THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY april 25, 2011 $3.50 OF MANY THINGS

PUBLISHED BY JESUITS OF THE UNITED STATES n Holy Week my mind turns to scrupulous observance of the Status Jerusalem, as I recall my participa - Quo agreement, which allows various EDITOR IN CHIEF Drew Christiansen, S.J. Ition in the liturgies and pilgrim denominations and religions to share devotions there. It is also a time for the same holy sites. On Holy Thursday, EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT remembering the Church of Jerusalem. I think instead of the Olivetan MANAGING EDITOR Palm Sunday is a special day for Holy Benedictine double monastery of Abu Robert C. Collins, S.J. Land Christians as they turn out for Gosh, built on the ruins of a 12th-cen - EDITORIAL DIRECTOR the procession from Bethpage down the tury Crusader church, where the monks Karen Sue Smith Mount of Olives, past the graves of and nuns chant the liturgy in antipho - ONLINE EDITOR those buried facing west toward the ny. “Ubi Caritas,” beautiful wherever it Maurice Timothy Reidy Golden Gate, where by Jewish tradition is sung during the washing of the feet, CULTURE EDITOR the Messiah is expected to appear to is ever so beautiful reverberating within James Martin, S.J. establish the kingdom, to St. Anne’s in those ancient stone walls. LITERARY EDITOR the Old City. During the last two On Holy Thursday night and early Patricia A. Kossmann decades, the Palm Sunday procession Good Friday, I think of St. Peter in POETRY EDITOR has become a festival of Palestinian Gallicantu, the traditional site of Jesus’ James S. Torrens, S.J. Christian identity, with the faithful imprisonment, the trial before ASSOCIATE EDITORS pouring in from all over the region, Caiaphas and Peter’s (see Am., Kevin Clarke from Galilee and, if possible, the West 1/24). The Pit, the hollowed-out cis - Kerry Weber Bank as well as Jerusalem. tern where Jesus is said to have been Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. The route is so crowded the best kept the night before his death, is the Edward W. Schmidt , S.J. word to describe it is “thronged” with very best place to share in his hour of ART DIRECTOR people. Boy scouts in uniform, some darkness. St. Peter’s is also where in Stephanie Ratcliffe quite beyond adolescence, provide 1998 I watched the announcement of ASSISTANT EDITOR crowd control along the margins of the the Northern Ireland Good Friday Francis W. Turnbull, S.J. road. Religious in a great variety of Agreement, and so I pray that day for ASSISTANT LITERARY EDITOR habits are strung throughout the crowd, peace with justice and forgiveness in Regina Nigro and prelates of the different Catholic the Holy Land, too. GUEST EDITOR churches in their distinctive robes come On Good Friday, I also think of the Francis X. Hezel , S.J. toward the end, with the canons of the Calvary Chapel at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Latin Holy Sepulchre. The chapel itself, BUSINESS DEPARTMENT at the very end. When the procession though I have been privileged to cele - CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER ends at St. Anne’s, those privileged to brate Mass there a number of times, Lisa squeeze into the monastery garden hear does little for me until I think of the ADVERTISING an exhortation from the patriarch fol - frail Pope John Paul II making his way Julia Sosa lowed by blessing with a of the back there, up the very steep steps, at true cross. the end of his pilgrimage in 2000, to 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019-3803 The Palm Sunday procession, a walk pray in solitude for 45 minutes. He had of a few kilometers under the hot sun, more true feeling for the marbled-over Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 pressed around with sunburned, dusty Golgotha than I ever will. E-mail: [email protected]; pilgrims from many lands, may be as The nearby Holy Sepulchre, with its [email protected] Web site: www.americamagazine.org. close as today’s Christians will ever get low entrance, recreates the sensation of Customer Service: 1-800-627-9533 to feeling what it was like to celebrate a the disciples bending down low to peer © 2011 America Press, Inc. holy day in St. Helena’s Jerusalem. into the empty tomb. But for Easter, I I associate Holy Thursday with the think of the Easter Vigil service at Abu Cenacle or Upper Room, but that site Gosh, where deep in a crypt beneath was taken over by the Muslims cen - the church, amid candlelight, for cate - turies ago, and the lower floor is now chumens and infants baptized into occupied by a yeshiva. Elsewhere the Christ’s death and rising, the resurrec - Cover: Detail from “The Disputation of the Sacrament,” a fresco by day might be an occasion for interreli - tion is made real again. . CNS photo courtesy gious dialogue. In Jerusalem, it prompts DREW CHRISTIANSEN, S.J. Catholic Communication Campaign CONTENTS www.americamagazine.org Vol. 204 No. 14, Whole No. 4931 april 25, 2011

ARTICLES 11 HOLDING ON Even in death, Christ never let go. Vincent J. Miller

15 THE GOOD FIGHT How Christians suffer, die and rise with Jesus Kodell

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS 4 Current Comment 11 5 Editorial Easter Peace

6 Signs of the Times

9 Column Dawn Out of Darkness Margaret Silf

36 Letters

39 The Word Conspiratory Faith Barbara E. Reid

15 BOOKS & CULTURE 21 SPRING BOOKS God’s Century; Townie; Clouds of Witnesses; In the Valley of the Shadow; God’s Invitation; A Widow’s Story FILMMAKING Searching for Hart Crane

ON THE WEB ON THE WEB Richard Rohr, O.F.M. , right, talks about his new book, Falling Upward, on our podcast, and Karen Sue Smith reviews the film “Poetry.” Plus, the editors offer video reflec - tions for the Easter season. All at americamagazine.org. 30 CURRENT COMMENT

something resisted by many bishops and religious superiors. Goldstone Reports Again The most surprising admission was this: “...with perhaps Depending on one’s view, the distinguished South African two exceptions I have not encountered a real and uncondi - jurist Richard Goldstone has either once more demon - tional admission of guilt and responsibility on the part of strated the honesty of his thinking or has cravenly capitu - priest offenders in my diocese.” The inability of many lated to Israeli pressure. In an op-ed article in The abusers to feel remorse has been well documented. Some Washington Post on April 1, he admitted that if he had psychologists note that the two most prevalent traits known what has recently been revealed by internal Israeli among abusers are and grandiosity. The narcis - investigations, the U.N. report he chaired on Israel’s sist cares only about his own needs; others exist simply to Operation Cast Lead, a 2008 military campaign against gratify him. The grandiose person acts as a kind of Pied Gaza, would have been different. Israeli officials, who have Piper, easily drawing children into his terrible orbit. heretofore reviled Goldstone, praised him and played his Archbishop Martin’s comments make clear that these statement as if it were a renunciation of the report’s con - malign pathologies run deep and that the church is, in clusions. The former Israeli ambassador to the United many places, still resisting a complete truth-telling. We Nations, Gabriela Shalev, went so far as to contend that “if need more bishops to speak the truth as bluntly and fre - in the future we have to defend ourselves against quently as Archbishop Martin has done. terror...there will be no way to deal with this terror other than the way we did in Cast Lead.” Budget Cuts Hurt Women But Goldstone later told the press that, with one excep - Many proposals to cut federal spending on entitlements tion, “as presently advised I have no reason to believe that tend to gloss over a significant fact: entitlements benefit any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this women—particularly the nation’s poorest women—to a time.” According to B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights much greater extent than men. The reasons are obvious: group, the internal Israeli inquiry cited by Goldstone “by women on average earn less than men but live longer. Single no means absolves Israel of all grave allegations regarding parents, who are overwhelmingly female, must stretch their its conduct.” Among the issues still deserving scrutiny, the incomes across decades as they rear their children. Many group said, “are the levels of force authorized; the use of women with young children work part time, and employers white phosphorous and inherently inaccurate mortar shells seldom offer health insurance or other benefits for part- in densely populated areas; the determination that govern - time work. Wage parity, which would help women and chil - ment office buildings were legitimate targets; and the dren enormously, still would not close the gaps produced by obstruction of and harm to ambulances.” In addition, longevity and childrearing. Here is the problem: since enti - because of lack of Israeli cooperation, the Goldstone team tlements disproportionately benefit women, cuts in entitle - was never able to look into Israeli policymaking. For these ments disproportionately harm them. and other reasons the U.N. process ought to continue. Consider Medicaid, the state-federal program for the At the same time, Hamas, the governing party in Gaza, poorest, sickest and/or most disabled Americans. Women needs to be held responsible for its use of rockets against make up three-quarters of the adults covered. That totals Israeli civilians and for failing to conduct investigations of 17 million women between the ages of 18 and 64; most are alleged war crimes on its side. pregnant or have children under 18. Few voters realize that Medicaid finances 41 percent of all births in the United Tough Talk From Dublin States. These are births among the poor. Medicaid also During a lecture at Marquette University last week (report - covers 43 percent of all nursing home spending. These ed in America , “Signs of the Times,” 4/18), the archbishop entitlements are vital, not just for the poor and not just for of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, known as a tough talker on women, but for a healthy society. the topic of sexual by members of the , talked Unlike abortion, these services are authentic women’s tough. He described, among other things, the inevitable health issues. As such they ought not be cut even to reduce results of a clerical culture that refused to take basic precau - the deficit. Other expenses—administrative duplication, for tions against abuse (one priest’s residence featured a swim - example—should be cut and are already being removed ming pool open only to children), the difficulty of “bringing through the Affordable Care Act of 2010. A clear link an institution around to the conviction that the truth must between women and entitlements is crucial information for be told” and the benefit of government-sponsored audits, the ongoing debates about the budget and deficit-reduction.

4 America April 25, 2011 EDITORIAL Easter Peace eace be with you.” That first Easter evening Jesus’ deny the gifts of others and steam - greeting burst through the gloom and confusion of roll over them in pursuit of unifor - ‘P the upper room. The disciples’ grief over Jesus’ death, mity of opinion, we have severed their dismay over Jesus’ rejection by Israel’s leaders, their ourselves from the bond of peace, shame over abandoning Jesus at the cross, their bewilderment which is the risen Christ himself. over the empty tomb and Mary Magadalene’s wild report— Insofar as we drag the church into all those feelings came to an abrupt halt with the familiar partisan political rivalries or seek salutation: Peace be with you. But at that moment, Jesus’ salu - from it petty political advantage, we tation must have been more shocking than reassuring. Their are corroding the bonds of . heads must have been teeming with questions, with doubts Wherever the charism of unity is at and phantom terrors. What could these words mean? work, where bridges are built, where When we Christians hear this Easter greeting anew common ground is celebrated and where enmities are over - this year, we too should be dismayed as much as consoled. come, there Easter peace is at work, healing, strengthening For the peace of the risen Christ ushers us into a new exis - and making the many one in the body of Christ. tence, where nothing will ever again be the same. Because it From the church, God’s peace ripples out to fill the is soul-transforming, Christ’s peace is a costly gift that world: “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” The demands radical conversion. Because that peace is all- baptized are charged with extending Christ’s work of rec - embracing, uniting us with all sorts of people we would oth - onciliation. We are fortunate to live in a time when, in the erwise avoid, it rips away our prejudices and tears asunder face of many armed conflicts, people inside and outside the the protective walls that afford us comfortable assurance. As church are taking up the challenge of peacemaking. Jesus explained, “Not as the world gives, do I give.” Whether it is lay communities like Focolare and the The peace of Christ heralds the beginning of a new Community of Sant’Egidio, Catholic nongovernmental age. We are being drawn into a new way of life where the organizations like Caritas Internationalis and Catholic world as we know it—the world of black and white con - Relief Services or teams of academics and fieldworkers in trasts, of rivalries and wars, of domination and oppression, the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, women and men are of zero-sum solutions and justified inequality—should lose working to make Christ’s farewell gift of peace a reality in its grip on our minds and hearts. Christ’s peace should cast zones of conflict. Leading this movement, Pope Benedict out the fear that runs the world and too easily takes our XVI himself has reached out not only to the interfaith imaginations captive. In the glow of Christ’s peace, the fear community but also to agnostics and secular activists, that chills our hearts, puts us on guard and sets us, however inviting them to join in a common witness for peace at subtly, against one another should seep away. We should be Assisi this coming October on the 25th anniversary of the set free to live boldly in hope and to challenge those who Assisi Day of Prayer. Through all these peacemakers, would shackle our Christian visions. Christ’s greeting, “Peace be with you,” echoes where it A primary effect of Easter peace is to unite the church most needs to be heard. itself. For St. Paul “the bond of peace” Christ gives his disci - To help others find peace and to sustain themselves ples defines the church. It unites its members across class, from crisis to crisis, year after year, Christian peacemak - gender and ethnic barriers: slave-free, male-female, Jew- ers need themselves to draw deeply on God’s peace, which Greek. The bond of peace is more essential to the church’s is “so much greater than anything we can understand.” identity, in Paul’s estimation, than any charisms or offices From the depths of the divine beauty they will draw inspi - his disciples may exercise, and in the Christian community ration, from the reserves of divine strength they will draw genuine unity ought to weigh even more heavily than any energy, and in their vision of God and God’s kingdom claims of religious lineage or preening orthodoxy. they will find unfailing hope. For those ready to be chal - Insofar as any of us in the U.S. church today may be lenged by Christ’s greeting of peace, for those open to on the prowl to catch out anyone else in a dissident position hearing the call to be peacemakers in the broken places of or find ourselves perpetually on the attack, Christ’s greeting church and world, the risen Jesus’ Easter greeting por - of peace will be an uncomfortable challenge. Insofar as we tends a springtime of abounding grace.

