Reggae Priest, Ghetto Priest

This past weekend I read Joseph Pearce’s Candles in the Dark: The Authorized Biography of Fr. Richard Ho Lung and the Missionaries of the Poor, which had been sent to me for review by St. Benedict’s Press.

I had known very little about the work of Fr. Ho Lung before reading this book. Given my deep commitment to the Vincentian charism, I confess that the first person who came to mind as I read about Fr. Ho Lung was St. Vincent de Paul, whose commitment to serving the needs of the poor and seeing Christ in the faces of the poor seems very much in evidence here.

While there are certainly matters on which Fr. Ho Lung and I would not be in agreement (he seems to bemoan women in the workplace), there are many inspring things about him presented in this biography. First and foremost, he is a model of “love as self-sacrificial giving of oneself to the Other.” He seems to seek nothing for himself and everything for the sake of those to whom he ministers. At the same time, like Vincent, he understood that “Catholics who give themselves in service to the poor are not merely social workers. They are not motivated primarily by the desire to make people more comfortable physically,” although they do that also, “but by the desire to serve Jesus in His presence among them.” And he has attracted large numbers to minister with him; his Missionaries of the Poor now have more than 500 brothers serving in various places around the world.

Second, his combining prayer and action is something that comes through clearly. His call was to social justice but at the same time, a call to a serious prayer life and deeper spirituality. As someone with an Ignatian spirituality, I was struck by the description of his referring to figures such as Merton and Hopkins, “not as an intellectual or academic exercise. No, he gave them flesh, made them live, so as to enliven a passage of scripture or a point for meditation.”

Third, Fr. Ho Lung is presented as someone who had a sense of humor. He was serious about his faith, but knew how to have a good time. Not only in his music – although that is a not insignificant part of his story (the “Reggae Priest” received many awards for his music), but other times he could be extremely playful. Many people could benefit form the reminder that being a good Christian does not mean walking around somber all of the time.

One of the things that struck me particularly was Fr. Ho Lung’s response to the question whether he feared for his life. It was a legitimate question given his willingness to take public (and confrontational) stands on issues of social justice and to be direct in fighting the drug rings in his locale. His response to the question was, “Oh no! I have to die for something.” There is something very powerful for me in that response. We all have to die, after all. But better to die for something that matters than not. I’m not saying his response gives me a desire to affirmatively purse martyrdom, but it does, I think, help provide strength to fight even when doing so carries a cost.

Two things minimized my appreciation of the book, which may be related. First, there are a number of points at which the author has a very defensive tone in talking about different aspects of Fr. Ho Lung and/or his ministry, as though he needs to defend him against attack against his orthodoxy or fidelity to the Magisterium. Yet I see no indication of any need for such defensiveness, no indication anyone has seriously challenged his fidelity. Amusingly, the defense of the connection between Fr. Ho Lung’s orthodoxy and the vernacular style of his music seems to be in response to the author’s own misgivings rather than anyone else’s.

Second, the author’s own biases come through strongly and I think his recounting of the life and work of Fr. Ho Lung would have been more effective without the distraction of those biases. One could, for example, explain Fr. Ho Lung’s decision to leave the Jesuits and form is own order without painting the entire population of Jesuits as modernists who have lost a focus on Christ. One could explain Fr. Ho Lung’s approach to his ministry without wholesale degradation of liberation theology. (And in this context, I found the author’s treatment of the Catholic Social Principle of solidarity to be woefully incomplete.) One could applaud the way Christianity has taken route in some of the places in which Fr. Ho Lung ministered without dismissing “the West” as having disintegrated “into deconstructed particles, devoid of faith or reason and lusting after nihilism of the culture of death.” Many of us do not share the author’s views on these or any number of other matters, and those who don’t may very well be turned off by his tone.

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Spiritual Direction and the Call to Greater Union with God

As someone who is both a spiritual director and one who has been receiving spiritual direction for many years, I read with interest Daniel Burke’s Navigating the Interior Life: Spiritual Direction and the Journey to God, sent to me by The Catholic Company as part of its reviewer program.

