Religious booknotes

...The rehabilitation of Luther in the context of Marxist scholarship is the background of this biography but that family quarrel is not persistently insisted upon nor is it intrusive in the book...

...The Irish monasteries were sui generis and their influence on Irish culture was profound...

...Varieties of Catholic experience Lawrence S. Cunningham interpretative observations are hardly startling...

...Frequency of issue: every other Friday except Christmas, New Years" and monthly in July and August...

...Like their Marian counterparts, they see themselves as true believers with the rest of the world going to hell in a handbasket because people will not listen...

...D. Free distribution by mall, cartier or other means, sample complimentary and other free copies: 470...

...The merit of Blackwell's book is to focus on a well-defined topic: the role of the Scriptures in the controversy and the ancillary question of who had the authoritative right to interpret those Scriptures...

...He should be very pleased by this book which is, in the best senses of the words, a biography and a memoir: a life told against the background of great events and great persons...

...It is that tiny itching doubt that may be the sole gift that the Plowshares people have given us...

...E. Total distribution (sum of C and D): 18,818...

...Although the Cardinal has never conceded that he played a role in it, the sudden dismissal of the liberal Jesuit Paul Valadier from the editorship of Etudes two years ago was viewed by nearly every informed observer of the French Catholic scene as an action taken to placate the irate archbishop...

...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 562) Ravitch's book The Catholic Church and the French Nation [July 12], which I have only now seen...

...Hughes takes her title from Chaucer, of course, but unlike the monk who rode to Canterbury and was pilloried by Chaucer for his unmonastic frivolity and love of luxury, Diekmann's life demonstrates how the authentic monk can speak from the cloister to a much larger world when he takes seriously the Benedictine motto to pray and work...

...In fact, while it is not as penetrating as Oberman or as thorough as Brecht (two biographies recently noted in this column), it is eminently readable, very good in terms of social history, and demonstrative of the fact that no final biography of this titanic figure will ever be written...

...The Galileo affair has attracted an enormous amount of scholarly attention, both from historians and philosophers of science, and from apologists/critics of the Catholic church...

...Zimdars-Swartz's book concerns itself with six Marian apparitions: La Salette and Lourdes in the last century...

...1. Title of publication: COMMONWEAL...

...It was a relief to me that the Marxist brush was laid gently on this portrait...

...The 16th, he said, "is a rotten area, it's been wrecked by Action Catholique...

...This biography takes its inspiration from Engels who saw Luther as the catalytic agent that transformed medieval feudal society by his revolt against Rome and it is from that platform that he attempts a more sympathetic picture of the reformer...

...reprinted by Cornell University Press in 1972...

...Thus, exile was a dreaded punishment because it meant a symbolic death through separation from the social network...

...Wilcox's book is toopartipris upon which to make an informed judgment (he is a good writer but constitutionally incapable of spelling proper names correctly...

...Antiwar activists, like the Plowshares Movement (a loose coalition which emerged from the activities of the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip) are also preoccupied with apocalyptic scenarios but their visions come from an analysis of the here and now with little inspiration from the Beyond...

...Breydert's assertion that "[o]ur bishops are really 'united in love' would 590: Commonweal...

...The cardinal has never hidden his contempt for Catholic Action...

...What is taking place now, from my point of view, is a true renewal of the church: deeply faithful to the council and at the same time more respectful of tradition and its true values...

...I very much liked it and learned a great deal from it...

...For the monk, however, the act of voluntary exile was the ultimate form of asceticism because it meant that the monk would abandon all for the service of God...

...Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: A. Total no...

...A Marian subculture, orbiting around this or that apparition, is still very much a part of the Catholic world...

...It should not come as a surprise that this was a "front burner" issue after the Council of Trent since the question of the Bible was a neuralgic point in CatholicProtestant polemics...

...I would like to know which forms of Catholic action are being "lashed out against" by the hierarchy...

...the intricate demands of hospitality...

...Location of the headquarters of general business offices of the publishers: 15 Dutch St., New York, NY 10038.6...

...Wilcox is hardly a dispassionate chronicler of these symbolic gestures as one might have guessed when informed, on the dust jacket, that he is also the author of Grass Roots: An Anti-Nuke Source Book...

