By Paul Murray, Paraclete Press, 125 pages, ISBN 978-1-55725-579-2.
While most books on Catholic spirituality can be passed over because they more or less say the same thing, every now and then a deceptively simple book like this one comes along. At first glance it too seems like the others on spirituality.
However, this book reads like a fine wine. Perhaps readers need to take it in slowly and simply, a few paragraphs at a time. Catholic spirituality is not based on quantity but depth. I Loved Jesus in the Night offers readers a lot of depth.
The author discusses the extremely difficult concept of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, and how Mother Teresa lived this. The Dark Night is a complicated spirituality that many people, even some Church leaders and teachers, understand badly.
Father Paul Murray reminds us that we are not to understand this concept intellectually. He discusses his times with Mother Teresa, who suffered from a deep spiritual dryness for decades. The secular media has interpreted this as due to faithlessness.
He shows how her determination to love Jesus and to accept his love, even when she didn't sense his love for long years, is in fact the very stuff of faith. Her faith was actually stronger than we originally thought, and even more so because of her nagging doubts about somehow misrepresenting her faith to people.
This humility was the foundation of her spirituality. One thing that strikes the author is how she almost constantly asked people to pray for her, as she felt she needed their spiritual support. She had been inspired by the humility and “nothingness” of St. Therese de Lisieux, who energized Christian spirituality by saying that instead of saints and the devout hungering after God's love, it is God who hungers for our love.
“This thought, this vision,” Murray writes, “is something that was for Mother Teresa almost an obsession. She believed, and with an intense and living faith, that it was not only in the broken Host we see before us on the altar, but also in the person whom we see to be afflicted or in great need that Jesus thirsts for our love, begs for our attention.”
Given the divine absence she felt in her spiritual life, this thinking shows the greatness of Mother Teresa's faith. Her faith led to love, but also emptiness, both of which Murray himself witnessed: “What I mean by 'emptiness' is that Mother Teresa was so free of the weight of self that, when you met her, you almost had the feeling that she was coming towards you – not because she was so full and you were so empty, but because, in that moment for her, you were the one person in the world she most wanted to meet.”
I Loved Jesus in the Night conveys very well the simplicity and love of Mother Teresa.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
An Introduction to Christian Mysticism
By Thomas Merton, 390 pages, Cistercian Publications.
Merton, the Cistercian monk who died in 1968, goes over a profound amount of Christian spirituality and theology with these lecture notes for young monks at his Kentucky monastery. He takes the view that theology and spirituality, including mysticism, function best when they form a unified whole, as they did with the Church Fathers.
Merton's discussion of certain Greek Fathers such as Gregory Nazianzus shows why these teachers must be read more often by Catholics. They form the basis of our theology and spirituality. Moreover, they were theologians because they loved God and searched for a deeper relationship with Him. From this quest, they gained theological knowledge. While they formed their theology on the tenets of the faith, they also based it on their relationship with God. According to Merton, “In St. Gregory of Nyssa the dogmatic writings ... have a direct orientation to the mystical life.”
When discussing these Greek writers, as usual, Merton does not hesitate to use Latin and Greek expressions, which can be hard for readers with no interest in such terms. But for those with a keen sense of the intellectual heritage of the Church, Merton's wordsmithing adds greatly to the discussion. For instance, he defines Nyssa's Greek term “Epectasis” as “the ever-increasing growth of live and desire and penetration into the inexhaustible ocean of divine light.”
Sentences like this are almost one-of-a-kind Merton. Very few people develop the intellectual and spiritual capacity to write such things. Merton's understanding of both Greek and Latin lungs of the Church also help readers to see the great debt the Western Church owes to the Greek Fathers.
In the Latin West, as he traces it, the split during the Middle Ages between theology and spirituality caused all sorts of issues. Fourteenth-century mystics in the Rhineland turned away from Church hierarchy and orthodox theology, and looked inward. They practiced a non-sacramental, non-hierarchical, highly individualistic and pietistic spirituality frowned upon by the Church.
Clergy, for their part, over-focused at this time on speculative theology, and became corrupted by the Church's great material wealth and power. With their neo-scholastic theology, as taught chiefly at the University of Paris, the Schoolmen forgot the importance of lived, personal, Christ-centred spirituality.
