be regarded as ments...
...Yet it was THE READER'S just her way of reckoning with this reF ONE IS OF a sufficient age, to read the striction that revealed her talent for the I pieces that Diana Trilling has col- swift, central judgment of the essential lected from her work as chief fiction re- drift of a career or of a particular book...
...They jettison Letters their terrestrial government's "lust to (Continued from page 514) (1889-1916) own" the resources of space, in favor of psychologies in need of careful scrutiny...
...Answer parative Literature at Kent State University...
...5.95 paper ond, more persistently matriarchal, race...
...monthly in advance for more books as Catholic teaching is not markings on almost every page of my than three times...
...Non-theologian copy attest), I have the clearest recollec- Madison Ave., NYC 10016...
...66c, three times...
...the mangods descend from "Guaranteed to provoke rite and its custodians are seen as locked their static time-line, their pseudo- reflection, delight, and perhaps dissent:" into oppressive systems that make im- immortality, to discover provocative - Donald Senior C. P possible the service of priests or public ironies-Mazdean evolution toward true "The stunning and often ritual as liberating instruments of God's immortality beyond their gods' ken, the brilliant insight of these purpose...
...Job description and which have been brought to the attention language from "repetition" (which is qualifications sent upon request...
...by the warmth with which she speaks, as reader supposes, until it becomes clear Unless the Eucharist is seen as a permahe says, of "someone named Isabel Bol- that the author, a graduate of Oxford and nent invitation to the followers of Jesus to ton...
...In no way open to "the derisive laughter of his does Kelly suggest that he wishes to foes...
...worthwhile enterprise...
...allusive illusion of science fiction...
...His thesis is that the cieties and the derogation of human admiration for this wonderfully intelli- final meal Jesus took with his friends, rights under any political system will go Commonweal: 540 unchallenged...
...faith strengthened by knowing the the book's approach) informed me that JOHN DRUSKA is a writer who currently facts-no matter how painful the knowl- this kind of book did not require an imteaches high school in Indianapolis...
...Box 2649, in a 150,000 word book the transposition reader will doubt that such a sentence Chicago, 60690...
...Balasuriya gives as the crew schism that engenders the Mazdean Eznesto Cardenal reason for failure: "The eucharistic version of chlorophyll-adrenalin concommunities have in most countries been flict...
...The caretakers have al- Promenthean quests) as much as the his- Volume l l'$6.,95 ready taken care...
...ought to read a book more carefully be- underlying spirit of Hughes's review...
...the school takeover in a of "ballet...
...ers, Chapters VIII and XI are devoted to used to describe" (in the manner of a In short, Reviewing the Forties, the colonial pattern in Sri Lanka and the Steinbeck) nor calculated to assert the though lacking weight or any special rhythm of festivals in that three-quarters author's superiority to his subject (in the kind of profundity, will, in its graceful Buddhist country...
...This is a Next month, at the end of their rainy give exact page references...
...To I am unable to recognize my theologi- a representative but far from complete raise money for their families and for cooperative work in the shanty towns of cal position in Father Hardon's lengthy list of the book's disqualifying defects...
...Otherwise how ex- monweal readers under the captious title the author...
...I regret that in this amount of foolishness and outright instance I permitted the inference (which chicanery in American Catholicism since CHILEAN women whose husbands disis erroneous) that I was unaware of Msgr...
...I wind), The Selected Poems takes on a would have liked more for the sake of direction and a coherence that make it Ammons's reputation...
...No, prose and unfailing rectitude of insight, dence there since 1948 has seen a return "it is the style of a free and generous offer much the same kind of quiet plea- of the Christian clergy to the Tamil and intelligence most happily balanced be- sure that we are given by Virginia Sinhalese languages rather than the Engtween self-tolerance and tolerance of Woolf's The Common Reader...
...spacious, leisurely estimate...
...Send inof the publishers without Father heretical) to "re-presentation" (which is quiries to Box No...
...been made available in the' original French and now generate history, along on the quest: To the Editors: In his review of George appear in English for the from discovery of a biopotential planet Kelly's The Battle for the American first ti me.This is a publish("Mazda"), through Deluge-erasure of Church [July 6) John Jay Hughes says ing event for a I I those who the fallen "Adamites...
...Christ, is both human and divine...
