 THE PROMISE, by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, translated by Balinski,
Malone and Duchesne. Eerdmans.
177 pp. $18.
Reviewed by BRIAN WELTER, a doctoral
student in theology from North Vancouver,
British Columbia. He is a teacher of English
as a Second Language to Adults and
holds a B.A. in history from the University
of Saskatchewan.
CARDINAL JEAN-MARIE LUSTIGER,
the archbishop of Paris who died in
2007 and who never stopped seeing
himself as a Jew, claimed to live out
the fullness of the Jewish vocation—of
the grace of ancient Israel. In this collection
of his talks arising from these
deep religious roots, Lustiger denounces
Christian anti-Semitism and its origins
in “paganism.”
Lustiger came from a family of Polish
Jews who had emigrated to France
early in the 1900s. To protect him from
Nazi violence, he lived with a Christian
family in Orleans from 1940 to 1942.
Lustiger and his sister converted to
Catholicism and were baptized Catholic
in 1940. His mother was arrested by
the Gestapo in 1941 and died in
Auschwitz. His father survived the war
and tried unsuccessfully to get an
annulment of his son’s Baptism. So
Lustiger always saw himself as a bridge
between two faiths, which is clear here.
A pagan is someone without hope,
someone who does not know that the
darkness can be transformed into light,
he writes. Some pagans claim to be
Christian but have made Christ into
one of their gods. Rather than letting
Jesus the Messiah change their lives,
they change him.
“Pagan Christians” do not realize
that they have to enter the New Testament
via the Old. The prophets of
ancient Israel denounced the ancient
pagans and their fertility gods, whom
they called Baal. Paganism has been
alive and well throughout Christian
history, according to the cardinal,
because people who go to Church and
claim to know Jesus do not know Jesus
of Israel.
Jesus is the Son of Israel. The Chosen
People’s vocation is to share their grace
with the gentiles, and through Jesus
they have done this. How can this grace
be truly understood by the gentiles
except through knowledge of the Old
Testament?
Cardinal Lustiger thus reflects on
the meaning of history. The ancient
Israelites invented history, for they perceived
a vocation from God and therefore
a point to history, what
Christians later called eschatology.
Lustiger notes, “There is
true history only in accordance
with an Election, because
history is, ultimately,
a time period which draws
its significance from a relationship
with God who
calls and toward whom we
go. Otherwise, human acts
sink into the insignificance
of oblivion and death. Otherwise,
no memory is possible—it is
even better to forget. Otherwise,
human history is an abyss of meaninglessness
and horror and the moments
of light are merely faint sparks
marked, too, by oblivion and death.
Only God can be the source of man’s
memory.”
Lustiger’s deep connection to Israel
and Jewishness gives his theology a
freshness and directness that parallel
the Church Fathers. The cardinal speaks
with the same clarity and authority as
John Paul II and Benedict XVI. This
kind of theological leadership is vitally
important to the health of the present
and future Catholic Church because
of today’s tendency to undermine
Catholicism.
Lustiger is keenly aware of the “sociology
of power” that developed in secular
and Catholic intellectual circles in
France after Vatican II, and felt the fallout
from this firsthand. He also notes
that his philosophical and theological
training was profoundly marked by
Western atheism.
The only answer to intellectual atheism
or the hollowness of pagan Christians
(those who fail to accept Christ
through Israel’s lineage) is found in the
grace that originates in God’s covenant
with Israel and is fulfilled in Jesus: “The
Spirit of Jesus can be received only on
the strict condition of sharing the hope
of Israel and having access to it. This
is the meaning of baptism,
since in baptism...we are
‘incorporated’ into Christ.
But baptism is at the same
time, and inseparably...an
incorporation into Israel.”
In other words, “The Old
Testament has not been ‘invalidated,’
according to a
current expression, by the
coming of the Messiah, but,
on the contrary, has been
made accessible and open
to pagans who, without
him, would not have access to it.”
The Old Testament is not a preparation
for the New, but “a true pathway.”
Christians can avoid being “pagan
Christians” only by adopting the Old
Testament.
Perhaps, Lustiger muses, the current
rejection of Christianity signifies a lack
of faithfulness to ancient Israel by
Christians: “One of the possible sources
of the present crisis of faith in the West
is that the God being challenged is
nothing other than the god of the
pagans disguised as the God of the
Christians. Could it be that Christians
in the Western world are now paying
the price for a too shallow and rapid
conversion?”