April 25, 2011 America 5 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

ITALY Migrants from North Africa are met by Italian security near the southern Italian Church Teaching Tested island of Lampedusa on March 14. By Immigration Crisis ore than 22,000 boat people, many fleeing political unrest in North Africa, have arrived Mon the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa this year. The growing intensity of the fighting in Libya has spurred more people to flee in recent weeks. Not all sur - vive the trip. About 150 people drowned on April 6 when their boat capsized in rough seas. The new flow of North African immigrants into Italy is putting church teaching on immigration to the test. Church leaders have underlined the broad right to emigrate, the specific rights of refugees and the responsi - bility of wealthier nations to welcome those in need. But their moral advocacy has provoked criticism and even derision among some Italians. Because Lampedusa only 90 miles off the North African coast, it has long been the gateway to Europe for North Africans. Residents have complained that the island’s infrastruc - ture is overwhelmed. Authorities have been relocating new arrivals to other Italian regions— whose residents seem not to want true cooperation,” he said. 1952 in an apostolic constitution by them either. The church suffered a significant Pope Pius XII, who also noted that Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, presi - political backlash in the current cli - states may control the flow of migra - dent of the Italian bishops’ conference, mate. Several groups and newspapers tion, but not for arbitrary reasons. has called on Europe to recognize that proposed that the Vatican open up Immigrants make up 7.5 percent of Italy cannot handle the migration flow convents, seminaries and its own Italy’s population. Demographers say by itself. European bishops meeting on unrented apartments to immigrants. that immigrants, most of whom are April 3 agreed, arguing that the crisis In fact, Caritas Italy has already young, help balance Italy’s aging popu - “requires the solidarity of all European arranged to lodge some 2,500 in lation and low birth rate. But some countries and their institutions.” But church institutions. Church leaders political parties maintain that immi - Cardinal Bagnasco also reminded said they wanted to show that they gration has reached the saturation Italians that the current immigration practice what they preach and called point. emergency stems in part from long- on all Italians to make a “new effort of Archbishop Antonio Veglio, presi - standing global inequities. He said solidarity,” despite the nation’s own dent of the Pontifical Council for Europe cannot keep out the world’s prolonged economic downturn. Migrants and Travelers, has said that poor simply by patrolling its borders. This is not a popular message these while governments have a legitimate “It is an illusion to think that one days, but it is very much part of tradi - right to regulate immigration, “there is can live in peace, keeping at a distance tional church teaching on immigra - nevertheless the human right to be res - young populations that are burdened tion. The responsibility to welcome cued and given emergency help.” by deprivation and that are legitimate - the stranger has roots in the Bible, and Behind that statement lies a fact some - ly trying to satisfy their hunger,” the as Pope Benedict XVI recently noted, times cited by church experts: Over cardinal said. Persuading these people Jesus was himself a refugee when the the past 23 years, more than 15,000 to remain in their homeland will Holy fled into . The migrants have died trying to reach require implementation of “policies of “right to emigrate” was defended in Europe—a toll that grows daily.

6 America April 25, 2011 criminal violence are being left far Conflict over resources, as in the behind and face stagnation, both in Democratic Republic of Congo, or vio - terms of economic growth and disap - lence generated by drug trafficking, as pointing human development indica - in and Central America, exem - tors,” said Justin Lin, the World Bank’s plify the style of violence in the new chief economist. century. Unemployment was over - People living in countries currently whelmingly cited as the most impor - affected by violence are twice as likely tant factor for recruitment into gangs to be undernourished, and 50 percent and rebel movements. Risks of violence more likely to be impoverished. Their are greater when high social stresses children are three times as likely to be combine with weak capacity or lack of out of school, researchers report. More legitimacy in key national institutions, than 42 million people are displaced as indicated by the recent turbulence in globally as a result of conflict, violence the Middle East and North Africa. or human rights . “And the Building or restoring capable, legit - effects of violence in one area can imate institutions is crucial because spread to neighboring states and to they are able to mediate the stresses other parts of the world,” said that otherwise lead to repeated waves Zoellick, “hurting development of violence and instability. More than prospects of others and impeding eco - 90 percent of civil wars in the 2000s nomic prospects for entire regions.” occurred in countries that had already The World Development Report experienced civil war in the previous 2011: Conflict, Security and 30 years. The report suggests short- Development found that “no low- term measures aimed at successful SECURITY income, fragile or conflict-affected transitions from violence to rebuild country has yet to achieve a single confidence between citizens and the World Bank: 1.5 Millennium Development Goal.” state. These include improving govern - Billion Trapped Those goals, accepted by Western ment transparency, special budget allo - nations in 2000, aimed to cut in half cations for disadvantaged groups, By Violence the worst effects of global poverty in, removal of discriminatory laws and ome 1.5 billion people live in for example, sanitation, health, hunger credible commitments to realistic countries affected by repeated and educational attainment by 2015. timelines for longer-term reform. cycles of political and criminal Fixing the economic, political and Sviolence, the World Bank reports in its security problems that disrupt devel - latest development study. Noting that opment and trap fragile states in vio - military and development disciplines lence requires strengthening national too often work on separate paths, institutions and improving governance World Bank President Robert in ways that prioritize citizen security, Zoellick called for bringing security justice and jobs. It is a process that and development together to break the must be counted out in decades, not cycles of fragility and violence that trap years, researchers said. states in conflict and rob their citizens According to the report, in the 21st of economic and human development century organized violence appears to opportunities. be spurred by a range of domestic and “While much of the world has international stresses, like youth made rapid progress in reducing unemployment, income shocks, ten - Soldiers patrol in Goma, North Kivu poverty over the past 60 years, areas sions among ethnic, religious or social Province, in the Democratic Republic suffering from political instability and groups and drug trafficking networks. of Congo.

April 25, 2011 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Bishops Divided on NEWS BRIEFS

Pro-Choice Politicians The attorney general of Virginia, Kenneth T. Asked why there was so much disuni - Cuccinelli II, issued an advisory opinion on April 8 ty on the question of pro-choice that while “personal protection constitutes a good and Catholics receiving Communion, sufficient reason” under commonwealth law to carry a Denver’s Archbishop Charles J. concealed weapon into church, it was still acceptable Chaput told the audience at the for places of worship to restrict or ban handguns from University of Notre Dame on April 8: their premises. • Roy Bourgeois , a Maryknoll priest, “The reason...is that there is no unity refused in a letter on April 11 to recant his belief that James Martin, S.J. among the bishops about it.” He said, women should be ordained to the priesthood and “There is unity among the bishops now faces dismissal from the order and laicization. • James Martin, about abortion always being wrong S.J. , author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and America ’s and that you can’t be a Catholic and be culture editor, will be honored with a Christopher Award at the 62nd in favor of abortion…but there’s just annual ceremony in New York on May 19. • On April 12 the Vatican an inability among the bishops togeth - ordered the former bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe , 74, who er to speak clearly on this matter and admitted to sexually abusing his nephew, to leave Belgium and under - even to say that it you’re Catholic and go “spiritual and psychological treatment” as a final decision on his sta - you’re pro-choice, you can’t receive tus was prepared. • On April 6 Virginia became the seventh state to holy Communion.” There is a fear, he bar abortion coverage from being offered by private insurance com - said, that if bishops speak clearly on panies joining its proposed state-run health insurance exchange, which the issue, they would make it difficult is mandated by last year’s health care reform legislation. for Catholic politicians to be elected and would disenfranchise the Catholic community. The strategy clearly has failed, he said. “So let’s try something ses only in their church’s traditional including East Jerusalem. The settle - different and see if it works. Let’s be territory; otherwise, the responsibility ments on Palestinian land are pro - very, very clear on these matters.” is left to the pope, often in consulta - tected by the Israeli government and tion with the Latin-rite bishops of the military, and they prevent or restrict Church Conflict in region concerned. Bishop Puthur told access by Palestinians to their land, The Vatican and many of the Latin- Pope Benedict that the Syro-Malabar water supplies, education, health ser - rite bishops of India are not treating church’s traditional territory was all of vices and more. Extensive settlement the Syro-Malabar India until Latin-rite missionaries infrastructure divides up Palestinian with justice, Auxiliary Bishop Bosco arrived in the 15th century. Now any land, creating obstacles to peace. Puthur of Ernakulam-Angamaly in of its faithful who live outside Kerala Palestinian Quakers are calling for Kerala, India, told Pope Benedict XVI State are subject to the authority of the Quakers around the world to consid - on April 7 during an ad limina visit to local Latin-rite bishop. er boycott, divestment and sanctions . While other Christians and because of the worsening situation other religions enjoy the freedom to caused by Israel’s occupation. “People build churches and conduct services U.K. Quakers Boycott matter more than territory,” said a anywhere in India, the Eastern Israeli Settler Exports statement from the Quakers. “We Catholic churches “are denied it, para - Quakers in Britain have agreed to pray fervently for both Israelis and doxically not by the state, but by our boycott products from Israeli settle - Palestinians…. We hope they will own ecclesiastical authorities,” the ments in the West Bank. The Quakers find an end to their fears and the bishop said. Generally the leaders of consider the boycott a nonviolent beginning of their mutual co-exis - Eastern Catholic churches, like the move for peace between Israelis and tence based on a just peace.” Syro-Malabar Church, enjoy full free - Palestinians. Half a million Israeli set - dom to elect bishops and erect dioce - tlers live illegally in the West Bank, From CNS and other sources.

8 America April 25, 2011 MARGARET SILF

Dawn Out of Darkness

ere is a parable for Easter. caught in the branches. She gazes at it still be alive when this time comes The world is at war. The but now, in her mind’s eye, she no round again.” British Isles are cloaked in longer sees a parachute hanging there It is a lovely way of praying that we H in the tree but the possibility of a silk might live to see another year, another darkness. Into the midst of this black night a German pilot, his aircraft dis - wedding gown, a gift from God. For springtime, another new beginning. abled by hostile fire, bails out to save the next weeks she spends every spare May we be alive when the first lamb his life. Perhaps he prays as he plum - moment with her needle, painstakingly of 2012 appears. May we be more than mets to the ground into the heart of transforming an abandoned parachute just alive—may we have grown, in the enemy territory. Perhaps, as he strug - into a uniquely beautiful wedding intervening year, a little closer to the gles to release his parachute, he has a gown. fullness of life that Jesus incarnates. flashback image of the girl he left From his bed in the military hospi - May the suffering people in all the behind and dares not hope to see tal, a lonely young German world’s places of anguish again. Minutes later his parachute airman, recovering from dis - God be brought to new becomes entangled in a tree, and he lies aster, sees the bridal couple invites beginnings on the unconscious on the ground. pass by. His heart leaps with returning tides of hope Dawn breaks. A young woman a sudden surge of hope. each and trust and love that passes by. She is lost in thought. Her This time next year, per - of us to Easter promises. And lover has asked her to marry him. She haps, he will be with his may we work and pray longs to say yes. But who can afford to own young bride once more. work at untiringly to make that celebrate a wedding in these dark days? He little guesses that this trans- hope a reality. Where will they find the ingredients English bride is wearing his You might ask: But for a wedding cake? Whatever could parachute. formation. what can we do about she wear for a bridal gown? Warning these situations? Per- voices tell her to wait until the war is This time next year! Easter is a time to haps more than we think. The over—but who knows when that look forward. Too often the Christian parachute in the story did not change might be, and she loves him and longs story is told backwards, as if it were overnight by magic into a bridal dress. to be his bride now…for tomorrow solely about God’s rescue mission, The transformation took time, effort, may never come. God’s parachute, bailing us out of the energy, patience and perseverance, as And then her reverie is brutally wreckage of our sin. Easter is the time the bride-to-be changed it, stitch by interrupted. She almost stumbles over to change the direction of our gaze and laborious stitch, into something radical - the German airman lying in her path. see the rescue mission for what it can ly new. God invites each of us to work at Her heart knows what she must do. become: an invitation to participate in this transformation. We do it every She covers him gently with her coat the great adventure of becoming the time we speak or act in ways that and places her jersey under his head. people God is dreaming we can be and increase, however slightly, the level of There is still a pulse. There is still life. of transforming planet Earth into the hope and trust and love in the world— She fetches help. The casualty will be seedbed of God’s kingdom. by a word of encouragement, a small act cared for—at least in his immediate I was recently in Ireland with a of courage in confronting injustice, a need. Beyond that, who knows? friend. As we ambled along the coun - refusal to join in the general grumbling The next day her path takes her try lanes, we saw our first lamb of the about life that leads us and others down back past the spot where she found season, staggering around on its shaky, the track to despair and cynicism. him. The torn parachute is still there, spindly legs. My friend turned to greet Stitch by stitch. Choice by choice. me with the traditional Irish prayer for Moment by moment. These are the MARGARET SILF lives in Scotland. Her latest books are Roots and Wings , The Way of such occasions: “Go mbeirimid beo ar ways we are called to work with God to Wisdom and Compass Points . an am seo aris,” which means, “May we transform Good Friday into Eastertide.

