THE NATIONAL WEEKLY OCT. 5, 2009 $3.50 OF MANY THINGS PUBLISHED BY JESUITS OF THE UNITED STATES eople with what is sometimes infections that shortened their lives called a late vocation are a curi- along with the lives of their children,” EDITOR IN CHIEF Pous lot. Being one myself, I he said. Drew Christiansen, S.J. sometimes compare notes with others Finally, Bryan was assigned to work who come my way. The most recent with J.R.S. in East Africa, training EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT was Bryan Pipins, an energetic adults as teachers of basic literacy skills MANAGING EDITOR Australian Jesuit who walked about who could carry on the work after Robert C. Collins, S.J.

New York last winter in sockless, san- J.R.S. moved on. “When I first visited, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR daled feet while ministering at a local after the program had already begun, I Karen Sue Smith . His tough constitution, tested found over 50 people in one small room ONLINE EDITOR by 13 years in the Australian army and waiting for lessons. ‘There are too Maurice Timothy Reidy several more with the Jesuit Refugee many people here!’ I said, but they CULTURE EDITOR Service in Africa, has seen him through insisted, ‘We want to learn!’ One James Martin, S.J. challenging situations on three conti- woman cried out; ‘Why do I have to LITERARY EDITOR nents. The idea of religious life crossed wait till I’m 75 to learn to read and Patricia A. Kossmann his mind even in primary school. A write?’” And learn they joyfully did, he friend of his father’s, however, advised said. POETRY EDITOR James S. Torrens, S.J. him to work after high school before J.R.S. next sent him to northern applying to enter, “to see if I really had a Uganda for further refugee involve- ASSOCIATE EDITORS call,” as Bryan put it. Odd jobs eventu- ment. Did he ever have a day off? No, George M. Anderson, S.J. ally led him to the Australian army and he replied, “but I was doing so many Peter Schineller, S.J. Kevin Clarke a three-year enrollment. The life suited different things that each task meant him and he re-enlisted. tapping into a different source of ener- ASSISTANT EDITOR But throughout Bryan’s military gy.” Five days a week he was a school Francis W. Turnbull, S.J. years, vocation thoughts remained, so a administrator, but weekends saw him as VISITING EDITOR Jesuit pastor put him in touch with the a priest in various parts of the huge Thomas Massaro, S.J. order’s vocation director. By then Bryan camp with tens of thousands of DESIGN AND PRODUCTION was in his 30s. His novice director sent refugees. Many died of cholera, he Stephanie Ratcliffe him to a l’Arche community of adults explained, partly because as rural peo- with Down syndrome, and from there ple they were not accustomed to living BUSINESS DEPARTMENT to a remote aboriginal community. In in close quarters, where sanitary pre- PUBLISHER 1999 everything changed abruptly cautions became essential. Jan Attridge when East Timor “exploded” during its Thus far Bryan had enjoyed good CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER fight for independence. The resulting health, but then he himself fell ill with Lisa refugee situation led Bryan to ask and typhoid. Now back in Australia, he is MARKETING receive permission to work there with serving in a rural Jesuit parish founded Eryk Krysztofiak the Jesuit Refugee Service. for Catholics fleeing persecution in ADVERTISING After Bryan’s ordination, his during the 1840s. Two Jesuits Julia Sosa provincial sent him to teach English as accompanied these early religious a second language in the Philippines. refugees, so Bryan continues to serve, if 106 West 56th Street But given his instinctive desire for con- not refugees, at least their Australian New York, NY 10019-3803 tact with the materially poor (an descendants. Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 instinct he and I share), he also spent Our stories are vastly different, but E-mail: [email protected]; time as a parish priest, attending to we both learned that God’s call can [email protected] people in Manila’s huge garbage dump, never come too late, whether to reli- Web site: www.americamagazine.org. which is home to 70,000 of the coun- gious life—or to lay people who may Customer Service: 1-800-627-9533 try’s poorest. Picking through the also be searching to respond to a call of © 2009 America Press, Inc. dump, they scratched out a precarious their own. Each person has a vocation. existence. “The people were mostly The challenge is to discover what it is Cover: Inspired by the Time maga- from rural areas, and living in the and then to live it out. zine cover “Is God Dead?” of April 8, dump they suffered from respiratory GEORGE M. ANDERSON, S.J. 1966. CONTENTS www.americamagazine.org VOL. 201 NO.8, WHOLE NO. 4867 OCTOBER 5, 2009

ARTICLES 11 GOD MAKES A COMEBACK John Micklethwait on the persistence of belief in a secular age Austen Ivereigh

15 A FIERY GIFT A spiritual case for natural childbirth Susan Windley-Daoust

20 LOOKING FOR LOVE Encountering the problem of pain M. M. Hubele

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS 11 4 Current Comment 5 Editorial Siege Mentality 6 Signs of the Times 10 Column Classrooms for Peace Maryann Cusimano Love 22 Faith in Focus A Life Freely Given Patricia Talone 33 Poem Mary’s Cat Ethel Pochocki 43 Letters 47 The Word Just One Thing Barbara E. Reid

22 BOOKS & CULTURE 28 FALL BOOKS I Fires of Faith; The Case for God; Neither Beast Nor God; News of the World; A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim ; Closing Time; Strength in What Remains TELEVISION “Mad Men” and the shock of recognition

ON THE WEB ON THE WEB Rev. Robert E. Lauder compares Alice McDermott (right) to Graham Greene, and Susan Windley-Daoust reflects on birth and the spiritual life on our podcast. Plus, Rev. Stephen Joseph Fichter on priests who leave the church for Protestant ministry. All at americamagazine.org. 3528 CURRENT COMMENT

age result from large-scale irrigation and the overuse of fer- Natural Treasures at Risk tilizer and pesticides. Worth considering, too, has been the Madagascar’s extraordinary biodiversity is suffering impact on farmers, the foot soldiers of this revolution, and increased assaults because of a political power vacuum. their families and communities. We are only now attempt- Last March the millionaire mayor of the country’s capital, ing to gauge the effect of persistent exposure to pesticides Antananarivo, with the support of the military, overthrew on agricultural communities. The toll may be high. Madagascar’s president, Marc Ravalomanana. Many of Borlaug’s goal, to rid the world permanently of the mis- the country’s plant and animal species exist nowhere else ery of widespread hunger, has not been achieved. Hunger in the world. There is now little protection in areas persists, even in the world of food plenty that Borlaug where some species now face extinction. Political turmoil helped to create. Thanks to Borlaug’s genius and inspira- has especially jeopardized the island’s lemurs, small mon- tion, there is more food, but people remain too poor to key-like animals with large eyes. Unimpeded, poachers buy it. Across Africa and Central America, in wealthy and now trap and slaughter them as “bushmeat” for luxury poor societies alike, people are hungry—not because of restaurants. drought but because of indifference, a famine of solidarity. Illegal logging, along with slash-and-burn agriculture by As brilliant as he was, Norman Borlaug probably had no subsistence farmers, has already damaged much of idea how to respond to that particularly human calamity. Madagascar’s unique environment. Mining brings another form of environmental degradation, as foreign companies dig up forests for the mineral ilmenite, which is valuable Master of None for the production of titanium dioxide, a white pigment Most people would agree that motorists and train opera- used in paper, paint and plastics. Since Madagascar relies tors should not use cellphones or send text messages while heavily on ecotourism, some commentators regard the eco- driving. Such multitasking has resulted in crashes and logical losses as killing the goose that lays the golden egg. deaths. But the environmental losses also make clear what can But what about other kinds of multitasking? Can peo- happen when political chaos reduces a country’s ability to ple do several things at once and do them well? An expec- protect its most fragile natural treasures. Efforts are under- tation that they can and should underlies the help-wanted way to reach a power-sharing agreement between ads that specify “must be able to multitask.” Multitasking Madagascar’s ousted elected president and the upstart has become something of an ideal in our fast-paced soci- media magnate Andry Rajoelina. In the meantime, howev- ety—a model of success and efficiency often aided by tech- er, environmental destruction of the island’s rare flora and nology and sleek electronic gadgets. fauna continues. It turns out, however, that the “competent multitasker” may be more fable than fact. In August researchers at The Passing Stanford University reported results of a study of media multitasking in The Proceedings of the National Academy Of the Green Revolution of Sciences. After testing 100 college students, researchers The father of the Green Revolution, Norman E. Borlaug, found that on virtually every measure the students most died on Sept. 12. Borlaug, an Iowan, was a plant scientist persistent at multitasking performed worse than those who whose tireless work has been credited with saving hun- seldom attempted more than one task at a time. Multi- dreds of millions of lives. When Mexico and the nations of taskers lacked focus, were easily distracted, could not the Asian subcontinent faced famine, Borlaug helped cre- switch smoothly from one task to another and did not ate sturdy, high-yielding varieties of rice and other grains organize information well. When tested on content, they that have literally fed the world during the last five showed confusion rather than comprehension. Both the decades. researchers and the students were surprised by the find- His passing offers an opportunity not only to acknowl- ings, an indication of just how appealing the myth of the edge his accomplishments but also to re-evaluate the high- “competent multitasker” has become. tech, input-reliant food production model to which they If further studies corroborate the ineffectiveness of mul- led. We may already be near the “peak yield” years of the titasking, then we ought to drop it as an unattainable ideal. Green Revolution, and some of its drawbacks are becom- Why not elevate focus, concentration, analysis and reflec- ing more evident. Soil depletion and environmental dam- tion instead?

4 America October 5, 2009 EDITORIAL Siege Mentality

llegations of war crimes and crimes against appears to be drifting toward a dis- humanity capped a five-month investigation by the heartening acceptance of collective AUnited Nations into the conduct of the Israel punishment as a legitimate means for Defense Forces during their incursion into Gaza last winter. diminishing or even liquidating The report, released on Sept. 15 and named after its lead Hamas. It is therefore crucial now for investigator, the international jurist Richard J. Goldstone, the government of Israel to acknowl- also condemns the indiscriminate missile attacks by Hamas edge its obligations under international law to protect non- into southern Israel that provoked the bloody conflict, but it combatants in combat zones. reserves its harshest assessment for the I.D.F.’s brutal con- The U.S. public likewise has rights and responsibili- duct of the war. ties in this region. Our ongoing military and economic sup- Judge Goldstone, a South African, was the chief pros- port for Israel makes the United States complicit in Israel’s ecutor for the U.N.’s international criminal tribunals for the strategic decisions. The welfare of the Palestinian people, former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. His credentials are owing to their unique and vulnerable status, remains the impeccable and his reputation previously unassailable. Now responsibility of the international community. If collective he is the target of character assassination in Israel, where the punishment is to be the ongoing policy of the Israeli gov- report has been received with outrage. In the United States ernment, officially or otherwise, the U.S. public should the report has been described as “unfair” by the Obama understand the implications of such a position and press for administration, which appears to be laying the political an appropriate adjustment of U.S. foreign policy. foundation for dismissing it. It is possible in this instance both to agree that Israel That would be regrettable. The report’s findings offer has the right to defend itself against such attacks and to insist a depressing collection of cautionary tales that deserve a that this right does not give a green light to unlimited use of hearing in the United States as it pursues Al Qaeda targets force. The I.D.F. faces a difficult fight with an elusive oppo- in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. According to nent, but it also confronts a civilian population in no position the investigation, the behavior of the I.D.F. in Gaza was to defend itself from the I.D.F. and its American-made hard- objectionable in a distressing number of incidents: missile ware and no practical way to escape from its ferocious path. attacks on Gaza police that began the operation; artillery Even in the heat of battle, the I.D.F. cannot escape its respon- attacks on U.N. compounds and schools; the use of white sibility to distinguish between civilians and militants. phosphorus ordnance over civilian targets; and far too lax Israel’s own traditions require it to do better. As the rules of engagement, which led to the killing of many Mishneh Torah’s Laws of Kings and Their Wars (6:7) puts Gazans who were doing nothing worse than running for it: “When a city is under siege, the blockade should not shelter or seeking food or clean water for their families dur- include all four sides. One side should be left open to allow ing the brutal three-week campaign. the inhabitants to flee for their lives.” In Gaza last winter, no By the end of Operation Cast Lead, 1,400 such quarter was offered the unfortunate inhabitants. Palestinians had been killed and 5,500 wounded. According Israel has a long history of ignoring U.N. resolutions, to a report from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, and the I.D.F. has a similarly poor history of investigating the 773 of the Palestinians killed in the assault did not take part excesses of its troops. Nine Israeli human rights organizations in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over are calling for a thorough investigation of the Goldstone the age of 18. During the period of the conflict, Hamas Report’s charges. The Obama administration, which will be rockets and fighters killed nine Israelis, including three civil- under extreme pressure to neutralize the report at the United ians, and four I.D.F. soldiers were killed by friendly fire. Nations, should instead join them in insisting that a truly It is hard to believe that the Israeli strategy, as the independent body revisit the bloodletting in Gaza. If Israel report notes, did not reflect a deliberate if unspoken inten- refuses, the United States should support the report’s recom- tion among Israeli hardliners to inflict collective punish- mendation to bring the matter before the International ment on the entrapped Gazan community in retribution for Criminal Court. A good friend stands by his friend; a really its support of Hamas. Subsequently, Israeli public opinion good friend knows when to stand up to him as well.

October 5, 2009 America 5 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

THE ENVIRONMENT Climate Change Delegation Urges Attention to the Poor

coalition of Catholic leaders and development agencies urged world leaders gathered in New York for a meet- A ing on climate change to ease the burden environmental changes place on the planet’s poorest and most vulnerable people. “I think climate change is another situation where the poor of the world are being made to suffer more and more because of the habits of the first world,” said Cardinal Keith O’Brien of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, , a member of a 15-person delegation that traveled to the U.N. headquarters for the meet- ing on Sept. 22. “[The poor] haven’t caused the problems,” he said, “and yet they’re paying for it.” Cardinal O’Brien cited U.N. estimates that between the years 2000 and 2004, climate-relat- ed disasters affected 262 million people. The Catholic delegation was assembled by Cidse, a - based international alliance of leading Catholic development agencies, and , a network representing Heavy rainfall in May 2009 flooded a 164 Catholic aid organizations around the world. church in Bacabal, Brazil. Another member of the Catholic delegation was John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, former president of the Sept. 22 was intended to build momen- the needs of developing countries. Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria. tum for a major meeting on climate Cardinal O’Brien spoke about the “I know from direct experience that a change to be held in Copenhagen, pressing need to address climate fair and effective climate deal is crucial to Denmark, from Dec. 7 to 18. The change at a Mass in New York on avoid further misery for southern com- December meeting is viewed as pivotal Sept. 20 in advance of the climate munities,” Archbishop Onaiyekan said. to the campaign to reverse the causes of meeting. Citing as an example the way residents of climate change, in large part because the Society “seems to have become his country are adversely affected by cli- Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding tar- immune to what is urgent,” the cardi- mate change, he observed: “The process gets for 37 industrialized countries and nal said. “When banks go bust, as they of desertification in the northern fringes the European Community for reducing did in your country and mine last year, of our country has made it impossible greenhouse gas emissions, expires in governments seem able to mobilize for cattle rearers to make a living in their 2012. extraordinary energy and efforts as traditional grazing grounds, forcing Observers stress that the delegates well as unconscionably large sums of them to move elsewhere.” in Copenhagen must address four money to bail them out,” the cardinal “Developed countries must take issues: 1) set meaningful emission- said. “This response stands in stark the lead by making significant reduc- reduction targets for developed coun- contrast to the ponderous efforts to tions in their greenhouse gas emis- tries, 2) take steps to ease the effects of address poverty and climate change.” sions and supporting developing coun- climate change on developing coun- Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., tries in adapting to a changing climate tries, 3) build financial and technolog- the cardinal said: “Human progress is and developing a low-carbon econo- ical support to help countries adapt to neither automatic nor inevitable. We my,” the archbishop concluded. and mitigate the impact of climate are faced now with the fact that Convened by U.N. Secretary change and 4) develop an effective tomorrow is today. We are confronted General Ban Ki-moon, the meeting on institutional framework that addresses with the fierce urgency of now.”

