book reviews

by wm. b. smith

A plea for liturgical peace
WHITHER THE ROMAN RITE? By John W. Mole, O.M.I. (Word of God Hour, Inc., P.O. Box 40067, 2515 Bank St., Ottawa, ON K1V 0W8, Canada, 2000), 170 pp. PB $18.00 US postpaid.


The Roman Rite and the traditional Latin Mass are still very much with us. The Latin Mass of Pope St. Pius V was not suppressed by Pope Paul VI in 1969 when he instituted the Novus Ordo which took effect the following year.

Like most priests of the time, I obediently stopped celebrating the traditional Latin Mass and began to celebrate in English according to the new Missal of Paul VI. It was twenty years later that I was asked by a group that loves the old Latin Mass to celebrate for them. It was that request that aroused my interest in our tradition. Soon other groups were asking me to offer the Latin Mass for them. In the meantime I had secured the indult from the Ecclesia Dei Commission in Rome.

The growth of the Latin Mass in the USA during the past ten years has been truly remarkable. There is no comparable movement elsewhere that I know of — and certainly not in Europe. Ten years ago regularly scheduled Latin Masses could be found in only a few dioceses. Now over a 100 dioceses have scheduled traditional Latin Masses every Sunday — and the number is growing all the time.

Fr. Mole is an Englishman who has spent most of his life as a priest in Canada. In recent years he has become an articulate defender of the traditional Roman Rite. He has lectured and written extensively on this topic. Three of his articles have appeared in HPR and are reprinted, in a modified form, in this book. The book itself is a collection of his articles and lectures. Fr. Mole argues that the Novus Ordo is a wholly new rite in the Catholic Church, not a revised version of the Roman Rite.

Our author shows that there are three liturgical movements in the Church: 1) Sacrosanctum Concilium which is working to revise the Roman Rite. The Adoremus Society would fit in here; 2) Ecclesia Dei to preserve and restore the Roman Rite. In this category there is the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and similar groups; 3) Novus Ordo which is striving to establish a new rite Fr. Mole argues strongly that no one of these movements should oppose or threaten the existence and growth of either of the other two movements. According to Fr. Mole, it should be left to Divine Providence to decide what shall grow and prosper, and what shall not.

Because the book is a collection of articles and lectures, there is a certain amount of repetition or overlap. But that repetition concerns mostly the important points so the reader knows exactly where the author stands by the time he finishes the book. I found his point about waiting on Divine Providence most interesting. Obviously, the author is convinced that, in time, the traditional Roman Rite will prevail, at least in the western world. He says more than once that he thinks the Novus Ordo rite may have a positive future in Africa and Asia where millions of converts have come into the Church who have had no experience of the classical Roman Rite.

This is an easy book to read. It is not a research paper with hundreds of notes. The book is a collection of articles and talks to a popular audience. The tone of the book is very irenic — it is not polemical at all. The last chapter is entitled “Liturgy and Peace.” Fr. Mole would like to see the three rites in the Roman Church exists peacefully side by side, just as the Greek and Latin liturgy existed peacefully side by side in Rome during the first four centuries of the Christian era. The author thinks that liturgical peace in the Catholic Church will make her more attractive to outsiders and will increase the number of converts. If you would like to know more about the present state of the Roman Rite in the Church you will find this book helpful.

Kenneth Baker, S.J.
Ramsey, N.J.

Thoroughly Catholic
THE RED HORSE. A Novel. By Eugenio Corti (Ignatius Press, P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522, 2000), 1015 pp. HB $29.95.

Here is a novel that immerses the reader into the horrifying tragedy of World War II. It is written from the point of view of an Italian Freedom Fighter and his family who lived in Northern Italy.

This novel has epic proportions on the scale of Gone with the Wind. It begins in a small town in Lombardy in 1940 when the author and his friends were drafted into the Italian army and soon sent to fight with the Germans on the Russian front. The first 150 pages set the stage for what is to come later. There we meet all the people who will figure in the story. One gets the impression that the novel is basically autobiographical, but it is a novel and so I suppose one could designate it as an “autobiographical novel.”

The main action centers around the author and four or five of his friends who are sent off to war. The action starts in North Africa, then moves to Russia for most of the book; one of the soldiers is repatriated to Italy and then is soon sent off to Greece to fight there. About this time the Americans invade Italy and one of the personalities in the book is killed in the fight around Monte Cassino.

At the end of the war there is much confusion in Italy and an abundance of partisans fighting the retreating Germans and also fighting each other. Some of them were royalists, others were communists, still others were Christians fighting for a Christian republic. So the novel also covers about thirty years after the war, especially the struggle against the Communists who tried to take over Italy by winning the election in 1948. Pope Pius XII was their big foe and he played a major part in the defeat of the Communists and the victory of the Christian Democrats.

