Edited by Elizabeth M. Smyth, 312 pages, 312 pages, Novalis.
While a book on the history of women religious in Canada shouldn't emphasize the recent, sorry years of misplaced feminist bravado and ambition, nor the resulting tragic, precipitous decline of vocations for Canadian female Catholics, this precipitous decline is a fact that historians cannot avoid, however ideologically motivated they happen to be.
Some of the essays in Changing Habits are excellent because they appreciate the immeasurable artistic, intellectual, and medical achievements of Canada's female religious. Yet the cloud hanging over this book is the sometimes openly confrontational and sometimes hidden anti-male bias.
“Gender and Mission,” chapter 13, negates any shared vision between the male priests and brothers on the one side and the female religious on the other. The reader is left supposing that a perpetual wrestling match took place with the subordination of women by men.
From a power-oriented view of history, such as put forth by Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, or Joseph Stalin, yes, subordination did take place. But this chapter, and the entire book, fails to consistently emphasize the sense of service, love, duty, honor, and mission – vocation, in other words – that all religious communities, male or female, had. Nor does it show consistently how, or even if, male and female religious had any shared vision.
In Changing Habits, feminists often confront the reader with a version of history pitting men against women, each with their own agendas. We hear of the archetypal unfeeling, power-hungry yet ultimately impotent (male) bishop, central to some feminist mythologies of male power and domination:
“Sister Mary Lumena, the longtime superior at St. Mary's Mission wanted to keep 'her' orphans and her commitment to their parents to educate them locally. Bishop Durieu succeeded in having Sister Mary Lumena transferred to St. Ann's Convent in Kamloops. Within a year, however, she was caring for a new set of 'her' orphans as she liked at the Cowichan convent.”
The author suggests no other motivations for the removal of the sister. Rather than giving the bishop the benefit of the doubt – he surely knew that this strong-willed person would pick up in her new place where she had left off in her old – or suggesting that, Heaven forbid, he knew what he was doing, the writer paints him as a rascal.
Again, the author uses confrontational, we-they language: “The sisters' system and the Oblates system came together at mission residential schools, where, owing to gender politics, the women religious who taught were officially subordinate to the Oblates. But the women religious had a separate culture and were not entirely integrated into that male system.”
This author defines women religious largely in terms of their relationship to the Oblates rather than in terms of their relationship to the truth as preached by the Catholic Church. This reflects the feminist tendency to objectivize men and turn men into objects of worldly power and success rather than seeing men as human beings. Repeatedly, men in this book are portrayed as givers and takers of power, with women as their humble and humiliated servants and beggars.
Another chapter uses excessive academic jargon – inspired from Michel Foucault, a Nietzschean – to reduce the physical buildings of the women religious to meaningless academic conjecture. What on earth does the following mean?
“In the case of the nineteenth-century representations in runaway nun tales, the convent stood at the crossroads of urbanity, modernity and new formulations of the sacred-profane divide that made it both and neither. It was certainly not total but was discursively incomplete, unresolved and incompatible with its wider environment.” This empty wind continues for some time.
The beginning pages of Changing Habits outline the great professional opportunities women religious had within the Catholic Church in, say, the nineteenth century – teaching, administration, health. This reflects something very important about the Catholic Church. Why can't Changing Habits or other books acknowledge more openly (or at all) that the Church is not the terrible, misogynist organization mainline and radical feminists paint it to be? (After all, the vast majority of churchgoers, in every church, are women!)
Despite some promising material and some very good historical research, this book fails because it does not boldly enough counter lies, exaggerations, and emotional half-truths used by feminists against the Church. In fact, it sometimes falls prey to these.
At the end of the book, the question is irresponsibly left hanging: How did radical and mainline feminism, and an accent on power rather than on Christ-centred ministry, change and eventually reduce these orders to a shadow of themselves? Read between the lines at the words and attitudes of the book's authors themselves to get an answer.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Beloved: In Conversation with Henri Nouwen
By Philip Roderick, 52 pages hardcover with a cd containing the conversation between Roderick and Nouwen, Novalis.
