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 EVIL AND THE JUSTICE OF GOD, by
N. T. Wright. InterVarsity Press (www.ivpress.com). 165 pp. $18.
Reviewed by the REV. MICHAEL P. ORSI,
Ed.D., a research fellow in law and religion
at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.
N.T. WRIGHT, A RENOWNED New Testament
scholar, is the Anglican bishop
of Durham. His previous book, The Resurrection
of the Son of God (2003), provides
a bright backdrop for this volume.
Evil and the Justice of God is a theological
reflection on how God deals with
evil and how we can pastorally address
it today.
Wright’s book is particularly germane
in light of the Virginia Tech massacre.
While the public debates whether the
perpetrator suffered from a mental disorder
or was morally flawed,
the indisputable fact is that
evil erupted, causing death
and heartbreak. Wright presents
us with a paradigm for
dealing with such events
and bringing about healing.
In the first of the five essays
that make up the book,
Wright shows how both the
optimism of the Enlightenment
and the relativism of
postmodern thought fail to
come to grips with the reality
of evil (the undeniable fact of which
is made manifest in recent times by
the word Holocaust).
Wright’s answers as to evil’s existence
and the checks God imposes on
it are found in the biblical narratives of
both the Old and New Testaments. In
his second essay, he offers exegesis of
the stories of Job, Isaiah and David,
showing us how God put things right
in each case. “We observe [in the stories],”
he says, “a divine action, to judge
and punish evil and to set bounds to it
without the responsibility and agency
of human beings themselves, and also
the promise to bring about a new
moment of grace.”
The fundamental biblical belief,
according to Wright, is that God made
the world good and will work from
within the world to correct it. Wright
explains how biblical history shows
that God tolerates only so much evil,
and then restores the world as he
intended it.
The first two essays are a lead-in to
the mystery of Jesus and his confrontation
with evil. In his third essay
Wright explains why the cross is the
only antidote to evil. In the crucifixion,
Jesus took upon himself evil in every
form the world proposes it: political,
personal, moral and emotional. Wright
explains that the Good News at the
heart of the Christian message is Jesus’
victory: over the evil in the regime of
Caesar; over the corruption
within Israel; and over evil
in its supra-personal, demonic
form.
Returning to the often
neglected theology of atonement,
Wright reminds us
that Jesus took upon himself
our sins, and that
through the cross we have
been forgiven.
Wright sees Jesus’ Sermon
on the Mount as the charter
of the new creation that
overcomes the evil which is “anticreation,
anti-life and the force which
seeks to destroy God’s good world.” It
is through the resurrection of Jesus that
evil is exhausted and the new creation
begins. The resurrection, Wright says,
is “God’s proper no to sin.”
Wright insists on the need for us to
personalize the atonement of Jesus by
repenting of our own sins and offering
forgiveness to others. Implementing
the cross in our lives, he says, conquers
evil with love, and makes the world a
better place.
He suggests as a model for this
Christlike forgiveness the three-step
approach to reconciliation proposed
by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his
book, No Future Without Forgiveness (2000): 1) to name the evil committed;
2) for the perpetrator to apologize;
and 3) for the injured party to accept
the apology. Wright believes this procedure
can be used in both civil and
organizational conflicts, as well as to
heal the personal rifts that demean
human dignity.
This personal answer to evil, Wright
contends, makes us important players
in God’s ultimate plan for correcting a
world gone wrong. He insists that Jesus’
atonement for sin, God’s forgiveness
of us and our forgiveness of others are
what bring the Creator’s restorative justice
to the world. Forgiveness, Wright
says, “is the knife that cuts the rope of
sin, anger, fear, recrimination and
death.”
The Pennsylvania Amish community
well modeled this antidote last
year when they extended forgiveness to
the schoolhouse murderer of their children.
This impressive act clearly demonstrated
to the world that, through
forgiveness, the heavenly future can
begin now.
You can order EVIL AND JUSTICE OF GOD from St.
Francis Bookshop.
MEMORIZE THE FAITH! (And Most
Anything Else): Using the Methods of
the Great Catholic Medieval Memory
Masters, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D.
Sophia Institute Press. 249 pp. $17.95.
Reviewed by BARBARA BECKWITH, book
review editor of this publication. She is a
graduate of Marquette University’s College
of Journalism.
THOSE OF US OLD enough to have
had The Baltimore Catechism in Catholic
schools or CCD programs can probably
still rattle off answers to questions like “Why did God make me?” and “What is a sacrament?” (For parties, I can also
recite the Gettysburg Address and three
stanzas of “Paul Revere’s Ride.”)
