Lure and Loathing

...B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO...

...created importance of this inner struggle...

...with his small, thin frame, his balding, tiltThere's a story, told to me by Toronto ed head, and big weepy eyes, his lamenUniversity philosopher James M. Camer- tations over the "betrayals" of departing ISBN 0-8028-3714-X on, of Pope Paul VI and the great Domin- priests, but most of all as the promulga- Cloth, $29.99 ican theologian Yves Congar...

...They were tor of Humanae vitae, the encyclical which having dinner together and Paul asked proved that the supreme teacher could Congar, "What's going to happen when not listen to the church he would teach...

...discharged part of that responsibility the best books that The black intellectual's job, Moses with this important volume...

...S. F. ! C.kAKr1 FLAP] DS, MtCH...

...Paulist Press, $29.95, 752 pp...

...of scholarship in depth...

...It takes a world which yields him no true...

...The energy I exert his own people...

...The history of the American essay that most impressed me-for its Negro is the history of this strife- plain common sense, its philosophical Don Wycliff this longing to attain self-conscious highmindedness, its Catholic autobiomanhood, to merge his double self graphical details, its pedagogical responinto a better and truer self...

...Meditations for the end general statement about them...

...cannot afford to do otherwise in the ander Crummell: The "fashion of our life two souls, two thoughts, two unrec- course of daily commerce without fills us with perplexities and breeds con22: 21 May 1993 Commonweal stant anxieties, but these are the heritage says, is to "teach our young people the of all God's spiritual creatures...

...After recalling Giovanni Battista ing the radio report of the Montini from his "exile" as archbishop of white smoke over the Milan, Pope John obligingly died, so that Vatican announcing the Montini could assume the role for which 1939 election of Pope Pius XII...

...After and ideological ax-grinding...

...It is everything that of us who read the religion pages of Time which he and Congar were indispensable other religious biographies in the 1950s, the future of the church hung to the world in which they were willing are not: a graceful work on which of Pacelli's protege monsi- to be forgotten...

...not least, Gerald Early himself...

...two warring ideals writers like Stanley Crouch, Reginald Essays on Race, Identity, and the in one dark body, whose dogged McKnight, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ella Ambivalence of Assimilation strength alone keeps it from being torn Pearson Mitchell, C. Eric Lincoln, and, Gerald Early, editor asunder...

...This evokes the time, on Peter Hebblethwaite, the British, former- or call 800-253-7521 the eve of and during the Vatican Council, Jesuit, Rome correspondent for National FAX 616-459-6540 when the best of Christendom was em- Catholic Reporter and the London Tablet, bodied in the work of French philosophers, tries to reconcile these images...

...varied that it is impossible to make any State...

...We must all feel lost the Negro is a sort of seventh son, a poet...

...Much of this the Eygptian and Indian, the Greek and stand out, sociologist Robert Stapes's certainly has to do with being black, but Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian," the "The Illusion of Racial Equality," and a portion of it simply derives from the passage goes, "Primal Orb Density" by Wanda Coleman, human predicament...

...At your bookstore, we both die...

...I]f I want a job, I have to carry courage for an African-American to say self-consciousness, but only lets him myself in a way which is non- that...

...I nineteenth-century black scholar Alextwoness-an American, a Negro...

...But several thought this whole been in conflict with my sense of American partment of African-American Studies at "Du Boisian dualism" was so much bun- nationality...

...The latter includes this observa- and lonely and threatened by inevitable born with a veil, and gifted with sec- tion, presumably offered as evidence of doom...

...sibility-was that of Wilson J. Moses, N editations, Gerald Ear- The results of Early's challenge are so professor of English and history at Penn ly calls these essays...

...The text was one of the most lives in America...

...Du Bois's 1903 mature ones, are concerned with political Europe or in Africa I have never felt any classic, The Souls of Black Folk...

...It is a peculiar sensa- white employer...

...I suspect that that describes the ical condition-some would say predica- The best of the essays, the most thought- feelings of most African-Americans, inment-of blacks in America in this last ful and mature, reflected a pedagogical cluding many of those who call the greatdecade of the century...

...Fortunately, such foolishness is far less abundant than the wisdom of thinkerLURE AND LOATHING onciled strivings...

