Religious booknotes:

...He mentions two hundred books (each scroll is a book) on the Old Testament alone, with twice that many when one adds the New Testament Commentaries and the homilies...

...Pelphrey's book, a volume in the series, The Way of the Christian Mystics, from Glazier, could serve both as a vade-mecum to the writings of Julian herself and as an adjunct to the Colledge/Walsh volume...

...that the Shroud of Turin was declared the "most important" relic in the church by Pope Paul VI (p...

...translation of her revelations, with an exhaustive introduction by Colledge and Walsh in the Paulist series of spiritual classics: Julian of Norwich: Showings (1978...

...Pelphrey's analysis of the revelations (the "showings" as Julian called them) is helpful with his particular strength being an analysis of some of the more striking of Julian's formulations: the kindness of God...

...Rather than put together a clutch of unconnected essays, the editors asked the contributors (and a distinguished lot they are) to concentrate on those foundational issues which un-dergird serious theology today and to which Dulles turned his attention in his distinguished career as a theologian and teacher...

...Alas, my limited space does not even allow me to outline the richness of the offerings here, just as fairness constrains me from singling out one author over another...

...His concept of the spiritual life as ascent...

...Jerome does not note the Hexapla which set out the entire Old Testament in six different Greek versions in parallel columns...

...his use of the Song of Songs as a mystical text...

...This would all be forgivable if the book were good but, alas, the answers to the four hundred questions that are on the minds of the presumptive interrogators are not always reliable...

...He writes Tbe Critical Calling: Reflections on Moral Dilemmas Since Vatican II, by Richard A. McCormick, Georgetown, $29.95, $16.95 paper, 414 pp...

...Finally, he is intellectually adventuresome without being iconoclastic...

...Creasy claims he knows of versions in nearly sixty languages and a checklist done at the beginning of the century cited 6,000 editions in English...

...that the regional liturgies (some of which are in existence to this day) of the early medieval church are called "liturgical aberrations" (p...

...Every's book is a revision of a 1970 English edition originally published, under the title Christian Mythology, as part of a series on world mythologies...

...that Mary's vision to Saint Dominic is the official church explanation for the origin of the rosary (p.70...

...The current title is somewhat misleading since legends are not myths even though one might be found in the other and vice versa...

...His books include The Catholic Experience and The Catholic Faith: An Introduction, both from Paulist Press...

...his theory of christomimesis-all these would resonate through the mystical tradition of the church...

...To cite some random examples: Catholics put the pronouncements of the church before the Scriptures (p...

...the maternal image of Christ...

...well...

...One will find reflections here on the ethical dimensions of everything from heart transplants and the AIDS epidemic to reproductive technologies, the care of the terminally ill, and the pastoral dimensions of divorce and remarriage...

...Every Catholic of a certain age got a copy as a gift sometime or another (I still possess the one I received at my high school graduation), even though today its luster has somewhat diminished due to changing tastes in spirituality...

...Christian Legends* by George Every, Peter Bedrick, $18.95,144 pp...

...If a manual edition of this version were to appear, the editor should think about integrating the scriptural citations into the text or in footnotes instead of listing them at the close of the volume with no specific reference to page or line...

...he knows how to lay out a problem lucidly...

...That he does not use the term "translation" is significant because, true to the pieties of reader response criticism, Creasy wants to translate not words (what he calls "stencil" translation) but the deep meaning of words as they were understood by a late medieval reader into the language of contemporary culture...

...his active involvement with various professional associations dealing with health care issues and his indefatigable labors as a consultant to various religious bodies have given him the opportunity to apply his ethical insights to real life situations...

...His own asceticism (he had himself castrated as a young man but lamented the foolish act later as an excess of zeal) notwithstanding, Origen Origen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, by Henri Crouzel, Harper & Row, $39.95,278pp...

...In fact, many of Origen's works have come down to us in a mutilated state or in translations, but even the parts that have survived add up to an impressive whole...

...Every's book deals with the mythos in the Bible and with legends accruing to both historical persons (Mary or the saints) and events (the finding of the true cross...

...Other illustrations are not as common and not without interest...

...There was probably only one copy of it of which, now, we only know fragments...

...Crouzel is at his best in threading through the not always understandable thought of Origen, while giving balanced judgments about controversies connected with his name...

...Creasy's intention, then, is to retrieve this great work by a "new reading...

...Julian of Norwich is widely read today thanks, mainly, to the efforts of those scholars who have attempted to give womenafair hearing in theological circles...

...and so on...

...Practicing ethics & spirituality Lawrence S. Cunningham on many of McCormick's judgments...

...I suspect that this volume will find some classroom use...

...But as an interested amateur I can recommend this book to my colleagues (rest assured that the professional will read this work with care) for three reasons...

...The Imitation of Christ derives from the school of the so-called modern devotion which flourished in the Low countries in the late Middle Ages...

...Secondly, he is a theologian, which means that he has a profound respect for the sources and is unabashedly a churchman who knows how to speak from within a tradition...

...as how revelation might be conceptualized or how one understands the Scriptures as a norm for church life or the vexatious question of the relationship of Christianity to other world religions and to the world of unbelief...

...Untutored readers, however, need to be cautioned about some of his eccentric judgments: his overesti-mation of the influence of Julian on Eliot's Four Quartets...

...His obsequiums toward the noninfallible pronouncements of the Vatican are not obsequious (there is a real distinction in that word play...

