Books

A Year's Reading

One reader's choices of the most interesting books to appear in 1997.

By Philip F. Lawler

Since Catholic World Report is published by Ignatius Press, we might be accused of a conflict of interest if we reviewed too many Ignatius Press. (In any case, we trust that regular subscribers have already received the latest Ignatius catalogue.) So we have restrained ourselves, including only one Ignatius work on the list that follows. But any reader who appreciated the article in our November issue, in which Gerard Van den Aardweg dismissed the popular notion that homosexual tendencies are irreversible, might be interested in Battle for Normalcy, his full-length treatment of the same subject. And anyone who has appreciated John Saward's beautiful contributions to "Second Spring" will be delighted by The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty, in which he uses works of Fra Angelico to launch a profound meditation on Christian truth.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church establishes a new standard against which all teaching materials can be judged, and as the Catechism appeared on the scene, Russell Shaw (an occasional CWR contributor) reasoned that the new standard could be applied to reference works as well as catechetical texts. The result of his long editorial labors is a new Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine [Our Sunday Visitor]. In 751 pages--or on CD-ROM, for those who prefer to take their instruction in high-tech dosages--the Encyclopedia offers clear and reliable explanations of Catholic teachings and the reasons behind them. The book is written with an attentive eye to the universal Catechism, with a distinguished array of contributors including Scripture scholar Scott Hahn and Chicago Archbishop Francis George.

Among the many valuable books that cover such important topics as contraception, sex education, abortion, and world population, no single volume puts so much material into a form as succinct, useful, and attractive as Mercedes Wilson's Love & Family: Raising a Traditional Family in a Secular World [Ignatius Press]. Written primarily as a guidebook for parents, and endorsed by such luminaries as the late Dr. Jerome Lejeune and Mother Teresa, this single book would be a useful gift to any Catholic (or other) parent who wants a simple introduction to the many issues he will confront as his child advances through school, and encounters the propaganda so skillfully conveyed by Planned Parenthood and its worldwide consortium of cooperators--to which, alas, even Catholic schools often, if unwittingly, belong.

In November 1996, the journal First Things caused a sensation among American conservatives by publishing a symposium on the ravages caused by an overweening judicial system, which has in recent years overthrown traditional restraints on abortion, homosexuality, obscenity, divorce, and euthanasia. Especially in light of the traditional Catholic teaching--made unmistakably clear by Pope John Paul in Evangelium Vitae--that Christians are not obligated to obey an inherently unjust law, do these decisions put believers irretrievably at odds with the justice system? American conservatives have complained frequently about judicial arrogance, but this symposium drew the question out a critical step further; several contributors actually questioned whether the fundamental legitimacy of the American republic was intact. Such suggestions, cautious and nuanced as they were, remained anathema to several other neoconservatives, who noisily denounced the symposium as irresponsible and accused the magazine of sensationalism. By the time the controversy subsided, it had drawn in dozens of conservative intellectuals, and pinpointed some of the fault lines that divide the defenders of tradition in America today. A generation ago, the opponents of the Vietnam War were counted as radicals, and sharply told that the proper response to any question about government foreign policy was to "love it or leave it." Now the Christians and conservatives who have been forced against their will to become the counterculture of the 1990s heard roughly the same message, albeit in much more sophisticated form. The entire debate--the original symposium, a collection of pro- and con- reactions, and a summary-essay by Father Richard John Neuhaus, have now been collected in book form. This is a cornucopia of serious yet accessible writing on contemporary political theory, with contributors including Hadley Arkes, Walter Berns, Robert Bork, Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, Russell Hittinger, Norman Podhoretz, and George Weigel. The original First Things symposium was entitled The End of Democracy: The Judicial Usurpation of Politics, and that is also the title of this volume, the first book offered by Spence Publishing, a new house based in Texas.

In its impressive inaugural season Spence Publishing also offers The Examined Life, by Dennis Helming: an effort to convince young men (the book's primary audience) that they should practice virtue--if not for supernatural motives, then simply because virtue is conducive to personal happiness. Helming provides blunt, detailed, and occasionally idiosyncratic practical answers to the moral questions of adolescence in a thoroughly original style which is utterly unlike the typical self-help book--perhaps vaguely reminiscent of the earliest editions of the Boy Scout Handbook in its gruff, distinctively masculine expression of traditional moral truths, but still better described by one reviewer as "a unique blend of classical wisdom and Yankee pragmatism."