6 America October 5, 2009 POLITICS Survey Examines Profiles of Religious Activists

groundbreaking survey com- and posed slightly different questions paring the activities, demo- to each group. Agraphics and motivations of Regarding political priorities, a “religious activists” involved in politics large majority of the conservative has found that activists on both ends group listed just two issues as “most of the political spectrum are deeply important” for religious people to religious, though their religious and focus on: abortion, cited by 83 per- political profiles are dramatically dif- cent, and same-sex marriage, cited by ferent. 65 percent. No other issue was cate- The results of the 2009 Religious gorized as “most important” by more Progressive and Conservative Activist than 26 percent of the group. Surveys were released by the Bliss The responses by progressive Institute of Applied Politics at the activists were more diverse, with five University of Akron, Ohio, and Public different issues being identified as Religion Research of Washington, “most important” on a five-point D.C., on Sept. 15. The researchers scale measuring each of eight issues. divided the activists surveyed into Seventy-four percent of progressives “conservative” or “progressive” groups identified poverty as most important; 67 percent identified health; 56 per- cent marked the environment; 48 Pope Prays for Afghan Troops and Civilians percent listed jobs/economy; and 45 percent, the war in Iraq. The only After praying the Angelus on Sept. special prayers for the families of the issue for which the two groups gave 20, Pope Benedict XVI offered his Italian casualities, the pope said he similar rankings was immigration, prayers for civilians caught in the was also pained by the deaths of mem- which 21 percent of progressives and world’s conflicts and foreign troops bers of other international contingents 26 percent of conservatives marked working to promote peace and devel- “who work to promote peace and the as most important. opment. Speaking from the papal development of institutions necessary summer residence in Castel for human coexistence.” Gandolfo, Pope Benedict XVI said A Michigan man Pope Benedict said he prayed to protests federal that he was deeply saddened to hear God “with a special thought for the budget cuts. of the roadside bombing in Kabul, dear civilian population,” and he Afghanistan, that killed 10 Afghan appealed to all parties to oppose “the civilians and six Italian soldiers on logic of violence and death by foster- Sept. 17. ing justice, reconciliation and peace The deaths and injuries resulting and supporting the development of from violence around the world “are people, starting with love and mutu- facts we can never grow accustomed to al understanding.” The pope also and that incur strong reprimand and sent a telegram that was read during dismay in communities that hold the state funeral for the six Italian peace and civil coexistence close to soldiers at St. Paul’s Outside the heart,” the pope said. While he had Walls on Sept. 21.

October 5, 2009 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

North Africans Critique Synod Paper NEWS BRIEFS As preparations continue for the Synod of Bishops for Africa in Pope Benedict XVI announced plans for a October, some portions of the African Synod of Bishops for the Middle East in church are concerned that their experi- October 2010 to address the trials of the ences are not reflected in the synod’s Christian populations in the region. • After a instrumentum laboris, or working doc- series of meetings with House and Senate ument. Bishops, clergy and pastoral leaders on Sept. 17, a delegation of Hispanic workers in North Africa say that the bishops expressed concern that immigrants Vatican does not seem to recognize would be left out of health care reform. that they face different challenges than • Maria Odom, an immigration attorney in Maria Odom sub-Saharan Africa. Among those Georgia, has been named executive director of concerned are Catholics in Africa’s the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, known as Clinic. • The Maghreb region, which includes Rev. Larry Snyder of cited the economic down- Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, as well turn as a principal reason for a reported 10 percent increase in aid ser- as Catholics in Libya and Mauritania. vices nationwide from 2007 to 2008. • The Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, the According to Bishop Maroun Lahham newly elected general secretary of the World Council of Churches, of Tunisia, the North African bishops’ said on on Aug. 28 that he believes it is important to conference had sent a letter to the cooperate with the to address common challenges. synod planners urging them to take • Rick Curry, S.J., the founder of the National Theatre Workshop of into account the unique situation of the Handicapped was ordained to the priesthood on Sept. 13 in the church in the north. Yet when Washington, D.C., after serving many years as a Jesuit . Bishop Lahham read the working paper for the synod, he said, “I have to say I didn’t find myself or this church” has celebrated Mass at two public 2008. The revised sentence reads: reflected in them. demonstrations organized by the “To the Jewish people, whom God Resistance, but he denies that he is a first chose to hear his word, ‘belong Bishop Seeks End member of the political movement. the sonship, the glory, the covenants, To Honduran Crisis “It’s the people who are in the the giving of the law, the worship and Resistance, not me,” he said. “My task the promises; to them belong the A Honduran bishop has said he will is to provide pastoral accompaniment.” patriarchs, and of their race, accord- launch an effort to resolve the ongoing ing to the flesh, is the Christ.’” The political crisis in the Central American original sentence read: “Thus the country. Bishop Luis Santos Villeda of Vatican Approves covenant that God made with the Santa Rosa de Copán said on Sept. 16 Jewish people through Moses that he would see whether dialogue is Catechism Revision remains eternally valid for them.” In possible between “the Resistance,” The Vatican Congregation for Clergy a statement, the bishops’ conference Hondurans who oppose the govern- has approved a small change in the said that “the clarification reflects the ment installed in a coup on June 28, U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults teaching of the church that all previ- “and the economically powerful who clarifying teaching about God’s ous covenants that God made with are behind the coup.” Bishop Santos covenant with the Jewish people. The the Jewish people are fulfilled in said that dialogue is important, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Jesus Christ through the new “because if the armed forces and the announced in late August that the covenant established through his police continue killing the people of Vatican had granted its recognitio to a sacrificial death on the cross.” the Resistance…this could provoke one-sentence revision of the cate- widespread resentment that could chism that was approved by the U.S. evolve into a civil war.” Bishop Santos bishops at their meeting in June From CNS and other sources.

8 America October 5, 2009 109AP001_1A114069_ACP9080018_312A W y C W of theC R o a i i u com E thou th Us thol A ic identi t aC L , a ” anA e thol P in—y 1 ic chap a R i thol r For t E y thr ic p S o c ur p l e a E – in o r sp N u ie . E r g on s e h th C t m s ’ s s ence isne E ail u p o r NE e s e r e d s s , atchap thr a ence, ourC cr EDED e am e e - d ent da e l a d y minis in intheA s an s ! @ a r thol d co s . t a r f y ic A . f mil orc i ntinue r For a mil i r m i ar c en gow d f e Chap a iz l l ation t 1 a i - t 8 h for 0 l 0 a i o thou - in C ur 8 m 0 . E 3 ation t theEuchar - o x 2 r p 4 p e 52 s t r . i Joinu ence an . o nur t ur is d s s for“ t e ourA . e T e theminis h at C ’ s om w i r m e B h en er t //99/9/09 r ’ e e s y ©2009 Paid for by the U.S. Air Force. All rights reserved. 5:16 PM MARYANN CUSIMANO LOVE Classrooms for Peace

eace and schools are returning schools of mud and thatch were As a new school year unfolds, to southern Sudan. The unusable during the long rainy Catholic educators wrestle with plans to PComprehensive Peace Agree- seasons. For me, these schools better integrate concerns for justice, ment signed in January 2005 is hold- are nothing less than gifts of peace and global solidarity across our ing. Landmines have been removed hope to young children and their curricula. Yet too often we fail to tell from key highways, and mine-removal families, who suffered so deeply stories of how our own church around work progresses on farmland. Along throughout the war years. the world is serving as a powerful force the border with Uganda, the Eastern for justice, peace and global solidarity Equatoria district used to be a corridor Similar refugee education programs with the world’s most vulnerable people. of conflict between the Sudanese and are underway in the Democratic Efforts are underway to help Ugandan civil wars. Now 1,000 Republic of Congo. In the change that. Materials refugees are returning to this corner of Katanga Province, the made available through southern Sudan each month, accord- D.R.C. government has Are we a campaign of C.R.S. ing to the United Nations High delegated responsibilities serving and the U.S. Con- Commission for Refugees. Forty thou- for primary education to ference of Catholic sand refugees and internally displaced the local Catholic diocese. the poor Bishops (http://www. persons returned in the past year, with Returning refugees, who as they usccb.org/sdwp/global another 27,000 expected in 2009. call themselves the New poverty), include inspir- Challenges remain. Returning Hope Project, have created seek to ing stories of responses refugee children need permanent a new town and, in coali- to pressing global chal- school buildings, trained and paid tion with the local church educate lenges. C.R.S. (at teachers, textbooks and school sup- and J.R.S., are constructing themselves? CRSCollege.org) offers plies, and girls need the chance to go to schools to help build the additional compelling school. In the town of Lobone, only 10 peace in the country. stories and resources concerning percent of teachers have any sort of In the developed world, debates church work for peace and justice. The professional teacher training, and 95 rage about the nature of Catholic edu- Global Solidarity Network brings percent of teachers lack books and the cation. Is Catholic education marked C.R.S. staff into interaction with stu- most basic school supplies. by the display of crucifixes in the class- dents. The JRS/USA Web site Jesuit Refugee Service/USA and rooms, distinctive policies about (http://www.jrsusa.org) covers refugee JRS/East Africa are accompanying which speakers are permitted to stories and news of J.R.S. activities and schooling these refugees on their appear and the presence of theology around the world, along with monthly journey home. The director of faculty members with an ecclesiastical reflections called “Praying With JRS/USA, Kenneth J. Gavin, S.J., mandatum? Refugees” and a new education module. describes the situation this way: In impoverished and war-torn areas The Catholic Peacebuilding Network of the world, the Catholic contribution likewise highlights church peacebuild- It is amazing to see brand new to education means something differ- ing efforts (http://cpn.nd.edu/). primary schools appear in ent. In places like southern Sudan and When discussing Catholic identity Sudanese communities where the Congo, where people have suffered in education, we should include reflec- previously poorly constructed devastating atrocities, the church tions on how well our institutions builds peace and hope, restoring war- serve the poor and vulnerable. Are we MARYANN CUSIMANO LOVE, during her torn communities one schoolhouse at accompanying and serving the poor as sabbatical from the Catholic University of a time. These returning refugees dare they seek to educate themselves? In America in Washington, D.C., is a fellow at the Commission on International Religious to imagine and build a future where solidarity, we are all enriched as we Freedom. war ends and education begins. work to build God’s kingdom.

10 America October 5, 2009 God Makes a Comeback AN INTERVIEW WITH THE ECONOMIST’S JOHN MICKLETHWAIT BY AUSTEN IVEREIGH

ohn Micklethwait, editor of The Economist, has about him the excited air of a man who has made a considerable discovery in a place people said he was crazy even to look. It turns out that religion, whose gradual disappearance has for a long time been an article of faith in European university circles, is making a major comeback, and in precisely the way that the experts have long insisted it could not—as an Jadjunct of modernity. The book Micklethwait co-authored with his colleague Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (Penguin, 2009), has come to bury the secularization thesis. According to the authors, it is not true that as the world becomes more modern it becomes less believing. It was never true of the United States—a rather large exception—but now it turns out not to be true almost everywhere. When we meet at Micklethwait’s spacious house near London’s Victoria Station, we are

PHOTO: REUTERS/PHIL MCCARTEN both a little excited about this discovery. For when we were students at Benedictine board-

AUSTEN IVEREIGH is a journalist and former adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

October 5, 2009 America 11 ing schools in the 1970s and 80s, it was commonly assumed es—is booming at home and abroad. There are now 500 that religion was in retreat and that the who taught million renewalists (a category that includes both us were doing something quaint and anachronistic, like the Pentecostals and charismatics), a quarter of the world’s dance of a jungle tribe whose ancestral land was about to Christians, and they are expanding twice as fast as make way for a freeway. Catholics. The authors are occasionally horrified, but most- “You now look back at the 1970s and you think, actually ly impressed by the renewalists’ energy, organizational something happened,” says Micklethwait. “By the end of the genius and sensitivity to demand. But what most interests decade, in retrospect—definitely in retrospect—something them is that behind this growth is modernity, evident in big had happened in terms of religion and politics. God was greater pluralism and individual choice—the very factors back in there.” that the secularization thesis tells us should be undermining In retrospect, “the evidence for secularization not hap- adherence to faith. The same forces vivifying American reli- pening was in front of everyone’s eyes,” he says, citing the gion are bolstering it in the developing world, where 60 per- Iranian revolution, the rise of the moral majority in the cent of all Christians now live. United States and the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, That does not mean people of faith are at ease with and the global impact of Pope John Paul II. Yet the news modernity; religions reject much of what capitalism pro- took a long time to reach academe. In the late 1980s, duces, even as they benefit from its fruits. Religion is both a about the time Micklethwait was beginning at The critique and a counterbalance to global capitalism. People Economist after two years at Chase Bank, the search for community in a world dislocated by the same prevailing orthodoxy at Oxford, where I was doing my forces that alienate them; they long for givens in a world doctorate, was that that faith was epiphenomenal—a where almost everything is reduced to choice; people yearn byproduct of something else. Therefore it did not merit for God-given worth in a world where they are valued proper study, except as a retrograde and authoritarian instead for what they produce and consume. thing, a flight from modernity. The key element connecting modernity and religious The academic error, Micklethwait thinks, was to have revival is pluralism. “A country can be modern and religious extrapolated a universal law from the retreat of the church at the same time (or modern and irreligious),” write the from the public sphere in 19th-century Europe. Because the authors. “But it is exceedingly difficult to be modern with- study of religion and the world fell between sociology and out being pluralistic.” Religion is increasingly crafted, not theology, academics missed the evidence. “What happened inherited; it is “a seeking rather than a dwelling,” the authors was that the sociology profession carried on writing books explain in a striking phrase. Take the United States, where that took as their starting point that the world was becom- an amazing 44 percent of people belong to a religion other ing more secular,” Micklethwait says. “They set out to exam- than the one in which they were raised: Barack Obama, the ine the consequences of that, rather than examine the rootless young man “choosing” his church in Chicago’s premise.” South Side, is paradigmatic. Where religion has adapted to He and Wooldridge, Micklethwait said, “sort of stum- that cultural shift, it does best. bled upon” the untruth of the secularization thesis in 2004, when they were planning a follow-up to their successful Do Liberty and Pluralism Foster Faith? book on America’s conservative culture, Right Nation: How Does Micklethwait see a connection between the prospering Conservatism Won. (Micklethwait knows America well. He of religion in a climate of liberty and the nature of God? Is was U.S. editor of The Economist to his appointment God such that, where society supports the freedom to as editor in chief in 2006 and ran its New York bureau for choose him, faith thrives? This is too theological a question two years.) They planned a book on faith from the usual for the author of a socioeconomic survey of religion; but he standpoint of American exceptionalism. But “when we is delighted, because only days before, a British newspaper came to look at religion we discovered that that America review (by a Catholic) had asked what a theological version was not so exceptional,” he recalls. “We suddenly began to of God Is Back might look like. “I think what you’re sug- look at the rest of the world and ask why it wasn’t going the gesting is what it would say,” he ventures. way that it should have been. We thought: there’s something God Is Back is evangelical about pluralism. For the flour- big here.” ishing of faith, the authors advocate the same freedom from subsidies and state control that Adam Smith proposed for Faith Thrives in Modernity the economy in The Wealth of Nations. They think the sep- God Is Back is a brilliant survey of how America’s model of aration of church and state in the United States, with Christianity—Protestant, elected, market-sensitive; the encouragement of religion, has proved the most fertile field world of megachurches, “pastorpreneurs” and house church- for faith; and they think American foreign policy should be

