Religion booknotes

...In passing, McGinness provides interesting information about, among other things, the shape of papal liturgies, educational ideals, the style in which sermons were actually delivered, and, alas too little, hints about how the rhetorical pictures of the sermons might have been replicated in some of the visual arts of the time...

...Readers should be wary, however, of Senser's assertion that China "never should have been granted the status of a "Most Favored Nation...

...The urban middle class that is emerging as a result of reform represents China's best hope for creating a more human society...

...Baronius was the reigning historian, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome, by Frederick J. McGinness, Princeton University Press, $49.50,337 pp...

...Were there a male/female priesthood, of a certainty celibacy would have to go...

...RATES: 90c per word...

...From the cross with a corpus on it to the bare cross it represents a leap of some centuries of religious sensibility...

...I suspect that Father Fitzmyer would agree that such was his intention...

...We grant MFN to China for the same reason we grant it anywhere: because it is in our national interest to do so...

...How does one go about reading and reflecting while walking (something I like to do...

...For information, contact the Center for Spirituality, Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, 46556-5027...

...Why does it anger you [editorial, December 1,1995] that the Vatican doesn't treat such a truth cavalierly...

...In sum: an enormously instructive and provocative work on an original topic...

...telephone: 219-284-4636...

...How, I thought, does one underline...

...By extension, Christians were allowed some of the pagan rhetorical treasures to understand the Word of God...

...Finally, Sloyan considers the Crucifixion from the perspective of Judaism (he is very good on the embedded anti-Judaism of much of this development...

...I would especially recommend it to theologians...

...Or is an authoritative, arbitrary papacy okay if it supports women's ordination...

...Joseph Fitzmyer belongs to that generation of superb American Catholic biblical exegetes such as Raymond Brown and Roland Murphy, who, though now emeriti professors, still produce outstanding work...

...Although the idealized picture of Rome and Romanita' may have been somewhat excessive, McGinness notes that the biting criticisms of Roman immorality, common enough in the earlier part of the century, now were replaced with great efforts of moral renewal as well as practical schemes to make Rome an exemplar of what the papal preachers set out in their sermons...

...219-631-5435 or FAX 219-631-6968...

...telephone: 219-284-4636...

...as well as of Hinduism and Buddhism...

...Senser regrets that our government "is encumbered by extensive American entanglement with the Beijing regime...

...Continued from page 4) The key question By hindsight, it was evidently foolish of the Roman magisterium to associate infallibility with women's ordination, and to rely on the untenable argument that all the apostles Jesus chose were males...

...What the Vatican has done with respect to the ordination of women is reaffirm a tradition of nearly 2,000 years initiated by Jesus Christ...

...and, further, that the production of books was a labor-intensive and rather expensive enterprise...

...ALL TYPES...

...the "sign of the cross...

...Discovering the feminine aspects of God can help us make better sense of the whole of creation and our place in its continuation...

...Male and female priests could not live celibate lives in a single parish rectory...

...For additional information call 212-732-0800 or write COMMONWEAL, 15 Dutch St., Room 502, New York, NY 10038-3760...

...If most of the population could not read, does that mean, for instance, that the study of early Christian texts provides us with only a window on elite culture and says nothing or precious little about the practices of ordinary Christians...

...and so on...

...on the slow clericalization of the office of the lector for the liturgy...

...We don't need more publicity of this kind...

...MFN is nothing more than the common trading status given to all but a handful of nations...

...Rubens, Bernini, Caravaggio, Borromini were adding to the artistic patrimony left by such high Renaissance figures as Raphael and Michelangelo...

...Still, since the early '80s, Beijing has allowed the masses increased access to foreign products and ideas, freer markets, and broader scope for individual expression...

...China is a police state...

...Subsidy Publisher with 75-year tradition...

...Retreat PRIVATE AND CORPORATE RETREATS in historic Vermont home...

...the words must not be translated because they are the words of God...

...and he attempts to right that imbalance...

...ROBERT daly Ithaca, N.Y...

...The priesthood has been all male for the life of the church...

...Written for an intelligent reader, it seamlessly blends learning and piety, and is a welcome relief from the steady but thin stream of what often passes for "spirituality...

...This is a very fine work from which I have profited enormously...

...But the resistance to change increases as well...

...When next I point to the crucifix to make a point to my students about the complexity of Christology, I will have fresh things to say thanks to the graceful pages of this study...

...This is a religious book in that Sloyan writes as a learned believer on a topic which is central to our faith...

...802-334-8054...

...But to place such sentiment on the level of "conviction" is ridiculous...

...This current work takes Romans as a text for a series of meditations done in the style of an Ignatian eight-day retreat...

...the Beijing government treats people as chattel...

