Being Catholic
Higgins, George G.
with legs and arms disproportionately small compared to the torso, like sprouts budding from the eyes of a potato....He saw the fright in the face of the girl who was, after all, not much older...
...Rodger Van Allen's earlier study of Commonweal, The Commonweal and American Catholics, published by Fortress in 1974, coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the magazine...
...Not only are Left, Center, and Right represented, but the discussions are deeply rooted in historical research, contemporary public debate, and academic discourse...
...It seems Scrieber can only produce his amazing scientific theories when inspired by a mistress...
...Academics and pundits made "religion and politics" synonymous with "New Religious Right" or "New Christian Right," which more often than not was simply identified with the "Moral Majority" of the Reverend Jerry Fallwell...
...I would like to be the kind of person that could fall in love with you, but I'm not," she responds...
...His liaison with Emma nets him the Nobel Prize...
...Writing as a philosopher, Maritain drew a distinction between "two essentially different types of periodicals, the one specifically Catholic and religious, and as a result Catholic by definition...
...More importantly, the complete range of interaction has come into view, and breathless concern with the Religious Right has given way to sober and balanced analysis...
...We owe a debt of gratitude to all of them and to their predecessors, but to no one more so than the indomitable Edward Skillin, who joined the staff in 1934 and, now in his eighties, is still commuting to the office every day and was until recently jogging to early Mass...
...In 1979, when I first taught a course on religion and politics, pertinent academic and general literature was rare...
...Clarke E. Cochran ~ hat a difference a decade makes...
...COMMONWEAL: THE SEQUEL BEING CATHOLIC Commonweal from the 1970s to the 1990s Rodger Van Allen Loyola University Press, $12.95,203 pp...
...If I have one complaint with the Dork of Cork, it is that the ending is a little too neat, too precious...
...And, by contrasting the beauty of the heavens--here Raymo's writing can be stunning--with more earthy flaws, he continually forces the reader to examine "how beauty and hurt get jumbled up together...
...with legs and arms disproportionately small compared to the torso, like sprouts budding from the eyes of a potato....He saw the fright in the face of the girl who was, after all, not much older than his daughter...
...This means, of course, that they are comprehensive, informative, and dull...
...This is a role entirely out of character for Kelly, faithful father of six, and the affair is cut short when his daughter Emma witnesses their lovemaking...
...What is beautiful is always more desirable than what is not beautiful...
...Like his earlier volume, it is so structured-by topics, some of them neuralgic--as to be, in effect, not only a synoptic history of the magazine during the past two decades but also of American Catholicism during this turbulent post-Vatican It period...
...Ethics and Public Policy Center, $18.95, 145 PP...
...Both types of periodical, he said, are necessary, but to ignore or even to blur the distinction between them, he insisted, inevitably leads to confusion...
...Had it not been for him, Commonweal might have folded long ago--and what a terrible loss that would have been to American Catholicism...
...The present follow-up volume, which anticipates Commonweal's forthcoming seventieth anniversary, brings his study up to the present...
...Soon after, Jack and Bernadette become lovers...
...There are a host of other likable, slightly daffy characters, among them Roger Manning, the Protestant curate who writes erotic poetry and dreams of domesticating Bernadette, and Handy Paige, the half-soused literary agent who never fails to remind Frank that dwarfism sells...
...From the very beginning, Commonweal's lay editors have drawn their inspirationin the most courageous and intrepid manner--from Christian wisdom, and, almost always, have done so with extraordinary civility...
...Rather, the country offers a fitting haunt for one such as Frank, providing a sufficient number of dour dark settings for the novel's black humor...
...But this is not, in particular, a book about Ireland...
...He also introduces Frank to what soon becomes his passion: stargazing...
...Years of feverish research and commentary followed, especially from 197984...
...Maritain's essay was not the last word on the "problem" of the Catholic press, but it is still very timely, especially in a country like our own where the majority of Catholic publications are "specifically Catholic or religious" and only a handful fit into the second of the two categories referred to above...
...That preoccupation created its own set of perceptual distortions, so that even in 1984 few thought of the Reverend Jesse Jackson in the context of religion and politics...
...CHURCH, STATE, MORALITY, AND LAW Patrick Hannon Christian Classics, $19.95, 159 pp...
...The Religious Right is now old enough for retrospection and projection...
