Religion booknotes

...Veling is not interested primarily in the diverse ecclesial communities discussed in Cenkner's volume...

...The papers collected by William Cenkner, first delivered at The Catholic University of America in 1993, are very much concerned with inculturation...

...This particular essay and the one following do sharpen up less precise descriptions of inculturation found in some Catholic literature...

...Some light is shed on a few of the studies reviewed above as well...

...It would be premature to say how Tracy intends to proceed, but certain things seem obvious...

...The "God essays" in this book were of most interest to me...

...Each of the essayists is The Multicultural Church edited by William Cenkner, O.P...

...and the dry rot of Mexican politicians and the judiciary...

...Other scenarios include the indigenization of the Christian message in those countries, such as Buddhist Thailand, that had a highly developed theology and praxis...

...house churches, etc...

...The methodological remarks may well interest the missiologist and/or theologian and the other essays are valuable as limited explorations of the topic at hand...

...Ruiz, in fact, is at the center of this book by the highly respected commentator on matters Central and Latin American, Gary MacEoin...

...Indeed, as a number of his essays attest, it is the question of God in contemporary culture which is at the center of Tracy's current reflections...

...I did pronounce this volume "uneven...

...All may genuflect now...

...First of all, the essays were written mainly by social scientists and historians who have read very little in the massive theological and missiolog-ical literature that has dealt with these issues...

...The dispute between the Chiapas revolutionaries and the Mexican government was eventually mediated by the local bishop, a Rome-trained Scripture scholar, Don Samuel Ruiz...

...Indeed, not a few of these pieces could be seen as preliminary skirmishes for the major work which he has now undertaken...

...Hermen-eutical theory is employed to demonstrate this...

...Good Catholic theologian that he is, he wishes both to retrieve the tradition and take account of the situation in which we now find ourselves...

...The essays in Kaplan's volume are very uneven contributions made at a conference held nearly ten years ago at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem...

...The theologians represented in these pages write both from the perspective of such minority churches (for example, Shawn Copeland on the African-American church and Orlando Espin from the Hispanic) and, more urgently, about the issues raised by such diverse communities.The late Pope Paul VI (in Evangelii nuntiandi) said that the problem of gospel and culture is the "drama of our age...

...It is for these reasons, that Tracy postulates a need for a closer correlation between theology and spirituality (something already well begun by Gustavo Gutierrez) as well as a willingness to keep alive the "dangerous memory" of Jesus (J.B...

...Joseph Komonchak rightly highlights the renewed interest of understanding catholicity as "unity in diversity," and Roberto Gouizeta warns his fellow Hispanic theologians not to romanticize any bucolic retrospective vision of a simple Hispanic faith of popular religion...

...the historic contempt for the region's largely non-Spanish-speaking indigenous population...

...As a theologian I was particularly intrigued by MacEoin's well-told story of how Don Ruiz, inspired by the reforms of Vatican II and the Latin American liberation theologians, had devoted his entire episcopal life to the service of the natives of Chiapas, who among them spoke five Mayan languages...

...In his concluding reflection, the author asserts that intentional communities maintain an educational and hermeneutical preference for openness, gener-ativity, being on the way, and so on...

...One theme that seems particularly pertinent is the need to understand catholicity not as a sociological description or as a reified "mark" of the church but as a spiritual aspiration...

...in parishes) and marginal communities which maintain a "critical distance from mainline churches (feminist groups...

...In that sense, at least, it is far from dead...

...One could argue, for example, that the founding of both religious orders and "schools" of spirituality are, and continue to be, historical analogues (at least in their origins) to intentional communities and, further, that in many cases they existed in tension with the mainstream church as a prophetic, educational, and hermeneutical force...

...Its weakness, however, rests in the unremitting focus on methodology...

...It is part of the project of these writers to see that the subjects of our many communities do not, in fact, become lost to a church which wishes to be truly catholic...

...It is precisely the merit of some of these writers to help us focus our "third eye" and allow us, however dimly, to see what the gospel looks like when it is seen and experienced by the Other...

...would like to get a fix on the social and political realities of that part of the world...

...The abstract quality of this work is a pity since, at least for the Catholic tradition, intentional communities have been a hallmark of its catholicity, and historico-social contextualization would have added weight to the argument...

...One might benefit, to cite an instance, on seeing liberation theology not as a theoretical construct but as a school of spirituality...

...As a consequence, intentional communities in this book exist only as a Weberian "ideal type...

...a warning not dissimilar to one raised by Orlando Espin in this volume...

...What the participants really desire is what the Taiwanese theologian Choan-Seng Song calls, borrowing from the Buddhist lexicon, "third-eye theology," that is, that inner vision which permits us to see what has hitherto been hidden because of our own ignorance...

...the ruthless exploitation of the natural resources of Chiapas for the enrichment of the few...

...In the argument laid out by Veling, one learns (or relearns) a good deal about contemporary critical debates but, alas, very little in the concrete about intentional communities...

...Tracy argues that in a pluralist, post-Holocaust, world it is the apophatic and prophetic impulses of our present condition that offer us the largest opportunity to rediscover God, "not as an 'ism' but as an awesome, often terrifying hope against hope...

...These Christian responses ranged from mere (and grudging) toleration of the indigenous mores of the culture to a complete incorporation of the culture into the Christian life...

...Bishop Ruiz understands that with clarity...

...somehow within the bonds of tradition and the critique of Habermas and company which is far more suspicious of an inherited tradition...

...More importantly, the insights of liberation theology are crucial for the process of inculturation...

...But what Tracy has to say about how he views Catholicism in relation to the ecumenical enterprise is also quite valuable, as are his reflections on the universality of the Christian message (he makes the wonderful point that particularity does not erase universality...

