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 ON THE ROAD WITH FRANCIS OF
ASSISI: A Timeless Journey Through
Umbria and Tuscany, and Beyond, by Linda Bird Francke. Random
House. 266 pp. $25.95.
Reviewed by MURRAY BODO, O.F.M.,
author of Francis: The Journey and the
Dream and Clare: A Light in the Garden (St. Anthony Messenger Press) and many
other books.
FOR YEARS I have been a guide for
Franciscan Pilgrimage Programs, which
began with two American
friars studying in Rome, who
decided to spend their summer
vacation traveling to
the sites of St. Francis in Italy
and taking as their only
guide the Omnibus of Franciscan
Sources, medieval texts
by and about St. Francis.
Award-winning journalist
and former editor of Newsweek Linda Bird Francke does
much the same in this entertaining
and well-researched
book. With her husband, photographer
Harvey Loomis, she journeys to all of
the places made holy by St. Francis and
St. Clare.
What struck me immediately was
how much her journey is about St.
Francis and St. Clare, and how little is
about Francke and her husband. Her
book is in the tradition of the true pilgrim’s
guide, which enables the reader
to experience vicariously the sacred
places of the author’s pilgrimage of discovery.
Francke uses mainly sources
from Thomas of Celano, St. Francis’
first biographer, and at the various sites
she relies on keen observation and
interviews with friars or others.
Nor is her book limited to Italy.
Francke takes us as far as Damietta in
Egypt, where Francis befriended the
Muslim sultan, Malik al-Kamil, in the
effort to make peace during the Fifth
Crusade. She writes, “The Crusaders,
some 60,000 strong, were camped on
the west bank of the Nile, near the convergence
of the river and the sea. That
happens to be our exact location on
modern Ras el-Bar. It is entirely possible
that [in Francis’ time] our balcony view
of the resort’s palm-shaded esplanade
along the river and behind the
hotel...would have been of thousands of
tents and pavilions that sprawled
through the dusty Crusader camp.”
Then, Francke goes on to describe in
detail the realities of the Fifth Crusade
during Francis’ stay there.
All through the book,
Francke parallels the medieval
and present-day realities
of the site she and her
husband are visiting. For
example, when Francis returns
from Damietta, he
stops at Isola del Deserto
in Venice. When Francke
visits the friary there, she is
greeted by Friar Antonino.
“If the late actor Walter
Matthau had been cloned,
he would have reappeared as the 82-year-old Friar Antonino. The friar carries
an English script in his hand about
the convent’s history, which he delights
in reading rapidly, theatrically and virtually
unintelligibly.”
Francke’s book is filled with delightful
anecdotes like this one, but they are
always springboards into the medieval
story of what happened at the site. “It
is easy to see why Francis lingered on
this serene island before tackling the
problems that lay ahead. He began by
writing a defiant letter of support to
Clare, who was fighting the Church for
her ‘right’ to live in extreme poverty.”
Francke then quotes the letter Francis
wrote and journeys on to Bologna where
Francis went next in his determination
to tear down the elegant residence the
friars had built for themselves while he
was away on the Fifth Crusade.
Place after place mentioned in the
early sources is visited by Francke and
her husband, who took the 30 photos
included in the book. There are also
two pages of helpful maps and extensive
notes and bibliography. The
strength of this book is the fresh and
entertaining way the stories of Francis
and Clare are told through the eyes
of a 21st-century pilgrim who finds her
way to and around the places of
Francis and Clare.
She is also a pilgrim who knows her
away around words. The last page of
the book contains these: “We leave the
reconstructed chapel where Francis
died...only to be met by the jarring
sound of music, albeit sacred, being
broadcast over the loudspeakers. After
all the hundreds of miles we have traveled
with Francis, however, I have
learned to blot out intrusions into the
simple spaces we have shared with this
extraordinary man and his legend. And
so I don’t hear the canned music. I
hear the sound of larks.”
If the reader learns only that, this
will be a worthwhile, marvelous journey.
You can order ON THE ROAD WITH FRANCIS OF
ASSISI: A Timeless Journey Through
Umbria and Tuscany, and Beyond, from St.
Francis Bookshop.
AMERICA AND THE CHALLENGES
OF RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY, by Robert
Wuthnow. Princeton University
Press. 448 pp. $29.95, hardcover;
$18.95, paperback.
