|
 THE REFORMATION FOR ARMCHAIR
THEOLOGIANS, by Glenn S.
Sunshine. Illustrations by Ron Hill.
Westminster John Knox Press. 247
pp. $14.95.
Reviewed by PAT McCLOSKEY, O.F.M.,
editor of this publication. His independent
study project as a college senior involved
studying the development of Martin
Luther’s thought between the posting of
his 95 Theses (1517) and the Diet of
Worms, which outlawed him (1520).
IN RECENT YEARS Catholic parishes
and Protestant congregations are offering
more opportunities to
study Church history, of
getting beyond old stereotypes.
This volume began as a
series of newsletter articles
for First Presbyterian Church
in Hartford, Connecticut,
and was later expanded into
an adult education course at
First Church of Christ in
Wethersfield, Connecticut.
Additional research and consultation
resulted in this
present volume.
Sunshine, an associate professor of
history at Central Connecticut University,
has produced a very readable
account of European Christianity
between 1500 (the eve of the Reformation)
and 1648 (the Peace of Westphalia’s
decision that government
leaders would determine the official
religion locally). Ron Hill’s 41 drawings
reinforce and complement the text
nicely.
After a chapter titled “On the Eve of
the Reformation,” the author traces
the work of Martin Luther, Ulrich
Zwingli, John Calvin, John Knox and
others, without neglecting developments
within the Roman Catholic
Church. An 11-page Index should help
anyone who gets lost regarding a person’s
name or a technical term. A two-page
Bibliography suggests sources for
future study. Several discussion questions
end each chapter.
Sunshine tells a complicated story
in very understandable language. I was
surprised, however, that the section on
the Augsburg Confession (1530) did
not mention that in 1999 the Roman
Catholic Church and many parts of
the Lutheran Church agreed on a “Joint
Declaration” on justification, the Reformation’s
most disputed issue.
At times the author’s tongue-in-cheek
approach is too simple. For
example, William of Ockham’s nominalist
philosophy was not
widely held by Franciscans,
though Ockham belonged
to that order. Catholic
authorities did not have to
pressure Erasmus to write
more positively about human
freedom than Martin
Luther did. Were Jesuits
really involved in plots to
assassinate Elizabeth I of
England? Was Elizabeth
indeed “tricked” into signing
the death sentence of
her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots? Did
French kings “celebrate” Mass on their
coronation day?
Sunshine’s text avoids caricatures of
the Catholic Church. Most Protestants
and Catholics could learn a good deal
from this book.
You can order THE REFORMATION FOR ARMCHAIR
THEOLOGIANS from St.
Francis Bookshop.
THE GIFT OF CHANGE: Spiritual
Guidance for a Radically New Life, by
Marianne Williamson. Harper San
Francisco. 251 pp. $21.95.
Reviewed by the REV. LAWRENCE M.
VENTLINE, D.Min., a priest of the Archdiocese
of Detroit and a licensed psychotherapist.
His newest book is Securing
Serenity in Troubling Times: Living
One Day at a Time (Xulon Press).
POPULAR AUTHOR, TEACHER and former
pastor Marianne Williamson sees
a wounded world that needs a little
light to walk by. Extraordinary difficulties
are faced in this post-9/11 world
and, in Williamson’s view, things are
“spinning out of control.”
This is Williamson’s ninth book; others
include her best-selling A Return to
Love (Perennial Library), which was
reflections on the Foundation of Inner
Peace’s “A Course in Miracles.” Here,
her usual theme of “love is the answer”
is replaced by “change is a gift,” so that
someone can really discover her or his
essence.
Embracing personal responsibility is
a central idea in the book, both for
one’s own personal disasters and for
more collective issues. Williamson calls
the dilemma a “collective depression”
that many prefer to suppress. Yet, she
writes, only by dealing with our role in
healing the world can we overcome
the anxiety.
Like a thick fog, anxiety hovers over
the earth, the author writes, and, consequently,
many people feel exhausted.
