Religion Booknotes

...As such the volume is a useful, if minor, addition to the literature in English on this remarkable woman...

...and Nichlas Mal-erbi who, in the fifteenth century, published the first full Italian translation of the Bible...

...In addition, that fecund period of the late sixteenth and seventeenth century was the beneficiary of the now classic work of Henri Bremond...

...The latter, I think, is the most interesting question, for what the liberationists have in common is the desire to reflect theologically from a quite specific and historically circumscribed situation: What does the gospel mean in the Buddhist world of Sri Lanka (A...

...those who work through it will find their efforts repaid in full...

...Gratian, whose Decretum became the basis for canon law...

...I have already noted that the problem of the self is understood quite differently in East and West and the difference cannot be simply glossed over...

...That was a new discovery for me, so now I can add those poems to those of Auden (Horae Canoni-cae) and Merton (Hagia Sophia) who, like Eliot in the Quartets, found inspiration in the ancient round of the sevenfold praise of God...

...It would have been good to have had more information about actual Camaldolese life today...

...The Catechism of the Catholic Church acts as if liberation theologies (the plural is appropriate) never existed while neocon-servative commentators now assure us that their day is over...

...This experience comes from what the Hindu tradition calls yoga, a Sanskrit word which comes to us in English as yoke but which in our religious vocabulary might be better called asce-sis-i.e...

...Nightly vigils allow him to muse over the relationship of night to contemplation, while the morning prayer of lauds is a time of hope as the sun makes its first appearance...

...It provides a short biographical sketch of the four leading figures of the period (Berulle, Condren, Olier, Eudes), as well as other figures like John Baptist de la Salle, Louis Marie Grignion de Mont-fort, and a separate chapter on the women of the period (for example, Marie de TIncarnation...

...communities would be the Sulpicians, Eudists, Oratorians, Montforts, Christian Brothers, Vincentians, Daughters of Wisdom, as well as those innumerable congregations of religious sisters who drew inspiration from the French School like the Spiritans and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate...

...God is not an idea or concept to be "thought of," but the center of reality which ought to be experienced...

...It so happens that I read this slight book while staying at a Cistercian monastery following those hours, so the book had a special resonance and context for me...

...In a review this short I would not want to comment extensively on the quick elision from Oriental practices to Christian What We Can Learn from the East, by Beatrice Bruteau, Crossroad, $11.95,126 pp...

...Near the conclusion of his book, Father Hennelly says that readers might well feel like they have gone around the world in eighty days...

...Twenty-Third Publications, $19.95,382 pp...

...Among those The French School of Spirituality: An Introduction and Reader, by Raymond Deville, Duquesne University Press, $22.50,289 pp...

...Our authors face up to these challenges (and similar problems of grace, the meaning of the "I," and the Incarnation) with what appears to this nonexpert in matters Buddhist to be fairness and a concern for a correct explication of the matter...

...One interesting source for some of these meditations consists of citations of poems written by Rilke inspired by the monastic office...

...Steindl-Rast uses the hours to make larger points...

...There is a lot of compressed wisdom in these meditations which should provide nourishment for those who pray the hours and might encourage those who do not to at least begin with morning and evening prayer...

...I will content myself in outlining what I do think one can "learn" from the East using some of Bruteau's ideas...

...In truth, we get more of the former and less of the latter...

...Were someone to pick up this volume they would not know, for example, that Scivias is available in English, including the first volume of her letters...

...ing the following method: he would set out as clearly as he could Ruusbroec's vocabulary, thought patterns, and theology in chapters which would alternate, in dialogical fashion, with similar chapters written from the side of Buddhist doctrine and language...

...Hennelly's work is not a constructive theology, nor is it even a comprehensive history of liberation theology...

...it helps us keep in check the somewhat unexamined optimism of comparative books like that of Beatrice Bruteau...

...The goal of yoga is to understand the authentic self and in that understanding to know the nature of ultimate reality...

...The book could also use a bibliography (as well as an index...

...religion...

...Each chapter of the book has a suggested reading list as well as discussion questions...

...it is rather a horizon tour of the main writers, their significant works, the issues that they raise, and the perspective(s) from which they raise those issues...

...This is a serious work of scholarship and commitment to interreli-gious dialogue...

...Pieris...

...The first lesson would be on the Eastern insistence on experience as it comes from discipline...

...The Camaldolese, in fact, follow the Rule of Saint Benedict but have found enough flexibility in it to allow for both the cenobitic and eremitical life...

...Readers will soon see, as they follow the dialogue, that the presuppositions of Christian and Buddhist metaphysics are quite different...

...the enormously gifted humanist monk Ambrogio Traversari...