Yet theology and spirituality are never so simple, and Merton digs up some of the complications with his analysis of the Dionysian (from a fifth-century Greek theologian) versus Augustinian strands in medieval spirituality. Again, we read a sentence only Merton could write:
“The cosmos of Denys is then a vast ecstatic communion of intelligence striving to respond to the call of divine Love summoning them to unity in Christ, each according to his rank and degree of purity.”
An Introduction to Christian Mysticism is one of Merton's best yet most demanding books, as he whizzes by centuries and geographical areas of theology, spirituality, and religious culture, yet all the while on the search for the great love of his life, God. The enthusiasm behind the writing of this book comes from Merton's own lived experience of these ideas, which give an immediacy and a frankness to the analysis.
Merton, the Cistercian monk who died in 1968, goes over a profound amount of Christian spirituality and theology with these lecture notes for young monks at his Kentucky monastery. He takes the view that theology and spirituality, including mysticism, function best when they form a unified whole, as they did with the Church Fathers.
Merton's discussion of certain Greek Fathers such as Gregory Nazianzus shows why these teachers must be read more often by Catholics. They form the basis of our theology and spirituality. Moreover, they were theologians because they loved God and searched for a deeper relationship with Him. From this quest, they gained theological knowledge. While they formed their theology on the tenets of the faith, they also based it on their relationship with God. According to Merton, “In St. Gregory of Nyssa the dogmatic writings ... have a direct orientation to the mystical life.”
When discussing these Greek writers, as usual, Merton does not hesitate to use Latin and Greek expressions, which can be hard for readers with no interest in such terms. But for those with a keen sense of the intellectual heritage of the Church, Merton's wordsmithing adds greatly to the discussion. For instance, he defines Nyssa's Greek term “Epectasis” as “the ever-increasing growth of live and desire and penetration into the inexhaustible ocean of divine light.”
Sentences like this are almost one-of-a-kind Merton. Very few people develop the intellectual and spiritual capacity to write such things. Merton's understanding of both Greek and Latin lungs of the Church also help readers to see the great debt the Western Church owes to the Greek Fathers.
In the Latin West, as he traces it, the split during the Middle Ages between theology and spirituality caused all sorts of issues. Fourteenth-century mystics in the Rhineland turned away from Church hierarchy and orthodox theology, and looked inward. They practiced a non-sacramental, non-hierarchical, highly individualistic and pietistic spirituality frowned upon by the Church.
Clergy, for their part, over-focused at this time on speculative theology, and became corrupted by the Church's great material wealth and power. With their neo-scholastic theology, as taught chiefly at the University of Paris, the Schoolmen forgot the importance of lived, personal, Christ-centred spirituality.
Yet theology and spirituality are never so simple, and Merton digs up some of the complications with his analysis of the Dionysian (from a fifth-century Greek theologian) versus Augustinian strands in medieval spirituality. Again, we read a sentence only Merton could write:
“The cosmos of Denys is then a vast ecstatic communion of intelligence striving to respond to the call of divine Love summoning them to unity in Christ, each according to his rank and degree of purity.”
An Introduction to Christian Mysticism is one of Merton's best yet most demanding books, as he whizzes by centuries and geographical areas of theology, spirituality, and religious culture, yet all the while on the search for the great love of his life, God. The enthusiasm behind the writing of this book comes from Merton's own lived experience of these ideas, which give an immediacy and a frankness to the analysis.
By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign
By Ann Farmer, 421 pages.
Ann Farmer has engaged in tremendous scholarship to show us how the abortion debate in Britain, and elsewhere in the West, was one of many tentacles of the eugenics movement. This group, whose British and American members forged ties to the Nazis, had worked from the 1930s up to the late 1960s to legalize abortion.
Members of the eugenics-abortion movement used deceit to eventually get their way. They lied about who they were and what their real goals were. Even after the world had learned what evil the Nazis had wrought in the name of racial purity, eugenics supporters doggedly pursued their aims, though they now had to cloak their ideals of genetic purity.