I’m part of the generation brought
up on memorization, a learning tool
with which Catholics under age 50
tend to be unfamiliar and
disdainful. Education today
favors reasoning and
understanding over rote
recitation, although some
schools are rediscovering
memorization’s value, and
homeschooling especially
prizes it. (The best spellers
at the national spelling bees
all seem to have been
homeschooled.)
Dr. Kevin Vost, who has
taught psychology at Lincoln
Land College, MacMurray College
and the University of Illinois at Springfield,
aims his book Memorize the Faith! at those who want to remember
Catholic teachings, Bible verses and
theological terms. But Vost explains
that his technique can also be used
with any bits of data a person wants to
recall: birthdays, names, grocery lists,
PINs.
The technique he describes is visualization,
creating mental “memory
mansions” (loci) and linking the rooms
and their furnishings to things to be remembered
such as the Ten Commandments,
the 20 Mysteries of the Rosary
or the 73 books of the Bible (in order).
The technique comes from the
Greeks (poet Simonides and philosopher
Aristotle), the Romans (statesman
Marcus Tullius Cicero) and medieval
theologians (Sts. Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas). It kept their
thoughts organized for public speaking
and writing. I personally think it
works because it brings some of the
power of the right brain (spatial and
artistic) to support the left brain (verbal
and mathematical reasoning).
Of course, repetition is still essential,
too, for memory to take hold. Vost
says, “[E]ven with a mnemonic system,
repetition is the mother of memory.”
Besides young people in school who
have huge quantities of information
they need to remember, older people
worried about the decline of their mental
faculties or Alzheimer’s could profit
by Vost’s book. Certainly, more knowledge
of the faith would help the state
of Catholicism today.
Last week I used the book to nail
down the Beatitudes and to renew my
acquaintance with Aquinas’s
five proofs of the existence
of God. All I can say is that
the loci technique works.
Granted, I was familiar with
these concepts before, but
today I can recite them.
The book includes diagrams,
illustrations, humorous
drawings (e.g., a bear
with a purse for “bearing
persecution”), lists (some
with blanks for the reader to
fill in) and boxes with Q&As
(in the best Thomistic fashion). The
book concludes with chapters on applications
for all ages, how to teach this system
to children, how to move from
memory and understanding to faith and
works, and an ode to memorization.
Perhaps when I grew up, religion
classes overused memorization, slighted
understanding and ignored application
to life, but as Vost says, “Even saints can’t
live by truths they can’t remember.”
You can order MEMORIZE THE FAITH! (And Most
Anything Else): Using the Methods of
the Great Catholic Medieval Memory
Masters from St. Francis Bookshop.
SHADOWPLAY: The Hidden Beliefs
and Coded Politics of William
Shakespeare, by Clare Asquith. PublicAffairs/
Perseus Books Group. 348
pp. Hardcover $26.95, U.S./$37.95,
Canada; paperback $14.95, U.S./
$21.50, Canada.
Reviewed by BILL CAREY, who has a B.A.
from Siena College in Loudonville, New
York, and an M.A. from the University of
Dayton. He has taught English at Roger
Bacon High School since 1970.
REMEMBER WHAT YOU learned about
the history of England during the reigns
of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I? Forget it.
History is written by the victors and,
according to Clare Asquith in Shadowplay, 16th-century English history—both political and literary—is being
rewritten and corrected now.
Unlike the relatively benign
view of the transition
from Roman Catholicism
to Protestantism, the revisionists
tell of violence and
intrigue—bloody and terrible—marring the period.
Shakespeare’s plays, produced
in the middle of the
turmoil, are products of
their age.
Asquith, a noted lecturer
and contributor to several
literary publications,including an essay on Love's Labour's Lost in Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, contends that
Shakespeare used ambiguity and coded
language to veil his sympathy with the
cause of recusant Catholics of his day.
Because the Bard was such a master of
his craft, the authorities never quite
deciphered his code.
Now historians are revisiting the era
and noting the energy and animosity of
the movement opposed to the Reformation
in England. So Asquith revisits
Shakespeare to discern what, if anything,
he had to say about the most disputed
question of his lifetime and
when and how he said it.
Asquith touches on virtually every
piece of the Shakespeare canon, but this
is no erudite treatise aimed at literary
scholars. In chronological order and
with frequent references to contemporary
events, she enables readers to recognize
certain telltale signs. These “markers,” as she calls them, alert audiences—both then and now—to the presence
of an additional reading of the text
related to the local religious controversy.