...The author does not mention it but we might also note that the late Bede Griffiths lived as a Camaldolese monk at his Christian ashram in India...

...After some lecture tours in the Far East, Mommaers had the very good idea of comparing the mysticism of Ruusbroec with that of Buddhist mysticism by employ-Mysticism: Buddhism and Christian, by Paul Mommaers and Jan Van Bragt, Continuum, $24.95,302 pp...

...We have recently had a fine dissertation done on Berulle here at Notre Dame...

...A prolific author, letter writer, preacher, natural scientist, mystic, composer, and artist, Hildegard has been the subject of superb scholarly studies (notably, in English, by Sabina Flanagan and Barbara Newman...

...I must confess that I find Gregorian music a burden to listen to although a pleasure to sing when the liturgical opportunities afford themselves...

...only German titles are cited...

...This compact volume will find a natural home among those whose congregations find their roots in this period, but others, interested in the history of spirituality, will also find it a welcome volume...

...Camaldoli is a favorite tourist destination for, mainly, Italian visitors who love coming to the pristine forests (once maintained by the monks but now part of the state patrimony) to visit the lower church complex with its beautiful monastic pharmacy and to look higher to see Camaldoli: A Journey into Its History and Spirituality, by Lino Vigilucci, Source Books Hermitage Books, $11,180 pp...

...Most of the footnotes cite sources not easily available for the average reader...

...What Hen-nelly has done is give us a roadmap to work our way through the vast outpouring of those writers who think theologically in places as distant (from us) as El Salvador, Korea, the Philippines, Africa, and Sri Lanka...

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

...methodologies that they favor are, in one way or another, a shaping influence on how theology is done...

...Paul Mommaers is well-known in the scholarly world as the leading interpreter of the Flemish medieval mystic, Jan Van Ruusbroec (1298-1381...

...the collection of monastic hermitages where the Camaldolese monks, since the eleventh century, have lived...

...Unable to get a Buddhist scholar to undertake the task, he called on Jan Van Bragt, who has spent many years in Japan as a professor at Nanzan University (in Nagoya) with a distinguished publication record on Japanese Buddhism and other studies in Far Eastern religion...

...I still think that some of the best writing on the nature of the self is to be found in the opening chapters of Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation...

...How does an Hispanic-American Catholic woman define her place in the light of her culture (Maria Pilar Aquino...

...Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) has been the subject of intense interest over the past generation...

...Is there a way of holding up Christ, the Alpha and Omega, that is true to the culture(s) of Africa (Benezet Buzo...

...This volume, conceived as a source book for those who wish to rediscover the roots of their own congregation's spiritual charisma, follows a dual track...

...Be that as it may, David Steindl-Rast has written a small book which pays a passing tribute to Gregorian music in order to meditate more fully on the liturgical offices sung, mainly, in a monastic setting...

...The "sources and literature" at the end do not include any of the now vast literature available in English...

...ones which Bruteau sketches, but my suspicion is that scholars in this area would find some of these transitions problematic...

...It is from that German translation that this English version is based...

...Beatrice Bruteau's book makes a nice contrast with the Mommaers/Van Bragt volume because her work, based on secondary literature in English and targeted to the more popular market in spirituality, moves swiftly through the Christian encounter with the East, by which Bruteau means not only Buddhism but Hinduism...

...The "little" hour of sext at midday triggers a meditation on food and also the temptation to succumb to the "noonday devil" of ennui and boredom (the monastic accedia...

...What I would point out, however, is that the points of contact between these two traditions are not as simple as a schematic book of this sort would lead us to believe...

...What other religious order can brag of having three of its members named by Dante in the Paradiso (Gratian, Peter Damian, and Romuald...

...In 1968 a German Benedictine (Adel-gundis Fuhrkotter) translated into German the earliest Vita of the saint written by the monks Gottfried and Theodoric...

...The liberation theologians have brought history and experience to the fore of theological reflection...

...it is better appreciated by reading its chapters at the appropriate hours of the daily cycle...

...It is a user-friendly work which should find a useful place in a classroom setting...

...He meditates on the traditional hours from vigils to compline, with a concluding chapter on the equally traditional Great Silence which ends the monastic day...

...However, the translator/editors of this edition did only half the job...

...training"-a term to be understood in a wide sense...

...By my estimation, there are about five linear feet of liberation theology volumes here in my study...

...Among their more illustrious members: Guido of Arezzo, who devised the musical notation (do/re/mi) we still use today...

...Chant, after all, is a musical vehicle best understood in use and not as an aesthetic artifact to be experienced in a passive fashion...