The late Henri Nouwen, a Dutch-born priest who eventually lived at L'Arche Daybreak in Toronto, truly practiced theology by approaching God, others, and life through the eyes of love. Dogma became for him another way to reach out, rather than a way to judge, control, or intellectualize. Through his books, he continues to pastor to millions of readers around the world and to evangelize in this way.
The conversation of Beloved, which is transcribed into the small book, focuses largely on central issues of modern living. His discussion returns again and again to loneliness and solitude in an over-busy world; living God's truth in a world of lies; and the contemplative who lives in the world.
Nouwen parallels Thomas Merton in teaching and living a contemplative life from within the great expanse of the Catholic tradition:
“[I]n the biblical understanding, heart is the centre of our being. It's not a muscle, but a symbol for the very centre of our being. Now the beautiful thing about the heart is that the heart is the place we are mostly ourselves. It's like the core of our being, it's the spiritual centre of our being. Solitude and silence, for instance, are ways to get to the heart, because the heart is the place where God speaks to us, where we hear the voice who calls us the beloved. This is precisely in the most intimate place.”
These words, like Nouwen in general, unite theology, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology, a nearly-impossible feat outside of the Catholic tradition.
The late Henri Nouwen, a Dutch-born priest who eventually lived at L'Arche Daybreak in Toronto, truly practiced theology by approaching God, others, and life through the eyes of love. Dogma became for him another way to reach out, rather than a way to judge, control, or intellectualize. Through his books, he continues to pastor to millions of readers around the world and to evangelize in this way.
The conversation of Beloved, which is transcribed into the small book, focuses largely on central issues of modern living. His discussion returns again and again to loneliness and solitude in an over-busy world; living God's truth in a world of lies; and the contemplative who lives in the world.
Nouwen parallels Thomas Merton in teaching and living a contemplative life from within the great expanse of the Catholic tradition:
“[I]n the biblical understanding, heart is the centre of our being. It's not a muscle, but a symbol for the very centre of our being. Now the beautiful thing about the heart is that the heart is the place we are mostly ourselves. It's like the core of our being, it's the spiritual centre of our being. Solitude and silence, for instance, are ways to get to the heart, because the heart is the place where God speaks to us, where we hear the voice who calls us the beloved. This is precisely in the most intimate place.”
These words, like Nouwen in general, unite theology, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology, a nearly-impossible feat outside of the Catholic tradition.
Free Spirits: Portraits from the North
By Bern Will Brown, 146 pages, Novalis.
“Albert, having gotten drunk on the home brew, luckily forgot about crossing the river and staggered back to his planing bench. He took hold of the plane, made one long pass along the plank he had been working on, went right off the end and buried himself in the pile of shavings. Not a perfect ending to the day, but at least Albert Faille survived another of his misadventures.”
Free Spirits offers a pure, direct history of Canada's North in the twentieth century through short chapters on various eccentrics. For Brown, these characters made the culture special. Imagine a society without pop culture, but with deeply personal, intense, and interdependent relationships. The book portrays people being as genuine as the day they were born.
Any refusal to help another person could mean death because of the unforgiving climate. Most of the white society in the North revolved around solitary men and their attempts to draw a living out of the bush through hunting, trapping, and fishing. Often from the France-based OMI order, which had a special charism to this part of the world, the priests who survived there had to adapt to this way of life.
The Oblate priests lived heroic lives, serving and loving the people well. Rather than imposing an alien, European culture, the kind of priest who stayed for many years necessarily fit in with the natives. This love and understanding for the people came from a simple, very Christian theology:
“Léonce was never openly critical of anyone, especially his flock. He found an excuse for any misdemeanor. He realized that the people had only recently emerged from [a simpler] age and that Christianity introduced a whole new set of guidelines that they would need time to assimilate. Although they had always believed in a god, Léonce told me that they had never imagined a son of God – Christ and his redemption.”