Burke and I share the conviction that spiritual direction is an important tool for helping us deepen our relationship with God. As I have told people who have asked me, I think anyone who is a regular pray-er, anyone who is committed to a life of discipleship and to deepening their life with God can benefit from direction. And I share Burke’s passion for sharing with others that which I have benefitted from.

I also agree with Burke both about the need to choose a spiritual director carefully and about the lack of knowledge/awareness many people have about what spiritual direction is. Thus, I think a book like this, that seeks to bring understanding of spiritual direction to a wider audience has great potential value. Having said that, there are several respects in which Burke and I part company.

The book begins with a chapter defining what spiritual direction is and what it is not. His description of what spiritual direction is correctly identifies that there are three parties to the spiritual direction relationship – the director, directee, and God, and that the central aim of direction is “to help guide the directee to purposely, consistently and substantively grow in their relationship with God and neighbor.” And I think some of the distinctions Burke draws are important, such as the distinction between spiritual direction and psychological counseling and the difference between spiritual direction and confession.

I do not, however, share Burke’s view that it is “sub-optimal” to have a spiritual director who is not a priest. While he recognizes that spiritual direction is not “the exclusive territory of priests and religious,” his ideal is a spiritual director that can also serve as confessor. I have seen this bias in others, knowing some people who believe that a priest, regardless of how little training in providing spiritual direction is superior to any lay person, regardless of how much training they have received. I do not share Burke’s view that the training in moral and dogmatic theology provides a sufficient basis for providing spiritual direction.

Given my training in Ignatian spirituality, I also don’t draw the sharp distinction I read Burke as drawing between the spiritual life of the directee and other aspects of their lives. While I agree that the “specific focus of spiritual direction is the spiritual life of the directee,” Ignatius’ emphasis on finding God in all things means there is virtually nothing that is completely divorced from our spiritual lives. Thus, unlike Burke, I think there is very little “elements, activities and interests that are peripheral” to the spiritual life.”

I had similarly mixed reactions to his chapters on finding a spiritual director and entering into a spiritual direction relationship. I think the most important criteria for a director is that the director himself or herself has experience in the spiritual life – that the director has a lived spirituality and is not someone who simply talks about faith and spirituality. (And I agree that there is an enormous difference between quoting from saints like Teresa of Avila and understanding their spirituality.) For me, a director’s view on “a few hot-button issues” are less important than they are for Burke. My job as a director is not to convince a directee of my theology – it is to help them grow in their relationship to God; the same is true regarding my relationship with my own director.

In his chapter on first meetings, I don’t disagree with a lot of what he suggests by way of preparing to meet with one’s director. However, I was taken aback by his claim that it is hard to get an appointment with a potential director. He asserts that director’s don’t make it easy to get an appointment as a means of gauging an interested directee’s seriousness and constancy. That may be Burke’s practice as a director. It is certainly not mine and it has not bene the practice with anyone from whom I have sought direction over the years – priest, religious or lay. When someone interested in direction calls me asking if I am available to take on a new directee, I have a phone conversation with them to determine if it makes sense for us to meet and then meet with the person. It may take some weeks for that meeting to occur given my schedule, but never would I either delay getting back to someone or do anything else to make it difficult for a person to see me.

The book contains a useful chapter on spiritual self-evaluation and of identification of “root” sins, useful not only for those seeking spiritual direction. A later chapter discusses stages of development of the spiritual life. While good, I wonder how useful some of it is for the primary audience of the book – i.e., those not yet in direction.

In all, there is much I thought beneficial in the book, but also a number of things that cause me hesitation about it.

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Unity vs. Uniformity

I just finished reading Christian de Cherge: A Theology of Hope, by Christian Salenson (aspects of which I’ve already written about here and here). When my friend Richard gave me the book, he described it as transformative, and that is no understatement.

Salenson’s book is “intended as an introduction to Christian de Cherge’s theology of ‘religious encounter,’” particularly the encounter between Christianity and Islam. Salenson uses the term “theology of religious encounter” rather than “theology of religions” to underscore de Cherge’s understanding that “it is a matter not solely of considering Islam from the point of view of Christian faith but also of how this encounter allows Christian faith to be deepened.”

