Religious booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES have a principle, imperfectly ob- Lebensphilosophie first...
...First, de Sources and Appraisals from the Notre Certeau's careful historical work does go nurture children with love...
...Jones, like "Mary in Scripture: A Protestant Viewpoint" Sontag, evokes that curious culture of the Kingdom of Naples, which combined, DR...
...He was also closely tied to the Paris within the traditional boundaries of reli- tion, harassment, and violence...
...zoning and licensing and a secularist (or a-religious) view of tasks...
...Similarly, Adam's Christology, gy, and indefatigable missioner, was culminating in The Christ of Faith, brought declared a doctor of the church in 1831...
...Commonweal 7 Mati' 1993: 29 RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES A little of this kind of material goes a work while on an airplane trip but gave it and, consequently, becomes as usable as, long way (Bokenham, in fact, makes for up for the more austere setting of my of- say, a weight-loss program or a specialquite tedious reading) but he is not with- fice...
...out interest...
...Buckley is no doubt correct when hordes spreading terror and death" and officials said about the war against mosthe says there is no correlation between sex- urged the international community "to ly Catholic Croatia last year...
...Adam, steeped munitarian nature of...
...Director), PO Box 7, First, she suggests that, as in Northern Hot Springs, NC 28743...
...Serb ex- COMING intention to endorse all the theoretical tremists, in particular, have used the most MAY 21 objections that conservative religious be- barbaric violence to try to create a Greater lievers might raise to the gay rights Serbia at the expense of Croatia and SPRING BOOKS movement...
...Tellingly, Krieg's book Culture, by RobertAnthon y Krieg, C S. C., As Krieg points out, however, the very jumps from 1939 to 1946 without much University of Notre Dame Press, $28.95, strength of Adam's theology was also a of a transition...
...the believing com- died with the Second Vatican Council in the biblical and patristic world, provided munity as a vision of the church that was finished but his influence on it was that a vision of both the church and of Jesus notmally presented as a monarchical hi- of a precursor since age and infirmity preChrist free of the scholastic aridities of a erarchy seen as a societas perfecta...
...ecstatic founders/reformers of the eighfrom the Golden Legend...
...Jones's biography is an absolutely splen- voted to his subject (Jones is an Irish Bokenham rummaged through extant did achievement despite his almost dogged Redemptorist) but critical...
...ing...
...Julian allegorizes the three blows The analogy that best serves is the mod- Certeau account for an Alphonsus de of the executioner...
...that honors the Cartesian desideratum for less inclined toward the misogyny then so clear and distinct ideas, but in its prolix common...
...MARY'S UNIVERSITY Alphonsus de Liguori: The Saint of Bourbon Naples, in• Frederick M. Jones, SYMPOSIUM: M A R Y C.'hri.sliwr Classics, .139.95, 532 pp...
...identifying community resources reality...
...pansion of operations, with plans to double dividual or small group, write or call Father the number of homes in the next decade...
...casual, quiet atmosphere...
...Adam never world, especially between the two world joined the Nazi party but he was at worst the reductionism of liberal Protestant a passive supporter of the regime: at best, Karl Adam: Catholicism in German "Quest" literature...
...We are embarking on a major ex- or directed retreat, or a weekend for an inBosnia-Herzegovina...
...No doubt religious prejudices have relations and community outreach...
...circle of Lacanian psychoanalysis...
...In the wooded lands along the things Christians are doing in the Balkans...
...servatives, should show courtesy and re- Position Opening Because of the extensive travel required, spect to persons who are homosexual...
...JOSE HOBDAY, O.S.F...
...Mary's University ing...
...From then guages, and theological literature...
...That gious experience...
...Sontag describes a gruesome public hang- St...
...in the era to the quotidian religious life of Liguori did in his own...
...Krieg makes it quite clear why he land, Adam stressed the organic and com- cal work and as a pioneer ecumenist...
...on, de Certeau argues, mysticism becomes not a book designed for the beginner...
...Vincent Alagia, S.J...
...Catholic thought...
...has de Certeau pressed his thesis of the the earliest of the genre), the more im- Now that the above outburst is off my anti-institutional bias of modem mysticism portant fact is that Bokenham was an chest, let me hasten to add that this is a too vigorously...
...Bosnia...
...Along with two other movements for testing, counseling, and medical serabortion rights and euthanasia-the gay vices...
...BEVERLY GAVENTA, Princeton Th...
...implicit in my article: the crucial dis- Second, McCarthy repeats the mis- to accept aggression and territorial tinction between homosexuals and the taken view that the pope has been tepid conquest by force, nor the aberration of gay rights movement...