This book is not for those who have a weak stomach. Some of the descriptions of battle and the inhuman treatment of prisoners in the Russian prisoner of war camps are enough to make one sick. Man’s inhumanity to man is brought out very clearly by the author. Here we see in living color the consequences in human suffering of atheistic ideologies like Nazism and Communism which, in the pursuit of the perfect society or the perfect man, eagerly murder millions of individual human beings, apparently with no remorse.

To the surprise of many, The Red Horse, which first appeared in Italian in 1995, has become a European best-seller. It has been translated into at least five languages and now comes to us in this English translation from Ignatius Press.

The novel has been successful because it deals with the fundamental truths and realities of the human condition. The book is thoroughly Catholic. Without being preachy, most of the important points of the Creed and the Catechism are in this novel in an open way with no apologies to the secular humanists all around us. The main characters are motivated by their Catholic faith and they try to live it according to the grace given them. Some of the truths brought out by the author include the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Jesus Christ, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the role of divine providence in the life of each person, the sanctity of marriage and the family, the indissolubility of matrimony, and the importance of chastity. Sexual activity belongs in marriage and only there. These points, and many others like them, are worked into the action of the novel. The various characters give expression in their words and in their actions to these truths of the Catholic faith.

The title of the book is taken from the expression in Revelation 6:3-4, “And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another; and he was given a great sword. . . .” Since the book deals with the vast slaughter of tens of millions of people in WWII, the title is very appropriate.

It should be obvious to the reader by now that I liked the book. This novel is way above average because it deals with life and death, time and eternity, good and evil, with the dignity of the human person who is made in the image of God, with the triumph of Catholic faith, hope and love over human pride and wickedness. Highly recommended.

Kenneth Baker, S.J.
Ramsey, N.J.

Dietrich von Hildebrand: Defender of the Church
THE SOUL OF A LION: DIETRICH VON HILDEBRAND. A Biography. By Alice von Hildebrand (Ignatius Press, P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522, 2000), 322 pp. PB $14.95.

Dietrich von Hildebrand, as this outstanding book makes clear, was much more than a brilliant Catholic philosopher, gifted spiritual writer, and tireless defender of the Church: he was in fact (and one hopes eventually in name as well) a saint. Of course, anyone who has read his classic discussion of virtue and the spiritual life, Transformation in Christ, has already suspected as much. However, the hard evidence of his sanctity from a life devoted to Christ and his Church has been generally inaccessible to the public until now. Based on a lengthy private letter to his widow, Alice von Hildebrand, this book is both more and less than a standard biography. As much memoir as biography, The Soul of a Lion brings us much closer to the inner fire which made possible Dietrich von Hildebrand’s greatness than any “critical” biography could hope to do.

The only son of the great artist Adolf von Hildebrand, Dietrich and his five older sisters led an idyllic youth characterized by both affluence and total immersion in the fine arts. Indeed, it is a testimony to the character of his parents (both of whom were exceedingly kind-hearted but non-practicing Protestants) that not only did all six children avoid the sort of dissolute life which is often the inheritance of such an environment, but all became devout Catholics as well. In Dietrich, this spiritual disposition and dogged belief in the transcendent character of moral and aesthetic values showed itself early and pointed the way for his future philosophical and religious development.

A brilliant student, Dietrich studied under Edmund Husserl (who later became mentor to Saint Edith Stein), became close friends with Max Scheler (on whose thought Pope John Paul II did his doctoral thesis), and was one of the founders of the classic Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. But in this book, as in von Hildebrand’s own life, the focus always remains on the individual person rather than on philosophy per se. Hence, we experience both the shared joys and growing rifts between young Dietrich, the new convert to Catholicism, and the older, intellectually brilliant but morally dissolute Catholic Scheler (whose sad portrait is devastatingly drawn in these pages).

This is not to say that von Hildebrand’s philosophy is ignored by the book. For example, we learn that the distinction (around which his philosophy revolves) between values, which are intrinsically important and deserving of a response by persons, and subjectively satisfying goods, which may be pleasing to me but not valuable in themselves, was first made by von Hildebrand while observing his first wife Gretchen window shop for dishes. So great was his love for truth that this insight alone forced him to rewrite entirely his nearly finished dissertation (a sacrifice for truth only an academic can fully appreciate).

