Robert Kennedy and His Times
Shannon, William V.
devoted more of his energies to prayer (which would make a hefty book) alluded complex than the homogeneous commu- and solitude. Despite this contemplative to in the beginning of...
...In the years feature of the Schlesinger book...
...memoir and this a biography...
...thing like the emotional intimacy with of 1960-63...
...There is abundant evidence none...
...A derived from the fundamental prius of Tarrou, a character in Camus's novel The continuing seminar on his thought and its knowing and adoring God...
...We praxis became more apparent when La that such lives are not an impossibility in also have the issue of Testimonianze Pira entered public life, an arena far more this day...
...on the "materialism" of the cial action (he was active for years in the those who are tempted to patronize such a Resurrection...
...on "utopia as the true meaning sonalism and traditional concepts of so- best in pre-Vatican II spirituality...
...La biblical themes in Michelangelo...
...devoted more of his energies to prayer (which would make a hefty book) alluded complex than the homogeneous commuand solitude...
...With his poised, ironic cast of mind, the many actors in the crowded scene and to grow...
...usually resisted-a curious impulse to Kennedy...
...Karl Rahner once wrote that saints tured on from his youth...
...merely my own position but also, and Thus, the reviewer in the Irish Times widely admired and President Kennedy more important, the controversy over confessed he "hated" Kennedy as much is venerated...
...Kennedy entered the White House...
...No contemporary who tried to maintain everyone's sake, don't plunge into I followed this rule when President as I did an arms-length relationship with crowds or ride in motorcades...
...What else does one had been elected four or eight or a dozen dinner party in 1963, he confessed that expect from a close friend...
...For or Dorothy Day-were nurtured on the him...
...His letters to Amintore Fanfani La Pira all political and social impulses spirituality of the pre-conciliar church...
...tional atmosphere so credibly...
...Books: RFK: AN UNFINISHED MAN OBERT R Kennedy has proved as con- ROBERT HEII$EDY AND HIS TIMES cards on the table: this reviewer thinks troversial in death as in life...
...We can be grateful that Robert think he would welcome or heed my adhad gradually learned that if I felt Kennedy had in his inner circle a trained vice...
...The series close friend, cdnfidante, and political begins to level off after that, with the emissary of Robert Kennedy...
...Hav- his subject and no historian of a future If Providence had been kind to him, it ing declined' an offer to join his staff, I generation coming cold to the evidence would have devised a means of keeping was content to keep my distance from could possibly present readers with this him out of the 1968 presidential camhim and to criticize his policies as I saw feast of detailed information, delineate paign and giving him more time to reflect fit...
...Through sive,.accurate, richly detailed and well- contemporaries and I had no reason to several national political campaigns, I written...
...And impersonal pages of The Economist, the Kennedy grow and change, particularly this in a country where the Kennedys are critic began a laudatory review: "All in the three years after his brother's asCrnnmonweal: 86 sassination when he made the transition seems even more of a memoir because he here with which readers can make up from agent, adviser and political man- was personally closer to Robert than to their own minds and, if they wish, reach ager to the role of leader in his own right...
...a more central figure in the conclusions different from those arrived But I made no attempt to establish any- Kennedy politics of 1967-68 than those at by the author...
...lic life in the 1960s...
...It is reason- years later, he would have been even some of my columns criticizing his able to ask that the author, regardless of better, wiser, more thoughtful, more brother made him "furious...
...Schlesinger did go to formation efforts by Catholics and work for John Kennedy and did become a Henry Warner Bowden emerging Protestant bodies...
...He took, way of life, it is chastening to remember Europe, etc...
...But he always went rushing responded that one could occupy middle evidence honestly and state the issues through each day as if there were no ground, being sympathetic yet critical...
...Although a distinguished leading up to his death when I came to contrary, I preferred to maintain an historian, Schlesinger is writing here as a know him best, I often experienced-but arm's-length relationship with Robert participant as well as an observer...
...It is un- have been a good president...
...That might seem an odd stance If accepted on this premise, the book is give him fatherly advice...
...Better than their covers This outlook remained with him to the end...
...Despite this contemplative to in the beginning of this article...
...Then the second volume makes a when he was sure of their personal loy- VOLS...
...Schlesinger easily meets those tomorrows...
...Just as 16 February 1979: 87...
...If he had lived and been John Kennedy had no difficulty with this with such authority, or recreate the emo- elected at 43 in 1968, he would certainly kind of detachment...
...Yet I kept wanting to say to himstrongly about a politician, I should historian of such luminous intelligence don't fly in single-engined planes, don't either go td work for him or guard my and the master of such a virtuoso style...
...Schlesinger distin- itself is the flight pattern of an airplane...
...on the youth revolt in Saint Vincent de Paul Society...
...the gained the first-hand knowledge that un- whole set, one metaphor that suggests fifth, sixth and seventh fairly steadily dergirds this book...
...If moving up through subsequent halves of guishes, mistakenly I believe, between centuries can be considered equivalent to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...
