Benedict Books

The books in the 99 Sayings series, of which this is the latest, are designed to enlighten and inspire. Aside from a brief introduction, all text consists of direct quotations. In some cases the focus is a concept, as peace or friendship, with reflections from a variety of sources. In others, as Coming Together in Joy, quotations from a single individual highlight his or her spirituality. Editor Liesenfeld uses the following phrases to introduce Benedict XVI: personal serenity, joyful conviction of the truth of faith, and tremendous sense of realism. Benedict's comments are simple but penetrating, his words, eloquent, Liesenfeld writes, and his teachings "nourish our spiritual hunger and quench our mind's thirst."

From the pope's writings and talks, we learn of his devotion to the Eucharist; his care and concern for priests, parish ministers, and families; and his commitment to justice and dialogue with those of other faiths. He also addresses the need for Catholics to adhere to the teachings of the Church in a culture experiencing "a strange forgetfulness of God" marked by religion as a consumer product. "People choose what they like, and some are even able to make a profit from it," Benedict writes. "But religion sought on a `do-it-yourself' basis cannot ultimately help us. It may be comfortable, but at times of crisis we are left to ourselves."

This book address an important issue for all churches, but especially for smaller churches: how can worship be revitalized to attract new members without losing the elements that are important to longj-standing members. Most books on contemporary worship seem to have a started from scratch approach, i.e., start a new service or totally change the existing service. That is not very workable in most situations. However, these authors suggest a blended approach that I have found to be most effective in my church of 50-75 attenders. Their idea that "contemporary" is not "new" but instead "a recovery of what is best in the worship of all ages" (page 7). I highly recommend this book to anyone in church leadership struggling with how to make changes that will not shut down the church!

Mr. Allen took amazing photographs during his journey through Mongolia. I would recommend the book for its pictures alone. Mr. Allen's journal entries weren't quite as engaging as his photos, however. I found that he had a tendancy to repeat things. But aside from that, he gave excellent descriptions of the country's proud people, the harsh yet beautiful landscape, as well as humorous details about his camels and journeying mishaps. If you don't know much about present-day Mongolia and wish you did, get this book.

Life as a peasant in the Philippines is hot, sweaty, and above all very very boring. The wealth differences are huge, the chances of escape almost nil. The peasant's superiors, of course, argue repeatedly that this is all the peasants' fault, that they're morally inferior, lazy, etc. Yet peasants have the good sense to resist this interpretation. That, simply put, is the message of this book, which I enjoyed.

A well-presented book; and most interesting details of the artist's life an times. Slight disappointment in the plates - not all in colour and not full-page size. It is however, an extensive look at the artist and his work, I believe worth owning if you are interested in the genre. Not so interested myself in the sculpture side of his work and the small black and white photos of same do not show from all angles, but in general a good purchase.

Carrying on from "Good Luck Arizona Man", Benedict takes us on another ramble through a West that's filled with crazy characters, humor, action, and poetry (but not in a girly way). This is another one to share with your children and friends, truly delightful. The real West may never have been like this, but this is the way I wish it (still) was.

A reviewer might ask himself about this book as about any other: who would profit from reading HARVARD TO HARVARD and why?

Offhand, I cannot imagine more than a couple of thousand people willing to read HARVARD TO HARVARD without previous knowledge of the once notorious event early in the history namely, "The Boston Heresy Case."

Ideally, readers of Abbot Gabriel Gibbs's new book, HARVARD TO HARVARD will first have read two earlier and more scholarly (or at least journalistic) surveys of the same ground:

-- George B. Pepper: THE BOSTON HERESY CASE in View of the Secularization of Religion -- A Case Study in the Sociology of Religion (1988)
and
-- Gary Potter: AFTER THE BOSTON HERESY CASE (1995).

Does the Boston Heresy Case sound unfamiliar? If so, then conjure up Cambridge, Massachusetts 1940 to 1958. Greater Boston was in some sense America's most Roman Catholic city. From another perspective, however, its jewel was America's greatest center of secular learning: Harvard University with its Radcliffe College for women. And, after nearly three centuries of hostility, the Catholic Church and Harvard University were only just beginning to show respect for each other's hugely different values and world-views.

Avery Dulles, son of Eisenhower's Secretary of State, enters Harvard in 1936, is led through very positive Harvard epiphanies into Roman Catholicism in 1940. With two or three other Catholic laymen he founds The Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, just outside a main gate into Harvard. Dulles goes off to war as a naval officer. While he is gone his co-founder Mrs Catherine Goddard Clarke and other laymen turn the Center into a pulsing powerhouse of somewhat nostalgic Catholic intellectual life. At war's end the State of Massachusetts grants the Center the power to bestow academic degrees. The GI Bill gives returning service men and women the means to attend Saint Benedict. Prominent young men and women abandon Harvard and Radcliffe for the Center.