...Using John Cort's logic, perhaps we should use only the Aramaic terms, following the example of the Muslims who use only Arabic because that was the language used by Mohammed in the Qu'ran...

...This latter issue, of course, demands attention to a tradition that runs from the Fathers through Anselm, Abelard, and the medieval thinkers through the Reformers and down to the present day when lib-era tionists of various schools attempt to assess the meaning of salvation through an extended meditation on the cross...

...I say "rhetorical" because the humanist emphasis on the ars rhetor-ica had made a profound mark on the sermonic culture of the time...

...Whose relevance...

...what might well have been the common case were anthologies or florilegia of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament texts to be read at the liturgy...

...The seminar is presented by the Carmelite Forum and sponsored by the Center for Spirituality...

...Many Americans oppose China's MFN status not for economic or strategic reasons, but because of confusion caused by the phrase most favored...

...Sloyan's account tackles the crucifixion of Jesus as an historical event as well as The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith, by Gerard S. Sloyan, Fortress, $16,228 pp...

...Our Father, our Mother Because the English liturgy and the English Bible have used masculine words for God over the centuries, I see no reason to change them, especially in such traditional uses as the "Our Father" and "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...

...Second, the major use of the book was for public reading, thus pointing to the importance of the liturgical...

...It's true that Jesus used masculine words for God...

...Presenters are: Kevin Culligan, Keith J. Egan, Constance FitzGerald, Kieran Kavanaugh, Ernest Larkin, Vilma Seelaus, and John Welch...

...The writer served as a diplomat at the U.S...

...My conclusion is that this is not a text to be read in haste but in a spirit of leisure...

...Gamble concludes, first of all, that the Christians favored the codex over the roll precisely because the former allowed for more random readings than the roll, which was designed for sequential reading...

...The pride of American Catholic biblical scholarship, they are also conspicuous for having had the energy and commitment to share their scholarship with the broader Catholic public...

...I was pleased, therefore, to see Robert Senser's essay on Wei and U.S.-China policy [March 8...

...This difficulty is partially explained by the fact that Romans is a very difficult text to follow in places, and is made all the more difficult because of the necessity of constantly referring back to the text to follow Fitzmyer's "points...

...Nonetheless, Fitzmyer makes the cogent argument that Pauline materials are neglected in Ignatius (in reaction to the Lutheran emphasis on Romans...

...Faith in Christ and recognition of the church, imperfect as she is, as the true church, rest on far more profound realities...

...It is understandable that some may favor ordination of women, or at least wonder, as I formerly did, "why not...

...It is better to plan...

...Geoffrey b. gneuhs New York, N.Y...

...devotion to the "five wounds...

...If one were to read three chapters a day as a meditative exercise there would be more than enough material to fill up the eight days of retreat...

...McGinness studies this fertile period by a close focus on the preachers who exercised their rhetorical skills in the papal court...

...In the last decades of the sixteenth century, Rome was a city of intense cultural vibrancy...

...Islam (the Q'ran seemingly denies that Jesus died on the cross...

...The old medieval ars predicandi as well as the late-medieval scholastic doctrinal sermon had given way to a sermon style which married the tropes of rhetoric to the militant theology derived from Trent and the Roman Catechism...

...and on the use of books as sacred objects subject to such uses as divinization and even the wearing of texts as amulets...

...Augustine argued for the right to do this by telling his readers that the Children of Israel were allowed to take some Egyptian treasures with them when they went out into the desert...

...Embassy in Beijing from 1987 to 1991...

...and Donald Senior, C.P...

...Seeking theological degrees, sabbaticals /renewals for clergy, religious, laity...

...The prolific Origen, for example, dictated to stenographers who turned their work over to scribes who would make a "fair copy" for the correction of the author who would, in turn, have fine copies made by calligraphers (who were, interestingly enough, women...

...It was a good piece...

...How, they ask, can we favor, let alone favor most, a government that slaughters students and locks up advocates of democracy...

...Seminar THE CROSS The Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, will present a three-year series of seminars on the Cross beginning on July 7-12, 1996, with "The Cross: A Biblical Tradition/' Presenters for the 1996 inaugural seminar are Lorraine Caza, C.N.D...

...Mater Dei Institute, Gonzaga University, 405 E. Sinto, Spokane, WA 99202-1849.1-800-633-2252, ext...

...A New York Times/CBS News poll...

...Change made for the sake of women's equality, a different matter, will not answer the question whether any change is needed for the sake of the priesthood and the church...

...Forum CARMELITE FORUM "Therese: Her Mission (1897-1997)" will be the topic for the Tenth Summer Seminar on Carmelite Spirituality at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, on June 23-29,1996...

