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THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY OCT. 14, 2013 $3.50 Of Many Things Published by Jesuits of the United States 1958. One of the first things he saw he Society of Jesus and China 106 West 56th Street have a long and complicated at the police station was a poster New York, NY 10019-3803 history, one that goes back to indicting him: “Tang Yee-ming is Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 T the most faithful running dog of Subscriptions: 1-800-627-9533 the very beginnings of the order. One of the co-founders of the Jesuits, the the reactionary Vatican.” Although www.americamagazine.org he was neither officially tried nor facebook.com/americamag great St. Francis Xavier, died during his twitter.com/americamag attempt to reach the Chinese mainland. sentenced, he was kept in prison for the next 22 years. Much of that time Thirty years later, in 1582, Matteo Ricci, Editor in Chief Matt Malone, S.J. he spent in solitary confinement S.J., succeeded where Xavier had failed, Executive Editors in a tiny and almost lightless cell bringing the Catholic faith as well as Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy furnished only with a bench for Western science, mathematics and Managing Editor Kerry Weber sleeping. astronomy to the Eastern world. Today, Since he was not permitted either Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. at the China Millennium Monument to write or receive letters, his relatives Senior Editor & Chief Correspondent in Beijing, Father Ricci is the only Kevin Clarke and friends presumed by the 1970s Westerner included in the pantheon that he was dead. But on a morning Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. of those recognized for outstanding in June 1980, he was told that the Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. contributions to the development of Government, in its “great clemency,” Associate Editors Chinese civilization. was freeing him even though he Luke Hansen, S.J., Patrick J. Howell, S.J. In the four centuries since Father was still unreformed. The rosary Assistant Editors Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., Olga Ricci’s exploits, the relations between confiscated 22 years before was Segura, Joseph McAuley, Ashley McKinless the Jesuits and China have closely returned, but not the episcopal ring Art Director Stephanie Ratcliffe paralleled those between the West and set with a ruby.... Columnists Colleen Carroll Campbell, John J. Beijing. America’s most significant “I believe that one reason why Conley, S.J., Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela coverage of the church in China was they put me in prison,” he writes, Alaimo O’Donnell, Margot Patterson, Michael in 1988, when we published excerpts “was that they wanted me to change Rossmann, S.J. from the newly released memoirs of my thoughts and religious ideology.” Correspondents Dominic Tang, S.J., (d. 1995), the last His jailers did not use the physical John Carr –Washington, D.C. Roman Catholic archbishop of Canton torture that has been commonplace Moderator, Catholic Book Club Kevin Spinale, S.J. officially recognized by the Holy See. under right-wing regimes in “Catholic” countries like Argentina, Editorial e-mail The following reflection by John W. [email protected] Donohue, S.J., appeared in this column Brazil, Chile and Honduras. But on July 9, 1988. MatT Malone, S.J. the Archbishop did have to endure relentlessly harsh confinement V.P. & Chief Operating Officer with the meagerest rations of food Lisa Pope Archbishop Tang was born in Hong and clothing and with frequent Operations Staff Rosa Del Saz, Chris Keller, Kerry Goleski, Steven Kong on May 13, 1908; entered interrogations that sometimes lasted Keller, Glenda Castro, Judith Felix the Society of Jesus in 1930, and all day and night.... Advertising contact was ordained in 1941. Nine years “One day repeated another,” he [email protected]; 212-515-0102 later, when he was running a parish writes, “one year repeated another.” © 2013 America Press, Inc. and school in Shekki, a Southeast- In the most uplifting of his vividly China town not far from Macau, instructive pages, Archbishop Tang Rome appointed him Apostolic describes how he filled those prison Administrator of Canton. A days with a schedule of prayer, Chinese nun inclined to gloomy meditation and hymns. That program prophecy told him, “Your vocation kept him, he says, from losing either to be a bishop is a vocation to be faith or heart. Besides, he adds, imprisoned.” God has given him “the grace of an

Bishop Tang, who as optimistic spirit.” And so he ends the Cover: People carry a crucifix on top of Qiku administrator did not have the title stirring testimony of this remarkable Mountain in Taiyuan, China, on March 22. A of archbishop, guessed that much little book with a serene affirmation: Mass was celebrated on top of the mountain, a historic holy place for local believers, to pray for himself and was not surprised “God’s help and protection is always the newly elected Pope Francis. CNS photo/Jon when he was arrested in February with the Church.” Woo, Reuters Contents www.americamagazine.org Vol. 209 No. 10, Whole No. 5025 October 14, 2013

Articles 14 Living the China Dream Can Chinese leaders manage an ascendant Middle Kingdom? John Frankenstein

21 ‘Let China Love You’ Building relationships with Catholic China Robert E. Carbonneau

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

4 Current Comment

5 editorial The Strength to Care 14 6 state of the Question 8 signs of the Times

12 Column Reading Nature Thoreauly Margot Patterson 25 faith in Focus A Delicate Mission David Peters One of Us Camille D’Arienzo 30 Philosopher’s Notebook R.I.P. Jacqueline Pascal John J. Conley 32 Poem The Eternal Ingénue Richard O’Connell 47 the Word An Annoying Faith John W. Martens

21 BOOKS & CULTURE 31 Fall books 1 The Guns at Last Light; Thomas Aquinas; George Orwell; Country Girl; Without a Claim; The Life and Death of Poetry; René Girard and Secular Modernity IDEAS The Mary Rose and English Catholicism

ON THE WEB The debut of “The Ignatian Educator,” a blog on Catholic education featuring Matt Emerson. Plus, comedy writer Tom Leopold talks about his conversion to Catholicism on our podcast. All at americamagazine.org. 40 CURRENT COMMENT

government’s crisis strategy lacks a “growth impulse.” A Choice for Peace? The new government will have to steer Germany Surveying the smoldering Westgate Mall in Nairobi, through a dramatic shift to renewable energy and cope Kenya, and All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan, it is with the needs of an aging population. The latest census hard to find hope. How many more innocent lives will be shows Germany has more people age 65 and over than it taken in such depraved attacks? People around the world has children. Too often the economic considerations of were dumbfounded and furious about the specific targeting the Merkel government have neglected a concern for the of completely vulnerable and defenseless people: women effect on common laborers, pensioners or the unemployed. and children, families out shopping or attending Mass. Coalition politics could provide a healthier balance. The What activities should be more taken for granted as safe Social Democrats want a national minimum wage and and predictable? But these are not safe and predictable higher taxes on the wealthy, both opposed by Ms. Merkel. times. Bild, Germany’s best-selling daily, provided a telling It would be easy to remain in the grip of the anger such comment: “Taxes, justice and the euro weren’t the decisive brutality provokes and reach for vengeance. Indeed, at this factors. The question was: Who do people trust to rule moment Kenyan and Pakistani authorities are probably calmly, sensibly and with strong nerves?” contemplating counterstrikes against Al Shabab militants in Somalia and the Taliban in Pakistan. Will the United States be involved, officially or not, in facilitating that grim Let’s Get Reciprocal accounting? Such is the state of mutual suspicion between Iran and It may only infuriate some at this sorrowful time to the United States that an attempt by Iran’s new president, suggest that breaking the cycle of violence that has ensnared Hassan Rouhani, to portray a new, moderate face of the Western and Islamic worlds is a better way forward than Iranian leadership soon became embroiled in controversy. another punitive strike that will only perpetuate it. On the Mr. Rouhani, in an apparent effort to make amends for day of the Peshawar bombing, Pope Francis deplored the the denialism of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attack as a “wrong choice” that “cannot stand.” He added: “It described the Holocaust in an interview on Sept. 24 with serves nothing. Only the path of peace can build a better CNN as a “crime that the Nazis committed toward the Jews” world.” Now the choice is before the justly aggrieved. What and called it “reprehensible and condemnable.” But CNN’s choice will they make? translation, even though delivered by an interpreter provided by the Iranians themselves, was quickly challenged by Iran’s semi-official news agency, Fars, which accused CNN of Germany’s Future fabricating portions of the interview. The sweeping victory of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s This interpretive scrimmage is a small indication of the Christian Democratic Party and its Bavarian sister party, the delicacy and dexterity that will be required as the United Christian Social Union, on Sept. 22 came up just short of an States drafts its response to Iran’s overtures. The Obama outright majority in the Bundestag, the German parliament. administration must reciprocate, as America recently Ironically, Ms. Merkel’s center-right coalition partners, the implored (“Making Peace With Iran,” Editorial, 8/12). pro-business Free Democrats, garnered only 4.7 percent of The administration must make the most of this rare the vote, just short of the 5 percent minimum required for opportunity and reward Mr. Rouhani for the risk he is seats in the Bundestag. The new coalition will necessarily taking back home. include one of the parties of the left, either the Social Yes, there are many obstacles to a sustainable détente Democrats or the Greens, and Ms. Merkel will need to make between the United States and Iran (not to mention Israel), concessions. and there are cross-cultural challenges, the disruptive power Ms. Merkel’s approval ratings regularly top 60 percent. of words and symbols and the heavy legacy of history to Germans are grateful that she has presided over a strong contend with. But if not now, when? And if not with Mr. economy with low unemployment and has guided Rouhani, then with whom? This is the time, this is the man, them through the turmoil that has beset other euro- this is the opportunity the nation has been waiting for to zone countries. Meanwhile, Peer Steinbrück, the Social rebuild a relationship with Iran and to begin to unravel the Democratic challenger, has accused her of prescribing a many threats to world peace scattered across the complex “deadly dose” of austerity for the euro zone, saying the landscape of the Middle East.

4 America October 14, 2013 EDITORIAL The Strength to Care

here was a mournful tone in President Obama’s will allow broader restrictions eulogy on Sept. 22 for the 12 victims of the Navy on gun ownership and use, but TYard shooting in Washington, D.C., as he lament- for now the court is stymied by ed America’s “creeping resignation” to gun violence. “Our the anachronistic worldview hearts are broken again,” he said. “The question is, do we care of the Second Amendment. enough?” For that reason America pro- Have we become so numb to gun violence that a dead- posed repealing the Second Amendment (Editorial, 2/25) ly attack in our nation’s capital fails to shock? We still perform in order to allow Congress and state legislatures full discre- what has become an American ritual: a speech of consolation, a tion to pass appropriate measures to reduce gun violence. day of mourning, outraged calls for stricter gun control and an Aggressive owner registration for all weapons, regardless assurance—like President Obama’s on Dec. 14 after the slaugh- of point of sale, is needed as a basic, commonsense way to ter at Sandy Hook Elementary School—that we will “come to- prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands, whether of gether and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies the mentally ill, young people or criminals. Comprehensive like this.” But in the wake of the Navy Yard killings, it seems safety training and minimum storage requirements should we could barely go through the motions. Whether compassion also be required for anyone seeking the responsibility of gun fatigue has left us inured to the sufferings of victims, or we are ownership. resigned to a political stalemate over any new gun regulations, Fred Hiatt, in a column in The Washington Post (9/22), we are allowing mass violence to become “the new normal.” suggests that gun reform has been stymied because its oppo- A recent study by Michael Siegel of Boston University, nents are “focused, passionate, unyielding and indefatigable,” covering all 50 states from 1981 to 2010, demonstrates that while the reformers cannot agree on a common message. the more guns there are in any one place, the more homicides Other social movements have succeeded because they focused and suicides there will be. The study, the largest ever of its kind, on a clear, immediate goal. Mr. Hiatt, citing anti-smoking cam- which appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, re- paigns and vehicular safety regulations, makes the case that ports that for each 1 percent increase in household gun own- “public health” is an argument that appeals to many Americans ership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent. and could be effective in the campaign against gun violence. Another study, published last month by the Urban Institute, As pro-life people of faith, we believe that gun con- revealed that in 2010 alone there were 36,341 emergency trol is a pro-life issue and that the pro-life movement should room visits and 25,024 hospitalizations due to firearm inju- be passionate, unyielding and indefatigable in our efforts to ries. Most of the visits involved low-income young men. One end this scourge. As Pope Francis reminds us, reform takes recent shooting spree in Chicago (Sept. 20-22) left four dead time as it moves from discernment to laying the foundations and 15 wounded. for action. Perhaps a coalition with a steering committee of While the litany of shootings—at Columbine, bishops, ecumenical partners, leaders of religious orders and Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Aurora, Tucson, Newtown—has lay persons could lead the faith-based effort. It should form dominated the headlines and television news, other forc- soon. President Obama said in Washington that tears and es have blocked action. These include the National Rifle prayers are not enough: “We’re going to have to change.” He Association, gun manufacturers and gun marketers like ended with a quote from Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain which Walmart, the biggest seller of firearms and ammunition cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our in the United States. Add to that the television programs own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the aw- and Hollywood films in which all disputes are settled with ful grace of God.” In short, God will give us the strength to do shoot-outs, splattering walls and street corners with blood; this. Robert F. Kennedy quoted the same passage just hours and finally there are the politicians who pocket campaign after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Two months contributions from gun makers in return for maintaining later Mr. Kennedy, like his brother, fell from a bullet fired by the status quo. someone who should not have had a gun. The question we What can we do? Perhaps someday the Supreme Court face is, do we still care?