...Bokenham tells the ern shifts that made, say, chemistry or Liguori whose biography is reviewed same story, without any allegory, but physics something quite distinct from above or Paul of the Cross or other such probably got it, as did Julian's narrator, natural philosophy...
...It is appalling, for in- KEVIN BUCKLEY latter fact may explain why this book (the stance, that mysticism often gets lumped first of a projected series cut short by his with New Age babble, tarot cards, etc., but untimely death) is so infuriatingly opaque one can understand why this should be The writer replies: and so given to an insider vocabulary...
...Resume must approve of the gay rights ideology...
...Deeply indebted to the The postwar years saw Adam as an acregnant Lebensphilosophie of his native tive theologian involved in his theologiwars...
...RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES have a principle, imperfectly ob- Lebensphilosophie first inspired harmserved, of not reviewing the books less exercises in hiking, singing, and folk of my own colleagues but Krieg's music among the Weimar young in the book shall be a rare exception...
...This work is the first a mystic) becomes attenuated...
...One can think of any older contemporary of Margery Kempe provocative work that repays the effort...
...He went on to say that "practical the feminist movement speaks for all the war do not support such a conclusion...
...Mysticism has become a "system" Anthony Lewis and other "liberal" com30: 7 May 1993 Commonweal mentators of being simplistic and nar- tremist ends...
...and assisting in hydra-headed monster of contemporary DESIRE PRIESTHOOD...
...Delany could have made her work a bit an autonomous system detached from its Serious students of spirituality, however, more user-friendly by asterisking words traditional roots in monastic and ascetic will have to take it and its thesis into acin the text she would annotate in the notes theology...
...tional and child care program for boys and and letter of introduction should be subgirls seeks individual to provide admin- mitted to Fr...
...But when one can celThe late Michel de Certeau, a Jesuit used today and why the enormous litera- ebrate his or her own sexual choices only scholar, was a respected historian and ture produced in this century on the phe- by disparaging those of others, the seeds critic of early modern French spirituali- nomenon finds it difficult to locate it of bigotry begin to grow into discriminaty...
...voluntary, not-for-profit management and that everybody, including religious con- an advanced degree in a related field...
...Director, Mater Dei, E. cants must have a strong background in I completely agree with Mr...
...Donald Boccardi, S.M...
...Religious Peace" [March 12...
...BOYS Jesuit House of Prayer, Residence and McCarthy's column, "Religious Wars...
...pervasive" and 55th Anniversary, SUMMER SCHOOL responsibilities: development and staff OF SOCIAL ACTION, June 4-5, 1993, "neighbors of different faiths battle each support of local Advisory Boards...
...Bro...
...teenth century who were long distant from Who would find this work interesting...
...It was not necessarily my claims of self-determination...
...To suggest that this is a religious Mr...
...Karl Adam (1876-1966) was S. Cunningham (against the German hierarchy) that sema Tubingen theologian whose writings inarians and priests should serve in the gained wide influence in the Catholic army of the Third Reich...
...lems was getting their novices to leave the "A Personal Viewpoint shelter of their Neapolitan homes), and the greedy corruption of the Bourbon court and Information or brochure: the church which was so under its thumb...
...How, for instance, would de church...
...The Mystic Fable: Volume One: The the salons of Paris...
...I think Jones is a model biographer...
...Plagued by moral scruwhich steered an orthodox path between 1000 ples, repressed sexually, given over to the suffocations of ncoscholasticism and extreme forms of personal asceticism, and immersed in both clerical and royal catLAWRENCE S CUNNINGHAM chairs the the- fights over the founding of his communiology department at the University' of Notre ty, Liguori seems best left to the dustbin Dante...
...John Paul II condemned "the veritable stronger than, what he and other Vatican Mr...
...The book was with which the hagiographers describe senist inspired morality so as to provide written originally in a Middle English di- such torture), is martyred, and becomes a a sensible method for confessors to deal alect in poetry...
...It is accepted the same vision for his native in the deep background of the sea shift in worthwhile noting that every major book Germany...
...blinding weakness...
...compassionately with penitents, sparing them the tortured scruples that plagued his own life right down to the end...
...Reporting to the Assistant Director for New Ireland, Azerbaijan, the Middle East, and Program Development, this key man- Plan Ahead India, the war in Bosnia is one in which agement position carries the following "religious hatreds are...
...To schedule a private ing two misperceptions about the war in tunities...
...accomplishment ext...
...indifference in the face of such forms of women-or, for that matter, than the In his recent address to the diplomatic behavior is a culpable omission...
...The author also presumes a good thousands of martyred virgins, I had, in ics, it separated mysticism from theology deal of knowledge of religious history, lanmy mind, Carpaccio's vivid paintings of as traditionally understood...