De Cherge was not an academic theologian. His thoughts were born of his lived monastic experience in Algeria during a time of tremendous conflict and are shared not in books or academic journals, but in his homilies, chapter talks, supplemented by a few retreat and lectures.

There is much in de Cherge’s thought as reflected in Salenson’s book that will impact my prayer and reflection. Let me share here two related observations of de Cherge, which I think are so necessary for us to keep in mind in the pluralist world in which we live: “seeing things differently does not mean that one is not seeing the same things,” and “speaking otherwise of God is not speaking of another God.”

De Cherge understood that we are all united in having our source on the oneness of God. We may pray differently, we may call God by different names, we may have different conceptions or ways of talking about God.

But those differences do not change the reality that there is not a Christian God, a Muslim God, a Jewish God – but only God, the one God from whom we flow and the one God who constantly calls each of us to union with God and each other.

De Cherge takes this further, saying something else we might also profitably reflect on. “Could we not imagine that the difference which identifies someone as belonging to Christianity or Islam is rooted in the One God from which it proceeds?” That is, not only our unity has its origin in God, but so too do our differences.

If we can see that, then we can more easily understand the difference between unity and uniformity. Our quest is not for (in Salenson’s words) “a uniformity that is merely a caricature of unity,” but rather an understanding that difference itself “is a sacrament of unity to God.”

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Pope Benedict on the Infancy Narratives

I just finished reading Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, the final installment of Pope Benedict’s three-volume book series on Jesus. Here, as the name suggests, his focus is on the Gospel accounts of the birth and early days of Jesus.

There is much in the book worth reflecting on. Among the most important is something we see played out in so many ways in the infancy narratives, “the paradoxical element in God’s way of acting…greatness emerges from what seems in earthly terms small and insignificant, while worldly greatness collapses and falls.” At various points the Pope highlights examples of this in the Gospel accounts, starting with the announcement of Jesus’ birth to an unknown young woman in an unknown small dwelling in an unknown small town, and ending with the Magi, who find Jesus not in the King’s palace, but in a small home.

Just as God works in ways that seem surprising to us given the standards of the world, so, too, must we abandon worldly ideas of what constitutes greatness. At one point in the book, Pope Benedict observes that “one aspect of becoming a Christian is having to leave behind what everyone else thinks and wants, the prevailing standards, in order to enter the light of the truth of our being, and aided by that light to find the right path.”

Another point in the book crucial to our understanding of both God and our role in the world is the Pope’s discussion of the interrelationship between grace and freedom. He begins by talking about the two extreme positions: first, “the idea of the absolutely exclusive action of God, in which everything depends on his predestination,” and second, “a moralizing position, according to which everything is ultimately decided through the good will of the human person.”

Neither of those extremes is correct. Instead, “the overall testimony of Scripture” makes clear that grace and freedom “are thoroughly interwoven, and we cannot unravel their interrelatedness into clear formulae.” God loves first, but we are free to love in return or to refuse God’s love. It is God’s plan to save, but he asks Mary’s consent to participate in his plan; “the only way he can redeem man, who was created free, is by means of a free ‘yes’ to his will.”

There are many other things I liked about the book: the discussion of the joy and of hope, the way the Pope talks about our response to that which we cannot understand, and the challenge to “make haste…where the things of God are concerned.”

I was less impressed with the book’s tremendous concern with establishing that the events contained in Matthew and Luke’s narratives were historical rather than theological. My reaction to his efforts to refute those who see things like the virgin birth, the census and the visit of the Magi as theological stories reminded me of my reaction in my college Problem of God course to various “proofs” of the existence of God: wholly unnecessary to those who already are convinced and completely unpersuasive to those who aren’t.

With respect to the last of those examples – the Magi, Benedict quotes Jean Danielou as “rightly” observing that the adoration of the Magi “does not touch upon any essential aspect of our faith. No foundations would be shaken if it were simply an invention of Matthew’s based on a theological idea.” (Danielou, nonetheless, concludes that this event was historical.) Many might have the same reaction to some of the other things the Pope is concerned with proving the historicity of.

Whatever one thinks of the literal truth of the stories in the infancy narratives, there is much to reflect on in this book.

