Audacity to Believe
Haggerty, Brian A.
GOD AND THE ASTRONOMERS BY ROBERT JASTROW Dr. Jastrow tells the story of the reactions of scientists when their own findings force them to confront the mystery that religions have...
...Silberman is attempting to redress the balance between long- and short-term needs, a balance which has been dangerously thrown out of kilter by contemporary addiction to quick fix proposals--and he largely succeeds...
...Earl A. Weis, S.J., ~ LoyolaU niversityo f Chicago Chairman 6525 Nooth St'mr=dan Road Chicago...
...While in prison she met a number of other political detainees who "obeyed more truly and more instinctively than any Christian I knew the most devastating of Christ's commandments, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself...
...While the first style may encourage some corruption, the second's inhumanity will probably lead to widespread community cynicism...
...has allowed me not only to learn a lot about the Philippines, but a lot about you and all of it is good...
...And it revealed how much of self-indulgence still filled her life...
...that religious communities are responsible for endangering dissent against all injustice...
...Sheila Cassidy was finally expelled from Chile on December 29, 1975...
...A marvel of clarity on an apocalyptic theme:' -John Barkham Reviews ~6GOD AND THE ASTRONOMERS explores the theological implications of the Big Bang theory of creation...Dr...
...I enclose $ check or J_ | money order...
...Audacity to Believe is a story of what happened to Sheila Cassidy--and to Chile--in the intervening four years...
...LIPE AND DEATH IN THE PHILIPPINES...
...Silberman has daringly told us much about just why we deserve what we have gotten...
...and that the individual Christian must inform his conscience to be able to make ethical decisions and take individual moral responsibility...
...She went quite simply because she was disillusioned with her prospects as a surgeon in England and wanted to gain needed surgical experience in an underdeveloped country where there was less competition and easier hours...
...The selfless example of those young revolutionaries renewed for her the meaning of commitment and total giving...
...Zahn draws conclusions here similar to those in his other works, specifically, that no one ought to render automatic support to "legitimate authority...
...He says: "If you want to know my absolutely candid opinion, I think the best thing to do is not to look at television and to that end, I have, as has been said, disposed of my set...
...They force us to probe the limits of our conscience and our faith, pointing to the weaknesses in our moral and spiritual lives and, in comparison, trivializing our ethical choices...
...Early one morning, four months after setting up her clinic, she was approached by a Chilean priest friend and asked if she would treat a man with a bullet wound in his leg...
...The period of interrogation and torture was followed by eight weeks during which Dr...
...Martyrs disturb the general calm of our lives...
...Jesus himself was a communicator but Muggeridge claims that had the Lord himself met with a fourth temptation in the desert, this time an offer to preach the Gospel on prime TV, he would have turned down the temptation and preferred the way of the cross as the means of communicating his message...
...but abuse of God's blessing is no valid argument against proper use...
...Sheila Cas9 sidy, weary of the "academic rat-race of surgery in England," gathered her dog and thirty-three pieces of hand luggage and set off on a cargo boat for Chile...
...In December 1975...
...She describes her brutal experience factually, "that it may be known how political prisoners are t r e a t e d . . , in countries where torture is institutionalized as an instrument of interrogation and repression...
...JOHN B. SHEERIN IN SOLITARY WITNESS: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF FRANZ J.~GERSTATTER, by Gordon Zahn, The Liturgical Press, $4.95 paper [277pp...
...Though she had not soug.ht or prepared herself for that moment, she unhesitatingly answered, "Yes...
...I I I I Name i I I | Address | I I I c~ty...
...Illinois 60626 AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EDUCATOR/EMPLOYER...
...immediacy that makes it difficult to tuck the tragedy of Chile away in the dark recesses of one's memory...
...That training, arduous at times because of her initial inability to master Spanish, continued well after the coup...
...The title of this book is taken from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, 1964 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day REVIEWERS FATHER ROBERT F. DRINAN, S.J., represents the Fourth Massachusetts District in the House of Representatives...
...Sheila Cassidy did not go to Chile for political or humanitarian reasons...
...ISIDORE SILVER is professor of Constitutional Law and History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City...
...Gradually Dr...
...Franz Jffgerstfftter's life is not so quickly objectified as sainthood or subjectified as insanity...
...What she has written deserves to be read and acted upon...
...At your bookstore or postpaid from: Vantage Press, 516 W. 34 St., New York I0001 2 February 1979:59 for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits...
