Bookshelf.

So this Jesuit visited one of the Dominicans at Caldwell College recently. On the table between them was a piece of cake, which the Jesuit took and sliced. He pushed the smaller piece to the Dominican.

"Had I sliced the cake," said the Dominican, "I would have kept the smaller piece for myself."

"So what are you complaining about?" asked the Jesuit.

Now on to the books.

Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith: Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, edited by Nathan Mitchell and John F. Baldovin (Pueblo, 358 pages, $34.95 paperback), features a distinguished list of contributors, including Thomas J. Talley ("Roman Culture and R,oman Liturgy"), Robert F. Taft ("Understanding the Byzantine Anaphoral Oblation"), and Regis Duffy ("The Medicus and Its Transformation from Its Patristic to Its Medieval and Tridentine Usages").

Also, John F. Baldovin ("The Gestures of the Priest at the Institution Narrative of the Eucharist"), David N. Power ("Commendation of the Dying and the Reading of the Passion") and R. Kevin Seasoltz "The Liturgical Assembly: Light from Some Recent Scholarship").

With Kavanagh, whose 40 years of lecture and seminar, book and essay they celebrate, they assert that liturgy is not text to be studied but deed to be done.

I was invited recently to return to Fordham for a guest shot in a Theology of Christian Marriage class. The invite, I think, was based on having coauthored, with Molly K. Stein, Paulist's The Catholic Wedding Book. As proud as I am of that effort, for consideration of the history of marriage in the Catholic tradition, I depended instead on the revised and expanded edition of On Life and Love: A Gttide to Catholic Teaching on Marriage and Family (Twenty-third Publications, 198 pages, $14.95 paperback), by William Urbine and Fr. William Seifert.

The authors summarize key documents from the time of Leo XIII to John Paul II. They give an overview of the document with key summary points, key quotes and suggested readings. Each overview points the reader to certain paragraphs within the documents. Scholars will want those documents close at hand.

This text serves as a reference for those who wonder what the church taught or teaches and as a ready resource to those who wonder where in the originals certain points might be found.

I thought briefly about leaving my review copy for the Fordham professor who invited me, Crosier Fr. Jim Hentges, he can buy his own.

Even the title of Expectations for the Catholic School Principal: A Handbook for Pastors and Parish School Communities, from the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC, 148 pages, paperback), is provocative.

If the truth be told, the real expectations for the Catholic school principals are that she or he can miraculously change pennies to dollars, operate a world-class educational operation on a shoestring, attract top flight educators who will work for a pittance and keep parish boards and pastors happy, even as they find themselves committing more than a fair share of parish resources to the operation of schools that educate a small percentage of parish youth.

Of all the things I miss about being a

I e near impossibility of continuing to finance and run a quality school is not among them. Tike a look at NCR'S Classifieds to see how many schools are in need of principals. The category under which those ads ought to be listed is, I think, Walks on Water.

To this curiously developing situation, the United States Catholic Conference offers with great and inspiring hope Volume 3 in a series that addresses the unique mission of Catholic schools and the special demands those schools place on their administrators. This hopeful vision points to competencies in personnel and institutional management, finance and development. It is an awesome job for brave and faith-filled people.

Anglican Orders: Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae 1896-1996, by R. William Franklin (Morehouse, 149 pages, $17.95 paperback), is an open and interesting consideration of the serious challenges that modern ecumenism presents to an Anglican theology of holy orders. Pope Leo XIII decreed in 1896 that not only were Anglican orders null and void, but any attempt to raise an objection to his decree was pronounced in advance also to be null and void.

Here are difficult grounds on which to begin or continue a discussion, but these considerations are scholarly, open and lively.

I looked at the Seminarian Directory for my home diocese and counted nine candidates in theology and pre-theology. Of the nine, three had home addresses within the diocese. This fact made me curious to examine Who's in the Seminary? Roman Catholic Seminarians Today, by Martin Rovers (Novalis, 136 pages, $12.95 paperback), with a foreword by Fr. Andrew Greeley.

Rovers, a resigned Oblate of Mary Immaculate, conducted his research in Canada. He concludes that seminarians today have greater maturity than the average male and widespread criticism of unhealthy priests and seminarians is not true.

Not surprisingly, he finds that ministry and relationship to women must be addressed directly. Also no surprise: The church must come to grips with the fact that the theological attitudes of future priests are becoming more traditional. He suggests that 25 percent of priests and seminarians "state a sexual orientation other than hetorosexual."

This thorough, well-documented study offers much to ponder as the church approaches the coming millennium.

Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible 1941-1960, by Martin E. Marty (University of Chicago Press, 548 pages, hardbound), is a volume I'll happily use in teaching the history of religion in America this semester.