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The Testament of Mary

One of my Christmas gifts from Dave was a slim book by Colm Toibin titled The Testament of Mary.

The short novel is told in the first person by Mary late in her life. The book jacket refers to the Mary presented here as “a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity.”

The Mary of this book is not the Mary we have come to know from the Gospels and Church teaching. This Mary did not ask anything of her son at the wedding feast at Cana – a feast she didn’t even want to attend and went only to try to persuade her son to come home. This Mary doubted the stories about the raising of Lazarus. This Mary did not stay at the foot of the cross until her son died, but ran away to avoid capture. This Mary goes, not to the Synagogue, but to the temple of the great goddess Artemis.

But the worst offense to the Mary we have come to know occurs near the end of the book, in the final conversation Mary has with the men who are presented as something between her caretakers and her captors – the men who are writing about Jesus to spread his story. The men are (im)patiently explaining to Mary that Jesus died to redeem the world, that his suffering was necessary so that mankind could be saved. And in response to this claim that Jesus was sent by God to redeem the world, Mary says, “if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will way that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.”

The book is a novel and so I take no offense of the image of Mary presented (although I am aware of the angry reviews by many offended by the picture of Mary presented). Rather, although it did nothing to tarnish Mary in my eyes, I found it thought-provoking. I like the encouragement to try to go beyond the little we have in scripture about many figures – including Mary – to try to understand what they must have been feeling. The book is a reminder that the figures about whose lives we read only snatches in the Gospels were real people with real – and complex – emotions.

As for Mary herself, we know that she pondered many things in her heart. And perhaps she did ponder – at least in some fashion – some of the things the book presents her as pondering. Perhaps she wondered if Lazarus really rose from the dead. Or if her son really fed 500 people with a few loaves of bread. And perhaps she even talked (or argued) with God about whether her son’s death was “worth it,” trying to come to grips with the loss of her son. If she did, she would be like many of us, struggling to make sense of things that are not easy to make sense of. But whether she did or not, we do her a disservice when we fail to treat her as a real, complex woman – and as a mother who lose her beloved son.

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The Voice of Catholic Women

We (that is, my co-editors Marie Failinger and Lisa Schiltz) just sent to Ashgate Publishing the manuscript of our book on women, law and religion. Part of our motivation for writing/editing the book (which includes chapters written by each of us and as well as by a number of other women of different faith traditions) is to remedy the lack of the voice of women of faith from the legal feminist dialogue.

Responding to a similar concern that we hear too little from Catholic women on too many issues, Our Sunday Visitor has recently published Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, edited by Helen Alvare. I was delighted to receive a copy of it from The Catholic Company as part of its reviewer program.

In her Introduction, Alavare invites: “If you want to know who believing Catholic women are, and what we think about being Catholic and female today in connection with a host of hot-button issues, listen to engaged Catholic women, not commentators with little genuine curiosity. Listen to women who are honestly trying to grapple with how their faith might inform their thinking and their acting. Let Catholic women speak for themselves.”

And that is largely what the book does. Although I would not say that the women who contributed to the book represent the broadest range of views of Catholic women, there is a diversity of age, occupation and background of the contributors. Their faith journey differ, but they all have grappled seriously with difficult issues. And, while each of our faith journeys is unique, hearing each others’ stories helps us as we navigate our own path.

There are some themes that carry through the very different chapters. First, is that there are many ways women of faith may live out their vocation in the world. Religious order or lay, married or single, professional or stay at home. There is not single model of a “good” Catholic woman, and that diversity is worth celebrating. Second, is that we can find no answers to the difficult questions we face without opening ourselves to the power of God. Each of the authors recognize, in Alvare’s words, that “when we let God in, better answers suggest themselves, answers that satisf[y] both our souls and our minds.” Third, is that the voice of women matters. We have something important to bring to table – to all issues, not just those often spoken of as “women’s issues.”

To be sure, there are some statements in the chapters I would take issue with if I were engaged in conversation with the women who made them. But that doesn’t detract from the value of the book. Perhaps it actually adds to it.

