Father Joe:

...The only certainty in this awful—and awfully public—family struggle is uncertainty...

...Simple: Fr...

...Most Catholics know at least one priest like Warrilow: he laughs often, can crack and take a joke, seems thoroughly pleased with the fact of being alive...

...Grant Gallicho is an associate editor of Commonweal...

...Joe's gentle work as confessor inspires Tony to a rapid metanoia, and soon Quarr starts to look like an ideal way of life to Tony...

...After Fr...

...And it hit him: "hadn't Fr...

...A monk, again, he would be...

...In the concluding sentences of the brief prologue, Hendra sets out the challenge: "How to make my dear, good friend live again...

...Former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan gave Father Joe, Tony Hendra's spiritual autobiography, a rave on the front page of the May 30 New York Times Book Review...

...Before Tony's able to get past "second base," her husband Ben, Tony's catechism tutor, walks in on them...

...No punch line...

...Turning the page to begin chapter 1, you know you are in the hands of a skilled storyteller: "How I met Father Joe: I was fourteen and having an affair with a married woman...

...One night, weeks before his sixteenth birthday, Tony is seized by despair as he recites the Office of Compline...

...The next morning, the pair strike up a dialogue on the end of Tony's initial romance with God...

...With that pledge, part 1 concludes...

...Young Tony alone in a trailer-home with his fellow parishioner Lily Bootle: "Should we...

...Given the genre's conventions, it's a miracle that Hendra man-ages both...

...see-aaa+ s.~z...

...Tony reads Meister Eck-hart on the Trinity: "When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are be-gotten...

...he is very obviously holy—and very obviously human...

...Joe serve as mini-workshops in literature and theology...

...Hendra is a gifted writer, and this is a wonderfully composed, touching, humorous, and surprisingly intellectual volume...

...Most books of this type are all heart and no head, or vice versa...

...All my conscious life he was my strongest ally, the cherished gate-keeper of my lost Eden, a light-house of faith blinking away through the oceanic fog of success and money and celebrity and possessions, my intrepid guide in the tangled rainforest of human love, my silken lifeline to the divine, my Father Joe...

...But the satisfactions of the secular world intervened, and after seeing the sketch comedy of Beyond the Fringe one night in Cambridge, "I sensed something coming together, and someMary Magennis Boston College Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (IREPM) Chestnut Hill...

...Katharine Doob Sakenfeld Philip Sheldrake Continuing a Tradition of Excellence in Educating for Ministry Since 1971 SUMMER 2005 SESSION ONE: JUNE 27—JULY 8 Richard Gaillardetz Foundations of Theology Thomas Groome Sharing Faith Kenneth Himes, OFM The Moral Dimension of the Christian Life Introduction to Old Testament POST-MASTER'S CERTIFICATE IN THE PRACTICE OF SPIRITUALITY: Years 1, 2 & 3: Colleen Griffith, Rosemary Brennan, Transformation & Holiness: CSJ, and Guest Faculty Historical Resources for a Contemporary Spirituality David Tracy The Understanding of God Today SESSION TWO: JULY 11—JULY 22 Michael Himes Ecclesiology CONFERENCE WEEK AND Jane Regan Toward Forming an Adult Church TWO-WEEK COURSE: Barbara Reid Preaching, Teaching from the Scriptures ILLY Richard Rohr, OFM & Spirituality of the Two Halves of Life Ronald Rolheiser, OMI (Evenings: 6:3o - 9:30 pm) John Shea, OSA Basic Dimensions of Pastoral Care & Counseling Helen Blier and Michael Carotta — Youth and Young Adult Ministry SESSION THREE: JULY 25—AUGUST 5 John Baldovin, SJ Sacramental/Liturgical Theology Maryanne Confoy, RSC Theology and Pastoral Practice Bernard Cooke Christology in a Post-modern World M. Shawn Copeland Hope Seeking Understanding: Eschatology for Today Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz Justice in the 21st Century: The Challenge for Religious Educators and Pastoral Ministers Daniel Madigan, SJ Christians Understanding Islam: An Imperative for Religious Educators and Pastoral Ministers Michael St...

...He be-comes aimless and distracted, even in sports: during a swim meet, "halfway down the second lap I suffered a particularly violent assault on the doctrine of the Real Presence, and slammed into the end of the pool...

...Do satirists turn into what they satirize...

...The fire and brimstone Tony expected were not in store for him at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight...

...How did he find his way back to normalcy...

...He would do even more listening in the years to come...

...Perhaps this marvel can count as one of the two the church requires for Fr...

...But this conversion wouldn't last long...

...But Father Joe is theologically and emotionally sophisticated, very funny, and very well written...

...That," Hendra writes, "was a Trinity I could live with...

...Tony Hendra denied the al-legations...

...Until Father Joe, Hendra, an English-man, was best known for his work as a humorist—in print and on stage and screen...