October 14, 2013 America 5 STATE OF THE QUESTION Francis’ Personality People are focusing, I think, too much on the [passages about] abortion and Reactions to the Interview contraception. The church is not going to change its views on that. Excerpts from online commentaries on “A Big Heart What we should focus on is the Open to God,” by Antonio Spadaro, S.J. (9/30) personality of Francis, a remarkable personality. I really recommend every- Opening Doors the great truths of the church with the body reads this, a gorgeous personality The Francis factor, so to speak, is his political agendas of the far right, after of humility, of spirituality, of religiosi- focus on opening doors. How will an American hierarchy obviously more ty. If you just read that interview, you anyone be open to Catholicism if they interested in control than in love— see a man you tremendously admire, cannot get past knowledge of some of came like a shower in the desert. All who I think is going to have a tremen- dous effect on the world. the prohibitions, without knowledge the intimations we had seen since his David Brooks of the context, without invitation, papacy began, the hints and guesses, PBS NewsHour (9/20) without a love that compels them ra- emerged in language as powerful as it diating from Christians? was accessible. Home of All Kathryn Jean Lopez Andrew Sullivan What Francis is saying is not that lib- National Review Online (9/19) The Dish (9/19) erals are up in Rome right now and Never Prouder Journalistic Gold Mine conservatives are down—haha, now see Reading this interview gave me great- An extraordinary moment in journal- how you like it!—but on the contrary er insight into my Jesuit vocation and ism. That’s the only way to describe the that labels and tiny little boxes have no into our Jesuit pope. What is clear is Sept. 30 issue of America magazine. place in a faith that is so much bigger that he does not think like a classicist How the Jesuits sat on this inter- than that. Francis is not a “right wing- who sees the world in unchanging cat- view, done over three days in August, is er,” but he’s not a winger at all.... He is egories. He is a storyteller like Jesus, amazing in the nothing’s-a-secret-world speaking to all of us when he says that not a philosopher. He thinks in nar- of Wikileaks. As I read the interview, I the Catholic Church “is the home of rative, not philosophical principles. kept saying, “Wow! This is incredible.” all, not a small chapel that can hold He thinks like a pastor understanding “Pope Francis: The Exclusive only a small group of selected people.” the history of the church but wanting Melinda Henneberger Interview” is a journalistic gold mine. The Washington Post (9/20) to move with God’s people confident- It may stand as America magazine’s ly into the future. He trusts that the greatest moment in its 104 years of pub- A Useful Lesson Spirit is alive and well in the people of lishing, a tribute to the Jesuits and the [Pope Francis] didn’t right past God. Catholic press and journalism overall. wrongs. Let’s be clear about that. I have never been prouder to be Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M. Didn’t call for substantive change to The Washington Post (9/19) a Jesuit or prouder of my church or church teachings and traditions that more surprised by the Spirit. indeed demand re-examination, in- Thomas J. Reese, S.J. Radically Christ-Centered National Catholic Reporter (9/19) It’s going to take some time for both the cluding the belief that homosexual church and the world to grow accus- acts themselves are sinful. Didn’t chal- A Shower in the Desert tomed to an evangelical papacy with lenge the all-male, celibate priesthood. This was a day the new pope proved distinctive priorities.... Jorge Mario Didn’t speak as progressively—and how remarkable he is—simply for Bergoglio is determined to redirect the fairly—about women’s roles in the speaking the way Jesus spoke. No church’s attention, and the world’s at- church as he should. ideologies, no rigid certainties, com- tention, to Jesus Christ. In this, his pa- But he also didn’t present himself mitted to community, engaged with pacy will be in continuity with those of as someone with all the answers. No, the margins, speaking of mercy, mer- John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pope he stepped forward—shuffled for- cy, mercy. Readers will, I hope, forgive Francis is going to be radically Christ- ward, really—as someone willing to me for some of the gushing. But those centered in his own way, though, and guide fellow questioners. In doing so 12,000 words—after such a long, dark some may find that way jarring. he recognized that authority can come period of rigid enforcement of ortho- George Weigel from a mix of sincerity and humility doxy, after the hideous conflation of National Review Online (9/20) as much as from any blazing, blinding

6 America October 14, 2013 conviction, and that stature is a respect bit naïve to scatter seed promiscuous- grounded in a theology of women. This you earn, not a pedestal you grab. That’s ly, hoping it will take root even as we will lead, he seems to imply, to finding a useful lesson in this grabby age of know the soil rocky. But I don’t doubt an authoritative role for women. ours. Pope Francis is also a bit astute. He’ll Michelle A. Gonzalez Frank Bruni see what’s fruitful and tend the fragile National Catholic Reporter (9/26) The New York Times (9/21) shoots of faith where the Gospel takes root. Correction: Because of a production error, Hard to Refute R. R. Reno a sentence in “A Big Heart Open to God,” To be sure, many Catholics whole- First Things (9/23) by Antonio Spadaro, S.J. (9/30), was heartedly embraced the change in inadvertently omitted. In the section on tone and spirit in which the pope dis- Francis Needs Correction Women in the Life of the Church (page cussed difficult questions like abortion. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, he 28), the beginning of the pope’s response Unfortunately, some deeply involved in wrote that he rebuked the first pope, St. should read: “He answers: ‘It is necessary the prolife movement have taken those Peter, “to his face because he clearly was to broaden the opportunities for a stron- remarks as a rebuke. That is an overre- wrong.” ger presence of women in the church. I am action and misinterpretation of what Even if given the most charitable wary of a solution that...’” etc. The first the pope said. reading, Pope Francis’ recent interview sentence was accidentally deleted during Obviously, Francis was objecting to with Jesuit publications was alarming the editing of the sentence that follows the uncompromising and confronta- in its spirit-of-Vatican II liberalism.… it. America regrets the omission, and we tional rhetoric of some Catholic activ- Indeed, the need for a St. Paul to correct thank The National Catholic Reporter for ists. Why? Because that approach is him grows with each passing week as bringing the matter to our attention. simply not working. Worse, it is pre- his pontificate emboldens the church’s venting the larger gospel message from enemies and undercuts her friends and being heard both within and beyond most loyal members. TWITTER TALK the Catholic community. With a third George Neumayr This is what matters—>MT @chris- of all baptized Catholics abandoning The American Spectator (9/25) lhayes: Seriously, he keeps this up, and the church, and those who remain in- I’m gonna start going to Mass. Rejection of Patriarchy Joshua McElwee creasingly divided on ecclesial, cultural, [The pope’s] comments on “female @joshjmac43m and political questions, the pope’s diag- ma- ” stood out as his most provoca- nosis is hard to refute. Is it not time, as chismo tive statement. Francis rejects a female Plea: please read the actual @Pontifex Francis urged, to “find a new balance” in grounded in an essentialist interview, not a media writeup. The presenting the church’s teaching to an machismo vision of men and women. Machismo is instantaneous spin is dizzying. often doubting flock and a sometimes Michael Bayer the Spanish word used to describe the hostile secular world? @mbayer1248 The Editors particular incarnation of sexism in Commonweal (9/23) Latino/a and Latin American commu- What an amazing interview. Worth nities. It is often mistranslated to mean reading in its entirety, even if you’re not Naïve and Astute “macho” or “manly.” This is not the case. Catholic, even if you’re not religious. The Holy Father is trying to find his While it has a history of evoking chiv- pastordan way—we’re all trying to find our way— alry and gallantry, today in Spanish it is @pastordan19m in a sometimes (but not always, as he most often used to describe the patriar- rightly emphasizes) hostile secular cul- chal structure of life in Latin America. As Pope Francis said today: “I am a ture. That Francis will make mistakes By evoking the word machismo, sinner.” There is something cathartic is certain. He says as much himself. I Francis is not only taking a criti- about saying that out loud to yourself. think he has in this interview. cal stance against social hierarchy; We should all try it. Perhaps this and other mistakes are he is also reminding us of his Latin Arsalan Iftikhar @TheMuslimGuy30m to be expected. He warns us that we American roots. He is rejecting this pa- all must risk mistakes if we’re to bear triarchal, essentialist understanding of New pope says he doesn’t want to witness to Christ in the world. We women that limits their full humanity focus on controversial opinions, the must sow the seed of the Gospel and and the full humanity of men as well, Internet cheers. Ignoring that he still see where it grows, which is how I read reducing them to gender stereotypes.... holds those positions. the spirit of his remarks in this inter- Francis calls us into a deeper conver- Michael Pruitt view. To a certain degree we must be a sation about the authority of women @neoookami4m

October 14, 2013 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

United Nations On Syria, Iran and More: Small Steps to World Peace .N. Week, otherwise known as the U.N. 68th General Assembly, ended on Sept. 30 in New York with some notable successes. Iran and the UUnited States in speeches and statements issued by their respective presidents strongly outlined their geopolitical differences. But the two lead- ers managed to close some diplomatic distance, which offered hope for a more meaningful rapprochement in the near future, including a deal that might finally settle the controversy over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons development and end Iran’s diplomatic and economic isolation. A deal to track down and remove chemical weapons from the civil war in Syria was also concluded with the endorsement of the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 27. It remains to be seen if the chemical weapons agreement can lead to an opening to bring a ceasefire and a possible resolution to a two-year old conflict that has sent millions into flight and killed more than 110,000 people. And among other discussions, presentations and diplomatic initiatives, the United States signed on, despite a vehement protest from an indignant National Rifle Association, to the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. That international effort aims to finally create a regulatory regime aimed at containing the deadly, destabiliz- ing global small-arms and conventional weapons trade. The United States joined 17 other signatory states on Sept. 25, pushing the total number of the trea- perfected and adapted to the needs [of Ban Ki-moon said 80 percent of the ty’s signatories to more than half of the history].” He implored the member world’s persons with disabilities were U.N.’s member states. representatives to assume the United of working age and the same percent- These developments and more Nations’ historic responsibility to pre- age of disabled people lived in devel- during the 68th General Assembly serve the global peace. “It is enough to oping countries. He said too many of can be seen as positive steps toward a remember that the blood of millions them lived in poverty, suffered from more peaceful world. But the continu- of men, numberless and unprecedent- social exclusion and lacked access to ing violence in Syria and the greeting ed sufferings, useless slaughter and education, employment and health received by Iranian President Hassan frightful ruin are the sanction of the care as well as social and legal support Rouhani when he returned home— covenant which unites you, in a solemn systems. Kevin Clarke his car was pelted with eggs by Islamic pledge which must change the future hardliners after a close call with a history of the world: No more war, handshake from President Obama in war never again,” he said. “It is peace, New York—suggest how precarious peace which must guide the destinies Protecting Childhood even small steps to peace can be. The of peoples and of all mankind.” assembly ended just shy of the anni- Other small “peaces” achieved Dramatic Decline versary on Oct. 4 of Pope Paul VI’s during a week of negotiations and Continues in 1965 address to the United Nations. presentations included the highlight- Forty-eight years ago, Pope Paul had ing of progress on the Millennium Child Labor urged the members of the U.N.’s gen- Development Goals to halve extreme he global number of child eral assembly to “go forward.” world poverty by 2015. This year the laborers has fallen by a third “The edifice which you have con- needs of disabled people were added Tsince 2000, according to a new structed must never collapse,” the to the complex of issues identified in report from the International Labor pope had said. “It must be continually the M.D.G.’s. U.N. Secretary-General Organization. There were almost 78

8 America October 14, 2013 between 2000 and 2012, according to added. “The ironic twist is that we need I.L.O researchers. Much more remains to both further prevent child labor and to be done, however, if the global com- increase youth employment.” munity is going to reach the I.L.O.’s The good news on reduced child labor goal of eliminating all the worst forms is welcome. Some I.L.O. analysts feared of child labor by 2016. social hardships caused by the global “We are moving in the right di- economic crisis of 2008–09 and its af- rection, but progress is still too slow,” termath might have led to an increase in said Guy Ryder, director general of the the number of families resorting to child I.L.O. “If we are serious about ending labor in order to make ends meet. The the scourge of child labor in the foresee- report cautions that close attention must able future, then we need a substantial be paid to the risk of child labor among stepping-up of efforts at all levels. There older children when the global economy are 168 million good reasons to do so.” starts to recover. And in many countries, “Global progress in reducing child the progress that has been achieved labor is heartening,” said Bill O’Keefe, is fragile and must be monitored and vice president for government rela- strengthened to ensure sustainability. tions and advocacy for Catholic Relief The incidence of child labor is, not Services, noting that worldwide C.R.S. surprisingly, highest in poorer coun- SYRIA BREAKTHROUGH? Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon supports education and social protec- tries. But when seen in absolute terms, (second from right) addresses the tion programs “that seek to prevent middle-income countries are host to Security Council on Sept. 27. children from being exploited.” the largest numbers of child laborers. “In Guatemala, for example, C.R.S.’s That means, according to the report, ‘My Rights Matter’ project is helping that the fight against child labor is by million fewer child laborers in 2012 9,000 children to stay in school and no means limited to the poorest coun- than in 2000. The Asian and Pacific look forward to a brighter future,” he tries. The same general pattern holds region registered by far the largest ab- said. “Progress from efforts such as true across households within coun- solute decline in child labor among 5- these as well as the policy changes and tries—child labor is much more com- to 17-year-olds. The total number of other steps the I.L.O. report documents mon in poorer households but is not children in hazardous work declined is not the same as success, though,” he limited to them. by more than half. Despite that good news, last year there were still nearly 168 million child laborers worldwide, including more than 85 million still trapped in the worst forms of child labor—forced into slavery, trafficked into the sex industry, exploited in the drug trade or working in dangerous mines or manufacturing sites and as farm laborers. The I.L.O. estimates that some 22,000 children are killed at work worldwide every year. But the latest estimates show that real advances have been made in the fight against child labor, particularly over the last four years and especially WORK OF LITTLE HANDS. A boy among younger children. Child labor carries timber destined for a mine for this group fell by over one-third tunnel in the Philippines

October 14, 2013 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In Homs: Hunger ‘Knocking on the Door’ NEWS BRIEFS A Dutch Jesuit in the besieged Syrian On Sept. 30 Pope Francis announced city of Homs said those who remain he would declare his two predecessors are facing shortages of food and fuel. Blessed John XXIII and John Paul II “Disease has captured some of us and saints at a single ceremony on April 27. is knocking on the door of others,” • In the largest donation in Georgetown Frans van der Lugt, S.J., wrote in a University’s history, the alumnus Frank letter released by the Catholic charity H. McCourt Jr. has contributed $100 Aid to the Church in Need on Sept. million to create the McCourt School 26. “No food has entered our besieged of Public Policy. • The World Bank re- region for more than 15 months,” he At prayer in Cuba ports that the world’s CO emissions said. “We are surviving on what little 2 grew 4.9 percent in 2010, the third largest annual increase since 1990, food remains in our homes.” Father van while China, the United States, India, Russia and Japan continue to der Lugt said that during the winter, be the top five emitters. • According to Pew Research, three-quar- residents would “suffer from hunger, ters of U.S. Catholics (76 percent) say the church should permit cold, lack of electricity and water…. birth control; about half (54 percent) favor same-sex marriage, and How can we heat a room and, if we a third say homosexual behavior is a sin. • Bishop Richard E. Pates find food, how will we manage to cook of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on it?” he asked. Government forces have International Justice and Peace, reiterated a call to lift the embargo recaptured much of Homs, but about on Cuba in a letter of Sept. 26 to the Obama administration, arguing 3,000 people are estimated to remain that “engagement will do more than isolation to advance human rights in the besieged, rebel-controlled neigh- and alleviate human suffering.” • At a White House summit on Sept. borhoods. 16, women religious noted a rising groundswell of support to restrict human trafficking across the United States, said Margaret Nacke, a October Push for member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia, Kan. Immigration Reform Dozens of events around the country took place Oct. 5 as part of the March of United Latinas, met in José Martí er affiliations. “This means,” says Gray, for Immigrant Dignity and Respect. park in the neighborhood known as “that Catholics marrying these days are Labor unions, churches and other so- Little Havana. just as likely...to celebrate their marriag- cial justice organizations have sched- es at the beach or country club than in uled events to rally supporters of com- Catholics Marry, their parish.” What impact does being prehensive immigration reform as a married outside of the church have lead-in to a day-long rally and concert Just Not at Church on divorce odds? “We don’t know,” he in Washington on Oct. 8. In California, The National Vital Statistics System writes. “We need another survey!” At the focus was on the immigrants who estimates that there were 2,118,000 27 percent, Catholics who “experience produce the food eaten around the marriages celebrated in the United divorce” (from other Catholics) are far country. In the southwestern corner of States in 2011. Only 163,775 mar- fewer than in other U.S. denomina- Arizona, gatherings were planned at riages were celebrated in U.S. Catholic tions. That is still a daunting figure, he three Catholic churches in Yuma at 5 churches. That is just 7.7 percent of all says. “It is important to remember that a.m. to board buses to Phoenix, where marriages, Mark Gray, of Georgetown’s the percentage represents more than 11 there was a march through the streets Center for Applied Research in the million individuals,” Gray writes. “Some of the capitol city. Advocates in Pueblo, Apostolate, points out on his blog, are likely in need of more outreach and Colo., participated in a silent vigil and “1964.” Catholics make up nearly a ongoing ministry from the church.” march; while those in Miami, orga- quarter of the population and are no nized by a group called the Coalition less likely to marry than those of oth- From CNS and other sources.