April 25, 2011 America 9 An Easter Sunday procession in the town of Cospicua, Malta, in April 2003. EVEN IN DEATH , CHRIST NEVER LET GO . Holding On BY VINCENT J. MILLER

oments come that demand everything of us. A partner’s illness requires much more than we bargained for. An ethical conflict at work forces a decision that puts our at risk. A political crisis demands that we take a public stand amid imperfect choices. We are pushed to our limits perhaps; but even more Mwe are entangled, hemmed in, held by our relationships and must decide if we will hold on to them in return. Squeezed between our finitude and the brokenness of the world, we are tempt - ed to turn away, to wish to be dealt another hand. Isn’t there some other relation - ship that will better fulfill me? A less dysfunctional workplace? Couldn’t I have been born in a time when politics were clear and I would have stood with the angels? We are tempted to hedge our bets, to give as little as possible to preserve our sense of righteousness. I stay in the relationship but hold back, subtly communicating how unfair this is to me. I finesse the ethical or political challenge, doing just enough of the right thing to save my self-respect but keeping my head down. Such moments force us to decide who we really are. Reality puts our daydream self-imaginings to the test. The world in its brokenness gives us the opportunity to say yes in the concrete, to love and to give ourselves in love to what is. Our i

p temptations are as total as the demands placed upon us: not merely to refuse a U l t i particular responsibility but to refuse reality itself. Do we embrace the world or m m a

Z flee into fantasy?

N i r

r Such crises open into the hard grace of the paschal mystery. When creation a D /

S was broken by human sinfulness, God did not turn away or reshuffle the cards. r e t U

e The Creator doubled down on creation: insistently loving it, refusing to let it die r

: o

t of its self-inflicted wounds, respecting its finitude by entering into it bodily— o h p becoming subject even to its sin and violence.

Nails Jesus’ embrace of sinful humanity was a free act but one that involved nails. Nails signify both suffering and irrevocable binding, a frightfully demanding embrace of what is. The paschal mystery is a strange freedom to commit fully. The world that nailed Jesus to the cross was held firm in God’s saving embrace by those same nails. At the heart of the paschal mystery lies not the cross but Christ’s body

VINCENT J. MILLER holds the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He is writing a book on globalization, the church and discipleship.

April 25, 2011 America 11 stretched out upon it. The Dutch theologian Edward ’s Servant Songs portray our fearful response to the Schillebeeckx, O.P., attended to the human cost of Jesus’ world in straightforward and stark words. From the “man of absolute commitment to his Father’s will. Jesus experi - suffering” we “hide our faces.” We simply turn away. If our enced God’s kingdom coming into being in his ministry. media-saturated world renders us callous to violence, we The same fidelity in which he preached the good news, still have precious little tolerance for the victims of suffering. healed the sick and practiced reconciliation also brought We still look away, having no patience for those “aching ones him into conflict with the powerful and led to his aban - whose wounds cannot be nursed” of whom Bob Dylan sang. donment by the disciples. Jesus died watching it all fall It is not easy to tend wounds that heal more slowly than apart. His faithful living of God’s gracious salvation we can observe, to accompany the friend whose life careens stripped him of everything. from one crisis to another or to Through that complete giving, work with the powerless which looked so much like fail - We follow in God’s refusal to crushed in a system stacked ure, God worked resurrection. let the world remain unsaved. against them. Myths of It was through Jesus’ holding on progress and success infect our amid complete loss that everything was saved. imaginations. The endless enthusiasm for healing and self- God’s graceful giving has the last word. Paradoxically, life help programs on daytime talk shows, business training is found in death. Less paradoxically, life is found in a love seminars and the like are shiny glosses over our deep anxi - that holds on through death. Such strength was not placid ety about finitude. Our everyday language betrays our and assured for Jesus. He saw the loss of all that God had denial. We exhort the sick to “get well soon” but have little brought about in his ministry. It is no less difficult for us. to say to those who will not. Our dogmatic knowledge of the unity of the cross and res - In the paschal mystery we are given the strength to look urrection does not remove the darkness of the cross. in the eyes of the overwhelming need of the world—suffer - Although we can talk about it from the outside, the passing ing, disability, misfortune, injustice—and the courage to over remains a mystery that we must live into. Real suffering respond somehow in love. is always a surprise. We undergo not simply temporary pain, We are not God. Precisely as we are squeezed between but real loss. There is no guarantee that any given crisis will our finitude (our limited power, the short spans of our lives) turn out well, that our sacrifices will not be in vain or that and the searing need around us, we are thrown into the we are holding onto anything more than a delusion. grace of the paschal mystery. There are times that demand action. Others present burdens so heavy that one can only Truths Intertwined hold on, trying to remain faithful, feeling powerless in the Within the bounds of the paschal mystery—between giving face of overwhelming need. And there are times when our to the point of death and the surprise of resurrection— most sincere efforts are not enough. Whatever the adequa - the intertwined truths of suffering and gift, freedom and cy of our powers to the situation, we do what we can to help binding. All of this can, of course, be twisted into a push the world and those who inhabit it toward the fullness masochistic celebration of suffering for its own sake or an it lacks. We give, haunted that we are fools, and sometimes uncritical codependence that gives whatever the other experience shocking moments and long tides of grace. demands no matter how destructive or pointless. These, Things work out in a way that did not seem possible and however, pervert the cross into a passive acceptance of the our seemingly insignificant contributions play a part. world’s sinfulness. What distinguishes the paschal mystery Things heal. Justice is done. Salvation takes place. from these debasements is the activeness of love. We follow in God’s refusal to let the world remain unsaved. Truth in the Mundane Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, found in the heart of the Life is, of course, much more than crisis and struggle. If eucharistic prayer, are the fundamental form of discipleship: major challenges trumpet the unavoidability of the paschal “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and ever - mystery, the same truth whispers in the mundane rhythms of lasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that life. To love is to bind oneself to others’ finitude. Their sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.” We “do breath, in which we thrill, will one day cease. To commit one - this” not simply in the Eucharist, but in our lives. We pour self to any meaningful project is to court frustration and loss. out our lifeblood as Jesus did, in love for the part of the “all” In this, the mundane teaches the full truth of the paschal we encounter in our own lives. mystery: sacrifice is subordinate to love. We hold on not The paschal mystery is the fundamental form of with stoic tolerance of suffering but in love illuminated by Christian hope and grace. In it we are strengthened to face faith in the possibility of salvation. and to embrace the suffering and violence of the world. We are well aware of the weakness of our love manifest

12 America April 25, 2011 in interpersonal relations. But the same temptations of from the outside. Full clarity comes only with the eschaton. escape and refusal mark the social and political as well. Our bodies are a fundamental touch point of the There is an apocalyptic mood in the church and abroad that paschal mystery. Finitude, need and gift are all embodied seeks to separate the world into the good and the bad. The experiences. The Gnostic dream of escaping the body is church’s public engagement is hamstrung by a novel use of precisely a refusal of the paschal mystery’s insistence on the category of “intrinsically evil” that par - bodily redemption. Films like “Avatar” tisan activists, with the assent of many and online experiences like “Second bishops, use to separate candidates into ON THE WEB Life” herald the virtual fulfillment of this Video reflections good and evil. Lost in the process is the for the Easter season. ancient dream. Our off-screen lives, church’s moral witness to the many pro - americamagazine.org/video however, are haunted by a much more found evils that (conveniently for the pow - pervasive disconnect. Globalization erful) cannot be reduced to such a simple stretches economic relationships across moral calculus. Lacking the will for a complex debate of the world: I am fed by Guatemalans and clothed by issues and policies, we seek instead scapegoats, villains and Bangladeshis. Distance renders these life-sustaining rela - revolutionaries. We demand clarity and instant solutions. tionships abstract if not invisible, impoverishing our ability We are disgusted with the morass of compromise and poli - to imagine our own interdependence and to respond to the cy talk necessary to govern in service to the common good. dependence of others. Hans Urs von Balthasar’s great insight into the drama of In the headline dramas and quiet corners of life we salvation can point us back to the paschal mystery. The encounter the challenge, truth and grace of the paschal mys - Incarnation does not bring clarity but a deepening of the tery. Do we flee from the needs of others in denial of our drama, he wrote. Good and evil become ever harder to dis - own finitude, or do we hold on, giving our lives for others? cern as God works on many fronts and evil reacts with ever In Bruce Springsteen’s words, “In the end what you don’t more frantic vigor. Bright lines cannot be drawn; there is surrender, well, the world just strips away.” In the paschal neither a safe reservation from sin nor a realm outside the mystery, we surrender not to the world as it is but to its sur - bounds of God’s grace. We must engage the world as it is prising salvation woven by God through our mortal on all fronts amid a drama we live within rather than watch embrace. A

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14 America April 25, 2011 The Good Fight How Christians suffer, die and rise with Jesus BY JEROME KODELL

n the early 1960s, when the racial struggle was white- Baptism, then Decision hot, an interracial retreat was held at my monastery, In St. Paul’s writings there are three kinds of death: physical Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas, sponsored by Friendship death, the common lot of all; sin, a step on the road to eter - House. One participant was a recent college graduate nal death; and redemptive death, which leads to life. In aIt work in voter registration in the Mississippi delta area of Jesus, without sin, the first and third types of death coincid - eastern Arkansas. In conversation we asked him, “Isn’t that dangerous work you’re doing? We hear the Isabel Rosado, 93, protests peacefully out - reports of hatred and violence.” side the U.S. naval base in Vieques, Puerto “It’s true,” he said. “The hatred is vicious, and the Rico, in May 2000. The white ribbons punishment is violent.” woven into the fence symbolize peace. “Have you ever been hurt yourself?” “Yes, I’ve been spit on, beaten with fists, with pipes, with chains and left a bloody mess.” “But you’re pretty big. Weren’t you able to protect yourself sometimes, to fight back?” “Yes. At first I did fight back. I made some of them sorry they had attacked me. But then I realized that by fighting back I wasn’t getting anywhere. The hatred coming at me in those fists and clubs was bouncing right off me back into the air, and it could just continue to spread like electricity. I decided I would not fight back. I would let my body absorb that hatred, so that some of it would die in my body and not bounce back into the world. I now see that my job in the midst of that evil is to make my body a grave for hate.” We were all shaken by what this young man said. But what he was describing was the Gospel of Jesus. We do not fight evil with evil. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome

evil with good” (12:21). The young man’s insight was S r e t U

profound, and his courage was great. But even his e r

m

insight into what he was doing does not quite capture o r f

the majesty of the Gospel of the death and resurrec - S N C

: tion of Christ in us. Because when we make our bod - o t o h ies a grave for hate, the evil that we absorb does not p simply die. If we accept suffering in union with Christ, it becomes the dying of Jesus in us, and by the power ed perfectly. His physical death became the sacramental sign of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into resurrection. Instead of his interior death. of simply dying and no longer having an evil effect, what We Christians, Paul says, are baptized into Christ’s attacks us as sin returns to the world as grace. death. At baptism we began a lifetime of growing into redemptive death with Jesus. We empty ourselves of ego and JEROME KODELL, O.S.B., is the abbot of Subiaco Abbey in Subiaco, self and lay down our lives in love and obedience as he did. Ark. As we move toward physical death, our interior death