They believed that the poor underclasses of their countries, as well as non-whites and people with disabilities, were inferior genetically and therefore less human than they were. Yet, unable to spread their true message openly in the still largely Christian society, they turned things around and claimed to speak for the masses of poor women who, the campaigners believed, didn't want such large families.
Eugenics supporters assumed that women with large families would opt for much smaller families if given a real choice, and that the majority of children in large families were unwanted. Campaigners targeted poor women with brochures and clinics, and pushed the contraception and abortion laws that existed at that time.
Another common lie was the claim that many more backstreet abortions were occurring than actually were. In fact, no proof exists that mothers of large families ever sought or wanted clandestine abortions. The evidence we have shows that wealthy, upper class women with few children had abortions much more frequently.
An important anti-Christian element to eugenics / abortion advocates was their transformation of compassion. Without ever talking to someone with a disability, they claimed to speak on behalf of those with disabilities and their families by advocating the use of abortion to eliminate the unborn with mental or physical limitations. They called this “reform.”
Not surprisingly, violent political ideology was a part of at least some eugenics thinking: “the potential of biological engineering to create the perfect state – actually to create the human building blocks of that state – may have appealed to left-wing eugenicists as a shortcut to revolution.” Some campaigners of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, held Stalin in high regard, not least for the loose Soviet abortion laws (though such campaigners probably failed to mention that many of these abortions were forced and were performed without pain killers).
Eugenics supporters, more than anyone, are responsible for the Culture of Death. By Their Fruits notes: They “helped separate sex from procreation; having legalized abortion, they helped society 'get used to' it. They also helped make motherhood more onerous; now they stand ready to help with the complete separation of mothers from their offspring. No doubt this will be hailed as a kinder alternative to actually giving birth and raising children, and presented as an equality measure in view of the fact that wealthy women have always consigned their children to the care of others.”
The eugenics movement, in other words, is far from having finished its destruction of our civilization.
Ann Farmer has engaged in tremendous scholarship to show us how the abortion debate in Britain, and elsewhere in the West, was one of many tentacles of the eugenics movement. This group, whose British and American members forged ties to the Nazis, had worked from the 1930s up to the late 1960s to legalize abortion.
Members of the eugenics-abortion movement used deceit to eventually get their way. They lied about who they were and what their real goals were. Even after the world had learned what evil the Nazis had wrought in the name of racial purity, eugenics supporters doggedly pursued their aims, though they now had to cloak their ideals of genetic purity.
They believed that the poor underclasses of their countries, as well as non-whites and people with disabilities, were inferior genetically and therefore less human than they were. Yet, unable to spread their true message openly in the still largely Christian society, they turned things around and claimed to speak for the masses of poor women who, the campaigners believed, didn't want such large families.
Eugenics supporters assumed that women with large families would opt for much smaller families if given a real choice, and that the majority of children in large families were unwanted. Campaigners targeted poor women with brochures and clinics, and pushed the contraception and abortion laws that existed at that time.
Another common lie was the claim that many more backstreet abortions were occurring than actually were. In fact, no proof exists that mothers of large families ever sought or wanted clandestine abortions. The evidence we have shows that wealthy, upper class women with few children had abortions much more frequently.
An important anti-Christian element to eugenics / abortion advocates was their transformation of compassion. Without ever talking to someone with a disability, they claimed to speak on behalf of those with disabilities and their families by advocating the use of abortion to eliminate the unborn with mental or physical limitations. They called this “reform.”
Not surprisingly, violent political ideology was a part of at least some eugenics thinking: “the potential of biological engineering to create the perfect state – actually to create the human building blocks of that state – may have appealed to left-wing eugenicists as a shortcut to revolution.” Some campaigners of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, held Stalin in high regard, not least for the loose Soviet abortion laws (though such campaigners probably failed to mention that many of these abortions were forced and were performed without pain killers).
Eugenics supporters, more than anyone, are responsible for the Culture of Death. By Their Fruits notes: They “helped separate sex from procreation; having legalized abortion, they helped society 'get used to' it. They also helped make motherhood more onerous; now they stand ready to help with the complete separation of mothers from their offspring. No doubt this will be hailed as a kinder alternative to actually giving birth and raising children, and presented as an equality measure in view of the fact that wealthy women have always consigned their children to the care of others.”