...His powerful plea is that the tragedy of American life (often the dark side of our national optimism) be acknowledged and that such acknowledgment need not take the forms of either supine liberalism or harsh conservatism...
...Jastrow tells the story of the reactions of scientists when their own findings force them to confront the mystery that religions have immemorially called God...
...A wonderful book...
...During that period she experienced a rekindling of her Catholic faith...
...Come to think of it, he is not a plague of locusts but rather a Tocqueville who has come from the "outside" to tell us about ourselves...
...In his Jesus Rediscovered (1969) he revealed his new-born faith in Jesus and now finds TV and the other media irreconcilable with Christian faith...
...Though Audacity to Believe appears now some three years later, it conveys a sense of...
...Zahn, the pacifist, is not directly concerned with that philosophy here but with "the ever-recurring confrontation between Caesar and Christ...
...Only later did she realize that such shortages and strikes were due not to government ineptitude but to the coldly calculated actions of "rich men who were determined not to lose their wealth...
...Neither medical nor Christian ethics would allow otherwise...
...Once in Chile, Dr...
...Cassidy had to endure the shortages of vital consumer goods and the nationwide strikes that plagued the struggling government of Salvador Allende...
...Silberman's decrying of the "terrible waste of human potential that our society countenances" refers not only to its immediate context, the waste of lives of Trial by torture AUDACITY TO BELIEVE Sheila Cassidy Collins World, $8.95 [333 pp.] Brian A. Haggorty 1[ N DECEMBER 1971, Dr...
...treats Jffgerstfi'tter as a possible saint, at one point drawing a somewhat strained parallel to St...
...Jastrow traces the history of the diw pute imaginatively:' - - People Magazine Please send me copy(lea) of GOD I AND THE A81"RONOMERS by Robert Jas-, I trow at $7.95 each (publisher pays post- | age...
...Religious Comm on wea l: 60...
...The cynic who was skeptical of American evangelists has become an apostle of the Kingdom...
...The book, which was originally published in 1964 to record the thenunheralded "heroic sacrifice," is divided into two parts: a narrative-analysis of the events leading up to Jffgerstfftter's execution in Berlin, compiled from letters from prison and interviews with relatives, friends and several priests and prison chaplains he encountered...
...Only much later-long after the military coup of September 1973--did Sheila Cassidy, like the rest of us, learn of the incredibly arrogant intervention by the CIA, first to prevent Allende from being elected and then to bring down his government...
...Cassidy describes it as well...
...Malcolm Muggeridge, one of Britain's best known TV personalities, airs his colossal contempt for all the media in this little volume comprising three lectures with audience responses...
...As Silberman's numerous critics begin to dismantle his analysis and conclusions from varying perspectives, they should understand that he has made a bold attempt to answer the questions once posed by a famous criminologist, "Why do all societies get the kind of crime they deserve...
...This young, uneducated Austrian peasant-farmer and father of three daughters was beheaded in 1943 for refusing to serve in Hitler's army in a war which he considered unjust and ufider a regime which persecuted his church...
...She knew that if her treatment of him came to light, her work in Chile might be ended...
...These writings are distinguished for their extensive knowledge of the Bible (he was a sexton) and for their acute perception of the conflict between duty to country and faith in God, a commitment above that to nation, community or family...
...Cassidy was expelled from Chile and returned to England by air carrying only the clothes she wore and a suitcase hastily packed for her by many juveniles caught up in the maw of a beneficently poisonous process, but to an intermediate one as well, the spiritual diminution of the personae of policemen, prison guards, and many inmates...
...Cassidy was confined in a variety of prisons and made to endure a mockery of a trial...
...Theodore Hesburgh President University of Notre Dame LIFE AND DEATH IN THE PHILIPPINES Paul Bussard A distin/~uished clergyman, writer and editor of Catholic publications brings his speoal insights to this stark, searing portrayal of an exotic and distant land...
...Gordon Zahn, who has written on German Catholic capitulation to the Nazis at length in German Catholics and Hitler's Wars...
...At base, Silberman shares William Muir's "tragic vision" of both crime and criminal justice...
...By either idealizing their suffering--stressing the "solace" they found in death--or by viewing them as extreme religious fanatics, we quell the uneasiness their stories inevitably cause...
...She was repeatedly subjected to electric shock torture until she was forced to reveal who had hidden the wounded man and arranged for his treatment...
...Sheila Cassidy tells her story simply, forthrightly, with no pretentions of being a heroine...
