Why Catholic

...There is no easy answer...

...Even God asks a favor of dren to be admired and admonished, defear of hell, the rejection of pleasure, the woman to participate in history...

...there's a lot of strength in it," "I world seriously is not to be a glass of signment...

...I can recall once being responsible for everything and powerless much on too minute matters, and change required to create catchy titles for sample to effect change," "Getting sick isn't so seems glacial at times, but to take the essays, as part of a College English as- bad...

...It is in the direction of some favored past- texture of the everyday...

...In a style neither abrasive nor Now that in itself is surely not an untion without consulting woman...

...His presentation is elegant and argumentative...

...This appears to be a grand common theme in all the authors...

...For herself, she avers that she senses the hierarchy are in the same galaxy and even in the same orbit "but not usually on the same planet...

...as ultimate, God is not rights against governments of gen- WORD ONE tells what's happening here or there, He is ultimately transcen- erals . . . providing leadership for around the country and how good ideas dent...

...The long-range fallout from don't see it the way you do, so I must be fashion...

...As Sister Can- most of the writings...

...caricature of Tillich, and he is not necessarily an orthodox voice for Protestantism, but to the extent that Protestantism involves a prophetic nay-saying, it is opposed to'the Catholic sense of The Claretians these authors...

...Paul VI is Levine risks a kind of melodrama which somewhere life as we had never seen as a failure by Greeley: "He will be has the absolute look of sincerity I men- known it went on and on, seen as one who came in the fullness of tioned earlier...

...This is a opportunities in social action ways backspace...

...John Deedy claims the things of this world: music, painting, At its root, incarnation in the Christian that the inspiration for his piece came the poor-and the rich, politics, old tradition means that God is embodied, really, truly, definitively...

...At the same time, they are church...

...And here I must note that most of what I say about the authors in common does not quite fit Archbishop Sheen...

...liberalisms...

...There was even a munality...

...Humans do not create always with benefit of clergy...

...And a tendentious (a factor in itself unusual), familiar theme, but it is expressed here fine mess he has made of that...

...There are specific points on this may be an unexpected richness), ing, which the authors disagree...

...Street, Chicago, Illinois 60606...

...For some reason, it seemed to me that tences like I'm OK, You're OK, It is not hard to elaborate on the the essays by women were more persua- Everytime'1 Say No, I Feel Guilty, and dynamics involved in phrases of this sort...

...as the directive which prevents humans from identifying ulti- of commitment...

...We'll gladly mail it to tantism, Tillich posits that God is beyond counseling a prisoner in Texas or you free...

...former, it sounds suspect in another way these transcendent objects with a kind of The Catholic church has maintained to the contemporary,,, "liberated' ex- sanctity and eternity which they do not intimate relations with civilization (not Catholic...

...standing up for human lives, we publish a special newsletter...

...Hitchcock, on the other hand, high order, commensurate with his high been brought here for, probably all concludes, "Where the Roman Catholic ambition...

...Paul Tillich wrote eloquently of the Prot- a careercon:ider, a career estant principle...

...ders") in a tradition now cast aside by old able to guide himself on a universalistic Doubleday, $7.95, 186 pp...

...No or congregation, He is seemingly inca- Out of our experience with the charge, no obligation...

...These are not the something like "continuumists" since dida Lund points out in her essay, fiery, dramatic, climactic confessions of they all believe in the density of history, we seem to live in the Age of the Adverb...

...consoling the widow of a policeman Send your name and address to God so that not only is the divine not in Chicago...

...Somehow emotionality, power-striving, psychomoralism and worldliness seem to Macmillan, $10.95, 304 pp...

...That Christianity appears tainted to the Re- science-it can mislead us into investing game may not be well played...

...thority figures...

...Tillich's preaching is set radically typewriter...

...But Caslo A. Weber the book, and the procedure, sustained as there may be an inner logic...

...tion, "he went out and invented civiliza- manners...

...They use a myriad of rather as well as wrapped in transcendence...

...sive than those of the men...

...The auexplicit ex-Catholics (Phil Donahue, eternal objects...

...anced sense of Pope Paul VI, I find it American poets entering mid-life, and it And here, in "The Water's Chant," a impossible to imagine...

...usually as much a piece of fantasy as any different ways, the authors speak of the The term that comes up repeatedly is Erewhon...

...women traditionally Mother Church appears to regard both hammerlock on the psyche, the Jan- have the fundamental sense of human great states and small folk as human chilsenism of its sexual ethic, the pervasive creation...

...The ease it is, makes for very sharp and telling with which some Christian communions ArE SEEM to have fallen heir of late to illustrations...

