POETRY ROUNDUP

Forgiving My Sister’s Killer JEANNE BISHOP OF MANY THINGS

ne of the greatest Christian “For you, I your God became 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019-3803 writers who ever lived is the your son; for you, I the Master took Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 unknown author of this ancient on your form; that of slave; for you, I Subscriptions: 1-800-627-9533 O www.americamagazine.org homily from the second century, a med- who am above the heavens came on facebook.com/americamag itation on Holy Saturday. Happy Easter earth and under the earth; for you, twitter.com/americamag from the editors and staff ofAmerica . man, I became as a man without MATT MALONE, S.J. help, free among the dead; for you, President and Editor in Chief who left a garden, I was handed over Matt Malone, S.J. What is happening? Today there is to Jews from a garden and crucified Executive Editors Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy a great silence over the earth, a great in a garden. Managing Editor Kerry Weber silence, and stillness, a great silence “Look at the spittle on my face, Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. because the King sleeps; the earth which I received because of you, Senior Editor and Chief Correspondent was in terror and was still, because in order to restore you to that first Kevin Clarke

God slept in the flesh and raised up divine inbreathing at creation. See Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. those who were sleeping from the the blows on my cheeks, which I Executive Editor, America Films ages. God has died in the flesh, and accepted in order to refashion your Jeremy Zipple, S.J. the underworld has trembled. distorted form to my own image. Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. Truly he goes to seek out our “See the scourging of my Associate Editor and Vatican Correspondent first parent like a lost sheep; he back, which I accepted in order to Gerard O’Connell wishes to visit those who sit in disperse the load of your sins which Senior Editor Edward W. Schmidt, S.J. Engagement and Community Editor darkness and in the shadow of was laid upon your back. See my Elizabeth Tenety death. He goes to free the prisoner hands nailed to the tree for a good Associate Editors Ashley McKinless, Olga Segura Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve purpose, for you, who stretched out Assistant Editors Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., from their pains, he who is God, and your hand to the tree for an evil one. Joseph McAuley Adam’s son. “I slept on the cross and a sword Art Director Sonja Kodiak Wilder The Lord goes in to them pierced my side, for you, who slept Columnists Helen Alvaré, John J. Conley, S.J., holding his victorious weapon, his in paradise and brought forth Eve Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, cross. When Adam, the first created from your side. My side healed Margot Patterson, Nathan Schneider, Robert David man, sees him, he strikes his breast the pain of your side; my sleep Sullivan in terror and calls out to all: “My will release you from your sleep in Correspondents John Carr (Washington), An- Lord be with you all.” And Christ Hades; my sword has checked the thony Egan, S.J., and Russell Pollitt, S.J. (Johannes- burg), Jim McDermott, S.J. (Los Angeles), Timothy in reply says to Adam: “And with sword which was turned against Padgett (Miami), Steven Schwankert (Beijing), your spirit.” And grasping his hand you. David Stewart, S.J. (London), Judith Valente (Chi- he raises him up, saying: “Awake, O “But arise, let us go hence. The cago), Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M. (U.S. Church) Moderator, Catholic Book Club sleeper, and arise from the dead, and enemy brought you out of the land Kevin Spinale, S.J. Christ shall give you light. of paradise; I will reinstate you, Editorial e-mail “I am your God, who for your no longer in paradise, but on the [email protected] sake became your son, who for you throne of heaven. I denied you the

and your descendants now speak tree of life, which was a figure, but Publisher and Chief Financial Officer Edward and command with authority those now I myself am united to you, I Spallone. Deputy Publisher Rosa Del Saz. Vice in prison: Come forth, and those in who am life. I posted the cherubim President/Advancement Daniel Pawlus. Devel- opment Coordinator Kerry Goleski. Operations darkness: Have light, and those who to guard you as they would slaves; Staff Chris Keller, Glenda Castro. Advertising sleep: Rise. now I make the cherubim worship contact [email protected]; 212-515-0102. “I command you: Awake, you as they would God. Subscription contact/Additional copies sleeper, I have not made you to be “The cherubim throne has been [email protected]; 1-800-627-9533 held a prisoner in the underworld. prepared, the bearers are ready Arise from the dead; I am the life and waiting, the bridal chamber © 2015 America Press, Inc. of the dead. Arise, O man, work is in order, the food is provided, of my hands, arise, you who were the everlasting houses and rooms fashioned in my image. Rise, let us are in readiness; the treasures of go hence; for you in me and I in good things have been opened;

you, together we are one undivided the kingdom of heaven has been Cover: Easter Vigil at St. Mary’s Cathedral in person. prepared before the ages.” Miami, 2014. CNS photo/Tom Tracy Contents www.americamagazine.org VOL. 212 NO. 12, WHOLE NO. 5085 April 6, 2015

ARTICLES 14 PRAISE HIM Celebrating the life and work of Gerard Manley Hopkins Joseph J. Feeney

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

4 Current Comment

5 Editorial Living Easter

6 Reply All 14 8 Signs of the Times

12 Column The Furious Mysteries James Martin

18 Vatican Dispatch Francis’ Prophecy Gerard O’Connell

23 Vantage Point Meeting the Risen Lord Gerald O’Collins

25 Faith in Focus Do Not Miss This Brian Doyle Lord, Have Mercy Jeanne Bishop

38 The Word One Heart and Soul John W. Martens

25 BOOKS & CULTURE

29 FILM “Wild Tales” and “’71” OF OTHER THINGS Running on Plenty POETRY Spiritual Immobility BOOKS Reading Dante

ON THE WEB Stephen J. Binz writes on finding common ground through lectio divina, and a video report from America’s trip to the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. Full digital highlights on page 16 and at americamagazine.org/ webfeatures. 29 CURRENT COMMENT

campaign pulled the veil back on his true intentions Called to Account. Finally regarding the “peace process,” burning constituents in Israel The battles of a civil war do not end when the fighting and Democratic friends of Israel in Washington alike. stops. Twenty-four years after a peace accord halted Some have already predicted that the pragmatic the bloody civil war in El Salvador, the individuals Netanyahu will find a way to backpedal from his comments responsible for some of the war’s most violent episodes and commitments in order to ensure his “legacy” by the end remain at large and beyond the reach of justice—but of his fourth term of office. But stalemate—or worse—is perhaps not for long. now the prime minister’s legacy, and he seems content to On March 11, a U.S. immigration appeals court ruled accept it. Israeli settlements will encroach deeper into the that a former defense minister from El Salvador living in West Bank, where residents are already deeply embittered the United States could be deported because of his actions by the Israeli occupation. And a fractured West Bank may during the civil war. More significantly, the court also increasingly share in Gaza’s fate as a vast open-air prison ruled that he should be held responsible for the actions for a regional minority group. of the soldiers under his command. Gen. Carlos Eugenio The prime minister said what he said, and at least the Vides Casanova now faces the prospect of returning home charade has ended. Now the only question is how far the to answer for his role in the violent murder of four U.S. United States is prepared to travel alongside Israel as it churchwomen in December 1980, among other crimes. accelerates to an inevitable demographic that is its de facto The decision is a significant breakthrough for all one-state solution. those who have been fighting for justice for the slain churchwomen. Robert E. White, the former ambassador to El Salvador who spent over 30 years lobbying for the cause, Wisdom on Immigration died on Jan. 13, but not before he was able to give testimony In a recent discussion hosted by the Illinois Business against General Vides. The court’s ruling could also lay the Immigration Coalition, Archbishop Blase Cupich of foundation for pursuing other human rights abusers living in Chicago criticized Republican opposition to President the United States and other Western countries. The Center Obama’s proposed immigration reform, stating that it for Justice and Accountability has several cases pending is not enough to simply deny any efforts toward reform. against individuals from Guatemala, Haiti, Chile and other Archbishop Cupich said that the United States “benefits countries. They are also tracking efforts to prosecute those from the toil, the taxes, the purchasing power of a large responsible for the killing of six Jesuits in El Salvador in number [of ] undocumented workers,” yet we are unable to 1989. The judgment against General Vides is a welcome give these workers “their God-given rights.” He also scolded sign that high-level officials will no longer be able to distance House Republicans for failing to pass a bipartisan bill themselves from the torture and killings perpetrated by originally approved by the Senate back in 2013. others under their watch. The archbishop’s comments arrive at a critical time. A recent study by the American Action Forum, a center-right research institute, has rejected the idea that deporting In Israel, Fear Wins immigrants would benefit the U.S. economy. According Here are a few lessons from the recent elections in Israel: to an analysis by The Atlantic, “removing all 11.2 million fear will always trump hope; the two-state solution is a undocumented immigrants…would take about 20 years diplomatic dodo; and suggestions that Arab Israelis should and cost the government between $400 billion and not vote will be rewarded, not punished, by the state’s $600 billion.” It would also have a severe impact on the general voting public. economy, leading to an estimated $1.6 trillion drop in After calling early elections that were supposed to be a gross domestic product and slowing economic growth by walk-through, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 5.7 percent. panicked as polls turned against him during the final days Whatever the economic contributions of immigrant of the campaign. With Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union workers, we should not forget the families that would be party enjoying a late surge inspired by Mr. Netanyahu’s shattered if the United States does not act on reform. For unprecedented affront to a sitting U.S. president, the prime this reason, if for no other, Democrats and Republicans minister threw all caution—and hope for a resolution of should continue to work toward a compromise. The lives of this 67-year conflict—to the wind. His scorched earth immigrants must not be left hanging in the balance.

4 America April 6, 2015 EDITORIAL Living Easter

hile Christians believe in the Easter story, it against Catholic teaching, finds is sometimes difficult for us to connect with its most famous victim in Jesus WEaster in a personal way. The events that we Christ. hear recounted during the Easter Triduum may sometimes More generally, martyrdom and its attending horrors seem far removed from our daily lives. But is it true that the are not a thing of the past. One needs only to look to the Passion narratives and the story of Christ’s resurrection have Middle East to witness the terrible persecution of Christian no intersections with our present-day world? As St. Paul communities, many of them ancient, at the hands of the would say, “By no means!” Each moment of the triduum can Islamic State. In so many ways, Christ continues to suffer in offer important insights into our contemporary world and his body today. How can we aid him? contemporary lives. Holy Saturday. This is the day of dashed expectations. Holy Thursday. The story of the Last Supper is an The disciples cowered behind closed doors, terrified of being invitation for Catholics to meditate on Jesus’ institution of discovered and put to death. After all, their leader had just the Eucharist. But the Gospel of John, which Catholics will been executed in the most shameful manner imaginable. hear proclaimed this year on Holy Thursday, focuses on Hope seemed lost. So many situations in this world (like another event: the foot washing. There is some lively debate the threats from the Islamic State) seem without hope. On among New Testament scholars over whether or not the a more local level, our government seems stuck in permanent foot washing is better seen as an example of “humble service” gridlock. Can our government take any serious steps to aid (Raymond E. Brown, S.S.) or as the inauguration of a the poor, repair our crumbling infrastructure and improve our “community of equals” (Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M.). But faltering public educational system? Within our church, there perhaps both are accurate—and both models are crucial for is the continuing problem of addressing the legacy of sexual the contemporary disciple. A community of equals demands abuse; also, many feel that laypeople are still largely shut out humble service, both to our brothers and sisters in the church from positions of institutional leadership and authority. It can and to the world. And, as Jesus demonstrated when he washed seem overwhelming even to consider all these challenges. Yet the feet of the disciples, service to our brothers and sisters the disciples were called to hope in the midst of confusion requires actual contact—that is, it requires physical touch as and disappointment. Despair, as they discovered, is never the well. During Pope Francis’ visit to Argentina in August 2013, answer. he reminded us that it is not enough simply to give money to Easter Sunday. The Passion narratives make no sense a poor person. “If you did not touch him,” he said, “you did not without Easter. And it is here that the Scriptures intersect with meet him.” our lives most powerfully. Yes, we suffer the pain of a broken How can we make our church more a “community of world, of dashed expectations and seeming hopelessness. But equals?” How can we move from self-aggrandizement toward the Resurrection tells us that suffering is never the last word, “humble service” in the Catholic Church? And when are we that God is always a God of surprises and that nothing is called to meet and touch the poor among us? impossible with God. Good Friday. The sufferings of Jesus are unique: the One modest example of new life today is the papacy of carpenter from Nazareth was the only sinless human being Francis. Before his election, many believed that nothing would to suffer. But the types of things that Jesus endured during ever change in the church; even that nothing should change. his Passion are endured today by men, women and children But from the moment he took office, Pope Francis brought a across the globe: persecution, torture, imprisonment and new style, tone and clarity to the office of the papacy, opening execution by the state. Tragically, our own government was up new ways of conversing and making decisions, speaking complicit in torture, in the dark cells of Abu Ghraib and to people in new and direct ways and attracting many people other government-approved prisons. Jesus was imprisoned, who had long ago written off the church as irrelevant to their as over 1.5 million men and women in the United States are lives. His actions help direct us toward the Risen One, the incarcerated, in proportions that far outstrip other developed source of all new life. nations. And capital punishment, which a Vatican official in For Christ is risen, Christ is alive, and Christ is active a speech before the United Nations recently declared to be in our world. Alleluia!