The author displays through this basic “theology of the North” a love for the people yet also a love for the Church and its mission to these people. He never criticizes or seems ashamed of this mission, in contrast to so many writers and former priests. Rather, his stories center around the comical and human sides of a harsh environment, and the importance of the Church to this society, where life before government social assistance programs was fragile and often unsuccessful.
Contrary to media portrayals, the Catholic Church succeeded in the North because it served the people and fit into their culture. People built their society around countless individual acts of generosity and self-sacrifice:
“Noticing that I didn't have a bell for [the new church], she kept an eye out for one. The next winter, on her promotion tour for the lodge, she found a bell in Indianola, Iowa, outside Desmoines, and delivered it to my dock in her Norseman aircraft the following summer. At a thousand lbs it was the biggest bell in the Northwest Territories.”
Free Spirits counters the negative, one-sided propaganda surrounding white-native relations which portrays the Church and white Canadians as taking advantage of the natives. Brown's thoughts reflect the much richer, deeper, and more human reality.
“Albert, having gotten drunk on the home brew, luckily forgot about crossing the river and staggered back to his planing bench. He took hold of the plane, made one long pass along the plank he had been working on, went right off the end and buried himself in the pile of shavings. Not a perfect ending to the day, but at least Albert Faille survived another of his misadventures.”
Free Spirits offers a pure, direct history of Canada's North in the twentieth century through short chapters on various eccentrics. For Brown, these characters made the culture special. Imagine a society without pop culture, but with deeply personal, intense, and interdependent relationships. The book portrays people being as genuine as the day they were born.
Any refusal to help another person could mean death because of the unforgiving climate. Most of the white society in the North revolved around solitary men and their attempts to draw a living out of the bush through hunting, trapping, and fishing. Often from the France-based OMI order, which had a special charism to this part of the world, the priests who survived there had to adapt to this way of life.
The Oblate priests lived heroic lives, serving and loving the people well. Rather than imposing an alien, European culture, the kind of priest who stayed for many years necessarily fit in with the natives. This love and understanding for the people came from a simple, very Christian theology:
“Léonce was never openly critical of anyone, especially his flock. He found an excuse for any misdemeanor. He realized that the people had only recently emerged from [a simpler] age and that Christianity introduced a whole new set of guidelines that they would need time to assimilate. Although they had always believed in a god, Léonce told me that they had never imagined a son of God – Christ and his redemption.”
The author displays through this basic “theology of the North” a love for the people yet also a love for the Church and its mission to these people. He never criticizes or seems ashamed of this mission, in contrast to so many writers and former priests. Rather, his stories center around the comical and human sides of a harsh environment, and the importance of the Church to this society, where life before government social assistance programs was fragile and often unsuccessful.
Contrary to media portrayals, the Catholic Church succeeded in the North because it served the people and fit into their culture. People built their society around countless individual acts of generosity and self-sacrifice:
“Noticing that I didn't have a bell for [the new church], she kept an eye out for one. The next winter, on her promotion tour for the lodge, she found a bell in Indianola, Iowa, outside Desmoines, and delivered it to my dock in her Norseman aircraft the following summer. At a thousand lbs it was the biggest bell in the Northwest Territories.”
Free Spirits counters the negative, one-sided propaganda surrounding white-native relations which portrays the Church and white Canadians as taking advantage of the natives. Brown's thoughts reflect the much richer, deeper, and more human reality.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes: Eastern Influences on Rome and the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590-752
By Andrew J. Ekonomou, 347 pages hardcover, Lexington Books.
This scholarly book examines a little-known area of papal history and thereby accomplishes the important task of adding to our ecumenical self-consciousness. Ekonomou clearly shows just how closely East and West worked in the sixth to eighth centuries.
First, the papacy had not yet fully developed a sense of political independence. Often, for instance, the Byzantine emperor's political man in Ravenna, its Italian capital, would have the last word on the bishop of Rome's appointment of other bishops. The papal fight for the right to appoint its own bishops in the West was to be fought later in the Middle Ages with the Germanic emperors and French kings.
