Papal Sin

...Such "jerry-built a technically Christian child in a non- cause the Apostles appear to venerate contrivances" are "shoved under" totter- Christian home might actually have pre- the Virgin, not the Spirit...

...This was not meant to wrong...

...What- ry pope might sincerely have conceived Apostles bow in deference before a ever one thinks of Wills's particular ex- his responsibilities in terms other than strongly feminine figure...

...Mortara, baptized by a Christian nurse human vulnerability by grace, shrinking e-mail from an attorney in Texas, USA,March 2000 while dangerously ill, and subsequent- vernal nature made immortal by the In- Commonweal reader offer ly taken from his parents and educated carnation, Wills sees only a piece of papal Both sets $98-$89 as a Christian, ending his life as a de- propaganda (though the picture was not * Both sets in full colour presentation box * voted Catholic priest...

...Prophecy meant intellect, the- tion," as Harrington later described it, titled A Necessary Evil: A History of Amer- ology, and its demands...

...When he fia complex interplay-and tension-be- by Yale University Press...

...God the Father, he ** All Postage & Packing already included ** standably scandalized by this heart- notices, is wearing a papal tiara, "a com- Checks payable to Welcome Recordings6 Upper Aston Hall Lane (Monastery entrance breaking story, but the case for him has parison of the pope to God...

...As a But distrust of the church's government, while the royal element of the church graduate student in English at the Uniand of the church's past, looms every- was its organizational and historical di- versity of Chicago, Harrington experiwhere in the book under review...

...Pausing in front of Botti12 Audio Cassettes $59 much of the disturbing story of Pius IX celli's Coronation of the Virgin, an exquis"Probably the greatest talks ever given on the and his godson, the Jewish boy Edward ite celebration of the transfiguration of Gospel of John...

...As Wills sees shabby deceits by which men ill-suited Garry Wills them, these deceits result in clerical to it maintain the fiction of celibacy...

...Critics and middle-class Irish Catholicism and civic- acolyte of Max Shachtman, leader of one admirers alike who gathered around mindedness placed them near the cen- of the numerous splinter groups that the lectern after the talk to pursue fur- ter of a vital community...

...He seems blind ing doctrines and practices to keep them sented a real dilemma even to good men to the astonishing theological complexiin place, and the result is "the quiet cor- in another age, that a nineteenth-centu- ty of this image of the church, as male ruption of intellectual betrayal...

...Wills makes bad theology...

...Most intelligent Catholics issue he discusses is open and shut, and gesis of the Cana story, notably that of will share some of Wills's concerns, and he finds in the standard works of bibli- the present pope "eager to foist his view all will surely applaud his insistence on cal commentary or popular history on of the mediatrix on the revealed word," the need for truthfulness in the church...

...Yet Harrington's ap- white American males in the postwar pearances at Maryhouse reflected his decade...

...Wills is under- a papal commission...

...The history of the papacy in par- mation...

...nally left the Catholic Worker and the church for good, Dorothy Day was reportedly relieved that theology, not a woman, was the issue, though accordLEADER WITHOUT A FOLLOWING ing to Isserman the young Harrington rarely lacked for female companionship as Catholic or socialist...

...When a younger group of stuoften invited to call or visit Harrington's School, suggests Isserman, Harrington dent radicals emerged in the 1960s, the office at the Democratic Socialists of acquired "a sense of moral gravity" still boyish Harrington was ideally situAmerica (DSA) headquarters on Union rather than a specific ideological outlook...

...at the altar is iconic, without which Wills's specific targets are, on the the priest would not be perceived whole, a predictable round-up of to act in persona Christi...

...ated to guide them, but leaders of the Square...

...I am finding the John lectures very informative indeed...

...along with it the whole church to a fun- eliminating its causes...

...If any parallels scene, which Wills must have walked the church is often in fact an authoritari- to the case of Elian Gonzalez occurred past in the Uffizi, the Apostles reel and an insistence on the status quo, liable to to Wills, he does not mention them...

...Fr Raymond also asked us to record him giving his how all those mean old guys got it nature and nurture in his human for- lectures on John this year...

...Yet Isserman shows how HarThe Other American stature as an accessible and generous rington's quick and agile mind, coupled The Life of Michael Harrington leader of the American Left...

...one-year stint at Yale Law School...

...With provocative rally subordinate to men...

...He dwells pow- And Wills makes one telling theologidamental dishonesty, "the cumu- cal observation...

...highly-and the character of his politics, rington occasionally spoke Harrington grew up in the 1930s in which did not inspire the same universal I at Friday night meetings comfortable neighborhoods in the West admiration...

