The Catholic Thing/The Anatomy of the Catholic Church
Imbelli, Robert P.
charismatic, incalculable component of the Catholic thing.) What sets Rosemary Haughton's work apart is not only her pictorial skill in portraying these twin figures, not only her learned...
...They embody, in the author's striking phrase, an "unrepentant earthiness...
...Haughton and makes her so apt not merely to ex- pound, but almost to sacramentalize in her writing the Catholic reality she cele- brates...
...and these constitute an astonishing array: from Augustine to Dorothy Day, from Heloise to von Hugel...
...A joint review is, admittedly, a hazardous undertaking and one labors to relate to each work on its own terms...
...Instead, in this "time of transition verging on metamorphosis," Roman Catholicism, in its theology, its pastoral practice, and its missionary outreach, appears more adept at ecclesiastical fiddling than at revolutionary renewal...
...as befits a Catholic thing it resides in'the people as a whole...
...Yet, though the book helpfully maps the areas of chal- lenge and though it provides much useful information along the way, it fails to offer the reader the requisite detail and depth to make possible responsible deci- sion and action...
...The very format of the work militates against this by allotting, on an average, twelve pages to each of the very considerable topics it treats...
...There are others who, professing to be defenders of that substance, fear to ex- tend its reach to embrace new realities...
...Haughton's reflections: the recent recon- struction of the medieval English church of York Minster...
...The Catholic thing rejects restriction...
...One last image helps organize Mrs...
...RICHARD DRINNON is the author of Facing West...
...J~E rlOWARD, author of Familes, is at work on a biography of Margaret Mead...
...The task of reconstruction constitutes the major theme of Gerard Noel's The Anatomy of the Catholic Church...
...Whatever their inevitable limitations, they strove for an integrity of vision, for the inclusion and trangformation of the whole of the human...
...York Minster represents that living tradition which gives both letter and cus- tom birth, prolongs their existence, and, when necessary, radically reconstructs them...
...Such a method of transmission naturally scrambles the message at times, but it is because the thing is catholic in this sense, also, that it is worth re-volutionizing...
...Appropriately, Mrs...
...Yet their very participation in the Catholic enterprise fails to leave them unaffected...
...Commonweal: 506...
...ltANCrlER is an associate profes- sor of English at the University of Minnesota...
...and, though it can degenerate into rank superstition and often needs "reform, the sectarian spirit which would splinter Catholic unity is ultimately a greater t~eat to its integrity and well-being...
...But I believe there is something instructive in the horizons assumed by the two books under review which has considerable bearing for the future of the Catholic en- terprise...
...One cannot gainsay the validity of Noel's impressions nor the legitimacy of the concern which chronicles disap-pointed hopes in areas ranging from liturgy to ecumenism to the effective critique of unjust structures...
...It has the power to transform such service, and in so doing to transform the servant...
...It concerns breadth of vision and depth of staying power, it concerns what truly radical transformation is...
...The author's deeply concerned com-plaint is that the Roman Catholic church, faced with unparalleled possibilities, has hesitated to pursue its own prophetic vis- ion, outlined at Vatican II and in the great social encyclicals of John XXIII and Paul VI...
...of Minnesota...
...Paradoxically, "men and women involve themselves in the great enterprise, and serve it without being aware of the greatness of their service...
...What sets Rosemary Haughton's work apart is not only her pictorial skill in portraying these twin figures, not only her learned sensitivity that enables her to illustrate them amply by concrete histori- cal reference, but, most especially, her theological depth which refuses to sunder the two sisters, often quarrelsome, yet ever needful of each other...
...De- spite an undeniable effort to be fair, the format favors flag-waving more than crib ical reflection...
...The Catholic thing is popular in the most fundamental sense of the word...
...Noel situates the pressing challenge in the context .of the political and cultural revolution most manifest in the emergence of the third world and its radical demands DANIELM.MURTAUGH is a former assistant editor of Commonweal...
...It sup- ports a truly comprehensive anthropol- ogy, one which celebrates the multi- dimensional splendor of the human touched and transformed by GOd...
...In such a basically uncatholic ecclesial context, Mr...
...For, "it is the whole Catholic thing--saints and sinners, Popes and housewives, bigots and simpletons and scholars--all these who carry the message from one generation to another, the message which the great (and lesser) radicals recognize and re- vitalize...
...for justice and a new economic order...
...There are the "clerks" who articulate the experience...
...The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building (U...
...Haughton tells her tale through the people whose stories spring from and expand the Catholic enterprise...
...No trace of elitism mars Rosemary Haughton's Catholic vision...
...Rosemary Haughton's sense of the Catholic thing stands, therefore, as a sus- tained plea for the fulness of human ex- perience, the "both/and" of the Catho- lic imagination: "mystique" and "politique," orthodoxy and orthop.raxis, transcendence and immanence...
...This remarkable en-listment of modern talents to preserve past treasures symbolizes the radical task that today presses upon those committed to the Catholic thing...
...MICHAm...
...but, were I equipping myself for the long march, I would be sure to pack The Catholic Thing in my knapsack...
...Both stances are strangely at one in dog- matically constricting the range of ad- missible experience...
...Adapting Tillich's terms, Protestant reform ever requires Catholic substance...
...This ability to see whole, this commitment to the whole of the truth, distinguishes Mrs...
...Noel's book might be useful in mounting a minor skirmish...
...FATHER ROBERT P. IMBELLI teaches at the Maryknoll School of Theology...
...Moreover, such service is not restricted to the "clerks...
...Yet the task itself is eminently Catholic...
...For the genius of Catholicism is to be an enterprise which lives out of the past for the sake of the future, a future nourished by the past, but not reducible to it nor simply repetitive of it...
...For there are those today who, espousing the right (read "left") causes, risk evacuating the Catholic thing of its unique substance...
Vol. 107 • September 1980 • No. 16