12 America October 5, 2009 more ambitious in promoting it. This may mean “a more FORDHAM CENTER ON RELIGION AND CULTURE customer-driven religion,” acknowledges Micklethwait, but BOOK FORUM he does not think it means that non-Protestant faiths fare poorly. American Catholicism—described in the book as “arguably the most striking Evangelical success story of the second half of the nineteenth century”—has competed quite happily, he points out, without losing any of its basic char- SEX acteristics. But where religion fails to adapt to this model, its decline is marked. This is especially true of churches bound up with &THE culture even if not subsidized by the state, as with the Church of or Scandinavian Lutheranism; or sepa- rate from the state but subsidized by it, as with the church- SOUL es in Germany. Tradition and habit are no substitutes for choice and commitment. Romance, Religion and Responsibility Religion in The Economist Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 6 – 8 p.m. The Economist, one of the most successful global British brands, with weekly sales of 1.4 million copies around the =fi[_XdLe`m\ij`kp›C`eZfce:\ek\i:Xdglj world, famously eschews bylines. Its editors fly, if not under Gfg\8l[`kfi`ld›((*N\jk-'k_Jki\\k#E%P%:% the radar, at the edge of the screen. So it feels like a treat to Through extensive interviews, Donna Freitas’s Sex & meet this tall, formidably clever man, who shares his the Soul explores how college students struggle to insights in that hesitant, self-deprecating way that afflicts reconcile two features of campus life: spiritual longings products of English boarding schools. Micklethwait, 46, has and sexual freedom. What are the realities of “hook- asked not to be quizzed on his Catholic faith, but he admits up culture”? Why do faith traditions so often falter in to it in the introduction to the book along with his co- author’s atheism. offering moral and spiritual wisdom? A theologian and Micklethwait is not responsible for appointing the maga- an analyst of early adult life will discuss these questions zine’s first religion correspondent in those heady days after with the author and young people. 2001, when the media discovered religion. Around that DISCUSSANTS time Reuters decided to do the same, and the BBC appoint- Donna Freitas, a Ph.D. in theology from Catholic ed a committed Catholic as its director general. But University, is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction Micklethwait’s editorship since 2006 has coincided with and a visiting professor of religion at Boston University. The Economist’s taking a new interest in faith, introducing a new international section that is the natural home, he says, Christine Firer Hinze, Ph.D., is a professor of theology for reporting on the Catholic Church and Islam. The at Fordham specializing in Christian ethics, Catholic change was marked by the weekly’s “Religion Special social thought, marriage, women and work. Report” in November 2007, of which God Is Back is in Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., is an award-winning many ways an expanded version. The report stepped for- author and former co-director of the National Marriage ward to repent of the magazine’s former blind spot about Project. Her books include Why There Are No Good Men Left: religion, and with a convert’s zeal saw faith breaking out everywhere. The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman. For those who like the magazine’s crisp, witty, effortless- The panel will include two recent college graduates. ly magisterial style, God Is Back is a treat. It surveys the ups and downs of the faith market, leading to big conclusions FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC checked by frequent caveats. But the risk of this business- R.S.V.P. [email protected] | (212) 636-7347 survey approach when applied to faith is obvious: Isn’t it For more information: www.fordham.edu/religculture better to be faithful than successful? Micklethwait agrees that it is but worries that this justifies man-made decline. He is amazed, for example, by the level of defeatism among Anglicans and thinks the Church of England is increasingly recognizing that establishment is a golden noose around its

October 5, 2009 America 13 neck. Pope Benedict XVI recognizes the same of the In conflict zones, Catholic missionaries are the constant German church tax, according to Micklethwait, which is an ones who know everyone, he found. enormous funding engine that eviscerates churches as much So while Rome remains a reactive player rather than a as it keeps them afloat. “I gather that there’s one bit of Pope market leader or innovator, brand loyalty and ubiqui- Benedict which wants to chuck that,” reckons Micklethwait, tousness remain vital comparative advantages. “but another group around him says you just can’t do that; Megachurches might grow dizzily, but they are more con- this is worth billions of euros every year.” sumer-dependent and vulnerable to market fluctuations. Does Micklethwait conclude that faith is at its most Catholicism has absorbed the “acids of modernity” best vigorous (which must mean more than successful; we are of all, Micklethwait says. “If modernity is something you talking here of its transformative, binding power) when it have to come to terms with, Catholicism is at one end is planted in plurality and freedom? The short answer is and Islam at the other.” Micklethwait thinks it is possible yes. But “there are millions of holy people who have inher- that as people “get used to religion being there,” some of ited a faith and kept at it,” he points out, adding that some the depth you get with Catholics “might count for evangelical churches unreasonably demand a past of addic- things.” tion and promiscuity as proof of . “But in gener- But without forsaking what is best in the brand, al, in terms of fervency, on the whole the choice-based Catholicism must respond to the consumer. That is some- places, where people have made a choice and sought to thing American Catholicism understands better than its direct their lives around it, those tend to be the places European counterpart. “If you were a management consul- going best.” tant looking at Catholicism, looking at the church as a busi- ness,” says Micklethwait, “you could argue that it has some- Catholicism’s Competitive Edge times or too often mistaken the means of delivery for theol- In all of these areas Micklethwait has surveyed, ogy, so it has inherently clung onto things which aren’t ter- Catholicism “starts from an incredible advantage,” he says. ribly useful.” You might have the best light bulbs in the Its brand, even if overworked and tarnished by recent world, he says, but if you choose to sell them only through scandals, is the strongest. It is the first multinational, “the corner shops, there is a risk people will prefer the super- General Electric of the religious world”; it is omnipresent. market versions. A

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14 America October 5, 2009 A Fiery Gift A meditation on birth and the spiritual life BY SUSAN WINDLEY-DAOUST

ll the adorable clothes prayer when I thought, with surprise and gratitude, I’ve for infants, jokes been here before. about pickles and One reason that few people take seriously the physical A ice cream, and reality of giving birth as a teaching ground for receiving debates about appropriate grace is that sanitized hospital births, with epidurals at the names for children occupy ready, change the experience of giving birth from a gift the expectant woman’s mind received to an event managed. When my husband and I like sitting-room company discovered I was pregnant with our first child, we stum- sharing a pleasant tea— bled upon a method of giving birth naturally called the until labor begins. In a Bradley method. Despite the fact that a vast majority of flash, your visitors leave, women worldwide give birth in such a manner, this their cooling teacups half- method is seen as the empty. Alone, or with a trust- province of hippies ed companion, you may wait by most American out the beginning contrac- medical establish- tions by reading a book or ments. The Bradley watching a movie, but you know method encourages cou- as you have never known in your ples to understand what is life what the main event is. Birth is happening and then to the rock of motherhood. It does not cooperate by embracing the easily allow diversions; it is more glori- situation and “relaxing your ous and messy, more trying and transfor- muscles” into birth, which, mative than a person might suspect. as an incentive, makes it Basically, it is a lot like prayer. much less painful. I If you are an average American, that last found that to be true: the sentence may have come as a shock. But it is no pain was doable if I could groundbreaking metaphor to claim that the spiritual life is concentrate on relaxing. But like a birth (Jn 3:3). Still, few people look seriously at the when I slipped from my relaxation practices—all the deep physical reality of giving birth as akin to the spiritual strug- breathing, going limp at contractions, imagining muscles gle of prayer. When I was struggling through a wonder- stretching and staying calm by repeating “this is good, this filled but challenging prayer period recently, a sentence set- is normal, this is getting me to birth”—the difference was tled within me: This is a lot like giving birth; it feels as if radical. I would get distracted, the pain of the contraction something is trying to be born. And it was not that I was would begin, I would succumb to fear and resist by freez- looking toward a positive end—holding the baby— ing my muscles, then the pain would shoot up dramatical- although at some level I was. Rather, it felt “existentially” ly, and I was gone. like giving birth: a clearing of the mind, an expectant and All this is like the interior life. I am not referring to births somewhat painful waiting, the sense that my life is chang- that are horrifically complicated or have tragic ends: I will ing here and now. There was a concrete moment in my let those women tell their own stories; they are not mine to tell. But just as John Paul II reflected upon sexual union in his “theology of the body” as a sign pointing toward the ulti- SUSAN WINDLEY-DAOUST is an assistant professor of theology at mate union of God with the human being, a medically Mary’s University of Minnesota, Winona campus. She also teach- es in Saint Mary’s Institute in Pastoral Ministries and is training to be uncomplicated “good birth” points toward how all souls, a spiritual director. pregnant with the Holy Spirit, are transformed by cooper- ART: STEFANIE AUGUSTINE

October 5, 2009 America 15 ating with the Spirit, letting God make all things new. And new. while every moment may not be what you wished for, even How different it would be if we saw childbirth as some- in that, it resembles the soul’s journey to God. thing to receive, a fiery gift, rather than as something to resist or soldier through. We receive a vocation as well: our Living in Reality own motherhood. True, at the moment of conception, you The spiritual path and the path to birth both begin with become a mother, whether that child lives or dies before deciding to live in reality: the reality of your life and the real- birth. But there is something about the yielding and coop- ity of God. Just as we do not initiate prayer, but the Holy erating with an ultimate Power greater than your own that Spirit calls us to pray, so pregnant women are called to give is the road to every vocation. God wants this child to be birth. When that reality is fully realized, we respond. Jean born, and for you to be a mother, now. Pierre de Caussade, S.J., in the spiritual classic Abandonment to Divine Providence, speaks of this response In Weakness, Strength to God’s call as the duty—even the sacrament—of the pre- Another of the fiery gifts of birth is being forced to love our sent moment: weakness. St. speaks to the need to In the state of aban- How different it would be love our weakness, which donment the only he calls self-abjection, in rule is the duty of if we saw childbirth as order to recognize and the present moment. magnify the glory of In this the soul is something to receive, rather than Christ. Many would pre- light as a feather, liq- something to soldier through. fer the term “weakness” to uid as water, simple “abjection.” But to be as a child, active as a abject—desperately aware ball in receiving and following the inspirations of of one’s utter poverty—describes exactly how most women grace. Such souls have no more consistence and rigid- feel at some point in a natural childbirth. No word better ity than molten metal…so these souls are pliant and expresses the painful transition from contractions to push- easily receptive of any form that God chooses to give ing than “abject.” St. Paul knew something of that abjectness them. himself (2 Cor 12:10), and expressed it using the language of birth in his Letter to the Romans (8:22-3, 26): The calling of the present moment is a mystery. We do not control or manage the present; instead, we find ourselves We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains within it. The present is the only place where we can make even until now, and not only that, but we ourselves, the choice to yield to God’s will, to receive and yield to birth, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan yet we resist. We resist reality all the time; it is called self- within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemp- deception. We see the narrow path but look for the wide tion of our bodies.…In the same way, the Spirit too road. comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know It is striking that the language de Caussade uses for how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself inter- spiritual transformation is some of the same relaxation cedes with inexpressible groanings. language used by Bradley method teachers in responding to labor contractions: imagine yourself as liquid, imagine When we cede our illusion of control and consent to our riding a wave, receive the birth of your weakness by allowing others to help, we child and allow it to happen. One of the are at our most human. Stripped of all ON THE WEB keys to natural childbirth is learning to An interview with artifice, we are left with our most radical embrace what is happening to you: Susan Windley-Daoust. relationships: God, our child and the per- specifically, that your muscles are americamagazine.org/podcast son helping us to give birth. That sacra- stretching and pushing in ways that may ment of the present moment is a window be unprecedented in your body, but it is what they were into the interior life. created to do. The worst physical pain comes in resisting. God does not always perceptibly lead in the birth pro- When you constrict your muscles—trying to avoid the cess. Sometimes women must schedule their births for stretching—you increase the pain. After all, you are fight- medical reasons or hasten them with medication. ing against your body. You have to learn to keep your mus- Occasionally that may be in the best interests of the child cles as calm as possible so they can stretch into something and the mother and therefore “a good birth.” But when an

16 America October 5, 2009 overwhelming majority of women in the United States have unnecessarily scheduled or medically augmented births, we must ask: Do we lose a window to God? A window to the interior life? When the Holy Spirit initiates a spiritual birth to something greater within us, will any of us be able to say, “I’ve been here before”?

Pointing Beyond PRESIDENT It was only after I gave birth three times—one by Caesarean SETON HALL UNIVERSITY section and two vaginal births after the Caesarean—that I SOUTH ORANGE, NEW JERSEY read up on the theology of the body: that sex within mar- Seton Hall University invites nominations and applications for the riage is a participation in the life of the , a covenantal position of President. Seton Hall, dedicated to achieving the vision that its founder, Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, described as union pointing analogically to an ultimate union with God. providing a “home for the mind, the heart, and the spirit”, is an independent, , comprehensive university offering It is evocative teaching. bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees to a diverse population But I wonder why we do not think of childbirth in a sim- of 5,300 undergraduates and 4,500 graduate students. It is the oldest Catholic, diocesan university in the United States. As of ilar way: a gift, a bodily experience that points beyond our- the end of fiscal year 2009, the university had a total endowment of $173 million. The 2009 operating budget is $230 million and the selves, that echoes our ultimate transformation in the Holy university employs a total of 452 full-time faculty members with the Spirit. Perhaps it is for many of the same reasons that, support of sufficient staff and administrators. Seton Hall seeks an experienced priest with a commitment to the university’s Catholic according to John Paul II, sex is experienced in such a twist- mission and its continued growth and development as a nationally ed manner after the Fall. If the Evil One works through lies prominent institution of higher education. Located just 14 miles outside New York City, Seton Hall offers all and deception, disordering what is created good, then there the advantages of a large university within a small college setting. must be fruitful ground in twisting the original experience Ranked among U.S. News & World Report’s top universities, Seton Hall prepares students intellectually, physically and of childbirth. spiritually to be servant leaders and caring citizens, both in and Today, doctors routinely treat pregnancy like a disease. out of the workplace. With courses in a broad range of disciplines within six undergraduate and eight graduate schools and colleges, Many workplaces regard parental leave as “unpaid sick Seton Hall seeks to offer students a comprehensive curriculum that is forward-looking but also grounded in the questions central time.” And our medical system fears malpractice litigation to but not exclusive to the Catholic intellectual tradition. The average such an extent that the U.S. Caesarean rate is at 31 percent, class size is 25 with a 14:1 student/faculty ratio. breaking records every year. This medical culture teaches The President, together with the Board of Regents, will set the agenda and strategic vision for the future of the institution, women to dread the event that brings them face to face with embracing its core mission while enhancing its sense of community, its overall intellectual environment and providing their children. Still, something in our bones, our muscles financial leadership and operating management at the highest and our spirits says that childbirth is greater than all that. It possible levels. As the chief ambassador for Seton Hall, the President will enhance awareness, understanding and support is a transformative experience, the edge of life and death, the for the university among key external audiences and continue play of wind and breath, the shock of pain and joy. It is strengthening relationships with the Catholic community, donors and alumni, as well as other local, regional and national where a woman is given a new gift: a new relationship with constituents. God, her husband and their child—practice in receiving The successful candidate will be a proven leader recognized equally for a passion for the Catholic tradition and for the broader mission of grace. higher education in general. Given the long history of Catholic I’ll be candid: I cannot claim any mystical experience in leadership, the person in this role will be a priest with a demonstrated track record of leadership experience and ability. Experience leading any of my childbirths. Whether sad, frightening, silly or joy- large, complex organizations is desired, ideally higher education institutions. An earned doctorate or other terminal degree is ful, much of the work was rooted in a physical reality that preferred, as is a history of scholarship or record of publication. A kept me firmly on the ground. But my husband remains diverse group of priest applicants is sought. convinced of a mystical moment in my last childbirth. After The Board of Regents has named a Presidential Search Committee to oversee this search. Confidential inquiries, a difficult transition, I collapsed on the bed and was able to nominations and application materials, including a cover letter, curriculum vitae and reference list should be sent to: David A. rest about two minutes before pushing. Everyone in the Haley, Vice President and Director, Denise O’Grady Gaffney, room became instantly quiet, and there was this moment, Vice President and Director, Bernard R. Jones, Associate, Isaacson, Miller, 334 Boylston Street, Suite 500, Boston, he says, a hushed silence, God’s peace present like the eye of Massachusetts 02116, Email: [email protected]. Electronic submission of application materials is strongly encouraged. the birthing storm. All I remember is that I was beyond Review of applications will begin immediately, with an expected thought, exhausted in every possible degree, and taking start date of summer 2010. pleasure in breathing. I didn’t hear any angels. But then, the Seton Hall University is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to diversity. urge to push came. And you have to respond “Here I am,

