Catholicism Reborn
The sexual abuse scandal. The priest shortage. Divisions spawned by misinterpretations and excesses of Vatican II. Catholics divorcing and cohabiting in record numbers. Declining membership. Inadequate catechesis of children. Catholic colleges indistinguishable from secular institutions. The culture of death. Hostility from the secular media. Relativism. Cynicism. Materialism. Consumerism. The list goes on and on, and those who are middle-aged and Catholic or old and Catholic may be feeling a bit nervous about the future of the Church.
Tim Drake’s new book Young and Catholic is here with good news. In the hands of the “John Paul II generation,” the Church is blossoming with the “new springtime of evangelization” envisioned and figured forth so beautifully by the Holy Father. Throughout the book are testimonies by young Catholics to the life, example, speeches, and writings of the only pope they have ever known. Ranging in age from sixteen to thirty-nine, they have attended the Holy Father’s World Youth Days, listened carefully to his words, and devoured (and understood) his writing, and now they are living out and passing on what they have learned.
Drake is an award-winning staff writer for the National Catholic Register and Faith and Family magazine, and some of the material in Young and Catholic was published previously in the Register. But while those articles were excellent beacons of hope, the complete volume of stories is both exciting and reassuring. What amazes is the diversity of ways the Holy Spirit is drawing young Catholics to a deep, fruitful faith in Jesus Christ and loyalty to his Church. Drake introduces his readers to men and women from the United States and many other parts of the world: high school and college students, musicians, young professionals and business people, seminarians, those considering vocations, those who have strayed from Christianity, singles, married couples, fathers and sons—even a football star and a beauty queen whose pride in virginity is a witness to their peers.
Drake points out that “the young are a sign of contradiction simply by virtue of their existence,” because they “came of age during a time when at least one-third of their generation has been killed in the womb through legalized abortion” (5–6). He adds, “Young Catholics are also a sign of contradiction in the very practice of their faith—a faith that is often challenged daily by their peers, their teachers, the secular media, and sometimes by their own family.” Perhaps it is, in part, this very challenge that has motivated these particular men and women to long for more than what a skewed popular culture can offer.
The stories reveal young people who are on fire for the faith; have rediscovered neglected practices such as eucharistic adoration, Marian devotions, the rosary, and the Liturgy of the Hours; and are living out their deep commitment to Christ in vibrant lives of service, devotion, and chastity. The profiles are as different as the individuals themselves, but there are common threads: a mature seriousness, a deep hunger for truth and beauty, and lives suffused with meaning.
Drake describes the thriving ministries, religious orders, and organizations these young Catholics have founded as well as the influences that led them to seek holiness. He also provides a helpful appendix of addresses, phone numbers, and web sites for teen ministries, music and musicians, college organizations, Catholic colleges, young adult apostolates, theology of the body, vocation discernment, devotional resources, ecclesial realities, Catholic media, and abstinence. Under the subhead “You Shall Know Them by Their Fruits,” Drake writes, “Virtually every apostolate, movement, and organization mentioned . . . has generated vocations as a result of its work.” To cite just one of the many examples he gives, “more than three hundred former Life Teen participants have entered the seminary or are considering religious life” (159).
Young and Catholic would have been improved by an index, a flaw easy to forgive in light of all its pluses. To see the hand of God moving so profoundly in the lives of so many young Catholics is truly marvelous. Yet, lest his readers simply shout, “Mirabile dictu!” and proceed with business as usual, Drake cautions that we all have a role to play in furthering the new springtime. He writes in the introduction, “These young Catholics desperately need our encouragement and inspiration. Facing an increasingly hostile, secularized culture, they need to know that they’re not alone” (xiv–xv).
—Ann Applegarth
Young and Catholic: The Face of Tomorrow’s Church
By Tim Drake
5 stars
Sophia
267 pages
$16.95
ISBN: 1928832938
Star-Spangled Church
A book like Patriotic Leaders of the Church by John F. Fink is especially welcome at a time when the mainstream media criticize any American churchman who dares uphold Catholic doctrines and morals in public discourse. Fink’s book demonstrates that many throughout American history have been both fine Catholics and fine patriots, despite the views of an often suspicious American public. Whether dealing with non-Catholic agendas of government officials, the animosity of competing churchmen, the vitriol of anti-Catholic Protestants, or the threat of frenzied mobs demolishing Church property, America’s Catholics have had to strike a balance between fidelity to the Church and fidelity to the United States.
