A Far Glory
Wuthnow, Robert
Tarot cards to televangelism tells us that). BERGER'S PROGRESS But it does foster superficiality--or at least the proverbial fear of inauthenticity. We wonder if our convictions are real....
...Among the contributors: Carl E. Braaten o:o Jean Bethke Elshtain o:o J. Bryan Hehir Paul R. Hinlicky r Richard John Neuhaus r Mark A. Noli Michael Novak o~o Max Stackhouse o:o Glenn Tinder o~o George Weigel "Uniformly thoughtful and logically composed...
...Twenty-seven distinguished commentators probe that question in an interdenominational conversation among evangelical Protestants, ecumenical Protestants, and Roman Catholics...
...John C. Cort he "year" that shook Catholic America, in Kenneth Briggs's subtitle, ran from August 18, 1986, to September 19, 1987--thirteen months actually...
...ers come away mildly depressed with Berger is back...
...Less modest was the standing ovation that the bishops gave Archbishop Hunthausen when he ap- pealed for their support at their meeting in November 1986...
...In doing so, they tackle some of the most controversial questions involving religion and public life today...
...Peter L. Berger recent previous book (not counting sev- With ample sprinklings of Latin and Free Press, $22.95,218 pp...
...But it is a mature work, subtle in nuance, redo- lent with insight...
...Perhaps it was the ovation and this minor change that moved the Vatican, six months later, to remove Bishop Wuerl and restore the archbishop' s authority...
...not be disappointed...
...This defiance, together with the Vatican's ar- chaic fiscal procedures, did not sit well with the U.S...
...Two weeks after the Curran action Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen an-nounced that the pope had stripped him of five areas of responsibility and given them to a newly appointed auxiliary, Bishop Donald Wuerl...
...And we worry about the fact that we wonder...
...Apparently Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul, who clearly must have approved the opinion, were becoming uneasy with the modest signs of inde- pendent thinking displayed by the American bishops...
...FRANK McCONNELL, Commonweal's media critic, teaches English at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
...Indeed, this framework has become so familiar that the difficulty sometimes is to question its 1987 & ALL THAT HOLY SIEGE The Year that Shook Catholic America Kenneth A. Briggs HarperSan Francisco, $27, 608 pp...
...His most recent book is Rediscovering the Sacred: Perspectives on Religion in Contemporary Society (Eerdmans...
...eral edited collections...
...and through- out the world...
...This curious opinion was later dispatched to the U.S...
...public in general and in particu- lar with the wealthy Catholics who were being asked by the pope to make up the Vatican's $53 million deficit...
...1979...
...JOHN C. CORT is a Boston-area writer, au- thor of Christian Socialism ( Orbis), and con- tributor to the recently published John Courtney Murray and the American Civil Conversation ( Ee rdmans ). IRVING MALIN teaches at City College in New York...
...PAUL ELIE, a frequent Commonweal con-tributor, also writes for the New Republic and Lingua Franca...
...continue to seek, but whether it is possi- The core of the book is an extended reIt has been a while...
...ISBN 0-89633-164-4 Available at bookstores or through National Book Network, 1-800-462-6420 ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER Commonweal 6 November 1992:35 career he forged a synthesis of Weberian sociology and Heideggerian phenomen- ology (h la Alfred Schutz) that has pro- vided continuing inspiration for his own work and that of an entire generation of younger social scientists...
...At some point in 1986 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made the state- ment that individual bishops had teaching authority, but national conferences of bishops did not...
...Reading A Far Glory is thus like But there is also plenty of good humor (in ake heed, theologians, social paying a visit to an old friend who has been both senses of the word...
...Its es- by the possibility of an embracing tranBergerian reflections over the years will sential question is not so much why we scendence...
...24.95 cloth...
...The prose, This is a book for seekers and nomads, Berger's diagnosis of modern society, sagacity, and insight of this of whom there are still more than a few most will surely feel hopeful that life has new work are glorious to on college campuses, in the seminaries, meaning and that this meaning is enriched behold...