Revisiting her reflections on the principles
that guided “A Course in Miracles,”
Williamson suggests 10 changes
“to actualize the greatness of God that
lives within all of us.” Great performances
in the drama of living will not
occur, she concludes, until one takes
the path of spiritual maturity.
Her 10 changes include changing
from negative thinking to positive love;
from anxiety to atonement; from focus
on guilt to focus on innocence; from
living in the past and future to living in
the present; from asking God to change
the world to praying that God will
change individuals one person at a
time.
“If you can rise above the fear in
your life and live the love within you,”
Williamson says, “and if I can rise
above my fear and live the love in me—if that drama is reenacted enough times by enough of the world’s people then
we can pierce the darkness and tip the
world in the direction of light.”
Call it an inside job to change for
happiness. Call it Vatican II’s challenge
for transformation of the world beginning
with self. She advises folks to make
the most of mistakes by letting God
“turn our scars into beauty marks.”
You can order THE GIFT OF CHANGE: Spiritual
Guidance for a Radically New Life from St.
Francis Bookshop.
ABOUT GRACE, by Anthony Doerr.
Scribner. 402 pp. $25, hardcover; $15,
paperback.
Reviewed by BARBARA SONNENBERG, a
retired public librarian and former member
of the St. Anthony Messenger Press
Advisory Board.
ANTHONY DOERR FOLLOWS up on
his highly lauded short-story collection
entitled The Shell Collectors with a
dazzling first novel, interweaving the
basically unchanging laws of physical
science with the largely uncharted
realm of human psychology.
David Winkler, the protagonist,
spends his boyhood in Anchorage,
Alaska, obsessed with the phenomena
created by the extremes of weather
experienced there. He and his mother
share a particular interest in the intricate
design of a snowflake. At age nine
he dreams about a man being killed in
a bus accident and witnesses the event
with everything he had foreseen.
He dreams of meeting his future wife
at a supermarket, where he will retrieve
a magazine she will drop. This, too,
takes place, and he begins to stalk the
already married woman and persuade
her to have an affair. When she announces
her pregnancy, they flee
together to Cleveland, Ohio, and settle
in a small home by the Chagrin River
to await the birth of their child, Grace.
Six months later, David dreams that
the river will flood and that, while
attempting to rescue the child, his wife
will be torn from his arms and swept
away in the deluge. Convinced that
this dream will also come true, he flees
to a remote Caribbean island, adapts to
the radical change in surroundings and
attempts to forget his beloved wife and
daughter.
He becomes very close to Naaliyah,
the five-year-old daughter of the
Orellana family who take him in, and
an obvious surrogate for Grace. When
the girl runs away, he becomes obsessed
with discovering the fate of his own
family and begins the difficult journey
back to his earlier life and loves.
Some delicious comic relief is offered
by the very different personalities
and lifestyles of
the nine possible Grace
Winklers whom he visits.
Patient acceptance of his
search by at least eight of
the nine may be a personification
of the grace in the
title, as could the kindness
received from the Orellana
family, the truck driver in
Idaho and even his wife’s
first husband. The grace
hardest to come by is forgiving
himself.
Let me warn the reader that this is
not an easily readable work. While the
prose is gripping in its impact, it is also
dense with its manipulation of facts,
sights, feelings and thoughts. The
highly detailed descriptions of David’s
work as a hydrologist, then a weather
forecaster, then a wilderness survivor,
combined with Naaliyah’s studies of
insects overwintering in the Yukon, are
given excruciatingly detailed attention.
While an intricate part of
the plot, this amount of
detail seriously slows the
reading.
The multitude of minute
knowledge the author exhibits
can be exasperating
or enthralling. Perhaps the
following quote will help
you decide which adjective
would apply to you:
“Studying ice crystals as
a graduate student, he
eventually found the basic
design (equilateral, equiangular hexagons)
so icily repeated, so unerringly
conforming, that he couldn’t help but shudder: Beneath the splendor—the
filigreed blossoms, the microscopic
stars—was a ghastly inevitability; crystals
could not escape their embedded
blueprints any more than humans
could. Everything hewed to a rigidity of
pattern, the certainty of death.”