In the thoroughly modern American parish church, the tabernacle has been banished from the place of honor at the center of the altar, to be replaced by a colossal "presider's chair." No single gesture could more neatly capture the decline in reverence for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. But oddly enough, while the great majority even of practicing Catholics show less and less respect for the Lord's presence, a small but growing minority practice the time-honored forms of Eucharistic devotion: Benediction, private visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and Perpetual Adoration. Father Benedict Groeschel, CFR, and James Monti perform a major service for the latter group with In the Presence of Our Lord [Our Sunday Visitor]. The subtitle--The History, Theology, and Psychology of Eucharistic Devotion--says it all; this is a complete guide to the long-neglected practices which must surely be revived if Catholicism is to flourish in the third Christian millennium.

The Second Vatican Council--in its actual decrees, as opposed to the inchoate "spirit of the Council" which is so often cited to ill effect--offered to the world a radically new way of understanding the role of the Catholic Church. David Schindler, editor of the international theological journal Communio, describes the new vision as a "communio ecclesiology"--which he defines as the belief that "all things have their predestined integrity in and through Jesus Christ, hence in and through Christ's body and bride, the Church." He fleshes out that communio ecclesiology in Heart of the World, Center of the Church [Eerdmans], and explains how it differs from the views which dominant philosophy of our culture, which he describes as "Anglo-American liberalism." Ironically, he continues, some of the most ardent American defenders of Vatican II--notably the Catholic neoconservatives--have based their case on this Anglo-American tradition, which the Church has now passed by. So Schindler renews his critique of Michael Novak, George Weigel, and others, in a book which is both demanding (insofar as it presumes some acquaintance with the work of professional theologians like Balthasar) and rewarding.

In 1996, Kevin Sherlock could not find a publisher for his book Victims of Choice--an astonishingly detailed account of how American abortionists exploit women. In part that failure was due to the nature of the subject matter, which most "mainstream" publishers would not touch; in part it was due to fear of lawsuits; and in part it was due to Sherlock's insistence that editors should not tamper with his bizarre style, in which he mixes long, often gory descriptions of events with his own pugnacious comments. In any event, Sherlock responded to the publishers' rejection by putting out the book himself. And in 1997 he followed up with The Scarlet Survey [Berryman Books; PO Box 2629; Akron, OH 44309]. This is not a pretty book, nor does it advance any new arguments. But pro-life activists of a militant stripe will find it useful because Sherlock, an experienced private investigator, names names, cites court cases, ferrets out government statistics, and in general provides unmistakable evidence that the abortion industry is rife with unreported malpractice, sexual exploitation, profiteering, and fraud--all of them subsidized by the American taxpayers.

St. Thomas Aquinas needs no introduction. But the style of his most famous work--especially the Summa, in which he lists potential objections before he explains his own argument--sometimes intimidates new readers. That is unfortunate, because anyone who takes the time to understand the Angelic Doctor on his own terms will find riches that no popularizer can reproduce. But in its continuing effort to resurrect forgotten Catholic classics, the Sophia Institute Press of Manchester, New Hampshire, has managed to present the Commentaries on the Commandments and the Sacraments without doing much violence to the original presentation. Transformed by the deft use of some new subheadings and bold-face type, the lectures that make up God's Greatest Gift become a clear, simple presentation of profound truths, suitable for use as an introductory catechism.

On March 27, 1996, seven Trappist monks were kidnapped by Islamic guerrillas from their monastery in Tibhirine a remote outpost of Christianity in the Atlas Mountains of predominantly Muslim Algeria; on May 21 they were beheaded. Although their conflict with the surrounding culture was not nearly as obvious as that of the classic martyrs--they were, after all, contemplative monks--these men were killed only because they were Christians. They had recognized the dangers in advance, and chosen to remain in Algeria as a witness to the Gospel. Dom Bernardo Olivera, the abbot general of the Cistercian order, pays tribute to slain monks in How Far to Follow [St. Bede's Publications, Petersham, Massachusetts]. The book is terribly uneven--a patchwork of journal entries, letters, and supporting narratives. But in an odd way, this unfinished quality gives the book a special sort of immediacy; the reader almost has the sense that he is thumbing through scrapbooks left behind by these monks, and thus touching the lives of contemporary martyrs.

With a series of books that explore the choice between good and evil, and argue a connection between human virtue and psychological health, M. Scott Peck has carved out his own special niche in the publishing world--and on the best-seller list. Peck has demonstrated an uncanny ability to make spiritual claims in terms that do not seem to threaten the underlying consensus of secular values; his arguments are welcomed by critics who ordinarily reject all religious claims. (Whether this success points toward an extraordinary persuasive power or a willingness to compromise on theology is a story for another day.) His latest book, Denial of the Soul [Harmony Books/Random House] was sparked by Peck's concern that the political debate over euthanasia had become "strangely passionless." Peck himself is impassioned in his opposition to the euthanasia lobby, and explains his position as a physician, a believer, and a concerned member of an apparently decadent society.