April 6, 2015 America 5 REPLY ALL sisted suicide could become a conve- down barriers, not just bloviate with- nient social control; but like the case out building. In Father Hesburgh the against artificial contraception, the words of Paul the Apostle resound. Listening Well church’s current argument is being “Where grace superabounds.” We were Re “On Dying Well,” by Jessica Keating, lost in the public square. It is those blessed to have him in our midst. May and “Ars Moriendi” (Editorial, 3/16): who are suffering whose voices carry the Lord bless and keep him. People are often surprised when I tell weight. Those who believe in the pas- BILL MAZZELLA them that in my 17 years as a hospice chal mystery of suffering, death and Online Comment chaplain, I have had relatively few peo- resurrection had best listen more and ple discuss assisted suicide. Granted, it Recovery and Resurrection theologize less. Re “The Lives of David Carr,” by John is illegal here and therefore not an op- DAVID E. PASINSKI tion within hospice, and perhaps those Fayetteville, N.Y. Carr (3/16): Many years ago, after seeking a chaplain are less inclined John Carr had given a presentation for toward this option. Yet it is still some- ‘Not Even Close’ our diocese, I drove him to the airport what surprising, given the acute phys- Re “Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Recalled in Bismarck. I remember our deep ical, emotional and relational suffering As a Leader of Courage and Vision” discussion about family, addiction from the wide range of diseases and (Signs of the Times, 3/16): Perhaps and the impact of addiction on loved illnesses that I have witnessed. This the Rev. John Tracy Ellis, the promi- ones. Our talk also included the joy may be due to religious convictions or nent Catholic historian, said it best of resurrection in recovery. We talk- desperate hope for some satisfaction when comparing Father Hesburgh ed about A.A. and Al-Anon. I never that outweighs this terminal suffering. to the rest of Catholic leaders in this forgot that visit and reflected upon it I believe, however, the argument country: “It was not even close.” He when I heard of David’s death. David from “human solidarity in suffer- was a champion of the environment was one of the lucky ones. He knew ing” that seems implicit in these ar- before it became fashionable. He was the cross of suffering through addic- ticles cruises into a vague communal so present for God in so many areas tion and the joy of recovery through stoicism or toward a challenging or that one is in awe how he let God do the 12 steps and a loving family that nearly punitive God that I would not so much through him. It must have became frustrated yet never gave up. represent. I do not favor changing the saddened him to see all the rancor in Good Friday and Easter Sunday. current prohibition, since I think as- the world today. He was able to break Thank you, both Carrs, for giving and living the example. ANNETTA SANOW SUTTON STATUS UPDATE Online Comment Readers respond to “Rediscovering faith formation upon my return was Jesus,” by Timothy P. Schilling (3/16). an intense and emotional experience Hard Truths nurtured by mostly Christian influ- I write to commend the March 9 One of Pope Francis’ suggestions for ences like Kathleen Norris, Barbara issue, which features two contribu- having a closer encounter with Jesus Ward (“Joan of Arcadia”), Jan Karon tors—Bishop Edward K. Braxton, the is to receive spiritual direction. For (the Mitford series) and Diane African-American bishop of Belleville, three years in the ’50s I had a spiritu- Schoemperlen, as well as a daily per- Ill., and J. Augustine Wetta, O.S.B., a al director at the seminary I went to. sonal Bible immersion. Everywhere I Benedictine monk of St. Louis Priory. I have since then tried to have a spiri- looked, I found God looking for me Both add pulse to the environs of St. tual director—to no avail. The priests and rejoicing in my return. In the ear- Louis, Mo., which has been called the I asked either said that they are not ly days, it was as intense as any new Rome of the West. qualified or didn’t have the time. I relationship. Each day I grow closer In writing about what it’s like for an know that there are professional spir- and I will not grow apart from some- African-American to observe without itual directors, but they are few and one I walk with and spend time with interruption our pristine Caucasian far between. daily. My only regret is that I know Catholic culture, Bishop Braxton DON KNIPPEL this is not the relationship with God said many things many of us whites that many of my fellow Catholics have probably never considered. And I have a Protestant friend who calls experience. I pray the church will be Father Wetta, in a brilliant piece, told me a “born-again Catholic.” I re- born again to a personal relationship the truth about Ferguson from all turned to the church 17 years ago af- with Christ. points of view. I live 20 minutes from ter being estranged for 30 years. My ELLEN HARGUS Ferguson and have read nothing bet-

6 America April 6, 2015 ter anywhere about the atmosphere in tribunals.” Actually, the church has not opportunities become available for which this sad debacle occurred. dispensed with the requirement that all our young people who give a year DONAL MAHONEY an affirmative decision rendered by or more of national service. As Father St. Louis, Mo. the First Instance Court be ratified in Byron points out, a program of nation- Sort Of Sorry Second Instance. Eliminating this re- al service will not only be a plus for our Re: “Of Many Things,” by Matt Malone, quirement would speed up the process. young people but “will mean progress S.J. (3/9): Father Malone makes the At this time, however, ratification by toward a better America.” case for forgiving Brian Williams, Bill Second Instance is still required. My thanks to Father Byron for this TERRI SHAWHAN O’Reilly and the soon-to-be canonized informative article and for his enthu- Cleveland, Ohio siastic efforts on behalf of this move- Blessed Junípero Serra. No one can dis- The writer is a tribunal auditor in the agree that at the heart of our Christian ment. I look forward to hearing more. Diocese of Cleveland. RICHARD P. KLUS faith is forgiveness and mercy, so gloat- Cincinnati, Ohio ing that the powerful have fallen is Service Opportunities wrong. I read “A Rite of Passage,” by William No Alternatives? What I find lacking in his analysis is J. Byron, S.J. (3/2), with heightened I would like to reply to “Abortion any mention that Mr. Williams and Mr. interest. For many years, I’ve been a Alternatives,” by John C. Moore (Reply O’Reilly must first take responsibility proponent of required national ser- All, 3/2). The letter seemed to imply for deceiving, misrepresenting and/or vice for our young people, but I had that protestors at Planned Parenthood lying about their personal involvement never heard or read of any movement provide no alternatives for women in some news stories. Mr. Williams afoot until learning of the Franklin seeking abortion. I am not aware of made a “sort of apology,” and bombastic Project. While I’m a veteran, I know any town with a Planned Parenthood Bill refuses to acknowledge any wrong- that military service is not for every- that is without a crisis pregnancy cen- doing. one. However, I share the belief of the ter that responds to pregnant women’s This is the same modus operandi expert planners who want to make na- needs. Some of these centers are run that our bishops have taken in the sex tional service “a new rite of passage for by the protestors themselves, some abuse scandal. They “sort-of apologize” young Americans.” Following my tour by other groups. These services are for making “mistakes” but deny that of military service, I attended graduate offered to women seeking abortion. they and their predecessors’ actions school and earned a master’s degree I have heard them advertise on radio were sinful and criminal. through the G. I. Bill. In the late 1960s, stations that teenagers listen to. Often As far as I know, no bishop has ever as a married man with a young fami- they are even listed in the yellow pages publically apologized or shown any ly, I would not have been able to afford shame and sorrow for enabling preda- under “abortion alternatives.” school without that financial support. MARY BOGNICH tor priests to abuse innocent children, I would be thrilled to see similar Overland Park, Kan and it is the exception that a predator priest has apologized or expressed any remorse to those whom he abused. OMG! Forgiving those who claim innocence makes no sense, and justice demands that forgiveness be withheld until the guilty acknowledge their guilt and ask for forgiveness. PATRICK T. DARCY Columbia, Mo.

Annulment Correction This is in response to the letter regard- ing the annulment process that was submitted by Thomas Severin (Reply All, 3/9). He wrote that the church no longer requires “archdiocesan and Roman tribunals to review and con- firm findings of local diocesan marriage “Really?!” CARTOON WRITTEN BY JAKE MARTIN. ART BY BOB ECKSTEIN ART WRITTEN BY JAKE MARTIN. CARTOON

April 6, 2015 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

ISRAEL Netanyahu Victory May Doom Two-State Solution for Middle East rime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel snatched victory out of what pollsters had predicted would be a shock defeat by ending his campaign with Pa rejection of a two-state solution for the 67-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by raising an alarm over Arab-Israeli voters that many condemned as rac- ist and by promising to continue building settlements in annexed East Jerusalem in defiance of international law. The Israeli electorate gave the country’s political strongman, Benjamin Netanyahu, a measured victory on March 17, ensuring his Likud Party 30 of the 120 seats in the Knesset and opening up the possibility for him to become prime minister for a fourth term. Netanyahu defeated a challenge from the center-left Zionist Union, headed by Isaac Herzog, who pledged to relaunch peace negotiations with the Palestinians and mend relations with the Obama administration. The Zionist Union gained 24 seats. Herzog ruled out participation in a national-unity government with Netanyahu and will join the Knesset in opposition. David Neuhaus, S.J., an Israeli who is an astute observer of the political and social situation in Israel, called the outcome “less a vote of support for Netanyahu than an expression of despair.” He explained, “Many Israelis voted for Netanyahu, not because they trust him, but because they felt that there was no choice. Mr. At least some of the illusions and false concerned about the rise of extremism Herzog is perceived as without experi- hopes have been dissolved in the after- and racism in Israel, and more impor- ence and without charisma.” math of the election results.” tantly with the international commu- Father Neuhaus pointed out that Israelis had a hard look at the prime nity, to show the Israeli government 21 seats, a large percentage of the vote, minister’s “anti-democratic” tenden- the consequences of possible disas- “went to two parties that are largely cies and his disinterest in pursuing a trous choices.” without a political vision regarding the two-state solution that could lead to The prime minister’s scorched earth central issues that face the country,” peace, according to Father Neuhaus. strategy toward the end of the cam- and that the Zionist Union’s campaign He expects that the opposition efforts paign has probably further damaged “focused not on the real issues [West within the Knesset against Likud co- his already testy relationship with Bank occupation and relations with alition policies will therefore probably the Obama administration. Father the Palestinians, the economy] but on be strong. Neuhaus wonders if the Americans— petty attacks on Mr. Netanyahu, his Father Neuhaus added, “For those and European Union peace negotiation wife and the Likud party. The election who believe that the only way to partners—are likely to push back more results express the sense of frustration change the reality in Israel/Palestine strongly against Netanyahu’s policies that many feel.” is through international pressure, the in the election’s aftermath. “Up until Father Neuhaus did, however, per- election results are certainly a clear now, Israel has been able to oppose the ceive some positive outcomes of the indication that the time has come to two-state solution, build settlements election. “The road ahead is not facil- exert this pressure.” and restrict the Palestinians on every itated by the elections,” he said, “but Father Neuhaus suggested that level without any real consequences,” he they do help clarify where we stand with the curtain pulled back on said. “Israel must not be allowed to hur- right now, and at least this clarity Likud’s intentions, “the opposition tle along this road to suicide with the should help those interested in pro- within [Israel] can now unite with international community remaining si- moting justice and peace move ahead. those in the Jewish Diaspora who are lent.” GERARD O’CONNELL

8 America April 6, 2015 nity, that name and that face and that ing reductions include Medicaid and family, those really are important to the State Children’s Health Insurance making issues of poverty real.” Program ($913 billion); Medicare The legislative push began in ($148 billion); food stamps ($140 bil- February as advocates learned of lion); housing, nutrition, job training, Republican plans to remake the way elderly services and other discretionary social services like Medicaid and food programs ($759 billion); and the repeal stamps are funded. In meetings with of the Affordable Care Act ($2.1 tril- individual members of Congress, lion). The Senate plan was less specific, Catholic advocates have stressed that but identified only nonmilitary pro- the needs of hungry, homeless and un- grams for reductions. employed people must be the country’s Both budgets call for increases in highest priority. military spending over the decade, In a letter to Congress on Feb. while immediately adding tens of bil- 27, the chairmen of the U.S. bish- lions of dollars for overseas contingency ops’ Committee on Domestic Justice operations for the wars in Afghanistan and Human Development and the and Iraq. Committee on International Justice Sister Marge Clark, a domestic and Peace reiterated that a budget is issues lobbyist at Network, said the AT WHAT COST? Israeli Prime a moral document and that the needs needs of poor and vulnerable people Minister Benjamin Netanyahu burned a few bridges in the final of poor people are utmost despite the were being pushed aside in the budget days of his successful campaign. economic pressures posed by “future plans. unsustainable deficits.” “We’re really frustrated because the The federal budget “cannot rely House leadership is talking about do- U.S. BUDGET on disproportionate cuts in essen- ing good things for the middle class, tial services to poor persons,” wrote and yet everything we see them doing Bishops Say, Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of is bad for the middle class and partic- Miami and Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Protect the Poor Cruces, N.M. “It requires shared sac- atholic advocates are pressing rifice by all, including raising adequate Congress to make the needs of revenues, eliminating unnecessary mil- Cpoor and vulnerable people a itary and other spending, and address- priority as legislators hammer out a fed- ing the long-term costs of health insur- eral spending plan for 2016. They want ance and retirement programs fairly.” to prevent trillions of dollars in social As the bishops’ letter was circulating, services spending from disappearing Representative Tom Price, of Georgia, over the next decade as Congress seeks and Senator Mike Enzi, of Wyoming, to balance the federal budget and re- both Republican chairpersons of duce the nation’s growing debt. Congress’s respective budget commit- “There are millions of people at stake tees, were crafting spending plans that in these decisions,” said Brian Corbin, called for balancing the federal budget senior vice president for social policy within a decade, with the goal of tack- at Catholic Charities USA, which has ling the country’s $18 trillion debt. joined with Catholic Relief Services The House budget, called “A UNKINDEST CUTS. Budget proposals and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Balanced Budget for a Stronger out of Congress have proposed Bishops in meetings on Capitol Hill. America,” cuts nearly $5.5 trillion in reductions in spending on social services like this Baltimore Catholic “They all have a name and a face and spending from current projections Charities Head Start program in based on our principle of human dig- over the next decade. Specific spend- Edgewood, Md.