10 America October 14, 2013 October 14, 2013 America 11 Margot Patterson Reading Nature Thoreauly

chance remark led me back to way, and not his father’s or his moth- (he’s too American, too Protestant for Walden. I was urging revolu- er’s or his neighbor’s instead.” To this, that), he’s a monk who would have us A tion on a harassed friend and he adds: “We may not arrive at our all living in hermit caves supping on rummaged in my memory for Henry port within a calculable period, but we honey and locusts and whatever greens David Thoreau’s remark about living would preserve the true course.” we can find in nature. boldly. The line was on the tip of my Thoreau makes me think about As an author, he’s thrilling, sub- tongue but would not leave it. what my true course is. The exhila- versive and sublime. Pick up any page I picked up my copy of Walden rating thing about him is that he does of Walden, and a striking phrase or and began browsing the many pas- not have a destination in mind for me. thought jumps off at the page and de- sages I had underlined. I read them He is a liberator, wanting my freedom mands to be considered. Part of this is and was smashed all over again by as much as his and warning what he writes about— how wonderful they are. (“Smashed” readers that they entrust our ordinary lives, which is a word my Bulgarian neighbor uses their destiny to others at Walden is he exhorts us to live in for when she is overcome by how their peril: “Every path but a clarion extraordinary ways. Part good something is. I’ve adopted it for your own is the path of fate. of it is his eloquence. this occasion.) Keep on your own track, call to His language is stirring, Walden wins my vote for the great then,” he counsels. shake the grand, soaring. American book. There are other fine Nature, writ both large Some writers invite contenders, but Walden is unique in a and small, is Thoreau’s slumber you to sit with them; way they are not. For one thing, it is topic; and what a large from your some to walk with them, noble. We do not live in an aristocrat- theme that is, encompass- some to dream with ic culture, but Thoreau makes all of us ing the change of seasons eyes. them. Thoreau makes noblemen who read him. How many on Walden Pond, his bean you want to march with other books turn a cabin into a palace, field, the animals in winter, him. or a crank (arguably) into a sage? One the vagaries of humankind, the absurd A man famous for loving quiet, he puts down Thoreau inspired, resolved conventions of society, his own multi- is the John Philip Sousa of nature po- to live more deliberately and more au- tudinous nature. ets. Walden is a clarion call to shake the thentically, but most of all, resolved to The man who coined the phrase slumber from your eyes, the dust from live. He reminds us that too often we about listening to a different drum- your sandals and stride off into the un- do not. mer clearly did. Part of the pleasure of charted depths of your own interior. I am not ordinarily a fan of nature. It reading Walden is watching an ornery A true iconoclast, Thoreau is re- is dangerous, for one thing. It is full of idealist do battle with conformism. ligious to the core. Above all, he is a bugs, for another. But I read Thoreau, Thoreau took unpopular stances in spiritual writer par excellence. Walden and I’m ready for the woods. Above all, his time, stances that are not any more is a constant invitation to contemplate he reminds me of my own nature—that popular in ours. Read him on philan- ourselves, the purposes we serve, the I have one, that it should be respected, thropy (he’s against it), chastity (he’s laws we live by, our universe and, ul- that it should be cherished. for it), progress (it ain’t happening), timately, our God. He writes: “Our “I desire that there may be as many company (why bother?). whole life is startlingly moral. There is different people in the world as possi- He may not persuade you to live on never an instant’s truce between virtue ble,” he writes, “but I would have each rye and Indian meal, flee the farm, for- and vice. Goodness is the only invest- one be very careful and pursue his own sake fashion or give up traveling, but ment that never fails. In the music of you will be at least half won over by the the harp which trembles round the Margot Patterson is a writer who lives in astuteness of his criticisms. Though world it is the insisting on this which Kansas City, Mo. one can’t imagine him in a monastery thrills us.”

12 America October 14, 2013 October 14, 2013 America 13 Living the China Dream Can Chinese leaders manage an ascendant Middle Kingdom? By John Frankenstein hina dazzles. Glittering skyscrapers in Beijing, Since 1979, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping aban- Shanghai and Guangzhou catch the eye of the doned Marxist orthodoxies and Maoist fantasies and kicked visitor. Some of the world’s most modern airports off China’s economic reform, China’s economy has increased greet the international traveler, who then can be more than 10 times over. In 2013 China’s gross domestic Cwhisked across China’s vast distances on state-of-the-art product, driven by investment and exports, is expected to high-speed trains. Luxury stores with names like Gucci and reach $13.6 trillion (in purchasing power relative to the dol- Louis Vuitton line the shopping streets and malls. lar), the second largest in the world after the United States, China is a land of large numbers. The world’s largest popu- which China is poised to surpass in economic might during lation, 1.3 billion, lives in a huge land area that stretches some this century. Though well over 500 million people have been 2,000 miles from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the des- lifted out of poverty, some 13 percent of the Chinese popula- erts of Central Asia. The populations of some of China’s ma- tion—175 million—is estimated to still languish below the jor provinces exceed the populations of important European poverty line. countries. The number of Chinese using the Internet—about 580 Xi Jinping, recently installed as China’s president and head million and expected by some to grow to over 700 million by of the Chinese Communist Party, talks about the “China 2014—far exceeds that of the total population of the United Dream” of “rejuvenating the great Chinese nation.” But to States. The rapidly modernizing Chinese military, with a land what end? That is a question that has many observers won- army of 850,000 troops, includes not only an expanding air dering. force, equipped with advanced jet fighters (and even proto- type stealth aircraft), but also a navy with increasing force projection capabilities and a significant strategic missile force. John Frankenstein, a former U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in Asia for many years, teaches courses on Asia and international business at But sometimes getting a clear picture of what is happen- Brooklyn College/City University of New York. ing in China is difficult. Next to every account of remarkable

14 America October 14, 2013 GREAT WALL. Income disparity persists between rural and urban sectors in China.

economic growth and social progress are stories of corruption ethnicities or “nationalities” in the population, but even the ma- at all levels of society. State suppression of ethnic minorities jority Han people are divided by five major “dialects”—actually in Tibet and in the western province of Xinjiang is severe. different languages. Cantonese, spoken in the south, is not real- Widespread environmental degradation, poisonous air and ly comprehensible to northern Chinese who speak Mandarin. water pollution and contaminated food, including danger- The Wu “dialect,” spoken around Shanghai; Min-Nan, spoken ously adulterated baby formula, are the stuff of headlines. On in Fujian province and Taiwan; and Hakka, yet another lin- the social front, vast wealth gaps, increasing income inequal- guistic subgroup, are all quite distinct. Needless to say, local ity between urban and rural sectors, suppression of religious cultures are distinct as well. In other words, the concept of one freedom and freedom of speech and heavy censorship of news uniform China is a facade: underneath, there are vibrant local and the Internet are both domestic and international issues. cultures and conditions. Social explosions have resulted from these tensions and Still, there are elements that tie the country together. The disparities. The number of sometimes violent “mass incidents” complex system of Chinese characters helps unify linguis- is increasing, in which incensed citizens take on local author- tic diversity. But there is another element, which goes deeper: ities to protest illegal land grabs, police beatings and other the scale of Chinese history, which reaches into the deep, even official abuse. Some 180,000 urban and rural incidents were prehistoric past. The Chinese historical myth begins with the counted in 2010—an average of 500 per day. founding of the Shang and Zhou dynasties over 5,000 years ago. Indeed, history—the officially promoted version of it—is kept China’s Epic Scale alive for most Chinese. The current regime makes sure every- It is the China puzzle: everything you hear about China is true, body remembers that China’s past glories were degraded and but none of it is reliable. There is progress and repression. To destroyed by foreign invaders during the “century of humiliation” understand this paradox, we must take a long view and step that started with the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century. away from the headlines to look at the deep realities of China. The degree of domestic change in China also contributes Consider the geography. China’s land area is slightly larg- to the paradox. Millions have risen from poverty. The Maoist er than that of the United States; its population is more than extremes of the 1950s and 1960s, which turned the country three times that of the United States. There are 56 recognized inside out in a paroxysm of violence, have been repudiated.

October 14, 2013 America 15 Today members of the leadership dress in sober business suits. Today the controlling Communist Party similarly strikes Wealthy business people enroll in the Communist Party. And hard at any possible challenge to its power, be it from farmers here is the payoff: the party will allow great concentrations of protesting the illegal seizure of homes and land or intellectuals wealth among elites (which include the families of party lead- who dare to express themselves about democracy and civil lib- ers)—and some trickle-down prosperity for the masses—as erties. To be sure, contemporary China is not the ideologically long as the party’s monopoly on power is not challenged. China frantic and poor China of the 1950s and 1960s, when daily does indeed look as if it is heading parroting of slogans was required toward being a generally well-off so- CHINA-US COMPARISONS and fear of accusations of disloyalty ciety—but with a new twist to the CHINA US that could lead to labor camps was old economic “Golden Rule.” It is no LAND AREA (sq miles) 3,694,560 3,537,455 the order of the day. Private life is longer “who has the gold makes the POPULATION 1.350B 316.7M much freer, though challenging the rules”; it is “who makes the rules gets GDP US$ 12.6T US$ 15.9T party’s monopoly of authority can the gold.” GDP/CAPITA US$ 9,300 US$ 50,700 lead to extra-judicial imprisonment Still, our perceptions of China— FOREIGN RESERVES US$ 3.3T US$ 150B in “reform through labor” camps or and China’s perceptions of itself— LITERACY RATE 93% 99% worse. The Internet has brought have changed dramatically. China is LIFE EXPECTANCY 75 79 a certain freedom of discussion to no longer Red China, the center of SOURCE: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK JULY 2013. Populations are 2013 China, though 30,000-plus censors estimates. GDP & GDP/Capita are 2012 estimates, and are normalized the world proletarian, anti-imperi- against US$ purchasing power equivalences. keep an eye out for prohibited dis- alist revolution. Now it is a modern T=trillion; B=billion; M=million cussions. We have to wonder if the state on track to world power. It is the regime is afraid of its subjects. “world’s factory,” fueled by foreign and domestic investment. Yet even here the ideology of power produces paradoxes. But we cannot quite call its state-dominated economy capital- China pretends that it is a unitary state, ruled from the top. But ist, even though there are stock exchanges and a lively private given the extremely different conditions in China’s 34 provin- sector. cial-level administrative regions, which include not only provinc- es, but autonomous regions and major cities like Shanghai, local The Dream Achieved? power holders really run the show. Economically, each region But can we say that China’s successes mean Xi’s “China dream” strives to promote itself, leading not to a unified national econ- has been achieved? The whole story is, in fact, a process, and Xi omy but to a system of economic federalism. Local officials are and the party face several additional dilemmas that have their promoted on the basis of their region’s economic growth. Hence roots in both the deep past and the immediate present. Think it is not surprising to find not only regional competition but also of them, Chinese style, as China’s “Four Basic Questions.” disregard of directives from Beijing if those orders go against lo- How the current group of leaders answers them will not be cal interests. Feigning compliance to central directives by local the end of the story, but may give us an indication of where officials is a Chinese art form. China today is headed: • How to rule a large country with a large population from a Restoring the Middle Kingdom single place. The party still feels that its rule is essential for achieving “great- • How to make China great again. ness.” That China is indeed one of the great centers of world • How to transform China. culture goes without saying. But what is “greatness” in this • How to deal with the outside world. context? Restoration of sovereignty, for sure, international rec- The First Emperor, Qín Shi Huang, who unified China ognition as a major power and, most important, internation- over 2,000 years ago, addressed the first question. His solu- al respect. To be sure, China’s road to “greatness” continues to tion: China would be ruled from the top; select officials, per- take many turns, but it is a goal that is widely shared. Certainly sonally responsible to him and guided by a Legalist ideology China’s economic and social development is remarkable. of hard, inflexible laws and severe punishments, would con- But are those achievements due to a party that boasts that trol the localities; an army would be deployed throughout the “without the Communist Party there would be no China,” country to maintain order and ruthlessly wage war against ex- but which took the country down detours like the Great Leap ternal enemies; and secret police spies would make sure that Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen mas- order and loyalty to the emperor, the Son of Heaven, would be sacre of 1989 (an event quite literally erased from the official maintained. Confucian thought, with its ideas of morality and history books)? Or to a proud, resilient and talented people? benevolent relationships, was proscribed. Control was the ob- Confronted by the challenges of imperialism and internal jective; power was both arbitrary and absolute. No velvet glove decay and the dream of restored glory, Chinese leaders have here—only the iron fist. realized that Chinese society will need to be transformed. The

16 America October 14, 2013 question is, how? Which road? Today China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1970s, Council and a member of important multilateral organiza- Marxist and Maoist approaches have been abandoned. In the tions, like the World Trade Organization and the Asia-Pacific 1970s the party started with reforms in agriculture, with peas- Economic Cooperation forum. China has gained much by par- ants being allowed to grow for the market, not the state. Later, ticipating in these pillars of the world order as a “responsible foreign investment began to be welcomed. But it was slow go- stakeholder.” Still, when international action against repres- ing. The veteran Communist leader Deng Xiaoping struggled sive client states like North Korea or Zimbabwe, or murder- with more conservative leaders in Beijing to open up to reform ous regimes like that of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, is called for, more quickly. It was only in 1992 that the real boom in China’s China, perhaps seeing the potential for mischief or blowback, economy took off. Deng probably never actually said, “To get demurs. Similarly, when China runs afoul of the World Trade rich is glorious,” but that certainly became the mantra in China. Organization’s regulations, there is often noncompliance. The economic results 20 years on are obvious. China has not been bashful about flexing its muscles over The current regime of President Xi Jinping and Prime territorial disputes. China is a potent Asian military pow- Minister Li Keqiang, installed just this year, is faced with the er, and everybody knows it. It has warred with India and need to rebalance the economy away from a dependence on Vietnam over territorial claims and is currently involved in investment, export production and fiscal stimulus to domes- a game of gun-boat chicken with Japan over the Senkaku- tic consumption. One new solution: urbanization. The party Diaoyutai islets in the East China Sea. Similarly, China has plans massive resettlements of China’s peasantry in expand- made the questionable claim that most of the South China ed and newly created urban areas. Whether the disruption Sea is its territory—a self-described “core interest”—and re- of rural life will have the desired effect of increasing demand fuses the request of affected Southeast Asian nations to sub- or lead to the kind of trauma associated with the Great Leap mit to arbitration or international adjudication, as required by Forward (1958–61), not to mention the creation of low-in- treaties and agreements. Rather, China says it will deal with come urban ghettos, is an open question. each dispute one by one, a strategy of divide and conquer. From a strategic standpoint, it looks as if China is trying to Looking Out—Warily secure its offshore borders. And perhaps re-establish a mod- Finally, there is the question of how to deal with the outside ern version of the tribute system of the past, in which lesser world. China basically looks inward—the Asian states acknowledged Chinese supe- world beyond the Great Wall is seen as riority. But internationally these assertive On the Web hostile. Some observers suggest that the “(Un)Conventional Wisdom,” moves may be counterproductive. Asian essence of Chinese history is the conflict a new blog on politics. nations are forming closer relations with between the settled, agricultural Han peo- americamagazine.org/wisdom each other. Japan is reconsidering its secu- ples and the aggressive, nomadic tribes of rity interests; there is growing sentiment in the surrounding northern and western Japan to revisit and revise Japan’s so-called steppes. China today shares land borders with 14 countries peace constitution to allow a larger and more active military. and shares contiguous seas with Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam. And these moves are also reinforcing the views of Asian lead- The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are not far away. It is ers that the U.S. “pivot to Asia” is a good thing. Except for a difficult environment to deal with. China, no one wants to see the U.S. Seventh Fleet go away. In addition, China has to contend with foreign ideas that China plays up the nationalism card in these disputes. But may threaten the party’s quest for political monopoly. Some that is a dangerous game. Might not the legitimacy of the concepts—separation of powers, the rule of law, freedom of party be seriously, if not fatally, compromised if, somehow, its the press, civil rights, “universal values”—are regularly de- hard-line claims of sovereignty were successfully challenged? nounced in the party press as assaults aimed at destroying Nowhere does that danger lurk more than in the complex case Chinese socialism. of Taiwan. Foreign religions too—Buddhism, Islam, Christianity— Taiwan was only loosely part of the Qing Empire. It was have often been targets of repression throughout China’s long ceded by the Qing to Japan following China’s defeat in the Sino- history. The very idea that foreigners might exercise some Japanese War of 1895. The island became the rice bowl of the kind of authority over Chinese people is anathema. Christian Japanese empire. But following Japan’s defeat in World War churches, both Protestant and Catholic, fall under official “pa- II, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of triotic associations” which exercise control over their activities. China, reclaimed the island for China. As the Chinese civil war Needless to say, the Vatican does not accept Beijing’s authority. between Chiang’s Nationalist forces and Mao’s Communist Not surprisingly, China’s response to the outside world armies ground down to the defeat of the Nationalists, Chiang has ranged from autarkic isolation to full, if wary engagement. and his government fled to the island in the late 1940s.