...La Pira's more seriously the character of specific Seventies he went to Chile to see the spiritual development came in that historical circumstance one would have effects of the first democratically elected tension-filled period before the Second to compare La Pira with someone like Marxist government in the world...
...In the anonymous and normally preoccupies Schlesinger: how did Robert also rendered a severe indictment...
...nity of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society...
...He made a trip to Vietnam in Italian life and politics...
...Such a juxtaposition is not meant as a wide variety of subjects: Savonarola, La Pira grew and was nourished by the denigration of what La Pira stood for...
...the the underdog, and political skill would patient activist, a man of passion and book at times is infused with some of the have achieved considerable good...
...Because REVIEWS covering books in a series third book depicting events in the sevenRobert Kennedy was the kind of man he are tricky things to get off the teenth century...
...La Pira died in 1977...
...1-8 sharp climb, moving rapidly, through alty or their ideological commitment...
...The critic in the through to a reasonably balanced judg- way pursued the same theme which Irish Press, although more temperate, ment...
...my subject which is such a distinguishing passages in this book are based on his He died an unfinished man...
...the fourth, about threewas, only a personal intimate could have ground, and in introducing readers to the quarters of the eighteenth century...
...My wife his emotional commitment, lay out the far-sighted...
...Vatican Council when new stirrings of Archbishop Helder Camara of Recife or During this same period La Pira con- theology and spirituality were in the air Father Ernesto Cardenal of Nicaragua, tinued to write essays and books on a but were still in the process of becoming...
...On the own journal...
...tion by observing that it was difficult to know whether I was "with us or against US...
...this book...
...If he impulse...
...La Pira never Plague said that he wanted to be a saint, a application has already begun at Catan- wavered from that basic stance although, new kind of saint for an age which did not zaro with the announced intention of pub- as Father Balducci noted, the practical believe in God...
...paddle boats in white water, and for independence jealously from the outset...
...I say "curifor a biographer to adopt, but it was a splendid piece of work, comprehen- ous" inasmuch as we were almost exact founded in personal experience...
...He failed in that desire lishing annual volumes of research de- difficulty of linking contemplation and but persons like Giorgia La Pira testify rived from La Pira's life and work...
...twelve centuries from the end of the And this brings me at long last to the Consortium, $9.50 each, $5.95 paper Roman Empire to sixteenth century reSchlesinger book...
...All that Robert Kennedy, by contrast, was reasonable to fault Schlesinger for failing energy, moralism, humane concern for temperamentally a true believer, an im- to analyze and judge Kennedy coolly...
...have already been published in Italy...
...planations and, indeed, explosions of I, too, have a personal statement to emotion from reviewers and I gather the William V. Shannon make which I hope will illuminate not same has been true in the United States...
...After almost as a motto, the dictum of St...
...Many of the most interesting And what of Robert Kennedy himself...
...Sitting next to my wife at a passion of its subject...
...For of history...
...To understand between the Americans and the North are saints because they reveal a new way the difference of La Pira's spirituality Vietnamese with A. Fanfani (then at the of living the Christian life peculiar to the from that of a spirituality which takes UN) being intermediary...
...disarm- older spirituality of Neo-Thomism, Per- Pira's life clearly stands for all that was ament...
...this book and his earlier work on the thousands of feet, the series' first volume The final volume leaves readerKennedy administration, A Thousand begins slowly by taking the reader from a passengers cruising along at about Days, calling the latter a personal standstill up to 4000 feet, surveying two twenty thousand feet by covering devel...
...sanest and most sensitive people in pubhave been the occasion for personal ex- Houghton, Mifflin, $19.95, 916 pp...
...The that Robert Kennedy was one of the reviews in the Irish and English papers Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr...
...In the early time in which they live...
...He only felt at ease with persons FAITH OF OUR FATBERS Christ...
...I knew Robert Kennedy and today as he did when Kennedy was alive, In England, the New Statesman re- wrote a book about him (The Heir Appaand he followed through on that emotion viewer confessed to a personal distas.e rent published in 1967 and now out of with an astonishingly fierce attack on the for Robert Kennedy before he struggled print) which in a much less ambitious subject and the book...
...clearly...
...concern his efforts at "bridge building" Giorgio La Pira left a sure mark on La Pira's spirituality was ahistorical in continued...
...John and...
...that many of the authentically holy his death there was the immediate begin- Thomas that contemplation was the pur- people of our era-one thinks imnings of what surely will be a flood of pose and goal of all created being: con- mediately of Mother Teresa, Pope John, publications and studies by and about templatio est finis totius creationis...
...And suddenly there were He concluded that part of the conversa- two criteria...
...In fact, this centuries before and after the life of opments between 1955 and 1975...
...What is more character, it derived exclusively from the the Sixties to visit Ho Chi Minh where he interesting about La Pira is the style of his philosophy of esse that he had been nurattempted to open an exchange of views life...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 3