April 6, 2015 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES ularly bad for those struggling at the margins,” said Sister Clark, a Sister of NEWS BRIEFS Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Catholic Relief Services was coordinating closely A survivor in Vanuatu with Caritas Oceania agencies in an emergency Outcry in India response in Vanuatu, a remote island nation in Students at a Hindu-run school for the the South Pacific devastated by Cyclone Pam on blind joined a nationwide outcry over March 15. • As Kuwaiti legislators debated a law the gang rape of a nun in her 70s. The banning any new church construction, Sheikh 50 students at the Helen Keller School Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of near the convent where the nun lived Saudi Arabia, said on March 17 that it was ac- chanted “Mother we cannot see, but tually “necessary to destroy all the churches” of we can feel your pain,” on March 17, the Arabian Peninsula because of an edict that only Islam could be after news of the incident three days practiced in the region. • The Presbyterian Church (USA) joined earlier reached them, Bishop Joseph most other American mainline Protestant churches, approving Gomes of Krishnagar, India, report- same-sex marriage on March 17. • On March 20, Pope Francis ac- ed. Demonstrations throughout India cepted the decision of Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland, who called on authorities to hasten their in- resigned in 2013 after admitting to sexual misconduct, to renounce vestigation of the 10 suspects detained all “duties and privileges” associated with being a cardinal. • Melkite in connection with the incident. “This Patriarch Grégoire III Laham, speaking in Damascus on March 16, is shocking. The people are disgusted,” rejected calls for an international military intervention in Syria as Bishop Gomes said of the overnight “reckless” and urged Pope Francis and Christians to “promote a con- attack in which a group of masked crete and realistic road map” to peace for the beleaguered nation. men broke into the Jesus and Mary Congregation convent in Ranaghat, about 45 miles from Kolkata. Bishop penalty. The pope called capital punish- vironmental and social ills wrought Gomes said he visited with the hospi- ment “cruel, inhumane and degrading” by extractive industries like mining talized nun for a second time on March and said it “does not bring justice to and logging. The bishops testified on 16 and that she had forgiven her attack- the victims, but only foments revenge.” March 19 before the Inter-American ers. “She told me that ‘justice should be Furthermore, in a modern “state of law, Commission on Human Rights in a done. This should be never be repeat- the death penalty represents a failure” bid to heighten awareness of the deg- ed or happen to anyone else,’” Bishop because it obliges the state to kill in the radation of land, water—and people’s Gomes said. Prime Minister Narendra name of justice, the pope said. Rather, lives—brought about by companies, Modi expressed “deep concern” over the it is a method frequently used by “total- most of them foreign-owned, that attack and promised a crackdown on itarian regimes and fanatical groups” to take resources from the earth. Bishop religious-based violence. do away with “political dissidents, mi- Roque Paloschi of Roraima, a mem- norities” and any other person deemed ber of the Brazilian bishops’ Amazon Death Penalty a threat to their power and to their commission, said before the hearing goals. Just a few days earlier, on March that “large financial companies” must ‘Unacceptable’ 17, the bishops of Nebraska had called bear some of the responsibility, as they Pope Francis came out squarely against for repeal of their state’s death penalty finance the operations of transnational the death penalty on March 20, calling and reform of the criminal justice sys- mining and logging firms. It is not only it “unacceptable” regardless of the seri- tem. the land that is being exploited, Bishop ousness of the crime of the condemned. Roque said through an interpreter, but Pope Francis met with a three-per- also “the indigenous and nonindigenous son delegation of the International Extracting Justice people who are being exploited.” Commission Against the Death U.S. and Canadian bishops joined their Penalty and issued a letter on the occa- Latin American counterparts who came sion urging worldwide abolition of the to Washington to testify about the en- From CNS, RNS and other sources.

10 America April 6, 2015 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

DISPATCH | CHICAGO partners in the fight against domestic violence, but they are sometimes part Straight Talk on Domestic Violence of the problem, says Jan Burdulis, who helps Father Dahm establish support t a parish on Chicago’s North groups for the women, their children groups. “So many women I’ve worked Side, Charles Dahm, O.P., and husbands who recognized they with over the years are practicing Afinishes reading the Sunday had a problem. Father Dahm placed Catholics, and they cannot comprehend Gospel, the familiar story of a woman information in the church bulletin on the idea that it would be acceptable if accused of adultery who is threatened where to find help. Most important, he they were to leave and get divorced.” with public stoning until Jesus inter- preached about the problem. After Father Dahm preaches, he venes. Father Dahm then launches into Father Dahm is now spreading his invites parishioners interested in com- a homily that surprises many. message to other Chicago parishes. batting domestic violence to meet with “Today I would like to speak about Sometimes it’s an uphill battle. One him. As many as 40 people have shown women who are abused in their own pastor told him a homily on domestic up at a single parish. homes, who suffer in silence and secret,” violence might upset the congregation’s “I divorced my abuser, but was about he says. “How many of you have to marry another abuser, so this is ever heard a sermon about domes- One in four U.S. a cycle that continues unless you tic violence? Raise your hand. See, get help,” one woman told Father no one.” women reports having Dahm. Father Dahm is a priest on a His approach also stresses help- mission—to bring domestic vio- been hit or sexually ing abusers. Being in an all-male lence out of the shadows and into assaulted by a partner. group was important to Roman the consciousness of parishioners Carreon. He had for years rebuffed throughout Chicago. He hopes to his wife’s pleas to go into counseling prompt pastors to make domestic vio- children. “One of the worst things you with her. lence prevention as important a min- can do with your children is let them Carreon says he didn’t think he had istry as Christian initiation of adults, grow up in a home where there’s vi- a problem because he never hit his Bible study or marriage preparation. olence,” he says. “Your daughters are wife, though he often called her names A Dominican priest for 50 years, learning how to be submissive to this or didn’t speak to her for days if they Father Dahm says he thought little abuse and your sons are learning how argued. “To me, I was a nice man.… I about domestic abuse until he became to be abusive.” thought I was doing better than most the pastor of St. Pius V Church in One in four U.S. women reports of my family,” he says. But listening to Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. One having been hit or sexually assaulted other men talk about how they treat- day, the pastoral counselor told him, by a partner, according to the feder- ed their wives, he says he realized that “Father, almost all my clients from the al Centers for Disease Control and was how he too behaved. He vowed to parish are women, and most of them Prevention. Others suffer emotion- change. are victims of domestic violence.” al, psychological or financial abuse. “I did a lot of things I regret. But Father Dahm says, “I had no idea, Wordwide, 35 percent of women report now I can live the rest of my life with and I knew many of these women.” physical or sexual violence, according to my wife without violence,” he says. With only a small budget and mostly the United Nations, but the rate is as “The good news about domestic volunteers, Father Dahm quickly found high as 70 percent in some countries. violence is that it’s learned behavior,” counselors trained to deal with domes- Church teaching on domestic vio- Father Dahm says. “It’s not something tic abuse. They helped form support lence is clear. “No person is expected to we inherit in our genes; we learn it from stay in an abusive marriage,” the bishops somebody, someplace. That means it JUDITH VALENTE, America’s Chicago corre- wrote in their pastoral letter, “When I can be unlearned.” This is why Father spondent, is a regular contributor to NPR and Call For Help.” “Violence against wom- Dahm will keep preaching and teach- “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.” Twitter: en, inside or outside the home, is never ing about domestic violence—whether @JudithValente. For resources on domestic violence, visit the Archdiocese of Chicago at bit. justified.” anyone is willing to listen or not. ly/1DCSmSd. Churches can serve as significant JUDITH VALENTE

April 6, 2015 America 11 JAMES MARTIN The Furious Mysteries lmost 15 years ago, St. John money changers out of the Temple in seven deadly sins, but I think that Paul II surprised the Catholic Jerusalem, going so far as to make a has to do more with unbridled anger, Aworld by introducing a new “whip of cords” for the purpose (Mk free-floating anger, violent anger. Anger set of mysteries to the Rosary. In 11:15–19; Mt 21:12–17, 23-27; Lk is a natural human emotion. If you case you’re unfamiliar with the tradi- 19:45–48 and 20:1–8; Jn 2:13–22), don’t get angry once in a while, you’re tion, there are certain events from the though one way to read the Greek text not human. lives of Mary and Jesus that you can of the story known as the “Cleansing The questions are, Why are you an- meditate on as you recite the Rosary. of the Temple” is that he used the whip gry? and What do you do with it? In First are the joyful mysteries, like the simply to drive out the sheep and the the Gospels Jesus is never angry on Annunciation and the Visitation; oxen from the Temple precincts. behalf of himself. At the Crucifixion, then the sorrowful mysteries, like the There are so many times Jesus shows for example, he does not get angry at Crucifixion; and finally, the glorious anger that we could legitimately add those who are executing him. He for- mysteries, like the Assumption of another series of mysteries gives them. Earlier in the Mary. In 2002 Pope John Paul added to the Rosary, in addition to Passion narratives, he ut- a set called the luminous mysteries, or the joyful, the sorrowful, the The number ters not a word when he mysteries of light, which focus main- glorious and the luminous. of times is mocked and spat upon ly on Jesus’ public ministry, like the We could call them the “fu- by the soldiers. He says Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and the rious mysteries.” Jesus gets nothing in his defense. Wedding Feast at Cana. Some Christians have a angry in the If there was ever a time Lately, though, I’ve been thinking hard time with Jesus’ anger. for him to get angry, it that we could add some other events It’s a mystery to them. The Gospels is would be then. Rather, from Jesus’ life: all the times he gets cleansing of the Temple can considerable. Jesus’ anger is always on angry. be particularly disturbing, behalf of others. The number of times Jesus gets an- given its physical depiction Jesus’ anger is a righ- gry in the Gospels is considerable. At of anger. Others find this a wonderful- teous anger. Ours is more frequently one point, he says to the people around ly bracing passage. It shows that Jesus of the selfish type, the result of an of- him, “You faithless and perverse gen- is human—passionate. No matter fense to ourselves. Of course we need eration, how much longer must I be what you think about this passage, you a healthy love of self and a care for the with you? How much longer must have to agree: this is not a bland, un- self. So sometimes a strong response I put up with you?” (Mt 17:17; Lk threatening, boring Jesus. to injustice is justified. On the other 9:41) When Peter says Jesus shouldn’t Unfortunately, some Christians use hand, if someone cuts in line at the have to suffer, Jesus says, “Get behind that particular incident as an excuse for drug store, that does not mean you me, Satan!” (Mt 16:23; Mk 8:33). At violence, for judging other people, for need to punch the person in the face. another point in the Gospels, Jesus being rude or simply acting like a jerk. So the questions are: Where is the is hungry and approaches a fig tree. When confronted with opposition, anger coming from? What is the most When he finds no fruit, he curses the they’ll strike back and say, “Well, I’m Christian response? poor tree, which promptly withers angry just like Jesus was in the Temple, In the end, the furious mysteries and dies. (Mk 11:12-14, 20-25; Mt and I’m overturning the tables!” But may not be so mysterious. Jesus’ anger 21:18-22). And in perhaps the most when people oppose you, it may not is not so hard to understand. Jesus is vivid depiction of Jesus’ anger, includ- mean you’re a prophet like Jesus. It may human. Anger is a natural part of life. ed in all four Gospels, he tosses the just mean that you’re wrong. And his anger is a righteous anger. These passages, then, can be myste- It’s good for us to remember all those rious. So let’s examine Jesus’ anger. things so that even if we feel like it, we JAMES MARTIN, S.J., is editor at large of America and author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage. First, there’s nothing sinful about may decide that those tables do not Twitter: @jamesmartinsj. being angry. Yes, anger is one of the need to be turned over after all.

12 America April 6, 2015 April 6, 2015 America 13 Praise Him Celebrating the life and work of Gerard Manley Hopkins BY JOSEPH J. FEENEY

am so happy, I am so happy,” said Gerard Manley “first”—Oxford’s highest degree—in Greek and Latin clas- Hopkins, S.J., as he was dying in Dublin on June sics, then went off to begin his life. 8, 1889. As rich and resonant as any words in his At Oxford Hopkins wanted to be both a painter and a poems, these words offer a multilayered commen- poet, and after his conversion he also considered the Catholic tary on his life and reputation. In 1889 he was priesthood. For eight months he taught at Newman’s school ‘Ihappy to go to God as an unknown poet; in 2015 he enjoys in Birmingham—the Oratory School—then, deciding to be worldwide fame as a major poet in the company of Donne, a priest, he became a Jesuit in 1868. As a novice in London Milton, Keats and Eliot. How did this happen? he learned Jesuit life and prayer, then studied philosophy Gerard Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in the London suburb of Stratford, Essex, the The Starlight Night oldest child of nine in a comfortable Church of LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies! England family. His father, Manley Hopkins, owned a O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! London firm that insured The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! ships against shipwreck. But Stratford was soon Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes! industrialized, and when The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! Gerard was 8, the family moved to Hampstead, a Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! quiet, leafy London sub- Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!— urb. Young Gerard was a happy boy who loved Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize. to climb trees, joined in Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows. family prayers and wrote Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs! schoolboy poems. He went up to Oxford University in 1863, made many new Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows! friends, was a brilliant student of the classics and These are indeed the barn; withindoors house wrote more poems, in- The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse cluding his first sonnets. Like all Oxford students, Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows. he went to Church of England services, but he gradually grew uncertain about his religion. He read, thought and prayed, talked with in Lancashire and theology at St. Beuno’s College in North the famed convert John Henry Newman (later a cardinal) Wales. The first flashes of his poetic genius shone out at St. and became a Roman Catholic in 1866. In 1867 he won a Beuno’s in 1875, when he wrote his great shipwreck ode, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” and later 11 brilliant son- JOSEPH J. FEENEY, S.J., is professor emeritus of English at Saint Joseph’s nets about nature and God. In 1877 he was ordained a priest University in Philadelphia and co-editor of The Hopkins Quarterly. at St. Beuno’s and at the age of 33 became Father Hopkins.