18 America October 14, 2013 What followed was not pretty: strict martial law, suppres- Would China attack Taiwan if at some point a declaration sion of independence movements, a garrison state. The society of independence were to be made? Most international observ- split between the majority “Taiwanese,” descendents of Han ers do not entirely discount the possibility, but the impact on Chinese who had migrated to the island during imperial times, the international order would be serious. and the “mainlanders,” a minority of refugees—often regarded as carpetbaggers—whose roots were in China. China’s Own Path Today Taiwan is a fully functioning, multi-party democra- What can we conclude about the “China dream”? We should cy of 23 million people. Its G.D.P. of $913 billion ranks 21st not gainsay the genuineness of Chinese nationalist passions. in the world; per capita income of $39,400 is roughly that Most Chinese—and indeed, most people outside of China— of Belgium and Germany. Not surprisingly, given geography, want China to grow and prosper. But Xi’s slogan looks like China is its main trading partner. Not everybody in Taiwan is another one of those mantras that Chinese political leaders happy with the ever-tightening, if perhaps inevitable, econom- feel compelled to come up with to identify and justify their ic links with China. There are fears that the Taiwanese econ- particular place in the stream of history. omy is being “hollowed out” as investment across the Straits Still, whether one is sympathetic to China’s aspirations or grows. And there is also a serious question of identity. Most hostile toward them, it must be recognized that the country people on Taiwan see themselves as “Taiwanese”—culturally sets its own path. The regime has to grapple with a long list of Chinese but certainly not subjects of Beijing. difficult issues: the sustainability of growth as the economy re- So there is an international anomaly. Taiwan has all the structures, problematic foreign relations, an aging population, attributes of a nation state—borders, currency, armed forc- corruption and the erosion of China’s scarce arable land under es, economy—but exists in diplomatic limbo because Beijing the combined pressure of rampant urbanization and severe claims the island as a “lost territory” (like Hong Kong and environmental degradation. To be sure, the regime appears Macao). Any formal recognition of Taiwan as an entity sepa- robust—the country’s vast foreign reserves must be a comfort. rate from China is, for Beijing, not acceptable. Thus any talk or In the end, as we watch China, we should understand that move toward Taiwanese independence is truly one of Beijing’s the drama of China still revolves around the evolving answers red lines. The implications of Taiwanese independence for to the Four Basic Questions. And we should recognize that Tibet and restive Xinjiang Province, once known as East the “China dream” may have many forms. Xi would like there Turkestan, are obvious. to be one. But maybe there are 1.3 billion. A

October 14, 2013 America 19 20 America October 14, 2013 ‘Let China Love You’ Building relationships with Catholic China By Robert E. Carbonneau et China love you.” This advice, given to me in 1974 cross-cultural educators and historians to follow when in- by Linus Lombard, a Passionist priest, changed my teracting with contemporary Catholic China. ‘Llife. As relevant today as it was then, this radical In 1949 there were three million Chinese Catholics in the vision, suggested by the 20-year veteran (1934–54) of the newly declared People’s Republic of China. Decades of per- Passionist mission to West Hunan, remains key to under- secution and suffering became the norm. Political and theo- standing China. Having endured house arrest and expulsion logical debates exacerbated the believers’ witness. Yet China’s from China, Father Lombard challenged me to study histo- opening under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s revealed that ry by going beyond the news headlines. the Catholic Church in China had not died. Catholic orga- President Richard M. Nixon had just visited the People’s nizations in the United States set out to engage and express Republic of China in 1972, the tumultuous Cultural concern for the Catholic Church in China. Through public ed- Revolution (1966–76) was still underway and U.S. Catholics ucation, prayer and witness, two distinct voices paved the way. in the 1970s viewed China through the lens of missionary Founded in 1989, the U.S. Catholic China Bureau re- persecution. Instead, Father Lombard counseled, it is cul- sponded to the opening of China on behalf of Catholic tural understanding and relationships that stand the test of organizations, religious orders, academics and individu- time. This is wise advice for Catholic Church organizations, als. Its mission has been to promote understanding among American Catholics about the Catholic Church in China. In 2011 its executive director, Michel Marcil, S.J., relocat- Robert E. Carbonneau, C.P., is an archival specialist at the Ricci Institute, University of San Francisco, and assistant director of the U.S. ed the bureau from Seton Hall University in New Jersey to Catholic China Bureau. Berkeley, Calif. On Oct. 4–6, 2013, the bureau and Loyola CNS photo/Reute rs

October 14, 2013 America 21 University Chicago co-sponsored the 25th National China tered and unregistered best describe their situation, though Conference to address the theme “The American Catholic the Holy Spirit Study Centre opts to use the terms open and Church and China in an Era of Globalization.” underground. In 2011, the center reported there were 12 mil- The other voice, the Cardinal Kung Foundation in lion Chinese Catholics. Open church priests totalled 1,900, Stamford, Conn., established in 1994, has been directed by compared with 1,300 underground priests. Open church Joseph Kung, nephew of the late Cardinal Ignatius Kung sisters were 3,400 as compared with 1,600 underground. Pin-Mei (1901–2000) of Shanghai. Keeping before the Open church bishops numbered 68; there were 38 under- public and media those members of the Catholic Church in ground. China who have a strong allegiance to the pope has been its On March 20, 2013, a week after his papal election, Pope primary objective. Francis exchanged greetings with Cardinal Tong before the Currently, both organizations stress the importance of cardinal left for Hong Kong. “The Church in China is in Pope Benedict XVI’s “Letter to Chinese Catholics” (2007), my heart” are the words of encouragement the pope offered which declares that all China’s Catholics are members of Cardinal Tong. Gestures to heal church divisions should al- the universal church, who are living witnesses to suffering ways be of paramount concern for all Catholics. and a sign of reconciliation and hope. In this spirit, cre- ative participation of these two organizations with the U.S. Cross-Cultural Learning Conference of Catholic Bishops, archdiocesan and dioce- The work of Matteo Ricci, S.J., (1552-1610) in China re- san Chinese apostolates and lay U.S. Chinese Catholics will mains the best practical example of cross-cultural educa- provide an invaluable experience of service. I suggest “Let tion. In his spirit, many Catholics since the 1980s have China love you” expresses the approach needed to build a taken advantage of opportunities to teach in China. My po- common bridge from contemporary to future realities in sition as a foreign expert at Sichuan International Studies China. University in Chongqing, China, (2007–8) provided a fine Cardinal John Tong of Hong Kong, chairperson of the opportunity to witness and live out the tenet of action ad- local Holy Spirit Study Centre founded in 1980, publicly vocated by Father Lombard. Placement was arranged by the maintains there is one Chinese Catholic Church, though it Association for International Teaching, Educational and still has divisions. I and others agree that the terms regis- Cultural Exchange in collaboration with the Missionary Society of St. Columban. Its aim is to foster the modern- ization of China, especially in the area of education. From 1988 to 2011 AITECE has appointed 367 teachers, 17 percent of them from the United States, to serve in 90 Chinese educational institutes in 13 provinces, two munic- ipalities and one autonomous region. The largest number, 120 teachers, have worked in Chongqing. I was one of 85 instructors at SISU. My experience did not disappoint me. Teaching in China is a perfect opportunity to share knowl- edge, culture and faith. A second example of cross-cultural education is the theological instruction and spiritual formation of young Chinese priests, sisters, seminarians and laypeople. Since 1991, Chinese Catholic bishops and religious superiors have successfully coordinated with Catholic institutions of high- er education in the United States to fulfill this objective. Initiated by the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, in cooper- ation with the Maryknoll Sisters, and with Chinese Catholic representatives, this project has provided study opportunities for 110 future leaders of the Catholic Church in China from 37 dioceses. Among them are five bishops. Bishop Paul Pei Junmin, of Shenyang Diocese in Liaoning Province, for exam- ple, obtained a master of arts in Scripture from Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, in Philadelphia, Pa. In 2001 and 2002 I had the privilege of teaching at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

22 America October 14, 2013 Currently, 20 participants in the Maryknoll program of Southern California. A digital collaboration is currently are studying in the United States. After the completion of underway between the Passionists on the East Coast and their degrees, they plan to return to China, where they will the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco. Both serve as needed in their respective dioceses. Such programs projects breathe new life and vitality into Chinese-Western have historical precedents. Before ordination as a priest of religious encounters. the Diocese of Yuanling, Hunan, in 1948, John Nien re- The Passionist project has already drawn inquiries from ceived his theological training at St. Mary’s Seminary in relatives in search of their Chinese and missionary relatives. Baltimore. Upon completion of the digitization, over 5,000 photos and 50,000 documents on West Hunan history from the 1920s Rich in History to the 1950s will be available to help a new generation of Finally, historians studying the Chinese Catholic history historians to critically embrace the realities of 20th-century since the early 1600s might do well to revisit the archives. Catholic identity in China. This digitization project pro- R. G. Tiedemann’s Reference Guide to Christian Missionary vides a model for new possibilities to examine the past and Societies in China (M. E. Sharpe, 2009) offers untapped in- aspire for the future. formation on international Protestant and Catholic initia- According to Tiedemann’s sourcebook, 35 religious con- tives, while Wu Xiaoxin’s Christianity in China, second edi- gregations of women in the United States and 16 male re- tion (M. E. Sharpe, 2009), highlights libraries and archives ligious groups sent missionaries to China during the 20th that hold hidden scholarly treasures. Scholars who love both century. A national conference sponsored by a consortium Chinese and Western languages, the humanities, the scienc- of Catholic universities presently committed to education- es and the drama of Western and Chinese biographies as al exchange in China would be helpful for the purpose of ways to reinvestigate and reinterpret missionaries will find gathering historians and archivists of these religious congre- these sources central in their quest to promote fresh histori- gations to develop a strategy whereby the love and legacy cal paradigms to engage with Chinese society. of Catholic China scholarship can be passed on to a new Archival digitization suggests that technology has the generation of U.S. and Chinese scholars and students. potential to humanize Chinese Catholic history. For exam- “Let China love you.” For me, these words of Father ple, Maryknoll participated in the International Mission Lombard still go to the heart of the China Catholic narrative Photography Archive at the Digital Library at the University that might help shape the future. A

October 14, 2013 America 23 24 America October 14, 2013 FAITH IN FOCUS A Delicate Mission The new evangelization in an ancient land By David Peters n Dec. 3, 1552, St. Francis ized world. the underlying mission of converting Xavier died of a fever on One day Debby, one of my young stu- Kinmen students to Christianity. Some OShangchuan, an island 14 ki- dents, came to me after class, “Teacher, days, a man in an orange cap and vest lometers off the coast of China, await- look, look!” She held up a silver cross passes out English pamphlets to stu- ing a boat that would take him to the that was strung across her neck. dents in front of my school. For the next mainland. Xavier had had an impressive “What does that mean?” I asked her. few days, I notice scrap paper with the career of establishing mis- image of the risen Jesus sions all over Portuguese- and quotations from the controlled Asia, including Gospels being used in class. in India, Borneo and Japan, “What does they mean?” a and it had long been his student asked the other day. dream to establish a mis- The reputation that for- sion in China in order to eign English teachers have evangelize one of the great- for proselytizing has led me est societies of all time. Four to think about my identity and a half centuries later, I as a Catholic. How can I found myself on another fully represent my faith and small island off the coast of still be respectful of the lo- China rethinking what it cal culture of Kinmen? means to evangelize in the The church has always 21st century. sought to evangelize. But as I arrived on the island episodes like the crusades of Kinmen, Taiwan, as and the treatment of some a grantee in the inaugu- indigenous peoples prove, ral Fulbright program for Christianity has not always English teaching assis- succeeded. Traveling to a The author reviews vocabulary with students in Kinmen, Taiwan. tants. Nicknamed the Cold foreign land to tell people War Island by one scholar, that their traditions should Kinmen has been at the front lines of “It means I believe in Jesus,” she re- be replaced expresses a claim to cultural the cross-strait tension between Taiwan plied. Her command of English sur- superiority that is contrary to the mes- and China for the last five decades. prised me because our lessons were just sage of the Gospel. I have been amazed at the commit- covering simple words like run, jump and In my lifetime, I have been fortunate ment the education department here smile. to work with Catholic missionaries in has to teaching English. It is a top pri- I was also surprised because I had Central America and the Caribbean ority because many here view English never spoken about religion in front who spend their time in nursing homes, as the lingua franca. Officials have ex- of my students. As an English teach- shelters and schools working to promote pressed the belief that English language er funded by U.S. and Taiwanese tax health and education. They are expert learning is an essential step for students dollars, it is not my place to talk in the bedpan cleaners and math tutors. They who hope to be successful in the global- workplace about faith. Yet I have come listen to the people and genuinely em- to learn that many of the non-Fulbright, body the spirit of accompaniment. In David Peters is a student at National native English speakers on the island them I have witnessed that if you want

Taiwan University in Taipei. operate as English teachers but with to teach others about God, you try to be- P hoto by Jimmy Che n