...of the alienation of Asian youth reminds ling makes on the fiction of Elizabeth Repentance by Christians together for one immediately of Harlem or Hardwick and Robert Penn Warren and their whole historical complicity in the Youngstown...
...The discussion tinguished the commentary Mrs...
...that "a guerrilla-type warfare is going on difficult to understand why priestly ap(REV...
...JOHN LEO, formerly an associate editor of favor of a church of the Spirit and, in To the Editors: One of the few relevant Commonweal, is an associate editor of Time effect, denying that the true church, like questions raised by Father Hughes about Magazine...
...tory prof who invented this tale under an GERARD S. SLOYAN ORB IS BOOKS alias must have enjoyed letting his Maryknoll, characters discuss and enact those ideas, DAUGHTER OF Is by Michael Davidson, his mind's children traveling within the NewYork 10545 Popular Library, $1,75, paper...
...Hughes's basic stance is thus seen in (REV...
...poorly served...
...and too rarely has she consented indispensable for whoever undertakes to put her splendid critical gifts in the seriously to study popular literary tastes At bookstores or from service of literary interpretation...
...To Be a Christian, p. 427...
...No fair-minded signed/Married Priests...
...The Battle for the American Church [July DIANA CULBERTSON...
...01258...
...season, Ursulines hope to build a simply say that my review, far from "de- position in the church today is repre- health center at Banari, deep in the intenying the existence of a crisis" in the sented by theologians like Joseph Rat- rior of India...
...all...
...facts, which should not be ignored by "formally heretical," to reveal gross Kelly's book is factual, perhaps too doctrinaire reviews offered Com"ignorance," to make it difficult to trust factual for Hughes...
...tion of the sacrifice of the cross.' "The 28 September 1979: 541 alleged statement of Kelly's is said to be church's role as teacher of nations...
...Readers will make up their own meal, "and not the repetition of the sac- CORPUS-National Association Remind...
...It is my position that appeared in the 1973 military takeover Kelly's pastoral appointment, and I Msgr...
...1122 should be sent to Sister that "at its best the book is squarely on position with which I largely identify so Paula De Block, Ursuline Provincialate, target...
...THOMAS J. DOYLE, S.M...
...They provide the only medical church, explicitly states that Kelly "de- zinger in Germany and Urs von Balthasar help for miles around for aborigines who serves full credit for pointing out that the "have not even 2 meals a day the whole in Switzerland...
...And how refreshing might note too that the three or four well in this most immodest of epochs to enknown poems selected by Ammons counter such a quality, and such a man...
...which looked forward to total human libcussing Saul Bellow's Dangling Man or Trilling and the late Edmund Wilson are, eration, has been used over the ages as a Nabokov's Bend Sinister or Katherine so far as I know, the only commentators means of social control: of women by Anne Porter's The Leaning Tower or ever to have accorded the respect that men, of priests by bishops, of laity by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty- was her due...
...Hans Kung does not believe in his experience for more than twenty potential reader from reading a most in- the Real Bodily Presence of Christ in the years as a very successful parish priest, formative description of what is going on Eucharist or in the Mass as a re- including his appointment "Pastor by in the Catholic Church in America today...
...FRANCIS M. COSTELLO REVIEWERS his unwillingness (or inability) to see the EDWARD PROFFITT is himself a poet as well church as both visible and spiritual, as Kelly on Hughes as associate professor of English at Manhat- both structured and supernatural...
...himself with those who are causing the with Cardinal Spellman...
...vii) vance against what he has to say and Land mine of data The problem is that Hughes identifies simply because he was once associated New York, N.Y...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Catholic teaching at all...
...This and surprises (and so much narrative challenge is different...
...Its - Carroll StuhlrrnieiW- C. P. megalomania and his crew's hokey devo- National Catholic Reporter impact was minimal...
...Or, again, in her account of was a happy decision of Mrs...
...and writer Charles de Foututelage as gods: "we go to chain the I thank you for publishing "Liturgical cauld carried on a profound and fascinating correselements...
...MSGR...
...Kelly's book offers such primatur...
...October...
...days of Cardinal Spellman...
...as Herman Wouk'sAurora material, Roland Frye tells the the opportunity we now have of looking Dawn, Ira Wol fert'sAn Act of Love, John story of the Bible in narrative in bulk at what she did for The Nation Hersey's A Bell for Adano, Frederic form...