The development of his teaching career and his eventual decision to abandon it and everything he owned to flee Germany (and later Austria and later still France) rather than remain silent in the face of Nazi barbarism are treated at length, yet still breathlessly narrated. His insistence upon the authority of the Church and the sole suitability of Christianity (and not of Communism, as so many intellectuals in the 1930s believed) as an alternative to Fascism cost von Hildebrand many possible allies, just as the failure of the German bishops to speak out forcefully against the Nazi regime cost him many bitter tears. Certainly, his visceral disgust towards all anti-Semitism and his public proclamations of solidarity with the persecuted Jews deserve far greater public mention than they will likely ever be granted. Throughout the book, we are presented with a portrait of a man totally reliant upon God and totally fearless in confronting evil so long as he confronted it on behalf of God and his Church.

Somewhat curiously, the story ends in 1940 with von Hildebrand’s arrival with his family in America after his miraculous escape from the Nazis. Hence, his future (and second) wife Alice Jourdain never appears in the story, nor do we learn anything of his last (and exceedingly fruitful) 37 years. As with St. Augustine’s Confessions (a comparison which would certainly have pleased von Hildebrand), the book is a confession of praise to God and its narrative only extends so far as God’s most miraculous works in his life did. Likewise, as in the Confessions, many details of his personal life less directly related to his spiritual journey are absent.

While the details about the influence of his conversion on his various philosophical works is quite valuable, The Soul of a Lion is not an introduction to the Catholic philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand (a much-needed work which still awaits being written), nor is it the “definitive” biography of this great Catholic (which also is still needed). Rather, it is a deeply personal and moving account of one of the great Catholics of the Twentieth Century, whose accomplishments and Christian vision have survived and can help to point a path out of the confusion and spiritual decay of the post-Conciliar period.

Dr. Lance Byron Richey
Conception, Mo.

The glory of the Holy Name
THE INVOCATION OF THE NAME OF JESUS: AS PRACTICED IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. By Rama Coomaraswamy (Fons Vitae, 49 Mockingbird Valley Drive, Louisville, KY 40207, 1999), 256 pp. PB $19.95.

True to its title, this treatise deals with the invocation of the Name of Jesus, as practiced in the Western Church. The term “invocation” is to be understood in a special sense; it refers to a mode of prayer founded upon the mystical theology of the Holy Name, a mode generally associated with the Eastern Church, and with the Hesychast tradition of Mount Athos. A spate of books on this subject has aroused considerable interest in recent times. It appears that thousands, bored perhaps and alienated by today’s secularized churches, have turned to Orthodox Christianity in hopes of achieving a deeper spiritual life, inspired by the aforesaid literature. By way of contrast, Dr. Coomaraswamy’s book now documents what is substantially the same tradition on the basis of Catholic sources, thus revealing a strand of spirituality within the Western Church which has been largely forgotten, or at least overshadowed by other concerns. This treatise cannot but appeal to the serious Catholic reader; and for many who seek, it may mark a turning point in their life.

The book contains an Introduction by the author, which constitutes a small treatise in its own right, followed by an anthology — the first of its kind, I believe — of major Catholic texts which speak to the glory of the Holy Name and the power of its invocation. There is also an Appendix by Archimandrite Placide Deseille, a monk at Mount Athos, on Hesychast prayer in the Orthodox tradition, which the reader will no doubt find illuminating.

Concerning the main body of the book — the anthology — let me say summarily that it constitutes a treasury of rare and splendid texts, several of which have never before been ren dered into English, and of which most will no doubt be unfamiliar to the contemporary reader. The collection opens with a sermon by St. Bernardine of Siena, often referred to as the “Apostle of the Name,” which Coomaraswamy describes as “probably the most complete discussion on the subject [of the Holy Name and its invocation] by any single author of the Roman Church.”

Among the selections that follow, one finds a commentary on the text “Thy name is as oil poured forth” from the Canticle of Canticles, culled from sermons by St. Bernard, excerpts from St. Bonaventure’s De quinque festivitatibus (On the Five Feasts of the Child Jesus), commentaries by St. Thomas Aquinas on the texts “His Name was called Jesus” and “Hallowed be Thy Name,” and a splendid piece by Blessed Thomas à Kempis on “The Invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary, His Blessed Mother,” to mention but a few. It is hardly feasible, nor indeed needful, to comment upon each of these masterpieces of Catholic spiritual literature, comprising thirteen authors in all. Suffice it to say that each contributes something profound and precious to the overall doctrine, which emerges clearly from these various testimonies.