October 14, 2013 America 25 have like Christ. If you want to see God in the community, I have developed a ble with modern society. at work, you must see the dignity and rapport and friendship in which fruit- Generalizations about the West worth in every single human being. ful dialogue can occur. By building the made by the media here, combined Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in bridge between cultures, the nations and with a lack of exposure to foreigners, 2000 that the new evangelization is a peoples of the United States and Taiwan have given students in Kinmen an over- way toward joy. Christians must be skep- can grow in understanding and mutual simplified understanding of Western tical about the value of converting large respect. culture. My students were shocked, for numbers of people, if those conversions But on an island with so few for- instance, to learn that not all Americans are not made from the heart. He said: eigners, the Kinmen people often fail celebrate Christmas. “Large things always grow from a small to distinguish among English educa- The life of a Taiwanese Christian seed. The mass movements are always tion, American culture and Christianity. can be difficult because for many it ephemeral.” Christians must sow seeds Evangelical messages often are disguised means choosing between their family of faith, embody the spirit of the Gospel as English education, which gives the and their religious community. They message and have courage to leave the impression that all English speakers often feel pressure to choose when cel- when and how of the growing to God. In share Christian beliefs. Because most ebrating holidays like the Mid-Autumn a region where Christians are a small mi- of the students are working simply to Festival, in which sacrifices are left for nority, and one so close to China, one of grasp the English language, they are the spirits of the ancestors. One man I the largest areas of fast-paced Christian not able to engage in dialogue about the met was waiting for his parents to pass growth, the responsibility of Christians significance of the message. Too often, away before being baptized, fearing that to be authentic representatives of their it seems, the intertwining of the all-im- choosing Christianity would prevent faith is even more vital. portant English language lessons with him from participating in the traditional My method of practicing the new Christian teachings results in the notion funeral rites. evangelization is to recognize the digni- that converting to Christianity will ben- The Kinmen traditional spiritual- ty and worth of the individuals I meet in efit a student’s career. And many times ity is rich. To be an evangelist means Kinmen. Through my work as a teach- the implication is that traditional Daoist to approach this culture with humility, er and my interaction with individuals and Confucian practices are incompati- recognizing its beauty and value. The Kinmen culture is very similar to the traditional culture in Fujian, the closest mainland province. Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist morals and teachings blend with every area of life here. There are many temples where local people go to bai bai, or make sacrifices and pray. Because of the casualties of war, it is believed that there are many ghosts. To appease these spirits, my neighbors burn paper money for them to use. One afternoon, I sat on a cement block at the edge of the water and looked off toward the channel. In the distance, China was large and ominous. I wondered if in his dying days, St. Francis Xavier had stared similarly to- ward China awaiting the ship to bring him to the mainland. Had he looked out and wondered what he could teach the people of China about Jesus? These days, as the Christian population in China continues to grow, I wonder not what I can teach others about Jesus, but what my students, in their struggles with faith, might teach me. A

26 America October 14, 2013 FAITH IN FOCUS One of Us How a death row inmate changed my outlook on life By Camille D’Arienzo

A few months ago, members of the for our prayerful support, David has failed to protect him and not the pow- Cherish Life Circle, a group that works faced—and been spared from—three er of the drugs that twisted his mind. to end the death penalty, had gathered execution dates: the first in 1994, the The year after David first contacted to plan an event to mark our 20th us in Brooklyn, he was transferred to anniversary. We sat down and imme- Terre Haute. There he responded to diately concentrated on practical ele- encouragement from his devoted at- ments of the celebration. We discussed torney and from a Protestant chaplain, guest speakers: Kevin Doyle, New a Sister of Providence from nearby St. York State’s last capital defender, and Mary of the Woods and this writer. Helen Prejean, C.S.J., our country’s A few months after our initial best-known death penalty opponent. meeting, I sent David a small, beau- We noted the support of our bishop, tiful autumn leaf from the Weston Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyln. We Priory in Vermont, only to have it even secured the place, the Convent returned in a big envelope stamped of Mercy, and we identified members “UNAUTHORIZED MATERIAL.” willing to help with the details of Much of what the prison system funding and promotion. There was does authorize is ugly and dehuman- more: concerns about timing and pub- izing. Some inmates are broken by licity, literature to be distributed, in- the deprivation; others devise creative formation about our annual service for ways to compensate for the losses. families of murder victims—the nitty Some will relieve their desire to have gritty of planning such an event. something to care for by capturing and Then the phone rang. It was adopting a mouse, as did the prisoner Providence calling to remind us of the in Stephen King’s The Green Mile and why and wherefore of our event, which as David did in real life. takes place this month. The voice second in 2000, the third in 2004. Some death row inmates, like came from a cell on death row in Terre Today he awaits a date for a new trial. David, confined to a single cell, man- Haute, Ind. Its timing is uncertain. age to think outside the box. With “How y’all doin’ there?” asked David What is certain is the transfor- money sent to him, David has spon- Paul Hammer. mation in the man once considered sored the schooling of a child in Haiti. David first contacted the Cherish “the most dangerous prisoner in He has used his artistic talent to help Life Circle in December 1998 after Allenwood.” That Pennsylvania prison, produce Christmas cards; the profits reading about our circulation of the far from his native from their sale aid Declaration of Life, a document that Oklahoma, is where On the Web children in need. In allows individuals to oppose the death this longtime inmate Faith reflections from young a dozen years over penalty by insisting that, if murdered, took the life of a Catholics. americamagazine.org/ $70,000 has found generationfaith they do not want their killer executed. cellmate—a crime its way to child-care In the 15 years since he first asked he regrets with all institutions as near his heart and for which he blames only as Indianapolis and as far away as the Camille D’Arienzo, R.S.M., a member of the Mid-Atlantic Community of the Sisters of himself—not his childhood spent in island of Jamaica. Mercy of the Americas, is a past president of the poverty and abuse as a son of migrant David got his G.E.D. in prison t: s ea n qui r k t:

Leadership Conference of Women Religious. workers, not the social systems that through television courses, along with a r

October 14, 2013 America 27 several associate degrees. One qualified him as a paralegal. He uses that com- petence to help death row inmates with their appeals and other legal concerns. Before his second scheduled exe- cution date, David asked to become a Catholic because, he explained, “In my life those who have been best to me have been Catholics, and I want to die one of you.” David does his best to live as one of us. His prayer life is deep; his spiritual interests are many. Several years ago, he was accepted as an associate of the Sisters of Providence and is devoted to their foundress, St. Mother Theodore Guerin. Because David’s life was spared, many have been helped. What he has been allowed is God’s gift of time; the opportunity to choose good over evil, hope instead of despair. Not surpris- ingly his favorite prayer is that of St. Francis, which includes, “where there is hatred, let me sow love.” There is no guarantee that anyone so spared would make the choices that have transformed David. But no one has the right to deny another person the opportunity God offers. The mission statement of the Cherish Life Circle affirms its members’ commitment to “strive for a society that refuses to solve its problems by the willful termination of life at any stage by any means.” Pope John Paul II understood this. He wrote in “The Gospel of Life” (1995), “Modern society has the means of effectively suppressing crime by ren- dering criminals harmless without de- finitively denying them the chance to reform.” And so The Cherish Life Circle is happy to celebrate 20 years of oppos- ing the death penalty that would de- prive a person of the chance to reform. And something else has happened to us. We have been changed by what we have learned along the way, by the good people who support our efforts and by David, whose life has touched ours in unexpected ways. A

28 America October 14, 2013 October 14, 2013 America 29 Philosopher’s Notebook R.I.P. Jacqueline Pascal ho? poor candidates and reject wealthy on Augustine. During my research candidates without an authentic call. Antoine Arnauld, the leading Winto Jansenism, I discov- Vocational freedom would now trump Jansenist theologian, devised an inge- ered a nun named Jacqueline Pascal parental desire and economic status. nious distinction to permit Jansenists (1625–61). The sister of the philos- As director of the convent’s celebrat- to sign the document. According to opher Blaise Pascal, her life and writ- ed school, Sister Jacqueline devised an this distinction, the church could bind ings are a monument to the struggle of educational program unusual for its the conscience on matters of droit women, especially women religious, for theological sophistication. Every pupil (faith and morals) but could not bind spiritual freedom and theological edu- was to have a French/Latin psalter as the conscience on matters of fait (em- cation in the church. her basic prayer book. On feast days, pirical fact). Consequently, Jansenists The youngest child of three, the nun-teacher would deliver her own could sign the condemnation, letting Jacqueline Pascal became the caregiv- commentary on the Gospel for the it be known that their signature only er for her father during his last years. feast. assented to the condem- She struck an agreement with him: she The texts used for in- nation of the heretical would take care of him until his death struction had unusual Her life propositions, not to the and would then enter the convent. At theological heft: Letters and writings allegedly erroneous con- his death, however, her sickly brother of Saint Jerome, Teresa of demnation of Jansensius Blaise insisted that Jacqueline remain Avila’s Book of Foundations are a for having held these po- home as his caregiver. In a letter to and Jansenius’s Reform of monument sitions. Blaise, Jacqueline refused to be trapped the Interior Person. At the Sister Jacqueline pro- in the domestic role and insisted on the center of this educational to the tested such a subterfuge. right to follow her own vocation. “It’s no design was the work of the struggle of “When they present this longer reasonable to continue my defer- nun-teacher as spiritual di- formula for signature, ence to other’s feelings over my own. It’s rector. “The greatest help in women. what prevents us from their turn to do some violence to their improving the conduct of simply replying, ‘I know own feelings in return for the violence I the pupils is our custom of having pri- the respect I owe our lord bishops, but did to my own inclinations during four vate conversations with them. In these my conscience does not permit me to years. It is from you, in particular, that I interviews we relieve their anguish, sign affirmatively that something is in expect this token of affection.” wage war against their faults, and help a book I’ve never read,’ and just wait- When the young nun became en- them to see the hidden roots of their ing to see what will happen? What are tangled with her two siblings during vices.” we afraid of? Exile and dispersion for the “crisis of the dowry”—Blaise and While many parents praised such a the nuns? Confiscation of our temporal Gilberte wanted to keep their father’s sophisticated formation, critics of Port- goods? Prison and death?” inheritance for their own families— Royal denounced the nuns as théologi- Under pressure, Sister Jacqueline the abbess of Port-Royal, Angélique ennes, women who dabbled in matters reluctantly signed and indicated the Arnauld, encouraged Jacqueline to en- reserved to the clergy and encouraged strictly reserved nature of her assent ter the community without a dowry. their students to do the same. in a postscript. When she died short- One of the abbess’s reforms had been In 1661 Sister Jacqueline became ly afterward, clearly chagrined at her the abolition of the traditional dowry embroiled in the “crisis of the signature.” surrender to political pressure, she was requirement for choir nuns. The con- King Louis XIV ordered all members acclaimed a martyr to conscience. She vent would now accept worthy but of the clergy, religious and teachers in had embodied the right of the nun to his kingdom to sign a statement sub- be a théologienne: to teach, to provide mitting to the church’s condemnation spiritual direction, to acquire a theolog- John J. Conley, S.J., holds the Knott Chair in Philosophy and Theology at Loyola of certain theological propositions al- ical culture and in crises of conscience University Maryland in Baltimore, Md. legedly held by Jansenius in his work to withhold assent.

30 America October 14, 2013 Books & Culture

fall books 1 | Rene Sanchez Washington Post, and it shows. He packs the book with extraordinary de- tail, dug up from thousands of sourc- ‘A Long Piece of Work’ es, ranging from long-forgotten letters and diaries of military leaders at the The Guns at Last Light on the war, which was 14 years in the time to new testimony from World The War in Western Europe, making. And in its narrative force and War II veterans or their families who 1944–1945 sweep, its utterly detailed and unspar- read his first two volumes in the tril- By Rick Atkinson ing reporting, it is must-read history. ogy and offered scraps of memoir and Henry Holt and Co. 896p $40 Rare is the book that is riveting remembrance. At the end of the book, even when you know exactly how it Atkinson spends nearly 200 pages cit- In December 1944, as winter ing his sources. arrived across bomb-ravaged He also displays an unspoken Europe, the Allied armies striving determination throughout The to crush Hitler’s monstrous war Guns at Last Light to avoid any machine had cause for optimism. sentimental or rose-tinted render- Though bloody and chaotic, the ing of the war’s last year, as is often D-Day invasion six months earli- the case these days as we pay our er had been a success. American final respects to the aged and ail- and British troops were advancing ing American soldiers who battled through France. The Allies had the Nazis. There are no “Bands even seized control of their first of Brothers” in this account, no German border town, Aachen. star-spangled odes to the Greatest Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Generation. Marshall said the Nazis appeared Instead, Atkinson shows gen- “licked.” Allied intelligence reports erals and G.I.’s alike in the raw— suggested German resistance was bickering, scared, prone to deadly crumbling. There was quiet talk tactical errors, vengeful, yet also of shifting some U.S. divisions brave beyond measure and re- soon to the fight raging in the markably resolute as the charge of Pacific. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied armies across Europe soon the supreme allied commander, becomes a treacherous, uncertain knew better—at least that is what slog. he told his mother back home in Atkinson is so admirably intent Kansas. “Most people that write on showing the truth of things as to me these days want to know they unfolded behind the scenes when the war in Europe is going that at times the reader is left to to be over,” Ike wrote to her. “I wish I will end. World War II, of course, has wonder: How did we even manage to knew. It is a long, hard, dreary piece of been the subject of countless histories win? So much goes wrong from the work.” and films; Atkinson is not plowing new moment wet boots hit Omaha Beach, That work—the last epic year of ground. Yet in his tick-tock recounting starting with the incessant squabbling World War II in Europe, a struggle ev- of how the Allies freed Europe from of the U.S. and British commanders, ery murderous mile toward Berlin—is Nazi Germany’s grip, the story often who often appear allied in name only. the subject of Rick Atkinson’s mon- feels fresh, definitive, even revelatory. The beret-clad British Field umental new book, The Guns at Last Before he became a best-selling au- Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who Light. It is the third and final volume thor, Atkinson was a Pulitzer Prize- commanded ground forces during in his acclaimed Liberation Trilogy winning investigative reporter for The the Allied invasion of the Normandy

October 14, 2013 America 31 coast, spends the subsequent months exhausted, beset with alarmingly high orable portraits of the men on both constantly chafing under Eisenhower’s blood pressure, never lost his cool— sides who orchestrated the war. You command, scoffing at his military judg- and he made sure that none of the snip- encounter a top Nazi admiral reading ments and pleading in private letters ing, egotism and distrust ever seriously Gone With the Wind and comparing for his ouster. The distaste was mutu- undermined Allied unity. Perhaps by the destruction of the Civil War with al. The hell-bent U.S. General George that alone the war was won. the ruin engulfing Europe, and you Patton, never at a loss for words as he Atkinson is at his best depicting bear witness to the celebrated German led his army onto the battlefield, de- Eisenhower’s pragmatism and resolve, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel being scribed the prevailing American view which were hallmarks of America’s forced by Hitler’s henchmen to com- of Montgomery this way: “Monty is a must-win mindset by late 1944 and mit suicide by cyanide pill after he was tired little f__t.” an underlying theme of the book. The suspected of plotting to assassinate But Eisenhower, chain smoking, Guns at Last Light also offers mem- the Führer. You discover U.S. General Omar Bradley reflecting on lessons from a book he had recently read on Confederate General Robert E. Lee, The Eternal Ingénue and you see General Patton carry- ing along a six-volume history of the Convince the Dauphin now, dear Joan, convince Norman conquest of England as his army rumbles across Europe. You also Him now; forget the peasant business. Wage peek into Patton’s diary near the end of Charm on him: boy-cut hair and virgin grace. the war: “In hundreds of villages there is not a single living thing, not even a Assert his strength to raise the English siege. chicken.” At times, The Guns at Last Light The scene is mandatory, so the spell slows or suffers from the deluge of de- tail that Atkinson pours into the story. Only awaits your touching. They are real No pertinent fact—from the 4 million Your voices: stop to listen, Joan. They call gallons of gasoline the Allies burned each day in Europe to the 144 bot- To battle Christ and lily shod in steel. tles of gin the British brought to the remote Yalta summit with the United No, do not throw your arms about: your face States and Russia—seems to be left out. The author’s meticulous account- Is your chief weapon. See, he starts to waver— ing of which armies, divisions and reg- Seduced somewhat. Press your advantage now, iments went where when in the last Make him proclaim you France’s spur and savior. months of the war also becomes a kind of dizzying alphabet soup on some pages. But those are quibbles. No hesitation now; depart in joy. Much of how Atkinson chroni- cles the Allies’ liberation of Europe, There will be space for sorrow at the stake the triumphs and the toll, is searing, In Rouen, when the black Inquisitor even poignant, illuminated by his Finds your bright maidenhead too bright to break. deft, recurring use of first-hand ac- counts from ordinary soldiers. That reporting puts you beside them on the Richard O’Connell front lines and eventually at the gates of Nazi concentration camps, where Richard O’Connell lives in Hillsboro Beach, Fla. Collections of his poetry have been published by the University of Salzburg the shock of such unimaginable hor- Press. His most recent collections include Dawn Crossing ror gave many the grit to finish off the (Atlantis Editions). Germans. “Hardly any boy infantry- man started this cause as a moralist,” one G.I. wrote. “But after the camps, a