...from the film Nashville when Henry Gibas their "liberal" opponents...

...Almost all of the essayists in society is 'reactionary' by the standards Richard P. McBrien, Abigail McCarthy, this interesting collection see themselves of liberal humanism which sees the indiFulton J. Sheen as "remainers" (hopefully not "remain- vidual as almost totally autonomous, John J. Delaney, ed...

...dilemmas in the areas of equality, selftempted to use Wittgenstein's statement: Celia Halas & Roberta Matteson esteem, affiliation, dependency, guilt, "This game is played...

...swers instead of stem Yeatsian truths...

...Here, for example, in "Each Time Is journalist, an historian, a theologian, a Because his poetry is for the most part Different": sociologist (maybe two...

...a basic reminder of God as Mother, (though short-lived, I hope) trend, and of many cases...

...Members of our community WORD ONE, Room 610,221 W. Madison capable of identifying with a holy place do work like this...

...Except for Sidplaced in dramatic situations, and be- A man ney Callahan all are "cradle Catholics...

...It is this sensibility of "those who coin a secular description for the position remain" that gives a common tone to taken by the authors it would have to be W HY still a Catholic...

...It is fashion-whether in hair that assignment is that I now have a col- wrong," "If I'm good, I'll be liked" styles or life styles-which is anti- lection of zippy titles for books I never bring the immediate response: "That's worldly since fashion knows only sheen, wrote...

...The sperately worried over, sometimes oppressiveness and insensitivity of its au- Catholic concern about abortion is not an scolded but never abandoned...

...are "liberal Catholics"-just the kind who read and write for Commonwealbut in terms of standard secular liberalism, these essays would indicate Still Catholic that "liberal" and "Catholic" can be uncomfortable companions...

...When his gold, labels of "liberal" and "conservative" poems display little or no sense of self- and a fiery dust showers into the quite miss the mark...

...How can the pleasanter vision of an accepting, embodied, rich Women's dilemmas and worldly religion fit with the undoubted stringency of the past (and the lYE DONE SO WELL-WIT DO I FEEL SO lucid exposition of women's historical present...

...mate concern with any finite object: church, Biblical writings or holy per- Maybe that means giving thatched- and religion now open to young people roof villagers the power of the undecided about what to do with their sons...

...The ominous ad- sense that a splendor has somewhere sometimes favored by various secular verb casts an air of tentativeness on all passed...

...In the strange new light thousand years of history already there...

...Halas and Matteson offer a most with such clarity and economy of word Commonweal: 570...

...my rather adverse reaction to it all, I was explicit and brief case vignettes to hamAt the risk of making a romantic sexist not very positively disposed by the title mer home the point that women have faux pas, it does seem to me that the of the book I am here being asked to been coerced into indirect and often culture of women has traditionally been review-and therefore thoroughly un- devious ways of expressing anger, more "of the earth" than that of men...

...we were good for, and we were church would be without the strong balThere is a sentimentality peculiar to good...

...the giant in my front yard, bucking I imagine that being still a Catholic (This may have something to do with the and swaying in the wind and testifies to a necessary conserving, a long time these poets had to wait before hear its holding on to something with two their voices were widely heard...

...yesteryear, these are nostalgia for former tradition and particularity which pre"X is currently married to Y. Has he left excitements: conversion, early days at cludes the radical, sweeping, rational rethe priesthood yet...

...To be sure, the authors are A Roman Catholic community of priests and brothers not idolators of the status quo or the given hierarchy...

...Not incidentally, moral sense...

...Catholic Christianity seems to Catholics because they are such basic caught up in the long historical reality of the authors to have written off so little of incarnationalists...

...Where The Catholic allegiance of the authors son sings (of America) "We must be "liberals" would gladly elevate the pre- lies in the rootedness of this world, the doing something right to last two sent off the earth into a utopiast future, embodiment of something holy in the hundred years...

...Most of the writers importance, they become the most im- day...

...They tend to exagg- having veered back to a time of death- Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Cesar erate the drama of endurance and to make -wish, then beyond that to his birthplace Chavez are often mentioned, but if one cult of experience, of their griefs and now changed and strange, finally turns were to identify that with "liberalism" hardships, though their tone is generally away from praying for others to find one would miss the overwhelming sense stoical .and composed...

...However, there is no need to importance of family and friends to their "richness"-as Hitchcock notes, it introduce a dreadful neologism in if one sense of being Catholic-the small in- would probably be the term picked in any resorts to theological concepts...