This brings me to Coomaraswamy’s Introduction, which summarizes this doctrine in its major facets (under seventeen headings, to be exact). I should point out, first of all, that the author writes with consummate precision and supports his every point with pertinent quotations, drawn from Scripture and Catholic tradition. He begins where he should: with the mystical theology of the Holy Name. The great truth — so hard to comprehend in our nominalistic age — is that the Name, so far from constituting a mere designation, is ultimately one with its referent; as we read in Jeremias and Amos (Jer. 33:2; Amos 9:6): “Dominus nomen eius” (The Lord is his Name). In the words of St. Bernardine: “The name of Jesus is itself God through which God the Father and the Holy Spirit communicate in Divine Unity.”

We come next to another major point pertaining to the theology of invocation: Given that “Dominus nomen eius” — that the Holy Name is ultimately God — it surely follows that “in the last analysis, it is God himself who pronounces his Name in us, or who causes us to pronounce it.” As the author further explains: “The Name, when invoked by man, is nonetheless always pronounced by God, for human invocation is only the ‘external’ effect of the eternal and ‘internal’ invocation by Divinity.” What takes place is a certain participation, if you will, of the human act in the divine. There is an analogy, in fact, between invocation and the Mass, which has occasionally been pointed out in Catholic tradition; and like the Mass, “the invocation of the Name is an offering, and hence a sacrifice.” Coomaraswamy is careful not to overstate the point; there is no question here of “replacing” the Mass, or of dispensing the individual from his regular obligations. Nonetheless, the analogy is real and central to the theology of invocation; it entails that in the act of invocation — rightly accomplished, needless to say — “the Name incarnates the Divine presence in the soul of the person who invokes.”

It is well to point out that there is an intimate connection between invocation and the prayer of the Rosary. Coomaraswamy argues, in particular, that the Angelic Greeting “which embodies the Divine Name of Jesus as a ‘jewel in the lotus,’ has rightly been called ‘the Hesychast prayer of the Western Church.”’ This is not to say, of course, that Catholic invocation is constrained to assume this particular form. What matters above all, so far as invocation is concerned, is the Name of Jesus, whether it be invoked alone, or in some traditional formula (as in the case of the so-called Jesus Prayer, which often takes the form “Lord JESUS Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”).

This brings us to the question of “method”: how does one invoke? What conditions, what principles, must be observed? If invocation is indeed a sacred act, it must conform to appropriate standards, to spiritual laws, if you will. In a word, there must be a right way — with the understanding that there are of course many particular ways in which invocation can be rightly practiced. As Dr. Coomaraswamy (who is, among other things, a psychiatrist) points out, however, this fact can pose a problem: “The very idea of methodology in the spiritual life offends the ‘modern mind’ which is in revolt against reason, discipline, and indeed, against all authority The modern mind above all wants to ‘feel,’ for in feeling it makes itself — its own egoity — the criterion of its own state of soul, and feeling requires neither thinking nor discipline.” It needs to be emphasized that invocation is not for “free spirits,” not for hippies or New Age enthusiasts, but for believing and faithful Christians who obey the precepts of the Church. The serious aspirant should seek appropriate guidance, presumably from a duly qualified priest who can serve as his spiritual director. However, as Coomaraswamy goes on to say: “In the absence of such, those who feel called and desire with all their heart to ‘invoke,’ should throw themselves on the Mercy of Jesus and Mary, while consulting the writings of saints and authoritative texts dealing with the subject.” A selected bibliography is provided at the end of the book.

It is hardly necessary to point out that the benefits of invocation — again, when rightly practiced! — are immense and indeed immeasurable. There is however a final point which needs to be stressed; as Coomaraswamy states at the outset, the practice of invocation “is eminently suitable to contemporary man and the present times.” Not in the sense of conforming to the spirit of the times, certainly, or to the modern bent of mind. On the contrary, the practice of invocation constitutes a means “to make our prayer partake of the eternal and not to conform ourselves to the present times — ‘nolite conformari huic saeculo’ (Rom. 12:2).” Whatever the specific reasons why the way of invocation may be “eminently suited to contemporary man and the present times,” as the author contends, one cannot but agree that for many this way may indeed prove to be “a powerful and secure viaticum through the perils of the modem world.” Dr. Coomaraswamy has rendered a valuable service to us all in producing this beautiful and timely book.

Wolfgang Smith
Hayden, Idaho

Moral judgment on life issues
CATHOLIC BIOETHICS AND THE GIFT OF HUMAN LIFE. By William E. May (Our Sunday Visitor, 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750, 2000), 340 pp. PB $17.95.


During the past fifty years there have been so many advances in the biological sciences that it has been hard for the ethicians and moral theologians to keep up with what the scientists are doing. During that time a new science sprang up and it is called “bioethics.” This new science deals with the moral evaluation of new procedures which are proposed or actually engaged in by members of the medical profession. What I am referring to are such things as in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, embryo transplants, therapeutic sterilization, cloning, assisted suicide, and so forth.