The eugenics movement, in other words, is far from having finished its destruction of our civilization.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The Last Secret of Fatima: My Conversations with Sister Lucia
By Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone with Giuseppe de Carli; foreword by Pope Benedict XVI, Doubleday, 165 pages, ISBN 978-0-385-52582-4.
It takes the authority of a cardinal to put to rest the rumors and mythology surrounding the 3 secrets of Fatima. This book examines the history of the event where the Virgin Mary appeared over a 6 month period to 3 illiterate shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal starting on May 13, 1917.
They received 3 secrets that they gave to the Church to interpret. This led to a media frenzy. Adding to the frenzy and speculation was the Miracle of the Sun, witnessed by 70,000 people on October 13, 1917.
The Last Secret of Fatima, in question-and-answer format with Cardinal Bertone, clarifies theological issues such as the nature of predictions. Bertone emphasizes Christian freedom, especially through prayer and penance. Humans are not under the shadow of God's or Satan's judgment or punishment.
Deeper Christian living helps us avoid the mass destruction foreseen by mystics. Predictions from heaven are really warnings of what we humans will do to ourselves, with the manipulation of Satan, if we fail to live holy lives.
Thus Our Lady of Fatima predicted that a second great war, an atheistic war, would take place after the one still raging in Europe in 1917, if people didn't repent and turn back to God. Our Lady did not make a definitive declaration or judgment about humanity's future; nor was it a divine punishment. WWII was something humans did to themselves. Nonetheless, people are free at any time to return to God and to lives of prayer and humility, and are therefore at liberty to avoid these terrible events.
“Prophecy,” Bertone notes, “is an urgent invitation to conversion, penance, and prayer, and the point is that these things have the power to change the course of history.” He makes a warning of his own, concerning a false interpretation of the nature of prediction: “The mistake made by some of the Fatimists after the publication of the Third Secret was to give the text a literal, fatalistic interpretation.”
“Fatalistic” invites a sense of hopelessness because it believes that we can do nothing to prevent the approaching doom. “The end is nigh,” which is fatalistic, is not a Christian way of thinking because Christians must live with hope. Prophecies are about hope, because while they show the worst scenario, they only do so as a way to get us to focus on conversion. Fatima-like prophecies remind us of the high stakes involved in our lives, of the spiritual issues at hand. This gives us a sense of urgency – we must repent and invite the kingdom of God.
Bertone thus keeps his focus on the big issues, rather than the superstitious, petty matters. The Last Secret of Fatima carries a tone of irritation regarding certain media and religious types who wrote that Sister Lucia was worried about the consecration of Russia. The mystic was satisfied with Pope John Paul II's consecration of Russia.
This book's solid Catholic theology acts as a corrective to superstitious or mischievous people who have made Fatima into an industry.
Bertone's interviewer occasionally falls into sensationalism. De Carli attempts to connect Our Lady of Fatima with Muhammed's favorite daughter, Fatima (Portugal, like Spain, was under the Arab Muslims before the Reconquista, and Fatima, Portugal, is named after her):
“The Shiites believe that the Fatima shrine belongs by right to Muslims, and that the Catholics have stolen it from its rightful owners. They argue that if a Lady dressed in shining white appeared there, then it's because she had a message for Muslims, not for Christians. Ali Agca, in his megalomania, thought he had a mission from God. Apparently, when John Paul II visited him at the Rebibbia prison in 1983, he asked the pontiff, 'So who is Fatima for you?'”
This is actually a fortunate digression because it is the sort of confusion created by the Fatima cottage industry, and it gives Cardinal Bertone the chance to set things right. Here, as many times elsewhere, Bertone speaks with the clarity and authority of Pope Benedict XVI, which is precisely what is needed in issues such as this.
The Last Secret of Fatima advances our understanding of Our Lady of Fatima and the 3 secrets precisely because it doesn't shy away from controversy and, even more so, because Bertone doesn't shy away from direct, authoritative answers. He bases his responses on biblical, Catholic theology.
When the interviewer turns to Medjugorje, Bertone again brings things back to Catholic simplicity: “Don't forget that Our Lady is present in all the world's Marian shrines. The purpose of [all] the shrines is to form a sort of spiritual safety net, to be sources of spiritual light, reservoirs of goodness.”