In America in Black and White [Simon & Schuster] Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom open their Introduction by mentioning Gunnar Myrdal's classic 1944 book, An American Dilemma, which has long been recognized as a classic work on the problem of race in America. The Thernstroms obviously see their own work ranking equal in importance to Myrdal's study, and their ambition in that respect is justified. Just as Myrdal caused American scholars to take a new look at the race question, the Thernstroms ask for a new look at the conventional assumptions about racial affairs--including, by the way, the assumptions which can be traced back to the Myrdal study. While conceding the damage wrought by racism and Jim Crow laws well into the 20th century, the Thernstorms argue that for most black Americans, life was getting progressively better and the future looked sunny. They buttress their argument with an enormous wealth of statistics on education, health, life expectancy, and--arguably most revealing of all--migration. (Is it not significant that, despite the problems they faced here, so very few blacks chose to leave the country?) In the 1960s, the civil-rights movement eliminated the last vestiges of the Jim Crow regime, and raised expectations that all racial divisions would soon disappear. But those expectations were unrealistic, the Thernstroms argue, and the resulting gap between goal and performance led to the call for preferential policies: programs like affirmative action, which obliterated the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of result. Unfortunately, the end result of these liberal programs has been a increase in racial tensions. At the same time, after steadily closing the socio-economic gap that separated them from their white neighbors for the first six decades of this century, black Americans saw their progress slow in the last 30 years. All these arguments cut against the grain of accepted wisdom, but the Thernstroms are more than ready to defend their case, with over 100 pages of footnotes and a bevy of charts, graphs, and references to primary sources. Myrdal, move over!

Ordinary Christians read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John without worrying too much about the sequence in which they were written. But in the esoteric world of Bible criticism, that question of order can be crucial. For nearly a century, the dominant view among scholars has been that St. Mark wrote his Gospel first, and Sts. Matthew and Luke based their own versions on that first account, as well as on a mysterious document known only as "Q," whose existence has never been demonstrated. Working backward from the assumption that "Q" is the earliest account of what Jesus actually said--and therefore presumably the most accurate--some scholars have embarked on the laborious enterprise of questioning everything in the accounts of Matthew and Luke, asking whether these accounts might have been corrupted by faulty memories or embellished to influence the theological disputes of the day. In the most egregious example of this trend, the Jesus Seminar has produced one debunking claim after another--usually timed for release just before Christmas or Easter, to command maximum publicity. Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Did he really teach his disciples the Lord's Prayer? The portrait of Jesus that emerges from this line of scholarship is very different from the one handed down through the tradition of the Church. But that entire line of thought is based on the unproven assumption that Matthew and Luke relied on Mark and "Q." Now in The Gospel of Jesus, [Westminster/Knox Press; Louisville, Kentucky], William Farmer--a distinguished professor from Southern Methodist University--argues that Matthew wrote first, Luke relied on Matthew, and Mark relied on both as he prepared his briefer account. If that is true, then the "Q" hypothesis in unnecessary, and the image of Jesus passed down by Christians through the centuries is essentially correct--a strong clue that Farmer is on the right track.

Does the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests constitute "the most serious crisis Catholicism has faced since the Reformation," as Andrew Greeley once claimed? Such a notion is "fatuous" in the eyes of Philip Jenkins, a social scientist who provides a calm, sober look at the crisis in Pedophiles and Priests [Oxford University]. Without excusing the bishops and religious superiors who gave known pedophiles ready access to their prey, Jenkins says that the social "construction" of the abuse problem--that is, the efforts to make sense of the incidents in light of prevailing public beliefs--led to a gross exaggeration of the dimensions of the problem. Jenkins cites several different factors which converged at the time when the first scandals were emerging: the history an anti-Catholic bigotry, with the persistent undercurrent of rumors that priests abused children; the rise of Catholic feminism, with its demands for an end to the all-male priesthood and the discipline of celibacy; the decline in morale among the clergy; the emerging acceptance of "recovered-memory syndrome" in American courtrooms; and the explosion of litigation involving real or imagined abuse of all kinds. Jenkins is certainly right in saying that the tight focus on Catholic priests was unwarranted; clergymen of other denominations were found guilty of abuse without the same sensationalistic coverage. And he puts forward an interesting hypothesis about the reason for the decline in clerical morale: Jenkins posits that many priests, schooled in the expectation that a distinctively American Catholic Church would soon merge comfortably into the secular culture, were deflated by the late 1960s as they realized that could not and would not compromise her doctrines to suit the spirit of the age. But Pedophile and Priests does skip too lightly over a crucial issue: the extent to which pedophiles benefited from an unhealthy willingness to overlook the untoward activities of young priests--an unwillingness which in turn can be traced to the de facto toleration of homosexual activities.