Professor William E. May is a Catholic moral theologian who has served on the International Theological Commission which advises the pope on theological issues. He is also known in this country as a scholar who defends the teaching of the magisterium of the Catholic Church. He has published extensively on moral questions and has contributed several articles on these matters to HPR over the years.

The book under consideration here is a handbook for Catholics on the many difficult questions that biology and medical science put to the Catholic moral theologian. May begins by presenting the teaching of the Church as presented in four recent documents, especially the Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life). That teaching stresses the dignity of the human person and that an innocent human person can never be directly killed for any reason; this holds from the moment of conception to the natural end of life in death.

In the second chapter the author gives a brief summary of the basic principles of making true moral judgments and good moral choices. The third chapter takes up the matter of generating human life and the new reproductive technologies, such as assisting insemination. What about “rescuing” frozen embryos? On this point he disagrees with Msgr. Wm. B. Smith and argues that it can be a moral choice for a woman to “adopt” a frozen embryo and bring it to term.

The next two chapters deal with contraception and then abortion. Here he offers some light on how to deal with ectopic pregnancies. The new technology raises questions about how to deal with such pregnancies which are now more common than they were in the past; this is probably due to the widespread use of the contraceptive pill.

Chapter six covers the question of the morality of experimenting on human subjects, especially on infants in the womb and embryonic stem-cell research. May defines stem cells as “cells that develop very early in the human embryo after fertilization” (p. 214). These cells “have the capacity to develop into any of the 200 and more different kinds of cells that make up the adult human body” (ibid.). Many scientists think these cells can be used to cure diseases such as Alzheimers or Parkinsons. The problem with it is that the young embryo must be killed in order to “harvest” these cells. That is killing and therefore immoral. The end, assisting others, is good, but the means is evil, that is, killing embryos to aid adults.

Chapter seven takes up the questions of euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the care of the dying. The eighth and last chapter deals with the philosophical problem of defining death, what it is and when it occurs, and the related question of organ transplants. One moralist I know holds that no doctor on a transplant team should be involved in declaring someone dead because of the conflict of interest. For, the transplant doctor wants the organs to be still living and may be inclined to take them from the donor before he or she is actually dead.

This is an excellent, up to date, and thoroughly Catholic handbook on medical-moral questions. On each point Professor May offers solid reasons for his opinion. Those who want to get up to speed on bioethics should get this book and study it carefully. My advice applies in a very special way to doctors, nurses, administrators and all those involved in hospital or nursing care.

Kenneth Baker, S.J.
Ramsey, N.J.

It is triune love that makes the world go round
PERSON TO PERSON: FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE IN THE LIFE AND THEOLOGY OF HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. By John S. Bonnici (Alba House, 2187 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, NY 10314, 1999), 145 pp. PB $9.95.


One never tires of the subject of love, and the mystery of human love and divine love remains inexhaustible. Although humans are created to love and be loved, many confuse love with sentiment, and others fear the loss of freedom in the commitment to love another. As von Balthasar acknowledges, the forces that frustrate love are legion: the struggle to earn a living, the decline of eros, the clash of opinions, and the irritating faults of the other person all impede the natural destiny of love, which is intimate communion between persons in an “I-Thou” relationship. Father Bonnici’s careful, illuminating exposition of Balthasar’s “dialectic of love” takes us to the heart of the mystery. Because all human love — whether it is between mother and child, between husband and wife, or between friends — is modeled upon the paradigm of the trinitarian love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it is dynamic, energetic, overflowing, and circulating. As Father Bonnici explains, “In other words, the love of God the Father, Son and Spirit is somehow mirrored in the love experienced between created human persons.”

Using the famous story of Damon and Pythias from classical antiquity and the love between a mother and her infant, Father Bonnici illustrates the central themes of love in Balthasar’s work: persons cannot live social, human lives “without entering into meaningful relationships with others”; true friendship is “trinitarian in form” in its circulation of giving and receiving, flowing and overflowing, incoming and outpouring; the relationship of love embodies the communion between an “I” and a “Thou” which is a powerful, revitalizing “grace-filled event.” This dynamism of love with its irrepressible energy manifests itself especially in the tender playfulness of affection between mother and child where love awakens love, where the mother’s smile is reflected in the baby’s beaming face. In Balthasar’s words, “The interpenetration of the mother’s smiling and of her whole gift is the answer, awakened by her, of love to love, when the ‘I’ is addressed by the ‘Thou.’ “ Likewise, Damon and Pythias in their ideal friendship of the gift of self were willing to die for one another, inspiring Dionysius to remark, “I never believed that such faith and loyalty could exist between friends.” It is this surprising, charged, spirited volatility of love which these examples illuminate. Thus, as Father Bonnici demonstrates so clearly, the other person is not some obstacle to freedom or object of frustration but a “sign of hope,” “an extension and circulation of triune love,” and “a constant source of surprise and satisfaction.”