...This pastoral greatREVIEWERS ROBERT COLES is a child psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard, and the author, most re- cently, of The Spiritual Life of Children...
...It began the day the Vatican notified Father Charles Curran that he could no longer teach theology at The Catholic University, an action that led to protest from nine past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society and the College Theological Society, signed by 750 other theologians...
...In this sense, A Far Glory does not break new ground...
...This chastisement of the highly popular Hunthausen, which Briggs describes as uncharacteristically "awkward and amateurish," led to even louder and more universal protests from Catholics both in the Seattle area and throughout the country...
...Commonweal 6 November 1992:37...
...Directing the ble to do so seriously...
...The bishops did not, however, really support Hunthausen, who protested that the process by which his authority had been stripped from him bore no resemblance to the kind of due process to which U.S...
...And if some readscientists, fellow travelers: away on a journey...
...We want desperately to feel that our relationship to the sacred is weighty enough A FAR GLORY of Berger's attention during the past to hold us in place...
...Conference of Bishops, which rejected it by a vote of 205 to 59, which is reasonable, since the Vatican position seems to be based on a new kind of math by which one times one equals one, but 200 times one equals zero...
...At the same November meeting, though obscured by the smoke and fire created by the Hunthausen affair, the bishops voted 225 to 9 to approve a pastoral letter that castigated the U.S...
...The Quest for Faith in an Age of decade...
...SUZANNE KEEN is an assistant professor of English at Yale University...
...His book Walker Percy: An American Search was published in 1979...
...assertions rather than simply seeing how well they apply...
...Those who have luxuriated in and in churches and synagogues...
...PETER L. BERGSR 367 pages...
...A few weeks later the Vatican issued a statement on homosexuality that raised a storm among gay and lesbian groups, as might be expected, but also aroused crit- icism from some orthodox Catholics...
...It shines with wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of reading in lit- erature, philosophy, theology, and the social sciences...
...In February 1987, the Vatican defied orders from the Italian government for the arrest of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the American head of the Vatican Bank, for his involvement in the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest...
...This meeting great- ly embittered Jews in the U.S...
...And his last book- German, more than occasional references length foray into theology--a recurring to Kierkegaard, and no hesitation in coinRobert Wuthnow affliction, he opines in the preface--was ing sociological abstractions, Bergerian The Heretical Imperative, published in prose is no feast for the fast-food addict...
...It terminated the day Pope John Paul II ended his second visit to the United States...
...LIB~RY JouRNAL r "An unusually good and vigorous set of essays representing many points of view, all strongly argued...
...In June, 1987, John Paul met with Kurt Waldheim, president of Austria and a man charged with collaborating with Hitler's massacre of the Jews...
...citizens are enti- tled...
...The most his sympathetic colleagues felt able to do was to strike the word "just" in the resolution describing the process and say simply that it was "in accord with general principles of church law and pro- cedures," leaving aside, as Briggs points out, "the question of whether those prin- ciples were themselves just...
...ROBERT WUTHNOW is Gerhard R. And- linger Professor of Social Sciences and director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University...
...REMBERT G. WEAKLAND, O.S.B., is a grad- uate of Julliard School of Music and Columbia University and was appointed archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1977, by Pope Paul V1...
...economy for produc- ing a degree of poverty that was "a social and moral scandal...
...His Capitalist Revolution (1986)-- Reading Berger has always been a way Credulity a fulfilled prophecy, it appears--is his most to add gravity to the theological enterprise...
...The intense secu- flection (based on Berger's William Belden Institute for the Study of Economic Culture larity of modern society scarcely destroys Noble Lectures at Harvard University in at Boston University has absorbed much our interest in the sacred (everything from 1991/92) on the meaning of the lapidary BEING CHRISTIAN TODAY An American Conversation Edited by RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS and GEORGE WEIGEL How can Christians help to shape the future of the American experiment and its promise of "liberty and justice for all...
Vol. 119 • November 1992 • No. 19