32 America October 14, 2013 October 14, 2013 America 33 moral attitude was dominant.” Atkinson’s stirring history leaves the “dumb ox,” that he didn’t complete his Near the end of The Guns at Last reader with another emotion, too: pro- Summa Theologiae and that this very Light, with Hitler dead and the shat- found gratitude for the courage Allied incompletion was symptomatic of his tered German leaders and armies non-self-promotional personal and army surrendering, On the Web showed in taking the professional style. Atkinson takes sur- The Catholic Book Club fight straight to the Thomas was the smartest person prising note of how discusses Enon, by Paul Harding. Nazis and for never americamagazine.org/cbc in the room, but he always took the many American sol- relenting until every last seat in the last row. So—how diers still lacked the vestige of that evil did Thomas the Unlikely become the spirit to celebrate. For so long, at every regime had been wiped out and they founder of that periodically discard- turn through Europe, all they had seen had brought forth, in the prophetic ed only to be rediscovered philoso- was more death and more destruc- words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “a new phia perennis called Thomism? A tion. U.S. forces had suffered nearly a earth.” deep Catholic sensibility is part of it. half-million casualties since D-Day. Thomas’s philosophy aces the F. Scott It is difficult to exult when the Rene Sanchez is managing editor of the Fitzgerald criterion that “the test of a book is done. Like those G.I.’s, you Minneapolis Star Tribunal, which recently won first-rate intelligence is the ability to feel spent, mournful, relieved. But the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the abil- ity to function.” In his own little par- adox, Turner characterizes Thomas’s James R. Kelly thought as combining both the Protestant either-or and the Catholic Incomplete Philosopher both-and. Turner has three tightly intertwined Thomas Aquinas He is modest. He calls his portrait middle chapters (“A Materialist,” “The A Portrait a “caricature,” but redefines the term Soul,” “God”) where we learn, among By Denys Turner to mean not distortion but exaggera- other things, why Thomas had no ratio- Yale University Press. 312p $28 tion, as a teacher might do in an early nal problems with Aristotle’s argument morning class. This that the world was In his very first sentence, Denys Turner, works wonderfully eternal; why he did professor of historical theology at Yale for his account of have rational prob- University, tells us that in his portrait Thomas the man, the lems with the many of that most Catholic of Catholic Dominican and the Platonist Christians philosopher-theologians, St. Thomas saint. We learn that who, in their defer- Aquinas (1225-74), “I have not until Thomas disappoint- ence to Genesis, op- undertaking this work given more care- ed his ambitious posed Aristotle; why ful consideration to an intended read- parents when he Thomas emphasized ership.” That is you and me, the non- joined the recently that humans are ra- specialist looking for conversations, formed Dominicans, tional animals (the written or oral, about the foundational who sided with the author’s constant em- questions mostly skipped in homilies, era’s 99 percent with phasis); why “Thomas pamphlets and catechisms but noisily their off-putting vow the Materialist” is the raised by the New Atheists (Richard of poverty and their key to his philosophy Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam street-preaching, and theology; why Harris, Daniel Dennett) and by al- that he did grow fat many of his academic most any report in the Tuesday New and balding, that he colleagues and some York Times science section on neuro- knew no Greek, that he unhesitatingly bishops considered his teaching dan- science and its neuroimaging inform- drew on Arabic sources of Aristotle, gerously heretical; why Thomas ar- ing us that we have lost our minds to that his sermons were “mercifully gued that the soul’s immortality is in- our brains. Before offering a judgment short,” that he was not scintillating, sufficient for the survival of a personal about Turner’s success, let’s talk about that he had a plodding deadpan style, “I”; that for Thomas the existence of what he’s done. that he too thought of himself as a God is rationally debatable, even if he

34 America October 14, 2013 October 14, 2013 America 35 knows as a matter of faith which side preceding chapters. fortable with a rational silence. Turner ought to win; that rationally mono- Here is an apt way to decide if closes Aquinas with suggestions for theism is no easier to establish than you want to buy this worthy and de- further reading, helpfully arranging the Trinity; that while humans must manding book. Download Part 5 of the sources by their pertinence to ask questions about a creator—why the 2004 BBC program “The Atheism each of his chapters. A reader could is there something rather than noth- Tapes,” in which, like Aquinas, Turner profitably spend a semester with this ing?—the answers are not inevitably in his conversation with the neurolo- book. provable; that for Thomas this neg- gist Jonathan Miller presents a por- ative theology is the exact inverse of trait of the honest seeker who refuses James R. Kelly is emeritus professor of sociolo- atheist denial; that regarding free will, to sever reason and faith and is com- gy at Fordham University in New York City. both God and “I” are the causes of my free action. In all these complex and paradoxi- James Lang cal philosophical reasonings, Turner, always the conscientious teacher, as- A Generous, Lovely Champion sists the reader with apt analogies and punchy one-liners. Still, these middle George Orwell lection of letters, Davison selected ma- chapters remain oceans away from A Life in Letters terial that he hoped would “illustrate beach reading. By George Orwell, Edited Orwell’s life and hopes.” Turner’s Chapter 6, “Grace, Desire, by Peter Davison In short, Davison wants readers to and Prayer,” begins, “It would be im- Liveright. 560p $35 catch a glimpse of the human being— possible to overestimate the impor- born Eric Arthur Blair but known for tance of friendship in Thomas’s moral In April 1938, the British writ- most of his adult life, even to friends, as theology and the role that friendship er Stephen Spender sent a letter to George Orwell—behind the celebrat- plays in his theology of grace.” This George Orwell asking how Orwell ed author of two very famous works, chapter warrants a slow reading and could justify attacking Spender for his Animal Farm and 1984, and a remark- prepares us for what I took to be per- politics and then— able output of less- haps the contemporary core of Turner’s after the two writers er-known writings, Portrait: Thomas’s teaching on the eu- had met—chang- from book reviews charist, which is the culmination of ing his attitude and and literary and so- both his philosophical reflections and treating Spender in ciological journalism his spirituality. a more amicable and to his earlier novels After that Thomas wrote not one generous manner. like Burmese Days or more word, leaving his Summa in- Orwell responded Keep the Aspidistra complete. He died three months later. with a handwritten Flying. Turner argues that Thomas’s “elected letter in which he The task is a wor- incompleteness” signified not (as the explained that “when thy one. Although legend has it) that his reflections on you meet anyone in some of the specific the Eucharist unmasked his heavy the flesh you realise targets that Orwell thinking “as straw,” but rather that he immediately that he attacked in his non- had brought them to the edge of the is a human being and fiction and his novels soul-filling silence of mysticism. In not a sort of carica- have faded from our terms of Thomas’s apotheosis em- ture embodying cer- view, his critique of brace, Turner then reflects on what tain ideas.” the political and eco- the term “transubstantiation” can and One cannot help nomic systems that cannot tell us today and whether it but apply this statement to the latest create and justify poverty and his per- obscures the depth of what Thomas, volume of Orwell’s letters, edited by sonal courage in the face of threats to the Council of Trent and today’s Peter Davison, who has previously freedom and injustice remain as rele- church mean by the Eucharist. This compiled and edited Orwell’s complete vant and inspirational for us today as chapter alone almost—but it’s still an oeuvre into a 20-volume collection that they were in the years leading to and almost—eases the underlinings and stretches beyond 8,000 pages. For this following World War II, his most double-readings required by the new (and mercifully more brief ) col- prolific literary period. When Orwell

36 America October 14, 2013 died in 1950 at the age of just 46, his tellectuals in the first half of the 20th what little I can to get justice for peo- popularity and influence were at their century, Orwell saw democratic so- ple who have been imprisoned without height, evidenced by the fact that his cialism as the most just political and trial and libeled in the press.” friends in publishing and bookselling economic system available to mod- As any life in letters will reveal, of were raising money for him to travel to ern societies. His commitment to course, Orwell was neither uniformly Switzerland to fight the tuberculosis the poor and oppressed peoples of strong nor saintly. After his wife dies that eventually killed him. They un- Europe stemmed in part from the under anesthetic on the operating ta- derstood the power of Orwell’s work years he spent living as a tramp, or ble, leaving Orwell a widower at 42, and wanted to give him the opportuni- working horrendous hours for small with their adopted infant son to care ty to continue producing it. pay in the kitchens of luxury hotels for, he makes awkward overtures to The George Orwell that Davison in Paris or in the farm fields of south- a series of younger women. “You are presents to us is an appealing one: ern England—experiences he docu- young and healthy,” he writes to Anne indefatigable writer, generous friend, mented in books like Down and Out Popham, “and you deserve somebody champion of the poor and oppressed, in Paris and London and fictionalized better than me: on the other hand if avid gardener and outdoorsman. in A Clergyman’s Daughter. But unlike you don’t find such a person, and if you Particularly appealing for the read- many of his peers, Orwell saw quickly think of yourself as essentially a wid- er who has even a casual interest in that the corrupted Communist soci- ow [owing to Orwell’s poor health], Orwell’s work will be the earlier pe- ety established in Russia did not rep- then you might do worse—i.e., sup- riods of his life, in which we see him resent an ideal toward which British posing I am not actually disgusting to as a hopeful and struggling writer, one socialists should look for inspiration. you.” Orwell’s loneliness and desper- who seems resigned to a life of literary As a result, Orwell found himself ate search for companionship in these hackwork and financial struggle. frequently clashing with other art- years can make for painful reading. In a letter to his lifelong agent, ists, writers and even his own pub- Catholic readers might certain- Leonard Moore, in 1932, he complains lishers on political questions. He did ly take offense at Orwell’s deep ani- that his teaching position is interfering so with courage and honesty. In one mosity toward the Catholic Church. with his ability to write. In response case he sent a letter to the editor of a Multiple letters reveal his distrust to Moore’s question about whether he pro-Communist publication that was not only of Catholicism, but of any- will be producing a new book anytime giving him regular work, letting them one with strong religious convictions, soon, Orwell writes: “I have got to pro- know that because of their whitewash- even when their politics matched his duce a school play, and I have not only ing of Communist activities in Spain own. In response to a reader’s question had to write it, but I have got to do all he could no longer write for them. about Gandhi, Orwell describes him the rehearsing and, worst of all, make “Let me say how sorry I am about this in a 1941 letter as one of the “right- most of the costumes. The result is that whole business, but I have got to do hand men” of the colonial government, I have practically no leisure.” (Readers of Orwell’s novel A Clergyman’s without guile Daughter will remember how he later translated this challenging and comical task of costume-making into fiction.) Even after the success of Animal Farm had brought him considerable international recognition, Orwell seems not to have foreseen the level of fame that his works would earn him after his death. “I’m glad you liked the book,” he writes to Frederic Warburg, the publisher of his final books, in December of 1948. “It isn’t a book I would gamble on for a big sale, but I suppose one could be sure of 10,000 any way.” The book he was referring to is 1984.

“And exactly what, pray tell, were you doing on the evening of October 31st?” too n : bob e c k s tei Like many British artists and in- c a r

October 14, 2013 America 37 whose nonviolent resistance “made it with his correspondents. easier for the British to rule India.” (In But Orwell as a writer deserves a later and more generous letter, after a wider audience—a statement that India achieved independence, he seems might seem absurd in the face of 1984’s to acknowledge that he has been mis- omnipresence on the American high taken about Gandhi.) school syllabus. To limit the work of The technical qualities of the book George Orwell to that work does him a can also put barriers in the way of it serious injustice, as his descriptions of substituting, as Davison hopes it will, poverty and social injustice, and their for an Orwell autobiography. The let- causes, have much to teach us today. ters are annotated with copious foot- If Davison’s compilation of Orwell’s notes, and one has to flip back to the bi- letters, which help fill out our under- ographical pages frequently to remind standing of this oft-caricatured writer, oneself about the identity of his various can draw readers more deeply into the correspondents. Readers who are not life and catalogue of George Orwell, familiar with the details of the Spanish then he will have accomplished an im- Civil War or the politics of wartime portant objective. England might also find themselves confused by some of the detailed polit- James Lang teaches English at Assumption ical wrangling in which Orwell engages College in Worcester, Mass.