This challenging book can be read
over and over again.
You can order THE PROMISE from St. Francis Bookshop.
REMEMBRANCES OF THE ANGELS:
50th Anniversary Reminiscences of
the Fire No One Can Forget, by John
Kuenster. Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
(www.ivanrdee.com). 192 pp. $22.50.
Reviewed by BARBARA BECKWITH, book
review editor of this publication. For grade
school, she attended St. Viator in Chicago
and St. Peter School in Skokie, Illinois,
both of which are within 10 miles of Our
Lady of the Angels.
ON DECEMBER 1, 1958, I was in fifth
grade and came home from school to
see the first terrifying TV footage of
the fire at Our Lady of the Angels (OLA)
School on Chicago’s northwest side.
The death count eventually mounted
to 92 children and three B.V.M. sisters.
It seems probable now that the
source of the fire was a fifth-grader who
set alight wastepaper in a cardboard
container on the floor of the back stairwell.
The tragedy led to improved fire-safety
regulations for all parochial and
public schools in the United States, but
this book goes into the personal toll it
exacted on the neighborhood families
and anyone connected to the event.
The full story of the fire was told by
this author and David Cowan in their
1996 best-seller, To Sleep With the Angels.
This new book reveals, 50 years after
the event, how vivid the memories are
for these 28 people—surviving students,
grieving parents, reporters who
covered the story, firemen and others—and how times have changed.
OLA, one of the largest schools in the
Chicago Archdiocese, had 1,600 students.
Classrooms each had 50 or 60
students, with one teacher, no aides.
Most teachers were religious sisters.
The school had only one fire escape,
no sprinklers, no automatic fire alarms,
no smoke or heat detectors. The
wooden stairs and floors had been polished
with layers of petroleum-based
wax. The school’s four fire extinguishers
were mounted seven feet off the
floor, too high for most of the teachers
to reach, much less any students. The
school had passed a fire-department
inspection only weeks before.
The Humboldt Park/Austin neighborhood
in Chicago was then nearly all
Roman Catholic, drawing from Italian-,
Polish-, Irish- and German-Americans.
In the intervening years, the neighborhood
has changed. The parish
school was rebuilt in 1960 but in 1999
closed because it couldn’t
keep the minimum of 225
pupils the archdiocese requires.
In 2006, the parish
was reduced to a mission,
and in 2007 a memorial
was placed in front of it.
But the legacy of the fire
is more than memorials or
even better fire safety in
schools. Many of those
who experienced the fire
still suffer from survivor’s
guilt. A boy who was home
sick that day watched on TV as two of
his best friends died; he remembers
sneaking a smoke near the trash container
where the fire started.
No counseling was offered survivors—it wasn’t done in those days.
Most of the survivors admit they react
now when they smell certain kinds of
smoke. All of them check fire exits in
public buildings they enter and select
homes with easy egress. Many OLA
alumni continue to be very close to
one another because of
what they went through.
Some of the parents were
quite angry with the school
and considered suing. But
again, that just wasn’t done
then. The Archdiocese of
Chicago refused to let the
sisters tell their side of the
story, ostensibly to protect
them, but really to avoid lawsuits,
which led to charges of
a cover-up.
A nurse, who at the time
was a student in the emergency room
at St. Anne’s Hospital, comments: “I
think the Church’s response to the
school fire left a lot to be desired. It’s
one thing for the cardinal to walk
through the hospital and bless the kids,
but there was no notion of talking about it. The Church treated the
burned kids like it treated the kids who
complained of sex abuse. Church officials
didn’t want to talk about it. They
made people feel like they weren’t entitled
to be sad and to be angry, and to
ask questions. That was a
time you didn’t ask questions
of your Church.”
Did any of the grieving
families lose their faith over
this tragedy? None of those
who participated in this
book admit they have, but
many have struggled with
the question of how a good
God permits such horror.
A 40-year veteran Chicago
Tribune columnist, who as a
reporter had even covered
deaths in war, sums it up: “Memories of
those dead kids never leave me.”
You can order REMEMBRANCES OF THE ANGELS:
50th Anniversary Reminiscences of
the Fire No One Can Forget from St.
Francis Bookshop.
ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS WISDOM FROM ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, compiled
by John V. Kruse. Liguori. 110
pp. $10.95.