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Two Statues

I just finished reading Brian Kennelly’s Two Statutes, sent to me for review by St. Benedict’s Press. The book is Kennelly’s first novel, and he succeeded in keeping me engaged enough to read the book almost in a single sitting. The problem I often have reviewing novels, however, if figuring out what to say that will be sufficient to entice someone to read the book, but that will not say so much about the content to take away the enjoyment of reading it. But, on the supposition that I need to say more than, “Hey, I liked this book. You should read it,” let me say a few things.

The book weaves two stories. One has to do with the friendship between a retiree named Buck and his violin-playing neighbor, a private man who doesn’t open up about his past easily. The other has to do with a young priest suffering a crisis of faith who is sent as part of an investigative team studying something strange with respect ao a statue of the Virgin Mary. That the two stories ultimately come together is a surprise to no one, but the lack of surprise is no detraction. There is a miracle here – and it has nothing to do with physical manifestations of a statue.

What Kennelly succeeds best at, in my view, is creating real and compelling characters. Buck is described late in the book as someone whose heart is “made only for kindness.” And that he is; a good man. But not a plastic one – he pushes too hard, butts in when he is not invited, doesn’t always say quite the right thing. In short, human like the rest of us. Peter, the young priest questioning his faith and his vocation carries a lot of pain, and you can feel it in everything he says. We don’t always agree with everything he says and does, but we feel for him as we follow his story.

I was grabbed by Walt – the violin player – from the start. Tentative in offering or accepting friendship, he nonetheless is a man full of love. Then there is Father Paul, the priest who Fr. Peter accompanies to investigate the statue. His desire to help his friend find his way back to a place of God, of peace, is palpable. Then there is Sister Marie. And Donald. And…

Kennelly manages to combine telling a good tale that keeps one reading with a portray of characters that invites our reflection. A good and enjoyable read.

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Benedict on the Environment

Our Sunday Visitor has published The Environment, by Pope Benedict XIV. The book is a collection of excerpts from audiences, speeches, encyclicals, messages, letters and homilies of Pope Benedict’s that address matters related to the environment. I was delighted to receive a copy of it from The Catholic Company as part of its reviewer program.

The book addresses what is obviously an important topic. Pope Benedict observed in one of the general audiences excerpted in the book, that “life is a stewardship of the goods received from God, which is why each one is responsible for the other.” I think it is fair to say that we are not being as good stewards as we are called to be. That we are not doing enough, either individually or collectively, to care for the earth we have been given (or for each other). And we see and hear the effects of that all around us. Climate change. Deforestation. Famine for far too many of our brothers and sisters. Lack of access to clean drinking water for many.

Pope Benedict has had much to say about the environment. In these excerpts, we find a clear exposition of the Church’s social teaching about our call to assume political and social responsibilities in the world and of a “eucharistic spirituality” that aspires to sanctify the world. We find beautiful statements about the meaning and value of agricultural labor and of the rural family. We hear warnings about the effects of scarcity of energy supplies on portions of the world’s population. We hear a call for global solutions to issues such as sustainable development and climate change, which the Pope calls “matters of grave concern for the entire human family,” the ethical implications of which “no nation or business sector can ignore.”

If I have a quibble about the book it is that I could not discern any principle of organization to the excerpts, which are simply presented one after the other. Although it would have been a difficult task to achieve, the book might have benefitted from an effort to organize the material thematically. I also think some of the shorter excerpts might have been left out with no loss to the book. An example is several of the addresses to particular groups, which by their nature tend to be very formalized and thus say little of substance. Having said that, their inclusion serves to highlight the extent to which Pope Benedict has spoken on this important subject.

Far too many people are still woefully uninformed about the principles of Catholic Social Thought, including that of stewardship. This book is a useful aid in presenting the Church’s teachings on the environment and our stewardship responsibility in an accessible way.

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A Pope On the Slopes

I just finished reading The Secret Life of John Paul II, written by Lino Zani (with Marilu Simonesci), kindly sent to me by St. Benedict Press. The book was written last year and recently translated into English.

Lino Zani was born and raised in the Italian alps is an avid skier and mountain climber. Since his parents owned and operated a mountain lodge (a lodge dedicated to the fallen soldiers of the Adamello, which figures into the story), he also instructed and guided others in skiing in is mountains.