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy A Luscious Account

Country Girl of O’Brien’s books to be drawn into A Memoir Country Girl, the memoir O’Brien By Edna O’Brien swore she would never write. From Little, Brown and Company. 368p page one, she irresistibly pulls us into $27.99 (Reprint edition) the wild heart of her life with master- ly prose and a sagacity born of obser- Edna O’Brien had a dream. In it, she is vant living. In this luscious account, a very young girl on her way to school O’Brien writes of her raw and solitary when she trips and falls on the road, childhood in rural Ireland, of her im- gashing her forehead open. Out spills petuous marriage to the writer Ernest her brain, which becomes a spinning Gébler and their divorce, of illicit and top that passers-by, young and old, constant loves, of her successes and dance and trample upon. failures as a writer—”the fame and the Reality for O’Brien has proved far slaughter”—of exhilarating evenings less cruel, thank God. There has been among the literati of London and New no stamping into silence the whirling York and times of inward unraveling, mind of this Irish writer, whose early and of the reading and writing that novels were once denounced in her sustained her through the years. A homeland as too salacious. Over the survivor’s tale. A reckoning exquisitely past five decades, she has spun out rendered, Country Girl is a testament tales of fiction, biographies, essays and to the holy craft of writing, its power to a collection of poetry, her work gar- reveal how life, for all its vicissitudes, is nering numerous honors, including a bountiful gift. the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement The youngest of Lena and Michael Award. O’Brien’s five children, Edna was born You need not to have read any in 1930 and raised at Drewsboro, her

38 America October 14, 2013 father’s decaying estate in western child. The couple have sons, Carlo putting behind her the “twin gover- Ireland. Michael O’Brien is a gambling and Sasha, and move nance of parents and man and alcoholic, and young Edna to London. In “bleak husband.” (O’Brien lives within the folds of her fiercely suburbia,” amid the later said reliving that loving mother. The outdoors provide desolation of a mar- exodus of 1962 was refuge from a home lacking in money riage to a moody, the most difficult part and “fraught with tension.” controlling man, she of writing this mem- As a child, O’Brien thought scrawls The Country oir.) Drewsboro the “loveliest, leafiest place Girls in three short The years that in the whole world.” It is here in fields weeks, writing while follow bring their of wildflower and burdock, where fam- the children are away upheavals and joys, ily ghosts and Mad Mabel roam and at school and before which O’Brien re- Carnero, the farmhand, sings saucy bringing her husband counts with penetrat- ditties as he takes his weekly wash that his afternoon tea. Set ing precision, captur- 8-year-old O’Brien first pursues her in Ireland, O’Brien’s ing the smell of mem- “daft ambition” to be a writer, jotting debut novel, the first ory and hue of mood down essays on the natural world to in a trilogy, receives as well as landscape. submit to a local newspaper. high praise from re- Ireland, the home- O’Brien’s childhood is imbued with viewers but condem- land O’Brien left de- a stifling Catholicism, her people forev- nation from many of cades ago, is in the er petitioning Christ to save them from her countrymen for its sexual passages. very marrow of this sublime telling. their own bodies. For all her mother’s As O’Brien’s literary star rises, her It suffuses her chapters on childhood, prayers, O’Brien inclines to rapturous, already ailing marriage plummets. Dublin, Donegal and the North. It can hectic loves. At age 23 she elopes with After one furious evening during which be heard in O’Brien’s voice, felt in the the Irish writer Ernest Gébler, who, the depressive and jealous Ernest at- melancholy that rims this tale, making unknown to her, has been recently tempts to choke her, she walks out of the joys appear more luminous. It was abandoned by his American wife and the house and suffocating marriage, the light of Belfast that she first noticed

October 14, 2013 America 39 when she journeyed to the city in 1974 ing observer of self and world, pursu- chimes, the carillon,/ the ring of ice to write of the Troubles. “A gray, rainy ing her craft with the same rigor a saint cream vans, a bird’s high phrases,/ light, working-class Protestant and pursues union with God, who makes church bells that bonged out colors, Catholic houses, identical, Lilliputian this memoir a tale of warrior’s perse- blue for bridesmaids.” The tone shifts size, the presence of mountain and sea, verance as well as an account of love’s as the list of sounds continues: “a wall and heaped clouds that cried out for yearnings and losses. Criticized by her clock, punctuating my father’s silenc- poetry and not bloodshed.” friend Norman Mailer for producing es,/ his sister lost, cutting through the Those expecting a kiss-and-tell prose that is “too interior,” O’Brien re- toneless/ black-white headlines and memoir from O’Brien will be disap- mains committed to the interior view, the radio’s spondees/ loud as tower pointed. She devotes just 10 pages giving us the heart of a scene in exqui- bells: death camps, mass graves.” to her two love affairs, and these are site detail. In many of these poems we see mu- remotely described. Far more reveal- Devour this book in a day, if you sic as lament, praise, passion, solace or ing and specific is her chapter on the choose, but then reread and savor. Its prayer: the blues of Miles Davis and LSD trip taken under the supervision landscapes alone evoked an awe in me Billie Holiday, the operatic tenor of of the Scottish psychotherapist R. D. akin to what I felt in the cathedrals of Enrico Caruso, “Handel’s Messiah” Laing and her hilarities reckoning with Europe. The sheer beauty of O’Brien’s which in the poem’s opening quatrain dry spells in writing. The woman who descriptions make you want to drop asks “the question, still unanswered,/ wrote a novel in three weeks finds her- down on your knees and stammer why do nations furiously rage together?” self facing wordless seasons and pur- “thank you” for all that is gorgeous on And in its closing quatrain declares: sues myriad methods to conjure away this planet. “The world is so beautiful,” “Now horns acclaim. I don’t know if her barrenness. she writes. Indeed, when O’Brien has Messiah/ has come, will come to save “There were so many me’s,” writes pen in hand, that truth is made more us, or will come/ too late to save us, O’Brien. Imaginative, repressed child, obvious. but never mind,/ let the bass roar with pining lover, committed mother and winds that tell the story.” wise woman with a wicked sense of hu- Claire Schaeffer-Duffy is a freelance Schulman addresses faith and writer and member of the Sts. Francis and mor, all vividly appear in these pages. Therese Catholic Worker community in art in several poems, including “The But it is O’Brien the writer, unflinch- Worcester, Mass. Printmaker,” based on El Greco’s painting of Veronica’s veil with Christ’s image. In the stunning poem “Letter Claudia Mo n pere Mc Isaac Never Sent,” Schulman adopts the persona of Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Muse Cannot Be Leashed S.J., speaking to Walt Whitman, a poet Hopkins both admired and disdained. Without a Claim a Claim”). Nothing is truly ours, yet We see the two poets’ shared awe of By Grace Schulman under Schulman’s probing eye, she of- nature: “Let each in his way/ catch the Mariner Books. 96p $14.95 fers us new ways of seeing and listen- hawk alive in air,/ tongue-tied, stam- ing; her language soars in song. mering,/ in whatever whirled words/ The Life and Death Faith, visual art, music, the family, will suffice.” A few lines later:The “ of Poetry natural and urban landscapes, history: more desirous to read you,/ the more de- Poems Schulman moves seamlessly through termined/ I will not,/ for my eyes lift By Kelly Cherry these subjects, often in the same poem, to Heaven,/ not simply the heavens/ Louisiana State University Press. 80p in brilliant associative leaps. Her vi- of puffed clouds and stars.” $19.95 sion places history squarely in our Schulman’s interest in religion and lives, and there are frequent references culture is expansive; her vision is one Without a Claim, Grace Schulman’s to the Holocaust. (Schulman’s Polish of unity. In the poem “Havdalah,” as dazzling seventh poetry collection, father immigrated to America, but his Schulman describes this Jewish cere- immerses us in a richly textured world sister was killed in the Warsaw ghetto mony, she writes, “the flame/ tells me where “dread-and-joy” are neighbors uprising in 1943.) that havdalah, meaning separation,/ di- (“Charles Street Psalm”) and noth- In “Bells,” Schulman begins with vides only to join.” In the candle’s flame ing is truly ours: “We rent, borrow, or an exuberant Whitmanesque list that she sees “yellow for the luminous me- share even our bodies,/ and never own sings with alliteration and conso- dallion/ in a Muslim prayer rug” and all that we know and love” (“Without nance: “I hear the summer bells, the “silver in a chapel’s blue-green tapestry.”

40 America October 14, 2013 Schulman’s poems are filled with Not Heard”: “A thrill of cobwebs in the the playful way the daughter and her images of fragmentation and words trees,/ the breeze strumming gossamer friend interact. These mournful po- like broken, chipped and cracked. Ye t like a guitar.” ems, all from the woman’s perspective, the poems insist that The poem “Night are grounded in bleak island imagery all people, places and Vowels” is full of rich of fog, rain and sea, of “wind from the things are connected. images and skillful north shrieking its own sad cries” (“On Many of Schulman’s end-rhyme, begin- Bardsey Island”), of “clouds worn thin poems are dedicat- ning with “Breath as slippers” (“A Day Spent Walking ed to or inspired of wind that clouds and Writing”). by others: writers, the moon./ Shriek The book’s final section, “What the musicians, artists— of eagle, cry of loon/ Poet Wishes to Say,” deepens Cherry’s also strangers. This threading through Ars Poetica in a voice of authority connection moves fog.” The final cou- and humor. “The Life and Death of many of her poems plets are beautiful: Poetry” is the least successful poem in to a place of awe and “And is that you I this section; the connections between praise that is deeply hear, weeping/ while poetry and Christ’s life, death and moving, never sen- the rest are sleep- resurrection seem strained. But “On timental. The urban ing?/ O,O,O,O,O/ Translation” is thoughtful and witty and natural world u,u,u.” as Cherry speaks to her students and often appear side by Individual let- to us: “Okay,” she writes. “You know al- side, both deserv- ters appear in an- ready/ that Frost said poetry is/ what ing of praise, as in other poem, “The gets lost in translation,/ and so it is, “Variations on a Line By Whitman”: Loveknot,” a surprisingly moving poem standing/ there helplessly, its arms/ by “Bless the waters/ that hurry like the about stillborn mice: “would-be twins/ its sides as cars zoom by/ and the sun morning rush hour,/ praise the audi- clutching each other/as if either/could lowers itself/ into the blue bath of/ ence that chatters/ before the Verdi save his brother./ The evening.” starts, the small talk/ lifting my heart size of thumbs,/ tails The fascinating like tidewater through stones.” Oh, still curled./ Two Q’s/ poem “What the Poet how our hearts, too, are lifted, reading spelling nothing./ Wishes to Say” claims these magnificent poems. Spelling it twice.” in its first line that it Cherry often “cannot be said,” and In The Life and Death of Poetry, winner weaves together im- then explores the of the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award ages of animals and daunting demands in 2013, Kelly Cherry explores lan- language: “The words poetry makes on guage and poetry in the long tradition have flown/ sprout- writers, like the idea of the Ars Poetica. Her own language, ed wings and taken that “what the poet as we would expect in this ninth col- off/ Your throat is an wishes to say” is “a lection of poetry, is exquisite: imag- empty nest” (“Against word-field of music, inative, vivid and rhythmic, in a voice Aphasia”). And we as it’s less a text/ and that is alternately curious, meditative, learn in the villanelle more a space of time mournful, witty, wise. “Ars Poetica” what the profoundly charged/ In the first section, “Learning the muse is not: “No dog, by feeling.” Language,” Cherry explores a vast ter- the muse cannot be We trust Cherry’s ritory: of sounds teetering on the edge leashed or trained.” vision and instruc- of meaning, of words spoken and un- In “Welsh Table Talk,” a sequence tion in this poem. And we feel that spoken, of animals as texts and wit- of 18 poems, Cherry explores a cou- what she wishes to say throughout nesses, of words that amuse, enlight- ple’s inability to connect during a this collection, she has indeed said— en, confuse, forgive, “reveal us to our stay on Bardsey Island. The relation- with a discernment, imagination and selves” (“A Voice Survives”). ship’s failure is juxtaposed with the music that leave us enchanted. Cherry’s rhythm is masterful, and bond between the man and his young she delights us with rhyme, often inter- daughter—whom the woman hopes Claudia Monpere McIsaac teaches writ- nal, like the opening lines in “Seen but will become her stepdaughter—and ing at Santa Clara University.

October 14, 2013 America 41 sial aspects of this theory is the claim ROBERT J. DALY that it is the Bible, and more precisely Christianity, that is primarily respon- sible for the secularization that indeed How Everything Hangs liberates us from the shackles of the René Girard and Secular that characterizes all human social, re- “false sacred” but also, ironically, from Modernity ligious and political activity. Originally the scapegoat mechanism that we have Christ, Culture, and Crisis brought to light from a reading of the been using to save ourselves from the By Scott Cowdell world’s great litera- effects of our rival- University of Notre Dame Press ture, and then con- rous desires. 272p $34 firmed by a reading of But this liberation the Bible, the univer- is incomplete; enough A new Darwin, indeed one who sal applicability of this of the archaic sacred does a better job of explaining who theory has also been perdures in our world and what we are than even Sigmund supported by recent to continue to make Freud? Someone who offers a key to discoveries about imi- violently sacrificial all the mythologies? And, even in this tative behavior in cog- readings of the Bible age of secular modernity, one who nitive neuroscience. still possible, as, e.g., offers an intellectual synthesis that Key to this the- in “Christian funda- actually holds faith, reason and sci- ory is Girard’s un- mentalism whose an- ence together? That one can answer derstanding of the gry God underpins a yes to these questions and point to archaic sacred, the myth of redemptive the work of one person, the French- mechanisms of sacred violence in American American anthropologist and cul- violence. This ap- culture.” tural critic René Girard, is the bold plies especially to the In a central chapter, claim of this book. scapegoat mechanism, “Modern Institutions What enables Cowdell to make this which formerly protected us from our and Violence,” Cowdell spells out how claim is the extraordinary explanato- self-destructive mimetic urges but now, the archaic sacred helped pre-mod- ry power of Girard’s mimetic theory, having been progressively unveiled by ern societies to protect themselves a theory that finds in the way human secular modernity, is becoming increas- from constant violent disruptions beings instinctively imitate the desires ingly ineffective in doing so. by maximizing “external mediation” of others the fundamental dynamic One of the unique and controver- and limiting “internal mediation.” In the external mediation of desire, for example, peasants did not think of themselves as equal to their lords and masters and thus possibly their rivals. But with the onset of equality and its concomitant dilution of religious au- thority, secularized modernity in the West has had to rely on the nation state and, more recently, the market to control and divert, distract and dilute the violent conflictual mimesis of in- ternal mediation (everybody equal to everybody else) that equality seems to make inevitable. In a final chapter, “War, Terror, Apocalypse,” Cowdell expounds Girard’s vision of this emancipation of mimetic desire from traditional constraints as moving us inexorably toward a situation of absolute war, a

42 America October 14, 2013 situation better understood, Girard church—violent, acquisitive mimesis already open to Girard’s vision. But claims, not just in terms of the West is replaced by a nonviolent transforma- it does reward the persistent reader versus Islam, but as a global civil war tive mimesis. with a remarkable sense of how every- based on the erasure of difference. How powerfully transformative thing hangs together. And it actually Far from being just another in a that can be is illustrated by what hap- achieves this to an extent that, to my long series of jeremiads, Girard’s apoc- pened to St. Ignatius, the founder of knowledge, no other theory can claim. alyptic fears and Cowdell’s measured the Jesuits. Driven no longer to imi- The persistent reader will be reward- description of Girard’s listing of the tate the glorious feats of knights and ed with a comprehensive glance into actual phenomena and events leading warriors but the self-giving desire and the “key to all the mythologies” that to this unhappy end, this Girardian vi- feats of Jesus and the saints, Ignatius’ George Eliot’s Edward Casaubon so sion does not leave us without a sliver life was transformed. The daunting vainly sought and that, somewhat of hope. For even though we cannot question with which the more re- later, Nietzsche glimpsed but could keep ourselves from imitating some- cent work of Girard leaves us is: will not bring himself to accept. For, as one else’s desire, that same dynamic enough of this kind of transformation Cowdell notes in his opening words, can be not just the deadly cancer but be taking place in our world to coun- appreciation of this theory requires a also the healing cure. teract a seemingly inevitable slide to- certain amount of personal conversion, That begins to happen when the de- ward global civil war? although, as the extraordinary range of sire that we imitate is, for example, the The strength of this book is the Girard’s followers indicates, not nec- kenotic (i.e., self-giving, self-emptying) chilling clarity with which it explains essarily conversion to Christianity or desire of Jesus. According to Girard the origins and the dynamic opera- even to religion. and especially his Christian interpret- tions of human civilization as we know In other words, this is a good book ers and followers, in that kind of dy- it, and the profound internal threats to on a very, indeed vitally important sub- namic—not restricted to Christians, that civilization that have been devel- ject. as the life of Ghandi shows, and ad- oping in secular modernity. mittedly not well supported by the The weakness of the book is that it ROBERT J. DALY, S.J., is a retired theology pro- bloodstained history of the Christian is not an easy read, not even for those fessor at Boston College.