Nowhere is this dialectic of love’s dynamism more evident than in the striking contrast between the Pharisees’ idea of love and Jesus’s teaching on the love of neighbor — one of the most compelling examples in the book. Whereas the view of the neighbor in the Old Covenant is restricted to the friends of Israel, Christian love transcends race, nation, and ethnicity as Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan teaches. In Father Bonnici’s words, “The blood of salvation poured out on the cross is not destined for a select few,” and “the cross becomes the true source of universal brotherhood.” As Balthasar emphasizes, “. . . the brother for whom Jesus dies is not only the fellow member of his race but absolutely every individual.” In this way love’s energy is transformative, creative, kinetic, intense, “the love of God flowing to all persons,” not a mere adherence to commandments or ethical precepts. The gospel and letters of John, Father Bonnici argues, epitomize this dynamism of communion and interpersonal love. This outpouring of Christ’s love (“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” John 15:9), Jesus manifests in washing the feet of the disciples with the streams of water — a sign of Christ’s pouring out of himself in the Eucharist. This same quality of “overflow” emerges once again, Balthasar explains, in the fruitfulness of marital love, “the unfathomable miracle of their common child” when “the affection of the two flows together in the kindling of a third love.” Because of this phenomenal creativity and energy of love, love cannot be closed, and one who loves God cannot remain solitary. As Father Bonnici’s enlightening exposition of Balthasar proves, love in its many authentic forms does not limit or frustrate but fecundates and enriches.

Person to Person, then, takes us right to the heart of the mystery of love as it explicates Balthasar’s thought. Like the tides of an ocean or the cascades over a waterfall, the ever-flowing, ever-whirling love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit signifies the paradigm of human love in its constant giving and receiving and in its outpouring and overflowing. Whether it is the love between true friends, between mother and child, or between husband and wife, it is triune love that makes the world go round.

Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D.
Magdalen College
Warner, New Hampshire

The master storyteller
THE PARABLES OF JESUS: A COMMENTARY. By Arland J. Hultgren (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49503, 1998), xxix + 522 pp. $35.00.


“Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words,” said Francis of Assisi, a marvelous piece of advice even for experienced preachers. Words are indeed necessary. Jesus taught in parables, a genre made beautiful and powerful by the economy of his language and the beauty of his message, and where often a short paragraph carries lengths and depths of sublime wisdom.

The parables of Jesus, “a fragment of the original rock of tradition,” as Joachim Jeremias called them, offer a unique opportunity to listen to the Master in his favorite manner of teaching. Reading them you can have a taste of his delight in using words sparingly and for great effect, as a storyteller telling the tale for the first time. Apparently the obscure rabbi from Nazareth had a splendid gift to convey strikingly amazing and beautiful revelations about God and the Father’s love for humanity, and much wisdom for humanity besides, in a few words. Short, full of surprises, and invariably shocking, the parables offer the best literary portrait of God and his ways with humanity, short of the mind-blowing event of his own silent death and resurrection which no human language can ever capture, a sort of parable written with his own blood.

The abundance of literature about the gospel parables can be disconcerting for the non-specialist, particularly for the preacher or teacher who easily falls into temptation and is satisfied with more or less pious, more or less wordy, and more or less good, homiletic helps. By multiplying words in sentimental ways often these aids abuse the gospel teaching rather than strengthen it. It pays then to go to the original words and go deeper into them. This is what Arland J. Hultgren, professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, has achieved in this comprehensive commentary of all the parables.

The question of the distinctiveness of Jesus’s parables is still not completely resolved but Hultgren notices at least six characteristic notes, and it is hard not to agree with him. First of all, the directness of address the audience; not only you can, as a reader, “see” the audience, you can see how immediately he engaged his listeners, made them participant in the telling, shocked them and elicited a response to the story. Then, he sees the parables themselves as “front and center bearers of his [Jesus] message,” a trait that makes them distinctive from rabbinic parables and other non-Jewish teaching in the ancient world. Besides, the content of the parables is the familiar of ordinary life, since they are not used for further argumentation. Fourthly, the parables are theological not in a propositional but in a concrete and personal manner; what is revealed in them is the intimacy of God, God’s secret life. This accounts for the surprise ending of many of the parables: “over against common assumptions, the parables of Jesus do not always portray typical human behavior as illustrative of God.” They shock the listener and make us think anew. Finally, the parables combine and use to great effect the ancient wisdom and eschatology traditions of the Jewish people.