Lord,” like an ancient prophet, and allow God to push, push Recruiting exceptional leaders for mission driven organizations. through you as you push along. That is the spiritual life. Birth is like that. A Boston • San Francisco • Washington, DC

October 5, 2009 America 17 New noteworthy titles from the

Inaugural Volume - Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series The Meditative Art Studies in the Northern Devotional Print 1550-1625 Walter S. Melion

“In my opinion, Walter Melion’s The Meditative Art is the most important book about the relationship of art and theology of this generation . . . In a comprehensive Introduction and nine brilliant chapters, it reveals the myriad ways in which art during the Counter- and immediately afterward engaged meditative practices.” —Herbert L. Kessler, The Johns Hopkins University

“As one would expect, Professor Melion has worked out his ideas in considerable detail and with great care. His research is impeccable; the main argument and its subsidiary elements are both muscular and refined.” —Bret Rothstein, Indiana University

“At one level, this work is a cluster of close and deeply informed studies of graphic and painted images . . . produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for devotional use. In bringing those studies together, Walter Melion has produced a work of central importance for scholars of art, literature, and theology in early modern Europe.” —Lee Palmer Wandel, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Saint Joseph’s University Press ISBN 978-0-916101-60-6 | cloth | 442 pp | 157 images | $90.00 Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, Vol. 1

Donald L. Gelpi, SJ Encountering Jesus Christ: meaning and history in systematic theology Meaning and History in essays in honor of robert m. doran, sj Encountering Jesus Christ Rethinking Christological Faith and Commitment Rethinking Christological Systematic Theology: Essays in Faith and Commitment Honor of Robert M. Doran Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. John D. Dadosky, ed.

Marquette University Press edited by john d. dadosky Marquette University Press

marquette university press ISBN 978-087462-742-8 | 649 pp | paper | $47.00 ISBN 978-087462-745-9 | 518 pp | hardcover | $39.00

Also from Marquette University Press & Economic Globalization. John Sniegocki. ISBN 978-087462-744-2 | 335 pp | paper | $37.00 The Heart of Rahner: The Theological Implications of Andrew Tallon’s Theory of Triune Consciousness. Heidi Ann Russell. A Mounting East-West Tension: Buddhist Christian Dialogue on Human Rights, Social Justice and a Global Ethic. Keith Soko ISBN 978-087462-741-1 | 234 pp | paper | $25.00 ISBN 978-087462-743-5 | 253 pp | paper | $27.00

Creighton University Press Fordham University Press Georgetown University Press p: 402 280 1760 | f: 402 280 3040 p: 800 996 6987 | f: 212 995 3833 p: 800 537 5487 | f: 410 516 6998 www.creighton.edu/cupress www.fordhampress.com www.press.georgetown.edu Association of Jesuit University Presses

Aquinas on the Emotions A Religious-Ethical Inquiry

Diana Fritz Cates

“Diana Fritz Cates does a masterful job of providing a clear, sympathetic, and insightful analysis of Thomas Aquinas’s account of the role of the emotions in the moral life.”

—Stephen Pope, Boston College

“Lucid and nuanced, Diana Fritz Cates’s study of the emotions in Thomas Aquinas explores the significance of emotions for ethics with unprecedented care and thoroughness. Her book will be a staple for scholars of Aquinas and for constructive religious ethics.”

—Cristina L. H. Traina, Northwestern University

Georgetown University Press ISBN 978-1-58901-505-0 | paper | $29.95 Moral Traditions Series

In the World, Yet Not of the World Social and Global Initiatives of Ecumenical Bartholomew

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Edited and with an Introduction by John Chryssavgis Foreword by José Manuel Barroso

“Patriarch Bartholomew knows how to connect seemingly unrelated worlds. It is no wonder he has been called a bridge builder. His words are influential and inspiring. And as such, they deserve the widest circulation and attention.” —José Manuel Durão Barroso, President, European Commission, from the Foreword

"Our age urgently calls for global leaders who can draw connections and build bridges between the world's diverse and disparate religions, races, civilizations, and nations. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is such a leader, and these timely texts reveal his unique and inspiring spiritual voice. The Patriarch's reflections are a significant blueprint for people of good faith to engage in dialogue on the crucial issues of our time." —former U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes

Fordham University Press ISBN 978-0-8232-3171-3 | cloth | 350 pp | $32.00 Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought

Marquette University Press Rockhurst University Press ’s University Press University of Scranton Press p: 800-247-6553 | f: 419-281-6883 p: 800 247 6553 | f: 419 281 6883 p: 610 660 3400 | f: 610 660 3410 p: 800 621 2736 | f: 800 621 8476 www.marquette.edu/mupress www.rockhurstpress.org www.sjupress.com www.scrantonpress.com Looking for Love What does suffering say about God? BY M. M. HUBELE

t was 4 a.m., and a new friend and I were finishing our valuables were the cattle owned by the dump’s landlord. The third cup of French press coffee in a dusky room in animals were kept among the refuse to remind the people downtown New York. Maybe it was the setting, living in the dump that while they were squatters, the ani- maybe it was the caffeine, maybe it was the burgeon- mals actually belonged on the grounds. Not a single person Iing friendship rising up in those wee morning hours, but I I saw at the dump would look me in the eye. How could suddenly realized that our conversation was turning philo- they? They were kept lower than the cows. sophical. He told me a big part of his life story: disillusioned I wept that night. If there is a loving God, how could that by his divorced parents’ hypocritical profession of Catholic God let those people live in such squalor? ideals, he left in the dust the church, his faith and God. The problem is, I don’t think anyone knows the answer Then, inhaling deeply from the cigarette he was holding, he to that question. The problem of pain, as C. S. Lewis so studied me keenly before remarking, “So you believe in eloquently labels it, is a problem every believer must face at God. Explain to me, what is faith? How can you believe?” some point. It is the issue that validates doubt, that rever- His question hit me between my unsuspecting eyes, and berates in more questions, that tempts faith. More than hard as I tried to divine the answer in the coffee grounds at any other human experience, it is suffering that makes a the bottom of my mug, I could not find a satisfying case for atheism and shadows agnosticism. When we lov- response. I thought of his childhood, of his justified doubt ingly point a finger to the God who saves, the God who and fell into silence. loves, that same finger can become a tool for blame A few years later, among sloshing piles of papers to be because it seems evident that not all are saved, not all are written and books to be read, I opened a letter from my loved. Given the suffering in our world, in our history and longtime pen pal. Her previous reflections on time spent in in ourselves, few attest unwaveringly that God is present in Amsterdam had revolved around revelations of living alone all that misery. in a foreign country, images of riding her bike along the canals, questions about her future. But this e-mail broke Denial or Optimism from the typical. She spoke of her horror at seeing neo- It is easier to believe God does not exist. But being resilient, Nazis chant outside her local temple, of her familial ache we are not willing to give up a hope for better things. We when she passed signs over roads leading to concentration look in the mirror and remind ourselves that we are not camps, of her disgust at being frisked before she could enter going to sit by and watch the world tear itself apart. We will temple for worship. But it was the concluding line—capi- live good lives, lives that alleviate the pain we see. So we join talized for emphasis—that still haunts me to this day: humanitarian aid campaigns, volunteer at the local soup How could God have let the Holocaust happen? I closed kitchen and visit the sick. Prayers to a gracious God have my computer and turned to the papers, as I waited unsuc- become concrete moral acts that help our neighbor. We cessfully for the divine revelation I needed to answer her leave behind churches to lend a hand to addicts. God will question. not help, perhaps, but we certainly will. Then there is the dump. On a recent trip to Nicaragua I Such a philosophical stance is not original. Take the came face to face with pain as I had never known it. I was work of Ludwig Feuerbach, the 19th-century author of The there to study the policy and history of this economically Essence of Christianity and an inspirer of Karl Marx. His impoverished country. My weeklong experience culminated book urged everyday people to take on what once was God’s in a trip to Managua’s nearly 70-acre dump, piled with cas- role. Feuerbach wrote, “To will, to love, to think, are the cading debris and lean-tos—homes constructed of salvage highest powers, are the absolute nature of man as man, and from the dump: brick, vending-machine siding and plain the basis of his existence.” Not monopolized by God, these cardboard. Scattered among the families scrounging for characteristics come to define humanity. We become, if we choose to take up our responsibility, perfected people no M. M. HUBELE, of Phoenix, Ariz., is a freelance writer with a back- longer beholden to God for salvation. We have mistaken ground in interreligious dialogue. our own power for the power of a phantom God. It is not

20 America October 5, 2009 that God failed us. It is that we failed ourselves. We can come to realize that “the divine activity is not distinct from the human.” His is a beautiful thought. If the divine activity is not distinct from the human, then what humans do can have the same characteristics as the divine, namely perfect reason, love, force of will. But few could attribute the Holocaust to such divine attributes. If humanity per- fected is what we have erroneously labeled divine, then the question is not how God could have let that happen but how we could. There’s the rub. Isn’t it intrigu- ing that much of the pain we see is inflicted by one human on another? And we are supposed to be the true possessors of perfect reason, love and will. No, we are not perfect creatures maturing into our divine powers. Since Feuerbach’s opti- mistic proclamation of “holy” per- fection in humanity, we have seen whole segments of humanity tum- bling down into worse and worse conditions. One could argue that we, the generations after Feuerbach, have proved him wrong.

Selfless Love Yet a humanity-saving, selfless love—even between toward rationality, a case tends to speak beyond the merely strangers—does exist in our world. How is that? Knowing intellectual. It speaks to experiences, to emotions, to those the worst we are capable of, whether genocidal camps or unarticulated whispers resting just behind your right ear. weapons of mass destruction, we should not ask, How can And while many good cases are built on sturdy proof, some God watch so much pain and stand by? but rather, Why is are relegated to the abyss between reason and intuition. that we don’t just stand by? What is it inside us that makes Stirring up sediments of dismissed reflections, these cases us denounce pain and suffering and work to prevent and challenge us to explore new pathways into territories we overcome it? There is selflessness in such empathy. It is a self- might otherwise have sealed off. lessness that does not come from the same creative place St. John the Evangelist wields his one-word description within humanity that dreamed up poison gas, torture or as a case. And the best I can do in the face of suffering is to ways to dehumanize the poor. Knowing the worst humanity turn back to that beautiful and enigmatic case: God is love. is capable of, we must admit that such uncharacteristic self- It is only when I ask challenging questions and let them lessness seems to come from something other than human. bounce off that particular description of God that I can Something apart, beyond. Call it what you will. I call it God. begin to reach a glimmer of understanding. The problem of This case for God is not new. The writer of the First pain and suffering does not disappear, but the problem of Letter of John tells us that God is love. It is not just a poet- love does. We may still have to face challenges from friends ic metaphor for God. It is a case. and from life itself, but at least now we face them from with- There is a difference between a proof and a case. While a in this case. And who knows? Love just may be the strongest

ART: STEFANIE AUGUSTINE proof can be laid out and argued over with some movement case we have. A

October 5, 2009 America 21 FAITH IN FOCUS A Life Freely Given The ministry of a Catholic sister and physician BY PATRICIA TALONE

s a child with a vivid and rich Jersey, where the disease was rapidly among health care professionals, that Catholic imagination, I was spreading, AIDS affected women and one might inadvertently receive a nee- A both fascinated and repelled men, gay and straight, citizen and dle stick, and thus fall prey to AIDS. by the notion of martyrdom. With her trademark humor, Over the years I have often Reyelt observed that statisti- been drawn in prayer to ponder cally she stood a greater chance the meaning of Jn 15:13: “No of being killed by a car on the one has greater love than this, New Jersey Turnpike than of to lay down one’s life for one’s acquiring H.I.V. from a needle friend.” Does it mean that the stick. But she confessed, pre- Christian must embrace mar- sciently, that the transmission tyrdom out of love for Christ? of hepatitis frightened her far Are we called to pour out our more, because of its prevalence lives in far-off lands, to labor among the population she among the destitute in the treated. world’s slums? Or do the words of the Gospel call us to give Fighting Disease ourselves wholeheartedly in- Mary Christine Reyelt died on stead to family, co-workers and June 1, 2008 because she was parishioners? Ultimately, of fully committed to her beliefs. A course, there are many ways to Sister of Charity of Saint lay down one’s life. Perhaps no Elizabeth (Convent Station, one has embodied this for me N.J.), she graduated from more than my friend and col- Georgetown Medical School league, Dr. Mary Christine and completed a residency at Reyelt, who passed away last Bellevue/Veterans’ Adminis- year. tration, specializing in infectious We met in the summer of diseases just as AIDS, a terrify- 1988 at a gathering of what was ing and then-unnamed disease, later to become the National was being reported by physicians Catholic AIDS Network. Two on both coasts. of the times Reyelt spoke at the meet- immigrant. Persons of color, the poor Once I asked her why she chose this ing remain fixed in my memory. First, and the disenfranchised were increas- specialty. She fixed me with her direct she pointed out that the epidemic we ingly being diagnosed with the disease, gaze, looking at me as if I had asked a faced was not only a gay disease. Based and precisely for this reason, she really strange question: “Because the on her experience in northern New noted, the church should extend its poor are disproportionately affected healing ministry to the AIDS commu- by infectious disease,” she said. “That nity. is where a Sister of Charity should be.” PATRICIA TALONE, R.S.M., is vice president for mission services of the Catholic Health Reyelt’s second point concerned That was her primary motivation, her

Association, St. Louis, Mo. what was then a widely held fear, even passion. ART: STEFANIE AUGUSTINE