October 14, 2013 America 43 historical salvage operation. Each ob- ideas | Philip Crispin ject in the museum has been carefully conserved through a groundbreaking Hail, Star of the Sea process that is still ongoing. “Domini exaudi orationem meam et One museum sheds light on English Catholicism clamor meus ad te veniat” (“O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto thee”). These words of a soul in distress, from Psalm 102, were in- scribed in Latin around the border of the most ornate book cover to be re- covered from the wreck. What could be more apt? Or more prophetic? The drowning men would surely have called upon God, and a great many would, it appears from objects re- covered, have called upon the Virgin Mary and the saints as well. Henry VIII had broken with Rome several years earlier, and the English Reformation, driven from above, was slowly extending its official grip on the nation. Following the dissolution of Detail of an engraving depicting the sinking of the English warship Mary Rose on the monasteries, Henry’s coffers were July 19, 1545. replenished, and he was able to afford The cries, it was recorded, could be creation of the museum also marks the a substantial and expensive refit of the heard on shore. The piteous shrieks first time the hull of this 16th-century Mary Rose in 1536. of men “drowning like rattens.” They warship and its artifacts will be reunit- The Mary Rose was engaged in were the crew of Henry VIII’s beloved ed. More than 19,000 artifacts and the sea-battle with the ships of Catholic flagship, the Mary Rose, the pride of crew’s mortal remains were recovered France when she sank, yet, intrigu- the English Navy Royal, which sank from the wreck (179 identified indi- ingly, no fewer than 10 rosaries were before his very eyes during the Battle viduals). recovered from the wreck. Mechanical of the Solent on July 19, 1545. In the ceremony, the ship’s bell rosary praying had been banned in Just why the Mary Rose, the “no- was solemnly conveyed from over the 1538 (and all use of the beads was blest ship of sail,” sank is a mystery. wreck site, where the ship had lain condemned in 1547), yet deeply in- Too many bodies and armaments for 437 years, and was the final ob- grained Catholic practices were still aboard, some claimed. A sudden gust ject to be installed in the museum. clearly being observed. There was of wind caused her to list, allowing The museum is dedicated to the crew, popular resistance to the new religious the seawater to gush into her open and one unknown sailor is buried in prescriptions. The beads are made var- gun ports, said another. Whatever the Portsmouth Anglican Cathedral, orig- iously from boxwood, coral, brass and reason, of the estimated 500 crew- inally the parish church of Portsea and silver. Two chaplets have cone-shaped men, no more than 35 survived. Most the first church ded- beads with three were trapped below decks or snared icated to St. Thomas On the Web dots drilled into beneath the antiboarding netting that Becket, just a few “The Ignatian Educator,” a new them, representing n g s /J AME S BA I R E (1703-1803) En g r avi y Ro s e a n d the Cowd r ay blog on Catholic education. covered the main deck. years after his mar- americamagazine.org/educator the Trinity. This past spring, on the feast of tyrdom. As well as the ro- Corpus Christi, the official opening The excavation saries, or paternos- ceremony of the magnificent new and “resurrection” from the deep of the ters as they were familiarly called, ar- Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Mary Rose in 1982 remain unparal- chers’ wrist guards from the ship bear Dockyard, right next to where she was leled coups in the field of maritime ar- religious symbols and prayers. Two built, brought a form of closure to the chaeology. Almost 28,000 dives took are inscribed with words of prayer to

P hoto: wikimedia c ommo ns / T he M a r ship’s strange, eventful history. The place in the world’s largest underwater the Blessed Mother: “Ave Maria gracia

44 America October 14, 2013 [sic] plena dominus tecum...” (the first glimmering over several subterranean might started with the Mary Rose.” words of the Hail Mary in Latin); floors, while the sound of creaking Indeed, she marks a turning point in and, almost certainly, this poignant timbers and the clanging bell cast the history. She was almost certainly the line from the Salve Regina: “Et jesum visitor once more onto the briny deep. first ship to fire a broadside in anger, benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis Thanks to facial reconstruction, vis- but one of the last to use archers and post hoc exilium ostende” (“and after itors can look certain members of the longbows to shoot arrows. Following this our exile, show unto us the bless- ed fruit of thy womb, Jesus”). Until the A rosary found on board the Reformation, England was known as carrack Mary Rose. Our Lady’s Dowry. Another wrist guard depicts the crucifixion, and another carries the crossed \keys associated with St. Peter (and the papacy), although this was also the heraldic device for the Diocese of Exeter, from which sever- al of the bowmen may have come. An ornamental serving flagon carries the motto in Latin: “If God is for us, who can be against us” (Rom 8:31). Due to the difficulty of storing water, the crew were allocated one gallon of ale a day. Henry had constructed four breweries in Portsmouth to supply his fleet. The ship’s very name recalls a happi- er time before the rift in Christendom. crew—a carpenter, a cook, a master her loss, the Navy redesigned its ships When the ship was first built in 1511, gunner—in the eye and discover their to make them less top-heavy and also Henry was a loyal son of the church. personal and professional belongings. altered its tactics to fight in open wa- Indeed, a few years later, he was hon- It is both moving and amazing to ter. ored with the title Defensor Fidei for discover these men, their lives and this Entering the rarefied Admiral’s his defense of orthodoxy against great ship through all the precious rel- Gallery at the end of the tour is like Luther. ics on display. Hatch, the ship’s dog, is entering into Hans Holbein’s paint- It was long held that the Mary now an alert skeleton. Combs come ing, “The Ambassadors.” Here are as- Rose was named after Henry’s sister, complete with nits and human fleas. tonishing musical instruments: two Mary Tudor, and after the Tudor rose. There is a pewter bleeding bowl and violins, tabors and a shawm (an early But no direct evidence for this exists. a syringe, courtesy of the barber-sur- form of clarinet). There is fine pew- Now it is argued that the ship’s name geon. From the galley we have a four- ter ware to eat and drink from, fash- revered Our Lady, the Mystical Rose. legged stool used for chopping meat, ionable garments and books to read, There was a long-standing tradition the backbone of a cod and even charred including, it is believed, the Bible in of such pious naming and two of fuel logs from the oven, untimely English. Henry’s other great ships were called quenched. There are precious pep- Lippiett summed up the Mary Henry Grace à Dieu and the Peter percorns, a type of early backgammon Rose as “the world’s finest insight into Pomegranate, the pomegranate being board and tiny dice; a mighty cannon life and death five hundred years ago. Catherine of Aragon’s royal emblem. and an array of weaponry, including a When their world ended, our story be- The museum design, built around great many longbows, which we learn gan, and yet we have barely scratched the venerable oak hull of the Mary were pulled at almost twice the weight the surface of what we can learn from s a/3.0)], via W ikimedia Commo ns c ommo ns .o r g/li e s /by- -S A -3.0 (http:// cr eative Rose, has been ingeniously conceived previously thought. A bowman’s skele- the collection.” as a finely crafted wooden jewelry box. ton reveals a repetitive strain injury to Here’s to further explorations. And infinite treasures lie within un- his shoulder and a twisted spine. der strict environmental conditions. John Lippiett, a former senior Royal Philip Crispin is a lecturer in drama at the y Ro s e Tr u t [CC- BY Lights are dim. The space evokes Navy officer now chief executive of the University of Hull, England. A version of this the feel of a shrine, with exhibitions Mary Rose museum, said: “Maritime article appeared at indcatholicnews.com. the M a r

October 14, 2013 America 45 429, Hales Corners, WI 53130-0429. Located in sition is filled. Send letter of interest and curriculum CLASSIFIED a suburb of Milwaukee, Sacred Heart School of vitae by e-mail to [email protected] or The Very Theology (www.shst.edu) is a Roman Catholic sem- Rev. Ross Shecterle, President-Rector, Sacred Heart Books inary specializing in priestly formation for men of all School of Theology, P.O. Box 429, Hales Corners, Adult Faith Study. Faith and reason together: ages, with a specific emphasis on seminarians over 30 WI 53130-0429. Located in a suburb of Milwaukee, www.WordUnlimited.com. years of age. Sacred Heart School of Theology (www.shst.edu) is a Roman Catholic seminary specializing in priestly Anointed for a Purpose: Confirmed for Life in SACRED HEART SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY formation for men of all ages with a specific emphasis the 21st Century, by Mary Sharon Moore (Awakening seeks candidates for a full-time, graduate-lev- on seminarians over 30 years of age. Vocations, 2012). Parish and personal resource for el seminary appointment as Director of R.C.I.A., Confirmation, spiritual growth at all levels, Liturgical Music and Organist SACRED HEART SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY connecting sacramental anointing with the urgency of starting August 2014. Applicant must be a Roman seeks a Vice President for Human our times. Sample pages: www.awakeningvocations. Catholic possessing at least a master’s degree, though Formation. Reporting directly to the President- com. Order: (888) 687-2046. Bulk discounts. preference will be given to those with a canonical de- Rector, the vice president is responsible for overseeing gree, or doctor of sacred music degree. Candidate will the seminary’s human formation program. Applicant provide evidence of outstanding service playing skills, must be a Roman Catholic priest possessing at least Positions choral conducting skills, cantor formation and exhib- a master’s degree, though preference will be given SACRED HEART SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY it faithfulness to the General Instruction of the Roman to those with a canonical degree or advanced study seeks candidates for a full-time, graduate-lev- Missal, the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the in a formation-relevant area. Candidate must have el seminary appointment as Director of Hours and Sing to the Lord; Music in Divine Worship. worked in the formation field, preferably in a sem- Homiletics starting August 2014. Applicant Applicants will also demonstrate competence with inary context. Evidence of administrative compe- must be a Roman Catholic priest or deacon possess- a wide range of musical styles for the liturgy, from tence and pastoral skill must also be provided. The ing at least a master’s degree, though preference will Gregorian Chant to contemporary expressions of sung submission deadline is Nov. 15, 2013, although ap- be given to those with a canonical degree, advanced prayer as well as experience in multicultural liturgical plications will continue to be reviewed until the po- study in homiletics or doctoral degree. Candidate music. As a talented and proficient organist, the suc- sition is filled. Send letter of interest and curriculum will provide evidence of classroom teaching ability, cessful candidate will play the seminary chapel’s 1994 vitae by e-mail to [email protected] or Search compelling preaching skills and pastoral experience. Berghaus II/35 rank mechanical action pipe organ. Committee, Sacred Heart School of Theology, P.O. Position may also include formation advising of sem- Position may also include teaching responsibilities. Box 429, Hales Corners, WI 53130-0429. Located inarians. The submission deadline is Nov. 15, 2013, The submission deadline is Nov. 15, 2013, although in a suburb of Milwaukee, Sacred Heart School although applications will continue to be reviewed applications will continue to be reviewed until the po- of Theology (www.shst.edu) is the largest Roman until the position is filled. Send letter of interest and sition is filled. Send letter of interest and curriculum Catholic seminary in North America specializing in curriculum vitae by e-mail to [email protected] vitae by e-mail to [email protected] or The Very priestly formation for men over 30 years of age. or Dr. Patrick J. Russell, Vice President for Academic Rev. Ross Shecterle, President-Rector, Sacred Heart Affairs, Sacred Heart School of Theology, P.O. Box School of Theology, P.O. Box 429, Hales Corners, Pilgrimage WI 53130-0429. Located in a suburb of Milwaukee, Ignatian and Carmelite Spain and Fatima, May Sacred Heart School of Theology (www.shst.edu) is a 14–24, 2014: Montserrat, Manresa, Xavier, Loyola, Roman Catholic seminary specializing in priestly for- Burgos, Madrid, Avila, Alba de Tormes, Fatima. mation for men of all ages, with a specific emphasis on Jesuit spiritual directors Paul Macke and Michael seminarians over 30 years of age. Cooper. Information at ParableTravel.wordpress. com, (727) 744-4684; [email protected], SACRED HEART SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY (727) 644-5544. seeks candidates for a full-time, graduate-level sem- inary appointment as Director of Liturgy and Liturgical Formation starting Wills August 2014. Applicant must be a Roman Catholic Please remember America in your will. 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46 America October 14, 2013 THE WORD An Annoying Faith Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Oct. 20, 2013 Readings: Ex 17:8–13; Ps 121:1–8; 2 Tm 3:14–4:2; Lk 18:1–8 “Yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice” (Lk 18:5)

ey, want to hear the most unjust judge will render a proper verdict God properly as the one who desires us, annoying sound in the when one is persistent in pleading one’s whom we can never annoy, who is more ‘Hworld?” That is Jim Carrey’s case, how much more will God render than open to welcoming our concerns. character, Lloyd, speaking in the 1994 the proper verdict? God yearns for us to lay our burdens comedy “Dumb and Dumber.” He goes The question I just asked is a way of down. on to demonstrate the world’s most an- arguing common among the This is the persistence with which noying sound. Some people might find rabbis, known in Hebrew as the author of the Second Letter to a lowbrow comedy like this, as a whole, a qal wa-homer argument, “an Timothy, traditionally identified a collection of some of the most annoy- implicit argument from the as Paul, instructs Timothy ing sounds in the world. Hold on to that lesser to the greater, and to live the Christian life. In thought; this might work out for you vice-versa”. The parable of this passage, Paul functions spiritually. the annoying widow and in the role of a coach as It seems that the annoyance fac- the unjust judge has at its he encourages Timothy to tor works two ways. On the one hand, heart an implicit qal wa-ho- “continue in what you have God hears our persistent, bothersome mer argument. learned and firmly believed,” holding up pleas; on the other hand, God asks us God is not unjust; God is not un- to engage in behavior that punctures willing to hear us; God does not render PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE polite convention. Jesus’ parable in Luke justice just to get rid of us. So if we ap- regarding the dishonest judge and the proach God with our prayers, our pleas, annoying widow is one of those bibli- our pain, our suffering, our loneliness, Place yourself at the judge’s home in Jesus’ parable. What do you need to ask of God, cal passages that takes one aback each not only will God hear us; God will ren- over and over again? time it is encountered. I keep wondering, der justice not to get rid of us and not when I hear of the widow who because because we have worn God down with of her persistent badgering receives jus- the most annoying sounds in the world, the Scripture as a faithful guide, for “all tice from “a judge who neither feared but because God loves us, wants what is Scripture is inspired by God and is use- God nor had respect for people,” wheth- best for us and wants to hear from us, ful for teaching, for reproof, for correc- er I am truly getting the point or missing over and over again. tion, and for training in righteousness.” some profound spiritual insight that my And so, as the parable nears its con- Paul says that in view of Christ’s surface reading cannot perceive. clusion, Jesus asks: “Will not God grant “appearing and his kingdom,” Timothy In the parable, Jesus indicates that justice to his chosen ones who cry to should “proclaim the message; be per- persistence in bringing our pleas to God him day and night? Will he delay long in sistent whether the time is favorable in prayer matters. Even the unjust judge helping them? I tell you, he will quickly or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and grants the wishes of the woman when grant justice to them.” encourage, with the utmost patience in she will not cease calling out to him, Yet the parable ends with a question teaching.” though it must be said he has his own designed to challenge us: “And yet, when At stake is our life with God, so we needs in mind. As he explains, he is con- the Son of Man comes, will he find faith must be persistent in approaching God cerned she will “wear me out by continu- on earth?” and in proclaiming the message. The ally coming.” But that is the point: if an Do we see God as an unjust judge? most annoying sound for God, according Do we see God as unconcerned about to Jesus, is our silence, not our persistent our problems? Do we see God as some- knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. one who does not want to hear from door. Let’s make some noise. Paul, Minn. us? This parable asks us to perceive John W. Martens

October 14, 2013 America 47