April 25, 2011 America 15 should also be taking place. We have no choice about phys - ical death, but the other type is up to us: We decide whether Spring we will die with Jesus. We are not doomed by our circumstances. The choice is Books from ours. Will we live from our heart with Christ, pouring our - selves out in love? Or will we shield ourselves from the world’s pains in fear and self-protection? Sometimes when I NOTRE visit a person in a nursing home who is in a desperate con - dition, I am overwhelmed by the faith and peace that come AME from that person’s smiling eyes. Love pours forth from the D dying of Jesus within. I recall Hemingway’s description of the fisherman Santiago: “Everything about him was old THE EUCHARIST IN except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and PRE-NORMAN IRELAND were cheerful and undefeated.” I return from the nursing NEIL XAVIER O’DONOGHUE home as if I had made a retreat. ISBN 978-0-268-03732-1 As the interior death grows, resurrection life also grows. SD‡SDJHV ,OOXVWUDWHGKDOIWRQHV Death and life are intertwined. Paul puts this beautifully: “Always carrying about in the body the death of Jesus, so SACRIFICE, SCRIPTURE, that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our body. AND SUBSTITUTION For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Readings in Ancient Judaism Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in and Christianity our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4:10-11). The word for “death” here EDITED BY ANN W. ASTELL is used only twice in the New Testament, both times by AND SANDOR GOODHART Paul, and it carries the nuance of “dying.” We carry about in ISBN 978-0-268-02038-5 our living bodies the dying of Jesus. SD‡SDJHV Where there is this kind of dying, there is always the res - &KULVWLDQLW\DQG-XGDLVPLQ$QWLTXLW\ urrection, the living of Jesus. And where the dying of Jesus is not happening, Paul says, neither is the resurrection hap - A CATHOLIC BRAIN TRUST pening, no matter what kind of show we put on. “If I speak The History of the Catholic in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have Commission on Intellectual love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). and Cultural Affairs, 1945 –1965 The life looks all right, but it sounds tinny. There is nothing PATRICK J. HAYES ISBN 978-0-268-03109-1 to back it up. FO‡SDJHV Available June Love as a Dying Gospel love is not easy to do, but it is quite simple to ORTHODOXY AND THE understand. It means wanting what is best for the other ROMAN PAPACY and doing what is best for the other. Feelings come and go, 8W8QXP6LQWand the but love is a matter of decisions and actions. Love is a dying Prospects of East-West Unity to oneself and one’s own wishes and preferences, putting A. J. DEVILLE the other first. Jesus set the pattern for us in his self-emp - ISBN 978-0-268-02607-3 tying death. SD‡SDJHV During his public ministry, Jesus quoted the ancient proverb, “Do to others whatever you would have them do to MORNING KNOWLEDGE you” (Mt 7:12), but he set a higher standard with his new KEVIN HART commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn ISBN 978-0-268-03093-3 14:34). The norm for love among Jesus’ disciples is laying SD‡SDJHV down one’s life for others as he did. This was not only a sin - gle act at the end for Jesus but his life program, and now it UNIVERSITY OF is the program for his disciples. In Paul’s terminology this is NOTRE DAME PRESS “carrying about the dying of Jesus” (2 Cor 4:19) or being :HEXQSGUHVVQGHGX‡7HO  “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20).

16 America April 25, 2011 We see the love, but ordinarily we do not see the inner the matter with you; don’t you know how bad it is? We fear dying of Jesus that supports it. That is the way it has to be. to expose the subterranean river of joy that flows within us. St. and Archbishop Oscar Romero were But when we spoil our interior dying by parading it, it able to make the ultimate sacrifice—martyrdom—at the loses its transforming power. Jesus himself speaks of a grain end of their lives because in a mostly hidden way they had of wheat that must die in the ground or it will never sprout been dying with Jesus in love for others moment by and give life. The dying has stopped, and there is no resur - moment, inch by inch, drop by drop in the time before. rection. In another image, Jesus speaks of the foolishness of The dying of Jesus is lived in secret. Even when we see sounding a trumpet when giving alms or of praying on a another person suffering patient - street corner to get attention: ly, we cannot see his or her inte - “Truly I tell you, they have rior decision for love. But what Feelings come and go, received their reward” (Mt 6:2). becomes evident if we are dying but love is a matter of And as Georges Bernanos’s with Jesus, whether we are con - country priest says: “When our scious of it or not, is the resur - decisions and actions. suffering has been dragged from rection light that begins to shine. one pity to another, as from one We keep hidden our pain, our mouth to another, we can no suffering, the injustice we suffer, the loneliness, the bitter longer respect or love it.” In Paul’s view, when we haul our disappointments in other people, ourselves, the church. We suffering onto the public stage, it decays. do not hide the good we do, but we do not parade it either. We rely on Jesus to be with us as we walk with him on our Signs of Resurrection own road to Calvary. We ought never to hide the signs of the Resurrection, which Often, however, we prefer the reverse: to advertise the Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, interior dying and to hide the resurrection. We want every - kindness, generosity, faithfulness (Gal 5:22). That is the dif - one to know about our pain, our stress, our hard work, the ference in the way death and resurrection are lived: the way we are misunderstood and the sacrifices we make. Yet dying is the backdrop for the resurrection, which, by con - we are embarrassed to show a resurrection face to the world, trast, is a public gift to the world, a light on a mountaintop, because if we smile people might think we are naïve. What’s the light of hope. The world knows well enough the realities

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April 25, 2011 America 17 of spiritual death: sin, hypocrisy, injus - tice, hatred and violence; it can create those for itself. But the world will see the Resurrection only through disciples who interiorize the dying of Jesus. There is no other source. Faithful disciples of Christ, including those who pass long lonely days in a hos - pital or nursing home after decades on the front lines, need to know that they are still fighting the good fight and that by offering their suffering as the dying of Jesus in them, they are transforming the world. That college student in Arkansas who let his own body absorb racial hatred also seemed to understand this. It is said that an earthquake often begins when a sliver of rock is dis - lodged deep in the earth. The sur - rounding mass adjusts slightly, which OurOur priests araree starts a chain reaction of larger adjust - ments until on the surface there is a messengers of hope cataclysm. The faithful who joins his or her suffering to Christ is a friendship waits to be born between a family in Illinois sliver of rock upsetting the sinful struc - A andand a little girl living in poverty in Honduras. Before ture of the world. A long a teenage boy in the and a parish youth groupoup in Connecticut are going to become acquainted The Unveiling of God through the exchange of encouraging letters. In Idaho a by Linda Sabbath womanwoman with grandchildren of her own will soon enter into a blessed relationship with an elderly woman in need of help in Kenya.

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18 America April 25, 2011 New Titles from Liguori Publications

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20 America April 25, 2011 BOOKS &CULTURE

SPRING BOOKS | WILLIAM J. GOULD members while insisting on a sharp distinction between religious and AN INFLUENTIAL FORCE political authority. Differences also exist among religious communities GOD’S CENTURY assertive religion, and why in some regarding the acceptability of violence, Resurgent Religion cases it assumed peaceful and demo - with some taking a pacifist position, And Global Politics cratic forms while in others it assumed others reluctantly accepting the use of By Monica Duffy Toft, violent forms, the authors focus heavi - violence in special circumstances, as in Philpott and Timothy Shah ly on two key variables: 1) political the just-war tradition, and others W. W. Norton. 276p $25.95 theology and 2) the type of relation - accepting violence as a legitimate way ship existing between religious author - to advance their religious objectives. ack in the 1960s, there was ity and political authority. Political Similarly important is a religious almost universal acceptance theology refers to “the set of ideas that community’s relationship with politi - Bamong social scientists of cal authority. Consensual indepen - the “secularization thesis,” the dence obtains when “religion and belief that as societies became state enjoy autonomy from each more modern—more economically other and are mutually content developed, technologically sophis - with this autonomy.” The classic ticated, democratic, etc.—they example is the United States. would become increasingly secular, Conflictual independence pre - to the point that religious belief vails where a religious body man - would virtually disappear. As a ages to carve out a sphere of inde - result, social scientists and the pol - pendence despite vigorous pres - icy makers who looked to them for sures by the state to control it, as guidance were surprised by the in the case of the Catholic Church prominent political role of religion in Communist . in the late 20th and early 21st cen - Consensual integration is char - turies, whether in fostering the col - acterized by mutual support lapse of or inspiring between the state and the domi - terrorism. In God’s Century , the nant religion, as in the case of pre - political scientists Monica Duffy sent-day Iran. Toft, Daniel Philpott and Timothy Finally, conflictual integration Samuel Shah (who teach at exists where religion becomes so Harvard, Notre Dame and Boston integrated with the state as to lose University, respectively) argue that all autonomy, as with the the secularization thesis has been Orthodox Church in Soviet refuted by the events of the past Russia. four decades in which we have wit - Having laid out these cate - nessed a resurgence on a global scale a religious community holds about gories, the authors devote a chapter to not simply of religious belief but of political authority and justice.” “the rise of politically assertive reli - robust political engagement by reli - Religious communities vary widely in gion.” They contend that prior to gious actors. They further contend the kinds of political theology they 1500, and despite important differ - that this resurgence of politically embrace. Some seek a theocratic con - ences, the relation of Buddhism, Islam, engaged religion gives every indication trol of the state; others emphasize per - Hinduism and Christianity to political of continuing into the foreseeable sonal piety so strongly that they authority was one of consensual inte - future. eschew all political involvement; still gration, but that in the ensuing cen - To explain this rise in politically others urge active citizenship for their turies their autonomy steadily dimin -

April 25, 2011 America 21 ished until by the late 18th century feels it should be privileged instead and note, despite Vatican II’s endorsement and up through the mid-20th century has a political theology that embraces of democratization, there were those their relationship to the state had violence for religious ends, then reli - in the church like the Argentine hier - become one of con - giously inspired ter - archy who resisted this development. flictual integration. ON THE WEB rorism may result. Similarly, Islam contains a wide range With the state so Richard Rohr, O.F.M., discusses A case in point is of perspectives, prominent among his new book, Falling Upward. dominant, the secu - americamagazine.org/podcast ’s priv - which is Sufism, which rejects violence larization thesis ileging of a particu - and promotes tolerance. seemed confirmed. lar brand of Islam, God’s Century is a very rich and Yet late in the 20th century, aspects of the Wahhabi school, which gave rise to illuminating work to which it is modernization itself, like globaliza - an Islamist opposition that ultimately impossible to do justice in a brief tion, advanced communications tech - led to the global terrorism of Al review. It will be read with profit by nology and democratization, all con - Qaeda. social scientists, students of religion tributed to religion’s political resur - Of course, where political theology and policy makers. gence by giving religious communities is concerned, there is considerable the freedom to operate and organize variation among and within different WILLIAM J. GOULD is assistant dean for ju- politically, to promote their beliefs and faiths. For example, as the authors niors at Fordham University, New York City. to receive support from their co-reli - gionists in other countries. Drawing upon an enormous range RON HANSEN of data and concrete examples, Toft, Philpott and Shah then discuss the FATHERLESS SON influence of religion over the past four decades on global democratization, TOWNIE noon parties with drugs and sullen terrorism, civil wars and work for A Memoir strangers were common in the house. peace and justice, demonstrating the By Andre Dubus III Andre’s younger brother Jeb was importance in each case of a religious W. W. Norton. 400p $25.95 focused on a hidden life in his room, actor’s political theology and its level practicing classical guitar and having of independence from the state. For an affair with an art teacher some 15 example, in discussing the prominent When Andre Dubus III was 10 years years older than he. And the oldest role of the Catholic Church in foster - old, his father, Andre, called “Pop,” left son, Andre III, was furiously learning ing the Third Wave of democratiza - his wife and four small children to be boxing and inflating his muscles with tion that took place from 1974 to with a pretty, rich girl at weightlifting in order to 1991, they note the church’s adoption tiny Bradford Junior protect his kin from the at the of a College, where he horrific, jail-worthy vio - political theology committed to taught English and cre - lence of “the Avenues.” human rights and political freedom, ative writing. The for - The senior Andre including religious freedom, as well as mer Mrs. Patricia Dubus was increasingly its decision to reject consensual inte - Dubus first found work becoming an acclaimed gration as its model of church-state as a nurse’s aide, then writer of graceful, sensi - relations in favor of one closely resem - returned to college and tive, acutely observed short bling consensual independence. This got a job in social ser - stories during this period, new stance, coupled with its transna - vices. But she was gone but he was stunningly tional organization and formidable all day and exhausted oblivious to what was hap - resources, enabled the church to be when home. Even with pening to his abandoned extremely effective in promoting Pop’s alimony, the fami - children. Immersed in his democratization around the world. ly of five was forced to live in squalor fiction writing and teaching, he Religiously inspired terrorism, on a diet of sodas and Frito casseroles seemed not to notice the filth or lack of meanwhile, often results from a repres - in one cheap rented house after anoth - food in his former wife’s house, or per - sive regime that privileges a particular er in the failed mill town of Haverhill, haps he just felt he could do nothing faith or branch of a faith to the exclu - Mass. Soon the oldest girl, Suzanne, about it. Inviting Andre III over for a sion of others. If the excluded faith was falling in with losers, and after - rare Sunday alone with his father, Pop