Reviewed by MICHAEL J. DALEY, a teacher
and writer at St. Xavier High School in
Cincinnati, Ohio. He edited (with Bill
Madges) Vatican II: Forty Personal Stories and The Many Marks of the Church (both from Twenty-Third Publications).
LATE LAST YEAR, Keith Ellison was
elected to Congress, the first Muslim
to be elected. Adding a note of controversy,
Ellison chose to be sworn in using
not a Bible, but a Quran—interestingly
enough, one owned by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the
United States. Many people objected
to this, saying it was but another example
of the breakdown of America’s
Judeo-Christian heritage.
In his most recent book, America and
the Challenges of Religious
Diversity, Robert Wuthnow,
professor of sociology at
Princeton University, examines “how we as individuals
and as a nation are responding
to the challenges of
increasing religious and cultural
diversity.”
Our national tension
arises from being founded
upon Christian principles,
yet also celebrating a tradition
of religious freedom.
This diversity of belief was easier to
accept when it was within the Christian
tradition. Now, unlike the Hindu, Buddhist
or Muslim geographic distance
of the past, religious diversity is across
the street, or in the next office cubicle,
or at the evening school event.
If Christopher Columbus and subsequent
American history are any
example, though, it must be admitted
that America has long struggled to view
itself by any other lens besides the
Christian one. Eventually, over time,
the nation tended to downplay religious
differences among Protestants,
Catholics and Jews and, by the middle
of the 20th century, arrived at what
has been termed the “tripartite settlement.”
In this process, cultural assimilation
became more defining of
identity than of religious tradition.
Now with increasing numbers of
Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, the
question of religious diversity has arisen
anew. As Wuthnow writes, “Diversity
raises the specter of a frayed society,
drawn in different directions by competing
lifestyles, ethnic identities,
national loyalties, customs, and beliefs.
But it also evokes new opportunities
for rethinking the United States’ vision
of itself.”
Looking at how most Christian
Americans respond to religious diversity,
Wuthnow divides them into three
groups: spiritual shoppers, Christian
exclusivists and Christian inclusivists.
The spiritual shoppers, for the most
part, still believe in God but have a difficult
time privileging one religious tradition
over another. This very openness
to new ideas, experiences and lifestyles,
Wuthnow argues, leaves them with little
commitment and, as a
result, does not build up
religious and societal institutions.
Christian exclusivists, on
the other hand, believe that
only Christianity is true and
that one is ultimately saved
by faith in Jesus Christ, God’s
only son. Here Wuthnow is
careful not to caricature
these persons, but he does
admit that Christian exclusivism
may lead to prejudice
and discrimination.
The last group Wuthnow describes is
the Christian inclusivists. Though he
doesn’t go into any detail explicitly,
given the teachings of Vatican II, this
is where one might expect to find the
majority of Catholics. Inclusivists are
strongly committed to one religious
tradition, yet recognize appreciatively
that God (and truth) is found among
the other world religions.
Admittedly, this position calls for
good balance which “involves maintaining
a fine course between opposing
forces, one of which is to veer toward
believing that only the Christian way
is true after all, the other being the
view that what one thinks and does
religiously is of little consequence
because all religions are the same.”
In light of these three positions,
Wuthnow explores how churches are
managing diversity with all of its practical,
legal and theological issues. One
of his major concerns is that lack of
engagement with those of other faiths
is leading to surface toleration rather
than genuine understanding and conversation.
To address this, Wuthnow calls for
the need to practice “reflective pluralism.”
It is described as “acknowledging how and why people are different (and
the same), and it requires having good
reasons for engaging with people and
groups whose religious practices are fundamentally
different from one’s own.”
Wuthnow communicates well the
tension, risk and gift of our national
motto—E pluribus unum—“one out of
many.”
You can order AMERICA AND THE CHALLENGES
OF RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY from St. Francis Bookshop.
SAINT FRANCIS AND THE WOLF, by
Jane Langton. Illustrated by Ilse
Plume. David R. Godine
Publisher. 32 pp. $16.95.
Reviewed by SUSAN HINES-BRIGGER,
an assistant editor
of this publication, and her
five-year-old son, Alex.
BECAUSE OF ITS long and
storied history, I’m sure
many people have already
heard the story of St. Francis
and the wolf of Gubbio. I
know my kids have, which
is why my son, Alex, was a bit hesitant
when I told him what our nighttime
book was going to be about. But, fortunately,
Jane Langton offers a new
version of the classic story in which
St. Francis convinces a wolf terrorizing
a town to live in peace with the townspeople
in return for food supplied by
them.