...In the early seventeenth century more, as Steven Katz has argued in a brilthem...
...National educa- especially encouraged to apply...
...It provid- ing organization meeting the needs of at- In the heart of the Appalachian Mountains...
...A Legend of Holy Women is a and, in turn, suffers horrible tortures (femof Alphonsus in writing a moral theolo- fifteenth-century work by an Augustinian inists rightly raise an eyebrow at the glee gy that would resist the rigorism of Jan- friar, Osbern Bokenham...
...He deserved such popularity...
...THE CENTER FOR ECUMENICAL MARIAN STUDIES ST...
...GEOFFREY ASHE, England alism, the yawning gaps between rich and "The Virgin's Cult: An Anthropological Viewpoint' poor, the tenacious hold of the family (one of the Redemptorists' biggest prob- SR...
...633-2252, Ext...
...ed a helpful look at some of the positive risk youth through the provision of Home-cooked meals...
...Krieg's well-written of Adam was removed from the book- book explains why Adam was important shelves until he made corrections de- and, in the process, gives us a panoramic manded by the Holy Office which studied view of the halting developments of twentexts that had to be translated into Latin tieth-century Catholic theological thinkfor the benefit of the curial censors...
...The Spirit of Catholicism (the battered Alphonsus of Liguori (1696-1787), the Image edition is still in my possession) and founder of the Redemptorists, a crucial figHenri de Lubac's The Splendor of the ure in the development of moral theoloChurch...
...Julian, for instance, tells of hearing a discrete genre detached from the near comfortable within their traditions but, inthe story of Saint Cecilia's bungled exe- millennial understanding of theologia deed, were valid reformers and energizcution by beheading from a "man of the in ystica as infused contemplation of God...
...The translator (Michael B. Smith) de- ized form of therapy...
...Applisecularism...
...Most of the lives of the martyred saints the rural areas and the tensions between I have tried to keep track of some of the followed an almost set formula: young virpost-Tridentine Catholicity and the rise of many resources for women's studies in the gin, converted to Christianity, refuses skepticism in the Enlightenment...
...His work gives us a small window there is a momentous shift in European re- liant essay (in Mysticism and Religious into the contemporary popular piety of the ligious life in which mysticism becomes Traditions), the mystics were often not only time...
...0 in the back...
...312) 631-1017, militant nationalists to serve their ex- search and selection...
...She also cited, in her intro- lieu in which confidence in the traditionduction, line numbers for verses in the al structures of sacramentality, scriptural Middle English edition but, irritatingly, did piety, and the ecclesial role of the connot give corresponding citations for her templative (the older word for what we call CORRESPONDENCE own prose translation...
...public Reynold Hillenbrand Institute, Niles College other...
...and HOPE/GIRLS HOPE is a dynamic, grow- Hikers' Hostel situated in Hot Springs, NC...
...It marks a modest but aus- a long way in explaining the ambiguous a role for a chosen few who are called to picious beginning...
...a silent protestor...
...It would also be useful for lovers The first use of the discrete noun mys- allusiveness one finds provocative pages of medieval and renaissance art: While ticism (de Certeau traces it to 1610) was and striking insights that may be worth the reading Bokenham on Ursula and the pejorative since, according to early crit- effort...
...in Southern Italy...
...704) 622-7366...
...SIDNEY CALLAHAN, Mercy College however imperfectly, the atheism and "A Feminist Recovery of Mary in a Patriarchal Church" skeptical scientism of the philosophes, the sensuous piety of baroque devotion- PROF...
...These Communist movement spoke for all work- corps (January 16), for one example, are strong words, as strong as, if not ers...
...He is Christian tradition that appear with such marriage because of a vow of virginity, especially acute in describing the efforts regularity...
...Apart from the fact that it is serves a heavenly crown for simply Secondly, however, there is a question: an all-female hagiography (indeed, one of tackling his task...
...But the war is best underrow-minded-in short, illiberal-when stood as a political-military conflict over they explain all opposition to gays as incompatible (and not equally legitimate) mere bigotry...
...240 pp...
...Commonweal 7 May 1993: 31...
...re- Seminary, Loyola University, 7135 N. been manipulated, especially in Serbia, by source identification and development...
...Delany provides us with powerful intercessor...
...National Field Manager-BOYS single individuals, particularly religious, are But it does not follow from this that we HOPE/GIRLS HOPE...
...HOPE National Offices, 4200 Ripa Ave., Misreading the Balkans Must be able to travel extensively-in- St...
...He is de- a prose translation...
...AND THE CHALLENGES I read this extremely well-written work OF THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT just as I had finished Susan Sontag's new novel The Volcano Lover which is set in AUGUST 6 & 7, 1993 the same locale at nearly the same period...