...Those who mainlative product of all the past eva- tain that the church's teaching on sions, the disingenuous explain- such issues has never changed, he ings, outright denials, professions, argues, are compelled to subvert deferences, pieties, dodges, lapses, tradition, by inventing new arguand funk...

...Wills has no sense that to leave descends, Wills tuts in disapproval, bebate for universal love...

...its spiritual and intuitive dimension...

...Mor- Tel orders 011 44 1244 818 111 tara was just a scalp on the papal teepee, tles at Pentecost, gathered round the stat- Fax orders 011 44 1244 535 663 a testimony to the moral blindness of uesque figure of the Virgin as the dove Official Publishers Of R E Brown Cassettes Commonweal 2 5 July 14, 2000 Catholicism so profoundly at odds with tween the elements of prophet, priest, Senator Robert Taft...

...the final stop on Harringtori s reverse Harringtori s wanderings were not unpilgrimage from Catholic radical to so- like those of many relatively privileged cialist agnostic...

...Eamon Duffy is Reader in Church History in siastical authority except ignoble and the University of Cambridge and Fellow of In 1952, however, he shocked fellow overbearing self-interest...

...church, the relationship between nature (Recorded in London 1998) History for Wills, as for his model, and grace, the cooperation of the crea- Based on Acts & other Early Sources-We are taken back to our roots-to a new sense of what Lord Acton, is an arsenal of cautionary ture with its creator, the historical root- Christian Community meant and means for us tales, demonstrating again and again edness of the messiah, and the role of today as well...

...Quod erat themes-the place of the feminine in the 6 Audio Cassettes $39 demonstrandum...

...Ismemoir From Union Square to Rome) was conservative Republicanism of Ohio serman's detailed treatment of HarringCommonweal 26 July 14, 2000...

...So, he sughelps create among educated gests, the real reason for the exCatholics, in Cardinal Newman's clusion of women from the priestwords, "a habit of skepticism or hood was that they were believed secret infidelity as regards all dog- to be inferior or at any rate natumatic truth...

...Similarly, liberal Catholicism's usual suspects...

...But most tion of the dignity of the marriage are issues of sex and gender: the bed is no longer acceptable, the papal prohibitions on contracep- Not in a liberal mood rule of celibacy is justified by the Commonweal 24 July 14, 2000 allegedly greater availability of the celi- Pius IX...

...He would Catholic Worker in the early 1950s...

...Before CW offer) Deeside Wales UK CH5 3EN Orcagna's representation of the Apos- Mastercard / Visa orders accepted no nuances, no moral ambiguities...

...Given his charisman whose best-known book, The Other ma and the "evangelical pitch" of his orAmerica (1962), was credited with the atory, his success was no surprise, but "discovery" of poverty amid a postwar Isserman also explores "the gulf that had James T. Fisher affluence so widely touted that many opened between his personal qualitiesbelieved social injustice had been ren- of which so many people thought so n the 1980s Michael Har- dered obsolete...

...priesthood was supplanted by a more meaningful ican Distrust of Government, in which he meant the prayerlife of the church and encounter with leftist thought during a defended the role of federal authority...

...Politics...

...From the Je- fought over the slim socialist pickings of ther "clarification of thought" were suits at Saint Louis University High the 1950s...

...Mary, for him, "is book seems symptomatic of the protyranny and the intellectual equivalent the mother of Jesus' weakness, not his foundly polarized state of American of quantities of chewing-gum...

...El nightly sojourns to the White Horse Tavto opposing positions, and which en- ern and on various picket lines he convisages no function or motive for eccle- tinued to mingle with secular radicals...

...In 1998 he made the unique decision to allow us to release fore hierarchy and priesthood are mat- ure of Mary might have offered the the following tapes to the general public ters of mere ecclesiastical organization Christian world a legitimate vehicle for The Beginnings of the and there can be no reason to exclude the exploration of a multitude of Church women from the priesthood...

...according to Wills, clerical celibaThese include the church's sorry cy was imposed on the church at record over the Jews, and the ag- large because even married sexugressive and overbearing manner al activity was believed to defile in which the nineteenth-century pa- the purity of the ministers of the pacy opposed modernity and had sanctuary...

...Indeed, in Botamples, he is certainly right in his claim those that seem self-evident to a twenty- ticelli s archaistic version of the same that what passes for "traditionalism" in first-century American...

...toward the Jews, he rightly targets the Eamon Duffy On some of these issues Wills writes inadequacies of the Vatican's Holocaust compellingly...

...S25,326 pp...

...cringe in disarray as the fire falls, while be subverted or at any rate troubled by The limitations of Wills's approach are in the midst of them the Virgin gazes upproper attentiveness to the complex re- on display in his discussion of "Marian ward in prophetic rapture, her promiality of the tradition...