This book is beautifully illustrated
by Ilse Plume with very simple, yet
compelling drawings. Langton and
Plume have previously worked together
on three picture books of adapted folktales.
Langton has also written
mystery novels for
adults, including Emily
Dickinson Is Dead.
Both the opening and
back inside cover contain
St. Francis’ The
Canticle of the Sun, a nice
added bonus to the
book. The reader is also
given a small summary
of the life of St. Francis
at the end of the book.
The dust jacket of the book recommends
this book as a “perfect gift for
Easter and for anyone who embraces
the relationship between mankind and
the natural world.” I certainly agree
with the second part, but also think
this book would make a perfect gift
anytime throughout the year.
You can order SAINT FRANCIS AND THE WOLF from St.
Francis Bookshop.
A MILLION REASONS: Why I Fought
for the Rights of the Disabled, by
Alan Labonte, with Brock Brower.
HotHouse Press. 236 pp. $26.
Reviewed by MARY LYNNE RAPIEN, a
writer for Homily Helps and Weekday
Homily Helps and a practicing licensed
clinical counselor in Cincinnati, Ohio. She
was the youth columnist for St. Anthony
Messenger for 40 years and is a wife,
mother of six and grandmother of 19.
IN THIS BOOK, Alan Labonte chronicles
in detail the legal battle he fought
and the risks he took in taking a stand
for the rights of disabled persons to
have reasonable accommodations in
the workplace.
The book is an easy read, although more details about the “he said/she
said” of the trial were included than
this reviewer needed. At times it seemed
that Labonte was putting the reader in
the jury seat, and that he was trying to
convince us of his case.
One might think that Labonte’s
problems began in July 1991 when he
was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
(MS). A bigger blow, however, was termination
from his job as executive
director of the prestigious law firm of
Hutchins and Wheeler (H&W). In January
1992, six months after making
known his condition, Labonte was let
go without warning. He
was a 52-year-old man
with a master’s degree. He
had been with H&W for
18 months and had commanded
a salary well into
six figures.
After he disclosed his
MS, no accommodations
were made for the author,
such as an office closer to
the elevator, more frequent
breaks or shorter days.
Instead, H&W fired him
and offered a severance package of
$60,000—provided that he would
not sue and would maintain confidentiality.
Labonte procured the services of
David Rapaport, a lawyer. He declined
the offer and countered for an amount
that, he believed, reflected actual losses—$168,000. H&W declined. There
began the legal battle which took them
to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
The book includes in tedious detail
major projects the author worked on
for H&W. We read of the infighting
and office politics. We are told the questions
for the mock jury and the details
of the author’s presentation.
After the firing, the author got partial
disability from the Union Mutual Insurance
Company (H&W’s Ltd. policy),
but as debts were mounting, his sense
of hopelessness was on the increase,
too. The book takes us through the
roller coaster of emotions of someone
with MS, financial problems and the
pressures of a long legal battle.
Interwoven in the court case is
Labonte’s spiritual growth and return to
the sacraments. We follow him on several
trips to Medjugorje and the adoption
of a child from there.
As the case progressed up the courts,
H&W offered settlements of $500,000,
$1,750,000 and then $3,000,000.
Labonte knew he could lose all, but acceptance
of the offer would mean that
he would not be doing all he could for
the rights of disabled people. Also, it
would mean he would not be able to
tell his story.
On May 5, 1997, more than five
years after termination, the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court made a
decision that ultimately
led to Labonte receiving
almost $2,000,000—a sacrifice
of a million dollars
(hence, the book’s title).
The court decision gave
disabled employees the
right to file a claim of
employment discrimination
even if they had received
disability benefits.
The final chapter updates
the reader on Labonte’s life
after the trial. He earned a
doctorate at Boston University where he
is on the faculty, thus proving his continuing
capability of holding down a
job. Presently, he serves as a senior
research associate. Physically, he gets
around with a specially equipped motor
vehicle which accommodates his electric
scooter. As for his adaptation to his
disability, he says, “Living with MS has
become for me like living with a friend.”
This book would be of special interest
to those fighting for justice with
their own disabilities, and for those
who enjoy the details of legal cases
from beginning to final gavel.
At the end of the day, Labonte did
get to tell his story.
You can order A MILLION REASONS: Why I Fought
for the Rights of the Disabled from St. Francis Bookshop.
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