22 America April 25, 2011 New Releases from ’s University Press

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April 25, 2011 America 23 seeks to fill the barbecuing time by and I knew then that if I wanted to softened him. And his son was a playing catch but finds out his son has stay this awake and alive, if I wanted changed man, too, a husband and never learned to throw a baseball and to stay me, I would have to keep writ - father who had given up his vicious never heard of his Pop’s beloved Red ing.” responses to others after recognizing Sox, since his father never thought to Andre Dubus III would later pub - how much his own aggressiveness cost invite him to a game. When he is later lish The Cagekeeper and Other Stories him, both emotionally and spiritually. introduced to the woman who will and the novel Bluesman , but it was in Looking into the New Testament become his father’s third wife, he’ll 2000, when Oprah Winfrey chose his in his distress, he chanced upon the have to ask where Manhattan is, and House of Sand and Fog for her book line, “Love one another.” His frankly when later he is serving drinks at a club, and which was later made into an confessional, even-tempered, often party, he will hear about Harvard Law Academy Award-nominated film, that shocking memoir is a testament not School and have no clue about it. he found a public recognition far wider just to a stubborn, against-all-odds It is only when Andre III enrolls in than his father’s. survival but to a healed man who has Bradford that father and son get to Andre senior was dead by then, found the redemptive power in fulfill - know each other, but then it is as hale having suffered a heart attack at age 62 ing that command. and hearty drinking buddies, with Pop after being confined to a wheelchair interested in the same co-eds and too for 12 years following a freak car acci - RON HANSEN ’s novel A Wild Surge of much impressed with his son’s willing - dent that dramatically changed and Guilty Passion will be published in June. ness to launch himself into a merciless street fight with anyone foolish enough to insult him. But Andre III THOMAS P. RAUSCH can still be humiliated by the under - graduate girl whom he overhears say - MISSION-DRIVEN ing, “That’s Dubus’s son. Look at him. He’s such a townie .” CLOUDS OF WITNESSES writer from Chicago, tells the stories “I’d heard the word before,” he Christian Voices From Africa of 17 men and women from Africa, reports. “They used it for the men And Asia India, Korea and who played they’d see at Ronnie D’s bar down in By Mark A. Noll and significant roles in planting Bradford Square, the place where my Carolyn Nystrom Christianity in those countries. The father drank with students and InterVarsity Press. 286p $25 authors acknowledge that their survey friends. It’s where some men from the is fragmentary and preliminary. It is town drank, too—plumbers and elec - If Protestants came late to missionary largely limited to those formed by the tricians and millworkers, Sheetrock work, at least in part because of the evangelical movement, though they hangers and housepainters and off- Calvinist doctrine of include the stories of sev - duty cops: townies.” Andre III escaped predestination that eral others not easily cate - the stigma by quitting school and then made evangelization gorized and of one Roman heading west to the University of seem unnecessary, they Catholic, Ignatius Kung Texas, where he became a Marxist, more than made up for Pin-Mei, bishop of earned a degree in sociology and took their tardiness in the , who spent 30 up meditation. And then, in discon - late 19th and 20th cen - years in prison, more than tent and desperation back in turies, and those they one-third of his life, for Massachusetts, he discovered the yen influenced have helped refusing to join the gov - to write fiction just as his father had, change the face of global ernment-sponsored and he sold his first-ever story to Christianity. At the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Playboy magazine. beginning of the last Association. In 1979 Pope “I felt more like me than I ever had, century, more than four- John Paul II named him a as if the years I’d lived so far had fifths of the world’s cardinal in pectore , though formed layers of skin and muscle over Christians lived in Europe or North Pin-Mei did not learn of this until 10 myself that others saw as me when the America. Today, about two-thirds of years later. real one had been underneath all them live outside those areas. This The legacies of some were mixed. along, and writing—even writing book, by Mark Noll of Notre Dame John Chilembwe, born in Malawi, badly—had peeled away those layers, and Carolyn Nystrom, a freelance studied for more than two years at

24 America April 25, 2011 Lynchburg, Va., where his contact into a Christian family in the south - of developing a theology by and for with American racism radicalized his east of India, was an evangelist who Africans. Today there are evangelical own views on race and justice. On his contributed to the growth of the theological schools and journals in return to Africa, he worked to protect Y.M.C.A. in India and later became and elsewhere in Africa that African rights and led an uprising the first Indian bishop in the reflect his influence. Others sought to against British colonial powers in Anglican Church and its second non- establish indigenous Christian com - Malawi in 1915. John Sung, a Chinese Briton. Shi Meiyu, also known as munities free of denominational evangelist with a doctorate in chem - Mary Stone, was born in Jiujiang to a entanglements. In India, Sundar istry from the United States, preached family converted by Methodist mis - Singh, a mystic born of a Sikh family in a histrionic style like that of Billy sionaries; she studied at the in northwest India, sought to integrate Sunday; at one point he spent six University of Michigan. Returning to Indian models of spirituality into his months in a psychiatric hospital. Y. T. China as a medical doctor, she found - understanding of Christian faith. In Wu (Wu Yaozong), a Chinese follow - ed a hospital and later a nursing his words, “Indians need the Water of er of the social gospel, moved from school at Jiujiang, which combined Life, but not the European cup.” The pacifism after ’s brutal occupa - medical training with evangelism. “Three-Self Movement,” churches that tion of much of China to an embrace Today her school is part of Jiujiang were “self-governing, self-supporting, of Mao Zedong’s Communism. The University, a four-campus institution and self-propagating,” was not an leading role he played in the growth of with over 30,000 students. invention of the Chinese Communist the “Three-Self Movement” was at the A number of those whose stories Party but grew out of the idea of cost of other Christian communities are told have helped shape both indigenous local churches encouraged that remained unregistered or church life and Christian theology in by missionaries like the Americans belonged to larger ecclesial commu - their countries. Some recognized the Rufus Anderson (1796-1880) and nions, even if it helped Protestant importance of developing a truly John Nevius (1829-93) and the Christianity survive the dark days of inculturated theology. Byang Kato, a British missionary Roland Allen Mao’s regime. Nigerian, early on saw the importance (1868-1947). In China, missionaries The stories of many in the book continue to inspire. Albert Luthuli, a TWO-WEEK COURSE IN CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Zulu chief born in 1898 in Bulawayo in what is now Zimbabwe, was a lay preacher inspired by the doctrine of HIGGINS, PH.D. creation in the imago Dei , the image of God. A leader in the African National The Spirituality and Thought of Thomas Merton June 20-July 1, 2011 Weeknights 6:30-9:30 PM Congress, he fought for justice all his life and received the Nobel Peace Prize Course may be taken for three MA-level credit hours in 1960. , from north - (with pre- and post-course assignments) or may be audited (only reading required). ern Uganda, was a member of the Registration deadline is June 6, 2011. For more information, contact the Office of the Registrar at [email protected] Acholi tribe. As Anglican archbishop of Kampala, he worked regularly with OBLATE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 285 Oblate Drive · San Antonio, Texas 78216 · (210) 341-1366 · www.ost.edu Catholic leaders. After the diverting of an Air flight to Entebbe airport and the dramatic rescue of its Israeli TO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW EB0909 9

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April 25, 2011 America 25 like John Sung and W. T. Wu favored were killed in the mid-19th century. the memories, but he regards the fact house churches, which are now grow - During the Boxer Rebellion (1900-1), that “they keep following me around” ing rapidly in China. some 4,000 Protestants and 30,000 as a “privileged insight.” For him, the Because of the evangelical focus of Catholics died in China. But the eerie proximity, the sense of his life as the book, Catholic missionary work is remarkable stories of these African a “compact, little thing,” of having a mentioned only in passing, but it was and Asian men and women, ordained “semi-permeable soul,” of inhabiting “a significant. Beginning in the 16th and and lay, professionally trained or stark world”—the book is poetic, as 17th centuries, Jesuit, Franciscan and charismatic, whose zeal and commit - obsessed with naming and renaming other Catholic missionaries in China ment planted the faith so widely is the condition as analyzing it—is both and Japan created Christian communi - inspirational for Catholics as well as the door to faith at its elemental level ties that endured to modern times. In evangelicals at a time when the and the reason moderns find it 1952, when Western missionaries had Catholic Church is becoming more increasingly hard to enter. to leave China, there were one million conscious of its evangelical mission. For if Kugel’s subject is the “small” Protestants and three million state of mind, his goad was his hospi - Catholics. These Christians paid a tal-bed reading on scientific explana - THOMAS P. RAUSCH, S.J. , is the T. Marie high price for their faith. An estimated Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology at tions for religion and the New Atheist 8,000 mostly lay Korean Catholics Loyola Marymount University. literature that cites them. In the Valley is Kugel’s own idiosyncratic volley in the God/no-God wars. He found DAVID VAN BIEMA himself both fascinated and exasperat - ed by evolutionary biologists’ con - REASONS TO BELIEVE tention that religion is a “hyperactive agency detection device,” the reflex of IN THE VALLEY helplessness, because of the “eerie attributing agency to every random OF THE SHADOW proximity” to death illustrated in the ripple of the tall grass because back in On the Foundations Complaints—that we profess faith. the day, a saber-tooth tiger would O f Religious Belief Tragedy lies in the loss of that sense of often jump out. As big predators By James L. Kugel helplessness. declined, goes the argument, the Free Press. 256p $26 This insight did not come cheap. hypersensitivity to inexplicable phe - Ten years ago, when he was 54, Kugel’s nomena lived on; and God or gods, the One of the abiding mysteries in the doctors diagnosed him with cancer (he ultimate Agent, became the (erro - Book of Psalms, a work that James never specifies what neous) receptacle for all Kugel, Starr Professor of Hebrew kind) and gave him two the corresponding emo - Literature emeritus at Harvard, has years, perhaps five, to live. tion. studied probably as fruitfully as any Obviously, he has beaten Kugel demurs. He living person, is the sudden pivot in the odds—the doctors concludes that however many of the so-called Psalms of now say he is cancer-free. archaic our agency detec - Lamentation (or Complaints). Four- (In the years since, in fact, tion device may be, it fifths of the way through, songs he produced his magnifi - remains valid regarding intensely devoted to bemoaning their cent and provocative How the one irreducible mys - authors’ dire straits abruptly shrug off to Read the Bible .) But tery of material life: their sackcloth and seem to proclaim, during his illness and death. Our error, really “Despite the fact that my bones are grueling treatment, he our calamity, which he melting and my heart failing, I assert inhabited the place tracks back as far as the my faith in You.” where, as he puts it, the early Middle Ages, is that In his latest, most personal book, In background music suddenly stopped as we have gradually subtracted phe - the Valley of the Shadow , Kugel —that is, “the music of daily life…of nomena from the inexplicable list we advances a proposal that solves that infinite time and possibilities…now have come to think of our own role as particular mystery, although it extends suddenly…replaced by nothing.” progressively “bigger,” to the point beyond the psalms: that rather than Most people lucky enough to expe - where all agents outside of those huge “Despite all that,” it is “because of all rience that state and survive would selves have been crowded out, render - that”—because of the experience of hurry to forget it. Kugel does not chase ing faith incomprehensible. At which

26 America April 25, 2011 FFoodood forfor HHeart,eart, MMindind & SSouloul

Life Is Hard This Our Exile The Wow but God Is A Spiritual Journey Factor Good with the Refugees Bringing the Catholic An Inquiry into of East Africa Faith to Life Suffering JAMES MARTIN S.J. WILLIAM J. O’MALLEY ADELE GONZALEZ With a new Afterword Catholic adults who by the author A masterful teacher have grown bored with Combining spiritual addresses the perennial the same old sermons writing, travel narrative, questions about God, and wonder if their and humor, James suffering and evil, and faith still has anything Martin recalls his time offers authentic, sincere, and informed dynamic to say are brought up-to-date as a young Jesuit working with the refu- answers. Based on sound theology and on Catholic understandings of God, the gees in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. made real with personal experiences, Bible, ourselves, our origins, and our “His spiritual journey becomes ours in Gonzalez offers understanding and future. Here are eye-opening Catholic this stirring, joy-filled, beautiful book.” consolation for individuals or groups. truths that will make the reader exclaim, —RON HANSEN 978-1-57075-926-0 pbk $16.00 “Wow! I never thought of it that way!” 978-1-57075-923-9 pbk $18.00 978-1-57075-927-7 pbk $16.00