14 America April 6, 2015 For seven years he worked in Jesuit schools and parishes in England and Scotland, writ- ing poems about the environment, about his students and parishioners (like the Liverpool blacksmith “Felix Randal”) and about the Blessed Virgin Mary. He wrote lively sermons too. Once in Liverpool he compared the Holy Spirit to a cricket player urging a teammate, “Come on, come on!” As Paraclete, he told the congregation, the Holy Spirit “cheers the spirit of man...calling him on...: This way to do God’s will, this way to save your soul, come on, come on!” The Holy Ghost as a cricket player? Hopkins had a most lively sense of humor! In 1884 he was sent to Dublin as a professor of Greek in the new University College on St. Stephen’s Green and as an examiner in the Royal University. He made many good friends in Ireland and enjoyed his teaching and his students but twice a year grew exhausted from grading hun- dreds of examination papers from all over the country. For months in 1885 he suffered from deep depression, even failing to con- tact God in prayer and wondering if he was losing his mind. He screamed out his pain in anguished—and brilliant—sonnets like “I wake and feel the fell of dark” and “No Alfred William Garrett, William Alexander Comyn Macfarlane worst, there is none.” After a few months he and Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1866 recovered from his depression, but in 1889 C. BAYFIELD GALLERY/THOMAS PORTRAIT PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/ NATIONAL he contracted typhoid fever and died at the age of 44, seven weeks before his 45th birthday. People re- and friends, England, the saints and God. He was mostly membered him as a warm friend and fine priest, but he was a happy Jesuit, though he suffered from a lifelong “melan- unknown as a poet. choly” (his word) that helped bring on that depression in Who was this man they remembered? Who was Gerard Dublin. As a young man he worried excessively about sin Hopkins as a person? Hopkins stood about 5’3” tall, had a but later learned the more positive Jesuit way of finding God high-pitched voice, a lively sense of fun and was nicknamed in all things, and in the poem “God’s Grandeur” he wrote, “Hop.” As a boy he joined in school games and loved to “The world is charged wíth the grándeur of God”—God is sketch trees and their shapes. As a Jesuit he prayed, hiked, in the world like an electric charge ready to spark out—“pfft, swam, climbed mountains, wrote poems and once hurt his pfft”—to show God’s presence. He loved Christ deeply, es- wrist arm-wrestling. He was always close to his family and pecially as really present in the Eucharist, and in a sermon he made warm, lifelong friends at Oxford, with fellow Jesuits delivered in Liverpool he celebrated Christ as a “Hero” for all and with Irish families; at St. Beuno’s, a Jesuit later wrote, humans. His intellectual hero was a medieval philosopher, he was “the most popular man in the house.” For recreation Duns Scotus, who celebrated individuality and selfhood. he visited art exhibitions and old churches, enjoyed concerts Hopkins even saw a unique selfhood in every tree and every and took vacations with his family, with Oxford friends bird! He had a strong sense of his own self, too, and though and with fellow Jesuits, in Switzerland, Holland, England, recognizing the dangers of fame, he was highly self-confi- Wales, Scotland and Ireland. He also composed small pieces dent as a poet, even writing in his last poem that though he of music but was not very good at it. was losing his inspiration, his technique remained perfect: Hopkins’s major passions were beauty, nature and the my “hand at work [is] now never wrong.” Today, 179 of his environment, language and poetry, art and music, family poems survive, most in English and a few in Greek, Latin

April 6, 2015 America 15 and Welsh, but very few were published during his lifetime. him—commentaries, critical studies, biographies—and Hopkins died in 1889 as an unknown poet. countless articles. There are three journals devoted to him: The Hopkins Quarterly, an international journal (of which Who Is Hopkins Now? I am co-editor), published in Philadelphia, and Hopkins Today Gerard Manley Hopkins is a poet of worldwide fame, Research and Nondum, both published in Japan. and the story is fascinating. His poems were not published Hopkins is also memorialized in art. A grand but lit- until 1918, 29 years after his death, when his Oxford friend tle-known tribute is a huge bas-relief in the United Nations’ Robert Bridges edited Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins for Palais des Nations in Geneva, which the United Kingdom Oxford University Press. Only 750 copies of the book were presented to the League of Nations in 1938 as the Lord Cecil printed, though, and just 180 were sold in the first year. Memorial. The bas-relief is called “The Creation of Adam”; Hopkins remained unknown. around Adam’s reclining figure the great English sculptor But in the 1920s and ’30s, a new way of reading poetry— Eric Gill carved five lines from the opening stanza of “The called the New Criticism—was being developed in England Wreck of the Deutschland.” In 1975 Hopkins was honored and the United States. Its practitioners rejected the old ways in Westminster Abbey’s famed Poets’ Corner with a large of literary critics—studying a writer’s life, sources, intentions floor stone of black marble bearing the tribute “Priest & and effect on readers—and studied the poem itself through poet/ ‘Immortal diamond’” carved below his name. In 2004 a “close reading” of the text: its words, images, sounds and the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh was formal- form. The New Critics admired Hopkins’s vivid language ly opened, and on its “Canongate Wall” 24 quotations were and rich sound—his “texture”—and showed his brilliance to carved in stone, one bearing the last four lines of Hopkins’s readers, poets and fellow critics. Gradually, Hopkins became environmental poem “Inversnaid” about a waterfall at Loch famous and over the decades influenced such poets as W. Lomond. Two monuments honor him at Regis University H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, in Denver and in Monasterevin, Co. Kildare, Ireland. Denise Levertov, Sylvia Plath and the Nobel laureate Smaller memorials also celebrate him: in London a “Blue Seamus Heaney. He also inspired some 500 musical works Plaque” decorates the wall of Manresa House, Roehampton, by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Ned where he lived and studied; and in Dublin, a plaque at the Rorem, Sir Michael Tippett and others. Many books study door of No. 86 St. Stephen’s Green, the original building

FROM OUR BLOGS Happy St. Ronald Reagan Day! Robert David Sullivan Faith, Morals and the Archdiocese of San Francisco THE LIVING WORD Jim McDermott, S.J. Stephen J. Binz writes on finding common ground What an Irish Protestant Journalist through lectio divina. Taught Me About My Own Heritage, Joseph McAuley

WHAT YOU ARE READING PODCASTS The Theology Requirement at Notre Stephen Bullivant talks about his new book The Dame: A Former Dean’s View Trinity on “America This Week” on SiriusXM. Carolyn Woo Rediscovering Jesus Timothy P. Schilling Where Francis is Leading the Church: VIDEO 10 Questions for Author Garry Wills A report from America Media’s trip to the Los Sean Salai, S.J. Angeles Religious Education Congress “No White Man Is Innocent” Nathan Schneider

If the comments here represent the sentiments of our white Catholic population, we are still far from realizing the magni- tude of our collective sin.” Roberto Blum, ‘No White Man Is Innocent’

16 America April 6, 2015 of University College Dublin, records three famous figures who worked there: “John Henry Newman, Rector; Gerard Manley Hopkins, Professor of Greek; James Augustine Joyce, Student.” Notable company for a once-unknown poet! The 1989 centennial of Hopkins’s death brought him new international fame. The centennial day itself, June 8, was celebrated in London, Oxford, Dublin, Washington, D.C., and at Loch Lomond. Major exhibitions were mounted by Oxford University, by University College Dublin and by the University of Texas at Austin, with smaller exhibitions at St. Beuno’s, at Hopkins’s birthplace in Stratford, Essex, at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash, and in a travelling exhibition in North Wales. Academic events honored him in England, Wales, Ireland, Italy and the United States; and lectures celebrated him in France, England, Wales, Canada, the United States, Paraguay, the Philippines and Japan. Today, 25 years after his centennial, Hopkins’s poems still inspire music, new books still proliferate, and scholars of many religions—or none—teach, translate and write about him in countries as diverse as Israel, Sweden, Poland, Italy, France, England, the United States, Mexico, Korea and Japan. Book-length translations of his poems are pub- lished in Japanese, Korean, Dutch, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew, and a Russian translation is now underway. He has had novels written about him, nota- bly Ron Hansen’s Exiles (2008); three one-man plays portray his life; and actors like Richard Burton and Richard Austin have recorded his poems. Every year, Regis University in Denver holds an international Hopkins Conference, and the Hopkins Society of Ireland sponsors a Hopkins Festival in Co. Kildare. Oxford University Press currently is publish- ing a new scholarly edition of everything Hopkins wrote, in eight large volumes. A few final signs of Hopkins’s current fame complete the picture. Just before Christmas 2009, a theater company in Santa Fe, N.M., performed 30 Hopkins poems spoken, sung and danced by 35 people; the two performances drew audi- ences of several hundred. In 2011, at the funeral of the ac- tress Elizabeth Taylor and following her wish, an actor read Hopkins’s poem “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo.” In 2013, just after his election, Pope Francis told an inter- viewer (Am., 09/30/2013) that he “liked Gerard Manley Hopkins very much.” And with a touch of whimsy, I add that two pubs memorialize Hopkins. In England, his birth- place of Stratford has a pub named the “Goldengrove” (a rich word from his poem “Spring and Fall”) with Hopkins dis- plays inside, and in Ireland, Monasterevin has a pub called “The Manley Hopkins.” Not every poet—or every Jesuit priest—has two pubs named for him! All these details tell a larger story: the man unknown at his death in 1889 is alive and famed today throughout the world. A

April 6, 2015 America 17 VATICAN DISPATCH Francis’ Prophecy ope Francis’ revelation that he But, he added, “interiorly...I try to think from the heart. He confirmed that his has “the feeling” that his papacy about my sins and my mistakes, lest I health is reasonably good given his age, Pwill be a short one has caused have any illusions, since I realize that but said he has this inner feeling about deep concern among many people this is not going to last long...two or a brief pontificate. worldwide, especially among the over- three years, and then...off to the house He told Televisa that he’s not in favor whelming majority of Catholics who of the Father.” of setting a statutory age (80) for popes worry what might happen to the rad- When Elisabetta Piqué (my wife) to resign because “the papacy is some- ical reform and renewal of the church interviewed him for La Nación last thing of a final instance. It’s a special that he has started. December, she told him that after grace.” Setting a retirement age “creates The concern first emerged in August his airborne revelation “many people the sensation of the end of a pontificate. 2014 after the pope’s press conference were worried about your health; they That wouldn’t do good, it would be pre- on the flight back from Korea, when he thought you might not be well.” She dictable.” He said he shares “Benedict’s said he thinks his pontificate “isn’t going asked: “How are you?” He idea,” but avoided com- to last long.” responded: “I do have some ‘I feel mitting himself to fol- It surfaced on a more global scale on aches and pains, and at my that the low suit. “Benedict has the second anniversary of his election, age ailments don’t go un- opened the door to emer- when he told Mexico’s Televisa network noticed. But I am in God’s Lord has itus popes. One cannot that he felt his pontificate would last hands. Up to now I have consider Benedict as an four or five years, or less. been able to maintain a placed me exception, but as an insti- His repeated affirmation that his rhythm of work that is more here for a tution.... Maybe he will papacy will be short has raised many or less good.” be the only one for some questions. The three main ones are: Then in March, Televisa’s short time.’ time, or maybe he will Has he some serious illness? Is he en- Valentina Alazraki returned not be the only one.” gaged in a political calculus to push to his “short papacy” remark and asked, In actual fact, Francis is a realist. He through the reform he wants in the “Why do we have the sensation that read the history of the popes in 1991, church? Does he plan to resign at 80, as you look like someone in a hurry by before becoming a bishop. He knows some whisper in Rome? your way of acting?” and “Why does it that 48 of his 265 predecessors were To answer such questions, it’s neces- seem that you envisage a short pontifi- popes for less than one year, 73 others sary to understand the context in which cate? Why do you repeatedly say these for less than five years and 64 more for Francis spoke and what he actually said. things?” less than 10 years. Let’s begin with the airborne press His answer: “I have the feeling that In this context it is worth recalling conference on Aug. 18, 2014. A re- my pontificate will be brief: four or five that when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger porter for Radio France, Anaïs Fuga, years; I don’t know, even two or three. was elected pope at the age of 78 in recalling the ovations the pope received Two have already passed! It’s a some- the 2005 conclave, he said he took the in Rio, asked, “How do you handle this what vague sensation. Maybe it’s like name Benedict because the last pope immense popularity? How do you the psychology of a gambler who con- with that same name had “a short pon- deal with it?” After confessing he didn’t vinces himself he’ll lose so he won’t be tificate.” And yet he was pope for almost know what to say, Francis went on to disappointed, and if he wins he’s happy. eight years until he resigned just before thank God that “His people are happy” But I feel that the Lord has placed me his 86th birthday. and said he felt “the people’s generosity.” here for a short time... It’s a feeling. For Francis was elected pope at 76. He this reason, I always leave the possibility is now 78; and, as he stated in a recent open.“ interview with young people from a GERARD O’CONNELL is America’s Rome On all three occasions, his answers Buenos Aires shanty town, “My life is in correspondent. America’s Vatican coverage is sponsored in part by the Jesuit communities of were spontaneous, not part of a polit- the hands of God.” the United States. Twitter: @gerryorome. ical calculus. He’s like that. He speaks GERARD O’CONNELL

18 America April 6, 2015 April 6, 2015 America 19 20 America April 6, 2015 April 6, 2015 America 21 GENERATION FAITH

Subscription Fraud Alert We want to warn you about an active mailing scam involving renewal requests from an organization claiming to be America. These renewal notices were not sent by us or any organization associated with America. America does not authorize any third party organization to solicit or accept subscriptions or payments on America’s behalf. Please disregard any notice coming from an organization other than America and with a different address from the two addresses listed below. If at any time you have any concerns or questions, we encourage you to call our customer service department, toll free, at (800) 627-9533. Please note that all notices coming from America will include your unique account number located above your name on the shipping label of your issue. Nothing matters more to us than your trust. We are doing everything in our power to stop this fraudulent activity as we work with state and federal authorities. Always protect yourself and never disclose any bank account or credit card information to these companies fraudulently claiming to represent America.

