A Stairway to Paradise
John, Madeleine St.
BARBARA & ALEX & ANDREW Elizabeth K|rkland CahUi i t is a pleasure to return from the trenches of book reviewing with a real find in hand. Indeed, I so enjoyed this slip of a novel that...
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...3) Pastoral Theology, with a concentration in homiletics...
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...Awaking from a sleep during which he has seen the angels of God ascending and descending on a ladder, and has received God's blessing and promise, Jacob said, "Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not...
...Apart from the filioque, we believe the same Nicene and Apostles' Creeds...
...Hoyt's...
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...Essays should be no longer than 4,000 words in length and written according to the style sheet of the New Theology Review...
...Does the cardinal's statement, once again, call for explanation...
...Thousands of periodicals pass through my department each month, so I must be choosy about which I take the time to set aside and read...
...The moral question Barbara, Alex, and Andrew all face is how to find meaning in their human helplessness in the face of life's caprices...
...Andrew says, "Mimi comes here quite soon, Summer hols...
...I'll continue to pray for a second coming...
...Here are Andrew and Alex, sharing a pint after a squash game...
...So what if I seem to be the only one who disagrees...
...A Stairway to Paradise begins, appropriately, with Barbara, "big, velvety Barbara," elusive Barbara, alluring Barbara, inspirer of love (or lust) in two middleaged men...
...My turn to parent...
...Enter Andrew Flyrm, a channing and somewhat bumbling academic who has just returned to London after a ten-year sojourn in the United States...
...He urges Barbara not to reject the possibility of such a heavenly union "for the sake of a mere scruple...
...Instead, I'm arguing "it does matter," but I'm proposing a different "it...
...They also find themselves on the horns of a dilemma: Alex feels morally bound to stay in his bloodless marriage until his younger child is old enough to attend boarding school, and Barbara is unwilling to enter into a hidden and adulterous relationship...
...The ceremony was not a Mass so there were no inhibitors to full participation of all people present from both sides of our two families...
...What happened...
...Roman Catholic priests and women and men religious are especially encouraged to apply...
...It is very supportive of the people who have continued the ideals of the Catholic Left from the 1960s to the present...
...I'm due at the cahez about now...
...Where do we begin to know the truth about the Palestinians' plight if not with short but meaningful essays like Mr...
...10 percent, 6 times...
...WILLIAM H. DEMPSEY Arlington, Va...
...preferred for each opening...
...To the conundrum of human existence--the longing for love hindered by fate, or compromised by our sinful nature---there is one saving grace, even if it can be summoned only by default...
...A doctorate is required and ecclesiastical degree and teaching experience with wide background and interests Commonweal 40 February 11, 2000...
...When our youngsters prove to be devoted Christians, worshiping "in spirit and in truth," whether on this mountain or that, something very good is happening...
...I understand my Jewish friend's concern better than I understand Davidson's...
...Appointment begins July 1, 2000...
...Director, Feinstein I n s t i t u t e PROVIDENCE COLLEGE, a Catholic and Dominican institution, invites applications for the position of Director of the Feinstein Institute for Public Service...
...REV...
...The novel's premise is that Commonweal 3 6 February 11, 2000 life is, in Alex's words, "an irredeemably irrational construct...
...Barbara argues for moral action as the only choice, though quite possibly a futile one: "'All there is in the end,' she said, ' i s - - i s - - simply--trying to keep one's hands clean--and it's difficult.'" Alex counters with a moral doctrine of relatedness, whatever the cost: The best thing we can hope for in life is to connect, really connect, to another soul, he says...
...It reminds this reader of the story of Jacob's ladder...
...The big picture I appreciate the concern James Davidson and others have about Catholics marrying outside of the Catholic church [see "Outside the Church," September 10, 1999...
...knowledge of Catholic social teaching...
...John conveys briefly, in architectural terms, the hollowness of his marriage: "The skirting--it made up for a lot, an awful lot, that skirting...
...ALL TYPES...
...John moves along briskly, sometimes skipping a year between chapters, sometimes mere seconds...
...Special kudos to Robert G. Hoyt for his article "Israel & Palestine: An Unequal Struggle" ]January 14, 2000...
...Peter Steinfels misconstrued the book in order to defeat the extreme movements and maintain Catholic centrism...
...Am I simply uncomprehending, or might Commonweal 3 8 February 11, 2000 my puzzlement have had something to do with the threshold question of definition of terms--in particular, the term "liberal...
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...Sixty-five of the Catholics appear at the rectory with a spouse-to-be who was also raised Catholic...
...No thanks, mate...
...John's earlier work, The Essence of the Thing (which was nominated for the Booker Prize), and read it straight through, too...
...It would seem that I'm arguing for an "it doesn't matter anyway" response to Catholic-Protestant marriages...