Germain Grisez may be the best Catholic theologian in America today; he is certainly the most ambitious. Some years ago Grisez observed that Vatican II had called for a new appreciation of the Christian's moral responsibilities, yet no one had undertaken a systematic response to that challenge. So he did. His projected four-volume work on moral theology, The Way of the Lord Jesus, when completed will be an exhaustive and original treatment of the topic, weighing in at somewhere around 4,000 pages. The first two volumes, Christian Moral Principles and Living a Christian Life, set out Grisez's unique understanding of the essential principles of Christian morality, and then applied them to the daily life of ordinary Catholics. Now Volume 3, Difficult Moral Questions [Franciscan Press; Quincy, Illinois] provides a more detailed treatment of some very specific moral questions. With each question, Grisez first explains the moral issues involved, then delivers a reply that answers them. He writes with clarity and humor, and chooses his examples in a way that is guaranteed to tweak the reader's curiosity. ("What should the faithful do about a priest's liturgical abuses?" "May a gangster's sister accept his money for her college expenses?" "May a physician prescribe a placebo for an anxious patient?" "May people whose government is grossly unjust evade income taxes?" "Should a subordinate pretend to follow an irrational directive?") This book just might revive the appeal of casuistry.

The Search for Common Ground [Our Sunday Visitor] is a curious work. The title, which suggests a relationship between this book and the high-profile initiative undertaken by the late Cardinal Bernardin, is actually misleading; this book has a much more modest focus. With the backing of the Lilly Endowment, a team of sociologists undertook an in-depth survey of Catholic opinions, attitudes, and practices in the five dioceses located within the state of Indiana. They produced a prodigious number of charts, graphs, and case studies, but no remarkable new conclusions or recommendations. Indeed at the close of the study, when they attempt to make recommendations on how Church leaders should behave in the light of their findings, they authors have difficulty moving beyond the truism that everyone involved should be aware of the complexity of the situation--a "recommendation" which in practice supports no action whatsoever! The key findings of the study's extensive polls are interesting but not new: there is a broad (if shallow) acceptance of Catholic teachings on most topics, but sharp disagreement on any teaches that touches on sexual morality. And support for the full range of Church doctrine breaks down along generational lines; younger Catholics are drifting away from the traditional faith. How and why did this happen? The book is silent.

In 1996 Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi produced His Holiness, in which argued that Pope John Paul II had collaborated with the Reagan Administration in order to support the Solidarity movement and ultimately to bring down the Soviet empire. In Man of the Century [Henry Holt], former Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny takes the argument one step further. The Pope did not conspire with Ronald Reagan, he objects, and in fact the Vatican was consistently at odds with Washington throughout the 1980s. In fact, Kwitny claims, it was John Paul alone who orchestrated the fall of Communism, and that prodigious feat makes him the most important actor in the greatest drama of the century. Kwitny is wrong, for two reasons. First, although it is difficult to overstate the personal influence of Pope John Paul at the end of the Cold War, this book does so; surely the political moves of the Reagan Administration--to say nothing of the Solidarity leaders who began their work before the Pope's election, and the isolated martyrs in Lithuania and elsewhere--deserve some of the credit. But more importantly, Kwitny, like Bernstein and Politi before him, falls into the trap of viewing the Holy Father as a political figure--a political figure who taps the reservoirs of spiritual power, to be sure, but essentially a political figure nonetheless. Ironically Paul Johnson, who wrote his own biography of the Pope (John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration) before the final fall of Communism, anticipated the story which Bernstein, Politi, and Kwitny alike think they have discovered; he understood the Pope's strategy before it succeeded, because he grasped the fact that John Paul was basing his political tactics on spiritual principles, rather than vice versa. If historians of the future judge Pope John Paul as the pivotal figure of this century--and they might--it will be not because he defeated Communism but because he revived Catholicism. If we see the resurgence of active faith which he has predicted at the dawn of the third millennium, John Paul will have earned Kwitny's accolade.

Finally, this review of a year's reading would not be complete without a bow to our journalistic colleagues at the Wanderer. Always feisty, often frustrating, but ultimately irreplaceable, the Wanderer has been battling in the trenches for 130 years, and now George Kendall offers Witness for Truth [Wanderer Press], a historical perspective on that journalistic campaign. It is not fashionable to quote the Wanderer. Indeed some Catholic journalists, upon discovering a story there, will quickly search to see if the same facts have been published elsewhere, so that they can refer to the other, more "respectable" publication. But often that search is fruitless, because the simple fact is that the Wanderer regularly provides information which can be found nowhere else. Yes, those exclusive stories are usually depressing. But can we blame the messenger for the news he brings?

Philip F. Lawler is editor of Catholic World Report.