Sincerely yours,

Rev. Matthew Malone, S.J.

Headquarters Customer Service America Press, Inc. America 106 West 56th Street P.O. Box 239159 New York, NY 10019 Kettering, OH 05429

22 America April 6, 2015 VANTAGE POINT: 1983 Meeting the Risen Lord

BY GERALD O’COLLINS

ven nowadays—or should I the empty tomb, sees the grave cloths calls to them from the beach. But love say especially nowadays?—the and believes (20:8). Love makes the allows the beloved disciple to identify Esight of two people very much beloved disciple jump at once to the who it is that has come to meet them in love still delights us. The world right conclusion: Jesus has risen and at daybreak. “It is the Lord” (21:7). continues to love and make excus- is alive. Once again love brings him to know es for lovers. A truly great love story In the second scene the beloved the truth and recognize the risen will fill the cinemas and top the list disciple is one of seven disciples who Jesus. of best-sellers. Yet the modern world have spent a night out fishing in Lake The beloved disciple sees an empty has come to believe that love is blind. Tiberias. At dawn they all look across tomb and reaches out in faith to the In their delirious joy lovers are sup- the waters towards the stranger who risen Lord. He hears a voice at dawn posed to be incapable of seeing how across the waters of a lake and knows things really are. himself to be in Jesus’ presence. Our Not everyone, however, has lives are full of sights and sounds. accepted our modern preju- Love can turn those sights and dice. “Give me a lover,” St. sounds into moments when we Augustine exclaimed, cry out: “It is the Lord.” “and he will under- “Jesus, give us a heart stand.” Augustine re- to love you with. Then alized that it may take we shall truly see you, deep love to open our encounter you con- eyes and let us see the stantly, and recklessly truth. The heart does believe in you.” have its reasons. Love Likewise, Mary helps us to know and Magdalene meets the share in reality. living Jesus because In two episodes she has come back to (Jn. 20:2-10; 21:1- the tomb looking for 14) the beloved disci- His dead body. The ple is mysteriously led tears flood down her by love to encounter face (20:11,13,15). Jesus truly risen from She now finds two the dead. He enters angels sitting in the tomb like a guard

GERALD O’COLLINS, of honor. She does S.J., emeritus professor at not ask them for any the Gregorian University help or information, in Rome, is the author or but simply explains co-author of 62 books, most recently The Spirituality why she is weeping of the Second Vatican and turns her back Council (Paulist Press). on them. In her grief This article originally appeared in America on and love she is anx-

March 26, 1983. ious only to locate the BY FRA ANGELICO. PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS “NOLI ME TANGERE,”

April 6, 2015 America 23 corpse of Jesus which “they” have tak- en away and laid somewhere. Then Mary sees the “gardener” standing there in the garden out- side the new tomb where Jesus had been buried (19:41). It is the risen Jesus, the new Adam who is inaugu- rating His new creation. Artists like Fra Angélico and Rembrandt have sensed something about the encoun- ter that theologians have missed: its joyful playfulness. They depict Jesus as wearing a gardener’s hat or with a tool slung over his shoulder. His dis- guise delays briefly the moment of recognition. Mary imagines that the “gardener” might have carried off the body, but expects that all the same he would be ready to help her: “Sir, if you have car- ried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Then with one word Jesus changes her life. He calls her by name, “Mary.” John’s Gospel has made much of Mary’s grief over the disappearance of Jesus’ corpse. She has been weep- ing outside the tomb; she has been weeping as she stooped to look into the tomb. The two angels and then the risen Jesus Himself have asked the reason for her tears. Now she knows Him to be gloriously alive. But apart from telling us that she clings to Jesus, the Gospel makes no attempt to capture her joy in a net of words. It is the same with the raising of Lazarus. John notes the tears and grief of Martha, Mary and Jesus Himself over the death of Lazarus (11:19,31), but discreetly declines to portray their happiness over his return to life. In the Fourth Gospel no other encounter with Jesus matches the contrast between Mary Magdalene’s expectations and the outcome. She expects at most to be helped to find a missing corpse. Instead she learns that death has no final power over Jesus, and that she is to bring to the disciples the ultimate good news: “I have seen the Lord.” A

24 America April 6, 2015 FAITH IN FOCUS Do Not Miss This Moments of grace at the Easter Vigil BY BRIAN DOYLE watch for it every Easter vigil, and every Easter vigil it happens—this IEaster vigil right in front of me where I sat in the second row of the chapel expressly to see it; and once again I nearly burst into tears, because it is so beautiful and subtle and gentle and heartrending and amazing, and you would totally miss it if you were not watching closely for it. So here, sit with me and watch as the candidates for adult initiation come up the aisle shyly, smiling and nervous and beaming, and their spon- sors come up behind them, and the 12 men and women arrange themselves on the steps of the altar, the sponsors one step higher than the candidates, and Father John says something joy- ous which I don’t quite catch, be- cause there it is!—the sponsors ever so gently, so affectionately, so proudly, putting their right hands on the right shoulders of the candidates! And four of the six candidates reaching their left also for us as a community, because we Father John then booms out prayers hands up and putting their hands on have six new members, and they have and makes his way down the line of their sponsors’ hands! And the fifth worked hard and long to be here in this the candidates, anointing them and candidate from the right laughing and thrilling holy moment, and when he confirming them and blessing them weeping at once, a lovely sight. You can has finished anointing them with oil, and hugging them and their sponsors, see the sheen of tears sliding down her and praying for them, and confirming and we all sit in our pews smiling and face and you never saw tears that were them as full members of the Catholic laughing at the relaxed burble of it all, so absolutely not sad as those tears. Church, with all the rights and privi- and then when Father John is done he Father John then talks passionately leges and responsibilities belonging turns and presents the six new mem- from his huge honest genuine heart thereunto, he hopes that we will stand bers of our Catholic community with a about how this is not only an extraor- and extend an uproarious welcome, wave of his hand just like a stage man- dinary moment for the candidates and and applaud these brave souls, who ager presents the terrific cast of the their families and their sponsors, but have chosen to step into the grace wonderful play, and we all stand and which resides in the church, the church applaud uproariously, with the sort of being no mere structure or corporate whistles and cheering you would hear BRIAN DOYLE is the editor of Portland entity, but all of us gathered around after a delicious victory, which this is, Magazine at the University of Portland and the author, most recently, of A Book of the world at sweet holy shivering mo- when you think about it.

ART: ANN KISSANE ENGELHARDT ART: Uncommon Prayer (Ave Maria Press). ments like this one. But all through Father John’s

April 6, 2015 America 25 passionate speech and prayers and ly on the shoulders of the candidates for everyone in the chapel that eve- anointing I watched the sponsors and that gives me the shivering happy wil- ning, for everyone in the world who their right hands. All six of the spon- lies when I think about it. Such tiny believes that there is such a thing as sors kept their right hands on the things mean so very much, don’t they? grace overwhelming you when you right shoulders of their candidates for The little things that are not little at need it most, as hope defiant against the longest time, as long as they pos- all. All that love and pride and trust the fleeing darkness, as love rising sibly could, I think, lifting them off and delight and hope, all caught by a ever higher like an irresistible tide, as only to hug Father John and applaud hand shyly reaching out and coming hands reaching tenderly for you when their candidates at the end, and there’s to rest on the shoulder of another per- you thought all was dark and dim and something about the way those hands son, at an extraordinary moment for always would be. But that is not so; rested so proudly, so gently, so loving- both people, for all 12 of those people, that is not at all so. A Lord, Have Mercy Forgiving the man who murdered my sister BY JEANNE BISHOP or a long time, my experience as serving a discretionary life sentence for blowing things open, scattering de- a public defender supported my intentionally killing their unborn child. bris, wasn’t done with me yet. On a Fbelief that some people deserved But changes to sentencing procedures Sunday morning months later, I went life sentences. One client chilled me to for juveniles by a Supreme Court ruling to a “church on the beach” service held the core. As a juvenile, he had graduated meant that David was likely to seek a by Christ Church, a charming, ivy-cov- from burglary and auto theft to armed resentencing hearing to reduce at least ered stone church set on a hill near Lake robbery, holding up three separate vic- part of his sentence to less than life. I Michigan in the town where I live. It’s tims in the course of two days. The first had no idea whether I could support a pleasant change from the Gothic for- victim was a young mother playing with the release of David at such a hearing. mality of my Presbyterian church in her kids in a park; the second was an “He’s still remorseless,” I told a friend. downtown Chicago. 11-year-old on a bike. My client preyed “How do you know that?” he re- I arrived late, just in time to hear the on the vulnerable. When he took their sponded, leaning across the table. “You priest, a man in a black shirt and white property at gunpoint, he said the same don’t know that. You’ve never even collar, cargo shorts and Birkenstocks, thing: “I want that.” It was the object he spoken to him.” I was stunned. He was begin his homily. He was talking about cared about; the people meant nothing right. how the Sunday after the Episcopal to him. I had spoken about the murders and Church’s national convention is a kind I recognized something of David forgiveness all over the world: France, of liturgical season of its own: the Biro in him. David is the man who mur- Ireland, Mongolia, Japan and all across season of complaints. Every year, he dered my sister, Nancy, her husband, the United States. I had written arti- said, on the Sunday after the conven- Richard, and their unborn child. After a cles about forgiving David Biro, given tion he feels like a human dartboard. long struggle, I had forgiven David, said speeches at churches and schools and Members of his congregation call or his name, even prayed for him. But I conferences. But one person I had not email him, demanding to know: Why still wasn’t certain I wanted him to serve told: him. Never once had I commu- did the church vote in favor of that? less than his full life sentence. David nicated my forgiveness to David Biro. How could the church decide this? was serving a mandatory life sentence I had waited all these years for him to The priest’s response: When you get a for killing Nancy and Richard. He was apologize to me. I saw it now with star- thousand Episcopalians in a room, you tling clarity: I had to apologize to him, get a thousand different opinions. “It’s a for never telling him that I had forgiven mess!” the priest observed, half-ruefully, JEANNE BISHOP works as an assistant public defender in the office of the Cook County public him. I had to go first. half-cheerfully. He threw up his hands. defender in Chicago, Ill. She is the author of “A mess!” the book Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, All God’s Children He went on, tying the messiness of and Making Peace With My Sister’s Killer (Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), from That wasn’t all. The Holy Spirit, the the human condition to stories from which this article is adapted. spirit of God that moves like wind, Scripture. One was about King David,

26 America April 6, 2015 taking a woman who was the wife of September 2012, I put my two sons to First, that you and I are no dif- another man, then arranging that man’s bed and crept downstairs in the dark- ferent in the eyes of God. I am some- death in battle. Another was the aw- ened house. I sat at the computer, turned one who has fallen short and hurt ful story of the beheading of John the on a small desk light and typed a letter to God’s heart; I have sinned, to use Baptist because of Herod’s moment of David, which read, in part: that biblical word, just as you have. misbegotten pride. You are a child of God, created in “We are a mess, all of us. And how I have heard news of you: how pris- God’s image, just as I am. God does God respond to that messiness? on has been hard at times because loves you every bit as much as me; Mercy. Mercy. Mercy,” the priest con- of your association with me and my nothing you have done could ever cluded, pausing after each word, his sisters. I am sorry for that. Nancy stop God from loving you. The di- voice dropping to a whisper vision I have made between with the last. That word hung us—you, guilty murderer, in the still, sunlit air. We sat si- me, innocent victims’ family lent, no sound but the distant member—was a false divide. crash of waves on the beach, I was wrong to do that. the song of birds overhead. Randall’s second obser- The word lodged in my heart. vation was this: How did Mercy. Jesus respond to the people We, the congregation, said who were taking his life, in that word a short time later, the very moment they were just before we lined up under killing him? He prayed for the shade of a spreading tree to them: Father, forgive them; take the bread and wine. “Lamb they don’t know what they of God, you take away the sins are doing. of the world: have mercy upon It struck me that I had us.” never prayed for you. I had You take away the sins of the never even said your name. world, I pondered. What does That was wrong of me, too. that mean? Whatever it meant, So I did pray for you, in the I knew that it couldn’t mean garden outside Kenilworth saying to any human being: Union Church—you know We are taking the sin you com- the place—where Nancy and mitted and freezing it in time Richard and their baby are forever. No matter what you buried, alongside my father, do, how much you repent and who found their bodies the show remorse, you are forever only one above all was about love; she nev- morning after they died. thing—a killer—and we will punish you er would have wanted her death to Here is what I have come to be- endlessly for it. I knew this in my heart: result in more brutality, even to the lieve: sentences like the death penal- I could no longer support this merciless person who took her life. ty and life without parole reflect our sentence of life without parole for juve- You have heard news of me: how need to find a response to something niles. I have forgiven you for killing my as heinous as the murder of inno- And in the very next moment, like family members. I never conveyed cents equal in weight and gravity to daylight breaking into darkness, I knew that forgiveness to you directly; I am the crime itself. something else. I’d always thought that sorry for that, too. It was wrong to The only thing that could possi- the only thing big enough to pay for the tell other people and not the most im- bly pay for the loss of Nancy, her life of my sister was a life sentence for portant person of all: you.... husband and their baby is this near- her killer. Now I understood: The only [I read a book about forgiveness ly impossible thing: that you would thing big enough to equal the loss of her by Dr. Randall O’Brien. I called make your way home to God, the life was for him to be found. him to ask:] How do I reconcile with way the Prodigal Son in one of someone whose position is, I have Jesus’ parables finds his way home. The Letter not wronged you? He responded So I can no longer support the