The pope therefore paid close attention to the happenings of the court in Constantinople. The future Pope Gregory the Great was sent there for a number of years to try to increase imperial support of Rome actacles into the religious rites and practices of the Roman church. Nowhere was this attraction to Eastern ceremonial more evident than in the elaborate papal processions that took7s cause before the emperor, there seems to have been little left for him to do once imperial policy toward Italy became evident. Papal representatives who pressed their claims with excessive vigor could quickly become a nuisance and find themselves excluded from the imperial presence altogether.”
Second, the Latin West, through the conduit of the papacy, became greatly enriched by Byzantine spiritual practices:
“[I]t was in Constantinople during the first half of the sixth century...that the cult of the Theotokos [a Greek name for the Virgin Mary] began to develop with what has been justifiably described as 'an astonishing rapidity.'” Emperors ruling a besieged empire “invoked the patronage of the Virgin Mary as the special protector and guardian of the empire generally and of the city of Constantinople in particular.”
Third, Greek liturgical practices spread to Rome because the clergy of Rome and many parts of Italy at this time contained an important Greek contingent, including in the monasteries of Italy:
“The oriental popes also absorbed Constantinople's fascination with great liturgical ceremonies and spectacles into the religious rites and practices of the Roman church. Nowhere was this attraction to Eastern ceremonial more evident than in the elaborate papal processions that took place on great feast days. In a manner nearly identical to that of the emperor processing with great pomp from the imperial palace to the Great Church of St. Sophia to attend the Divine Liturgy on major ecclesiastical holidays in Constantinople, the pontiff would depart from the Lateran patriarchum and proceed through the city to one of Rome's titular basilicas to preside at mass.”
This dense book contains an amazing amount of information on a poorly-understood era of Christian history.
This scholarly book examines a little-known area of papal history and thereby accomplishes the important task of adding to our ecumenical self-consciousness. Ekonomou clearly shows just how closely East and West worked in the sixth to eighth centuries.
First, the papacy had not yet fully developed a sense of political independence. Often, for instance, the Byzantine emperor's political man in Ravenna, its Italian capital, would have the last word on the bishop of Rome's appointment of other bishops. The papal fight for the right to appoint its own bishops in the West was to be fought later in the Middle Ages with the Germanic emperors and French kings.
The pope therefore paid close attention to the happenings of the court in Constantinople. The future Pope Gregory the Great was sent there for a number of years to try to increase imperial support of Rome actacles into the religious rites and practices of the Roman church. Nowhere was this attraction to Eastern ceremonial more evident than in the elaborate papal processions that took7s cause before the emperor, there seems to have been little left for him to do once imperial policy toward Italy became evident. Papal representatives who pressed their claims with excessive vigor could quickly become a nuisance and find themselves excluded from the imperial presence altogether.”
Second, the Latin West, through the conduit of the papacy, became greatly enriched by Byzantine spiritual practices:
“[I]t was in Constantinople during the first half of the sixth century...that the cult of the Theotokos [a Greek name for the Virgin Mary] began to develop with what has been justifiably described as 'an astonishing rapidity.'” Emperors ruling a besieged empire “invoked the patronage of the Virgin Mary as the special protector and guardian of the empire generally and of the city of Constantinople in particular.”
Third, Greek liturgical practices spread to Rome because the clergy of Rome and many parts of Italy at this time contained an important Greek contingent, including in the monasteries of Italy:
“The oriental popes also absorbed Constantinople's fascination with great liturgical ceremonies and spectacles into the religious rites and practices of the Roman church. Nowhere was this attraction to Eastern ceremonial more evident than in the elaborate papal processions that took place on great feast days. In a manner nearly identical to that of the emperor processing with great pomp from the imperial palace to the Great Church of St. Sophia to attend the Divine Liturgy on major ecclesiastical holidays in Constantinople, the pontiff would depart from the Lateran patriarchum and proceed through the city to one of Rome's titular basilicas to preside at mass.”