Bertone sets the record straight on the real importance of Fatima, which is not apocalyptic future prophecies. The apparitions at Fatima and elsewhere are God's attempt to break back into a world that has forgotten Him, that has decided to go on alone and to reject the Spirit.
Bertone sees hope in Fatima: “But the fact that you could fill an entire library with what has been written both about Fatima in particular and about apparitions in general suggests that God is trying to break through the hard shell of our indifference.”
It takes the authority of a cardinal to put to rest the rumors and mythology surrounding the 3 secrets of Fatima. This book examines the history of the event where the Virgin Mary appeared over a 6 month period to 3 illiterate shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal starting on May 13, 1917.
They received 3 secrets that they gave to the Church to interpret. This led to a media frenzy. Adding to the frenzy and speculation was the Miracle of the Sun, witnessed by 70,000 people on October 13, 1917.
The Last Secret of Fatima, in question-and-answer format with Cardinal Bertone, clarifies theological issues such as the nature of predictions. Bertone emphasizes Christian freedom, especially through prayer and penance. Humans are not under the shadow of God's or Satan's judgment or punishment.
Deeper Christian living helps us avoid the mass destruction foreseen by mystics. Predictions from heaven are really warnings of what we humans will do to ourselves, with the manipulation of Satan, if we fail to live holy lives.
Thus Our Lady of Fatima predicted that a second great war, an atheistic war, would take place after the one still raging in Europe in 1917, if people didn't repent and turn back to God. Our Lady did not make a definitive declaration or judgment about humanity's future; nor was it a divine punishment. WWII was something humans did to themselves. Nonetheless, people are free at any time to return to God and to lives of prayer and humility, and are therefore at liberty to avoid these terrible events.
“Prophecy,” Bertone notes, “is an urgent invitation to conversion, penance, and prayer, and the point is that these things have the power to change the course of history.” He makes a warning of his own, concerning a false interpretation of the nature of prediction: “The mistake made by some of the Fatimists after the publication of the Third Secret was to give the text a literal, fatalistic interpretation.”
“Fatalistic” invites a sense of hopelessness because it believes that we can do nothing to prevent the approaching doom. “The end is nigh,” which is fatalistic, is not a Christian way of thinking because Christians must live with hope. Prophecies are about hope, because while they show the worst scenario, they only do so as a way to get us to focus on conversion. Fatima-like prophecies remind us of the high stakes involved in our lives, of the spiritual issues at hand. This gives us a sense of urgency – we must repent and invite the kingdom of God.
Bertone thus keeps his focus on the big issues, rather than the superstitious, petty matters. The Last Secret of Fatima carries a tone of irritation regarding certain media and religious types who wrote that Sister Lucia was worried about the consecration of Russia. The mystic was satisfied with Pope John Paul II's consecration of Russia.
This book's solid Catholic theology acts as a corrective to superstitious or mischievous people who have made Fatima into an industry.
Bertone's interviewer occasionally falls into sensationalism. De Carli attempts to connect Our Lady of Fatima with Muhammed's favorite daughter, Fatima (Portugal, like Spain, was under the Arab Muslims before the Reconquista, and Fatima, Portugal, is named after her):
“The Shiites believe that the Fatima shrine belongs by right to Muslims, and that the Catholics have stolen it from its rightful owners. They argue that if a Lady dressed in shining white appeared there, then it's because she had a message for Muslims, not for Christians. Ali Agca, in his megalomania, thought he had a mission from God. Apparently, when John Paul II visited him at the Rebibbia prison in 1983, he asked the pontiff, 'So who is Fatima for you?'”
This is actually a fortunate digression because it is the sort of confusion created by the Fatima cottage industry, and it gives Cardinal Bertone the chance to set things right. Here, as many times elsewhere, Bertone speaks with the clarity and authority of Pope Benedict XVI, which is precisely what is needed in issues such as this.
The Last Secret of Fatima advances our understanding of Our Lady of Fatima and the 3 secrets precisely because it doesn't shy away from controversy and, even more so, because Bertone doesn't shy away from direct, authoritative answers. He bases his responses on biblical, Catholic theology.