CHRISTMAS LOVE: A True Story of a Holiday Miracle, by Candy Chand,
illustrations by Julie Olson. Gibbs
Smith. 32 pp. $9.99.
Reviewed by JEAN BARNES, a Cincinnati-based
writer.
ST. FRANCIS LOVED CHRISTMAS. He
saw in the Lord’s humble birth a confirmation
of God’s great love for us, as
well as a call to live a simple life. Three
years before his death, Francis staged a
live nativity scene in Greccio to appreciate
the “simplicity, humility and
poverty of the scene,” says John V.
Kruse.
Advent and Christmas Wisdom From
St. Francis of Assisi cites the saint’s
words—some written in his own
hand—that speak of these same
themes. Kruse, a historical theologian
with expertise in Franciscan spirituality
and teacher at Neumann College in
Aston, Pennsylvania, has pulled
together Francis’ words from many
sources.
The Advent-related first part follows
a day-by-day format for the possible
28 days of the season. It pairs Francis’
words with appropriate Scripture
quotes, prayers and actions.
The second part does the same for
the 12 days of the Christmas season.
The final part has two
possible liturgical formats
for nightly prayer, if a
reader wants to use the
book as something more
than a daily reader or a
guide for a prayer journal.
The other book, Christmas
Love, concerns a real
public school holiday pageant
that somehow got
to the religious heart of
Christmas. Candy Chand
is an inspirational writer
who has had stories published in the
Chicken Soup for the Soul series.
Both of these books are great antidotes
to the consumerism of the standard
American Christmas.
You can order ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS WISDOM FROM ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI and CHRISTMAS LOVE: A True Story of a Holiday Miracle from St.
Francis Bookshop.
TAKE HEART: Catholic Writers on Hope in Our Time, edited by Ben
Birnbaum. Boston College, The
Church in the 21st Century series.
Crossroad Publishing. 240 pp. $14.95.
Reviewed by RACHELLE LINNER, a freelance
writer who lives in Boston.
BOSTON COLLEGE’S The Church in
the 21st Century Center is committed
“to explore the neuralgic
issues facing the Catholic
Church today.” As part of
its work, the Center publishes
books that address
sexuality, priesthood, lay
life and religious education,
among other topics. This
volume is different. It addresses
how people can
“find or retain...hope in a
time dizzy with betrayal,
anger, and uncertainty....”
To this end, the Center
approached “serious and able Catholic
writers” and asked them to “reflect on
the nature of hope and its sources and
uses in our time.” Thirty-two of them
and three non-Catholics contributed
the thoughtful essays that comprise
this modest but valuable book.
Editor Ben Birnbaum, who is Jewish,
is a longtime employee of Boston
College. His introduction reveals an
affectionate appreciation for the incarnational
sensibility of Catholicism, noting
the preponderance of things that
are mentioned in the essays: “green
chile, a blooded crossroad, a Monday
evening meditation group, a subway
ride, charm bracelets, ‘Danny Boy,’ a
neglected church building, an AIDS
clinic, and Spanish anarchists.”
The essays vary widely in tone and
subject, which adds to the pleasure of
good prose and the range of insights,
impressions and ideas. Take Heart affirms Cullen Murphy’s conclusion
that hope is located “at the miraculous
intersection of one person’s faith and
another’s charity.”
Many essays narrate situations of
pain. Don Wycliff, writing two years
after his wife asked for a divorce, reflects
on the aching loneliness and disruption
of a once-settled life. Colleen Carroll
Campbell was a senior in college in
1996 when her beloved father was diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s disease. “It was
in Dad’s crucible of dementia that I
came to see what his hope was made of:
It was there that I learned why he had
refused to hope in anything less than
the promise of eternal life in Jesus
Christ.”
Now on the faculty of Ave Maria
University, Joseph Pearce in his youth
was an imprisoned and
angry white supremacist
who was “utterly alone” in
solitary confinement, “surrounded
by my own vices,
my own sins, my own bitterness,
my own hates.”
Pearce had never prayed,
but someone had given
him a rosary and “it was
with this thinnest thread
of hope in my hands that I
climbed downward to my
knees.”
Other authors share the fruits of
their careful observation. Lawrence S.
Cunningham writes about the soup
kitchen, hospitality house and respite
shelter near the University of Notre Dame, where he is a professor of theology:
“When one magnifies and connects
living Catholic places by the
number of similar ones all over the
world, one conjures up a huge skein of
goodness that covers the planet.”