...classes, and sex is a more urgent and pal agents for the spread of English eduOne very gifted and very young critic deeper requirement...
...Charles de Foucauld Buoyed by visionary notions of Taoist JOHN DRUSKA Captain Aurelius Varuna, descendant of Aeneas and Indus Valley Brahmans, the INNER .3rd millennium crew members of Prom- Correspondence etheus coalesce into a "Tribe of Man" SEARCH: and "commit genesis...
...and the stringent assessments and the complexities of human nature and destiny as revealed various sorts of readings of the Zeitgeist, of these books that Mrs...
...poem by the strategic juxtaposition of ("Corsons Inlet," "The' City Limits") judiciously selected lyrics...
...The Catholic priest, honIsaac Rosenfeld and Jean Stafford and exploitation of the oppressed nations, ored in British times as one of...
...Additional funds are needed, without a worthy spokesman...
...I the mark of the man...
...ness of sensibility at work in Christopher Whirligig of Time-which nobody seems Balasuriya has written an essay, not a Isherwood's fine novel Prater Violet-a to have discovered, and it is but another documented study...
...And, amongst these figures, Mrs...
...Reply Box 403, S. In over a hundred published book re- tion," adding that "there can be few Egremont, Ma...
...Illus...
...JOHN A. HARDON, S.J...
...It should be clear cation, is now recognized by Sri Lankan who, in talking about her book, has from this salvo, and from the fact that the youth as a man...
...RONALD D. LAWLER, O.F.M.CAP...
...and brothers in Christ...
...When the teaching of And she remarks how much Eudora Wel- In brief religion was made compulsory in the ty's penchant for "fine" writing, in a socialized schools, despite "certain disbook like The Wide Net, promotes a kind THE EUCHARIST AND HUMAN LIBERA- advantages...
...Classified payable priests and religious now propose in and reread it with the greatest care (as the with order...
...Hans Kung concerning the Eucharist (cf...
...Unfailing insight REYIEWMi THE FORTIES Shores of Light and Classics and Commercials, or even of Alfred Kazin's ConDiana Trilling temporaries...
...Mother Is, a power she claims encomMost calls for social reform by Chris- passes that of her people's self- GOSPEL tians fail to identify the complicity of the christened gods...
...And it is such a faculty for rapid, evils of the Reformation," writes this Sri corner of the world but as it is being exact definition that over and again dis- Lankan (Ceylonese) theologian author, experienced everywhere...
...28 September 1979: 543...
...ing of language to its rhythms and "Ecumenism in the sense of exchange The author seems to be a man without patterns"-and this is sternly denomi- of pulpits, visits by church leaders to illusions and also of great faith...
...pling," "regrettable," and, to sum up, (REV...
...and this, ling immediately recognized Miss Bol- ministry is, however, evident throughshe insists, is a simplicity neither "heavy ton as one of the finest American out...
...O.P., teaches Com- A book as valuable as The Battle for 6] is this: Why no imprimatur...
...His familiarity with worldliness to which, as she suggests, he evidence of her perspicacity that, in the scholarship underlying pastoral worowes "the quickness and warmth" and reckoning with the first two, Mrs...
...Kelly has thrown away a golden have been making patchwork tapestries apologize for any injustice done him on opportunity by bungling a thoroughly (arpilleras) as a protest against the this score...
...John's University those who are causing the church such anguish,` as Father Hardon falsely Farm Wanted charges, the review says that these Ex-convict and 15-year-old son need help The author replies: people "deserve the severest condemna- in acquiring small farm...
...has likewise witnessed the fusion of the she is struck by how much his Catholi- Catholic population into the Center-Left cism rests its appeals to faith "on the alliance of the Freedom Party and the most familiar cynicisms of non-faith...
...However, cross" by denying that Kelly says this...
...Which makes a slightly amusing the Gregorian University, has as a goal build communities of unselfish love, the cavil, since it is precisely one of the dis- freeing Christian populations equally abuses of power endemic to socialist sotinctions of this book that it records an from the Eucharist...
...For The Nation normally Harooart Brace Jovanovich, $9.95, 272 pp allotted Mrs...
...The true conservative...
...A hurried call to the FATHER GERARD S. SLOYAN is professor of the facts, and with God's grace have their New York censor (who was familiar with Religion at Temple University...
