Religion booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
RELIGION BOOKNOTES Lawrence S. Cunningham Rowan Williams; the essays of the younger theologian, Sarah Coakley (now at Harvard), and Edinburgh's James Mackey. A perusal of most theological writing...
...Having made that stipulation, they are not reluctant to say when Buddhist teaching might conflict with the Christian faith...
...Living Strings: An Introduction to Biblical Spirituality by Michael Whelan Morehouse Publishers, $11.95,189 pp...
...lation of theological disciplines to the larger work of the academy is more problematic in this country than in Great Britain...
...The story of these women orbits around a number of fundamental issues: how they were absent from the opening session and how they came to be invited to subsequent ones...
...The Carmodys see this work as both being a way of interreligious dialogue and a kind of ressourcement for their own understanding of Christianity...
...They do not trim their Christian beliefs (at the end of each chapter they assay a Christian reflection on a specific strand of Buddhist teaching), but in this profession of faith they are neither pugnaciously dismissive, apologetically challenging, nor patronizingly conciliatory...
...It also strikes me that what Father Hugo has done for Francis might well be done, mutatis mutandis, for any number of crucial religious figures in the tradition or, for that matter, any "difficult" spiritual work...
...The twenty-three auditrices of Vatican II are now of a certain age...
...While there is time we need more books of this kind to document the watershed events of the council...
...Although John Hick is not represented in this collection, his influential work stands behind much of the discussion...
...She pays generous tribute to Bernard Haring, the Redemptorist moral theologian, who argued tirelessly for women to be heard in the council and insisted that there were profound theological issues to be raised about women in the church...
...Hugo's book is subtitled "A Beginner's Workbook...
...In two appendices we find a clue to what Whelan wants to accomplish: an appendix on the writing of homilies and another on Bible study groups...
...Hugo has put together an extremely fine pedagogical tool...
...teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...It is irenic, informative, and provocative enough to instruct anyone who is not expert in both traditions...
...McEnroy's book, even though it is marred by a number of minor errata, is a reminder that the Vatican II generation is passing into history...
...To borrow the now nearly canonical usage of my Notre Dame colleague, John Dunne: the Carmodys want to "pass or cross over" empathetically to Buddhism and come home again to their own tradition enriched...
...and the method of study is straightforward...
...As a consequence, the discourse and the issues tend to be framed somewhat differently...
...The often arcane scholarship on Francis is set out clearly...
...Christ and the Academy" has only North American selections since the re-Readings in Modern Theology: Britain & America edited by Robin Gill Abingdon Press, $26.95,399 pp...
...the fine writer on spirituality (now bishop), In sum: a wide-ranging collection culled mainly from journal articles and indicating that there is a fruitful discussion occurring within the Anglophone world...
...as the drive for the basic motif of holiness is laid out...
...However much they esteem the tradition of Buddhism, they write from the perspective of orthodox Christology...
...The sole British essay on Lindbeck is Don Cupitt's "After Liberalism...
...This work is a tribute to his memory...
...As late as 1994 women religious were not accorded voting rights at the synod on the religious life, even though their male counterparts, as religious superiors, did enjoy a vote...
...and the rest were either personally interviewed by McEnroy or contacted by mail...
...McEnroy details the participation of these women with sharp profiles, making this book of great interest to those who wish to contextualize the workings of the council in some historical detail...
...sys-tematics professor Nicholas Lash...
...Various strands within Buddhism are clearly delineated (Buddhism like Christianity is an umbrella word for a highly complex reality...
...There is no small irony in the fact that the author herself lost a tenured position in a seminary for having supported, in a public fashion, the ordination of women to the priesthood...
...Books like this are an encouragement to a more contemplative and prayerful encounter with the Word of God...
...I can only lament that I did not have this useful resource when I taught a course on Franciscan spirituality a few years ago...
...The rest of the loaf is to appropriate Scripture as revelatory and/or disclo-sive...
...I am always in search of books like this because of my conviction that even in the academy we are giving students only half a loaf if all they get is technical exegesis (although they surely need that...
...John Carmody died in 1995 after a long and painful bout with bone cancer...
...Essays are organized under various headings...
...Above all, we have profiles of dedicated, highly intelligent, and articulate women who were the forerunners of those who today fight for equality in the church...
...our theological essays are studded with, mainly, French and German bibliography...
...Haring, for instance, argued for ordination of women to the diaconate, the need for women theologians in service to the church, and the legitimate role of women in the administrative dicast-eries of the church...
...He did not think that ordination to the priesthood was a "practical" possibility...
...In roughly chronological order, he takes the events in the life of Francis and has the students read and question the pertinent sources...
...thanks" is close to the word "think," so that being thankful is to think well of someone...
...audience to the life and teachings of Saint Francis...
...The distinguished economist Barbara Ward had prepared a paper on world hunger but it was read by James Norris...
...one could not be found Guests in Their Own House: The Women of Vatican II by Carmel McEnroy Crossroad, $15.95,309 pp...
...They aim to speak of Buddhism as best they can describe it, learning what they can Serene Compassion: A Christian Appreciation of Buddhist Holiness by Denise Lardner Carmody and John Tully Carmody Oxford University Press, $22,136 pp...
...and discussions on meditation, morality, and wisdom...
...Separate chapters discuss the major themes of the several Buddhist traditions: the Buddha himself...
...This is not as easy as it might seem since, though we possess many early sources for the life of Francis, the status of those sources, the impulses that led to their composition, and the agendas they might be pushing are difficult to disentangle...