COMPOSITE IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM/AMERICA Late at night on the last day of with some stunning observations. sentence of juvenile life without

April 6, 2015 America 27 parole. It says to you, and to ev- letter first? He readily answered yes. When I heard these words, a cry ery other person serving that sen- Two days after I received the letter, he escaped my lips, a kind of sob buried tence: never. No matter what you did that. After he read it, he looked up so deep, I hadn’t known it was there. I do, how you may be transformed, at my anxious face and smiled, a calm, leaned forward, fingers pressed to my or who you become, we will never quiet smile. “It’s good,” he said. David’s mouth. To hear those words: Yo u’re even give you a chance to get out letter went on for 15 pages, and my right, I am guilty.... I never thought I of prison.... friend read it aloud to me. It read, in would hear that, ever. It was more than part: I’d ever dreamed. My friend was right: How would he respond? Would it was good. he respond at all? I had visions of I know that for a long time you My mind filled with wonder. Who him reading my letter and laughing— and your family have been looking could have imagined this? Not in my showing it to a cell mate, maybe, scoff- for me to confess to the murders I wildest dreams did I suppose David ing at my earnest foolishness. All I committed years ago. Of course, as Biro might do what he had resisted knew was this: it was out of my hands you know in the past, I have al- doing ever since the murders: confess now. It was in the hands of God. ways maintained my “innocence.” and say he was sorry. It was beyond Then one day I stopped at the Well, for a lot of reasons which anything I could have asked for—and mailbox in the public defender’s of- I’ll get into in a little bit, I think I knew, even as I heard his apology, fice where I work and pulled a stack the time has come for me to drop that it would not have come if I had of mail from the slot: some returned the charade and finally be honest. not gone first. The time I spent waiting subpoenas, some junk mail and a large You’re right, I am guilty of killing for that apology! That was the price I manila envelope with a return address your sister Nancy, and her hus- paid for my coldness toward Biro, for from a downstate prison. It was from band Richard. I also want to take holding myself aloof. I understood for David. this opportunity to express my the first time what Jesus was saying to I called a friend and made an unusu- deepest condolences and apologize us about apologies: You go first. Don’t al request: would he open and read the to you. wait. A

28 America April 6, 2015 Books & Culture

ell. Not a location we care FILM | JOHN ANDERSON to dwell in, though dwelling Hon it has occupied no small ROADS TO PERDITION amount of time, or words, or dread- ful words, since poets started studying Explorations of hell from Argentina and Ireland perdition. Dante, most famously and with an immortal amount of detail, de- scribed nine circles of calibrated agony, advising the hell-bound to abandon all hope. The Jesuit-educated James Joyce, via Father Arnall (in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), described hell as a place where “the blood seethes and boils in the veins, the brains are boiling in the skull, the heart in the breast glow- ing and bursting, the bowels a red-hot mass of burning pulp, the tender eyes flaming like molten balls....” Jean-Paul Sartre simply said hell was other people. All of the above—as well as Jesus’ command that sinners, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire” (Mt 25:41)—might have inspired the mak- ers of two recent feature films:Wild Tales, the Oscar-nominated Argentine entry for best foreign language film this year (it lost to “Ida,” reviewed here last June), and ’71, the dire but grip- ping drama from the United Kingdom amidst the Irish Troubles, in which a British soldier is lost in Belfast, without a Virgil and without a clue. POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE. Scenes from “Wild Tales.” Above: Ricardo Darin and the director Damián Szifron. Below: Érica Rivas as Romina. “Wild Tales,” directed by Damián Szifron, is eager to outrage. Like the violent “’71,” it is rated R, partly for a modest amount of extremely immodest behavior but also for its violence. And yet alongside the self-indulgence and intemperance that invariably get the characters into an enormous amount of trouble is an awareness that eternal suffering will come from separation— from a loss of communion with one’s fellow man and God, and a loss not just of acceptable behavior but of simple morality. Solitary confinement may be immoral and promote madness, but it doesn’t necessarily require a cell.

April 6, 2015 America 29 The opening and closing episodes put rat poison in his food? young Private Gary Hook, played of “Wild Tales” are probably the most In a third, a demolition expert (the in “’71” by the up-and-comer Jack deftly drawn of the film’s six chapters, well-known Argentine actor Ricardo O’Connell, who was so enjoyably out all of which concern themselves with Darin), a man who blows up derelict of control in the U.K. prison drama characters who are offered the opportu- buildings with such care that the dust “Starred Up” last year and suffered so nity to comport themselves with good barely stirs, goes to war with the Buenos endlessly in Hollywood’s unending judgment and dignity and who, on Aires parking violations bureau, which “Unbroken.” Everyone has a least fa- impulse, choose another path entirely. he views as a totalitarian regime de- vorite bad dream, and Hook’s may be The first story, which unfolds before voted to ruining his life and populat- yours: the nightmare of being hopeless- the title of the film even appears, in- ed by agents of Satan. Unlike some ly lost in a place where time has stopped volves a plane full of passengers who, of the other folk in Mr. Szifron’s film, and hope has vanished. just accidentally, discover they share a Mr. Darin’s character is wholly ridic- In “’71,” that place is Belfast, in the troubling connection (and not the one ulous. But like the others, he indulges year of the title, when the Troubles to Honolulu, bada-boom). The last in- his worst instincts and in the process were at their most dire, something di- volves a bride at her wedding totally los- becomes a moral exile. rector Yann Demange portrays not ing her cool when she suspects her new There are plot twists, to be sure, and just by a set design of blasted, treeless husband has been intimate with one some very polished filmmaking. What streets and ruined buildings but also by of the guests. You will be praying that Mr. Szifron makes very evident is that a palette bordering on the bilious, with someone has hidden the cutlery. his characters are inviting trouble by overtones of khaki and a camera tech- To say more about those episodes abandoning Christian principles, most nique that is dizzying. Hook, who along would give too much away, but the oth- obviously that of turning the other with the rest of his platoon is expecting ers can be at least sketched out safely cheek. In every instance, their destiny— to go to Germany after boot camp, is without blowing the payoff. In one (a spiritual and otherwise—would have sent instead to Northern Ireland, where nightmare scenario involving road rage been infinitely improved had one char- they are to assist the Royal Ulster and immolation) two drivers take their acter or another simply done what he Constabulary (portrayed as particularly vehicular differences to an extreme that or she ought, swallowed a small amount brutal by Mr. Demange) and where a verges on the absurdly comic. In anoth- of pride, understood that members of disorienting strain of warfare confronts er, a young waitress recognizes her abu- a bureaucracy are just doing their jobs the young recruits. The nuances of the sive customer as the man who ruined (we’re talking about workers at the conflict are beyond their ken; the com- her father, drove him to suicide and then D.M.V., after all, not Nazis) and exer- batants all look alike. tried to seduce her mother. Should she, cised a modicum of selflessness. There’s a certain amount of con- as her older female co-worker counsels, None of which would have helped fusion in store for the viewer, too, as Hook, left behind when a mob scatters his unit, is pursued by the Provisional I.R.A., the more moderate I.R.A., the Protestant Loyalists, his own unit and an ambiguous operative whose alle- giances are more than suspect. Hook gets beaten, shot at, blown up, stabbed, throttled and shot at again, all in a night without end. There is very lit- tle choosing of sides in “’71,” but what Mr. Demange gets exactly right, via young Gary Hook, is the feeling of be- ing utterly alone, a sense that because of something unclear that you did, or are, you have been totally abandoned by both God and man. Hell indeed.

JOHN ANDERSON is a film critic for Variety and The Wall Street Journal and a regular contributor to the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times.

30 America April 6, 2015 OF OTHER THINGS | KERRY WEBER RUNNING ON PLENTY rom the moment “McFarland, watch knowing that good will win out, cause of their victories, but because USA” begins, you know how it that the hills will be overcome. It en- they acknowledge how much they have Fwill end. So the scenes described courages us to acknowledge the reality always been capable of. here do not quite qualify as spoilers. of our struggles but to keep moving This sort of transformation is per- You can guess that Jim White, the forward. haps particularly relevant during gruff yet big-hearted running coach Although the terrain I have tread, Easter, as we are reminded of our call (whose surname also matches his both along the race course and in my to be transformed and to remain true. ethnicity) played by Kevin Costner, home life, has been quite different The risen Christ models this for us in will have a hard time adjusting to his from those depicted in the film, the Scripture by being both revolutionary abrupt move to the largely Mexican- racing scenes still brought me back and recognizable. He is someone totally American town of McFarland. You to my own days as a new, and yet constant. suspect that his team of Mexican- high school runner We will not Christ’s resurrection American high school kids will treat in Massachusetts. tells us we will not al- him with some suspicion. And you Though the boys of always be as ways be as we are now. know that by the end of the film, they McFarland joined their we are now. Better things are on the will all come away changed by their team largely to get way. encounters with one another,. into or out of trouble, Better things In our daily lives, But what you might not guess be- my own decision to we sometimes feel fore seeing the film is that director join my high school are on the this tension of being Niki Caro won’t take any shortcuts to cross country team way. in transition, that pull the eventual happy ending. You will be was largely inspired of what was and what pleasantly surprised by the thought- by Michael Johnson’s will be and what we ful attention to the back stories of the speed on the track in wish for. But from that runners, who struggle to help support the 1996 Olympics. stretching there comes their families by working in the fields His gold racing flats real growth. when not in school. You will be glad also motivated me to True Christian to see that the relationships among cover my mother’s old community asks us to the team members and their families New Balance sneakers recognize those quali- are in fact real and loving and solid, with gold glittery puffy ties in one another that though not without struggle. You will paint before trying we might not be will- be relieved to learn that the kids are them out on my first ing to recognize in our- not portrayed as helpless cases in need run around our neigh- selves. We are called to of a savior in White. borhood. support one another and challenge one “McFarland, USA” is based on a On my first day of practice, I was another along our shared path, even as true story; the events took place in nervous. But almost as soon as I ar- we sometimes desire to sprint off on 1987 in McFarland, a real town in rived, we were told to start running. our own diversions. Yet even those tan- California’s Central Valley. In many We were told to just move forward, gents are part of our journey; there can ways, the movie is a welcome one for just keep going, all at our own paces, all be continuity even in the wrong turns. our time: an earnest, sincere film in an of us trying to better ourselves while Slowly we are strengthened, not just by era when irony, snark or edginess can also letting go of ourselves for just a our own will but by those who love us. seem to dominate so many creative little while. And this transformation is not the ful- pursuits or conversations. It allows This tension between the shared fillment of our own desires but of God’s joy to exist alongside difficulties, and journey and individual identity exists desire for us. hope alongside discouragement. Even in McFarland, too. The beauty of the The events of our own journeys in its predictability is a comfort; you can relationships in the film is that as the faith are anything but predictable, but team grows in skill, its members also the paschal mystery helps remind us to KERRY WEBER is managing editor of grow into their own skins. They be- keep moving forward in faith. There are America. come more confident, not simply be- better days ahead.