...Commonweal: 542 Under those circumstances and be- charge of heresy for calling the Eucharist cause publication was already six months "a repetition of the sacrifice of the Classified overdue, I let it go through...
...My review and checks for the Ranchi Ursuline Sociopportunity for spiritual growth," and reflected keen disappointment at seeing a ety a/c No...
...gave it...
...With its recurrence of persona Poems is its supreme modesty: it runs to (i.e., a figure named "Ezra," a would- 105 pages, as against the 391 pages of the be prophet repeatedly effaced by the Collected Poems, 1951-1971 and howelements) and of motif (e.g., the effacing ever many pages have come since...
...I my position is that the present im- write from a Trappist monastery without primatur rules are too lax...
...This is immediately related to the Mrs...
...intent or not, this is what Ammons has My only complaint against The Selected achieved...
...Allowing the reader to must occasion some regret that over the Wakeman's The Hucksters, Betty follow Biblical history in last thirty years she has produced so little Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- chronological order, this criticism, for her books-Claremont Es- which for a brief time in the forties car- Reader's Bible gradually unsays (1964) and We Must March, My ried a large appeal for the half-educated folds the character of God Darlings (1977)-are largely devoted to multitudes...
...By the an agency of social change but of conserpraise out of sheer boredom" is marked Eucharist," the normal bien pensant vatism...
...tion of the passage in question...
...I NATHAN SCOTT, Jr., teaches Religious the American Church deserves more objective treatment than John Jay Hughes discovered this to my sorrow shortly beStudies and English at the University of Virginia...
...inside the church," that the issues at pointments are germane to the story unSchool of Philosophy stake "are the correctness of Catholic folded in his book The Battle for the The Catholic University of America doctrine and the survival of the Catholic American Church-except perhaps to Church as a significant influence in the prejudice Commonweal readers in adlife of her own communicants...
...He criticizes Cardinal Cooke (1970-74) to revitalize a Here is a land mine of data concerning Kelly for saying that the church makes New York City parish, a ministry of the confrontation in American Catholi- -statements declaring unchangeable which John Jay Hughes does not seem to cism over revelation, the priesthood, the truths...
...Trilling's that, Portuguese and Dutch...
...The review gives Pinochet regime and for self-support...
...I am annoyed, too at discovering rifice of the cross...
...MSGR...
...And it lish and Latin of the colonizers (before others...
...adopt the precise contradictories of all Perhaps, the expression "derisive No nostalgia the views that he reports...
...Princeton The present book does not have the It is, however, her discussions of the weight and range of such similar collec- important writers and literature at the University Press tions, say, as Edmund Wilson's The fore in the forties that claim our principal Princeton, New Jersey 08540 28 September 1979:539 interest, and, here-whether she is dis- gent novelist whom, even now, Mrs...
...and, most critically, appear- volume 3 sharing based on changes in the struc- ance of the prophetess who serves THE tures of society...
...02116...
...Hughes really laughter of his foes," best describes the New York, N.Y...
...The central cultic shorthand...
...He notes laconically supernatural suspension of disbelief "The dialogues are intense, of this meeting that like Vatican II in necessary to survive this epic parable's profound, radical'...-The matters of his concern: "It came and elisions and summaries, its arbitrary Gospel in Solentiname calls went...
...controlled and controllwanted to sound a mild applause has book's publisher is Orbis, to which the able in virtue of his largely cultic funcsuggested that the one occasion on which world of English-speaking theology is so tions...
...divine institution of the church, the papal that Christ gave the church an essentially In any event, as a pastor myself, I can primacy, the priesthood, the indissolubil- unalterable structure, vested in the assure Commonweal readers that the ity of marriage, contraception and the hierarchy and the papacy...
...of this period...
...GEORGE A. KELLY Far from "identifying myself with St...
...Kelly As for the rest of Father Hughes's in- there complains that Hans Kung holds temperate misjudgments, I have little to Married Priests the Eucharist to be merely a fellowship say...
...He has nated as a mode of frivolous "insincer- each other, and beatings of breasts for the not written a tract on Christian life in a far ity...
...Tribe'ss subsequent enervation by people into the meaning of There was a National Synod held in Sri death-wish-that bend the trajectories of the Scriptures chart in Lanka in 1968 and 1969...