22 America October 5, 2009 As a scientist and scholar, Reyelt approached each person living with H.I.V. as a fellow human traveler; she also welcomed the intellectual and sci- entific challenge to understand, address and beat this devastating dis- ease. She brought her considerable spiritual, social and scientific skills to bear upon the medical reality of each patient she met. In the early 1990s Reyelt’s fear was realized when she received a needle stick while treating a patient, an IV- drug user. Although she followed all the medically prescribed precautions, Reyelt ultimately became so sick with hepatitis that her liver function failed. Facing certain death without a new liver and convinced that her work for the sick and dying was not finished, Reyelt underwent a transplant. The transplantation process was not smooth, and Reyelt faced disheart- ening challenges. Yet she was back at her practice as soon as she was able. The peaceful rhythm of a ’s day She never missed a Catholic AIDS consists of prayer, study, and manual labor. Network meeting. Over the years the While contemplation is at the heart of AIDS network met in many American Trappist life, it is by the labor of our cities, always on a shoe-string budget, sometimes in less than desirable hands that we support ourselves. At venues. New Melleray Abbey, making caskets Never did I hear her complain of is an expression of our sacred mission. the medications she had to take or the edema she frequently experienced. She free joked about “moving slowly,” especially Contact us for a catalog and you in the morning. But that did not stop will receive a complimentary keepsake her from attending every international cross blessed by one of our monks. AIDS conference over a 20-year peri- od. She traveled to Russia, Thailand and Africa to seek the best combina- Caskets and urns are available for tions of medicine to treat her patients. next-day delivery or can be ordered She took pride in the fact that some of on a guaranteed pre-need basis. her poorest patients lived with the dis- ease for many years. And she thrilled in the knowledge that her female patients gave birth to healthy babies and were able to provide for their beloved children. Caring for poor persons living with H.I.V. and ministering to patients who 888.433.6934 | www.trappistcaskets.com | Peosta, Iowa ultimately die of AIDS is a heavy bur- den for any doctor. Yet Reyelt never

October 5, 2009 America 23 New Audiobooks from St.Anthony Messenger Press

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ST. ANTHONY MESSENGER PRESS 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202 leaf image at top: ©vnlit. Shutterstock.com seemed overwhelmed or depressed. ters provided the grounding, balance Christine Reyelt’s worlds—medicine, She was sustained by a deep faith in and impetus she needed to meet daily the state and national boards on which the Gospel message and a sense of challenges. She relished her time apart she served, and her religious commu- humor that gave her a light grasp on with them—times of retreat and cele- nity—came together in the chapel at life. She did not take herself too seri- bration. Convent Station. Her sisters came to ously, nor was she impressed with Reyelt’s transplanted liver, the gift celebrate and thank God for her voca- pedantic pomposity in other profes- of a generous, anonymous donor, tion and dedication; for her prayerful- sionals. Reyelt’s eyes would often served her well for 14 years. It permit- ness, playfulness and humor; and for dance with glee as she silently made ted her to treat countless patients, to the way she lived out St. Vincent de note of some humorous remark or a rack up thousands of frequent flyer Paul’s instruction that “you are the ser- situation ripe with irony. Careful not miles, to pray and laugh and to be pre- vant of the poor, always smiling and to give offense, she would hold her wry sent to her fellow religious. good humored.” Most touching to me remarks for a private moment, allow- In February 2008, we met for the was the steady stream of persons, ing herself to indulge in mirth that last time. Reyelt had a troubling, per- many living with AIDS, and others, embraced the whole human family. sistent cough. As a physician she knew family members of those who had died that her immune system was severely of the disease, who processed up the Sister Christine, Doctor Reyelt compromised and that a common cold center aisle, one by one, to offer their While Reyelt was a physician par could lead to systemic illness. thanks for this extraordinary woman. excellence, she was first and foremost a Ultimately, infection was the immedi- Not all of us are called to be mar- Sister of Charity. Her mother got it ate cause of her death, yet her life was tyrs, but each one of us is called to give right when she would introduce her not taken from her because of a needle our lives for others. Christine Reyelt only child, saying, “I’d like you to meet stick. Rather, she gave it fully and was a model of such selfless love, a my daughter, Sister Christine, Doctor freely because of her commitment to physician and a devoted servant of Reyelt.” Reyelt’s loving religious com- Jesus and to the poor and the sick he God who laid down her life not with munity gave her the support to work inspired her to love. pomp and circumstance, but with in often trying circumstances. Her sis- On a misty June afternoon, grace, humility and humor. A

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26 America October 5, 2009 October 5, 2009 America 27 BOOKS &CULTURE

FALL BOOKS I | THOMAS J. SHELLEY many Catholic historians have written off the reign of Mary Tudor as an ALONG COMES MARY abject failure on the grounds that she was content to resort to force rather than attempt a genuine Catholic reli- FIRES OF FAITH brief reign of her half-brother Edward gious revival. Catholic England VI (1547-53), who opened the flood Professor Duffy demurs. For him Under Mary Tudor gates to Protestantism upon the death the central figure in the Marian By Eamon Duffy of Henry. Like The Stripping of the restoration of Catholicism was not the Yale Univ. Press 280p $28.50 Altars, Fires of Faith is lavishly illustrat- Queen, but her cousin, Cardinal ISBN 9780300152166 ed and includes six maps with the loca- Reginald Pole, the papal legate and the tions of the Marian executions. last Catholic archbishop of t has been said, not altogether face- Mary Tudor is a formidable test Canterbury. Although Pole has tiously, that historians are either remained “the invisible man of the I plagiarists or revisionists. Some Marian restoration” for most histori- are content to repeat and rehash the ans, Duffy credits him with an impres- standard interpretation of an era, while sive list of initiatives—such as the others dare to challenge the prevailing encouragement of preaching, the pub- academic orthodoxy and offer a fresh lication of Catholic devotional and new approach. Eamon Duffy unequivo- polemical works, plans for the estab- cally belongs in the latter category. lishment of four seminaries and, of Professor of the History of course, the heresy show trials and pub- Christianity at Cambridge University, lic executions intended to be the “the- Duffy established his scholarly creden- atre of justice.” Ironically, Foxe largely tials almost two decades ago with The absolved Pole for the executions in Stripping of the Altars, a meticulously which Duffy shows he was deeply documented work in which he blew implicated. huge holes in the thesis that the Pole’s greatest success was his Protestant Reformation in England renewal of the episcopate and cathe- was a grass-roots movement with dral clergy, deliberately recruiting can- widespread popular support. On the didates with both scholarly and pas- contrary, Duffy argued that it was toral credentials who were staunch imposed from above on a reluctant supporters of the Roman primacy. The population. While Duffy’s magisterial case for any revisionist historian. She best measure of his success was the work has spawned its own revisionist is remembered as Bloody Mary, who large number who resisted the critics, it remains today the starting sent over 280 Protestants to the stake. Elizabethan religious changes, unlike point of any serious discussion of the Duffy notes, “It was the most intense those who participated in the igno- English Reformation. religious persecution of its kind any- minious collapse of the clergy under The religion of England was where in sixteenth-century Europe.” Henry. In four years Pole achieved changed four times in the quarter cen- Thanks to John Foxe’s widely read Acts results with the upper clergy that took tury between Henry VIII’s break with and Monuments of the Marian mar- decades to accomplish in and Rome in 1534 and the Elizabethan tyrs, Bloody Mary became part of . “In that perspective,” says religious settlement of 1559. Duffy’s English folklore, solidifying popular Duffy, “Marian England was the hare latest book focuses on the brief reign suspicion of an intrinsic connection to the rest of Europe’s tortoise.” of Mary Tudor (1553-58), Henry’s between Catholicism and tyranny, cru- Duffy rejects the assertion that the Catholic daughter, who attempted to elty and religious oppression. Not only Marian restoration was the last gasp of restore Catholicism after the equally partisan Protestant historians, but also medieval Catholicism rather than the

28 America October 5, 2009 beginning of the counter-reformation ‘invented’ the counter-reformation.” recapture—realize—the cosmos as it in England. Pole himself was an Both Mary and Elizabeth employed was before the pain-filled reality that important figure in the formation of a combination of religious persuasion was ordinary life. Such cosmological the counter-reformation in and and political repression to secure the myths and rituals ideally taught them came within one success of their to live compassionately, emptying vote of being elected ON THE WEB respective religious themselves (kenosis) of all that imped- pope at the conclave Rev. Robert E. Lauder on the establishments. ed access to the transcendent. of 1550. His death Catholic fiction of Alice McDermott. Their methods ex- Similarly, Armstrong’s analysis of the on Nov. 17, 1558, americamagazine.org.culture cite revulsion today, Hebrew Scriptures reveals stories several hours after but they were brutal- (myths) of the one God who is power- the death of the childless Mary, spelled ly effective. Elizabeth had the ines- ful, benign, fair, ruthless, impartial, the end of the most promising effort to timable advantage that time was on arbitrary and faithful. Clearly, Israelite restore Catholicism in 16th-century her side. She occupied the English monotheistic insight did not render England. However, many of Pole’s throne for 45 years, compared with the nature of God transparent; rather, closest collaborators fled abroad to Mary’s five. History usually favors the God’s utter transcendence makes idol- play significant roles in the implemen- winners, not the losers. Thus we have atry both horrifying and ever possible. tation of the Catholic Reformation in Bloody Mary and Good Queen Bess. Through the ages, classical Judaism Europe. Posthumously Pole himself Eamon Duffy offers cogent reasons to insists that revelation—Torah—must had a major impact, through his syn- believe that it might have turned out be heard within ritual, which opens odal decrees in England, in shaping differently. the heart to reality beyond reason. the ’s legislation on From mystery religions to monothe- the residence of bishops and the estab- MSGR. THOMAS J. SHELLEY, a priest of the ism, myths and rituals are the dual dis- Archdiocese of New York, is professor of church lishment of seminaries. Duffy goes so history at Fordham University in New York ciplines for transcending ordinary life far as to say that “the Marian church City. and finding meaning. The chapters “Reason” and “Faith” carefully demonstrate how the Greek DENISE LARDNER CARMODY philosophers and the early adherents of Judaism, Christianity and Islam CRAVING THE TRANSCENDENT harbored analogous interpretations of the role of reason (a practical mode of thought that lets us function effective- THE CASE FOR GOD Part I, “The Unknown God ly in the world). But it is their agree- By Karen Armstrong (30,000 BCE to 1500 ment about faith that is Knopf. 432p $27.95 CE),” quickly orients us crucial. Faith in these dif- ISBN 9780307269188 to the author’s major ferent contexts was closer themes. Drawing on the to trust, commitment, loy- Somehow it seems fitting that Karen work of anthropolo- alty and engagement than Armstrong should make the case for gists, Armstrong shows to abstract assent to theo- God. Her earlier works establish her that early human retical or theological gift for displaying the vast historical beings, through their truths. Going beyond range of a topic with little distortion. myths and rituals what reason alone could Here she pursues the human quest for (which changed as they reach required disciplined God from the evidence of the cave evolved), cultivated a living. Eventually such painters of 30,000 B.C.E. to the mus- sense of the transcen- spiritual exercises led the- ings of postmodern thinkers who dent that permitted ologians and the to opine about God-speculation that is them to experience “the silence of unknow- beyond both theism and atheism. The ekstasis, stepping outside the ordinary. ing.” By the Middle Ages, book has two parts; each part has six Rather than bemused dupes cringing Christianity—East and West—was chapters with abundant footnotes. An before natural phenomena or manipu- permeated with the apophatic introduction, epilogue, glossary and lative priests, the peoples of ancient method: Whatever we say God is, we selected bibliography provide solid China and India (for example) devel- must affirm, deny and then deny the guidance through and beyond the text. oped disciplined rituals that let them denial. Unfortunately, the apophatic

October 5, 2009 America 29 center did not hold; by the 15th centu- American Christianity too is used the word dogma—as the Greek ry, theology lost its grounding in litur- enthralled by positivism, eventually fathers did—“to describe a truth that gy, community and charity. As theolo- spawning both the literalism of the could not be put readily into words, gy grew more speculative, it was less fundamentalists and the stridency of could only be understood after long able to respond to the craving of the today’s atheists, whose rejected “God” immersion in ritual, and, as the under- human heart for the transcendent. would scarcely be recognizable to standing of the community deepened, In Part II, “The Modern God orthodox theologians. From changed from one generation to (1500 CE to the Present),” Armstrong Columbus to Caputo, Armstrong another.” details the saga of how we systemati- reviews nearly every significant thinker Who should read this book? cally miss the mark spiritually even as whose work is germane. The result is a Undergraduates in appropriate philos- we become scientifically sophisticated. densely (and delightfully) written “case ophy or theology courses would bene- For Socrates dialogue meant gentle for God.” The reader is left with the fit from its sweeping account of persuasion with the possibility of both impression that human beings are per- humanity’s pursuit of transcendence. sides changing; dialogue today is often haps soft-wired for the transcendent. Another audience would be reading more like a debate, where neither true Religiously inclined, we want more groups interested in the “Why?” and listening nor understanding occurs. than bread: we seek rapture, ekstasis. “Why now?” of the New Atheists’ Logic reigns and myth is equated with We long to live generously, compas- appeal. I especially recommend it to fiction. Religion is less about spiritual sionately, humanely, lovingly. anyone who is intellectually curious exercises and disciplined lifestyles than Augustine’s intuition about the human and hungry to know and feel the “rea- about adherence to a set of beliefs. heart may yet be correct. Sadly, effec- sons of the heart.” Faith is the intellectual assent to such tive help is in short supply. It would be DENISE LARDNER CARMODY is professor of beliefs, without our being immersed in a start, Armstrong suggests, if reli- religious studies at Santa Clara University, the experience they symbolize. gious leaders and believers of all faiths Santa Clara, Calif. Armstrong writes that modern people, unwilling or unable to submit to the self-emptying (kenosis) required to RICHARD M. GULA penetrate religious symbols, often feel “caught between two sets of extrem- AN IN-BETWEEN CREATURE ists: religious fundamentalists, whose belligerent piety they find alienating, on the one hand, and militant atheists NEITHER BEAST NOR GOD undermines human dignity, but it does calling for the wholesale extermination The Dignity of the Human Person not deprive one of personal dignity. of religion, on the other.” Without By Gilbert Meilaender Meilaender, a professor of Christian romanticizing the past—bigots and Encounter Books. 180p $21.95 ethics at Valparaiso University, a mem- atheists are found in all eras—it is dif- ISBN 9781594032578 ber of the President’s Council on ficult to deny that religious leaders, in Bioethics and a fellow at Armstrong’s words, “often spend more “Respect human dignity” the Hastings Center, time enforcing doctrinal conformity is a common imperative addresses the lack of clari- than devising spiritual exercises that in ethics, yet this imper- ty with which the notion will make these official ‘beliefs’ a living ative is filled with ambi- of dignity is used in reality in the daily lives of the faithful.” guity. On the one hand, ethics, especially bioethics. In chapters entitled “Science and we say that strong pater- This short book expands Religion,” “Scientific Religion,” the nalism violates the digni- his programmatic essay, “Enlightenment,” “Atheism,” “Un- ty of the patient. On the “Human Dignity: Ex- knowing” and the “Death of God?” the other hand, we say that ploring and Explicating author marshals convincing evidence nothing we do can ever the Council’s Vision,” that the seduction of “objective certi- deprive another person which appeared in the tude” lured us away from the pursuit of their dignity. Can we President’s Council’s 2008 of the ineffable. Armstrong moves us have it both ways? We volume, Human Dignity through modernity deftly and with a can if we follow Gilbert Meilaender’s and Bioethics. confidence that brooks little resis- core distinction between human digni- While Neither Beast Nor God is not tance. She relates a story in which ty and personal dignity. Loss of control a work in bioethics, it was certainly