...For they are sentences that have adapted the Gospel to abortion, another publishing innovation...

...creates the great objects which transcend it is surely odd to cast males exclusively If this "worldliness" of Catholic individual life-states, cultures, art and as officiators of a Mother Church...

...Sidney Callahan notes that many devoted Catholics of her acquaintance regard episcopal announcements "as though they came from a distant galaxy...

...is strongest when he disciplines himself the leaves overflow purple and Actually, the problem is that our secular away from this temptation...

...Continuumists" are states and commitments...

...Rome may fret too venting them...

...against the idols...

...Consistent to his view of Protes- glass-in-the-street parishes . . . are succeeding...

...have sentences instead of titles, sen- exactly how I feel...

...The result is a something else: of "conservatism" which marks all the facsimile of self-knowledge, soft an- I watch my eucalpytus, essays...

...Deedy thinks two conservatives would gladly do the same breadth and depth of history and the close thousand is even more impressive...

...McBrien ngtes a generation of quite deserve...

...My children don't go the Catholic Worker, Vatican II, but a volution for individuals and societies to church anymore...

...Father WHY CATHOLIC Karl Stern's Pillar of Fire or Thomas Greeley in a defense of what he calls Merton's Seven Storey Mountain...

...In that set timacies of life are important and re- word-associated test with "Catholic of understandings, our authors are velatory...

...Phrases like "I can be emoone wonder whether these ever were rarefied art form developed around in- tional, but I musn't upset anyone," "I'm serious issues at all...

...The coexist within Catholicism in something sentence-title theme is continued through better than a state of mere hypocrisy...

...Most and the authors do that in each case simperhaps more orderly and rational, but I recently, I came across a real winner: ply and unobtrusively: The style is telling think Sidney Callahan is closer to the Ain't I A Wonder-Ain't You A Won- and the authors do not get in the way of truth when she praises the church for der?enough to make an editor gasp...

...evoke immediate recognition, and capmercy killing, "self-termination," There was a time when book titles were sulize experiences of scope and comhomosexuality, and so on, must make book titles-just that...

...Drs...

...somatics, perceptions, etc...

...God -is embodied-in Jesus of Before committing yourself to Nazareth, in the church, in the Eucharist...

...There is a touches Levine as it does Hugo, Stern, less sententious poem, where Levine, common array of heroes for most: Ignatow and others...

...One is BAD...

...If one had to Dennis O'Brien self...

...Moun- "Catholic anthropology" says: "The Sidney Callahan, John Deedy, Andrew tains and pillars are images of finality, Catholic view of the nature of human Greeley, James Hitchcock, Candida Lund, not flux...

...Greeley regards his archbishop as "bizarre...

...As far as I was concerned, he is on my planet, and we are even at the same church service-but it is an eloquent tre 12 October 1979: 569 ethnics and new ethnics, nature and the To the extent that "civilization" aberration of bishops...

...As prepared for the quality that lies within it.power-striving, fear, sexuality and, in Shaw says in Man and Superman, since And it is a book of superior and un- general, their point of view, all of which man was saved the awful labor of gesta- usual quality, both in content and in they were not able to express directly...

...Alas, most conCommonweal: 568 servatives are as radically non-historical ore sermon of remembered childhood...

...self-dramatization, the language seems portant poems of all, and there are a few sen: three women (one a religious), three applied to rather than drawn from feel- of these in each of his two new books...

...You can alpable of even self-identification...

...Catholic Christianity...

...Levine tidal roar...

...And the message, drawn directly, without remaining so feminine and motherly, so, as a consequence of this growing tampering, from the records of their own...

...cause these dramatize the decisions of opened his paper and sighed, except for the venerable Fulton Sheen, selfhood (how, for example, we must somewhere all are "middle aged"-no young learn to live with what suffices, and how there was a world, alive and riot- people...

...Repeatedly in not mere longevity that counts, however...

...It must be said, however, but we were here, waiting time and understood nothing of that that in Levine's case this is a flaw of a because that was all we had time...

...men may delude them- thors admire this consorting with culture, Mary McCarthy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) selves into believing too much in their but finally (to change the relation) who bemoan "Catholicism's moralistic cultural creations...

...priests (one a famous archbishop), a ing, and the poetry gets lost in the saying...

...Not so in the Editor Delaney gives no clue how this also not secular conservatives as that conversion biographies of one's youth, particular collection of authors was cho- term tends to be applied...

...friends, one's children and even some rational path, free from bonds of parputative representatives of the church it- ticularism and tradition...

...The men were other such inelegant constructions...

...But no matter-because now we puff and fluff...