Religion booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
A merican Catholics and Civic Engagement is the product of a three-year study cosponsored by the Commonweal Foundation and the Faith and Reason Institute, and funded by the Pew...
...Hence, the Black Jesus has nothing to do with oppressive Christianity...
...Exactly...
...and an analysis of Catholic voting patterns...
...In another essay the late (and much admired) Philip Murnion writes about the parish and the public square, and explores the entanglements that may arise from government-inspired "faithbased initiatives...
...405, New York, NY 10115, or e-mail copy to Malena Seldin at: dreulationmgr@commonwealmagazine.org (e-mail is preferred...
...A Season in Bethlehem: Unholy War in a Sacred Place Joshua Hammer Free Press, $24, 286 pp...
...As with food and clothing and other cheap commodities, it is hard to infuse books with the aura of the sacred...
...Perhaps it is my familiarity with the area that made reading this book so touching for me...
...With Jefferson as his starting point, Prothero is off to the races: He moves quickly through the "feminized" Jesus of the nineteenth century to the muscular Jesus of the early twentieth preached by people like Billy Sunday...
...argues both that there is no Catholic vote and that the Catholic vote is important...
...better ones during graduate study in Latin and later at Harvard Divinity School...
...talk shows...
...The religious tension is fierce: memories still linger of the physical fight between the friars and the Orthodox monks over the right to wash windows in 1928...
...Cunningly, Prothero finishes this chapter by juxtaposing it with the 1990s Jesus Seminar, which also refashioned Jesus according to contemporary measurements...
...Her life is almost a textbook study of a certain kind of Catholic...
...The new president will take office in midsummer, 2005...
...One of my suggestions would be Guigo's classic work on lectio...
...I am keenly interested in the subject of reading (it was officially stipulated in the Middle Ages that the first task of the theologian was to read) and over the decades I have collected a number of books on the act of reading...
...life-saving books in times of crisis...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...My assumption was that, apart from those feverish minds who read too much Ayn Rand, everyone agrees that there is a common obligation to make sure that all people have a roof over their head, access to health care, and education for their children...
...He notes how figures in the Israeli underworld profit from the Palestinian demand for guns just as some members of the Palestinian Authority profit from lucrative construction contracts for Israeli settlements...
...Finally, Malone makes a point which is worth repeating...
...Commonweal 30 June 4, 2004...
...Such are the books that Malone writes about, and everyone of a certain intelligence could add to her list...
...Almost as a response, VALERRY E. J. Dionne Jr...
...www.sabbathretreats.org Ecclesiastical Art RARE, ORIGINAL ECCLESIASTICAL ART—Custom-order a hard-to-find saint...
...but in Prothero's telling, the South is simply geography between the West Coast and the East Coast...
...The writer Ida Goerres once talked of the "books of Providence" in her diary...
...Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading Nancy M. Malone Riverhead Books, $19.95, 208 pp...
...In the end, this book is rather like a chocolate Easter bunny: rich and tasty but hollow in the center...
...So are Roman Catholics, Native Americans, Christian Scientists, and Hispanics...
...In the final section of the book there are interesting essays on Catholic voting patterns, especially David Leege and Paul Mueller's capacious overview of the "Catholic Vote...
...She entered the Congregation of the Ursulines, where her life as a religious was marked by the books she read: bad books in the novitiate...
...Part II examines "reincarnations" of Jesus...
...In Walking a Literary Labyrinth, Malone uses books to trace her own spiritual development...
...Since Stephen Prothero is interested in Jesus as a cultural icon in the United States, one would think that his book would include a sizable section on contemporary Evangelical Christians...
...Hammer is quite aware of the ironies of the conflict...
...RELIGION BOOKNOTES Lawrence S. Cunningham The autobiographical essays are particularly compelling...
...The book begins, predictably enough, with Thomas Jefferson excising passages about miracles, exorcisms, and other superstitions from his Bible in order to provide a portrait of an Enlightenment wisdom figure whose ethics are worthy of admiration and consonant with the spirit of the age...
...Flannery O'Connor saw the American South not as "Christ loving" but "Christ haunted...