When the interviewer turns to Medjugorje, Bertone again brings things back to Catholic simplicity: “Don't forget that Our Lady is present in all the world's Marian shrines. The purpose of [all] the shrines is to form a sort of spiritual safety net, to be sources of spiritual light, reservoirs of goodness.”
Bertone sets the record straight on the real importance of Fatima, which is not apocalyptic future prophecies. The apparitions at Fatima and elsewhere are God's attempt to break back into a world that has forgotten Him, that has decided to go on alone and to reject the Spirit.
Bertone sees hope in Fatima: “But the fact that you could fill an entire library with what has been written both about Fatima in particular and about apparitions in general suggests that God is trying to break through the hard shell of our indifference.”
A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who Became Pope
By Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, 260 pages, Doubleday.
“That reminds me of one of the Wednesday general audiences. A priest was there with a group of young women. They were all former prostitutes who had decided to turn over a totally new leaf. When their turn came, they all burst into tears. One by one, they came toward the Pope with eyes full of tears, and shame, and maybe even a bit of embarrassment. The Pope's reaction? He embraced them and gave them his blessing.”
A Life with Karol is a true insider's account of the life and pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz became Archbishop Karol Wojtyla's secretary in 1966, though they had met previously when Professor Wojtyla taught Dziwisz ethics at a Polish seminary.
Even with countless new books coming out on the late pope, this one will strike a cord with fans of John Paul II. Rather than an academic work focusing on some aspect of his philosophy or his role in geopolitics, A Life with Karol paints a picture of the spiritual practices and beliefs of the pontiff.
For instance, Dziwisz describes John Paul's habit of praying for 30 minutes or more in a prostrate position in a chapel, something that he continued to do as pope. At times during the day, when no one could find John Paul, the pope would usually be in a nearby chapel -- “in a state of total abandonment, almost of ecstasy, completely unaware of who was entering the chapel.” In his daily life, he also prayed the rosary after lunch and prayed the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, wherever he was.
Dziwisz introduces the reader to the person who was John Paul, helping us to see what he was like to meet, live with, or share dinner with: “The Pope would eat a little of everything. He wouldn't take much, but he would try everything. That was his custom, which went back to his youth during the war, when all you could get were frugal meals.... From that time on, Karol Wojtyla had maintained what we might call a certain detachment from food.”
Overlooking the entire book are the public issues that have made the public image of the late pontiff, including the Cold War and his push for Poland's spiritual and political freedom; his equal opposition to the increasing materialism and individualism of Western Europe and North America; and his emphasis on the importance of the individual.
Though not a preoccupation, the author does give us a peek at some of behind-the-scenes political moves, such as when John Paul wrote to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in the early 1980s to voice his opposition to a feared Soviet invasion of Poland.
Naturally, the Cardinal describes his own emotions and last moments with Wojtyla, whom he describes as his spiritual father: “Of course he hasn't left us. We feel his presence, and we experience all the many graces obtained by his intercession.”
“That reminds me of one of the Wednesday general audiences. A priest was there with a group of young women. They were all former prostitutes who had decided to turn over a totally new leaf. When their turn came, they all burst into tears. One by one, they came toward the Pope with eyes full of tears, and shame, and maybe even a bit of embarrassment. The Pope's reaction? He embraced them and gave them his blessing.”
A Life with Karol is a true insider's account of the life and pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz became Archbishop Karol Wojtyla's secretary in 1966, though they had met previously when Professor Wojtyla taught Dziwisz ethics at a Polish seminary.
Even with countless new books coming out on the late pope, this one will strike a cord with fans of John Paul II. Rather than an academic work focusing on some aspect of his philosophy or his role in geopolitics, A Life with Karol paints a picture of the spiritual practices and beliefs of the pontiff.
For instance, Dziwisz describes John Paul's habit of praying for 30 minutes or more in a prostrate position in a chapel, something that he continued to do as pope. At times during the day, when no one could find John Paul, the pope would usually be in a nearby chapel -- “in a state of total abandonment, almost of ecstasy, completely unaware of who was entering the chapel.” In his daily life, he also prayed the rosary after lunch and prayed the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, wherever he was.