The beginning of Zani’s relationship with Pope John Paul II began when the pope’s personal secretary had the idea that Zani’s parent’s secluded lodge would be a good location for a papal skiing vacation. The idea came to fruition, thus beginning a relationship that would last until the Pope’s death – a relationship that began as mountain guide and developed into a deep friendship.

For many years, Zani said nothing about his encounters with the Pope, but decided on the “verge of the beatification of John Paul II…to recount in its entirety, with faithful precision and a spirit of authentic and Christian awareness, the human and spiritual story…revisiting the trail of all the memories of those twenty-one exgraordinary years with the Holy Father.”

Despite the title, there may be no secrets in the book, but reading it made me feel that I knew Pope a little more personally and deeply than I had before. Zani beautifully conveys both the personalism and the prayerfulness of Pope John Paul II. Whoever the Pope was with at any given time received his love and his undivided attention. One senses reading that no one was ever made to feel small in his presence. The picture of the Pope’s sense of humor and delight in simple play made me smile.

What really touched me were the descriptions of the Pope at prayer in the mountains, which beautifully conveyed his deep holiness and spirituality. Zani describes seeing that up close: “The main effect of his holiness was precisely that of transmitting a stream of unexpected courage to face one’s own life, whatever it was like. For a little while after having been with him, one became intrepid, impermeable to the evil of sufferings, unharmed by fear.”

Although the delight of the book is in the picture of the Pope it presents, the book also tells the story of a cross in the mountain, dedicated to solders that died during World War I – and the relationship of that to the Fatima predictions. That part made an interesting read, but, for me at least, not as compelling as the portrait of holiness Zani paints.

As the book jacket says, this book provides a “fascinating glimpse into the private life of history’s most public pontiff.” A good read.

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The Essential Texts of Vatican II

This is the 50th Anniversary of Second Vatican Council, considered by many to be the most significant event for the Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholic theology in the twentieth century. The Council lasted three years and resulted in the issuance of a number of important documents on a range of subject including the theology and role of the Church, liturgy, and the role of the laity.

For some people, Vatican II represented a great step forward for the Catholic Church. Others see it as the cause for many of the Church’s struggles today. Lamentably, many of the people with strong feelings on the subject (as well as many with no view) are woefully ignorant of what the Council taught, some able to say little more than that is led to Mass being said in English (and that it was either great or horrible).

I’ll be involved in several programs in various venues this fall talking about various aspects of Vatican II. I was, thus, particularly happy when asked by Image/Random House to review Vatican II: The Essential Texts.

In a world where documents such as those produced by Vatican II are so easily accessible via internet, is there really any value in a book that produces those documents in printed form? (I should say “another”, since one can find other books in print containing documents of Vatican II). In this case, the answer is yes.

The book begins with two introductions, written from very different perspectives: one by Pope Benedict and the other by James Carroll (author of Practicing Catholic). Reading the two introductions gives one a good sense of the contrasting views of what Vatican II intended and what it means for Catholics today.

Whatever else one thinks of the two perspectives, Carroll is assuredly correct that the texts produced by the Council “cannot be fully appreciated apart from the context out of which they came.” For Carroll, the “shorthand definition” of that context is Hiroshima and Auschwitz. For those who might benefit from a more detailed setting, each of the documents in the book is preceded by a historical preface by Edward Hahnenber (a theology profesor and author of A Concise Guide to the Documents of Vatican II.) Many readers will find this a useful aid to their reading of the documents themselves.

As for the documents themselves, the major (“essential”) documents are here. Had I been making the selection, I might have included Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Decree on the apostolate of the laity, but its exclusion is certainly defensible. The translations of the documents used in the text are different from the English translations on the Vatican website, but in almost all cases in which I compared actual language, I found the version in the book to be more easily readable. (I am not in a position to judge the relative accuracy of the translations from the original text.)

My hope is that the fact of this being an anniversary year, and the publication of books like this one, will encourage Catholics (and non-Catholics interested in better understanding the Catholic Church) to spend some time becoming more familiar with the teaching of Vatican II.

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