No one diminishes the fallout from
the sexual-abuse scandal. Brian Doyle
is blunt and direct. “I have three small
children; I was enraged. And I remain
enraged, afraid, and bitter. The organization
into which I was born...is
revealed to be a place where men at
the highest levels shut their eyes to the
screams of children in the next room.”
Yet Doyle offers the realistic and
clear-eyed hope that “this closed corporation
is dying and being reborn
before our eyes; it is crumbling and
shattering and roiling and churning
while something in its institutional
heart is struggling to be born anew.”
The authors represented in Take
Heart deserve to be included in the
company of midwives assisting at this
momentous birth. We are the richer
because they have shared the fruits of
their intelligence, faith and hope.
You can order TAKE HEART: Catholic Writers on Hope in Our Time from St. Francis Bookshop.
MEDIA MINDFULNESS: Educating
Teens About Faith and Media, by
Gretchen Hailer, R.S.H.M., and Rose
Pacatte, F.S.P. Saint Mary’s Press. 150
pp. $25.95.
Reviewed by MICHAEL J. DALEY, a religion
teacher at St. Xavier High School in
Cincinnati, Ohio.
“IF I HAD A NICKEL for every time
somebody said ___ (fill in blank), I’d be
a rich man.” For this teacher of teenagers,
it would have to be the phrase
“It’s just entertainment.”
In their book Media Mindfulness: Educating
Teens About Faith and Media,
Gretchen Hailer and Rose Pacatte, both
media literacy experts and women religious,
attempt to do what at first seems
impossible: give teachers like myself
the tools to show teenagers that there
is a connection (or disconnect) between
their media consumption and gospel
values.
In light of the all-pervasive quality of
today’s media, Hailer and Pacatte make
it clear that media mindfulness—media
literacy education done in the context
of faith formation—is no longer a
luxury but a pastoral imperative.
The reason is as
important as it is obvious.
Our culture’s storytellers,
the media makers and creators
of tomorrow, are in
homes, classrooms and
pews today.
Unfortunately, many
adults are afraid of discussing
media. They feel
hopelessly left behind and
incompetent in its presence.
This sometimes results
in a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing
attitude toward the multiple sources
of media that teenagers are exposed to
and use every day. Also, rather than
opening up avenues of communication,
many adults are more comfortable
controlling the media to which children
and teens have access.
Hailer and Pacatte clearly favor communication
rather than a “Just say no”
response. They write, “Much as we
might want to shield them from any
sinfulness in the media, what we really
want for them is the ability to recognize
what they are seeing and hearing for
what it is, and to form a Christian
response to it.”
This invites adults—teachers, parents,
pastors, youth ministers—to
become co-learners in regard to the
various entertainment out there. As a
result, the experience and opinions of
youth must be honored (and admitted).
Otherwise, we’ll more than likely,
whatever our intentions, be dismissed
as judgmental and out of touch.
To this end, the book addresses eight
specific media: popular culture, advertising,
print, movies,
music, television, electronic
games and the
Internet. Each chapter follows
a familiar outline:
brief introduction, followed
by key issues and
points involved in this
area of media, and finishes
with creative activities
designed to get
teenagers to become more
media mindful.
In envisioning what
media mindfulness is, the book offers
two lenses. The first one is faith. Here
it must be affirmed that all of creation—including the various forms of
media—can reveal God to us. Rather
than be suspicious, we should be open
to “the media as potential locations
for discovering the presence of God in
all manner of unlikely places.”
The second lens is mindfulness.
Hailer and Pacatte encourage teenagers
and others to ask questions and be
reflective about their lives and the
choices they make.
Ultimately, the hope is that a spirituality
of media and communication
will emerge. Necessarily, the Church
can and should play a vital role.
It is to the book’s credit that it allows
for multiple uses: a course on media literacy
or on ways to incorporate it into
the whole curriculum; prayer or retreat
experiences; parent meetings; and one’s
personal enrichment.
As a teacher who sees teaching teenagers media mindfulness as one of
his goals, I found the book to be a rich
resource which I highly recommend.
You can order MEDIA MINDFULNESS: Educating
Teens About Faith and Media from St. Francis Bookshop.
THE WORK OF OUR HANDS: The Art
of Martin Erspamer, O.S.B., foreword
by Archabbot Justin DuVall, O.S.B.,
preface by Guerric DeBona, O.S.B.