Dziwisz introduces the reader to the person who was John Paul, helping us to see what he was like to meet, live with, or share dinner with: “The Pope would eat a little of everything. He wouldn't take much, but he would try everything. That was his custom, which went back to his youth during the war, when all you could get were frugal meals.... From that time on, Karol Wojtyla had maintained what we might call a certain detachment from food.”
Overlooking the entire book are the public issues that have made the public image of the late pontiff, including the Cold War and his push for Poland's spiritual and political freedom; his equal opposition to the increasing materialism and individualism of Western Europe and North America; and his emphasis on the importance of the individual.
Though not a preoccupation, the author does give us a peek at some of behind-the-scenes political moves, such as when John Paul wrote to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in the early 1980s to voice his opposition to a feared Soviet invasion of Poland.
Naturally, the Cardinal describes his own emotions and last moments with Wojtyla, whom he describes as his spiritual father: “Of course he hasn't left us. We feel his presence, and we experience all the many graces obtained by his intercession.”
The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital
By Jaimie McEvoy, 272 pages hardcover.
McEvoy tells the history of this recently torn-down Sisters of Providence hospital through the people who made it a great health care and community success. Top-notch medical practice and close, emotional links to New Westminster, Canada and nearby cities gave Saint Mary's its distinctive character.
As well, the Sisters and their Catholic spirituality, which they brought to life through their caring interactions with the poorest and most needy patients in the area for over 100 years, gave the hospital a soul, something that McEvoy paints quite clearly.
Beginning in 1887, The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital shows the slowly growing hospital, in the hands of determined, dedicated Sisters and a supportive Catholic and non-Catholic community in British Columbia, dealing with the health problems particular to each era. In its first decades, it dealt with deadly smallpox, as well as typhoid, pneumonia, and even leprosy. Medical care could be rudimentary, with injured minors, cannery workers, or sawmill laborers sometimes having their limbs amputated because of gross infections and gangrene. In these beginning years, McEvoy notes, “if the disease didn't kill the patient, the medicine might.”
The Sisters always did things their way. For instance, before the era of government welfare support, they fed and sometimes sheltered the indigent, and at times gave out small sums of money. This played a crucial role in the Depression. In responding wholeheartedly to their vocations, the Sisters also broke the mold by accepting patients no other hospitals at the time would accept – the poor who couldn't pay their medical bills, natives, and Japanese workers. McEvoy notes the “cacaphony” of languages in the wards and lunchroom.
He also writes, “[I]t was from the beginning – as it would be for many decades – very much a hospital of the ordinary working man because it was just uphill from the industrial area and wharves on the Fraser River.” Working people played such an important part of Saint Mary's because the Sisters always reached out to them, often going door-to-door looking for the sick and needy. They also went to the far-flung logging camps in search for donations to continue their work, venturing into places that only prostitutes would normally go.
The hospital and the Sisters changed with the times, and Saint Mary's kept up with medical and technological advances, installing the latest elevator or using the latest medical equipment. Over the decades it developed many specialties, including palliative care, procedures for hip-fracture patients, breast health, ophthalmology, and diabetic treatment.
The province and the hospital had been on tenuous relations for some time, perhaps because of the hospital's independence or outspoken opposition to abortion. Yet the community support it received seemed to give it reprieve after reprieve. As the years passed, the B.C. Provincial government kept centralizing health care, until the 1990s, when local voices fell on deaf ears in the capital.
Thus McEvoy judges the folks in government for stifling local politics, which makes for a very good story. As well, McEvoy never forgets the spiritual heritage of the Sisters, and their original vocation. Yet The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital misses a crucial side, which is some judgment of the forces of secularization that surrounded the hospital's closure in 2005. Local versus centralized politics is not the whole story. A better-rounded history would have spent some time discussing values of a secular government and society that might no longer be open to Catholic health care.
McEvoy tells the history of this recently torn-down Sisters of Providence hospital through the people who made it a great health care and community success. Top-notch medical practice and close, emotional links to New Westminster, Canada and nearby cities gave Saint Mary's its distinctive character.