...Barbara is the novel's most apparent drifter, but in fact Andrew and Alex are both caught in life situations that they could not have imagined or desired...
...This seems to me a clear and simple statement of the argument...
...The interplay of confession and discretion, desire and scruple among these various characters is the essence of the novel...
...Manuscripts Wanted MANUSCRIPTS WANTED...
...Our parish priest orders several copies of your magazine and one can only openly wonder why a supposedly Catholic magazine presents teaching that, at best, can mislead our Catholic people and, at worst, is the smoke of Satan within our church...
...Despite the ironic tone, the reader pities these blokes as they grope about in their unspoken suffering...
...Not a word is wasted...
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...The connection cannot be real, she declares, as long as the scruple exists...
...area and to travel...
...I add that for me the only jarring note in Cardinal Francis George's otherwise impressive contribution was his characterization of Vatican II as "a limited accommodation to modernity for the sake of evangelizing the modern world...
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...John manages brilliantly to create a narrative voice that is detached, yet directly in touch with vulnerability and pain...
...It is very disheartening to see that Commonweal has become so middle of the road...
...Crazy...
...You used to wax eloquently over gut churning issues like human rights, the Vietnam War, poverty, and public welfare...
...Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill is co-author with Joseph Papp of Shakespeare Alive...
...I'll try again...
...5) Humanities, with an interest in theological imagination...
...For the most part, each author was careful to define the term, but the definitions pretty clearly differed in material respects...
...twice and think it is wonderful...
...I read it regularly at the Princeton University Library where I work in the periodical receipts department...
...The stairway to paradise does not incline straight up, but dips and shifts, making crazy and unpredicted turns...
...EDWARD J. FITZPATRICK Blauvelt, N.Y...
...and record of scholarly publication...
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...I contend that this distribution has not changed in marriage cohorts since the beginning of the century...
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...Your December 3, 1999 issue "From the Archives" contains a dissenting opinion on Humanae vitae by the theologian Gregory Baum...
...Thirty-five appear with a spouse-to-be who was not raised Catholic...
...A Stairway to Paradise, despite the fact that its protagonists are putatively engaged in an extramarital affair, is a deeply moral novel...
...Travel and office budget extra...
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...rpagano@providence.edu Full-time Positions Available SAINT MARY'S SEMINARY AND UNIVERSITY in Baltimore has multiple full-time non-tenure-track openings in its School of Theology, beginning Fall, 2000...
...When Protestant or Orthodox young people marry Catholic young people the intraChristian dialogue is advanced at a fundamental level, helping the cause being discussed at higher levels of church leadership...
...Yeah...
...ORRESPONDENCI (Continued from page 4) and/or spouse changed religion in conjunction with marriage...
...Salary commensurate with experience...
...Patently it has...
...John is after is the idea that all of us are drifters, carried along through our lives by a current whose direction and speed we are completely unable to control...
...WILLIAMS ANDER Chicago, I11...
...Kutschera, we are grateful for his prayers...
...1) Systematic Theology, with a concentration in ecclesiology...
...For Barbara, metaphor becomes reality, just as in her relationship with Alex the phrase "with my body I thee worship" was transformed from a dry phrase written by a Tudor clergyman to the ultimate expression of love and connection between two people...
...Your latest tends to support that...
...2223 Commonweal 3 7 February 11, 2000 are determined to rear their own children in the faith "once delivered to the saints," a noteworthy kind of antidote to schism presents itself...
...A matter of definition "The Crisis of Liberal Catholicism" [November 19, 1999] was surely one of the most interesting and thoughtful collection of essays that I have seen in decades of reading Commonweal...
...With her taut writing, she never once fails to convey the emotional intensity of her characters' lives...
...It made up for vacancy, and ironical courtesy, and alienation, almost...
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...Anguished but resolute, they part...
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...Much later, in Australia, homesick and still despairingly in love with Alex, Barbara remarks to a friend on the casual use of the phrase, "Oh, God...
...Meeting Barbara at a party, unaware of her history with his old friend Alex, he immediately falls for her...
...The writer is pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church...
...And in the moment that she utters that prayer, she believes that she finds God...
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...I n Quest o f the Celtic Soul BRIDGET MARY MEEHAN RETURNS to the land of her birth to give us an extraordinary view of the faith, myths, and celebrations of Ireland that are part of its spiritual heritage...
...She drifts into the life of Alex MacLise, a Fleet Street journalist, through her acquaintance with his wife, Claire...
...The only reservations I could detect came from certain folk from our side who had concern about one of our children marrying a Catholic...
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...I was very disappointed by your issue on Catholic liberalism ["The Crisis of Liberal Catholicism," November 19, 1999...