...FATHER JOHN B. SHEERIN is fl member of the secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington...
...6.95...
...C.SJ...
...It should also be remembered that his breathtaking vision of this new nation was almost as tragic as it was optimistic--and that the tragedy was most apparent on questions of race and the criminal justice system...
...She set up practice in a small shanty town clinic serving some of Santiago's marginal people...
...It is also an eye-witness account of the violent overthrow of the first democraticallyelected Marxist government in history and the coming to power of an oppressive military regime whose crimes against Commonweal: 58 humanity are now well-documented...
...The death of her closest friend led Dr...
...Cassidy settled into the medical training for which she had originally come to Chile...
...Zahn sees in Jffgerstfi'tter's act--in his unwaveri.g commitment to his conscience, despite numerous pleas to serve from his family, friends and priests--an example which should challen_ge all to reassess their order of priorities...
...He adopts a compassionate "professionalism" much like that of the Oakland, California, police style rather than Los Angeles' aloof and callous counterpart...
...BRIAN A. HAGGERTY is working on a book tracing the influence of Martin Luther King on the development of the social gospel tradition in America...
...If not completely seflsfied I may I return the book(s) within 10 days for full ,m | refund...
...She realized that the wounded man belonged to Chile's outlawed revolutionary leftist party...
...He is the author of Honor the Promise (Doubleday...
...All police work, all criminal justice processes, are trade-offs, often of greater for lesser evils--and this is part of the tragic vision, perhaps its most significant part...
...he refuses to become either cynical or withdrawn in the face of that tragedy nor does he become overly (and dangerously) sentimental...
...Muir's Police: Streetcorner Politicians defines the "good cop" as one who realizes that much of what he encounters is the result of society's brutalization of the poor...
...She came to realize that she was only "sewing a very small patch on the threadbare garment of their existence...
...After suffering for six months from culture shock, complicated by her own insecurity, Dr...
...ultimately that insight extends to the great social costs of race prejudice and poverty...
...I In brief CHRIST AND THE MEDIA, by Malcolm Muggeridge, Eerdmans, $5.95 [123 pp...
...There was a positive side to her otherwise appalling experience and Dr...
...Thomas More...
...Cassidy's medical training brought her face-to-face with the social misery which had prompted AIlende's Marxist experiment...
...and the complete text of nine "commentaries" he wrote before his imprisonment...
...It is the personal chronicle of the growth toward spiritual maturity of a woman who arrived in Chile as a fairly conventional middle-class doctor and left a confirmed Christian humbled by the total commitment of those who were prepared to die to change Chile's system of self-propagating social rnisery...
...The enfant terrible who charmed, provoked and infuriated his British audiences is here at his creative best in this volume, at least in his dexterous felicity with words and his colorful imagery, but his generic condemnation of all media is just too, too much...
...An impressive travelogue, a view of another culture, and a nineteenthandtwentieth century history...
...The story is fairly well-known now, with editions in several languages...
...MASTER OF ARTS IN THEOLOGY 9 Scripture Studies 9 Historical-Systematic Theology 9 Spirituality Courses SUMMER SESSION BEGINS JUNE 18,1979 Department of Theology ~,lr~, ( contact: Sister Mary Peter McG=nty...
...TV and other communications media have unquestionably been exploited or misused...
...Muggeridge sees TV involved in a vast brainwashing operation that corrupts all traditional standards and values, leaving us awash in a sea of erotic and selfcentered fantasy...
...Sheila Cassidy has given eloquent testimony to that audacious faith...
...I I !State & Zip m. == m-J I I . - - ~ l l I I i l n l i l l i l l l ~U i i m n i l I l l I ~ l n i l must concentrate upon the "hard core," it often does not, and even if it did, temporary expedients would be clearly insufficient...
...Within a week of her treatment of the wounded revolutionary, Sheila Cassidy was arrested...
...JOHN CUTTER is a Fordham student who recently completed an internship at Commonweal...
...Her introduction to Catholic missionaries, who had cast their lot with Chile's poor, lay open before her the meaning of the Gospel...
...I the British consul...
...it should be remembered that Tocqueville's original mission to America a century and a half ago was to report upon the ambiguities of our "reformed" prison system...
...Cassidy to seek refuge in God whom she had long ignored...
...It only argues that the redeemed who misuse TV need to be more redeemed and more selective at the tuning dials...
...Reissuing the bc• now, just as the memory of Vietnam is fading, is a significant and timely gesture...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 2