Patriotic Leaders of the Church chronicles the lives and work of nine famous Catholics from American history, from America’s first bishop, Archbishop John Carroll (who, at his own suggestion and with the Pope’s permission, was elected by the American clergy), to John Cardinal O’Connor of the archdiocese of New York (best known for his pro-life advocacy, but not as well known for his work in the field of military ethics). Other noteworthy portraits include those of James Cardinal Gibbons, author of the apologetics classic The Faith of Our Fathers; television personality and prolific writer Archbishop Fulton Sheen; and the pioneering convert-specialist and founder of the Paulists, Fr. Isaac Hecker. Snapshots of other notable Catholic American patriots are offered in the final chapter.
The tales of these patriotic Catholics, told in a popular style, make for a pleasant afternoon’s reading. The book’s strength is its ability to present illustrious members of the Church’s American hierarchy as accessible human beings with charming foibles. It is easy to smile over nineteenth-century Archbishop John Ireland’s gruffness, as reflected in his remark that “any immigrant who does not thank God that he is an American should in simple conscience take his foreign soul to foreign shores and crouch in misery and abjection beneath tyranny’s scepter” (98). Also winsome is Gibbons’s extravagant statement to President William Howard Taft that “you were pleased to mention my pride in being an American citizen. It is the proudest earthly title I possess” (85). The cardinal was using hyperbole, a point Fink should have made clear for any reader who might think Gibbons should have claimed Christian as his “proudest earthly title.”
Fink is not interested in fomenting controversy. Carroll’s request for a democratically elected—rather than papal-appointed—bishop is defended without qualification as justified by the fear of “the public’s adverse reaction to a bishop appointed by the Holy See” (29). Archbishop John Ireland’s founding of the Total Abstinence Society (113) is reported without comment that total abstinence from alcohol has never been required by the Catholic Church (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 2290).
He quotes President Woodrow Wilson as saying, “The Roman Church was then [in the Middle Ages], as it is now, a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become pope of Christendom; and every chancellery in Europe, every court in Europe, was ruled by these learned, trained and accomplished men, the priesthood of that great and dominant body” (18). This statement from a prominent and devout Protestant is potentially an apologetic goldmine, so I was disappointed that the end notes pointed me not to a primary source but to Archbishop Noll’s Decline of Nations.
Patriotic Leaders of the Church is not the right book for a skeptic or someone looking for a scholarly treatment of the subject. But it would be a good Catholic supplement for a student’s American history curriculum, a veteran, or someone looking for a popular, readable, and uplifting look at American Catholic history.
—Michelle Arnold
Patriotic Leaders of the Church
By John F. Fink
3 stars
Our Sunday Visitor
222 pages
$13.95
ISBN: 1592760740
Follow the Lead
This revised and updated edition of Thomas Howard’s conversion story is good news indeed. Lead, Kindly Light, its title drawn from John Henry Cardinal Newman’s poem, is the spiritual biography of a man who at age fifty gave up the religion of his family and a tenured professorship at a prestigious Evangelical college to embrace the truth of Catholicism. It is compelling reading, and Howard’s reflections on his first twenty years in the Church will interest Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike.
In describing the circuitous path that led him from Fundamentalism via Anglicanism to his reception into the Roman Catholic Church in 1985, Howard mentions the profound influence of earlier converts Newman, Henry Edward Manning, and Ronald Knox. About these great men, each of whom followed a similar route to Catholicism, he writes, “To adduce these worthies is to place oneself in company so august that any analogy between one’s own pilgrimage and theirs seems grotesque. I would only venture the point that dwarfs can follow in the footsteps of giants, albeit laboriously” (12).
Don’t let his sincere humility fool you: Not only is Howard a writer of immeasurable grace and skill, but he also has been widely influential. Surely I am not the only convert lured toward Rome by books Howard wrote while still a Protestant. His sacramental vision, expressed so beautifully in Splendor of the Ordinary and Evangelical Is Not Enough, was honey for my Baptist heart. Here, at last, was someone who understood—and wrote about—the intense beauty, mystery, depth, and order of Christian life that I had yearned to experience and clumsily sought since earliest childhood. And all converts can agree with what Howard writes in the afterword of Lead, Kindly Light concerning his decision to become Catholic: “Every yearning,.aspiration, hope, and desire that marked my life . . . has been fulfilled a thousand times over. I have dropped anchor. I have taken my place in the Church of the apostles, fathers, confessors, martyrs, bishops, saints, and all the Catholic faithful” (104–5).
To his credit, Howard writes with gratitude and charity about the Protestant world of his past, especially his strong Fundamentalist family that includes siblings Elisabeth Eliot and Dave Howard, both luminaries in the Protestant sphere. In listing the “rudimentary impressions” formed during his first years as a Catholic, he makes interesting comparisons between things Catholic and their Protestant counterparts, and he also assesses the benefits of his pious upbringing (88–96). “This earnestness has its pharisaic side,” he writes, “but I would guess that the round-eyed solemnity with which I tend to approach Catholicism now was planted in my sensibilities by Fundamentalism. Certainly the profoundly Christocentric orientation of my faith, and the immediacy that I attach to Scripture, along with my unmingled confidence in it, and my disposition to venerate the great lineage of the faithful from ‘righteous Abel’ down to John Paul II, and the huge moral weight that invests the faith for me, may all be seen as having had their planting and early nourishment in Fundamentalism” (21).