...Mysticism reflects a social mi- count...
...Bokenham seemed Press, $35, 374 pp...
...I would say of my- rent project which is a study of another of self that the two most important works on the seniores not much read today: Romano the church I read as a very young man were Guardini...
...Under55...
...We Despite such interference, the books also await the completion of Krieg's curwere very influential...
...It was like background reading for that DR...
...Continued from page 2) volume of the series Medieval Studies: Two observations are in order...
...Jones describes a pamphlet that San Antonio, TX 78228 Alphonsus wrote for chaplains who suc- (210) 436-3991 cored their charges as they were brought to the scaffold...
...community-and represent the organiTo the Editors: Thank you for Abigail zation to a variety of constituencies...
...Buckley 405 Sinto, Spokane, WA 99202...
...There may be Dame Press...
...Paul G. Sheridan, S.J., DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...It is a worthy of Voragine) to produce a volume outlinpublic life of Alphonsus...
...This is the same story...
...long-term, loving, and stable homes and Unfortunately, the article risks perpetuat- college preparatory educational oppor- Appalachian Trail...
...But I show more clearly its political will not GERARD F. POWERS contend that there is most definitely a connection between gay rights ideology of incorporation...
...istrative leadership and support for the ex- Founder and C.E.O., BOYS HOPE/GIRLS pansion of program operations nationwide...
...From cluded his active participation...
...to the fore serious biblical scholarship, en- 00000- In many ways, his life reflects a kind of gagement with Protestant theologians, and piety and asceticism that is repugnant to a deep faith in the humanity of Christ the modern mind...
...He is not Catholic theological world traumatized that romantic impulse, however, Adam also much read today except by those interested by the antimodernist movement...
...a clear writer...
...Furtherhave known them, or, certainly, knew of enough...
...site Harlem, Niles, IL 60714...
...hagiographical sources (especially the insistence on following out the inter- and, most important of all, totally at home wildly popular Golden Legend of Jacopus minable clerical struggles that marked the in the culture of the time...
...securing furnishings and transrights movement is a vital member of the Priesthood portation for programs...
...28: 7 May 1993 Commonweal RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES Such, however, is not the case...
...I when we get the historical antecedents in The point of my article was to accuse made the awful mistake of starting this focus...
...ual orientation and religious belief...
...number of counter examples to those and Dame Julian of Norwich and may well De Certeau's thesis is straightforward which he advances in his book...
...of hagiography...
...Students, to be sure, especially those in- Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, b,v The Mystic Fable gives no comfort to terested in the story of women in the his- Michel de Ce rteau, University of Chicago those who expect from the French prose tory of Christianity...
...1 (800) identifying staffing for the homes...
...ers of it...
...manner in which the term "mysticism" gets dedicated celibacy...
...Seminary somewhat tedious novel...
...Adam was harassed by in the past and, I suspect, many readers of the Brownshirts in the 1930s and defenda certain age have read such works as The & more ed the basic rights of the Jews, but he also Spirit of Catholicism and were deeply in- attempted to mediate between the church fluenced by them as were, to cite two wide- Lawrence and National Socialism, accepted social ly different people, Flannery O'Connor and restrictions for the Jews, and argued Pope Paul VI...
...I pay Jones this study of a man who was a zealous priest, ing the lives of then popular women saints compliment because his biography re- a learned theologian, and the founder of ranging from Saint Anne, the mother of flects a deep understanding of the Catholic an order which has brought honor to the culture of the Settecento Kingdom of church...
...cluding temporary relocations to a local Retreat House Hyattsville, Md...
...Buckley's letter, however, gives me war confuses rather than clarifies what is a chance to stress a distinction that was happening...
...The `ethnic cleansing"' [emphasis in the origmore speaks for all homosexuals than numerous statements by the Vatican on inal...
...The Adam's sin, 1920s but, by a malign alchemy, later bereasons are simple: Adam's essays came an ideology of the Volk in the hands have appeared in the pages of this journal mysticism's fall, of the Hitlerites...
...He provides us with an accurate ished the book that it was one of Alph- and ediIed hi Sheila Dc/any, Llnir^e rsity of (and depressing) picture of Catholic life onsus's spiritual sons, the German Noire I)a,nr, Press, 325, 21') pp...
...Louis, Missouri 63125...
...negotiating arrangements with CLASSIFIED schools...
...We should be thankful for that...
...I could not help but think as I fin- A Legend of Holy Women, translated Naples...
...He has excellent pages Redemptorist Bernard Haring, who revoon everything from the style of preaching lutionized moral theology in our day as the Virgin, to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary...
...The movement no in his defense of Bosnian Muslims...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