April 6, 2015 America 31 POETRY | JOSEPH P. HOOVER I saw like a huge claw time tear through SPIRITUAL IMMOBILITY the iron armory and the baseball fields I grew up in Omaha, the youngest in on being not the slush-puppy stand a large Catholic family. We belonged to this, not that the little pier at Towle Park Pond.... the Jewish Community Center, where I I drove took swimming lessons in its bleak and a steamroller Time’s huge claw somehow reminds echoing indoor pool. I failed Beginners smack-dab over me of Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel. three times. I never made it to Minnows. The girl steam shovel with happy eyes I thought I would never properly learn and gaping smiley mouth is a thing I to swim. It was a dark time. have not thought of for years. I think This hasn’t much at all to do with a of it now, and it makes me glad. Mike poetry review. Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Buy Except to make the point, may- this book too. be, that any review is really about the The preacher in “The Preacher reviewer himself. In every word he’s Addresses the Seminarians” is a man talking about his childhood in side- you want to give sermons to your con- ways fashion. He’s judging literature gregation every Sunday, even though but really he’s talking about swimming some of the spiritually immobile will be lessons. In one way or another, it’s al- alarmed. Toward the end of a fantastic ways about the swimming lessons. dressing-down on what the preacher’s ••• life is really about, he declares, Once in the West, by Christian Wiman (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2014). I tell you some Sundays even the Christian Wiman’s new collection of children’s sermon poems Once in the West is fantastic. maybe especially this—sharks your Buy it. If you don’t buy books of new gut poetry—and you don’t—buy it anyway. like a bite of tin some beer-guzzling It is approachable, violent, frightening, goat lovely, funny and somewhat mystical— a fat black snake either drunkenly or mistakenly de- but not in a way that makes you loathe Up surged a cheer cides to sample. things that seem mystical. The words from men move, they don’t sit back on their heels. so cheerless But, in the end, Christ will take There is urgency here. cheers care of all the struggles of the minis- Many of the poems are about the were grunts, squints, ter’s life, won’t he? Our preacher con- days of Wiman’s youth in Kansas. whisker twitches cludes: “the truth is, our only savior is (I assume anyway they are about it would take failure.” Wiman. Whenever poets say “I” or a lunatic acuity Behold the double meaning. The “me” they usually are talking about to see. new fad of Silicon Valley (entire con- themselves. When gritty rock stars ferences dedicated to Great Failures use the first person they may well And now the reviewer surgically, as fertile loam for Great Start-Ups) be talking about someone else. John bracingly and with masters’ degrees, coupled with the Passion of Jesus Cougar Mellencamp singing about analyzes these stanzas: these words feel Christ. Nicely done. “Forty-four empty acres/ that used to really good to read and to say. Wiman’s last poem begins, “Love is be my farm” refers not to himself but In “Keynote” Wiman beholds men the living heart of dread.” He speaks to a man who actually tills the earth at an Elks’ lodge beholding him. He is about going to the Shedd Aquarium and is forlorn and bankrupt and yet suddenly taken back to his childhood in in Chicago with his wife and two little he tills, or did.) the town where both he and these Elks girls. Looking at the minnows, (small Wiman’s “Native” begins: grew up. “m”), Wiman is struck not so much by these tiny fish, as by what they do to At sixteen...hellbent I saw the water they swim in:

32 America April 6, 2015 For me for a long time ing, human quality to things you would at least once in its life, every deer not the minnows mattered never think of as being alive or human. must answer to Bambi... but the pattern after: miraculous Waterfalls, countries, swans, a bas- every deer hears LOOK OH I didn’t think ketball dunk. The collection does not LOOK it’s Bambi... to think.... merely anthropomorphize these things. When the deer all die they will die (“The dog smiled at me.”) It brings fear, of genocide, of one To forget thinking and just watch dignity, abandonment, rage and weird- baby name for the million of them. and just be. A fine and rare gift for ad- ness to every part of the known world. dled and thought-besieged humans. It seems unfair to consider this to be a Maybe it takes a kind of shock, a Wiman reminds us of this truth with- book just about sexuality. It is so much poem title that has a deer undergo- out telling us what a truth it is, like the more. ing sexual assault, for us to get at a best literature does. In the poem “Search ‘Lizard Vagina’ new feeling about something we hear and You Shall Find,” the country of about so often—The Degradation of Motherland Fatherland Homeland- Canada is a person that can look up Women. Through deer and Disney we sexuals, by Patricia Lockwood the phrase “lizard vagina.” (Okay, it is a are startled into thinking about this (Penguin, 2014). This is strong poetry, other sad thing we’d maybe rather not a great deal of which weaves in, around think about. and through sex. It features strange or Lockwood’s M.O. in these poems is violent or startling renderings of sexu- a kind of abandon—it feels as if she is ality and its malcontents. And the truth just talking, the work a stream-of-con- is, if there is well-crafted or vividly dis- sciousness. But it is a rigorous abandon. played (or a stark approbation of ) sex The poems are not mere words thrown in any work of art, it tends to overtake onto a page. They do something, and that work. deliberately. It becomes the sex book. The sex There is one sin in this book. (Unless poetry. The sex movie. Think of “Basic Lockwood is Catholic or a more strict Instinct.” Think of Erica Jong’sFear Christian or an Orthodox Jew, for of Flying. The indie film “Blue is the whom sex before marriage is a sin and Warmest Color.” The flower paintings by extension celebrating sex outside of of Georgia O’Keefe. The early albums marriage in lyric form is probably some of Liz Phair. kind of secondary sin, in which case she The first thought is the sex. It almost has sinned all over the place.) always is. That’s just how it is with this Other than this, her chief sin is re- unitive, generative and pleasurable verse pretentiousness: in the first words force of nature. (Consider Pope Paul of her back-page bio Lockwood tells us VI. When hearing his name, is the first that she was born in a trailer. thing that comes to your mind that he lot about sexuality.) The geography of The most straightforward and dev- “fostered ecumenical relations with the Canada takes on a beating heart and a astating poem in the collection is “Rape Eastern Orthodox Church?” Or is it living mind. It becomes a person, or a Joke.” The “you” in the poem is the au- “birth control, birth control, birth con- person becomes the land. The thought is thor speaking about herself. The fol- trol?”) worth more thinking—how we are land lowing are a few lines from the poem. Sometimes the artist desires this and land is us. Land that can look up They need no comment from me. sexual notoriety, sometimes he or she prurient phrases like any 12-year-old. doesn’t. Whether Lockwood wants “The Whole World Gets Together The rape joke is you went home it or not, in one poem she addresses and Gangbangs a Deer” alludes to the like nothing happened, and laughed this phenomenon with heart-break- way deer, and subsequently women, be- about it the next day, and the day ing self-awareness. In “Rape Joke” she come used, over-sexualized (perhaps? after that.... writes, “The rape joke is that if you am I reading too much into it? It is The rape joke is it wore a goatee. write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re not, after all, an after-school special of A goatee. asking for it to be the only thing they a poem.) The rape joke is that he was your remember about you.” father’s high school student—your The poems inMotherland give a liv- Every deer gets called Bambi father taught world religions.

April 6, 2015 America 33 The rape joke is that when you foreign film without translation.” them,” the man says, “Now there you told your father, he made the sign A woman tells Rankine (whom she go.” of the cross over you and said, “I has just met) that her son wasn’t ac- Rankine’s response to “There you absolve you of your sins, cepted at a college “because of affirma- go” reveals that this book is not a mere in the name of the father, and tive action or minority something— sociological tallying up of pathetic mo- of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” she is not sure what they are calling it ments of racism. It is a window into which even in its total wronghead- these days and weren’t they supposed the honest humanity of Rankine and edness, was so completely sweet. to get rid of it?” how she responds to those moments. A man refers to “boisterous teen- Rankine repeats the man’s words, In the last line of the poem agers in Starbucks as niggers.” When “There I go?” She feels “irritation begin Lockwood’s rapist twines up fun-in- Rankine protests this, and then goes to rain down.” Nonetheless, she writes, the-sun Beach Boys music with this on to say, “No need to get all KKK on “something about hearing yourself re- horrific experience: peating this stranger’s accusa- In Brief tion in a voice usually reserved The rape joke is that the next Slant Six, by Erin Bellieu (Copper Canyon Press, for your partner makes you day he gave you “Pet Sounds.” 2014). I like this because I am from Nebraska and smile.” No, really. “Pet Sounds.” He Bellieu is from Nebraska and at times she reveals my Rankine explores the ra- said he was sorry and then he soul. I am annoyed by Slant Six because she is from cial implications of Serena Nebraska and I am from Nebraska and at times she Williams’s professional ten- gave you “Pet Sounds.” reveals my soul. Why would I want someone reveal- ing my soul? Several of the poems are funny, which nis career. Serena’s “three sec- Citizen: An American Lyric, I like. In “Ars Poetica for the Future”: “The Rapture ond celebratory dance” (a “crip by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf came/ and went without incident/ but I put off fold- walk”) after she won a gold Press, 2014). This is a sad, ing my laundry/ just in case.” medal in the 2012 Olympics in alarming, phil- Wimbledon Stadium was re- Idiot Psalms, by Scott Cairns osophical, high- (Paraclete Press, 2014). These ported by various media as “an ly self-aware poems are skillfully rendered. act at which you couldn’t help piece of writ- But many of them feel elliptical, but shake your head.” “What ing. In the form generalized. They use the word Serena did was akin to cracking of prose-po- “obtain” more than seems ad- a tasteless, X-rated joke inside ems, (a visable. Eventually you can de- a church.... “ “What she did was Citizen duce something, but the words National Book often circle the runway and do immature and classless.” Award final- not land. “One’s waking of itself The implication is that by ist) primarily obtains/ a rising and—one might her dance Serena was endors- discusses black say—a dazed,/ surprising glee at ing and even celebrating the experience en- having met/ within sleep’s neth- violent world of the thuggish erworld one’s own/ dim shad- countering white owed psyche, and survived.” street criminal. It is beyond ri- experience. Hmmmm. As with Lockwood, diculous. The careers of Serena Rankine unveils Cairns’s great offense lies in the and her sister Venus, says the black body author description. On the low- Rankine, have been plagued by in the space of er left hand of the back cover subtle and not-so-subtle racism the world, and there is a drawing of Cairns, an since Day 1. Few could argue icon of Scott Cairns, with quill pen and a halo. I am what it does to those around it, not making this up. with this. and how it is perceived, and the Rankine indicates that rac- disruption it makes for others. The Poems of Jesus Christ, translated by Willis ism was involved in one of My naïveté (I didn’t know Barnstone (W. W. Norton, 2002). I feared this book the most notorious events of white people still said these would reduce Christ’s life to aphorisms taken out Serena’s career. At the same of context. It would mask his status as the best things!) is illuminated by this person who ever lived who was also God. It does time, she fails to provide any collection. A man outside a this, a little. But it also sets apart and lights up his hard supporting evidence that conference room, unwittingly words, like embers in gray ash. In “Walking on the this is the case. At match point in earshot of Rankine, tells an- Waters of the Sea,” nearly the whole of the Gospel of the 2009 U.S. Open Finals, other man that “being around is summed up in three lines. “Take heart/ It is I/ Do Serena was called for a foot- black people is like watching a not be afraid.” fault that led her to lose the

34 America April 6, 2015 match. It is an atrocious call. Serena depth-sounding piece of work. eign sounds.” responds to the line judge viciously. “I “Father Mac’s Wake” talks about his swear to God I’m f***ing going to take Some Permanent Things, by James parish priest and “The Church he built/ this f***ing ball and shove it down your Matthew Wilson (Wiseblood Books, In the brute modern style of a time/ f***ing throat!” 2014). I planned on reviewing this be- When everyone knew the face of Pius “Serena’s behavior,” says Rankine, fore I met James Matthew Wilson in XII and Paul VI was newly vilified.” “suggests that all the injustice she has person. He is very nice. Wilson told The young Wilson is at the priest’s played through all the years of her il- me, among other things, that he and his wake and does not want to be at the lustrious career flashes before her and wife would love to save enough money wake. His friends are playing outside. she decides finally to respond to all of it to renovate his kitchen. After our en- As a minor act of protest, he scratches with a string of invectives.” counter I worried I would not like the with a key into a pew, which only serves This may well be true. But doesn’t book. I feared I would break this man’s to prefigure a later spiritual surrender. Serena deserve the respect of a sim- “And those key-stabs I made may still ple bit of reporting by Rankine as to be scarred/ In the pew’s aging wood/ a whether years of injustice actually did seeming accident/ that only I can read flash through her mind? Maybe she felt in memory/ Signs of a last attack be- the outrage any tennis player might feel fore defeat.” at a line-judge’s ridiculous call. Where Wilson is not even afraid to rhyme is the confirmation from Williams as to his poetry! It is utterly refreshing. “She what she was thinking? offered him the heart-meat of two Rankine’s reporting also suffers doves/ The smoke and tartness of wine when she discusses the infamous marinade/ It seemed he tasted her at head-butt delivered by the French star one remove/ And took with gratitude Zinedine Zidane in overtime of the what she had made.” 2006 World Cup final. The recipient A complaint (Mr. Wilson, you are of the headbutt, Marco Materazzi, still very nice) is that, structurally, near- was reported to have called Zidane, an ly all of the poems have about the same Algerian by birth, a “terrorist,” leading tenor, the same overall feel. The passion to Zidane’s retaliation. Rankine places in the words is rarely mirrored by fault this incident in the catalogue of racist lines and eruptions in their rhythm and moments she has been detailing. flow. Reading the poems one after the However, should it be there? Both other lulled me into a feeling of...being Materazzi and Zidane later confirmed lulled. I would love to have seen him that Materazzi said something foul break this pattern. about Zidane’s sister, not about his heart with a bad review. (The ego!) For my money the best poem in being a terrorist. The Sun, The Daily People, let’s get this man’s kitchen this work is “A Note for Ecclesiastes. Star and The Daily Mail each had to renovated. Let’s buy this book. My fears In Memoriam Rae Lee Lester.” In it pay damages to Materazzi and make have been allayed. Wilson fights off the resigned air that a front-page apology for their insis- Some Permanent Things is the work the Book of Ecclesiastes might cast over tence (based on the interpretations of of a man who does not scold, preach a woman’s death: just another turning; lip-readers) that Materazzi had called or sit high above his subjects or the another event in the sameness of all the Zidane a “dirty terrorist,” or “son of a reader. He tells, reports, identifies from world; women have come and women terrorist whore.” ground view. will go and more will take their place. Why does Rankine hold on to the Wilson talks about idolizing The There is nothing new under the sun. earlier, disproved account? I do not New Yorker magazine. He writes Wilson protests everyone who know. Am I missing something? Did I about a mansion in South Bend whose thinks this way: read the poem wrong? Detailing with attempts to look old and “classical” certainty overt racist moments that come off as sad and forced. He turns The flint-lipped quietists, the smug may not be there diminishes this book. phrases marvelously, striking quick to advisor But these failures do not swal- a sharp image. In “The Gypsies”: “My Certain no treasonous plot, utopian low up the collection as a whole. senses woke to madrigals tongued in scheme It is a thoughtful, enraging and the light of gypsies, their curious for- Or menu in an obscure restaurant