Some markers are fairly straightforward.
Storms and their resulting chaos
and confusion refer directly to the English
Reformation and the resulting
social and political turmoil. The opposing
images of light and darkness represent
the Catholic-Protestant dichotomy.
Early in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo implores
Juliet to come out to the balcony
to resume the conversation of young
lovers: “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious
moon/Who is already sick and
pale with grief.” For some time readers
have recognized Romeo’s seductive subtext
urging Juliet to allow her beauty to
overcome the moon associated with
Diana and virginity. Now we are
encouraged to recognize
Shakespeare’s plea that the
light of the Catholic Church
might overcome the Protestantism
of the virgin queen,
Elizabeth.
Some markers are much
more complicated. In 1582
throughout most of Europe,
the calendar of Pope Gregory
XIII replaced the Julian
calendar, skipping 10 days
that October, in order to
correct certain mathematical
inaccuracies in the calendar calculations.
England balked, however, and
the English calendar was out of step
with the one used on the Continent
until early in the 18th century.
Hence, when Hamlet learns of his
uncle’s treachery, he cries out, “The
time is out of joint, O cursed spite/That
I was ever born to set it right.” Asquith’s
reading of the passage has Hamlet representing
Catholics whose unhappy
duty it was to rectify the wrongs of the
Reformation.
What exactly were the
messages Shakespeare was
sending to the faithful? Primarily,
he seems to be urging
caution on members of
the audience who wanted to
overthrow the queen. Thus
Julius Caesar, a usurper of
legitimate authority, is overthrown
by conspirators
avowing high-minded purposes,
who are in the subsequent
turmoil turned out
by men not so highly principled.
Asquith sees this play as a message
directed at those extremists who
believed that violence would be the
answer to their prayers.
Unfortunately, the attempt by Catholic
sympathizers to blow up Parliament
and kill King James I suggests that the
cautionary tales were undeciphered or
unheeded.
Asquith has provided some tools for
would-be code-breakers to venture further
into the canon to discover new
examples of Shakespearean code.
Happy hunting!
You can order SHADOWPLAY: The Hidden Beliefs
and Coded Politics of William
Shakespeare from St.
Francis Bookshop.
WHAT PAUL MEANT, by Garry Wills.
Viking Books. 192 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by JULIE DONATI, a freelance
writer and teacher of theology at St. Agnes
Academy in Houston, Texas.
WHEN I HEARD that Pulitzer Prize-winner
Garry Wills was following his
hugely successful book What Jesus
Meant with a companion volume on
Paul, I was thrilled. If precedence meant
anything, I could expect another innovative
synthesis. Sure enough, I was
not disappointed!
“Many people think that Judas was
the supreme betrayer of Jesus. But others
say Paul has a better right to that
title.” And so begins author Gary Wills’s
exploration of the controversial Christian
figure, the Apostle Paul, in this
very slim volume.
St. Paul has been accused of many
things, from founding his “own” religion,
to being a “tool of Satan,” to
being a faithful witness to Jesus. This
book is an attempt to tell us who the
real Paul is.
While not a biblical scholar, Wills is
a leading Catholic intellectual
and a masterful writer
who has effectively synthesized
current biblical
research, producing an eminently
readable work.
Relying only on the letters
that scholars agree were
actually written by Paul,
Wills peels away the layers
of misconceptions about
Paul.
Particularly noteworthy
is Wills’s careful treatment
of Luke’s account of Paul’s conversion
experience. While not dismissing Luke,
Wills suggests that Luke had a particular
agenda when writing the Acts of
the Apostles, and that agenda has distorted
our understanding of Paul. He
reminds us that Luke wrote Acts years
after Paul had written his letters, so
Acts should be treated “with great caution”
while learning about Paul!
In the first chapter alone, Wills notes
eight problems with the Lucan story of
Paul’s conversion, yet Luke’s version is
the one most of us know and remember. Clarifications continue, chapter
after chapter, as Wills addresses Paul’s
stormy relationships with Peter, with
the Jews, with women and with Luke’s
claim that Paul was a Roman citizen.
Paul has been accused of holding a
negative attitude toward women, an
attitude which Wills says is simply
wrong. “Paul believed in women’s basic
equality with men,” he writes, offering
support of women leaders as evidence.
He explains how and why Paul
advocated celibacy, not on sexist
grounds. Wills defends other Pauline
comments, such as requiring women to
cover their heads, as a product of his
culture.