...Incidentally, the defection rate of Catholics who are not Latinos has been 11 percent in every birth cohort of the century...
...Unfortunately, some don't worship at all...
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...Ambling through her life with no defined plan, she appears to be one of those "nineties dropouts" who inhabit various corners of the British Isles...
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...15 percent, 12 times...
...As she turns it over and over on her lips, it becomes a cry from the heart--a prayer...
...Our own dear daughter, Hillary, was married to Harry, a fellow from a strong Irish/Italian Catholic heritage...
...If an adjustment is made for the respondent and/or spouse converting to Catholicism at the time of marriage, the intermarriage rate is much lower--about one in three marriages...
...Back to the facts Professor James D. Davidson disappoints me [Correspondence, January 28, 2000...
...On another occasion, as Alex considers the spaciousness of his north London house, St...
...All choices in a moral universe are related...
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...Would the authors' conclusions have been different if each had been obliged to begin with the other's definitions...
...Rochester's" shirts), it is only a matter of days before they find themselves passionately in love...
...Alex and Barbara struggle to sort out their love for each other, which is "all wrong, but...the only right, the only possible, thing in all the universe...
...I did not say that the proportion of Catholics currently in religious mixed marriages has not increased...
...Let us suppose that a hundred Catholics in a certain parish are to be married this year...
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...Barbara nails him here...
...Thus the essential geometry of the novel: Alex and Barbara and Andrew in triangle, with tangents out to Alex's wife, Claire, and Andrew's daughter, Mimi, and a phalanx of other very British characters...
...All these positions are dual-track and involve both the formation of seminarians in the collegial atmosphere of the Society of Saint Sulpice and the teaching of seminarians...
...The tone is one of grudging acceptance rather than enthusiastic embrace and of expedience rather than principle--precisely the vices with which the cardinal appears, in other passages, to charge some liberal activists...
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...Indeed, I so enjoyed this slip of a novel that immediately upon finishing it I got hold of Madeleine St...
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...In this deftly-written and delightful novel, God lurks just out of sight...
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...The Catholic church is now in dialogue with the Orthodox churches and with various Protestant denominations because there are essential doctrines they share...
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...STUART D. ROBERTSON West Lafayette, Ind...
...After Catholic young people marry Protestant young people, sometimes they worship in Protestant churches...
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...Or, as Andrew says, "We're all just stumbling around in the dark...
...From the editors: We urge Mr...
...A close Jewish friend has a like concern, calling the marriage of Jews to Christians a "loving holocaust...
...I did not think sociologists argued by counting the number of sociologists who agree with them...
...They were both in pretty desperate need of laughter at this juncture, were these two," she writes of Alex and Andrew early in the novel, just after an awkward car ride with Barbara which constitutes the novel's memorable opening scene...
...Or does not want to get it...
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...He cites many other studies and clergy impressions to prove I'm wrong about Catholic intermarriage...
...His life has taken an unexpected turn: The dream teaching job that has brought him back to London has also cost him his marriage and the company of his beloved young daughter...
...The priest who officiated at the wedding welcomed me equally as a co-celebrant...
...There are no tidy endings here...
...Indeed, while the plot is carefully structured and the novel's forty-nine chapters nicely organized into four parts, the writing is so good that it almost doesn't matter what happens...
...Censored...
...advanced social sciences or humanities degree...
...The writer is professor of economics at DePaul University...
...CHRISTINE DYKGRAAF Princeton, N.J...
...Have another...
...CAROL DELLMAN-ANDERSEN Silver Lake, Ind...
...For example, only about 30 percent of men and women in their sixties intermarried...
...PETE KUTSCHERA Albany, N.Y...
...Data on first marriages indicate that about one in two Catholics intermarried, although the rate is lower for older Catholics...
...Perhaps what St...
...Although she initially regards the attractive, dour Alex as a Mr...
...Right you are...
...The winner will be announced September 15, 2000...
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...I wonder, though, if others shared my rather unsettling experience of largely concurring with each of the articles as I read them, even though their authors were, obviously, largely at odds...
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...What he saw jives exactly with what I witnessed while living in the Old City as a student in 1989...
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...Obviously, when you decide to be loyal to those you purport to represent, the decision should be reviewed...
...I also said that the increase seems to be almost entirely explained by the fact that more of those who are not Catholic and who marry Catholics do not convert, as they formerly did...
...Rochester type (and in a distracted moment actually asks the housekeeper to iron "Mr...
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...Worse still than this ad hominem argument, he also does not understand what I said...
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...However, in the present, unlike the past, the future spouses of the thirtyfive are much less likely to convert to Catholicism because no one is pushing them to...
...God may deliver us," Barbara says to Alex, adding, "There's no one else who can help us here...
Vol. 127 • February 2000 • No. 3