...Brendler wrote against the Marxist conventional wisdom that Luther was a reactionary (the Marxist hero was, of course, Thomas Muntzer who identified himself with the Peasant Revolt) who sided with the princes, and not the proletariat, in the Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation (act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code...

...monastic particularity and social class...

...Over the past years I have reviewed a number of books on Luther as readers become the beneficiary of a spate of continental scholarship, translated into English, published on the occasion of the five-hundredth anniversary of Luther's birth in 1983...

...Our bishops are truly "united in love," and more human than they ever were...

...Their models range from Thoreau (in the Concord jail) to the White Rose movement in Nazi Germany as justifications for their actions with the Nuremberg trials as cautionary tales against inactivity and complicity in what they see as immoral actions...

...Zimdars-Swartz has neither the hermeneutical sophistication of Victor and Edith Turrler's work on Mexican Marian sites nor the shrewd eye of Alan Neames whose book, not cited in her bibliography, The Happening at Lourdes (1967) is still one of the best on the topic...

...A monk of St...

...The great Jesuit apologist maintained that if something were said in Scripture it was, by that fact, true and a matter of faith...

...17,911 D. Free distribution by mall, carrier or other means, sample complimentary and other free copies: 566...

...John's Abbey (Collegeville), he had the good fortune of a European education (in the early 1930s) at a time when the great ferment of liturgical studies was in full bloom both in Germany and France...

...As Blackwell notes, had Galileo (or anybody...

...Galileo's answer was that they had never explicitly considered the question but assumed this picture of the cosmos and simply used the ordinary language of the day (we still speak of the "sun rising...

...Bitel's work studies the relationship of these early monasteries to the broader culture by a judicious use of the extant sources and by a critical reading of the hagiographic literature which has survived...

...The last part of the book is a modest excursus in interpretation (she resists the temptation to reductionism which mars some recent studies) but her LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM is chair of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame...

...The one thing that the early medieval Irish church never imported from the continent was the Rule of Saint Benedict...

...Editor, Margaret O'Brien Steinfels 15 Dutch St., New York, NY 10038...

...One could make the case that the hard-fought battle not to have a separate document on Mary at Vatican II was partially motivated to check the more rococo formulations of Marian belief...

...Start again from scratch...

...She is interested in the interchange between monastic vision and nature...

...What remained is deep in the Irish spirit: a penchant for ferocity in religious expression, a love for drinking (a common topos in hagiography), an aching nostalgia for Ireland by those in exile, a deep capacity for making prayer a poem, and the monastic custom of troscud : fasting against another person as a public protest against injustice 588: Commonwealand as a means, as Bitel notes, of shifting their "position from weaker to stronger partner in a social relationship...

...In her final chapter she also considers the curious apparitions at Necedah (Wisconsin) which ended up in the creation of a rather loony cult movement not unlike the Bayside (New York) apparitions which she does not discuss...

...In any case, I believe these paragraphs of the review show a lack of respect for the apostolic labor of the church in France...

...I was surprised and shocked by the final two paragraphs of the review, which allege that many bishops and clergy, led by the cardinal archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, are "lashing out against and suppressing" many forms of Catholic action...

...of issues published annually: 22...

...Bitel's book is exceptionally well researched and very well written...

...The two events together brought as a consequence a long period of "overliberalism" in the church, and this in its turn was responsible for the Lefebvre schism...

...It is also a commonplace to see the messages emanating from such apparitions as projective attempts to center a world which is perceived to be in disequilibrium...

...E 1 Office use, left over, tmaccountad, spoiled after printing: 191.2...

...B. Paid Cwculation: 1. Sales through dealers and carriers~ street vendors and counter sales: 780...

...It should not surprise us, however, that Luther is portrayed preeminently in terms of German culture...

...they are sentenced to prison and off they go, often after having thanked the judge and jury...

...The symbiosis, or lack thereof, between "high" theology and popular religion in contemporary Catholicism is a fascinating one but this book reflects little acquaintance with the former and even the author's knowledge of the latter seems bookish (she has someone "saying" a"station" of the cross...

...Returns from news agents: 866...

...I am French, and a Parisian...

...Location of known office of publication: 15 Dutch St., New York, NY 10038.5...