This dense book contains an amazing amount of information on a poorly-understood era of Christian history.
Our Life Together: A Memoir in Letters
By Jean Vanier, $ 32.95, 565 pages hardcover, Harper Collins.
“[W]e can and must work on the wound of rejection, by giving new confidence, encouragement and support to those who are weak and who live in a world that seems only for those who are strong. Our second objective is to create a community spirit for those who are living in our homes and who, for one reason or another, are not called to complete autonomy.”
These words and letters reveal the more intimate side of Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, communities that welcome people with mental limitations and those who want to live with them and help them. This intimacy does not show a different Jean Vanier, because any of his books display the same humility, honest struggle to live the gospel, and even fresh innocence.
Our Life Together does reveal how Vanier lived the more banal and difficult momentsently get out of whack when weng up and then participating in vaOn a trip to Russia in 1990, and feeling the newfound sense of freedom in the air, he writes that
“The Russian Church has such a deep sense of what is sacrednd shows a straightforward, Jesus- and community-oriented spirituality, as in this one from India, 1973:
“I went into a church not far from the station. It was large and deserted, and had a marble floor. There were about twenty people at Mass, which was in Bengali. There was such a difference between the station full of poor people and the empty church with a few well-dressed people like myself. I felt a bit crushed.... My only consolation came from knowing that Jesus was crucified, poorer than the people in the station and on the streets, and that he died naked on the cross, and that he gives his crucified body.”
The letters indicate a life of simplicity and even hardship:
“I arrived in Calcutta on Friday evening. They had fixed up a little room for me in a storage shed in the garden behind the house. It is like a little cell, with a bed and a table.”
As usual, Vanier asks the hard questions. He does not assume that the spiritual life is simple. He notes the tension, so common to Christian history, between social justice and reverence for God. These two poles frequently get out of whack when we favor one or the other too much. On a trip to Russia in 1990, and feeling the newfound sense of freedom in the air, he writes that
“The Russian Church has such a deep sense of what is sacred. They criticize the Western churches sometimes for having lost a sense of the greatness of God and for being too taken up with political and social matters. Yet, I felt that they were touched when they rediscovered the place of the poor at the heart of the Church, the poor as an image and real presence of Jesus.”
Vanier wrote that “the challenge of L'Arche” revolved around living with the poor and the suffering and also finding a place for the presence of God.
“[W]e can and must work on the wound of rejection, by giving new confidence, encouragement and support to those who are weak and who live in a world that seems only for those who are strong. Our second objective is to create a community spirit for those who are living in our homes and who, for one reason or another, are not called to complete autonomy.”
These words and letters reveal the more intimate side of Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, communities that welcome people with mental limitations and those who want to live with them and help them. This intimacy does not show a different Jean Vanier, because any of his books display the same humility, honest struggle to live the gospel, and even fresh innocence.
Our Life Together does reveal how Vanier lived the more banal and difficult momentsently get out of whack when weng up and then participating in vaOn a trip to Russia in 1990, and feeling the newfound sense of freedom in the air, he writes that
“The Russian Church has such a deep sense of what is sacrednd shows a straightforward, Jesus- and community-oriented spirituality, as in this one from India, 1973:
“I went into a church not far from the station. It was large and deserted, and had a marble floor. There were about twenty people at Mass, which was in Bengali. There was such a difference between the station full of poor people and the empty church with a few well-dressed people like myself. I felt a bit crushed.... My only consolation came from knowing that Jesus was crucified, poorer than the people in the station and on the streets, and that he died naked on the cross, and that he gives his crucified body.”
The letters indicate a life of simplicity and even hardship:
“I arrived in Calcutta on Friday evening. They had fixed up a little room for me in a storage shed in the garden behind the house. It is like a little cell, with a bed and a table.”