Wills uses his mastery of classical
languages to illuminate subtle nuances
in the biblical Greek which have been
lost due to poor translation over the
years. Additionally, Wills includes an
annotated appendix to clarify words
like salvation, apostle and bishop that
historically have had poor translations.
This book is not an introduction to
Paul but is for people already versed
in the Pauline corpus. Written for a lay
audience, this book would be an excellent
resource for individual or parish
groups, guaranteed to stimulate lively
discussion.
You can order WHAT PAUL MEANT from St. Francis Bookshop.
LIGHT THROUGH THE CRACK: Life After Loss, by Sue Mosteller, C.S.J.
Image/Doubleday. 156 pp. $10.95.
Reviewed by MARY JO DANGEL, assistant
managing editor of this magazine who
has lost two adult sons to cystic fibrosis.
THE TITLE of Sister Sue Mosteller’s book
is appropriate but can be misleading: It
covers loss suffered in relationships due
to death, betrayal, addiction, fear and
the like. The title is inspired by words
from one of Leonard Cohen’s songs:
“There is a crack in everything. That’s
how the light gets in.”
The author has been involved with
L’Arche Daybreak Community for 30
years and is executrix of her friend
Henri Nouwen’s literary estate. Rather
than focusing on L’Arche residents,
who have developmental disabilities,
Mosteller shares her own experiences
and inspirational stories of staffers she
has met. These accounts reveal how
the cracks in their relationships can
allow healing light to enter.
The first chapter, “Change of Heart,”
focuses on a woman with a heart defect
who, at first, refuses to have a transplant
and then changes her mind.
Mosteller’s reflection at the end of the
chapter refers to her own need for a
change of heart in a fractured relationship
with a friend.
This chapter hit close to home: My
older son, Tim, died in 2001 while waiting
for a lung transplant, and my
younger son, Ritch, died in 2006
because of a rare liver condition which
would have required a transplant if he
had lived.
Mosteller’s chapter “Like a Nail in
My Heart” describes how a childhood
with an alcoholic and abusive father
continued to affect a man’s life years
after the father’s death. While on a
retreat, the adult son discovers how to
talk to his father and forgive him.
The last chapter, “Choose Again,”
describes a man who was addicted to
drugs and alcohol at birth. Despite
being raised by loving adoptive parents,
the boy becomes addicted to drugs
and alcohol as a child and continues on
a downward spiral. After many failed
attempts at rehab programs, healing
light finally penetrates. Today, he’s
sober, married and has an intimate relationship
with God.
The poignant stories in the seven
short chapters are independent of each
other. Thus, it’s a nice book to crack
open when you have only a brief
amount of time to read. This book
reminded me of the 2004 film Crash and how little I know about the personal
lives of people I encounter: Everyone
has a story.
You can order LIGHT THROUGH THE CRACK: Life After Loss from St. Francis Bookshop.
CATIE THE CATERPILLAR: A Story
to Help Break the Silence of Sexual
Abuse, by Tracy M. Schamburg, L.P.C.
Illustrations by Melanie Ellis Riley.
Liguori Publications. 31 pp. $6.95.
Reviewed by SUSAN HINES-BRIGGER, an
assistant editor of this publication and
mother of three.
ONE IN THREE girls and one in seven
boys will be victims of abuse. As a parent,
I find that statistic horrifying. Sex abuse
is one of those subjects that every parent
dreads and struggles with how to address.
Fortunately, there are helpful resources
like the book Catie the Caterpillar.
Here, the subject of sexual abuse is
broached through the story of Catie,
who struggles with the secret that her
Uncle Cad would touch her “in places
and in ways she did not like to be
touched.” Keeping the secret is preventing
Catie from developing into a butterfly.
But luckily, Catie is surrounded by
people who help her face her problem.
This story presents the subject of sexual
abuse in a very realistic but approachable
way.
Author Tracy M. Schamburg is a licensed
professional counselor with a private
practice in St. Louis, Missouri. She
has obviously used her experience in
dealing with both child and adult sexual-abuse
survivors in writing this book. She
includes many lines that abusers will use
on their victims and realistically portrays
how a child might react to such abuse.
As difficult as it may be for parents
to talk about sex abuse with their children,
fortunately, resources such as this
book make having that talk a whole
lot easier.
You can order CATIE THE CATERPILLAR: A Story
to Help Break the Silence of Sexual
Abuse from St. Francis Bookshop.
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