April 6, 2015 America 35 Contains a newborn thought, a When I was 24 my housemate Lynn ter, a glossary, an outline of the princi- hope that hasn’t took me to a recreation center in pal events in Dante’s life and suggested Been crushed before—in more aus- Dorchester, where we lived, and taught further readings. Academics can ad- picious times. me to swim. Old women in black bath- mire the competence with which Shaw ing caps swam in the lanes next to popularizes received scholarship; nov- Wilson concludes: mine. Over the weeks I got the rhythm. ices can benefit from the pedagogical Kick and breathe, kick and breathe. guidance provided by her very British Is wisdom wise enough never to Cup the water with your hands, push classroom analogies. Both professional dare it back, easy now, easy. The day I really and amateur Dantisti can find in her To try to take the measure of our got it, the day I finally had it down, the numerous asides inexhaustible mat- loss grandmothers of outer Boston clapped ters to ponder and feel when reading Il We do not need to know all things for me. I looked over, startled. They Summo Poeta. have been had been watching. They were invest- Commencing on Good Friday But only to say, once more and in ed. They helped birth me into Minnow. Eve in the momentous year 1300, La fitting Beginning with a copy of Tulips Commedia is about a visionary three- Voice, that she was. and Chimneys lying around our house, day journey to the three realms of the this was about the same time I started afterlife, where the pilgrim poet speaks Here is a prophetic cry for simply reading poetry. to and learns, primarily about the paying attention to what is. You might meaning of the journey itself, from the say this about the whole book. JOSEPH P. HOOVER, S.J., is America’s poetry damned in the inferno, the repentant ••• editor. in purgatory and the blessed in para- dise. The poem begins with Dante’s famous description of himself as lost, at the biblical midpoint of life, age 35, BOOKS | DENIS J. M. BRADLEY in a fearfully dark place. What led him to abandon “the straight and true way?” ABANDON HOPE? It would seem, above all, frustrated ambition—civic but also poetic— READING DANTE played out in and against an intellec- From Here to Eternity tually and artistically vibrant, wealthy, By Prue Shaw turbulent Florence. In the Commedia, Liveright. 398p $28.95 Florence is violently unstable morally as well as politically: pride, envy and A basic Dante bibliography would greed inflame rivalries into bloody now run in excess of 50,000 items; conflicts between the citizens. Of the something new appears on the list ev- 36 Florentines Dante meets in the af- ery day. So why would Prue Shaw add terlife, 30 are in hell, four in purgatory, yet another introduction, albeit one and only two in paradise. with a droll cinematic subtitle, to the Dante’s own catastrophic fall from Divine Comedy?—because she holds the Florentine political summit came that the “sacred poem,” notwithstand- on Jan. 27, 1302, when, on trumped- ing what she calls its antiquated the- up charges of financial corruption, ology and erroneous science, illumines he and other tepidly papalist White the individual’s role in society and the Guelfs were exiled. Dante never re- cosmos, even for readers who do not turned to Florence; he lived for almost share Dante’s medieval Catholicism or 20 years as an “undeserved exile” un- his “hierarchical and judgmental” view der a twice-imposed death sentence. of good and evil actions. thematic chapters are capacious, each Moving about Italy from court to Shaw considers seven themes in developed as a graceful if somewhat court, supported by patrons, Dante that moral universe: friendship, pow- miscellaneous narrative. Five addition- was, in his own self-pitying words, “a er, life, love, time, numbers and words, al sections provide information about wanderer almost a beggar.” and devotes a chapter to each. These the dramatis personae, the poem’s me- Written during those intermina-

36 America April 6, 2015 ble years of exile (c. 1308–20), the deur,” reticent to defend or criticize its must. In Dante’s neo-Platonist chain Commedia is peopled with rival poets truth. That nod makes a theologically of being, the poetry of human making and self-serving, vicious political actors. abstinent reading of Dante easier for must depend on the theology of divine The poets, those shown as obliquely Shaw than for many post-Christian, creating: human art follows nature; confirming Dante’s artistic pre-emi- secularist readers. Dante’s own cul- nature follows the divine intellect. In nence, fare better than the politicians. turally particular beliefs—which al- an arresting metaphor, Virgil encap- Dante’s ingeniously executed denunci- low God’s justice to dominate brutally sulates Dante’s understanding of art: ations of avaricious, simoniacal popes, above and over things human—sepa- human art is “almost God’s grandchild.” power-voracious kings and treacher- rate him from current religiosity as well A this-worldly “religion of art,” where- ous nobles are devastatingly direct, as from contemporary nonbelievers. in the human experience of universal mouthed post-mortem by the suffering For those readers, Shaw identifies a aesthetic value substitutes for the tran- miscreants—bringing judgment, or ex- different bottom line: “Political power scendence of an imperious moral di- piation, or damnation on themselves, is transient, but art endures; the poet vinity, contradicts what Dante affirms. their descendants and their still living trumps the pope.” Calling it a “para- Once, Shaw puts Dante’s point more companions in crime. The underlying dox,” Shaw delicately allows or perhaps bluntly than Dante himself: “God is theme of the Commedia is that in this hopes that some similitude to divine more important than poetry.” Yet, in life politics seems to be all, but in the transcendence remains experientially her celebration of Dante’s poetic virtu- afterlife it is assuredly not. The overrid- intelligible in a religiously disenchant- osity, Shaw subtly asks, “Is He?” ing theological truth is that God tran- ed world: “To nonbelievers, it must be DENIS J. M. BRADLEY is professor emeritus scends human politics, even the pope’s because aesthetic value transcends or in the department of philosophy at Georgetown putative power to bind in heaven as defeats time.” Everything rests on that University. well as on earth. Was Dante, “fiery and uncompro- mising,” also a medieval bigot and a CLASSIFIED rigidly dogmatic moral scold? Shaw CIATION. Seeking alumni and friends to support thinks that Dante’s “moral certainties” Positions PARISH EDUCATION DIRECTOR. St. Peter those who live and study in the Saint Damien do not blind him to the ambiguities of Catholic Church, a dynamic and growing 1,700- Community at the newly renovated American “real human behavior in a real human plus household parish in Charlotte, N.C., is seeking College in Leuven, Belgium: Provide scholarships for theology, philosophy and canon law students, world.” So we can continue to learn a Parish Education Director. St. Peter is the oldest Catholic parish in Charlotte and has been served by • Foster ongoing theological reflection for minis- from the Commedia about the human the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) since 1986. We are lo- try, • Advocate for the pastoral needs of leaders in condition in today’s secularized world. cated in the heart of beautiful downtown Charlotte. the church. Learn more about programs of study: The Parish Education Director will be respon- https://theo.kuleuven.be/en/prospective_stu- But is it as easy as Shaw suggests to dents/StDamienCommunity. Alumni are invited abstract contemporary metaphysical, sible for faith education from birth to death. A min- imum of three to five years of administrative expe- to join the association: www.acaalouvain.org. moral and psychological universals rience in education/parish setting is required. The from the particular “supernatural econ- candidate should be a practicing Catholic, familiar Translator Luis Baudry-Simón, translator (from English into omy”—widely regarded as unbelievable with Ignatian spirituality, with a degree in educa- tion/theology or pastoral ministry. Spanish): newsletters, articles, essays, websites, pas- or even unintelligible fantasy—of the This individual should be a forward-thinking, toral letters, ministry resources, motivational confer- Commedia? big-picture visionary with hands-on parish educa- ences, spirituality material, etc. Contact: luisbaudry- My undergraduates would query tion experience. The ideal candidate has experience [email protected] (815) 694-0713. in education/curriculum development as well as who today can really believe that “histo- the neighborhood/community-based catechesis ry [is] a single, purposeful sequence of model. Candidate needs to be an extremely orga- WANT YOUR AD HERE? events,” or that the natural and human nized administrator, technologically savvy and pos- Visit americamagazine.org. world is evidently “Trinitarian”? But sess strong communication skills. This is an evolv- Email: [email protected]. ing role and department, so flexibility, the ability to Call 212-515-0102. these are questions too grand to charge take risks and tolerance for ambiguity are required. an introduction to raise much less an- Send résumé cover letter and any questions to Ten-word minimum. Rates are per word per issue. [email protected]. 1-5 times: $1.50; 6-11 times: $1.28; 12-23 times: swer carefully. Still, Shaw mentions T. $1.23; 24-41 times: $1.17; 42 times or more: $1.12. S. Eliot, that Old Christian Possum, Seeking Support For an additional $30, your print ad will be posted on who slyly observed that even those who America’s Web site for one week. The flat rate for a AMERICAN COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSO- Web-only classified ad is $150 for 30 days. have never read Dante know his famous bottom line, “And in His will is our America (ISSN 000-7049) is published weekly (except for 13 combined issues: Jan. 5-12, 19-26, April 13-20, May 25-June 1, June 8-15, 22-29, July 6-13, 20-27, Aug. 3-10, 17-24, Aug. 31-Sept. 7, Dec. 7-14, 21-28) by America Press, Inc., 106 West 56th peace.” Shaw knows the line but treats Street, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. Circulation: (800) 627- 9533. Subscription: United States $69 per year; add U.S. $30 postage and GST (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S. $69 per it en passant, content to nod at its “gran- year for international priority airmail. Postmaster: Send address changes to: America, P.O. Box 293159, Kettering, OH 45429.

April 6, 2015 America 37 THE WORD

unconvinced by the other apostles, until a week later, when Jesus’ dis- One Heart and Soul ciples “were again in the house, and SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (B), APRIL 12, 2015 Thomas was with them. Although the Readings: Acts 4:32–35; Ps 118: 2–24; 1 Jn 5:1–6; 1 Cor 5:6–8; Jn 20:19–31 doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with “Blessed are those who have not seen yet have come to believe” (Jn 20:29) you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put any Catholics today are Why does Luke include this story your finger here and see my hands. rightfully dismayed by divi- in Acts 5? It is a shocking story—both Reach out your hand and put it in my sive arguments among fel- Ananias and Sapphira separately fall side. Do not doubt but believe.’” Only M down dead immediately after their then did Thomas answer, “My Lord low Christians over matters as diverse as liturgy, the pope, politics and moral- deceit is revealed—but it speaks to and my God!” ity. Only the strong of heart dare ven- reality. Even in the heady days of the How did the other disciples treat ture near online comboxes on certain apostles, people were already Thomas during that week? It seems Catholic websites. Such disagreements, seeking their own way that they did not cast him out for oftentimes petty, sometimes significant, and hedging their doubting, marginalize him stand in sharp contrast to the second bets on the church. or call him a “cafeteria summary in the Acts of the Apostles The period of apostle” but allowed him on the state of the early church. Easter brings into to remain with them. According to Acts, “Now the whole sharp contrast the For his part, Thomas group of those who believed were of stumbling ways stayed with them, even one heart and soul, and no one claimed of the believers, in the midst of his private ownership of any possessions, a feature found doubt. throughout the but everything they owned was held PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE in common.... There was not a needy church’s history, and the steadfast love of God, which the psalmist tells person among them, for as many as How do we help to build up a church of owned lands or houses sold them and us “endures forever.” As steadfast as one heart and one soul? God is, so we are fickle in the ways brought the proceeds of what was sold. A. DUNNE TAD ART: They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and of God. And yet, as fickle and ca- it was distributed to each as any had pricious as believers might be, there need.” It is a beautiful image of the ear- is persistence among the disciples of We all need and rely on the stead- ly church, strengthened by the story of Jesus, who get up, brush the dirt from fastness of God at all times to support Barnabas, which immediately follows their clothes and move forward eager us when we are uncertain, but the these verses and describes him giving again to follow God in “one heart and support of other believers is essential, to the church the money gained from soul.” not “even” when we disagree, but espe- selling a plot of land. The Apostle Thomas gives us an- cially when we disagree. Thomas did It is an ideal picture, which is soon other image of the wavering disciple, not believe initially and only believed shattered by the story of Ananias but in this case one who remains in when he saw Jesus in the risen flesh. and Sapphira, who also decide to sell the fold. Thomas did not witness the “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed a plot of land but hold back some of risen Lord and so hedged his bets on because you have seen me? Blessed are the money for a rainy day fund. Their the reality of the resurrection even as those who have not seen and yet have behavior indicates a fissure among the the other apostles were telling him, come to believe.’” Important in all of early disciples and undercuts the claim “We have seen the Lord.” Why would this, though, and often overlooked, that “everything they owned was held they lie to him in his grief? Still, he is that in the midst of Thomas’s pro- in common.” said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails found disagreement with the other in his hands, and put my finger in the disciples regarding Jesus’ resurrection, mark of the nails and my hand in his he remained within the fold of the JOHN W. MARTENS is associate professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas. side, I will not believe.” brothers and sisters. Twitter: @BibleJunkies. Thomas persisted in his unbelief, JOHN W. MARTENS

38 America April 6, 2015 April 6, 2015 America 39