...The "problem" of the Catholic press which Maritain analyzed had nothing to do with a rise in printing costs or a decline in circulation figures or any of the other bread-and-butter problems which are the bane of every publisher's existence, but it was and still is a very "practical" problem nonetheless...
...Van Allen's concluding tribute to Skillin as a sterling Christian gentleman and as the keeper of Commonweal' s corporate conscience and the guardian of its institutional memory is richly deserved...
...Best is the Cromartie volume, No Longer Exiles: The Religious New Right in American Politics...
...Regrettably, we do not have enough publications of this kind in the United States...
...In 1990 the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a neoconservative Washington think tank sympathetic to, but not captured by, the Religious Right held a conference to assess its past and speculate Commonweal 16 July 1993:25...
...Still, he continues to act as a friend to Bernadette and a father figure to Frank...
...I admit, I was leery of reading a book about a little person set in Ireland, especially given the off-beat title...
...Even the sinister Hans Scrieber, who seduces, then discards Emma, leaving her completely unhinged, is a unique villain...
...And Jack's daughter Emma comes, for Frank, to embody the stars' physical beauty and unreachable distance...
...At one point, Raymo, who has a taste for the brutal, manages to force this issue upon the reader, through a conversation between Frank and his editor: "Tell me, Jennifer, do you think that--hypothetically--do you think that you could fall in love with me...
...B ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL--AGAIN RELIGION AND RADICAL POLITICS An Alternative Christian Tradition in the United States Roger H. Craig Temple University Press, $34.95,320 pp...
...I'm not that kind of person either...
...They are a distinguished company...
...For the convenience of the reader Van Allen has listed chronologically the members of Commonweal's staff from 1973 through 1993...
...It was of marginal political sophistication and offered little guidance concerning the emerging Religious Right, the primary attention-getter in those days...
...Tis a lad,' he said, beaming into the imploring eyes of the exhausted girl...
...lndeed, writing as one who was introduced to Commonweal in his teens, I would argue that the magazine is today as good as or better than ever-and that's saying a lot...
...The three works under review exemplify this development...
...By 1993, the American Political Science Association had formed a Religion and Politics Section, and keeping up with the literature now requires full attention and a substantial budget for books and journals...
...Throughout, Raymo demonstrates a scientist' s talent for order by intertwining Frank's first-person narration with that of the book within a book without confusing the reader...
...NO LONGER EXILES The Religious New Right in American Politics Michael Cromartie, ed...
...Despite Frank's deformities (and Frank does feel he's deformed), Raymo imbues him with such humanity that he avoids a common failing of novelists: turning characters into bizarre, nasty caricatures, with actions so unbelievable that it's hard for the reader to understand, let alone sympathize, with them...
...But, thanks be to God, we have had Commonweal since 1924, and it is still alive and well...
...That is to say, "they involve no other initiative than that of the particular persons or groups who have started them...
...the other specifically political or 'cultural,' which we must indubitably wish to be "Voila" 24:16 July 1993 CommonwealCatholic, but Catholic in inspiration only, not by denomination...
...If it's any consolation, Jennifer, I don't blame you...
...To reveal it would spoil everything, but I wish Raymo hadn't succumbed to the need to put everything aright in the end...
...Parenthetically I might note that September will see the publication of another book also dealing in part with the history of Commonweal--an in-depth scholarly biography of the late George Shuster, one of the magazine's early associate editors (George Shuster: On the Side of Truth, by Thomas E. Blantz, University of Notre Dame Press...
...Still, it is a small criticism for a book alive with so many enduring characters...
...What little existed was often decades old and confined largely to law, church history, religious studies, social ethics, and sociology of religion...
...Periodicals of the second type, as Maritain points out, "do not engage the church--even if, as is to be desired, they draw their inspiration in the most courageous and intrepid manner from Christian wisdom...
...George G. Higgins ~ ifty-odd years ago, Jacques Maritain published a brief but incisive essay on "The Problem of the Catholic Press" as an appendix to his book, True Humanism, which dealt with a series of questions belonging to that section of phiE losophy which Aristotle and Saint Thomas called "Practical...
...Likewise, Bernadette might be distant and self-absorbed, but Raymo has taken pains to see that we understand how her experiences in war-torn France damaged her ability to love...
Vol. 120 • July 1993 • No. 13