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Think and No Turning Time and Act Anew Back Eternity How Poverty in My Summer with The Uncollected America Affects Us Daddy King Writings of Malcolm All and What We GURDON BREWSTER Muggeridge Can Do about It “ Brewster’s book is Edited with an Introduction LARRY SNYDER valuable not only for by Nicholas Flynn Foreword by The near collapse of the record of his own Mother Teresa of Calcutta our economy provides awakenings, but for Gathers together for the us with an opportunity the personal anecdotes first time some of the to thinkh kd and act anew in dealing with the about King Sr., who emerges as a most brilliant journalism of the twentieth problem of entrenched poverty. “Anyone passionate, wise man with a sense of century and offers inspirational insight into looking for the place to start the debate humor equal to his sense of justice” the professional and private journey of one would do well to begin exactly where —Publisher’s Weekly of the great writers of our time. Fr. Snyder does.” —E.J. DIONNE, JR. 978-1-57075-836-2 pbk $16.00 978-1-57075-905-5 pbk $24.00 978-1-57075-904-8 pbk $16.00

www.maryknollmall.org ORBIS BOOKS From your bookseller or direct Maryknoll, NY 10545 1-800-258-5838 Follow us on Facebook point death, the exception, becomes death’s starkness and the only useful potter: “He does not understand” (Isa unbearably terrifying. Nor does Kugel response) to Leonard Cohen to 29:16). think that moderns can recover our Wittgenstein to the ancient radio Are such words blasphemous? Was former sense of the cosmos: “There we punch line “Was you dere, Charlie?” to God foolish making us as we are? Or hang, so big that we can barely see that the enduring puzzle of why we hit the was God inept? Did the one who fash - which is real but…outside ourselves, elevator button when it clearly has ioned us misunderstand our makeup and utterly unable to return to what already been pressed. or our propensities? But who of us has was an earlier, truer sense of things.” In the Valley of the Shadow ’s other not at times harbored some of these This is plausible but hardly conven - virtue is Kugel’s indelible insistence on same questions? Who has not asked: tionally uplifting, first, because one his experience, in all its small, eerie Why did God make the world the way hates to feel this lost. And also because particularity. At one point he com - it is? Realizing that these are questions even if we could recover the old way of pares himself to Tiresias, the mythical posed by believers, and devout believ - seeing, we would regain our reason to Greek who (involuntarily) shuttled ers at that, we can turn again to the believe, but not (by this particular back and forth from male to female first words of the poem and perhaps argument) any content for that belief. and back again. This rendered him even make them our own. This is an occupational hazard of uniquely wise, but inquirers some - The poems in God’s Invitation: arguing God/no-God; but Kugel once times found his wisdom disquieting. Meditations on a Covenant Relationship wrote a book called On Being a Jew , so In the admittedly vast American genre flow from Thomas Flowers’s reflec - presumably there was some kind of of near-death tales, it is hard to imag - tions on episodes from his own life, faith ready when he needed it. He does ine another book simultaneously so coupled with aspects of various bibli - not explore it here. tough-minded, so uncanny and yet, cal characters or events that somehow Offsetting the aridity of his desti - despite all, so enjoyable. Kugel’s last relate to those episodes. The 20 reflec - nation, however, is the ride. Kugel has line is, “From way up here…I can see tions are creatively gathered under five always worn his great erudition not you all, floating.” What makes this headings, each directly corresponding just lightly but alluringly, and a mem - unnerving is that he is still down here, to one of the Old Testament oir/polemic frees him as never before. writing. What makes us grateful is the covenants: the covenant that God ini - He unveils a stream of perfectly same thing. tiated with creation (Gn 9:16-17); framed illustrations, associations and with and his descendants digressions featuring everything from (Gn 17:5-7); with the Israelites at DAVID VAN BIEMA is writing a book on the African witchcraft to the psalms history and cultural interpretation of the Sinai (Ex 20:5); with David and his (exemplifying art that expresses both Psalms. dynasty (2 Sm 7:16); and with all those open to a new covenant (Jer 31:31-33). Flowers, a Jesuit scholastic, DIANNE BERGANT artfully weaves together threads that are variously colored by his own expe - GOODNESS IN OUR MIDST rience, vivid strands taken from bibli - cal accounts and others GOD’S INVITATION nitely a believer, this that bear especially the Meditations on a Covenant poet still appears to be hue of covenant theology. Relationship something of a skeptic, The poems are Flowers’s By Thomas Flowers, S.J. wondering about God’s responses to the ways he Paulist Press. 128p $12.95 (paperback) intentions, the value of sees God active in his own the Creator’s creation life. They are personal If you made us for yourself and perhaps the skill prayers that reveal aspects You truly are a fool. with which God creates. of his own spirituality and —“Credo” Nonetheless, the senti - explain the familiarity ment in the poem is with which he speaks to If the first words of this poem do not reminiscent of a passage God. get the reader’s attention, very little found in the Book of Poets always reveal will. They are obviously words of a Isaiah. Employing the themselves in their poetry. believer, one who acknowledges the image of God as a potter, the prophet Flowers’s self-revelation is twofold, in existence of the Creator. Though defi - wonders if the vessel dares say of the his poem-prayers and in his recollec -

28 America April 25, 2011 tions. Though very personal, these ciousness in the face of them. Judging and unreliable human beings. That is reflections are not self-indulgent or by human standards, one might say why this initial poem, after pointing self-promoting. that it was foolish out God’s graciousness, ends: Rather, they present ON THE WEB of God to make to the reader exam - Search America ’s women and men And so you are a fool, ples of how one’s book review archive. who, at the slight - Which is, of course, americamagazine.org/books reflection on events in est provocation, Why I love you. one’s life can illumi - would fail to live nate the deeper meaning of biblical up to their potential. God is not bound DIANNE BERGANT, C.S.A. , a former Word columnist for America , is professor of biblical stories and how, comparably, reflection to human standards, however, but lav - studies at Catholic Theological Union in on biblical stories can provide insight ishes extraordinary blessings on weak Chicago. into the religious significance of per - sonal events. The events that he describes are quite commonplace— struggling as a teacher, working in a BILL WILLIAMS retirement center, enjoying the ocean. But he came to see a much deeper real - REMEMBERING RAY ity in these everyday experiences— realizing that God had accomplished A WIDOW’S STORY days of her husband’s death, the much good through him, seeing the A Memoir author’s “consoling fantasy” is to “swal - beauty of human beings in the broken - By Joyce Carol Oates low as many pills as seem feasible, to ness of life, allowing the magnificence Ecco. 432p $27.99 put myself to sleep; that is, to sleep of creation to recreate him. His reflec - forever; for truly I want to die, I am so tions invite the reader to ponder her or Millions of readers are familiar with very tired.” Oates accumulates bottles his own life in order to discover there the oeuvre of Joyce Carol Oates, who of pills for depression and worries that the goodness of God, even in the has written well over 100 she will become addicted. midst of the ordinary. books of fiction, short Oates is assailed by a Flowers’s observations on the bibli - stories, plays and poetry voice she identifies as a cal stories stem from his interest in and is the recipient of basilisk, a mythical lizard- them as stories. He does not analyze numerous literary like monster that insists them as a scholar might, nor does he awards. she is “utterly read into them meaning that is not In A Widow’s Story unloved…of no more already there. He lifts the characters Oates describes in worth than a pail of off the biblical pages and introduces wrenching detail her garbage.” She is so para - them to the reader as women and men excruciating grief after lyzed by grief that she has of flesh and blood, people who strug - the death of her hus - neither the physical nor gle with the realities of life as we all do. band, Raymond Smith, mental energy to begin The difference between them and us is following a short illness writing again. “No more the fact that their stories have endings, three years ago. She is could I plan a new novel endings that we know. We, on the overcome by a “kind of visceral terror” than I could trek across the Sahara or other hand, are still moving toward the and sinks into depression, loses Antarctica,” she says. endings of our stories. But that is pre - weight, endures sleepless nights and Momentary consolation comes cisely why Flowers has us meet them. blames herself for not taking better when she discovers an unsent The ending of their stories assures us care of her husband. Valentine card “To My Beloved Wife” that God will always be with us, as “I just feel exhausted, groggy and a short phone message left the God was with them. around people and want to crawl away very night Smith died: “This is your The personal reflections in this vol - somewhere and sleep,” she tells a honey calling.” ume lay bare human limitations and friend. The author effectively uses repeti - neediness. The initial poem, with its She struggles with resentment, tion, returning again and again to the startling beginning, and all the poems despair, rage, bitterness, fury and guilt days before and immediately after the that follow reflect not on these limita - and often thinks about suicide, but in death of her 77-year-old husband, the tions or neediness but on God’s gra - the end rejects that option. Within highly regarded founder and editor of

April 25, 2011 America 29 The Ontario Review, who awoke early about her husband’s early life, wonder - death, she gives no hint of it here. Yet one morning in February 2008 not ing if she ever really knew him. Her she acknowledges being touched when feeling well. Oates insisted on taking husband had grown up in a strict her friend Gloria Vanderbilt gave her a him to the emergency room at nearby Catholic family at a time when many small statue of St. Theresa. Princeton Medical Center in New such hoped that one of their On the last page of this intensely Jersey, where he was diagnosed with sons would become a priest. Smith felt memoir, Oates briefly mentions a pneumonia. They both expected a entered a Catholic seminary at age 18, small dinner party for some Princeton quick recovery but within a week but within months he quit, which led colleagues, including a neuroscientist Oates received a call, at 12:38 a.m., to estrangement from his father, who she was meeting for the first time. requesting that she come quickly. believed he would be held responsible What she does not say is that she and When she arrived at the hospital, her if his son went to hell. Whenever the neuroscientist later married. husband was dead. She cannot grasp Oates tried to bring up the subject of That tantalizing and unexpected that awful fact and wishes she could Smith’s seminary experience and loss turn of events may have served as a “stop time…reverse time.” of faith, he refused to talk about it. bridge that led Oates from crippling Library shelves are filled with books Oates, too, was raised in a Catholic grief to a new, happier life, which I hope about grief. Some people may compare family, although no one in her family will become the subject of a sequel. this one with Joan Didion’s affecting discussed religion. Surprisingly, the memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking , author says almost nothing about her BILL WILLIAMS is a freelance writer in West Hartford, Conn., and a former editorial writer which became a widely praised best- own spiritual beliefs. If she ever won - for The Hartford Courant. He is a member of seller six years ago. But comparing ders what happens after physical the National Book Critics Circle. grief memoirs misses the point that there is no single way to grieve. For Oates, grief is “like a sodden overcoat FILMMAKING | PAUL MARIANI the widow must wear.” We do not learn how long the SEARCHERS author suffered or how she is doing today because the book covers a period James Franco, Hart Crane and me of only a few months after her hus - band’s death. You’re standing on the fourth step of You look into the mirror and swear Oates struggles, without success, to an old brownstone stoop in Brooklyn that you are looking at the ghost of find meaning in her numbing grief. “I Heights, N.Y., on a cold, raw, cloudy your father and grandfather, those am no longer convinced that there is morning in early December. It’s 7:30 quintessential New Yorkers who lived any inherent value in grief,” she writes. a.m. and you’ve been up since 6:00 just across the East River in Stieglitz’s “Or, if there is, if wisdom springs from a.m., when two young women came to time. the experience of terrible loss, it’s a wis - the door and began transforming your Now you’re looking into the eyes of dom one might do without.” She won - 70-year-old self into the 58-year-old the actor James Franco, who is on the ders if a widow’s grief is “sheer vanity; photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who cement sidewalk below you. He is narcissism; the pretense that one’s loss was married to the painter Georgia speaking fast and reverently up at you. is so special, so very special, that there O’Keeffe and who reinvented photog - He is dressed in a handsome old camel has never been a loss quite like it.” raphy for the modern age. You’re wear - coat and striped sweater. He—or The book quotes extensively from ing an authentic suit of clothes dating rather the poet Hart Crane, whom he e-mail messages to and from Oates, back to the 1920s, an overcoat that you is portraying—is telling you how although in many cases she leaves out can barely button, a fedora and a pair much your photographs, especially the the sender’s name, believing it is of leather shoes that must weigh five new batch you took up at Lake George “unconscionable” to humiliate others pounds, which you must negotiate earlier that year, have spoken to his in the name of full disclosure. She rails with. They have removed your own own sense of the kinetic possibilities of against a deluge of sympathy baskets glasses and given you a pair of wire- the image for the poetry he wants to sent by well-meaning friends. She rimmed glasses with little oval lenses create. tosses many of them into the trash and through which the world looks dis - By which you (you meaning the pleads, “No! No more of this! Please torted and teary. Then there’s the biographer and poet, but likewise the have mercy.” fluffed-out graying hair and that gray- dead photographer Stieglitz standing Oates becomes intensely curious white moustache to top it all off. there) take him to mean the sense of a