...While it is true, as McGinness is at pains to note, that the papal preachers in the seicento broke with the scholastic sermon when preaching before the pope, they were still hard at work on the manuals when they were in their rooms at the Collegio Romano and other centers of theological learning in the Eternal City...

...Spectacular mountain-lake scenery...

...Innovative Art Gallery/Chapel...

...The horrors of the sack of the city were a distant memory and the Council of Trent, having finished its work, gave warrant for a militant Catholicism...

...Gerard Sloyan is a religious educator and this book does justice to both of those terms...

...But that approach seems to me fundamentalist...

...They will find descriptions of a sermonic literature in it which, shorn of its tropes and conceits, hardened into the ecclesiology that was standard fare in scholastic manuals until the theological revolution started by Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac and others became crystallized into Vatican IFs Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium...

...those were the words available to him in the language he spoke...

...Advance payment required...

...In this extremely well-written and thoroughly researched work, Gamble asks to what extent the early church used books, how were they produced, and for what audiences...

...1-800-695-9599...

...Gamble has interesting pages on the development of Christian libraries in antiquity...

...These large topics, deftly chronicled by Sloyan, are interwoven with wonderful pages on the evolution of devotional practices connected to the cross: gestures of prayer...

...Contact: Center for Pastoral Liturgy, Box 81, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556...

...It may not be out of place to note that his choice of Romans is a rather audacious one...

...Who determines the sense of the faithful, and how...

...Fitzmyer's long-awaited commentary on Romans appeared in the Anchor Bible commentary series in 1993...

...Their books advance biblical literacy and a deeper sense of authentic Christian spirituality rooted in the Word...

...JOAN LORENTZ Cambridge, Mass...

...12 words minimum...

...However, what comes across most strikingly is that books and reading had functions quite different and that literacy had a vastly different significance in early Christianity than it does today...

...How do we hold tradition and transition in balance...

...Conference PASTORAL LITURGY CONFERENCE June 17-20,1996, on the campus of Notre Dame: "Traditions and Transitions: Culture, Church, and Worship/' The pressure on our culture, our church, and our worship to change increases yearly...

...on the private ownership and use of books...

...Instead, I "did" two chapters a morning (during Advent) and discovered that there was more material than I could readily handle...

...Ministry Program WANT TO BE A PRIEST, RELIGIOUS, LAY MINISTER (MAN OR WOMAN) IN THE CHURCH...

...Christianity is, along with Judaism and Islam, commonly denominated by the phrase, a "religion of the Book...

...The total concept that emerges from this literature is a vision of a re-publica Christiana in which the single parts of worship, governance, social activity, and intellectual inquiry interlock into a harmonious whole centered around the Chair of Peter...

...Shall the bishops rush to change their teaching...

...on the relationship of book production and the canonization of the New Testament...

...john branigan Staten Island, N.Y...

...Financial help available...

...What forces and factors already are changing the face of our culture, our church, and our worship...

...This study is impressively researched (nearly half the book consists of notes and bibliographies) and very well written...

...it has worked fairly well...

...But extensive entanglement is precisely what we need, and it is what we shall have whether we plan for it or not...

...The issue of women's ordination must be considered on its merits, and the key question is whether it would be good for the priesthood and the church, and whether it is needed to satisfy women's demand for equality in the church...

...Current Exposition: 'The Forest Mythos and the Corporate Ethos/' Aesthetic accommodations...

...flagellation...

...These are important questions both because there was not a high degree of literacy in the period in question (Gamble makes the educated guess that 10 to 15 percent of the general population in the Roman Empire were literate...

...So: Smile...

...Is late-twentieth-century American culture to determine what is truth for the Mystical Body of Christ...

...While I gladly use masculine words for God, I see no reason not to use feminine terms as well, to enrich our understanding of so great a mystery...

...The standard text(s) for an Ignatian retreat would be, and in the Exercises are, the Gospel narratives vividly "imagined" through the "composition of place...

...It is not a "justice issue...

...You invoke "the sense of the faithful," a much-bandied-about expression...

...as a result of a developed medieval piety...

...The purpose of this preaching, however, was not so much instruction in doctrine as it was persuasion, moral change, and advancement in piety...

...The practices of some Christian authors give us a window into what might have been the practice of many...

...institutions and the exuberance of American culture have catalyzed much that is good and new in China...

...MFN also serves the interest of the Chinese people...

...In fact, reading this book made me wonder whether or not we need to reflect on the function of books in the contemporary church as we now enter the world of cyberspace...

...It is neither...

...Sloyan is an educator who can take an enormously complicated doctrine and present it both historically and theologically with clarity, fairness, and insight...

...even close association of single male and female priests might be a cause of scandal...

