Keeping the Faith:
Jordan, Patrick
IN BRIEF Keeping the Faith. American Catholicism Past and Present, by Philip Gleason, Notre Dame, $24.95, 320 pp. This collection of ten essays, written between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s,...
...He indicates that there has never been a more challenging moment for American Catholics than the present...
...A constant refrain in its various segments is Gleason's awareness of the "earthquake," "breakdown," "utter decomposition," and "psychic dislocation" experienced by American Catholics in the two decades following the Second Vatican Council...
...He is the author of A Theology of Christian Prayer (Glazier...
...Gleason avoids the easy cynicism of blaming others...
...He was an eyewitness to many of the events recorded in the book under review, and some of his writings on the Shoah have appeared in Commonweal...
...MARGARET WIMSATT has frequently reviewed for Commonweal...
...P.J...
...He makes the effort to revitalize the faith seem not only demanding but ennobling...
...She also teaches at Yale University and the University of New Mexico...
...BOGUMIL KOSCIESZA is an essayist, editor, and translator...
...Gleason's fine reflections on the achievement and the sudden demise of the Neo-Scholastic project remind one of Paul Hendrick-son's stunning if more novelistic account in Seminary...
...His latest book, Matters of Faith and Morals, was recently published by Sheed and Ward...
...Gleason writes from a scholarly perspective- he is professor of history at Notre Dame-but infuses each treatise with a sense of personal regard for the fate of the Catholic enterprise...
...The extensive footnotes indicate the book's genesis as well as its REVIEWERS DANIEL A. DEGNAN, S.J., who teaches at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, where he was formerly dean, has written on abortion issues previously for Commonweal...
...The essays range from the influence of what Gleason styles the "mythic" Middle Ages of the American Catholic mindset, to criticisms of contemporary historians in the field...
...JOHN H. WRIGHT, S.J., is past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and a member of the faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union...
...Both authors indicate that foundations deserve special scrutiny...
...One cannot escape the author's own pain...
...This collection of ten essays, written between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, analyzes the travails and triumphs of the American Catholic experiment, past and present...
...james gaffney is professor of ethics at Loyola University in New Orleans...
...likely audience...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 15