Young adult and adult readers with
a background in biology—or who at
least have the patience to absorb scientific
details while following a suspenseful
plot line—will find this novel
an enjoyable read.
You can order About Grace from St. Francis Bookshop.
REAL PEOPLE, REAL PRESENCE:
Ordinary Catholics on the Extraordinary
Power of the Eucharist, presented
by Cardinal William H. Keeler.
Foreword by Father Benedict
Groeschel, C.F.R. The Word Among
Us Press. 176 pp. $10.95.
Reviewed by BARBARA BECKWITH, book
review editor of this publication.
IF YOU LIKED our October cover story, “What the Eucharist Means
to Me: Our Readers Respond,” you’ll love this book. Cardinal
William H. Keeler invited
the people in his Baltimore
Archdiocese to write stories
that witness to the power of
the Eucharist in their lives.
The testimonies are deeply
moving. Ranging from
First Communion to Communion
for the sick and
dying, from extraordinary
ministers of the sacrament
to participants in eucharistic adoration,
these stories attest to the felt presence
of Jesus in the Eucharist. They
speak of God helping them through
particularly difficult times of life or
healing them—physically or emotionally—through their reception of the
Eucharist.
The contributions are pure faith. The
one that touched me the most was
Rebecca Drink’s story of her autistic
son’s Communions when he realized he
was with “my best friend” and was
quiet, his face glowing with joy, perhaps
seeing angels and the communion of
saints gathered around the altar.
A few of the stories come from converts
who stress that they became
Catholic because of the Eucharist. They
don’t take the gift of the Eucharist for
granted, as sometimes we lifelong
Catholics do. These stories come from
ordinary parishioners, not Church professionals,
although I do recognize one
name, Maureen Sullivan, as the author
of an excellent book on Vatican II.
Each chapter begins with an inspirational
quote on the Eucharist from
Pope John Paul II or a saint,
and ends with reflection
questions suitable for individual
or group use. The
book also includes the complete
text of Pope John Paul
II’s apostolic letter, Mane
Nobiscum Domine, for the
Year of the Eucharist.
Even though that Church
celebration concluded last
October, the Eucharist is
always available to us. Cardinal
Keeler is still inviting
Catholics to share their personal witness
stories and includes guidelines in
this book on how to do that.
The cardinal will donate the royalties
from the sale of this book to Catholic
education and the restoration of the
historic Basilica of the Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.
His book has been endorsed by all the
U.S. cardinals and many U.S. bishops,
as well as familiar lay authors like Bert
Ghezzi and Sister Ann Shields.
Cardinal Keeler says of his book, “Taken together, the stories in Real People,
Real Presence compose a song of
Love to the Lord, striking a variety of
chords and resonating from deep
within.” This is glorious music, indeed.
You can order REAL PEOPLE, REAL PRESENCE:
Ordinary Catholics on the Extraordinary
Power of the Eucharist from St.
Francis Bookshop.
PRAYING IN THE CELLAR: A Guide
to Facing Your Fears and Finding
God, by Anthony Delisi, O.C.S.O. Paraclete
Press. 160 pp. $15.95.
Reviewed by MARION AMBERG, a freelance
writer for this publication and dozens
more.
DON’T READ THIS title on an empty
stomach! Father Anthony Delisi opens
his inspiring book with tales of his Sicilian
mother’s cooking and his family’s
cellar stocked with jars of tomato sauce.
The aromas just seem to waft off the
pages. I found myself scanning the
book like a menu, not only because I
was getting hungry but also because
this octogenarian Trappist monk is an
expert storyteller.
I laughed and cried—sometimes
both in the same paragraph—at Father
Delisi’s naked honesty in facing his private
fears.