...Perhaps one of the saddest stories is the takeover of parts of the Christian village of Beit Jala by Palestinian militants, who fire on the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo...
...A merican Catholics and Civic Engagement is the product of a three-year study cosponsored by the Commonweal Foundation and the Faith and Reason Institute, and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts...
...Review of applicants will begin May 22, 2004...
...This fine set of essays is very good reading as we head into the presidential elections...
...Advance payment required...
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...Mary Jo Bane, a committed Democratic who is "Pro-Life, Pro-Family, and Pro-Poor," describes how difficult it has been for her to remain in the party...
...Hammer personalizes the story by contrasting the activities of an Israeli military officer outside the basilica and a Palestinian terrorist inside...
...Both sides are to be blamed for the dire situation, but it is truly troubling to read about a barrier that, when finished, will turn the land of the Palestinians into one vast ghetto...
...For the position description and information about the Association, go to www.accunet.org Books / Publications BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR...
...Prothero's book is full of tidbits of information, but many of the groups he describes are either minor blips on the religious radar screen or already consigned to the dustbin of history...
...Hau,ht I agree that Catholic college students need a magazine like Commonweal to help them understand the issues facing contemporary society...
...Nancy Malone's book will make a nice addition to my collection...
...and the books she now savors as a solitary, following a life of intellectual activity...
...Discounts 5 percent, 3 times...
...As she points out in the prologue, however, we never bring a finished self to the act of reading...
...Evangelicals are virtually ignored in this book...
...autobiographical essays by a range of Catholic professionals...
...Those works that come at just the right time in a person's life—books that, to '0 N AL The Unfinished Universe Is cod at Wor} 6hr...
...I have visited Bethlehem many times over the years...
...American Catholics and Civic Engagement: A Distinctive Voice Edited by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Rowan & Littlefield (A Sheed & Ward Book), $29.95, 293 pp...
...Nominations and applications should be sent to: William P. Leahy, SJ, Search Committee Chair, 18 Old Colony Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467...
...It is a sad and disheartening story...
...As I write, the Israeli government is erecting a huge wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories...
...What Malone says about reading and prayer is exactly what Guigo, a medieval Carthusian, noted eight centuries ago...
...Behind all of this horror and warfare is the duplicitous figure of Yasir Arafat who, from his besieged offices, permits enough carnage by Palestinian militants in the hope that international forces, fearing a Kosovo-like situation, will intervene...
...It is a sign of how deeply Catholic social teaching has shaped my life that I was stunned to learn that (a) not all Americans are dedicated to the notion of the common good, and (b) few know how to define it...
...1-800-695-9599...
...Jesus the rabbi is a Reformed Jew...
...Perhaps it is more difficult to see books in a spiritual way today because they are such a cheap commodity...
...Visual images of Jesus are also examined, including Werner Sallman's Head of Christ (Catholics were spared its popularity) and the biblical epics of Cecil B. DeMille...
...The heart of his story is a long description of the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity...
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...and he has a sympathetic account of how Palestinian Christians are caught in a vise between Israeli and Muslim militants...
...www.annerice.com Dynamic Creative Preaching PARISH MISSIONS, RETREATS FOR RELIGIOUS...
...The ferocious struggle between Israelis and Palestinians often appears in our media in predictable images: a blownup bus, rock-throwing youth, a bulldozed house, frenetic funeral corteges through the streets of Hebron, and so on...
...Part I concludes with a discussion of the Jesus-as-superstar image made popular by the so-called "Jesus Freaks" and plays like Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell...
...That is why the Catholic tradition has always argued that we are fed in the liturgy from two tables: that of the Word and that of the Bread...
...I have often walked up the road, past Rachel's tomb, now an armed fortress, to the city of Christ's birth...
...She ends with this intriguing judgment: if the GOP were not prolife many in the party would go right back to the Democrats...
...Faculty In-Service...
...My students return their study Bibles for cash when the semester is over...
...Nonetheless, the act of reading can be sacred if we realize how close it is in spirit to the search for the contemplative...
...What engaged us as adolescents may seem thin beer at fifty...