...See him laugh and teach and heal once more...

...This is a wallop of a scene, opening where all good spiritual memoirs begin: big sin...

...Spiritual memoirs are too often simpering, self-serving, schmaltzy, and freighted with deadly prose...

...On satire and humor, these later exchanges prove to be some of the most fascinating in the book—the word mimesis makes a cameo, and to great effect...

...Save the world through prayer...

...His vocation as a performer and a writer coalesced as his vocation as a monk evaporated...

...In Tony's case, to some extent he had...

...Joe to make sainthood...

...He sought counsel on how to do improvisation-al comedy...

...While filming Spinal Tap, Tony feels powerfully intimidated by his costars, comedy geniuses such as Michael McKean and Harry Shearer...

...And confessing again to Fr...

...take him by the hand, and lead him into the light...

...After hitting the bottom of a "profound and all-encompassing" depression, his dream of becoming a monk shattered, Tony takes off for Quarr, where Fr...

...He called it "extraordinary, luminescent, profound...

...Now he's a regular churchgoer and the father of three children from a second marriage...

...One feels something of the disorientation Hendra must have experienced in those swirling, intoxicated years...

...Joe ex-plains the selfish trap of living only for our feelings—even one's feelings toward God—Tony sees a new level of belief, "another kind of light," open before him...

...I think we should," I replied, having no idea what she was talking about...

...It's Fr...

...Joe, the monk surprises with a series of pointed, illuminating questions about such a line of work...

...The conversion, de-conversion, and re-conversion scenes may be a bit too tidy, too cinematic, but Hendra's rendering of this time at Quarr is vivid...

...she asks...

...Nothing in the book can con-firm or refute the charges, and although the Times story made the allegations sound credible, further coverage has made Tony Hendra's denials sound believable, too...

...Hendra spent many of those years boozing and snorting—"the crazed coke-anddrinking days," he calls them...

...If you find that hard to believe at the book's start, you won't by the time you reach its end...

...No sarcasm...

...She was right, of course...

...But...but" (she never used just one "but"—always at least two) "it will be the end, the point of no return, all will be lost...

...No knee slap...

...Clair Psychological Foundations of Pastoral Care Robert Ver Eecke, SJ Sacred and Liturgical Dance Study Program ;ia aras, raaaaf4eSiata, a t.Sa -,:s...

...He does what any committed Catholic would do in this situation: sends the kid to a priest...

...I don't think so...

...I'm going to save it through laughter...

...Part 2 has no shortage of amusing vignettes, but the story loses some focus, jumping around confusingly, from 1980-something to Degrees & Continuing Education Generous Financial Aid Scholarships for New England Dioceses Graduate Student Housing Web Distance Education http://www.bc.edu/irepm 1971, back to 1968, then 1972...

...When the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs back at the FaI Commonweal 2 7 September 24, 2004 ther, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and that love is the Holy Spirit...

...Joe "did nothing but listen...

...Breathless and agonized, poor Lily speaks as though she learned English Visit us on the Web @ commonwealmagazine.org from the first talkies, the perfect foil for Tony's adolescent simplicity...

...Joe twenty or more years ago said an almost identical thing...

...He was an editor at National Lampoon and at Spy magazine, and appeared in Rob Reiner's rock 'n' roll "mockumentary," This Is Spinal Tap (1984...

...Joe, or rather it's Tony's conversations with Fr...

...Despite a few relatively minor hitch-es, Father Joe remains a ray of hope in a foundering genre...

...Many of his conversations with Fr...

...Joe a saint...

...Consequently, the memoir climbed up the bestseller list...

...We follow Tony through his time as a writer/director/per-.former, and an editor at National Lampoon, into his troubled first marriage, his sense of total failure, and of irredeemable sinfulness...

...he emanates peace, a connection to God, to creation...

...Joe, that hold the second half of this memoir together...

...Roll back the rock...

...Joseph Warrilow, though, was...

...All advice came down to one word: listen...

...Admitted to the University of Cam-bridge, Tony begrudgingly left Quarr believing he'd return to the monastery after college...

...Joe, confessing into his peaceful silence, his holy under-standing, the pendulum of Tony's life swung again, toward the church, one last time...

...It's a good cliffhanger, but the second part of the book doesn't quite live up to the promise of the first...

...In the deadest of deadpan, Hendra declares Fr...

...Is mimicking evil the same as participating in it...

...On July 1, though, an article in the Times daily arts section detailed accusations of sexual molestation against Hendra by his thirty-nine-year-old daughter, Jessica...

...FQR MORE, INFORMATION: IN ADDITION: Commonweal 28 September 24, 2004...

...MA 02467-3931 800-487-1167 or 617-552-8440 email: irepm®bc,edu thing else falling away...

...As Tony at-tempts to explain his trade as a satirist to Fr...

...But the unlikely success of Father Joe, as a piece of writing, is hard to deny...