30 America April 25, 2011 majestic, larger-than-life image Three participants in the filming of "The Broken Tower" (left to right): Vince Jolivette, a producer; Paul Mariani that will lend a myth to God. (as Alfred Stieglitz); and James Franco (Hart Crane). You (the poet) take this to mean a kind of dynamic stillness, the still point of the turning world, what he—the poet—has found in that icon of New York: the 140-year-old Brooklyn Bridge that strides the East River just blocks from here. “Apples and gable,” you say after a nervous hesitation, which you hope will come across as a considered profundity. It is spo - ken with a slight Jewish- German accent to recreate what you take Stieglitz’s voice to be, considering he was raised in Hoboken, N.J., and spent 15 years of his youth studying pho - tography in Berlin before returning to the States. You have practiced those three words before a mirror countless times, and you are still afraid you’re going to blurt out “apples and oranges,” but you don’t. The scene is shot once to the quiet applause of the young film crew taking all of this in. James looks pleased. Good, he says, but let’s do a second of the East River and New York. The his mother’s family name to replace take for insurance, and we do. We date was April 27, 1932, just before Harold when he reinvented himself shake hands and Hart Crane walks off noon—eight bells. He had been and moved to New York) was going to down the deserted street to see Charlie severely beaten by members of the show America a sense of new possibil - Chaplin in the classic film“The Kid.” ship’s crew hours earlier after trying to ities. He saw Walt Whitman as his gay You turn and walk up the steps as your hit on one of them, even as his fiancée brother-in-arms and Isadora Duncan moustache begins to slide down over was in her cabin sleeping. as the courageous figure who would your lips. Hart Crane—Harold Hart remake dance and movement for the Crane—born in 1899 in Garrettsville, young century. When T. S. Eliot’s The The Movie of the Book Ohio, raised in Cleveland, was the Waste Land was published in 1922— Two years ago, James Franco’s agent e- only child of a set of horribly mis - good, Hart thought, but so damned mailed me to say Franco was interest - matched parents who seemed always dead—he saw it as his duty to rewrite ed in turning my biography of Hart to be going at one that epic and give it N a m Crane, The Broken Tower, into a another. The boy an optimistic end - D ON THE WEB o o Karen Sue Smith reviews g movie. The book’s title is after the last from the Midwest ing mirrored in the

N

o the film “Poetry.”

S poem Crane wrote before he killed meant to change Brooklyn Bridge, a j americamagazine.org/culture / m

o himself at the age of 32 by jumping American literature which, against the C . g j from the stern of the S.S. Orizaba as those other two odds of Tammany S o t o somewhere off the coast of Florida. He Midwesterners, Ernest Hemingway Hall and business-as-usual, had actu - h p : o

t was returning, broken in spirit, to the and F. Scott Fitzgerald, would also do. ally been built and stood now, like a o h p “chained bay waters,” as he called them, In spite of everything, Hart (he took New World cathedral, replete with its

April 25, 2011 America 31 Gothic towers and choiring strings the 1950s, James Dean, even to the down at once to business. We went playing on by the North Atlantic day point of taking his first name and ren - over the most recent cut of the film— and night, sleepless and spanning the dering Dean in a biopic. His portrayal black and white, 100 minutes—that river of time below. of that tragic actor, who died in a car had been delivered to me the night “How many dawns, chill from his crash on a highway in central Califor- before at my home 90 miles to the rippling rest,” Crane would write from nia back in 1955, still awes me. west. What about Robert Lowell’s his rooms facing the East River and “If James says he’s going to do take on the poet in his “Words for the bridge itself, rising like Rip Van something,” Miles Levy, his agent, told Hart Crane”? What was Lowell’s take Winkle from his long sleep into the me one August morning 20 months on Crane’s homosexuality? What was vision of those white buildings down ago in a hotel down in Soho, “he does Hart Crane’s vision of America, com - in Manhattan’s business district, trans - it.” I took that statement with a New ing as it did 70 years after Whitman’s figured by the morning light reflecting Yorker’s grain of salt, but the truth is Leaves of Grass and the bloodletting of back across the river, the Woolworth that—if James says he is going to do the Civil War and the Spanish- skyscraper rising into the heavens like something, he does it. I’ve been lucky American War and ? a vision of some New Jerusalem: enough to work with him and his good What about Allen Ginsberg’s take friend Vince Jolivette, often via on Hart Crane? After all, James had How many dawns, chill from his Blackberry and e-mails back and forth, rendered Ginsberg in his film adapta - rippling rest forth and back, about every conceiv - tion of the legal proceedings that The seagull’s wings shall dip and able question under the sun, such as stemmed from the publication of his pivot him, poets and biographers don’t normally long poem, “Howl,” back in the late Shedding white rings of tumult, deal with, but which actors and direc - ’50s. What about the pacing of the building high tors do—everything from translations film he was creating in what he calls Over the chained bay waters of Catullus’s salty language (in the Twelve Voyages—named after Crane’s Liberty— original Latin) to the Danish accent of own “Voyages” sequence? What about Hart Crane’s lover, Emil Opffer, to the the voiceovers? What about the flam - A new day, a new dawn, a new era, music Crane would have heard in boyance of Crane’s lifestyle, wolfing a brave announcement more than a Taxco as he beat the ancient Aztec down sailors in Brooklyn or Paris or question, shaped by this gull, this joke, drums in the broken tower of the Cuba or Mexico? How to reconcile this sod, this Charlie Chaplin figure in Catholic cathedral there. that with the almost mystical sensibil - baggy pants and bowler, who would ity of the man? either prevail or die trying. The Searching Heart What about the juxtaposition of This energy, this promise, this bril - James recently flew into Boston’s 1920s jazz pieces against the recurrent liance, this tragic dance that was Hart Logan Airport on the red-eye out of “Dona nobis pacem” one hears? Or the Crane’s short life, I have learned to my Los Angeles, where he was picked up crash of waves against the shore, the amazement, is what the young James in a black limo by his driver and wind brushing against the trees along Franco, now 32, has captured in his deposited at the Crowne Plaza in the Seine in the Paris sequence James filming of The Broken Tower. Franco is Newton, Mass., where I waited for filmed months ago? Or the low bellow a brilliant young actor who seems to him with three pots of coffee, skim of a cow in a field somewhere on the have modeled himself after that icon of milk, granola and fresh fruit. We sat Isle of Pines off Cuba? Or—even more poignantly—the long, ineluctable M œ¦š¤ MŠš¡Ž£Š J Ž£¦“¤ RŽ¤¡ŽŠ¤ Hœ¦£Ž silence of the heart in search of C Ž—Ž‹¡Š¤“š‘ ၹၸၸY ŽŠ¡£! answers? It is the search that holds, I have ’Ž“¡¤’—ŠŒŽœœ¤¤’ŽŠ­Ž¤¡ŽŠ¤œ¨Ž˜Žš¤““š¤¤’Žš“¤Ž¤Š¤Ž£ come to see over these past months, Centennial Speakers’ Series Present: Hart Crane and James Franco and the biographer together as one. James Martin, S.J.  Ž£¦“¤ ¦“Ž¤¤œ Culture Editor ှ—˜œ£¤ဿ¨Ž¡­¤’“š‘ PAUL MARIANI, poet, biographer and mem - oirist, former poetry editor of America , is the America Magazine Monday,May9,2011 University Professor of English at Boston 7:30p.m. College, where James Franco’s adaptation of  Mariani’s biography of Hart Crane, The Phone:718.727.3844Website:mountmanresa.org Broken Tower, was screened before a large FredHerron,InterimExecutiveDirector audience of students on April 15.

32 America April 25, 2011 NEW CITY PRESS NewSpring 2011 Releases

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Speakers: Barbara Reid, OP Robin Ryan, CP Peter Bisson Patrick Byrne David Burrell The Gospel of John God and the Mystery of Moira Carley M. Shawn Copeland Patrick Daly Dianne Bergant, CSA Human Suffering Eileen DeNeeve Robert Doran Dominic Doyle Psalms and Wisdom Scott Alexander Philipp Fluri Richard Grallo John Haughey Literature Christian-Muslim Relations Charles Hefling Glenn Hughes C. Jacobs-Vandegeer Edward Foley, Capuchin Orlando Espín The New Missal Latino/a Theology and Paul Kidder Chae Young Kim Thomas Kohler Mark Francis, CSV Ministry Joseph Komonchak Paul LaChance Greg Lauzon Liturgy and Culture Richard Liddy Robert Luby William Mathews Michael McCarthy Francis McLaughlin Ken Melchin Mark Miller Gilles Mongeau Joseph Mudd All courses can be taken for credit or for audit. For a complete William E. Murnion Elizabeth Murray Matt Petillo list of courses and their descriptions, as well as how to apply, Gordon Rixon Randy Rosenberg Armando Rugarcia go to www.ctu.edu or contact: Sallie Latkovich, CSJ, at 773.371.5436 or [email protected]. R.J. Snell Paul St. Amour Ryoko Tamura Beth Toft Michael Vertin Jeremy Wilkins

Fred Lawrence, Director, Lonergan Workshop www.ctu.edu Theology Department, Boston College 5401 S Cornell Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60615 Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. [email protected] (H) 617.543.9853 (O) 617.552.8095 Preparing effective leaders for the Church

34 America April 25, 2011 CLASSIFIED Baltimore, MD 21210; or send e-mail to tkulbic - Dallas, 1845 E. Northgate Drive, Irving, TX 75062. [email protected]. More information on the School of Ministry is avail - able on our Web site: www.udallas.edu/ministry. Books VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF THE - CONCILIO VATICANO II: CONCEPTOS Y OLOGY. Qualified candidates are invited to apply SUPUESTOS. A new publication on Vatican II in Wills for a one-year, non-tenure-track position as Visiting Please remember America in your will. Our legal title Spanish, appropriate for Hispanic study groups: Assistant Professor of Theology for the School of is: America Press Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New www.vaticanoii.com. Ministry of the University of Dallas. The starting York, NY 10019. date is Aug. 27, 2011. The person selected for this Institutes position will hold a terminal degree in theology, To submit an ad for America’s print or web classified visit 2011 SUMMER INSTITUTE, Oblate School of liturgical studies, catechetics, pastoral or practical our Web site, www.americamagazine.org. Ads may also Theology, June 20-22: “Theology and the Arts.” theology, religious education or a related field. be submitted by e-mail to: [email protected]; by Keynotes: Kathleen Norris, Mary Jo Leddy, Ron Applicants should have significant experience teach - fax to (928) 222-2107; by postal mail to: Classified Rolheiser, O.M.I., plus break-out sessions on top - ing adult learners. Applicants should submit a cover Department, America , 106 West 56th St., New York, ics related to many of the arts. Registration: $90. letter, C.V. and names of three references to: Search NY 10019. We do not accept ad copy over the phone. For 285 Oblate Drive, San Antonio, TX 78216. For Committee, School of Ministry, University of more information call: (212) 515-0102. information, see www.ost.edu.; (210) 341-1366, ext. 226. Contact: [email protected]. Parish Missions A 2000 YEAR OLD FAITH,, INSPIRING, DYNAMIC PREACHING : parish st missions, retreats, days of recollection; www A 2211 CENNTURRYY APPROACH... .sabbathretreats.org. Come explore the possibilities of graduate education at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley Positions t&&OOOHHHBBBHHHFF XJUUII XPSSMMMEEESSFFOPXOFE  DIRECTOR OF FAITH FORMATION. St. Angela GGBBDVMMUUUZZ Merici Parish, Pacific Grove, Calif., seeks a full- t44UUUVVEEZZ XJUUII TUUVVEEFFOUUTT GGSSSPPN PWFS time Director of Faith Formation for children, EEJJJąąąFFSSFFOU DPVOUUSSJJFFFTT youth and young adults. Responsibilities include t%FFFQQFO ZPVS VOEEFFSSTTUUBBOEEJJOOHH PPGG providing sacramental programs and liturgical TTQQJSJUVVBBMMJJUUZZZ NJOJJTTUUSSSZZ BOE UUIIFPMMPPPHHHZZ involvement. Salary commensurate with education and experience. Send letter and professional résumé to: Rev. Paul P. Murphy, 146 8th Street, t-JJWWF BOE MMFFFBBSO JO UUIIIFF Pacific Grove, CA 93950; Ph: (831) 372-0338. WJCSSBBOU44BBO ''SSSBBODJJTTDP  ##BBBZZ"SSFFFBB ETHICS CONSULTANT. Franciscan Services Corporation (www.fscsylvania.org) is seeking an ethics consultant for clinical consultation, educa - tion and development of ethics committees and senior/mid-level leaders, policy review and input ,E2OY !!VVENUE "ERKELEY #!  s    into significant business decisions with service 4-5 A membereemmbberer of thehe GGraadduduaatete Theeoolloogicalgicalccaal Unionnionioon [email protected] s www.scu.edu//jjst/america days/month. Position requires a Ph.D. or equiva - lent and a foundation in Catholic theology. Contact Sr. Nancy Surma, V.P. for Mission Integration, at [email protected].