30 America October 5, 2009 inspired by bioethical debates, and in it Meilaender draws out a few implica- FROM ONE PRIEST TO ANOTHER tions for that field. Nor is this a work of theological ethics, though the “Truly an inspiration and a real tour de force.” anthropology is thoroughly Christian. —Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, Ph.D., D.D. Meilaender is convinced that we can- Habits of a Priestly Heart not properly understand what it Fr. Eugene Hemrick means to be human apart from our relation to God. This book is a good Designed to help today’s priests better understand, accept, and live with the new and sometimes overwhelming example of religious thinking inform- challenges of the third millennium. Hemrick’s first-hand ing public debates on bioethical issues insight and practical wisdom will enrich the lives of all priests that deeply depend on some under- by renewing and affirming their ministry and will help standing of what it means to be others to better understand this truly remarkable vocation. human. 001760 Hardcover ...... $24.95 Meilaender’s governing anthropo- logical metaphor is of the human being “Every priest will find the book to be a rich resource for spiritual renewal and for as an “in-between” creature: not quite pastoral growth.” a beast; not quite a god (hence the —Most Reverend Raymundo J. Peña book’s title). We are a union of body (that ties us to beasts) and spirit (that makes us like a god). To flourish as a human species and to manifest human dignity, we need to live within our lim- WORLD LIBRARY PUBLICATIONS Visit us online to learn how to receive free copies of its. We should not seek to live in dis- 800-566-6150 Danielle Rose’s final albumPursue Me, dedicated embodied ways more suited to gods www.wlpmusic.com AM1009 to vocations. Share the calling with your youth! (as some reproductive technologies want to do), nor should we treat our bodies as if they were open to manipu- lation and not integrally involved with our spirit (as an excessive use of medi- cations to treat every bodily problem 1-800-654-0476 www.saintjohnsbible.org wants to do). Overall, Meilaender advocates honoring the embodied character of our life and living within Give the gift its limitations. As a result, he is critical of procreating without bodily union of a lifetime! and of hastening death when life diminishes. Discover the beauty The core contribution of this and splendor of book, however, is the distinction Meilaender draws between human The Saint John’s Bible, dignity and personal dignity. He con- the first handwritten, tends that we cannot understand hand-illuminated Bible appeals to dignity unless we are will- commissioned by a ing to consider that respecting digni- Benedictine Abbey ty might mean more than not harm- in over 500 years. ing a person or glibly acknowledging their autonomy. This Christmas share the Human dignity has to do with the glorious legacy of The Saint capacities and limits characteristic of John’s Bible – A stunning gift our species. Thinking in terms of to treasure for a lifetime! human dignity gives rise to comparing

October 5, 2009 America 31 one another’s capacities so that we forms of ethics. The ethics of equality sonal dignity does not require that we regard some people as having more values human beings in the light of our do whatever we can to enhance capac- dignity than others. Those with less common humanity. The ethics of qual- ities so that we stay alive as long as we developed capacities (the mentally ity values life when it has the capacity can. While we should not aim at the challenged) or diminished capacities for satisfying experiences. death of any person, respecting dignity (Alzheimer’s patients) lack human In Meilaender’s terms, human dig- makes our central concern how we live, dignity and so may be thought to be nity allows us to talk both about what not how long. worth less than others. we need to flourish as human beings Personal dignity, by contrast, pro- and about the value of each person RICHARD M. GULA, S.S., is professor of moral theology at the Franciscan School of tects against the dangers of making regardless of our capacities. The Theology/Graduate Theological Union, comparisons. It declares that each dialectical relation of human and per- Berkeley, Calif. person is of equal worth, whatever his or her powers and limits may be. Personal dignity is fundamental to KELLY CHERRY human dignity. It upholds equal regard for everyone as persons of A MASTER’S WISDOM worth apart from taking into account our human capacities. But personal dignity is not as obvious to us as are NEWS OF THE WORLD as vital to art as art is to us—who the shared capacities of human digni- Poems would ever begin otherwise?—but ty. Since personal dignity is a theolog- By Philip Levine maturity shows us we are not. We are ical assertion for Meilaender, we need Knopf. 80p $25 small and alone, unsecured against loss the religious perspective of the ISBN 9780307272232 and damage. The artist who, like covenantal relation with God in order Levine, takes the final step to maturity to see it. Relying on the religious We often use the word wise to mean teaches readers how to be unafraid: of grounding for personal dignity and its “insightful” or “graceful” or “shrewd,” loss, of mortality, of lack of specialness. priority seems to doom its reception or even “humble.” Philip Levine’s In other words, he teaches us how to in the public forum. newest, just-published poetry collec- live in the world with open hearts and Nonetheless, Meilaender argues tion, his 20th (not even counting calm minds. What can be more impor- that equal dignity is a conviction so chapbooks), is wise in a more funda- tant than that? basic that it often goes undefended mental, truer way: it is knowing, and To journey from delusions of and that religious believers should not what it knows is what grandeur to a relation- be ill at ease in the public square when only maturity imparts to ship of amity and equal- declaring its priority. He argues equal us. It gives us “news of the ity with the world as it dignity is a universal truth that will world” that can be got is—that is the journey ultimately assert its claim on us even if only by living in the world of maturity. we are obscuring it for now by some of for a length of time. Levine, whose many our practices and policies. Nevertheless, to live long prizes include the Ruth This compact volume is a challeng- is not by itself enough to Lilly Poetry Prize, two ing read. It should be of interest to acquire this news from National Book Critics anyone who wants to follow ethical the world. One must Circle awards, the debates—those within the discussion attend to the world, earn National Book Award of health care reform, for example— one’s place in it and take and the Pulitzer Prize, with a more refined vision of what it the measure of both self has served as chair of the means to be human. Meilaender’s sig- and other. literature panel of the National nificant contribution in clarifying dig- Nor does one have to be a poet to Endowment for the Arts and was nity can add to these debates. He acquire it; but only a master will con- elected a chancellor of the Academy of keeps the two forms of dignity in a tinue making art after unburdening American Poets in 2000. After years dialectic relation rather than have himself of all youthful claims to spe- of teaching at California State them stand side by side. To promote cialness, for that unburdening is the University in Fresno, he was appointed health care reform, we will need to last and largest step toward maturity. the Distinguished Poet in Residence at work out the relation between two We may begin with a belief that we are New York University. Honors in such

32 America October 5, 2009 abundance can be a hindrance to the world. Perhaps it is the speaker’s “Wasn’t that the way it worked/ growth, promoting self-satisfaction, voice that accomplishes this, for men sold themselves to redeem their even self-congratulation, but Levine’s though the poems are as much bio- lives?” he asks in “Arrival and moral compass is intact and as steady graphical (or fictionally biographical) Departure.” Time changes some as ever. as they are autobiographical, the voice things—though the current economy He has assembled News of the is the same throughout—clear, direct, seems likely to bring only harder hard- World forthrightly, in four parts. Part one might say collegial. He has written ships to the men and women who I comprises poems about family his- often, as he does here too, of childhood depend on the assembly line for jobs; tory. Part II collects poems about and youth in Michigan; he worked his and though the working-class radicals Michigan, where the poet was born way through Wayne State University of the thirties would be deeply per- and educated and where he earned a as a blue-collar employee in automobile plexed by the dissolution of the Soviet living as a laborer in industrial factories. In free-verse 14-liners he tells Union—and in “Library Days” we see plants. Prose poems reflecting on us about “Henry Ford/ the man who Levine discovering a different world, various far-flung places and times created/ the modern world” and the the world of books. He approaches the make up Part III. The final section childhood world Ford destroyed: new world with the same determina- confronts mortality. tion that had fostered his earlier life. “I It is a simple organization, but it is ...I loved that world had work to do,” he writes, taking up rendered complex by the sense we have, with its little woods that his future. reading, that the volume as a whole is held The work includes narrative poems something like an extended meditation their darkness and the still that segue swiftly into anecdotal mem- on what is to be learned from a life in ponds.... ory or surprising comic stops, as in

Mary’s Cat for Lucien he came the beads disappearing into his fur limp in surrender like clockwork like ripe plums dropping into grass every day at four, now, those leonine paws when he died, every day at four in imperious trot, I carried him to the rocker when I journey the beads as if some inner alarm for one last go-round, alone, roused him from his world one last in mind’s eye, I see him of couch and window before the angel came— leap into the lap and hunting in the attic, the Glorious, of course, of answered prayer, hurrying him to my lap resurrection being apt— Mary caressing to greet the first Hail Mary I anointed him with my tears, the tawny length of him, and settle in, the heft of him blessed the small wrinkled ears, as, in full throttle purr, warming my knees, the velvet paws growing cold, he kneads her robe and in the mix of prayer and purr, the once triumphant plume of tail to his ecstatic we meandered through the mysteries, now a ratty flag, satisfaction

ETHEL POCHOCKI

ETHEL POCHOCKI is the author of several children's books, including The Blessing of Beasts (Paraclete Press) and Saints and Heroes for Kids (St. Anthony Messenger Press), as well as The Women of Lockerbie, a collection of her poetry.

October 5, 2009 America 33 “The Language Problem,” “The Death of indifferent stars, and to call has a way of humanizing us; two, that of Mayakovsky” and the title poem. It them “heavenly nobody in church leadership—bishop, includes poems about his father, his bodies,” to regard myself as no cardinal, whoever—should have free brother, his uncle Yakov, who before part access to large sums of money. I knew he moved to Detroit lived in Siberia, of a great scheme that included that canon law allows bishops to avail where “Even the wolves...moved/ everything. themselves of church funds if the through the trees without breathing” I had to put one foot in front of amount is not $500,000 or more, and (“Yakov”). another, to do so without the involvement of Now the poet is in his ninth decade. hold both arms out for balance, the diocesan finance committee. But We wish him many more years and stare ahead, less ($450,000 in the Weakland case) many more books, even if he does breathe like a beginner, and hope does not require oversight. This dis- rather look forward to the condition of to arrive. tinction, while legal in the strict sense no longer owning anything, not even of church law, seemed to me to fail a his name. He will be “no longer inflat- These magnificently unadorned basic ethical test, as normal people ed/ or bruised” by people’s opinions, lines conclude the book’s final poem, understand ethics. I thought at the “free at last” (from “Burial Rites”). But “Magic,” wherein we observe how time that canon law needs some fixing; right now, he is alive and writing and the human can triumph over the I still think so. has something to say, wisdom to self. A kind of transcendence, I So with these “disclosures” and con- impart: think. cerns as background, I entered into the memoir of an American archbishop. ...It took me years to learn KELLY CHERRY is the author of 17 books of The author begins with his person- fiction, nonfiction and poetry, most recently a way of walking under an Hazard and Prospect (Louisiana State al crisis: the revelation of his long ago umbrella Univ. Press). sexual affair and the payment of settle- ment money. In sorrow and humility, he makes a public confession of his transgressions in the context of a pen- DOLORES R. LECKEY itential service displaying not only an innate sense of drama but also an THE BISHOP’S TALE appreciation of history. One is remind- ed of penance in the early centuries of the church, when certain sins, con- A PILGRIM ily and other friends. (He is seated at a fessed in public, earned the penitent a IN A PILGRIM CHURCH piano engrossed in a Chopin waltz.) pilgrimage, often to dangerous places. Memoirs of a When I worked at the U.S. Weakland, indeed, goes on pilgrim- Catholic Archbishop Conference of Catholic age in the pages of this By Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B. Bishops we collaborated memoir, and the reader Foreword by Margaret O’Brien on a number of issues goes with him. After his Steinfels and projects. I respected public confession, he Eerdmans. 384p $35 his erudition and intel- returns, using Chaucer’s ISBN 9780802863829 lectual prowess, and we Canterbury Tales as a map shared a love for of sorts, to the places of The English mystery writer P. D. Benedictine traditions. origin that shaped him at James once said she would not review a So when I heard the various stages of his life’s book written by a friend. I thought radio report on May 23, journey. The family that was good advice when I read it, 2002, that he had had an home in Paton, Pa., but now I am about to ignore it. affair with a man where his widowed I have known Archbishop Rembert decades earlier, and that mother raised six chil- Weakland for over 30 years. He wrote in 1998 there had been a dren, one of whom, the preface to my first book, which cash settlement of George (later Rembert), was about the Rule of St. Benedict in $450,000, two thoughts converged: displayed a gift for music; and St. family life. I have his picture in my one, that he fell in love, probably for Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa., office nestled in among photos of fam- the first time, and that falling in love where as a young teenager he began his

34 America October 5, 2009 lifelong explorations into the life of the the monks who were involved in his structure of the Catholic Church mind. formation that St. Benedict saw the through his encounters with real peo- The gave the young monk as one on a search for God. ple, and history comes alive. Weakland the best education possi- Benedict did not say the important Patricia Hampl does something ble, not only in their own school, but point was finding God, but the contin- similar. She is skilled in relating the later at the Julliard School of Music uous search for God. In all of the roles personal story to a larger horizon. For in New York and Columbia and responsibilities that were his over her, the memoir is an effort to learn University, where he studied medieval the years— of St. Vincent’s, things one could not otherwise know; literature, art and architecture. abbot of all the Benedictine it is a movement toward talking about Columbia granted him a scholarship houses in the world, archbishop of big issues, including meaning and val- that allowed him to study in Milan, Milwaukee, a national leader regarding ues. Weakland’s story does this too. where he first met the archbishop of issues of social justice, liturgy, ecu- With its triumphs and failures, its sor- Milan, Giovanni Montini, later Pope menical and interreligious matters— row and shame, this monk’s tale not Paul VI. That was the beginning of always the Rule, the Benedictine way only moves him to a deeper level of one of the most important relation- of life, anchored him. self-understanding but raises big ships in Weakland’s life. As I read A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim issues the church needs to grapple With every experience, his world— Church, I was reminded of three of my with honestly: the role of the laity in including the church world—grew favorite memoirists. Like the Polish the contemporary church, and espe- larger and culturally richer. But the writer Czeslaw Milosz, Weakland cially of women; the failure to prepare Benedictines gave him something places the self against a historical back- celibate leaders to deal with more, something that remains to this ground. He demonstrates that the per- human/sexual development; the theo- day. They gave him the Rule of sonal and the historical can illuminate logical contradictions in the claim that Benedict as a way to center his life and each other, and bring history from the homosexual orientation is intrinsically to guide him as he moved from one realm of the abstract to that of the con- disordered; the meaning of authority leadership role to another, nationally crete through the medium of the per- in the light of the Gospel; the struc- and internationally. He learned from sonal story. We meet the ecclesiastical tural reasons behind the bishops’