They are attracted to the Thursday evening theology lectures by one of the two or three most famous Catholic priests in America, the Jesuit Father Leonard Edward Feeney, who in late 1944 is appointed the Center's first and only chaplain. Ardent young men and women study languages, liturgy and, notably, philosophy with a brilliant Lebanese Catholic professor, Fakhri Maluf. They embed themselves fraternity-like into an affordable two years of excitingly orthodox Catholic mini-renaissance just outside secular Harvard University.

The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 was widely applauded by Americans as a war-shortening tactic. But it appalled the moral sensibilities of a hundred or more members of the Center. They at once set to work to analyze what was wrong with an America that could unleash such an atrocity. And why was the American Catholic hierarchy not up in arms against this unprecedented slaughter of non-combatants?

Center members appealed unsuccessfully to Pope Pius XII to denounce heresies being taught or tolerated by Catholics in Greater Boston. Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston in 1948 placed the Center under interdict: Catholics were forbidden to have anything to do with it. Father Feeney was expelled from his Jesuit Order in 1949 and excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XII in 1953. He was reconciled to the Church by act of Pope Paul VI in 1972 and a majority of his young lay followers shortly Feeney soon after.

Much more detail by me would be to provide "spoilers" of the author's own craftsmanlike telling of the story of Saint Benedict Center and how its early moral revulsion from atomic bombing quickly enough led into "the Boston Heresy Case."

Suffice it to say that this was a rocky time of roller coaster ups and downs. Every Sunday afternoon for 7 1/2 years Feeney and scores of adult followers preached their views of salvation in Boston Common, often protected by mounted Boston policemen. Jews and Masons were occasionally singled out as special enemies of Jesus, his mother and the Catholic Church. Then, in 1958, 100 or more Center people (including 12 married couples and their 39 children) decamped into the countryside west of Boston at Still River, a rural part of the town of Harvard. There they created, contrary to Catholic canon law, novel American experiments in vowed monastic living. All the married couples accepted celibacy and their children were then raised by a handful of women who were not their parents. In time the majority of Saint Benedict Center people made their peace with Rome. Some did not. One group, the largest, eventually became Catholic Benedictine monks. Most children, as they grew up, left the Center for the world.

This is the chronicle that is unfolded by Abbot Gabriel Gibbs, who had been virtually "present at the creation" of Saint Benedict Center. HARVARD TO HARVARD is the most recent book-length overview of a story which continues to fascinate such another early participant as theologian and now Cardinal Avery Dulles, as well as students of church history, sociologists, psychologists and researchers into religious utopias. Abbot Gibbs's narrative is clear, peaceable, detailed, only moderately opinionated and amply illustrated. The author tries to be ultra-fair to disagreeing participants and sub-groups in the Center's often controversial experiments in monastic community for both men and women. While not reflexively polemical, neither is the chronicle remotely detached.

Who should read HARVARD TO HARVARD and why? That is hard for me to say. But I hope that you have reason to decide whether enough is now enough with HARVARD TO HARVARD or if you care to pick up the book and read it.

I predict that if you do elect to read this book about Saint Benedict Center, you will enjoy it and will not stop there. Before you know it you will find yourself into other writings: about Christian tolerance and intolerance, the Second Vatican Council, the theological views of Cardinal Avery Dulles and also the rich and still growing learning experiences of the Center and its several offspring scattered across America, including some much sought after schools.
-OOO-

This is a user-friendly and accessible introduction to the thought of Joseph Ratzinger. It is one of the few books about Ratzinger which brings out the significance of his involvement with the journal Communio, his friendship with theologians like von Balthasar, and his engagement with the Communio e Liberazione movement. And it does so in a compact and readable text.

With little preparation and information, the author flies into West Papua where he first treks from mission to mission in 10 days among the Yali and Kim Yal people of the eastern highlands.
Then he makes a more adventurous trek in the southern foothils to visit the remote Obini people. However with lack of understanding of their culture and no means to communicate with them he gets chased away after 4 days.
Disappointed, he gives up on West Papua and flies back to more civilized Papua New Guinea, where he manages to take part in a traditional initiation ceremony along the Sepik River.

This book is SO MUCH better than that terrible book, Search for Joyful. Granted, there are some unanswered questions in the story, still this is a good book. The writing is much more clear and easy to read, and the main character, Kathy is so much more likeable and not so wishy washy like the Kathy in Search for Joyful.

In this book, Kathy is the daughter of Kathy Forquet and Erich Von Kerll, she has never met her father, and wonders about him constantly during her difficulties with her stepfather. She has a talent for singing, and finds that lots of people like her singing. She eventually marries a con-artist, which is one of the mistakes that she makes.

This book is much easier to read and much more enjoyable. However, there is nothing explained about Mrs. Mike, she is only mentioned in several sentences, not to mention other characters in Search for Joyful. Also, a little unclear is the time between Search for Joyful and Kathy Little Bird. Things which aren't that well explained take place during this story.

Despite the unclear history, this is still a really good story, not like Mrs. Mike, but so much better than Search for Joyful it's almost unbelievable.