...Augustine would send a completed book to a friend who, as it were, acted as a "literary agent," lending copies to be transcribed in order to provide for wider circulation...

...Lawrence S. Cunningham I have often told my students that the variety of mass-pro-duced crucifixes which hang in every Notre Dame classroom provide, when looked at closely, a compressed history of the development of Christological piety...

...its subsequent impact on the minds and hearts of believers (its mythos) and, finally, its significance for those who see themselves as disciples of Jesus (faith...

...There are twenty-four chapters, each strucSpiritual Exercises Based on Paul's Letter to the Romans, by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Paulist, $14.95,236 pp...

...Most" implies that MFN is an exclusive trading status, and "favored" implies that it is extended as a token of moral approval...

...There is, in my estimation, more than an incidental connection between the concetto of the papal preacher and the ecclesiology produced, say, by someone like Robert Bellarmine...

...But the Crucifixion is also a topic, as Paul noted two millennia ago, that is a "stumbling block" and a "folly...

...What change is inevitable or desirable...

...I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in Christian history and a taste for future-oriented speculation...

...I only lament that along with the index of scriptural citations there was not a topical index...

...This is a rich and underutilized resource for meditative and contemplative study, especially Fitzmyer's superb three chapters on Romans 8. This is the sort of book that I, for one, love to see come along...

...For a brochure, contact the Center for Spirituality, Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-5027...

...No one has a right to be ordained...

...Does it further mean (although Gamble does not treat this issue in ex-tenso) that the presumption of literacy for liturgical leaders in the early church was another reason why women and/or "lower class" males did not hold those positions, since literacy was more an upper-class male than a female prerogative...

...Finally, that the corpus is more or less anatomically correct is a gift of early Renaissance observation while the typical vee-shaped position of arms relative to the hanging head comes, say, from the powerful impact of sixteenth/seventeenth-century masters like Velasquez and Rubens...

...You express concern that the church won't be "relevant...

...Passion plays...

...Discounts and monthly billing available for repeat advertisers...

...The power and character of U.S...

...What would it mean if computer screens replaced psalters in monastic choirs, as someone suggested to me they well might...

...Third, books were often produced to be read by more than the ostensible recipient (think, for example, of the letters of Paul) to whom the book might be addressed...

...Would it not be a gross abuse of the Petrine ministry to ignore the tradition received from Christ...

...I say "more than enough" because I was not on retreat when I worked my way through this work...

...Sloyan both explains how in the medieval period in the West the Crucifixion of Jesus slowly became detached from his Resurrection, and how Christian thinkers began to elaborate theories about how the death (and Resurrection) of Jesus was, in the Pauline language, "for us" and "for our sins...

...What I recount as a homely classroom illustration has been magisterially fleshed out in Sloyan's immensely learned and highly readable study...

...The inspiration behind this theory of preaching was, of course, Saint Augustine's On Christian Doctrine in which the bishop of Hippo argued for the legitimacy of marrying pagan rhetoric to the exegesis and proclamation of the Scriptures...

...The United States contributes to this, not through specific policies, but through the mere fact of our existence...

...In separate chapters McGinness reads the extant sermon literature and describes how these papal preachers (drawn both from the Roman colleges and the curias of the large religious orders) erected rhetorically charged sermonic visions of the church militant with the triumphant Christ at its apex as a mirror image of the Vicar of Christ who stood at the center of a "right thinking" and organically coherent Roman church...

...let us rejoice in our Father-Mother...

...Manuscripts MANUSCRIPTS WANTED...

...Most favored nation The Chinese dissident, Wei Jingsheng, is courageous, correct, and deserving of international support, yet his case has been neglected by the American press since his imprisonment last December...

...tured with a selection from Paul followed by meditative points, a series of reflective questions, and a concluding colloquy prayer most commonly drawn from the psalter...

...Meantime, there's plenty for the faithful to concern themselves with and to have convictions about: Christ, the Beatitudes, truth, goodness, beauty, and unity...

...Still, I find John Cort's arguments for using only the masculine forms unacceptable ["God Is Not an It," November 17,1995...

...Four, few whole Bibles were available for congregations...

...Similarly, the corpus begins to possess "passion" characteristics of wounds, crown of thorns, nails, etc...

...At least once, on a plane trip, I saw a fellow traveler reading the New Testament on the screen of a laptop...

...Books and Readers in the Early Church, by Harry Y. Gamble, Yale University Press, $32.50,337 pp...

...By that measure, the faithful favor the death penalty...

...and Jesuit theologians like Bellarmine and Suarez were constructing the edifice of baroque scholasticism...

...Whose relevance...

...Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, O.P...

...Environmental and liturgical arts...

...The answer to that reasonable question is that "most favored" is a misnomer...