...It especially takes courage for one see himself through the revelation of threatening or seen as safe by my who hopes to be taken seriously among the other world...

...Then, from 1958 to 1963, Pope John XXIII-we remember the old photo of Raymond A. Schroth Roncalli with a cigarette in one hand and a martini in the other-reshuffled the Vatican deck and summoned Vatican Il, 0ne of my earliest child- with only a fuzzy idea of what it should hood memories is of hear- do...

...These were African-American est attention to their anguish with the state Much as a preacher might, Early gave scholars concerned with how best to raise of things for black people in the United them a text "as a kind of point of depar- and educate African-American children for States...

...He writes: "I am restfamous passages in African-American The least of the essays, the whiny, im- less and vulnerable, here at home...

...for the unending, the everlasting ventures Moses, Gerald Early, and all the conand anxieties of their spirits in the deep "'It is, simply, one o f tributors-even the weakest ones-have things of God...

...mentioned above...

...French biography Hebblethwaite strives to give us spirituality, liturgy, and bold experiments Montini whole: the man, his church, and Commonweal 21 May 1993: 23...

...These are not the thoughts of an adult, AMERICANS FIRST but of a college sophomore, circa 1969...

...theologians, and novelists like Maritain, massive, well-documented, sympathetic 253 JEFFERSON AVF...

...And race is the least of such a person's problems...

...States...

...SKI] deLubac, Danielou, and Mauriac...

...The only place I experience dressing the obligations of black intellecsuring one's soul by the tape of a liberty is on the page (within limits tuals to black young people, he unearths world that looks on in amused con- of what's salable imposed by the a spendidly insightful quotation from the tempt and pity...

...But the The Penguin Press, $23.50, 351 pp...

...But in literature, from W.E.B...

...But Moses isn't finished even after sense of always looking at one's self My opinions and values must be sup- that...

...For those suffer-lead the church from the world in context...

...ture, something to get the brain cells happy, successful, spiritually wholesome But Moses's best lines follow the ones working...

...tions what a president was and should be, Some, like Cameron, consider Paul VI Eugenio Pacelli-mysterious, skinny, aus- a great man...

...dooming my primary self...

...MARK NOLL ENIGMA ON THE TIBER PAUL VI like the worker-priests sought to bridge the The First Modern Pope gap between the faith and the secular Peter Hebblethwaite world...

...One ever feels his white publishing establishment...

...tion, this double-consciousness, this in this barrier-bursting exhausts me...

...In this 328, WM...

...Toward the end of his essay, adthrough the eyes of others, of mea- pressed...

...Every age in the history of mankind ond sight in this American world- some unfairness in American life: has been an age of anxiety...

...concern...

...But over the years I have beSaint Louis's Washington University, con- combe, as likely as not the projection onto come resigned to the fact that my interceived the notion of asking about two a whole people of one black man's own ests, so far in this life, have always been dozen black intellectuals to commit to confusion, born of his upbringing and ed- inseparable from those of the United writing their thoughts on the psycholog- ucation among whites...

...It is true enough," Moses writes at the of the twentieth centu- The majority of the essayists felt that start of his essay (sensibly and honestly ry on America's endur- Du Bois was onto something and that his titled "Ambivalent Maybe"), "that my ing dilemma: race...

...11 1 have ever read...

...Montini was an intellectual Newsome's work is a model tere, autocratic, churning out decrees and who saw so many sides of a complex of historical biography, instant elocutions on everything from eu- issue that he appeared to be a "Hamlet," thanasia to the art of the Harlem Globe- but one who might, because of his intel- a moving portrayal of trotters, and reportedly blessed with ligence, sensitivity, and profound spir- individual human lives heavenly visions on his deathbed-de- ituality-including his willingness to in the widest possible termined our image of a pope...

...Two of these less vulnerable or alienated...

...observations retained a certain validity feelings as a black man have sometimes Early, the very talented head of the de- even now...

...gnors-"conservative" Tardini or "liber- Others remember Paul VI through the -JOSEF ALTHOLZ al" Montini-was close to the throne, and image of the ultimate ineffectual cleric, in Worship the papal succession...

...As Frank- it seems every moment of his life had been lin D. Roosevelt defined in our imagina- a preparation...