...I was more interested in Mommaers's exposition of Ruusbroec's mystical theology (one could read those chapters alone and learn much), but it was instructive to read the Buddhist chapters if only to learn how arduous the work of comparative theology can be...

...her works are becoming available in English...

...One of the reasons why Hennelly could subtitle his work "The Global Pursuit of Justice" is that what all these theologians have in common is a sense that there are a lot of people out there who do not share in the common goods of the earth...

...This is a book not to be read as a whole...

...I am too inexpert in matters Buddhist to evaluate how accurately Van Bragt makes the Buddhist case...

...Mysticism: Buddhism and Christian is not a book to be read with one eye on the television set...

...for further readings...

...and her music is being recorded for an ever widening and appreciative audience...

...the fifteenth-century Renaissance painter, Lorenzo Monaco...

...A good index and bibliography also are provided...

...In short, we have the medieval Vita but no hints for the English-reading public that there is much more that could be learned about the person who was called the "Sybil of the Rhine...

...Although the Camaldolese have always been a relatively small order they have contributed great luminaries to the church...

...This is a theological world with which Hennelly is quite familiar, not at all disinterested, and about which he has written abundantly...

...Camaldoli, in short, is a tidy compendium about a religious order that has an almost millennial history in the church...

...William Thompson (himself at Duquesne) has produced an excellent volume of Berulle's writings for the Paulist series on spiritual classics...

...The Life of the Holy Hildegard, translated by James McGrath, Liturgical Press, $11.95,134 pp...

...The subtitle promises both history and spirituality...

...The text includes a longish introduction, the Vita itself, and both topical and scriptural indices...

...It is for that reason that Mommaers and Van Bragt is so valuable...

...The number of religious communities founded by the leaders of the seventeenth-century "French School" of spirituality is impressive...

...What does seem to be crystal clear, however, is that the (too) many popular attempts to harmonize Buddhist and Christian mysticism will appear slickly facile to anyone who engages this book with seriousness...

...It was the great insight of Gustavo Gutierrez, the veteran liberation theologian (and one of the most intellectually insightful) to see that theology would be radically different if it were written in the slums of Lima and not in the seminar rooms of Tubingen...

...The best of the liberation theologians (Hennelly would do well to chasten some of the overheated rhetoric and special pleading of some of them) resist the temptation to provide solutions to these great problems, but they see it as a fundamental duty to do, in the words of Richard McCormick quoted by Hen-nelly, what the Christian tradition does best: to be "more a value raiser than a problem solver...

...that fine scholarly studies have appeared, etc...

...This is a fecund period in the history of spirituality not only because of the impetus that its leading figures gave to church renewal but because many of its themes, especially in Christology and the connections between spirituality and liturgy, still bear close examination...

...Beatrice Bruteau wants to show that the East has much to teach us and with that thesis I would have no quarrel...

...It is, however, an incontestable fact that liberation theologies have not only had a shaping influence on the church but the liberationists have framed issues in such a manner that their questions become unavoidable...

...things as simple as their horarium or, more pertinently, something about the ecumenical and interreligious dimensions of their witness as Christian con-templatives...

...Vigilucci, himself a Camaldolese monk for over fifty-five years, provides the reader with an historical account of the order from its origins in the reforming impulses of Saints Romuald and Peter Damian through its somewhat tortured institutional history down to the present...

...Christianity's God, from which the whole notion of the doctrines of creation and providence derive, seems antagonistic to the Buddhist insistence on an Absolute as an ultimate nothingness or emptiness into which all differentiated beings eventually dissolve...

...There are signs that this period is undergoing a renaissance of study...

...The Liberation Theologies: The Global Pursuit Of Justice, By Alfred T. Hennelly, SJ...

...The worldwise success of a CD of Gregorian music sung by some Benedictine monks from Spain is a phenomenon I find most puzzling: was it a symptom of a new interest in spirituality or another sign of the popularity of New Age The Music of Silence, by David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., HarperSan Francisco, $15,122 pp...

...Time and patience are required...

...Well, not quite but this useful vade mecum of liberation theologies does survey recent writings produced, inter alia, by Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, Hispanics, and black Americans as well as a rapid summary of ecotheologies and recent discussions about the uniqueness of Christ and the world religions...

...It has made me serious about going back again to Ruusbroec's writings (ably translated by James Wiseman in the Paulist "Classics of Western Spirituality") helped by the able exegesis and commentary of Mommaers's fine work here...

...and I recently discovered that the Evangelical scholar at Oxford, Alistair McGrath, is doing a study of Berulle as a locus for a spirituality tailored for Evangelicals...

...that her music is available...

...And it provides excerpts of their writings...