Howard writes gently, too, about the “theological, moral, and ecclesiological crossfire” that erupted within the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council, calmly stating, “Whether one is a ferocious traditionalist or a giddy revisionist, if one is seriously Catholic, there are some inalterable realities with which one has to reckon” (98). He makes it clear that the Church, after all, remains the Church. Pointing out that it has survived Nero, Diocletian, Arianism, Pelagianism, Donatism, Jansenism, and Modernism, he adds, “She has lived through Huns, khans, Goths, and Saracens from the outside, and sybaritic prelates and polygamous (or worse) clerics from the inside. And yet Christ calls the Church his pure Spouse” (101).
Howard also writes about the great blessing of his wife’s reception into the Catholic Church ten years after his own: “Since then, our life together as Catholics—daily Mass together, total harmony on matters spiritual, evening prayer said together after dinner at night—it has all been a happiness impossible to have imagined ahead of time” (103).
Finally, he praises the richness of Catholic life shaped by daily prayer, daily Mass, lectio divina, the office of readings, the rosary, the sacrament of confession, benediction, pilgrimages, and the splendor of the liturgical year—”the daily business that eventually comes to subsume everything else” (104).
—Ann Applegarth
Lead, Kindly Light: My Journey to Rome
By Thomas Howard
5 stars
Ignatius
106 pages
$8.95
ISBN: 1586170287
Passionate Dialogue
There are times when even strenuous disagreement with a substantial portion of a book can be set aside if the author engages in genuine dialogue. That is the case with After The Passion Is Gone: American Religious Consequences, edited by J. Shawn Landres and Michael Berenbaum, a roundtable discussion by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant scholars of Mel Gibson’s landmark 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ. I often was infuriated by the conclusions drawn and by the ivory-tower psychoanalysis of the hoi polloi’s enthusiasm for Gibson’s movie, but reading the book helped me better understand the reasons religious scholars objected so strongly to the film, both in its pre-production and in its final form.
In its three sections, scholars of various religious disciplines consider the public reaction to the film, the movie in the historical tradition of the passion play, and the effects on interreligious dialogue between Jews and Christians. The authors include such luminaries as Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, co-founder of the Washington, D.C., campus of the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family; Susannah Heschel, daughter of famed rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and a noted scholar and Jewish feminist; and Elliot N. Dorff, rector of the Conservative Jewish movement’s University of Judaism, the institution from which the book’s editors work.
It would be impossible to address all of the various points raised by the various authors, so I’ll concentrate on a representative point from each of the major religious traditions that are represented by the authors:
Gibson’s film wrenched the Passion out of its proper historical context. This is the hypothesis explored by Albacete in his essay “The Gibson Code?” Setting aside the distasteful and scantily supported correlation between The Passion of the Christ and Dan Brown’s anti-Christian novel The Da Vinci Code, let’s consider Albacete’s argument that “The Passion is out of touch with the spirit of Catholicism in its ‘just the facts’ approach to the Passion story” (108). Albacete contends that Gibson’s over-reliance on the Gospel record ignores the context of the “experiences of the first Christian communities” (ibid.). While one can agree that a Catholic approach to Scripture always keeps Sacred Tradition as a touchstone in scriptural interpretation, Albacete’s argument ignores the fact that the evangelists, while often rearranging events and giving theological interpretation when necessary, took a “just the facts” approach to their record of Christ’s life (cf. Luke 1:1–4; John 19:35; 20:30–31; 21:24–25).
Jesus committed suicide. In a praiseworthy effort to uphold the Christian understanding that neither all the Jews of Christ’s time nor of all time were personally responsible for Christ’s execution, the proposition was raised by Christian author Robert A. Faggen that Christ committed suicide: “God becomes incarnate in man and kills himself in an attempt to put an end to all of humankind’s failed sacrifices and brutalities” (120). But as Frank Sheed pointed out in To Know Christ Jesus, “Calvary was not suicide” (360). Christ offered himself but did not kill himself.
The movie was anti-Semitic. Although Jewish author Gary L. Gilbert offers a few good points, such as Gibson’s choice to include the controversial line from Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be on us and on our children!”) while omitting the subtitle, other shots were completely off-target. Gilbert’s concern that all of the unbelieving Jews had their heads covered while Jesus and his disciples were bareheaded ignores the fact that Judas the traitor was also bareheaded. Had Judas been the only one among Christ’s followers to wear a prayer shawl, Gilbert’s complaint would have validity.