...a belief fueled, in large part, by the energy derived from the piety emanating from Lourdes and Fatima...

...they await arrest and on trial try to explain (with varying degrees of success) why they did what they did...

...and Medjugorje in Yugoslavia...

...On the other hand, when reading the smug pieties of the New Catholic Right or, worse, thinking about the Ollie Norths of this world, I remember that prophets are never honored in their own time or in their place...

...Instead of a "coin" clinking into the coffer, this text has "corn...

...Godfrey Diekmann is one of the authentic giants of the liturgical renewal in the Roman Catholic church...

...B. Annual subscription price: $36.4...

...His Maison Saint-Augustin is intended to rival, and if possible destroy, the traditional archdiocesan seminaries, Les Carmes and Issy-lesMoulineaux, which have been badly hobbled as a result...

...a concept of"paradigm" or"model" he might have been home free but he, true to his Aristotelian background, also sought for absolute truth and, in the field of biblical interpretation, at a time when the issue was of crucial importance, was no match for the authority o~f Bellarmine...

...2. Mail subscriptions: 17,568...

...MRS...

...8. Known bondholders, mortgagees and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None...

...and the ways in which monks could engage in role reversals to sanctify what was seen as bad...

...Bellarmine, by con11 October 1991:589today...

...Edward S. Skillin, Publisher...

...The late William Clebsch once argued that Christian activism (as distinct from Christian succor/charity/pleas for justice) only became possible after the revolutionary period of the late eighteenth century with its doctrine that social structures are not of divine right but of human making...

...CLAUDE N. BREYDERT The reviewer replies: Cardinal Lustiger's creation of a parallel seminary is one major example (among many others, major and minor) of the undermining of liberal Catholic institutions found objectionable by propapal forces in the current French episcopacy...

...Managing Editor, Patrick Jordan, 15 Dutch St., New York, NY 10038.7...

...How then was Galileo to account for the fact that the entire patristic and medieval tradition accepted the geocentric model of the universe...

...A. No...

...Valadier was well known as one of Lustiger's most intelligent critics...

...monks and the complex rules of kinship...

...There is one 11 October 1991:587side of me that looks at these folks, for all their heroic exertions, as self-absorbed sectarians who pass themselves off as the True Jerusalem facing down a benighted and complacent Middle Class (i.e., me) who will not see the truth...

...Mrs...

...They are released and the cycle begins again...

...Other scholars find a ready locus for testing theories about mythos, ritual, and sacralized space in a world where the conventional wisdom says such matters are in decline...

...Kathteen Hughes's biography is an admiring one but that is understandable given both the stature and importance of the man in the history of the American church in general and the liturgical life of the church in particular...

...At the time of Vatican II there occurred also our 1968 students' revolution...

...Brendler's biography is of particular interest because it was written by a historian from East Germany before the collapse of the German Democratic Republic...

...A patristics scholar by training (his doctoral dissertation in Rome was on Tertullian), he has been an indefatigable speaker and retreat master, promoter of the liturgy and social justice, while also devoting his spare (!) time to everything from his editing responsibilities to consulting on the building of the abbey church at Collegeville and being a pioneering supporter of the ecumenical center at Tantur in Israel...

...What is one to make of all this...

...Father Diekmann is still alive and active at his abbey...

...2. Date of filing: September 27, 1991.3...

...Similarly, the abbey archives contain letters he wrote from Europe as a student which allow us some entry into the heady world of studies and travels that he undertook in the 1930s...

...Fatima in the early twentieth century...

...The great age of vernacular Irish monasticism began to decline in the twelfth century as the more rationalized forms of Benedictine and Cistercian monasticism came to the Island...

...the most humorous one involved Tetzel's famous jingle to encourage people to contribute to the building of the basilica of Saint Peter...

...Their stories need to be told and those who are reluctant to write their own are forttmate to have dedicated biographers...

...Diekmann was always reticient about writing books and one finds it hard to imagine that he would write his own story...

...The alternative was a welter of private interpretation/conflict, a situation that Catholic apologists gleefully noted in the Reformed movements of their day...

...Liberationists have an intense interest in popular religion and turn, naturally enough, to the tenacious hold of such figures as Our Lady of Guadalupe...