...their contributions to the discussions, especially about those issues which would be central to Gaudium et spes...
...He is particularly fine on the images of God, noting, quite rightly, that the Bible never defines God but merely provides us with "pointers" to grasp some sense of God...
...He wrote right to the end while living with Christian optimism and with nary a whiff of self-pity (see, "Meeting My Mother Again," Commonweal, March 11,1994...
...perhaps at "the fourth Vatican Council," the cardinal opined...
...How much better it would have been to think of Cassian's translation of that term as "purity of heart" (taken from the beatitudes) where purity of heart not only means cessation of desire but the single-minded desire for God and God's Kingdom...
...Similarly, the section on "God as Mother" actually consists of extended reactions, from both sides of the Atlantic, to Sallie McFague's feminist modeling of God...
...Alda Miceli, one of the auditrices, noted sardonically that women did not speak in the aula until the 1971 synod since the "bishops were not yet mature enough to hear a woman...
...and the limits which were placed on their activities...
...The problem of these early sources is not unlike those associated with the New Testament, the synoptic problem, and the search for the historical Jesus...
...As a teacher of Franciscans his desire was to introduce his Studying the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi by William R. Hugo, OFM Cap Franciscan Press, $17.95,223 pp...
...In an age of instant seeing and throwaway books, such arts need cultivation...
...This book should be of special interest to those reading in the area of spirituality...
...Working, singly or as a group, through the sources using the work sheets as a guide is the goal...
...In the same vein, the discussion of "Christ and Post-Modernism" orbits around a critical analysis of Yale's George Lindbeck and his provocative The Nature of Doctrine...
...the biases of the author are stated up front...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham is chair of the department and teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...Each section of the study is a "worksheet" of just a few pages with questions to help readers (he has some very good earlier chapters on how to read hagiographical legends and florilegia...
...Of the twenty-three who attended one or more of the sessions, six were dead...
...Zen is not Theravada which is not Tibetan, etc...
...I was much taken with Gavin D'Costa's essay on constructing a Jewish-Christian theology...
...Those interested will need to read this generally well-researched and engagingly written work...
...Much provocative thinking has been done in Great Britain on the uniqueness of Christianity...
...The obvious beneficiaries of this workbook would be those in the Franciscan family (whether religious or lay), but any readers who would like to "home school" themselves in Franciscan history and/or spirituality would find it a sure and reliable guide...
...Gill's anthology presents North American authors in dialogue with their British counterparts...
...the Sangha ("community...
...Cupitt is little discussed in this country but as far as I can make out he sets forth a theological vision not unlike that of Feuerbach...
...Whelan quotes approvingly a sentiment first expressed by Rainer Maria Rilke: One "does not always remain bent over the pages but leans back and closes his eyes over a text he has been reading again and its meaning spreads through his blood...
...Purity of heart, as Kierkegaard says, is to desire one thing...
...Some were religious or members of secular institutes and the rest lay persons (like the redoubtable Rosemary Goldie, an Australian who later taught at Rome's Lateran University...
...a discussion that is enlivened by the sharp analytical tradition of British academe and made the more agreeable by a capacity for clear and cogent writing...
...Whelan is sensitive to language and, as a consequence, studs his text with excellent observations...
...of how to think of "tragedy" and "comedy" in the biblical narratives...
...The workbook must be read in tandem with the Omnibus of Sources or some other collection of the early Franciscan legenda...
...the gingerly way (and, in some instances, the hostile way) in which they were treated by the assembled hierarchy...
...from Buddhism to help them be better Christians...
...The Carmodys are quite good in transposing basic Buddhist motifs into more familiar Christian language while warning that certain fundamental orientations do not easily transpose (think of the Resurrection or the prophetic strain in the Bible...
...Whelan, deeply in debt to the reading praxis of Paul Ricoeur, offers both a way of reading the Scriptures and a series of chapters in which, artfully, he melds a close reading of the text, examples from contemporary literature, and personal reflections...
...At the end of each section Hugo has further suggestions for reading...
...Whelan, an Australian priest-theologian, has not written anything like a systematic biblical spirituality (that would be a daunting task...
...This is a clearly written and quite manageable book...
...This position may be nicely contrasted with that of Cardinal Antoniutti who refused to have women on the commission examining the religious life...
...on the different shades of the meaning of "good" in the Bible...
...Whelan intends to provide a method of reading the Scriptures for both personal enrichment and ecclesial proclamation or, in his words, to "promote a growing sense of Scripture as revelation in daily living...
...Carmel McEnroy had the very good idea of tracking down and interviewing women who were designated as auditors (after the first session) at the Second Vatican Council...
...This anthology also presents authors well known to American readers: on science and theology the physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne...
...Hugo's strategy is to devote brief sections of his workbook to the different sources...
...Each chapter ends with practical suggestions of exercises that thicken what the author has written...
...It was sad to see the copyright to Serene Compassion only in Denise Car-mody's name...
...Though Gill teaches in a British university, his selections are predominantly from this side of the Atlantic...
...Dharma (that is, the "creed...
...Hedwig Skoda of Czechoslovakia...
...A perusal of most theological writing in this country would indicate that Continental authors are our theologians' most common conversation partners...
...At times, I think they even miss some opportunities at transpositions, as, for example, when they attempt to correlate the Buddhist insistence on cessation of desire with monastic ap-atheia...
...More than anything else I admire the tone of the Carmodys' approach...
Vol. 123 • September 1996 • No. 16