Taking to heart Jesus’ instructions
for prayer, “Go to your inner room”
(or storeroom, as an older Greek version
has it), “close the door and pray to
your Father in secret,” Father Delisi
descends the steps into the storeroom—
or cellar—of his youth.
There among the jars of homemade
tomato sauce and preserves, decades-old
memories and fears begin to bubble up.
Father Delisi tells of his grandfather
Babi getting kidnapped by the Mafia
and how his older brothers slept at
night with a gun in a drawer between
their beds. For fear he would get kidnapped,
young Luigi (Father Delisi’s
baptismal name) was warned to keep
his distance from strangers. Delisi eventually
had to face that ingrained fear of
strangers when he became retreat master
of the guesthouse at Our Lady of the
Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers,
Georgia.
While I didn’t keep a journal as
Father Delisi suggested, his transparency
helped to bubble up some of
my own fears. I, too, ventured into a
cellar—the church cellar where a school
nun banished Frankie and me to practice our tubas in hopes that we would
improve. (We didn’t.) I also found
myself staring at a childhood fear that
seemed to grow up with me—the fear
of rejection, an unwelcome fear for a
freelance writer.
A part of Paraclete Press’s “A Voice
From the Monastery” series, this book
is divided into four chapters, each originally
published as a booklet. While
each chapter deals with a different stage
of spiritual light and darkness, I wasn’t
always able to make the distinction.
Was Mama Delisi’s spaghetti to blame?
Did Father Delisi get hungry, I wondered,
while writing these words at
4:30 a.m., as part of his morning vigil?
As a good selling point to his first
trade book (I hope Father Delisi writes
more), the final chapter includes testimonies
of people who have found healing
in their unique cellar encounters
with God. Rounding out the book are
an Afterword, an introduction to contemplative
prayer and a series of questions
to ponder with each chapter.
This book is a good read for everyone,
regardless of whether one wants to
expose fears to God for healing. Father
Delisi, founder of the Lay Cistercian
movement, has a masterful wit and
even offers tidbits on growing tomatoes.
His adventures in Africa—did you
know banana is an African word?—add
to the book’s spirit, as does his telling
of Sicilian Catholic traditions. Sicilians
eat neither pasta nor bread on December
13—the feast day of St. Lucy, who
was martyred in a flour mill.
This book lives up to the promise of
its title. Just make sure you descend
into your cellar on a full stomach—preferably after a plate of spaghetti and
garlic bread.
You can order PRAYING IN THE CELLAR: A Guide
to Facing Your Fears and Finding
God from St. Francis Bookshop.
FURRY LOGIC PARENTHOOD, by
Jane Seabrook. Ten Speed Press. 72
pp. $9.95.
Reviewed by SUSAN HINES-BRIGGER, an
assistant editor of this publication and
mother of three children: a six-year-old
daughter, a three-year-old son and a four-month-old daughter. She writes the “Faith-filled
Family” column for this magazine.
IN A FOLLOW-UP to her book Furry
Logic, author-illustrator Jane Seabrook
has created this latest book focusing
on the theme of parenting. Each page
features one of Seabrook’s exquisite
wildlife paintings along with a quote
on parenting, such as, “I used to have
a number of theories on raising children.
Now I have a number of children
and no theories.”
Many of the quotes were ones I had
heard before, but the illustrations gave
them a new perspective. For instance,
the above quote accompanies a picture
of a mother warthog with her babies
climbing all over her.
According to the book summary,
Seabrook’s paintings “uncannily capture
the highs and lows, loves and fears
that we all feel as parents.” I concur.
Seabrook is a freelance designer and
illustrator from Auckland, New Zealand.
In recent years, she has focused her
paintings on wildlife. The warm, naturalistic
illustrations in this book emphasize
how animals and humans nurture
their young.
Since I got this book for review, I
have picked it up a number of times to
browse through and have shared many
of the quotes with friends. This book
makes a perfect gift to give yourself,
for a baby shower, to celebrate a birth
or any other parenting occasion.
You can order Furry Logic Parenthood from St. Francis Bookshop.
| 