...Haitian...

...On the contrary, liberation theology has entered into, and gives sustenance to, all theology...

...One is reminded of Karl Rahner's observation about theoreticians of methodology: they are always sharpening the knife but they rarely cut the roast...

...In his opening pages Veling distinguishes between small groups (for example, Bible study circles, prayer meetings, etc...

...The pope has recently pronounced it a passing phase which is now dying...

...Veling's desire is to mediate between H. G. Gadamer's notion that hermeneutics should hold us Living in the Margins: Intentional Communities and the Art of Interpretation by Terry A. Veling Crossroad, $19.95,244 pp...

...No contemporary theologian has more assiduously sharpened the methodological knife than the University of Chicago's David Tracy...

...More precisely, he demonstrates that such groups live in tension and dialogue with the larger tradition in a prophetic and critical manner...

...and the overarching problem of how the gospel finds a local home and a habitation...

...Tamil-speaking HinIndigenous Responses To Western Christianity edited by Steven Kaplan New York University Press, $40,183 pp...

...These and similar case studies (for example, of Pentecostal Christians in China or of messianic movements of Indians in nineteenth-century Mexico) make up the bulk of this book...

...I did learn a good deal from this book, especially from the discussion of the poet Edmond Jabes as well as from the author's capacity to find the mot juste (I like his observation that such groups can be thought of as "scribbling on the margins of tradition...

...In this collection of recent essays, however, Tracy says that modern theology has become obsessed with the "right method" and, while this obsession has yielded its own insights, there now comes a time when theology must move from the framework of logos to the central issue, which is Theos...

...demands extended reflection on the local church and its relationship to the Great Church and vice versa...

...The focus was on how Christian missions were received from the perspective of indigenous people...

...On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church by David Tracy Orbis, $16.95,146 pp...

...the issue of local autonomy and the temptation to sectarianism...

...David Power, in a wonderful phrase in his essay, says that we have already experienced in theology the "turn to the subject...

...It also strikes me that save for the essays dealing with Latin America and Mexico, Catholics are more or less offstage and when they do appear some of the authors exhibit little knowledge of Catholicism, as well as a tin ear for Catholic praxis...

...But given its price, this is probably a book best borrowed from the library...

...Among these marginal groups would be the base communities described by MacEoin but not the ethnic-based church communities which are the focus of Cenkner's volume...

...As these stimulating essays make clear, this is a worthwhile path to take...

...He is also undoubtedly inspired by a man who was his predecessor as bishop of San Cristobal in Chiapas: Bartolo-me de Las Casas (1474-1566), the great protector of the native peoples of the Americas...

...My favorite example is the observation that the Thai sign of respect has substituted in Catholic churches "for the traditional Catholic curtsy...

...using, as an example, the particular day of Bloom in order to create a universal mythos in Joyce's Ulysses) and his observations about the plurality of readers and the need for a shared vision when reading the Bible...

...A gathering of theologians focused its attention on the fact of the American church's increasing ethnic, linguistic, and racial diversity...

...West Indian...

...In short: These essays provide us with brief entry into the thinking of a major Catholic theological voice and make us impatient for the major theological work which he has promised...

...My own instinct is to say that, however useful it may or may not be in any given social setting, its angle of vision, its way of reading the Bible, its focus on experience, has Lawrence S. Cunningham impacted theology in a fundamental way...

...What this journalist has to say is of intrinsic interest to anyone who The People's Church: Bishop Samuel Ruiz and Why He Matters by Gary MacEoin Crossroad, $16.95,174 pp...

...Furthermore, the very diversity of these communities (when we speak of the "black church" do we mean African-American...

...Furthermore, Veling's book can teach a good deal of hermeneutical theory...

...Veling never draws on empirical examples of specific communities like those studied by the Princeton sociologist of religion, Robert Wuthnow...

...The question of the meaning of culture runs like a basso continuo through these pages...

...Paulist, $14.95., 202 pp...

...Nevertheless, at one level the topic of intentional communities is largely submerged under a long discussion of hermeneutical theory...

...Ruiz's vision of a church being built from the ground up has come into conflict with the restorationist winds blowing from Rome...

...Such diversity has been a hallmark of American Catholicism but the new "minorities" are, in fact, becoming visible majorities...

...dus responded in this way to largely Protestant evangelization...

...It is not simply a matter of proclaiming the truth in some Barthian fashion (although Tracy acknowledges the neoconservative demand for attention to tradition, authority, and continuity), nor of submitting to the critical acids of modernity...

...What Power warns against is the "loss of the subject...

...The case studies are prefaced, however, by the editor's methodological essay setting out a menu of possible responses when missionary Christianity meets an unchristianized culture...

...It should not surprise those who have followed his work that Tracy sees God as essentially relational and, indeed, Trinitarian...

...acutely aware of that problem...

...All of these questions get taken up in one form or another...

...Cenkner, in the introduction, announces that this is a first step into what he hopes will be a continuing conversation and an ongoing study...

...the social consequences of NAFTA...

...The larger issue that MacEoin's quite informative work raises, of course, is the health of liberation theology...

...As various of these essays demonstrate, not only did the missionaries have to accommodate their message to diverse kinds of milieu but, in some instances, the native culture also might restructure itself to meet the missionary challenge...

...Those restorationist impulses were given much intensity through the apostolic delegate in Mexico who, as MacEoin describes him, is not a nice person (to put it generously...

...Metz...

...Gustavo Gutierrez has done this in his seminal work, We Drink from Our Own Wells (1983...

...Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology and chairs the department at the University of Notre Dame...