Pastoral Press. 104 pp. 55 illustrations.
$30.
Reviewed by JEANNE KORTEKAMP, art
director of St. Anthony Messenger.
WITH GREAT DELIGHT, I agreed to
review this beautiful book featuring the
artistic creations of Martin Erspamer, a
Benedictine brother whose work I have
known and admired for a long time.
Twelve years ago, when I began employment
with St. Anthony Messenger Press as art director of the magazine, I
entered into a working relationship
with Brother Steve Erspamer. That
was how he was known to me at that
time, as a Marianist brother, before
he entered the Benedictine
Order. By the time I
arrived on the scene,
Steve’s work had already
appeared in St. Anthony
Messenger Press’s books,
newsletters and in these
pages. That tradition continued.
Nearly three years ago,
I called the studio in St.
Louis where he worked
only to discover that he
was gone. He left to enter
into the novitiate at St. Meinrad Archabbey
in southern Indiana to become
a Benedictine brother.
I was surprised he would leave behind
his beloved dog. On the other hand, I
could see how he might be drawn to
the particular spirituality of the Benedictines.
He was deeply attracted to the
contemplative aspects of Christianity
and the rich tradition and history of
Christian symbols. It is these symbols,
especially from the medieval period,
that have found their way into his art.
So now Martin could delve deeper
into the transcendent and build on his
own rich heritage. The Work of Our
Hands is surely a testament to his skill
as an artist and craftsman and, above
all, to the knowledge of Christian subject
matter which he brings to his art.
Whenever I commission him to create
illustrations for an article in St. Anthony
Messenger, I know I can trust his understanding
and depiction of the essential
aspects of what is written.
The Work of Our Hands is beautifully
designed, presenting Brother Martin’s
work with the clarity and simplicity it
deserves. The color reproductions of
the art are each accompanied
by a brief explanation
of the process, as well as the
meaning of the symbols.
The book is divided into
four sections: art, glass,
ceramics and furniture. This
diversity exemplifies the
breadth of Martin’s talents.
A triptych titled “The
Shrine of St. Meinrad” is
one such example, as it
shows the life of St. Meinrad
in a series of paintings
on its panels and is also
designed to house relics
of the saint in the lower
central panel.
The Work of Our Hands provides the reader not
only with a delightful visual
experience, but also
with a deeper awareness
and understanding of the
symbols and transcendent
aspects of Christian
art. It received an award
from the Catholic Press
Association last May.
You can order THE WORK OF OUR HANDS: The Art of Martin Erspamer, O.S.B., from St. Francis Bookshop.
THE VATICAN, by Father Michael
Collins. Dorling Kindersley Limited.
320 pp. $35.
Reviewed by PAT McCLOSKEY, O.F.M.,
editor of this publication. During the years
that he worked at the international headquarters
of the Order of Friars Minor in Rome
(1985 until 1992), he regularly walked down
the hill and visited the Vatican.
THIS LUSH PHOTO BOOK was written
by Father Michael Collins, who spent
six summers as a tour guide in St. Peter’s
Basilica, as well as seven years studying
and teaching in Rome. Ordained in
1985 and now working in Dublin, he
gladly accompanies groups of pilgrims
to the Eternal City.
In the Foreword, he writes: “With
this book, I have taken you behind the
scenes of this fascinating city state. You
will meet a variety of the people who
live and work there, and wonder at the
incomparable artistic treasure house
and great Christian center that is the
Vatican.”
Father Collins tells
this story in six sections:
calendar (photos
of key annual events),
history (portraits of
many popes and a
chronological summary
of the papacy’s
history), art and architecture
(St. Peter’s and
other buildings at the
Vatican, plus St. John
Lateran and the papal
palace in Viterbo), daily life inside the
Vatican (pope, workers and members of
the Roman curia), people (see list
below) and treasures (mostly liturgical
objects).
The people section includes Pope
Benedict XVI, Cardinal Leandro Sandri,
a sacristan, a choirboy, a Missionary of
Charity, a seminarian, a mosaic restorer,
a photographer, a painting restorer, a
Swiss Guard and the director of furnishings
for the Apostolic Palace.
The excellent and well-captioned
photos (over 1,000) show behind-the-scenes
staff members, as well as locations
and objects that most visitors will
never see. This volume concludes with
a chronology of the popes, a glossary of
key terms and a thorough index.
You can order THE VATICAN from St. Francis Bookshop.
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