Gilbert also asserts that “nothing in the film” suggests that all of humanity shares the guilt of Christ’s death, so only a viewer theologically predisposed to believe it would have seen such a theme (132). But when we consider the prominent display of the verse from Isaiah 53:5 (“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities”) at the beginning of the film, nothing short of a direct announcement by Mel Gibson at the start of the film could have made the theme clearer. And that would have been poor theater.
Love it or loathe it, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ stirs strong emotions in its viewers. The reaction from the audience is almost as fascinating as the film itself, because the film often seems to act as a mirror, reflecting back the biases of the viewer. This seemed to be the case in many of the arguments offered in the book. Nevertheless, After The Passion Is Gone: American Religious Consequences is a must-read for those who wish to understand better the brouhaha surrounding Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
—Michelle Arnold
After The Passion Is Gone: American Religious Consequences
Edited by J. Shawn Landres and Michael Berenbaum
3 stars
AltaMira Press
348 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0759108153
Glowing Addition
Rarely does a proposed new prayer attract the attention of the Catholic faithful as a whole, but that has happened with the luminous mysteries. With Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, we were introduced to a fourth set of mysteries to complement the three on which millions have contemplated for centuries. The luminous mysteries—the “mysteries of light”—reflect upon five events in the life of Christ that should be important in our daily prayer. It is this supposition that inspired Tim Gray to write The Luminous Mysteries: Biblical Reflections on the Life of Christ, a thoughtfully detailed companion to these mysteries.
In addition to detailing the biblical foundations of each luminous mystery, Gray draws upon Catholic Tradition, applying the wisdom of the Church Fathers to bolster the relevance of these reflections. The Luminous Mysteries is part Bible-study and part catechism in this respect.
The Gospels reflect little on Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River, yet Gray argues that this event, which inspired the first luminous mystery, has more relevance for our faith than is implied in the Gospels’ brevity. “[The] baptism of Jesus profoundly impacted the cosmos,” writes Gray, pointing out the symbolism in the event’s setting: the Jordan as a symbol of new life for the Israelites and the coming together of John the Baptist and Jesus as a reenactment of the story of Elijah and Elisha. With this baptism, Jesus makes known his intention to begin his public ministry, an intention endorsed by the voice of God from heaven. Gray ties this story to the apostle Paul, whose letters emphasize the importance of Christian baptism, and St. Hippolytus, who writes that Christ’s baptism opened the gates of heaven to all.
As the rosary is a Marian prayer, it would make sense for the luminous mysteries to include the wedding in Cana, a high point of visibility for the Mother of God in the Bible and the site of Jesus’ first miracle. Gray says that it is at this event that Jesus “begins to re-do what Adam had undone,” meaning his work of redeeming mankind, and it is at this event that the concept of intercessory prayer (as Mary intercedes on the behalf of the wedding couple) is validated. Gray also turns to St. John Chrysostom, who writes that Christ’s changing of the water into wine is akin to his transforming the wills of sinners.
The proclamation of the kingdom of God is the third mystery, which, Gray writes, is a call to sinners to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,” words that are as applicable and necessary today as they were when they were first spoken. As this mystery encompasses more than one passage of the Bible, Gray notes the many parables of Christ and their relation to this mystery, capping off the section with Origen, who in simple words explains the treasury of Christ’s teachings and proclamation.
The Transfiguration—the meeting on the mountain between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah—is the fourth luminous mystery and, according to Gray, is a “well-timed event” through which his disciples are given hope for the future of Christ’s influence. It is this hope that will carry his followers to preach the good news in the wake of his Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Gray notes that before the Transfiguration Jesus’ disciples fret over his prophesying his death; hence the Transfiguration serves to allay their fears. The Transfiguration “shows us his true humanity . . . that reflects the image and likeness of God in glory,” a glory comparable to, in the words of Pope St. Leo the Great, the “sun’s brightness.”
The final luminous mystery acknowledges the central focus of our faith and worship. The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper is the heart of our Mass, Christ’s “eternal gift of self in thanksgiving and love to the Father.” Here Gray details biblical precedence to the Catholic belief in the Real Presence in a straightforward manner that would be helpful to anyone having trouble understanding this tenet of the Catholic faith. St. John Chrysostom’s reflection at the end of this section further stresses the importance of this mystery in prayer and in our spiritual lives.
The Luminous Mysteries, as perhaps the first work of length outside official Vatican documents to focus upon this prayer, provides not only deeper insight into these prayers but deeper insight into our faith. It also lends itself easily to group study because of its inclusion of a series of reflections at the end of each section.
—Kathryn Lively
The Luminous Mysteries: Biblical Reflections on the Life of Christ
By Tim Gray
5 stars
Emmaus Road
144 pages
$11.95
ISBN: 1931018200