...For Newman true Catholicism from Catholicism, but returned to the Christian officials, at their own estima- involved an endless struggle to hold church long enough to serve a memotion...

...ticular is an endless saga of tyranny, the art galleries of Florence, in search of The Gospel of John crassness, and self-interest...

...The same locale that served as The child of staunch Democrats, while fledgling Students for a Democratic Sothe springboard for Dorothy Day's rad- at The College of the Holy Cross Har- ciety (SDS) failed to pass the Shachtical journey (as described in her 1938 rington was for a time enamored of the manites' anti-Communist litmus test...

...Thank you so much...

...him, and that the positions he rejects can the proper role of the Holy Ghost, and To a Catholic living in Britain, Wills's be held together by nothing except rank infantilized the clergy...

...An example for us all...

...Wills takes us on a walk round be but we have discovered and remastered one of his earlier conferences...

...He is the author of The Catholic Workers by dramatically branman, one of Wills's truth-telling heroes, Stripping of the Altars and Saints and Sin- dishing a membership card in the Young thought the life of the church involved ners: A History of the Popes, both published People's Socialist League...

...At a monologue, which attributes no worth have hated this book...

...a real treasure...

...Now irony, Wills titles the final section that this can no longer be acof this denunciation of papally dri- knowledged as a justification, it is ven deception, Splendor Veritatis, claimed that the sex of the officiant "The Splendor of Truth...

...Cardinal New- Magdalene College...

...Wills recently published a book and king...

...In the end, however, Wills's cri- these differing energies in balance, priv- rable tour of duty with the New York tique of the present state of the church is ileging none over the others...

...hypocrisy, the sexual exploitation of Though I found myself dissenting from women by priests, widespread active ho- much of the detail of what he had to say mosexuality among the clergy, and pe- on the current attitudes of the church dophilia and its coverups...

...An appalling chapter on document "We Remember," whose unhe Catholic church, Garry the refusal of church authorities in Dal- appetizingly defensive tone stands in Wills believes, is locked into las, Texas, to take seriously or act on re- such sharp contrast (though this came T "deep structures of deceit" ports of sexual abuse by local priests il- too late for Wills to comment on it) to by an overblown papolatry, lustrates the misery that can flow from the open-hearted imaginativeness of whose determination never to admit the self-protecting determination of an John Paul H's words and actions during error dooms the modern papacy and institution to suppress scandal without his recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land...

...This "Oedipal reacitself...

...For Wills, the Catholic cult of nent belly pregnant with the church's fuIn the end, however, there is some- the Virgin Mary is essentially a ghastly ture, her hands raised in the traditional thing repellently illiberal about Wills's mistake, propagated by the papacy, "orante" position like a priest's at the angry liberal certainties, his wholesale which has idolatrously exalted a crea- altar, an unforgettable theological vision and unqualified conviction that every ture in the place of her Lord, oppressed of the church which eludes Wills's reright-thinking Catholic must agree with women, denigrated sexuality, usurped ductive analysis...

...with his middle-American qualities, proMaurice Isserman These qualities of openness and en- pelled him to the forefront of the socialPublicAtfrirs, $_'8.50, 449 pp, gagement are vividly captured in Mau- ist movement at a time of rather modest rice Issermari s superb biography of the competition in the field...

...his shelves unchallengeable proof of his has got it "exactly backward...

...Every strength," and traditional Catholic exe- Catholicism...

...All this saps honesty ments and justifications for their and, by inflating the church's chosen positions as the old reasons claims beyond reasonable bounds, become indefensible...

...Harrington showed a great at Maryhouse, a Catholic End of Saint Louis and the adjoining sub- devotion to sectarian infighting, a parWorker community located on Man- urb of University City, where his family's ticularly fruitless occupation for an hattan's Lower East Side...

...tion and abortion, the church's practice erfully also on the gap between the theand teaching on the indissolubility of mar- oretical justifications for celibacy, in riage and on annulment, the exclusion of terms of spiritual heroism and availPapal Sin women from the priesthood, clerical celiba- ability to others, and the sometimes Structures of Deceit cy and its consequences...

...Doubleday...

...Wills be- Yet it is hard to know what to make of a own views...

...It is of mensions-structure, hierarchy, tradi- enced his initial "indecisive apostasy" course prudent not to take officials, even tion...

...Now that this denigraitself declared infallible...

...Since, then, the Apostles trays no sense at all that a millennium were not bishops, Peter was not the first and a half of Marian devotion, art, and In Loving Memory of pope, the laying on of hands was mere- theological reflection might be something Raymond E. Brown ly a solemn form of Jewish commis- other than a blind plunge into misun- Universally acclaimed as one of the greatest sioning for any responsible job, there- derstanding and alienation, that the fig- Scripture scholars ever...