...All the essayists were conscious of our post-modern, historically conscious, culture as they wrestled with issues such Faithful Witness: Foundations of Theology for Today's Church, edited by Leo O'Donovan and Rowland Sanks, Crossroad, $1930,252 pp...

...Creasy does not allude to it (it appeared, probably, when he was in press) but it makes an obvious companion volume while being worthy of study in its own right...

...he defines...

...It is a good browse and would make a nice gift...

...The rather lubricious title of Williams's book is offputting enough, but the subtitle Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Catholic Church but Were Afraid to Ask, by Paul L. Williams, Dou-bleday, $17.95,310 pp...

...He explains this procedure at some length in his introduction (while providing, in passing, a fascinating account of changing prose styles in English) with some specific examples of how he proceeded...

...In a letter Saint Jerome listed the books of Origen he had seen at Cae-sarea in his own day...

...The Imitation of Christ can lay fair claim to the status of a spiritual classic...

...This volume of essays sums up his thinking on the foundational problems of Catholic ethical theory and his application of ethical principles to exigent situations confronting the pastoral worker and the professional...

...My sense is that Creasy's translation is quite readable even though I personally lament the loss of those Latinate nouns (e.g., compunction, contempt, etc...

...The text is engaging enough, but the real value of the book comes from the profuse illustrations taken from the history of Christian art and illumination...

...More positively, Pelphrey provides fuller information about life and culture in fourteenth-century Norwich than does Colledge/Walsh, which does much to illuminate Julian's life and her writings...

...We are fortunate to possess a fine contemporary Julian of Norwich, by Brant Pelphrey, Michael Glazier, $14.95,272 pp...

...and he judges...

...The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis: A New Reading, by William C. Creasy, Mercer, $35,169 pp...

...whose influence permeates these pages...

...Among the fourteenth-century English mystics she is a premier figure because of the vigor of her writing and the originality of her theological expressions...

...John Van Engen's recent Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings (Paulist, 1988) gives a brilliant account of this movement as well as a judicious selection of diverse writings associated with it...

...the laughter of Christ...

...Suffice it to say that within this volume there is as good a survey of the issues and promises in foundational theology as one will find in a single volume...

...I am not a moral theologian and, as a consequence, am unfit to render judgment LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame...

...A final point...

...It does honor to Dulles whose influence permeates these pages...

...had a deeply affective piety which anticipated by centuries the warmth of a Bernard of Clairvaux and a Francis of Assisi...

...his peculiar notion that Julian actually died when she received her revelations (and then was resuscitated...

...While not as readable as Joseph Trigg's Origen (John Knox, 1983), this is a work that must be read by historical theologians and those interested in the RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES history of biblical interpretation...

...a garbled note in which he seems to confuse the veil of Veronica with the Shroud of Turin...

...Some of the illustrations are old standards...

...Crouzel has written widely on Origen so this full biography has the authoritative ring of one who knows Origen and his writings intimately...

...102...

...Early on, the theoretical issues of ethical thinking, both as a discipline and as a discipline in the church, get a lengthy treatment...

...Mindful of its readership, each writer also provides a brief annotated bibliography at the close of the individual studies for further reading...

...His many years as the chronicler of current writings in moral theology, under the rubric of "Notes on Moral Theology" for Theological Studies, provided him with a magisterial grasp of the field...

...Consequently, his writings, including the present book, are central to discussions in moral theology today...

...Look for it on the remainder tables this year...

...One would expect Piero della Francesca's fresco cycle on the legend(s) of the true cross in the chapter on the same topic (even though RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES the frescos are erroneously dated by Every) for instance...

...I was particularly taken with an illustrated Book of Hours depicting the expelled Adam and Eve being harassed by what appears to be a large goose and-on the same theme- the bronze door of the cathedral of Hilde-sheim showing Adam trying to learn how to use a hoe...

...Crouzel lacks the easy stylistic grace of a Peter Brown but, despite a certain convoluted manner (the translator may have been of some help here), this is an important work by a distinguished scholar...

...It gives credence to anti-Catholic canards...

...It was with profound relief that I turned from Williams to a Festschrift edited by O'Donovan and Sanks for their Jesuit confrere, Avery Dulles, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday...

...First, McCormick is a model of clarity...

...Most of what is in this book is potted history derived from secondary sources or Vatican gossip, ancient (Williams declares Alexander VI the worst pope) or recent (the Vatican's sorry financial dealings...

...Because the late patristic church viewed him as a heretic, Origen, the great Alexandrian theologian and son of a martyr, has always had a pall over his reputation...

...which were part of the peculiar vocabulary of the old spiritual writers...

...This book, in short, rests more comfortably on the coffee table than on the bookshelf...

...that follows an asterisk (*For Fear of Excommunication) is insulting rather than cute...

...The author is at pains to distance Origen himself from the origen-ists, who deformed his thoughts, and to show that many of the later doctrines of Christianity find their first formulation in Origen...

...Purists may object that what he has done is to construct an apologia for paraphrase, but the Italian proverb traddutore traditore (every translator is a traitor) still holds...

...Nonetheless, he is one of the most important and, arguably, the most indefatigable of Christian theologians and Bible commentators...

...On the whole, then, this is a useful if mildly flawed work about one of the most original and appealing of the medieval mystics...

...172...

...The work should have a particular appeal to anyone concerned with Christian spirituality since, as Crouzel says, Origen can lay claim to having invented the field...