Marty examines religion and the roles it played in shaping the social and political life of mid-century American with the insightful thoroughness scholars and general readers alike hav come to know and appreciate from this master historian.

Is Jesus Unique?: A Study of Recent Christology (Paulist, 454 pages, $24.95 paperback) is by Scott Cowdell, a priest in the Anglican Church in Australia. He reports that his study was undertaken "with an eye to all the methodological coordinates and major preoccupations of contemporary theology as a whole."

He examines the work of leading systematic theologians and concludes that "every case for Jesus' uniqueness and finality treated in this study is that it has been a cumulative case. This is true whether the theologian offering it admits this or not."

A full 131 pages of notes and 21 pages of bibliography suggest that Cowdell has done his homework. He ends his study with a repeated warning and reassurance that the cause of Jesus is not furthered by aggressive defenses of his uniqueness and finality, but that those who seek to follow will reveal him, and they will leam in their own experiences who Jesus is.

I spent serene hours last summer rereading the remarkable Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, and remembered that when the Jesuits buried him upstate in New York in 1955, his name was misspelled on the gravestone. I looked for but did not find confirmation of that story in Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin, by Ursida King (Orbis, 245 pages, $25 hardbound).

King is chair of the theology and religious studies department at the University of Bristol in Great Britain. She has produced a lovely book, a well-researched, interestingly presented biography of the traveler, explorer, scientist, priest and mystic. I'm working with a bright young honors student who is plowing through some of Teilhard as he completes his senior project, and this text will quicken us both in study's task.

That We May Join Earth and Heaven: Lay Religious Community for the 21st Century, by Pia Gyger (Sheed & Ward, 117 pages, $12.95 paperback), may be just the book for a new and developing age. Ursula King, the author of the text above offers a foreword to Gyger's book, noting that the work "summons us to new challenges."

Vatican II called all Christians to the "fullness of Christian life and to perfect love." Gyger asserts that "the evangelical counsels (poverty, obedience and virginity) are ways that are open to all Christians." This way of living can be a breakthrough in a quest for a new, creative and inclusive holiness, putting theology and Christian living into rich personal and global practice.

Of all that is exciting and significant in the nation's cities, not much is more so than the hopeful toil and prayer of the many churches. Churches, Cities, and Human Connnunity: Urban Ministry in the United States 1945-1985, edited by Clifford J. Green (Eerdmans, 378 pages, $25 paperback), calls together authors who examine how churches have sought human community in the urban world, and how churches have thought about cities and ministered in cities in the United States since World War II.

Green asserts that the book is not reserved for urban ministry specialists, but that the picture sketched there confronts the whole church. Pretty exciting stuff, I'd say.

Folks, or at least authors, seem never to tire of Franciscaniana. Footsteps in Assissi, by Sara Lee Jobe (Paulist, 86 pages, $6.95 paperback), is the latest offering.

Jobe, a spiritual director working toward a master's degree, visited Assisi twice for a total of two weeks. She made pen and ink drawings and wrote poetic reflections tha were first a paper for her graduate study. Her seeker's vision and fresh approach may be just the key for other seekers.

The Voice of the Shepherdess, edited by Peter J. McCord (Sheed & Ward, 94 pages, $10.95 paperback), is based on the stories of eight women engaged in pastoral ministry in eight different Christian traditions representing a geographical and denominational diversity. McCord provides a forum for women to speak on their own terms and in their own words, based on their own experience.

Abortion, edited by Lloyd Steffen (Pilgrim, 466 pages, $19.95 paperback), is a collection of readings on abortion as a moral and religious issue. The selections do not share a common point of view but serve to illustrate the moral complexities involved.

In Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Moral Diversity in the Abortion Debate (Beacom, 185 pages, $23 hardbound), Kathy Rudy speaks to those complexities. She recognizes that the abortion debate is rancorous, divisive and unproductive. She wants to push forward to a different way of seeing morality, by harvesting positive aspects of competing ideologies. She wants to point to the best aspects of different traditions, examining and mapping many moral discourses on abortion.

In Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus? (Fortress, 238 pages, $19 paperback), Jerusalem's Ecole Biblique research professor William Klassen calls for a radical revision of the picture of Judas, suggesting that the words "traitor" and "betray" no longer be used to describe him or his action. He proposes that Judas did his God-given duty and contributed to the realization of Jesus' mission by handing him over. The emerging church, however, saw a need to draw boundary lines and found Judas a convenient figure.

Klassen asserts that if his book survives the scrutiny of careful scholarly historical research, there is sure to be a revision in the status of Judas. He does what scholars are called to do, and the ensuing dialogue should be very interesting.

Fr. James J. Bacik's voice is an important one to heed in this tumultuous age. In Spirituality in Transition (Sheed & Ward, 232 pages, $15.95 paperback) he points out that we are living through one of the greatest period of transition in human history. Vatican II taught that Christians have a special responsibility to participate in the process of creating a more humane world.