Hultgren’s commentary to the parables is both exegetical and theological, a rich addition to the literature, and an indispensable tool for the responsible preacher and teacher.

Alvaro de Silva
Quincy, Mass.

The current culture crisis
HEALING THE CULTURE. A commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom, and the Life Issues. By Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., with Robin A. Bernhoft and Camille E. De Blasi (Ignatius Press, P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522, 2000), 347 pp. PB $??.


Many Americans think and say that our culture is disintegrating right in front of our eyes. It is not a matter of crime on our streets, lying in the media, corruption in business, and pornography in films and television. It is much more serious than that. There is a culture crisis in the USA and in the west generally because we have abandoned our philosophical and religious roots. In order to heal the culture we must first reactivate the basic principles which gave rise to western civilization in the first place.

A clear sign of the sickness of our culture is the killing of innocent babies in the womb and now, as in Oregon, the legal killing of the elderly and the terminally ill. The root of the problem is the abandonment by the elites in our culture, such as legislators, judges, politicians, professors, journalists, etc., of a proper understanding of the nature of man. They have lost a sense of the dignity of the human person; they have separated the notion of “person” from human being so that some human beings, such as pre-born children, are declared by law to be non-persons and so can be slaughtered like chickens; they have lost a sense of the transcendence of the human person — that every one has at least an implicit desire for infinity and to live forever.

Fr. Robert J. Spitzer and his associates have addressed these problems in their enlightening and powerful book, Healing the Culture. This is primarily a book of philosophy and psychology, with a few additions from Catholic theology. But they make their case regarding happiness, freedom and life issues primarily from reason. The purpose of the whole book is to refute all the arguments that have been given in favor of abortion and euthanasia.

The heart of the book is the definition of “person.” So they define a person as “a being possessing an intrinsic guiding force (whether this be merely genetic, a soul, or both) toward fulfillment through unconditional, perfect, and even infinite Truth, Love, Goodness/Justice, Beauty, and Being” (p. 49). Several arguments and many facts are adduced to support this definition of a person.

Spitzer says that the source for the disintegration of our culture is the metaphysical materialism which has replaced the idea of the transcendence of the human person; this materialism has undermined the intangibles in the culture, such as the striving for perfect Truth, Love, Goodness, Beauty and Being. This has led our elites to the assumption that the personhood of the human embryo is an illegitimate question and that the quality of life of the sick and elderly is doubtful (p. 21). A consequence of this has been the legalization of abortion and euthanasia. This in turn has led to an attempt to justify abortion and euthanasia by reinterpreting the idea of “person” and of “rights.” A result of this has been the further undermining of the “intangibles” regarding the nature of man and more ethical and political problems within the culture. Here you can see how the culture begins to fall apart once philosophical materialism has been adopted.

Happiness, in the most simple terms, means the fulfillment of desire. A very helpful contribution of the book is to distinguish between four different views of happiness. Level 1 is the immediate gratification of desire, mostly sensual; Level 2 is personal achievement by gaining wealth and power; Level 3 is the desire to help others by seeking the good beyond the self — a form of altruism; Level 4 is seeking the ultimate good and ultimate meaning in perfect Truth, Love, Justice and Beauty. A large part of the book is dedicated to showing that the materialistic culture ignores or denies Levels 3/4 which are intangible, and places all understanding of happiness in Levels 1/2 which are tangible and measurable. The authors argue that the way to heal the culture is to lift people up to Levels 3/4 in their search for happiness.

Part Two of the book introduces “ten categories of culture discourse.” Here the authors apply the four levels of happiness to the ten categories and argue for the advantages of Levels 3/4 over Levels 1/2. It would take too much space to explain each one here so I will just list them to pique your curiosity: Happiness, Success, Quality of Life, Love, Suffering, Ethics, Freedom, Person, Rights, Common Good. In each case there is a big difference between Levels 1/2 and Levels 3/4.

Having established the above principles with regard to person and happiness, the author considers in Part Three the life issues of abortion and euthanasia. Here he takes up and refutes the major arguments which have been advanced in defense of these two forms of killing.

This is a powerful, well-argued and convincing defense of the inviolability of human life from conception to natural death. It is directed to all persons of good will since the arguments are derived from thinking and experience; it does not argue from the Bible and from the Magisterium of the Church.