As usual, Vanier asks the hard questions. He does not assume that the spiritual life is simple. He notes the tension, so common to Christian history, between social justice and reverence for God. These two poles frequently get out of whack when we favor one or the other too much. On a trip to Russia in 1990, and feeling the newfound sense of freedom in the air, he writes that
“The Russian Church has such a deep sense of what is sacred. They criticize the Western churches sometimes for having lost a sense of the greatness of God and for being too taken up with political and social matters. Yet, I felt that they were touched when they rediscovered the place of the poor at the heart of the Church, the poor as an image and real presence of Jesus.”
Vanier wrote that “the challenge of L'Arche” revolved around living with the poor and the suffering and also finding a place for the presence of God.
Solanus Casey: The Story of Father Solanus
By Catherine M. Odell, 267 pages, Our Sunday Visitor, $14.95.
Catherine Odell begins atthe same time. All indications are that he was otherwise quite intelligent, but he just couldn't handle studying in German. He was therefore ordained as a simplex priest, otherwise known as a Mass priest. This meant that he could say Mass, and marry and baptize people, but he couldn't preach or hear confessions.
The Story of Father Solanus shows the compatibility of the American dream with Catholic holiness.
Catherine Odell begins atthe same time. All indications are that he was otherwise quite intelligent, but he just couldn't handle studying in German. He was therefore ordained as a simplex priest, otherwise known as a Mass priest. This meant that he could say Mass, and marry and baptize people, but he couldn't preach or hear confessions.
The Story of Father Solanus shows the compatibility of the American dream with Catholic holiness.
Saints of Asia, 1500 to the Present
By Vincent J. O'Malley, Our Sunday Visitor, 221 pages.
Saints of Asia, 1500 to the Present reminds readers that the age of martyrdom never really passed for Christians. We often make the mistake of seeing Christian martyrs from Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia as the exception rather than the rule.
Yet anti-Christian violence in Asia, as in nineteenth-century China, shows another kind of martyrdom. Rather than due to madmen and their minions, it tended to be more of a slow, sometimes imperceptible grind. Christians simply had to live with the threat of martyrdom.
Sometimes years of peace and religious freedom would break out, followed of course by anti-Christian policies.
Yet countless believers not only went to their deaths, but joyfully and willingly. “Saint Lucy Wang Cheng and Companions” exemplifies this:
“The four girls were placed in a cart to be transported back to Wangla Village. Along the way, the soldiers verbally abused the girls, their Christian faith, and God. The three youngest girls felt terrified and wept profusely. Lucy encouraged them, saying, 'Don't cry. We are going to heaven soon. God has given us life; He will take it back. We should not be reluctant givers, but offer ourselves cheerfully.'”
Saints of Asia also includes paths to saintliness besides martyrdom, including those such as Thomas Kurialacherry, who was known even in his seminary days in Rome as a saintly person and who as a priest and then bishop in India focused on education, the building of physical churches, and improving the moral standards of people.
Saints of Asia, 1500 to the Present reminds readers that the age of martyrdom never really passed for Christians. We often make the mistake of seeing Christian martyrs from Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia as the exception rather than the rule.
Yet anti-Christian violence in Asia, as in nineteenth-century China, shows another kind of martyrdom. Rather than due to madmen and their minions, it tended to be more of a slow, sometimes imperceptible grind. Christians simply had to live with the threat of martyrdom.
Sometimes years of peace and religious freedom would break out, followed of course by anti-Christian policies.
Yet countless believers not only went to their deaths, but joyfully and willingly. “Saint Lucy Wang Cheng and Companions” exemplifies this:
“The four girls were placed in a cart to be transported back to Wangla Village. Along the way, the soldiers verbally abused the girls, their Christian faith, and God. The three youngest girls felt terrified and wept profusely. Lucy encouraged them, saying, 'Don't cry. We are going to heaven soon. God has given us life; He will take it back. We should not be reluctant givers, but offer ourselves cheerfully.'”
Saints of Asia also includes paths to saintliness besides martyrdom, including those such as Thomas Kurialacherry, who was known even in his seminary days in Rome as a saintly person and who as a priest and then bishop in India focused on education, the building of physical churches, and improving the moral standards of people.
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