...E. Total distribution (sum of C and D): 18,477 E 1. Office use, leR over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing: 208 2. Returns from news agents: 895 G. Total (sum of E and F should equal net press run shown in A): 19,580 Actual number of copies of a single issue published nearest to filing date: Total number copies printed (New Press Run): 19,875...

...This judgment, from the sweet vantage point of history, was of small comfort to Galileo but it is a cautionary tale for us terium widely understood...

...copies printed (Net Press Run): 19,580 B. Paid Circulation: l. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales...

...Total (sum of E and F should equal net press run shown in A): 19,875, I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete...

...Garabandal in Spain...

...The word symbiosis seems most apt for a description of how Bitel approaches her subject...

...It sums up a huge amount of work done on Irish monasticism over the past fifty years and, as such, is a welcome companion to John Ryan's classic work Irish Monasticism (1931...

...Blackwell's book should be of interest to every theologian...

...the circular settlements with their wattle huts gave way to the rectangular cloisters constructed as stone fortresses...

...The Irish monasteries were sacred places in which the monks protected the locus of divine power (the relics of the saints) and acted as mediators between the world outside their circular settlements and the great mysteries of God...

...Long associated with the journal Orate Fratres (now Worship) and, after some contretemps with Roman authorities, a peritus at the Second Vatican Council, Diekmann had a central role in the shaping of the document on the liturgy...

...also a Catholic who loves the church of Jesus Christ as a mystery, and not as a club, or a political party, or any human institution...

...To me it seems a total misunderstanding of the situation...

...The Plowshares Movement belongs to that latter category...

...Ryan is still the book to read to understand Irish monastic spirituality but Bitel complements his work by her sophisticated sense of social history...

...His story follows the pattern of a metaphorical dance: a small group enters a weapons center and then damages some armaments...

...His attitude is captured well in the advice he gave to Father Alain de La Morandais when he transferred him from the 14th arrondissement to the 16th...

...hence the combination of apocalyptic and exhortative flavors in such messages...

...Galileo was right and Bellarmine was wrong...

...Still, for all of these weaknesses, this is a good descriptive work but only middling when it comes to interpretation...

...tumults of the early sixteenth century...

...Far more irritating was the large number of printed errata (Oxford books are usually free of this sort of thing) in the text...

...Owner (lfowned by a corporation, its name and address must be stated and also immediately thereunder the names and addresses of steckholders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of stock): Commonweal Foundation, 15 Dutch St., New York, NY 10038...

...So the Incarnation was true and a matter of faith just as the fact that Abraham had two sons is a matter of faith...

...Galileo enthusiastically endorsed Trent's position that the authoritative interpreter of the Scriptures was church tradition, the pronouncements of the fathers, and the authoritative formulations of the magistrast, accepted what Blackwell calls the de dicto version of biblical hermeneutics...

...C. Total paid circulation: 18,348...

...Cardinal Lustiger is a valiant apostle and in Paris the church is very much alive...

...Names and addresses of publisher, editor and managing editor: Publisher, Edward S. Skillin, 15 Dutch St., New York, NY 10038...

...After the council, he was a core member of the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL...

...It is good that books like this are appearing since many of the dramatis personae at the Second Vatican Council are reaching a certain age...

...He makes us further in his debt by appending a generous (nearly one-hundred-page) selection of documents pertinent to the debate as they impinge on the question of biblical truth and scientific observation...

...In this country, activism has taken two broad forms: active participation in the political process to reform this or that structural injustice (e.g., agitating for better housing for the poor) and symbolic activism which hopes to show, by prophetic gesture and/or public resistance, that certain structures are evil and need to be overthrown...

...But here, for whatever it is worth, is my reaction, not to this book, but to the actions described in it: profound ambivalence...

...Those interested in the contemporary history of the church will find this a rewarding and useful work...

...The merit of this work rests mainly in its careful reconstruction of the apparition events as they evolved from the discrete experiences of seers into public events with accompanying structures to support them, i.e., what sociologists, following Weber, would call the institutionalization of charisms...

...and three more contemporary events: San Damiano in Italy...

...884 2. Mall subscriptions: 17,027 C. Total paid circulation...

...His biographer must be pleased that he kept a diary during his stay in Rome for the sessions of the council, for her telling of those days is much enhanced by that resource...