LITURGICAL/SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY. St. Rekindle Your Spirit . . . Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore invites applications from Roman Catholic priests for a The Journey Begins Here position in liturgical/sacramental theology for the School of Theology/Seminary program, beginning  QSTRESS QBURNOUT QDEPRESSION fall 2011. This faculty position is responsible for Q TRANSITION QRELATIONSHIP ISSUES QADDICTION ISSUES graduate-seminary-level teaching in liturgical and sacramental theology, service as a formator in the We offer: Sulpician tradition and an administrative role as t 4QJSJUVBM%JSFDUJPO Director of Liturgy responsible for the planning t -JUVSHZBOEDPNNVOJUZQSBZFS SHALOM and supervision of seminary liturgical life. The suc - t 1SPGFTTJPOBMDPVOTFMJOH cessful candidate should have both practical litur - t 4NBMMHSPVQFOWJSPONFOU CENTER gical direction experience as well as academic cre - t #JMJOHVBMDPVOTFMPST A Residential dentialing. A terminal ecclesiastical degree in the t 4FSFOFXPPEFEHSPVOET Renewal and Treatment Center field is preferred. Academic rank is commensurate t "GGPSEBCMFQSJDJOH for Clergy and Men and Women Religious with prior achievement. Competitive salary and benefits package. Send letter, curriculum vitae and names of ref - For help, call Deacon William Hartman, Residential Program Coordinator erences to: Timothy Kulbicki, O.F.M. Conv., 281-399-0520 Dean of the School of Theology, St. Mary’s .PSHBO%SJWFt4QMFOEPSB 5FYBTtXXXTIBMPNDFOUFSJODPSH Seminary and University, 5400 Roland Avenue,

April 25, 2011 America 35

LETTERS Daniel F. Polish hints in “A Spiritual Not Much Choice Home” (4/11), that I do not fully grasp Signs of the Times (4/4) reports ques - Both Call It Home the essential meaning of an Israeli state tions about the ethics of nuclear ener - Rabbi Daniel E. Polish’s “A Spiritual for the Jewish people. However, neither gy. Oil is finite, and burning it to pro - Home” (4/11) puts in perspective the do I adhere to the anthropocentric view duce electricity pollutes the air. historical/spiritual roots of Judaism. that God takes sides in military con - Nuclear energy can irradiate the sur - As the author points out, there is flicts. The problem with the original, rounding area and, to a lesser extent, much more than politics at work in biblical Promised Land is that it was the world. Natural gas might have to Israel; but it appears to me that his already occupied, requiring a military be mined by “fracking,” which you argument could equally be made about campaign of conquest and expansion. mention in the same issue’s editorial, the Palestinians. With both groups But before we throw stones at the and that contaminates water and air. (along with Christians) laying claim to Israeli government, we should look at Hydroelectric power involves a dam, the land, I wonder how Jews, our own historical backyard. The idea and dams are bad because the artificial Palestinians and Christians (to a lesser of “manifest destiny” was used to exter - lakes created are shallow and heat up degree) will resolve this morass. But minate the Native Americans and too easily, so the fish die. the violence only perpetuates more make room for us. Now the descen - Let’s face it—any other so-called violence, and another generation grows dants of the original Native Americans benign forms of energy (solar, wind, up feeling persecuted. May Jerusalem are relegated to isolation and poverty. whatever) are years if not decades off, (Israel) find a true path to peace. The beginnings of both Israel and the even if the market were competitive. SCOTT HILL United States are mired in the concept We will have to fine-tune and come up Oakland, Calif. of a God-given right to resort to mili - with better ways of using conventional tary violence. The outcome is always energy sources for the time being. The Both Off to a Bad Start short-lived and ineffective. alternative is to regress 100 years or As an American citizen, I support an CHARLES HAMMOND more in destructive ways. Yes, safety Israeli state. I do so realizing, as Rabbi Sandusky, Mich. and ethics should rule, just not to the

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36 America April 25, 2011 point of paralysis. the young, conservative priests, who friends who have houses and paid over Had we been doing this all along, in are all very provincial and speak in the the odds. When I told them this, they small, modest, well-reviewed bits, by patois of the 19th century following laughed at me and called me a “scare - now we would be in a much more the First Vatican Council. None monger.” Now it is all the banks’ fault. energy-friendly environment and less grasp the relation of the social prob - But everybody is to blame, not just dependent on foreign nations. So the lems of today—poverty, disaster, cor - politicians and bankers. The Irish gov - foes of the current forms of energy porate sin and war—to the weekly ernment took the same route as should continue to point out the dan - Scripture lessons read rapidly with - Obama; but I do not recall America gers honestly, but they should drop the out drama or persuasion by a select taking the U.S. president to task. Nor ideological commitment many seem to group of weak voices that never look should you. If he avoided the depres - have against them. up at the congregation. Presumption sion, how is that different from what PETER M. BLASCUCCI and despair! the Irish government did? Populism is North Baldwin, N.Y. THOMAS CHISHOLM popular in the short run but meets Chippewa Falls, Wis. with reality sooner or later. Priests and Nurses, Stay Home DAVID POWER With regard to “Nursing Shift,” Colonialism Is Back London, U.K. (3/28): For 10 years I’ve been listening Re “Air Campaign Broadens: Bishops to foreign-born priests struggle to pray Apprehensive” (Signs of the Times, Not Forgotten and preach in English. I know they are 4/11): Europe and the United States Thank you for Christopher Pramuk’s here in part to help the church avoid are playing fast and loose with human “A Hidden Sorrow” (4/11), a tender, ordaining women and married men, rights issues that make military inter - heartfelt and faith-filled reflection that but I have wondered who is preaching vention and wide expansion of a U.N. is at once prayerful and poetic in the to their own people back home. Have resolution appear “humanitarian” in best sense of the word. As I read this we created a kind of spiritual brain Libya but not in the rest of Africa or and cried, I remembered my own drain from third world countries in an the Middle East. Certainly this will mother sharing with me as a boy that effort to fill our own pulpits? ultimately be seen—probably is she had lost a child before I was born. Meanwhile, qualified leaders sit in the already seen—as a neocolonialist (He was stillborn at 5 months, misdi - pews. I welcome the cultural exchange approach and an attempt to establish agnosed as a tumor.) When she lost and service to immigrant communities an African beachhead. Shame! him, my dad was in during these priests represent, but I hope this DAVID PASINSKI World War II. When I was 3 years Fayetteville, N.Y. will be balanced by the kind of recruit - old, my mother lost another child, a ment Gary Chamberlain advocates for beautiful little girl born three months The Irish Are Not Stupid nurses. The developed countries premature. It was 1949, and they In “The Irish Question” (Current should redouble their efforts to train could not save those babies then. My Comment, 4/4), it appears that priests and nurses of their own. father remembered that little girl all America ’s editors agree with Fintan CATHERINE MARESCA his life, till his death at 81. Through Washington, D.C. O’Toole in calling the Irish stupid. my tears as I write this, I look forward Nice that. But the facts are different to the Great Day, when we will all be Too Old for Young Priests from the way you present them and reunited in the home where there is no “Bless Me, Father...” by Frank Moan, people now imagine them. No bank more death. S.J. (4/4), reminds me that I have not held a gun to the head of anybody to KEN LOVASIK been in the confessional for decades make anybody take a loan. I have Pittsburgh, Pa. and it is unlikely that I ever will be. This is hubris, perhaps, or sins too To send a letter to the editor we recommend great to acknowledge and share with using the link that appears below anyone. And I am too old to speak to articles on America ’s Web site, www.america - magazine.org. This allows us to consider your letter for publication in both print and online America (ISSN 0002-7049) is published weekly (except for 12 combined issues: Jan. 3-10-17, 24-31, May 2-9, June 6-13, 20-27, versions of the magazine. Letters may also be sent to ’s editorial July 4-11, 18-25, Aug. 1-8, 15-22, Aug. 29-Sept. 5, Nov. 28-Dec. 5, America Dec. 19-26) by America Press, Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New office (address on page 2) or by e-mail to: [email protected]. York, NY 10019. Periodicals postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. Business Manager: Lisa Pope; They should be brief and include the writer’s name, postal address and day - Circulation: Judith Palmer, (212) 581-4640. Subscriptions: United States, $56 per year; add U.S. $30 postage and GST time phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity . 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š‚¶¾Á}ÄÅɾÄöÁ~ šÍžǶɾÄٶɺ THE WORD Conspiratory Faith SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (A), MAY 1, 2011 Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Ps 118:2-24; 1 Pt 1:3-9; Jn 20:19-31 “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (Jn 20:22)

n ancient way of determining still visible wounds. It is a peace that are locked in their fear and who set up when a person had died was recognizes full well the horror of what what may appear impossible condi - A to hold a mirror under the has occurred and results from a tions before they will come to believe. person’s nostrils to detect any trace of willingness to enter Thomas voices their doubts: They moist air indicating that there was still into processes of need to see with their own eyes some breath of life. Before modern healing, for - and touch with their own hands. methods of cardiopulmonary resusci - giveness and It is not so much a stubborn tation, a person who had stopped reconciliation resistance to believe what oth - breathing was simply allowed to slip rather than ers have experienced that away. In today’s Gospel, the risen retaliatory vio - Thomas expresses as it is Christ reinfuses the breath of life into lence. An abili - the necessity for each one to the constricted lungs of the believing ty to see the come to faith through a community, releasing them from the wounds different - direct, personal encounter fear that choked their ability to ly, not as something with Christ. breathe together and to live fully for that needed to be avenged but his mission. as something that Christ was PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE The frightened disciples are gath - already able to heal with his peace • As you pray, focus on your breath, wel - ered behind locked doors “for fear of and his spirit, enables the disciples coming the divine breath of life that dis - the Jews.” In the aftermath of Jesus’ to let their fear give way to joy. solves fear. execution, their fear is understand - What results is a rebirth of the • What do you need to see and touch to able—will they be next? In the fourth community. Just as the Creator come to greater belief? Gospel, “the Jews” is code language for brings to life the first human being

• How do you “conspire,” or “breathe e

anyone who does not believe in and by breathing into its nostrils (Gn N N

together,” with others in your believing U D who opposes Jesus, even though Jesus 2:7), so the risen Christ brings back

community? D a t himself and all his first disciples are to life the frightened community of : t r Jews. The object of their fear is those his followers. This is not a painless a who are like them in heritage yet not process. There can be no secondhand faith. like them in terms of belief in Jesus. Recently, a friend suffered a col - The testimony of other believers leads Sometimes what we fear most is lapsed lung. The intense pain he expe - one to Jesus, but it does not substitute seeing that which we do not want to rienced when the lung was reinflated for the tangible experience of Christ face in ourselves reflected in “the other.” may be akin to the difficult process of needed by each one. The Gospel also Into the midst of this fearful space transformation that Jesus’ disciples allows that there are different ways that Jesus enters, inviting his disciples to had to undergo. Before his death, Jesus people come to faith: some through see - accept the peace he desires for them. It spoke to them about this pain as birth - ing, some without. Both are blessed. No is not a peace that ignores the brutality pangs that would give way to joy when matter how one comes to believe, it is inflicted on him, as he shows them the the new life emerged (Jn 16:20-22). with a “conspiratory” faith communi - For some this rebirth takes place on ty—people who “breathe together” BARBARA E. REID, O.P., a member of the the first day of the week after the res - through the Spirit, who dissolves fear Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids, Mich., is urrection. But not all are present and a professor of New Testament studies at by the use of peace, forgiveness and rec - Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Ill., not all are moving to the same rhythm. onciliation. where she is vice president and academic dean. The next week there are still some who BARBARA E. REID

April 25, 2011 America 39 Preparing Leaders in the Vision of Jesuit Education

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