...date: _ _ / _ _ Commonweal • 475 Riverside Drive, Room 405 • New York, NY 10115 • phone: 212-662-4200 • fax: 212-662-4183 • e-mail: circulationmgr@commonwealmagazine.org Commonweal 29 June 4, 2004 use Kafka's haunting phrase, are an "axe to break the frozen sea within us...
...Reading Malone's book made me want to speak with her and make my own recommendations...
...He unpacks that paradox with a number of shrewd observations, including the fact that as Catholics become wealthier, they bring more votes to the Republicans...
...When Israeli gunners return fire, the Christians of Beit Jala are forced to flee their home...
...This book illustrates how difficult it can be for a religious institution to make its way in a secular society...
...He provides a brilliant description of how suicide cells are formed, develop, and carry out their plans...
...Malone's thesis is that reading is not much different from prayer and meditation: they are all solitary acts done in silence which engage the whole being...
...That question is addressed in an excellent essay by Clark Cochrane on Catholic health care...
...Who in his or her right mind would handle with care a John Grisham paperback after a quick read on a flight...
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...it includes a long chapter on the Mormons and their complex (and rather odd) Christological development...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham is John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...10 percent, 6 times...
...and various Asian pictures of Jesus are simply images of a divinity who emerges into the world now and again: Jesus as yogi or avatar or sage...
...One would be wrong...
...Subsequent chapters repeat the refrain first articulated by Jefferson—namely, that a distinction must be made between Jesus and Christianity...
...I think, for instance, of Edith Stein casually picking up Teresa of Avila's autobiography one evening, reading it through, and saying to herself, "This is the truth...
...He also tells the story of a Greek Orthodox monk who manages to keep relative calm in the basilica while monitoring the activities of the Franciscan friars, whose rights in the church are limited by a document hammered out by the Ottomans in the eighteenth century...
...Hammer gives faces and names to those anonymous rock throwers—youth who end up in Israeli jails only to become more radicalized...
...Edited by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, former editor of Commonweal, this is the first of two volumes intended to explore the role of Catholics in the public square...
...Or, in a classic case, Augustine picking up the codex of Romans and reading it in the garden of Alypius...
...Reading, Malone argues, is a sacramental act...
...Here we encounter Bruce Barton's The Man Nobody Knows, a book that attempted to portray Jesus as a go-getting businessCommonweal 28 June 4, 2004 man...
...John Coleman's essay showed me that my assumptions are naive...
...It is far richer and more instructive than anything you're likely to read on the op-ed page or see on cable American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon Stephen Prothero Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25, 364 pp...
...Quality subsidy publisher accepting manuscripts...
...Catholic institutions in the American public square...
...Please bill my credit card ^ Card type: Amex ^ Mastercard ^ Visa ^ Card no.: Exp...
...Visit www.sacredartwork.com Position Available THE ASSOCIATION OF CATHOLIC COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES INVITES APPLICATIONS FOR THE POSITION OF PRESIDENT...
...The fact that he ignores the religious hotbed that is the South is inexplicable...
...In the end, what struck me most was how these many "Commonweal Catholics" find themselves a minority in Democratic circles (and, not infrequently, a vilified minority), but still resist the siren call of the Reagan Democrats who now live comfortably in Republican circles...
...The merit of Joshua Hammer's book is to narrow the focus to a precise place (Bethlehem and its environs) and a precise moment (the occupation and siege of the Church of the Nativity...
...3-line minimum...
...Fine leather missals have been replaced by cheesy missalettes...
...Similar tensions are expressed by other activists, journalists, and trade unionists...
...This volume is divided into four sections: Catholic social thought in the American context...
...Encouraged by a sympathetic nun as a teenager to love books, in college she became enamored of the writers of the Catholic renaissance (Peguy, Bloy, Greene, et al...
...What happens, for example, when Catholic agencies that receive public money are expected to provide services that are morally odious to Catholics...
...many people dispute the notion of the common good and many more are divided over how to achieve it...
...Any Republican who basks in that datum should read Kate O'Beirne's essay in which she points out some traps for complacent leaders of the GOP...
Vol. 131 • June 2004 • No. 11