The genius of the book is that it clearly sees the connection between abortion and euthanasia on the one hand and the decline in our culture on the other. Fr. Spitzer offers a recipe for halting and correcting the current culture crisis before our civilization and way of life are completely destroyed. I recommend this book to all who are interested in the “culture war” we are engaged in and to all those who are working in the pro-life movement. The reasons given here in support of life at all its stages can be used effectively to counter and defeat the “culture of death” which has grown so strong during the past thirty years.

Kenneth Baker, S.J.
Ramsey, N.J.

The cruel modern world
TIMELY THOUGHTS FOR TIMELESS CATHOLICS. By Donald DeMarco (St. Martin de Porres Press, New Hope, KY 40052, 2000), 181 pp. PB $10.00


Dr. Demarco’s substantive, carefully crafted collection of short essays encompasses a prodigious variety of subjects that shape modem life from the influence of Marxism on feminism to reproductive technology and its attack on the family to the difference between an integral pluralism and ideological multiculturalism. These essays reflect the author’s wide learning and special gift for applying philosophical wisdom and Christian morality to contemporary moral problems. Epitomizing the perfect, balanced synthesis between reason and faith, which John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio offers as the paradigm of the intellectual life, this book reflects that “sapiential dimension” which the Pope heralds as the benchmark of true learning.

Each of Dr. Demarco’s essays unmasks the popular opinions and slogans of the day and exposes the fallacies and assumptions of prevalent ideologies. For example, after exploring the procedures and techniques of in vitro fertilization, he examines the hard truth: “A child conceived through artificial insemination may have no natural father, may not be begotten by a father, or may be begotten by a ‘father’ who is a woman” if the physician performing the process is female. In the case of surrogate motherhood what will children think of a mother who nurtures a human life and then gives or sells the baby? How will a husband feel with the knowledge that his wife as surrogate mother is carrying another man’s child? Even though these technologies offer a brave new world of progress, “they introduce so many risks, disruptions, and forms of alienation into the web of marriage and the family that they prove, on balance, to be more hazardous than helpful.” Dr. Demarco’s cogent, lucid reasoning leads directly to the moral truth of the matter: reproductive technologies violate the dignity of human persons and reduce procreative love to laboratory experimentation.

Thus Dr. Demarco sounds the voice of moral common sense into areas of modem culture devoid of both reason and faith. While “politically correct” thinking raves about pluralistic societies, the virtue of tolerance, and the cosmopolitanism of multiculturalism, he explains the real distinction between true pluralism and moral relativism: no genuine pluralism can exist without recognition of a universal moral law and a consensus about the common good — a notion of polity which the early Romans grasped: “But there cannot be ‘moral pluralism’ . . . since divergent attitudes concerning what constitutes the common good sabotages the collective effort. . . . “As radical feminists — like Marx and Engels — presume that male-female relations are founded on men oppressing women in the bondage of marriage, it follows that women must enter the work force to escape from the slavery of procreation and motherhood, “the tyranny of biology.” Thus contraception and abortion liberate women from “the fetishization of female childrearing” and permit sexual experiences outside of marriage and apart from the conception of life. But as Dr. DeMarco traces the steps of this logic, it leads inevitably to “the elimination of the ‘sex distinction’ itself” and ultimately to artificial reproduction. The essay exposes modern ideology’s repudiation of Mother Nature’s wisdom and its contempt for God’s created order.

These essays also abound in divine wisdom. “The Heart of Jesus in a Cordless World” draws from the riches of theology that illuminate the love of God as a “burning furnace of charity.” Dr. Demarco turns to the truths of the Catholic faith to illustrate the artlessness and impersonalism in modern relationships. While holy men and women constantly refer to the “streams” that overflow from the Sacred Heart — the living stream, flowing honey, and burning furnace that embody the outpouring of grace of the sacraments as humans form an intimate relationship with God (cor ad cor loquitur), modern society destroys all the life-lines that God has established. In a “cordless” society of legalized abortion mothers reject the umbilical cord that binds them to their babies; in a culture of no-fault divorce husbands and wives cut the cords that unite them to one another and to their children; in the culture of death that “opposes breast-feeding, extended care of infants, intensive care of the elderly,” the family — “society’s heart” — cuts its connection from God’s heart and causes its own self-destruction. This essay exposes the hardness and cruelty of the modern world which fails to distinguish between false compassion and true mercy, between sentimentality and charity, and between the personal and the dehumanizing.

A book rooted in the perennial wisdom of Western civilization and in the heart of the Catholic faith, Timely Thoughts for Timeless Catholics appeals to the heads and hearts of all Christians who seek human and divine wisdom to life’s problems, not technological solutions or ideological formulas. It transmits the riches of philosophy and theology to a morally bankrupt culture that refuses to think, to love, to remember, and to be human.

Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D.
Magdalen College
Warner, New Hampshire