...Hughes does all he can to keep the Eucharist...
...pondence with his superiors Daughter of Is carries its readers, (REV...
...their missionary lust "to be," glossed to My thesis is simply that a philosophical require the creative evolution of world approach will not reach enough people The great spiritual thinker and race attuned to Tao and the crew's today...
...The National Synod was con- sci-fi plot devices, Varuna's us home'' voked, met, and passed into history...
...To the Editors: John Jay Hughes' review church such anguish and are mainly re- If his background is at all germane, it [July 61 of Msgr...
...Indeed, novels-such...
...Stephen Seley's The Cradle Will are the convictions of religion, Trilling earned an important place by vir- Fall-which had been quite forgotten a but its methods are the methods of literature...
...the Council...
...That too is Anytown, U.S.A...
...Tril- "will soon achieve its limited objectives...
...12.95 opinion...
...Tril- ship and the theologies of church and the vital simplicity of his prose...
...He criticizes is not the one year (1966-67) as Cardinal Battle for the American Church is unfor- Kelly for criticizing Hans Kung on the Spellman's Secretary for Education, but tunate...
...That estimate tions, you'll probably enjoy the play of $7.95.provides a powerful parable for both ideas (apropos of our own sub- Volume I $4.95 paper hemispheres...
...of "Dom Gueranger" when "Dom Odo allows but one inference: in Kelly's view Casels" was there first, for having a the Mass is such a repetition...
...In- is painfully conscious of the main thesis signor George A. Kelly for the thirtydeed, he would be wise to reread Kelly's of The Battle for the American Church, seven years of his priesthood, I find it book for a great many reasons...
...But having read RATES: 70c a word, one time...
...His diftan College...
...Trilling hardly more than a page, and thus she had no chance for the Nathan A. Scott...
...Commonweal, 232 Hughes's assistance...
...George a. Kelly's The sponsible for the conflict...
...readers are entitled to some guarantees...
...Madison Ave., N.Y., N.Y...
...Many others are devoted to introductory and transition across her desk week after week...
...He To the Editors: As an associate of Monfore he makes such extreme charges...
...BIBLE viewer for The Nation in the 1940s is to And it is a brilliance of this kind which is feel a certain nostalgic longing for that most noticeable, as one moves through A NARRATIVE marvelous period of the journal's career the ninety-some pieces that are here as- SELECTIONS FROM THE when, under Freda Kirchwey's editor- sembled...
...Should he wish a point- Others are listed in the only other review tapestries at $25 each...
...IN churches in the social institutions that After so many epic-epochal successes SOLENTINAME need reform within the churches...
...He criticizes Kelly for claiming have heard...
...ficulty is the familiar one of choosing in Jamaica, N.Y...
...Using tue of the wit and intelligence and cour- few months after their issuance and about a quarter of the King tesy with which she scrutinized and which now hold no significance for us at James Version and adding evaluated the current fiction that came all...
...the oppressed"- . is unexceptionable by the author's own If you can manage the hyper- -The Priest rigorous standards...
...presentation of Calvary...
...But what he is here doing is digested," "plain wrong," "heretical," still, deny the existence of a crisis...
...of words" which in turn TION, by Tissa Balasuriya, O.M.I., sense liberated the Christians to be less "allows an author to sacrifice the mean- Orbis Books, $6.95, 171 pp...
...But modesty is much more than a simple anthology...
...Silence...
...Because Doubleday did not ask for one...
...a son-Savior's birth, genitalconcerned with activities that did not "crucifixion" and chemically-rigged rehelp bring about effective long-term surrection...
...What many access to Kelly's book...
...Here I can misunderstanding...
...The late Mary Britton Mil- clergy, and of the world's dispossessed Four-her estimates are regularly ler, using the pseudonym Isabel Bolton, by the world's possessors...
...whereas book has substance and that Monsignor Hughes believes this is not so, what Kelly has no "nostalgia for the good old Christ actually gave was the Holy Spirit...
...and that Father Hardon, in order to diocese...
...He manages in a page and a half of Spellman...
...Political indepenmanner of a Katherine Anne Porter...
...Salary negotiable in accordance Jesuit order, and two dozen other errors defend Kelly here, is forced to alter this with qualifications...
Vol. 106 • September 1979 • No. 17