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October 5, 2009 America 35 incompetence in the sexual abuse truth, a deeply personal truth. Are “answers” that might help him under- crises; and the uses and misuses of there suppressions? Probably. We all stand what he had to endure. money. And that’s the short list. carry unconscious suppressions. Closing Time’s most provocative Finally, I thought Might his judg- moments may be when Queenan of Euginia Ginz- ments be skewed? moves from the sad particularities of ON THE WEB burg, who wrote From the archives, Rembert Weakland, Perhaps. Who of us his own impoverished youth to the about her life as a O.S.B., on his American upbringing. is free of bias? But I subject of poverty in general. political prisoner in americamagazine.org/pages can find no deliber- “Poverty is a lifestyle, a philosophy, Stalin’s Siberian ate deception in a modus vivendi, an agglomeration of camps. She assured her readers that these pages. bad habits, which is why nobody who she had written down the truth, not A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church has ever been poor physically ever the whole truth, she said, because she becomes a lens for viewing—and stops being poor emotionally,” had neither the range of information understanding a little better—a peri- Queenan writes. “The once-poor sim- nor the skill and because no one od of church history where tensions, ply become masters of disguise…try- knows the whole truth. But she insist- confusion and hope intertwined. ing to keep a straight face while some- ed there were no lies in her account. I one talks about low self-esteem.” DOLORES R. LECKEY is senior fellow at believe there are no lies in Weakland’s Woodstock Theological Center, Washington, Queenan is an unapologetic ranter, pilgrimage account. He speaks the D.C. and there are passages in Closing Time that will make some readers squirm. (“Poor people behave stupidly because poverty is a finishing school where TOM DEIGNAN children learn to be stupid.”) But his STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA refusal to romanticize poverty, his clear-eyed description of all of pover- ty’s consequences, is refreshing. By the CLOSING TIME notorious roster. In Closing Time, the time Joe Queenan was born, the fami- A Memoir humorist and author of nearly 10 ly was already on a downward spiral. By Joe Queenan books (including Balsamic Dreams), They eventually lose their home and Viking. 352p $26.95 takes a dark look back at his abusive, move into public housing. ISBN 9780670020638 alcoholic father and his youth in the “Three things kept us going projects of Philadelphia. through these wilder- On a recent episode of the hit cable That Queenan sur- ness years: the Catholic drama “Rescue Me,” the Irish- vived a childhood spent Church, the generosity American firefighter Tommy Gavin under the fist of his of [a] few relatives…and () attends his father's father is astounding. the public library.” funeral. In a subsequent fantasy How he emerged with a It is tempting to see sequence, Leary takes an ax to the old sense of humor and young Joe’s fledgling man’s coffin. Clearly, father and son decency, not to mention a interest in books and had some unresolved issues—and the bellyful of (more or less ideas as just another way Gavins are not alone. controlled) rage, is the to aggravate his blue- Irish fathers—in movies, books, subject of this book. collar Dad. But as memoirs and more—are often a dis- Queenan’s dad was Queenan makes clear, turbingly flawed group. abusive because his own his father, for all his There is Frank McCourt’s dad, “father had been beastly flaws, valued the written Malachy, from Angela’s Ashes. Movies to him, abusive in the word. Queenan even like “Good Will Hunting” and “The generally horrific way that Irish males took dictation when his father decided Brothers McMullen” are set in motion often are to their sons.” Also, “he had to write one of his famously eloquent by abusive fathers. And in literature by grown up in the Great Depression.” letters to a newspaper. such titans as Eugene O’Neill and Not surprisingly, Queenan spends Perhaps that is why Queenan, along James Joyce, fathers range from schem- much time talking about being poor with his sisters, became excellent stu- ing to tyrannical. and being Irish, though he has no dents. Joe even decides to become a Add Joe Queenan’s father to this interest whatsoever in any therapeutic priest. He enrolls in Maryknoll Junior

36 America October 5, 2009 Seminary, which does not lead him, a nightmare from which his family horror so fresh that he sometimes con- ultimately, to fulfill his vocation, but it needed to awake,” he writes. fuses past and present,” Kidder writes. does get him out of Philly for the first What is strongest overall about “And then, two years later, he enrolls time. Closing Time is Queenan’s voice, his in an Ivy League university. How did Queenan then sets his sights on astounding lack of sentimentality, his this happen? Where did he find the getting accepted into St. Joseph’s ability to find humor in nearly any strength?” College (in part because of the “abiding bleak situation. The book loses some The arc of Deo’s life, painstakingly allure of the ”). While steam, though, when Queenan’s focus reconstructed by Kidder during long Queenan is intellectually growing, shifts from his father to other, more interviews and a trip to Africa, is however, his father is still drinking and positive male figures in his life. breathtaking. Deo was a medical seething. Looming over all of this is Queenan’s intern in 1993 when a wave of ethnic There are two shocking scenes near elusive mother, a hard-working, per- killing began in Burundi. After hiding the end of Closing Time that perma- sistent woman, whom the reader can- in tall grass and living in refugee camps nently change the nature of the not help but want to learn more about. for months, Deo secured a visa allow- author’s relationship with his father. Then again, given what she had to ing him to fly to New York, where he Perhaps they could have been explored endure, Queenan’s mother probably delivered groceries to survive, slept in in greater depth, though it must be deserves a book of her own. Central Park, learned English and added that one thing you take away Finally, given Queenan’s intellectual eventually studied at Columbia from the book is that exploration in no evolution, it might have been interest- University and later at the Harvard way leads to explanation or under- ing to hear him reflect on the many School of Public Health and standing; nor should it. published stories that resemble his. Dartmouth Medical School, all the By the time he is in college, From “Studs Lonigan” to “Saturday while wracked by nightmares of the Queenan develops a passion for music Night Fever,” the urban Catholic male carnage he had left behind. and French culture. He spends a glori- and his suffocating environment is an Deo phoned home, fearful of what ous year in Paris, falls in and out of enduring narrative that transcends might have happened to his family. He love with girls who share his artistic eras and ethnicities. learned that several family members interests and, later, comes to his Still, Closing Time is easily one of had died in the violence, including a father’s side when the old man—“who the most refreshingly honest, even cousin who was beheaded. has been drinking since he was thir- brave, memoirs to appear in recent Though Kidder attempts to under- teen and smoking since he was ten”— years. stand the hatred between Tutsi and finally succumbs to cancer. Hutu, it remains a mystery. Historians Queenan, though, is not interested TOM DEIGNAN, books columnist for Irish cannot agree on what makes one per- America magazine, is the author of Coming in forgiving. He is exhausted and sim- to America: Irish Americans. He is writing son a Tutsi and another a Hutu, ply wants to move on. “My father was a novel about a New York City high school. because there are no clear ethnic, reli- gious or historical differences. And yet both sides have engaged in periodic BILL WILLIAMS genocide. Although Tutsi make up only 14 DARING DEO percent of Burundi’s population, they usually have constituted the ruling class. Because Deo was a Tutsi, he STRENGTH IN WHAT Tracy Kidder, the Pulitzer Prize-win- enjoyed advantages, like being admit- REMAINS ning writer, takes readers into the ted to the best schools. A Journey of Remembrance heart of that awful chapter in human While an intern in a rural hospital and Forgiveness history through the eyes of a in 1993, Deo sensed that trouble was By Tracy Kidder Burundian medical student named brewing. One day, as he prepared to Random House. 304p $26 Deogratias—known as Deo—who visit patients, he noticed the absence of ISBN 9781400066216 narrowly escaped the slaughter and any nurses or doctors. It happened fled to New York. that Burundi’s Hutu president had Genocide has claimed hundreds of “A young man arrives in the big city been assassinated, and Hutus were thousands of African lives in recent with two hundred dollars in his pock- coming to exact revenge. He hid under decades. In his ambitious new book, et, no English at all, and memories of a bed as militiamen stormed through

October 5, 2009 America 37 the hospital, shouting “warm them “Hutu brothers” to step to one side went to work for Farmer, who men- up,” code for pouring gasoline on and “Tutsi cockroaches” to the other. tored him. Tutsis and setting them on fire. He When the students refused to sepa- Deo’s dream since high school had smelled gasoline, then smoke. He hid rate, the soldiers decided to kill them been to build his own medical clinic in until nightfall, and then fled past all. Some escaped, but 40 were mur- Burundi. In 2006 he withdrew from scenes of slaughter, dered. Dartmouth Medical School to devote including rivers filled “It was said that some his full energy to the project. With with bodies. At one of the dying boys quoted support from Farmer and other bene- point, he spotted a fly on Jesus on the cross, crying factors, the clinic opened in 2007. Deo a leaf and thought, “How out to God to forgive sees the area around the clinic becom- lucky you are not to be a their killers because they ing a neutral ground where Tutsis and human being.” didn’t know what they Hutus can mingle without fear, “a While Deo was hid- were doing,” Kidder place of reconciliation for everyone, ing, a Hutu woman writes. Portraits of the including him.” approached and offered slain boys were later Kidder has written a stunning and to protect him. He was painted on a wall above poignant story, weaving together sev- suspicious, but she reas- an altar. eral threads and leaving the reader sured him by saying, “I’m In America, Deo had with indelible images of senseless a woman and I’m a moth- heard about the work of killing, admirable heroism and er.” When militiamen tried to take Paul Farmer, the Harvard physician unmatched resilience of the human Deo, she saved his life by telling them who has founded medical clinics spirit. that he was her son. around the world and was the subject The story unfolds in layers as of another acclaimed Kidder book, BILL WILLIAMS, a freelance writer in West Hartford, Conn., is a former editorial writer Kidder moves back and forth between Mountains Beyond Mountains. After for The Hartford Courant. He is a member of America and Burundi, a tiny nation Deo and Farmer met in Boston, Deo the National Book Critics Circle. the size of Maryland and among the poorest, with an average life expectan- cy of 39 years. TELEVISION | TERRANCE W. KLEIN At Columbia, Deo studied philoso- phy because he wanted answers to MANHATTAN GOTHIC questions about good and evil, human- ity and God. He spent hours sitting ‘Mad Men’ and the shock of recognition alone in St. John the Divine Cathedral in Manhattan, trying to reconcile his Flannery O’Connor explained the Amy Hungerford, an English pro- experience of genocide with his belief grotesquery of her characters and plot fessor at Yale, sometimes asks her stu- in God. twists by saying that the subject of her dents whether they would want to Kidder felt uncomfortable probing fiction was “the action of grace in terri- have dinner with O’Connor’s charac- into Deo’s past, and several times tory held largely by the devil.” She felt ters—unlikeable folk. The same can offered to stop “my search for his her characters and plots needed to be also be said about the characters of story and let his memories die, if they distorted to the point of the surreal to “Mad Men,” the critically lauded would.” Gradually, Kidder managed produce in the reader a “shock” of AMC series, although it would more to pierce the shell of this shy, intelli- recognition. O’Connor’s stories each likely be a cocktail that one would gent, introspective, wounded young contain “an action that is totally unex- decline to enjoy in their company. Don man. pected, yet totally believable,” often an Draper and the executives with whom In one of the most moving episodes, act of violence, like the murder of the he works at the Sterling Cooper Ad Deo and Kidder meet a priest who had cantankerous and haughty grandmoth- Agency are hollow, rapacious been principal of a Catholic high er in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” or Philistines. Draper would not want to school in 1997 and had tried to create the self-blinding of Hazel Motes in have a drink with anyone without the an “example of unity” by having Hutu Wise Blood. Violence, she said, is “the promise that it would lead to his suc- and Tutsi students live and pray extreme situation that best reveals cess in business or philandering. together. One day Hutu soldiers burst what we are essentially.” We are meant “Mad Men” employs the same cre- into the school dormitory and ordered to see in her stories our need for grace. ative device Flannery O’Connor used.

38 America October 5, 2009 Jon Hamm, left, as Don Draper and Vincent Kartheiser, right, as Pete Campbell meet with a client.

It radically resets a character or situa- So many people smoke in the offices of she is told—by a woman—that the only tion so that readers or viewers see Sterling Cooper that one wonders way to succeed in a man’s world is to themselves from a previously whether they’ve had a premonition become an object of men’s desire. A les- unknown vantage point. O’Connor that one day the practice will be pro- son in sexism is combined with one in did this geographically by exploiting hibited. When Don, driving while racism when Paul Kinsey, a copywriter her native, rural South—strange terri- drunk, causes a car accident, the local and aspiring novelist, dates an African- tory to many of us. Matthew Weiner, cop decides to get tough. American woman from New Jersey. At the creator of “Mad Men” and a writer The errant New Yorker must pay the a party with his co-workers, he instructs for the last three seasons of “The full $150 fine before her not to speak in Sopranos,” accomplishes the same he can drive away. his absence, lest her ON THE WEB through temporal dislocation. He There’s no arrest, A conversation socioeconomic back- takes us back to the early 1960s and, just a small contri- about “Mad Men.” ground become ap- with the aid of a half-century of hind- bution to the local americamagazine.org/podcast parent to the others. sight, we see ourselves with new eyes. economy. But do we get it? In the series’ first season, a child is The series’ chief moral pedagogy lies Do we see ourselves in the characters shown in the Draper family home in its depiction of 1960s sexism. A of “Mad Men,” or do we superciliously playing with a plastic dry-cleaning bag. woman at Sterling Cooper is called a take pride in having left behind their A parent scolds, warning not of danger “girl,” “babe,” “sweetheart,” almost any sexism, their racism, their ecological to the child but of wrinkling the gar- form of address except one that suggests callousness? When the Democratic ment. When the Draper family picnics equality. Peggy Olsen, a secretary raised Party chose to nominate Barack in a bucolic setting, Betty Draper, to the position of copywriter, is side- Obama in preference to Hillary Don’s wife, concludes the festivities lined and belittled by the men with Clinton, was it a sign that racism is with a brisk shake of the blanket, whom she works and shunned and dead or that sexism is still alive? And

PHOTO: AMC/CARIN BAER sending all their trash onto the field. resented by the women. In season two, if racism is dead, why did it take a

October 5, 2009 America 39 White House summit to conclude the 15 years to decompose and leach toxic can see God at work. Hazel Motes contentious national debate over the chemicals into the water and soil). really sees only after he has blinded arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Students first encountering himself. We are supposed to ask our- Louis Gates, Jr.? Racism, like any Flannery O’Connor’s fiction often selves what it would take for us to see. other prejudice, can be the mote we protest that her stories are too The danger of the temporal disloca- have simply learned to look past, mak- “Gothic” to be realistic. She insisted tion of “Mad Men” is that so many ing it all the more difficult to diagnose. that her stories were credible, though years have passed since the 1960s that Today many Americans must leave not easy to believe. The difficulty in viewers no longer recognize them- their offices to smoke, but some toss accepting their verisimilitude is meant selves in the insecure men and women their cigarette butts onto the street, to trigger our recognition of grace; the who bed each other in hotel rooms and despite the ecological damage (the stories are heightened in feature so commit rape in corporate boardrooms. butts are not biodegradable, take 10 to that clouded-over contemporary eyes Do career women today feel them- selves more secure at work than Peggy Olsen does? Is the emotionally suffo- America’s Stephanie Ratcliffe cating marriage of Don and Betty Drawings and Paintings Draper a relic of the past? “Mad Men” on Silent Auction is a morality play, and Don Draper is Everything Goes Book Cafe an everyman. Even his identity is bor- 208 Bay Street, , N.Y. rowed from a dead comrade of the Korean War. As brilliantly played by for the month of October Jon Hamm, Draper is reminiscent of Final Bid Party on Oct. 17, 5-7pm Walker Percy’s oft-repeated protago- To view the catalog, nist, a walking wound that no philan- visit stephanieratcliffe.blogspot.com dering can cure, here transplanted from New Orleans to Ossining, N.Y., the Draper suburban home. The self- alienation that expresses itself in per- fervid promiscuity is not a thing of the past. Both O’Connor’s fiction and “Mad Men” can be received without any shock of grace. (Students are often The Jesuit Center surprised to learn that O’Connor 501 N. Church Road, Wernersville, PA intended her stories to be all about the action of grace.) Some read them sim- The facility is located nine miles west of Reading, PA. We have 250 acres of beautiful ply as macabre stories without a moral. rolling hills, planned roads, walkways, terraces, grottos, and cloister gardens. Not everyone sees the morality tale 5 &7-DAY DIRECTED RETREATS IN 2009-2010: Oct. 21-29, Dec. 1-9, Jan. implicit in the saga of Sterling Cooper. 19-27, March 9-17, April 20-28, May 18-26, June 2-10, June 20-26, June 30-July 08, July 12-20, July 24-Aug. 01, Aug. 24-Sept. 01 Surely there are viewers who wish they could be Don Draper, who don’t rec- WORKSHOP: November 13-15, 2009: “‘I Want to See God,’ Born to Contem- ognize the soul-sadness stirred into his plate” presented by Keith Egan. This weekend will explore what the Christian mystics martinis. Hollow men have hollow have to teach us about prayer and how the call to contemplate is rooted in our and nourished by Eucharist. Contemplation is not for the few but for us ordinary, every- dreams. It takes a lot to see grace at day Christians. work in territory held largely by the Presenter: Keith J. Egan, Ph.D., is president of the North American Carmelite Institute, devil. The same might be said of time, Aquinas Chair in Emeritus, Saint Mary’s College, and Adjunct Pro- as O’Connor might put it, when Satan fessor of Theology, Notre Dame University. With a doctorate from Cambridge Univer- winds the springs. sity, England. REV. TERRANCE W. KLEIN is an associate The Jesuit Center offers retreats, day programs and weekend workshops. For professor of theology at Fordham University more information about the Jesuit Center and the programs that we offer, please and the author of Vanity Faith: Searching visit our website at www.jesuitcenter.org or call our registrar at 610-670-3642. for Spirituality Among the Stars (Liturgical Press, 2009).