Bacik asserts that a spirituality rooted in tradition and alert to the signs of the times is needed. He is ready to tap the power of the Holy Spirit, which he finds "residing at the very center of our being." He is a worthy participant in the effort to develop a viable contemporary spirituality that is both faithful to Chris tian tradition and responsive to a changing world.

My friend Tom Klonoski recently packed up his vast library and razor wit, sold the familys apartment behind Carnegie Hall and moved to Cooper City, Fla. I gave him two books for the journey an he appraised them as follows.

The Price of Excellence: Universities in Conflict During the Cold War Era, by Jacob Neusner and Noam M.M. Neusner Continuum, 252 pages, $24.95 hardbound), is an intensely sad and personal book about the death of the American dream, or at least that part of the dream that dwells within the ivied walls of academia.

The Neusners'topic has been addressed by such conservatives as Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball and Dinesh D'Souza, but never with the sense of personal tragedy and betrayal that comes from Jacob Neusner, a liberal Jewish college professor at the end of a long and distinguished career, who writes with his son, Noam, a newspaper reporter.

The Neusners initially go through the vapid mechanics of blaming the Cold War for the current state of decline in American college education. But they soon get to the heart of the matter: There can be no true learning without freedom, there can be no freedom without responsibility, and there can be no responsibility without consequences. The Neusners find that there is no education possible without that little-known concept, at least on college campuses, of absolute truth.

The Neusners suggest that in academia's desire to be fair, it must hold that all societies and cultures have equal value and all ideas equal merit. The result is an equality of the lowest common denominator. If truth is relative and situational, it must logically follow that what is fair must be imposed on students from the outside for their own well-being. The Neusners point out that this type of totalitarianism exists, in America college life today in politicallv correct campus life. The school that regulates free speech an the free exchange of ideas in order to be fair to the diversity of people enrolled in the institution is, in fact, fair to no one.

The Neusners think that all ideas, good and bad, should be given free reign in the university and believe that good will out in the end: a radical idea - or rather a conservative idea. If a witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling, this book is an epigram on the death of a liberal.

Klonoski continues: Some books are written for the masses; some books are written for the few; and some books are written for an audience of one. Cultural Disarmament: The Way to Peace (Westminster John Knox, 142 pages, $14.99 paperback), by Fr. Raimon Panikkar, a Catholic priest and professor emeritus of religion, falls into the last category. This book was written by Panikkar for Panikkar. I cannot imagine who else would read it.

The premise is easy enough: The way to lasting peace comes not from people laying down the weapons in their hands but from people laying down the weapons in their hearts. We begin by changing people's hearts through poetry. Panikkar, who has read more obscure poetry than most, offers some tidbits of rhyme that, if smuggled into the camps of armed brigands or boardrooms of corporate arms merchants, no doubt would make them cry like babies and begin to do humanitarian deeds that would put Mother Teresa to shame. There is a lot of going on about minnow eggs, all the oceans in one drop of water and so on. "That'll make them think," Panikkar seems to think.

About one-third of the way into the book, the poetry abruptly ends and the way to peace now seems to entail defining all sorts of words through all sorts of languages back to the time of Adam and Eve. It seems Panikkar knows more obscure languages than most and puts this knowledge to full use. We get long takes on such words as friend and trinity in the footnotes.

Lastly, Panikkar shifts into high gear and tries to find the way to peace through the thoughts of men through the ages. Since Panikkar knows more obscure quotations than most, we read quotes from the "North American President Taft" to the Vulgate, to El Monde Diplomatique, to the Council of Chalcedon. But mostly the author likes to quote himself. He is most at home when he is discussing something he said somewhere else.

Klonoski concludes: Panikkar knows more than most about his own obscure writings. Here he is in luck; his audience of one also knows more than most about these obscure writings.

My, friend Dom, bus composing the final chapter of his dissertation up in New Haven, writes: "Can you recommend a book that outlines the liturgical season. identifying feast, and other special occasions, and makes suggestions as to how one might worship in one's home? I'm beginning to envy Jewish friends who do a Sabbath meal weekly.

"Since having a child, I've alvways been a bit frustrated by the need to go to church to celebrate and worship with my family (bad liturgies, bad sermons, bad music and a real sense that someone is doing something for me rather than with me). I realize that community worship is a central part of being Catholic, I just think it wouldn't hurt to incorporate a family or home element, some kind of spiritual exercises for the family."

There was nothing in my box of books for Dom this month. Sigh.

Article Details

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Author:	Graham, William C.
Publication:	National Catholic Reporter
Article Type:	Bibliography
Date:	Nov 8, 1996
Words:	2907
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Topics:	Catholicity Bibliography Religion Bibliography