40 America October 5, 2009 THE 10TH CASAGRANDE INSTITUTE FOR INTERFAITH CONVERSATION

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October 5, 2009 America 41 CLASSIFIED They’re not plaster statues, Education SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY offers an they’re personal friends! M.A. degree in spirituality; regular semester and intersession courses. Web: www.ost.edu. James Martin, SJ, has learned that the saints are Parish Missions more than plaster objects—they are our compan- INSPIRING, DYNAMIC PREACHING: parish ions. Now, his award-winning book and exciting missions, retreats, days of recollection; www new DVD can help each of us develop a lifelong .sabbathretreats.org. friendship with the saints as we take them off the pedestal and place them in our hearts. Retreats BETHANY RETREAT HOUSE, East Chicago, Ind., My Life with the Saints offers private and individually directed silent retreats, including Ignatian 30 days, year-round in a t1Ctt)Dt prayerful home setting. Contact Joyce Diltz, Who Cares about the Saints? DVDtNJOVUFT P.H.J.C.; (219) 398-5047; [email protected]; www.bethanyretreathouse.org.

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42 America October 5, 2009 LETTERS lum that high school religion teachers ings of the U.S. bishops’ curriculum might use to counteract those ideas. framework (“Faulty Guidance,” Exercise and Spirituality I suggest an added remedy: Help 9/14). His students, all adolescents I much appreciated Maurice Catholic parents teach their pre- for that matter, would be well served Timothy Reidy’s latest Of Many school children about faith. When by having to tackle his essay as their Things column (9/14). I developed toddlers ask such questions as, “Do first reading assignment in the new the cycling addiction this past sum- goldfish go to heaven?” or “Are you school year. Indeed, thinking about mer. A doctor I heard speak recently crying because grandma died?” a par- such a prospect almost tempts me to described exercise, including cycling, ent has an opportunity to explain how end my decade-long hiatus and return as “meditation in action.” Cycling is everyone struggles with belief in a lov- to the classroom I haunted for over an enjoyable way to see new places, ing God. Are parishes across the coun- 30 years. On second thought, I lack meet new friends and develop new try systematically assisting parents to the courage and stamina Father insights. I look forward to reading seize such opportunities? I don’t think O’Malley has displayed for over four future articles on exercise (broadly so. Little children who are not taught decades and leave the job to brave defined) and spirituality. about faith at home are left to spend souls like him. BEN CRITTENDEN their first six or seven years absorbing PAUL LOATMAN JR. Anchorage, Alaska Mechanicville, N.Y. from television and elsewhere “some of the worst God-talk popular culture Reform in Kenya Too Late Have I Read Thee Thank you for keeping the suffering has to offer.” PAUL J. MCCARREN, S.J. Every article of Father O’Malley’s that people of Kenya and East Africa in the Washington, D.C. I have read over the years made me spotlight (Signs of the Times, 9/28). I sorry that I was reading them only was still living and working there when Tempted to Return after my children had left high school. the post-election violence broke out in God bless William J. O’Malley, S.J., I always believed that his pieces on December 2007. A way must be found for speaking truth to authority in his raising teenagers were full of wisdom to bring the instigators to justice. They trenchant analysis of the shortcom- and that if they had been written 10 are devious and determined to cling to power on the backs of the poor. To send a letter to the editor we recommend using the link that appears below articles on There is still a long path to genuine America’s Web site, www.americamagazine.org. This allows us to consider your letter for publi- democracy in Kenya, with open and cation in both print and online versions of the magazine. Letters may also be sent to America’s editorial office (address on page 2) or by e-mail to: [email protected]. They should free and fair elections, literacy and be brief and include the writer’s name, postal address and daytime phone number. Letters may transparency being important compo- be edited for length and clarity. nents. The ordinary people of Kenya desperately need and deserve civil peace based on an open and fair shar- WITHOUT GUILE ing of natural resources and land reform. The resistance to such reform is both subtle and blatant, longstand- ing and fierce. The Kenyan people need international help to achieve these goals, or poverty, violence and corruption will continue to be a way of life. MAE KIERANS, C.S.J. St. John’s, Newfoundland

Parents as First Teachers Brad Rothrock (“God and the Teenage Mind,” 9/14) says most Catholic teenagers have developed ideas about belief based on “some of the worst God-talk popular culture has to offer.” He then suggests a remedial curricu- CARTOON BY HARLEY SCHWADRON

October 5, 2009 America 43 years earlier, I would have done many things differently. I hope his students at Fordham Prep (and their parents) appreciate him. NYU PRESS / A. F. JOHNSON Great Ideas Falls Church, Va. The Gift of Tears Re: “Escape from Alcatraz” (9/28): I THE MYSTERY first read about Father Damien in OF THE ROSARY eighth grade in public school. I was Marian Devotion and totally taken with him and the lepers. the Reinvention of Catholicism It is very strange that after all these Nathan D. Mitchell years—I am now in my 60s—I am “In this dazzling venture in ‘reframing,’ basically the same sappy person, in what could have been a nostalgic revisit- tears reading the story of Father ing of a traditional devotion has, instead, Damien here in San Francisco, where I been rendered a masterful reflection on Catholic identity and imagination.” live. During breaks at work I often —EDWARD FOLEY, Catholic Theological Union look at America on the screen. I use it Why has this particular devotional as a prayer. Thanks for telling me of object been so ubiquitous and resilient, Father Damien’s approaching canon- especially in the face of Catholicism’s reinvention in the Early Modern, or ization. RICHARD BENITEZ “Counter-Reformation,” Era? Nathan San Francisco, Calif. D. Mitchell argues in lyric prose that to understand the rosary’s adaptability, it is essential to consider the changes Blessings of a Saint $37.00 cloth p 1 illustration Catholicism itself began to experience in the aftermath of the Reformation. The U.S. Army’s hospital ship Republic was the last ship refitted and commissioned toward the end of World War II. I too was newly com- missioned, as a second lieutenant NOW IN nurse assigned to the Republic’s com- THE PAPERBACK! plement. I wondered over the years if AMERICAN JESUITS A History the story of Father Damien’s body Raymond A. Schroth being transported to the United States aboard the Republic were true. Father “An enthralling celebration of the Damien was one of the heroes of my Jesuits’ presence in American Catholic life, masterfully testifying to the society’s childhood. The months spent on the achievement.” Republic were life-changing for me. I —NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER would like to think that Father A quintessential American tale of Damien’s one-time presence was one men willing to take risks—for Indians, of the blessings brought by that expe- blacks, immigrants, and the poor, and to promote a loving picture of God— rience. I met my husband aboard the The American Jesuits offers a broad Republic. Our life together was short and compelling look at the impact of but much blessed. Knowing I connect- this 400-year-old international order on American culture and the culture’s ed with Father Damien, even in such a impact on the Jesuits. tiny way, was a joyful gift for my recent birthday. $22.00 paper IRENE KING MENNITT Lyndhurst, N.J.

Pleasant Surprise Re: “Camelot’s End” (Editorial, 9/14):

44 America October 5, 2009 Soon after Ted Kennedy’s death, I called my brother in Baltimore to see how his children were doing in the Walter J. Burghardt first days of school. He said, “James and I were down watching a special on Short Sermons Kennedy.” I wondered what might for Preachers come next. Just six weeks earlier, my on the Run brother and I were having a conversa- tion and he commented that it was Written shortly before he passed away, amazing that he and I were of the same in February 2008, these short sermons parents, same home and upbringing, by Fr. Burghardt fill an enormous need. and we were so radically different. He They are an inspiring resource and said, “You are such a liberal Democrat, spiritual reading. The social and I am on the books a Democrat, justice themes give the sermons a but a conservative Republican at challenging flavor. Fr. Burghardt’s heart.” final gift to us is a small treasure. With this backdrop I was now 978-1-57075-848-5 pbk $18.00 holding my breath. Joe went on to say Also by Fr. Burghhardt: that “a great man had been lost.... In Long Have I Loved You the past 40 years, with everything A Theologican Reflects on His Church that had to do with the poor and “A rich tapestry of our church and our times.” —Paul Wilkes marginalized, Kennedy went to bat 978-1-57075-296-4 paperback $30.00 for me.” My brother made sure his son was at least exposed to Ted as At your bookseller or direct: ORBIS BOOKS they watched that special. This Order Online! www.maryknollmall.org Maryknoll, NY 10545 A World of Books that Matter 1-800-258-5838 exchange for me has been the greatest testimony to Ted Kennedy. And I pray that he now knows the blessing of his labors. MICHAEL DUFFY, O.F.M.CONV. prayerfulness examines what it means Above Rocks, Jamaica, W.I. to truly live in the present moment No Profile in Courage St. Thomas More did not compro- mise his faith for political correct- Prayerfulness ness. He knew his faith and fol- Awakening to the Fullness of Life lowed it. From his expulsion from Robert J. Wicks Harvard through his first marriage Foreword by Joyce Rupp to his reversal on the abortion issue, “In the face of anguish and distraction, so Teddy Kennedy always missed the common in our society, Wicks presents a chance to be a “profile in courage.” straightforward guide to deepening faith through compassion and love. A triumph That was his greatest tragedy. St. of the human spirit!” Thomas saw what was really impor- Kerry Kennedy tant. Author of Being Catholic Now GEORGE MUNYAN Thorofare, N.J. “What makes Prayerfulness stand out is Robert Wicks’s unfailing honesty and his Look at the Record ability to unite our everyday life to our relationship with the divine.” Looking at President Obama’s record Joyce Rupp HardcoHardcoverver / 192 pages / $20$20.0000 From the foreword by throughout his lifetime, it is absurd to Author of Open the Door think that he is committed to reducing Available from your bookstore or from ave maria press the number of abortions in the United Notre Dame, IN 46556 / www.avemariapress.com / Ph: 800.282.1865 A Ministry of the Indiana Province of Holy Cross States. This is the man who voted

October 5, 2009 America 45 against allowing palliative care for infants who survived botched abor- tions. This is the man who repealed the Mexico City Policy despite public opinion in its favor. This is the man who said that the Freedom of Choice Act was his legislative priority. He has taken many actions already during his presidency that will increase the num- ber of abortions performed around the world. He has done nothing so far to reduce them. To those who claim that the bish- ops are using abortion as a political tool: Shame on you. MIKE MAIALE Baltimore, Md.

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46 America October 5, 2009 THE WORD Just One Thing TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B), OCT. 11, 2009 Readings: Wis 7:7-11; Ps 90:12–17; Heb 4:12-13; Mk 10:17-30 “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mk 10:17)

any classic tales are told in as we move into maturity, it is words to Mary at the which a hero or heroine the gaze of love that Jesus casts annunciation (Lk 1:37). M searches for the key to hap- on each of us that enables us Total self-surrender to the piness. In “City Slickers,” a film popular to abandon everything divine is the one thing that in the early 1990s, Mitch, a city boy, is else. This love cannot be brings abundant life to all. asked by Curly, a crusty old cowboy, earned with actions, but is There is a similar “Do you know what the secret of life the sheer gift of the good theme in the first reading, is?” Curly holds up one finger and con- God, who embodies the where wisdom is the one tinues, “One thing. Just one thing.” one thing that surpasses thing sought. The king When Mitch presses him for the secret, all else. The only condi- prays for and is granted Curly says, “That’s what you have to tion for attaining the the grace to choose wis- find out.” The answer unfolds subtly in one thing is this: A per- dom alone, over scepter the film but is never stated explicitly. son must be willing to and throne, riches and In today’s Gospel, a rich young man let go of everything else. gems. Ironically, just as asks Jesus a similar question: “What Abandoning all for must I do to inherit eternal life?” He the pursuit of the one love is not an PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE seems to be looking for a formula. easy thing to do. In the Gospel, the Though he has kept all the command- young man’s many possessions seem • Ask Jesus to lead you to the “one thing ments since his youth, the young man an insurmountable obstacle. For a rich necessary.” lacks something. He looks to Jesus as person to enter the realm of God is like • What have you let go in the pursuit of the “good teacher” to tell him what it a heavily laden camel struggling to the “one thing”? is. Jesus does not say readily what he wriggle through a tiny opening with all • What have you received in return? must do to inherit eternal life but its cargo intact. To hold on to the focuses instead on the man’s use of the power, control and security that abun- ART: TAD DUNNE word “good.” In this way Jesus points dant possessions bring is antithetical to the disciples gained back a hundred- the young man toward God’s unique the vulnerability, receptivity and risk fold all the family relations and land goodness, which is the “one thing” at that abandoning oneself to the one love they relinquished, so the king’s choice the center of all. requires. It is not impossible for people of Wisdom over all else brought him Jesus invites the rich man to step with riches to do so, but it is exceed- all good things and countless riches. across a threshold, to leave behind the ingly difficult. The idea is not to guess the one thing spirituality of his youth and to take on As other Gospel passages illustrate, that will bring wealth. Rather, the another spirituality that abandons all it is not the having choice of the one for the sake of love. In youth, clear of riches that poses THE GOOD WORD love, Wisdom incar- guidelines with specific boundaries and an obstacle; rather it Weekly commentary nate in Christ, actions for moral living are needed. But is what one does on the Scripture readings. prompts one to let americamagazine.org/goodword with one’s posses- go of all else, only to BARBARA E. REID, O.P., a member of the sions that is deter- receive in return all Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids, Mich., is minative. Jesus’ assurance that “for that the beloved lavishes on us without a professor of New Testament studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Ill., human beings it is impossible, but not reserve. where she is vice president and academic dean. for God,” has an echo of Gabriel’s BARBARA E. REID

October 5, 2009 America 47 CALLED TO BE HUMAN ROWAN’S RULE NEW TRACKS, Letters to My Children on The Biography of the NIGHT FALLING Living a Christian Life Archbishop of Canterbury Jeanne Murray Walker Michael Jinkins Rupert Shortt PAPERBACKs PAPERBACKs HARDCOVERs A PILGRIM IN A OUT OF MY BONE THE DEVIL READS DERRIDA PILGRIM CHURCH The Letters of Joy Davidman and Other Essays on the University, Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop Edited by Don W. King the Church, Politics, and the Arts Rembert G. Weakland HARDCOVERs James K. A. Smith PAPERBACKs HARDCOVERs THE LIFE WORTH LIVING IMMINENT DOMAIN Faith in Action BASIC CHRISTIANITY FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION The Story of the Kingdom of God Byron L. Sherwin and Its Celebration John Stott PAPERBACKs Ben Witherington III PAPERBACKs PAPERBACKs I TOLD ME SO Self-Deception and the Christian Life Gregg A. Ten Elshof PAPERBACKs

9001 At your bookstore, or call 800-253-7521 www.eerdmans.com