As well, the Sisters and their Catholic spirituality, which they brought to life through their caring interactions with the poorest and most needy patients in the area for over 100 years, gave the hospital a soul, something that McEvoy paints quite clearly.
Beginning in 1887, The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital shows the slowly growing hospital, in the hands of determined, dedicated Sisters and a supportive Catholic and non-Catholic community in British Columbia, dealing with the health problems particular to each era. In its first decades, it dealt with deadly smallpox, as well as typhoid, pneumonia, and even leprosy. Medical care could be rudimentary, with injured minors, cannery workers, or sawmill laborers sometimes having their limbs amputated because of gross infections and gangrene. In these beginning years, McEvoy notes, “if the disease didn't kill the patient, the medicine might.”
The Sisters always did things their way. For instance, before the era of government welfare support, they fed and sometimes sheltered the indigent, and at times gave out small sums of money. This played a crucial role in the Depression. In responding wholeheartedly to their vocations, the Sisters also broke the mold by accepting patients no other hospitals at the time would accept – the poor who couldn't pay their medical bills, natives, and Japanese workers. McEvoy notes the “cacaphony” of languages in the wards and lunchroom.
He also writes, “[I]t was from the beginning – as it would be for many decades – very much a hospital of the ordinary working man because it was just uphill from the industrial area and wharves on the Fraser River.” Working people played such an important part of Saint Mary's because the Sisters always reached out to them, often going door-to-door looking for the sick and needy. They also went to the far-flung logging camps in search for donations to continue their work, venturing into places that only prostitutes would normally go.
The hospital and the Sisters changed with the times, and Saint Mary's kept up with medical and technological advances, installing the latest elevator or using the latest medical equipment. Over the decades it developed many specialties, including palliative care, procedures for hip-fracture patients, breast health, ophthalmology, and diabetic treatment.
The province and the hospital had been on tenuous relations for some time, perhaps because of the hospital's independence or outspoken opposition to abortion. Yet the community support it received seemed to give it reprieve after reprieve. As the years passed, the B.C. Provincial government kept centralizing health care, until the 1990s, when local voices fell on deaf ears in the capital.
Thus McEvoy judges the folks in government for stifling local politics, which makes for a very good story. As well, McEvoy never forgets the spiritual heritage of the Sisters, and their original vocation. Yet The Life and Destruction of Saint Mary's Hospital misses a crucial side, which is some judgment of the forces of secularization that surrounded the hospital's closure in 2005. Local versus centralized politics is not the whole story. A better-rounded history would have spent some time discussing values of a secular government and society that might no longer be open to Catholic health care.
Illusion or Opportunity: Civil Society and the Quest for Social Change
By Henry Veltmeyer, 136 pages, Fernwood Publishing.
This hard-hitting book examines the attempt by the U.S. since the 1970s to force countries into its neo-liberal agenda. The move to build one economic system under American stewardship and its individualistic capitalism is usually called “globalization.”
Veltmeyer, a professor of development studies in Mexico, calls this imperialism. He traces this American imperialism from its start in the Cold War, when the U.S. tried to keep countries away from Soviet domination by sponsoring “development,” which included controlling the politics and economies of these countries.
Globalization since the 1970s, the heir to this original development, tries to put a pretty face on imperialism by masquerading as democratic and economic freedom. Non-governmental agencies (NGOs) work in these countries close to the poorest people, and mask this imperialism by pretending to take their needs into consideration.
Yet these NGOs are hardly doing that, considering that they don't ask the people what they need, but instead tell them what they need – including birth control for women in Catholic or Islamic countries, where such practice goes against the local religious culture.
“Aid,” Veltmeyer concludes, “more likely serves the interests of the donor country.” Aid does not empower the poor, disempowered people, but aims to keep in place the same, neo-liberal structures that cause poverty and environmental and social destruction in the first place.
The author continues: “However, it was clear that the agenda behind these policies was not economic development but rather globalization,” which he calls “the new world order.” The only authentic policies for the poor and disenfranchised are those that confront the wealthy and powerful and that overturn the corrupt, unjust system.
Micro-policies, programs that put small amounts of resources into the hands of local poor people, do not work – and are not meant to work – because too many people have to fight over “miserably” few resources. NGOs bill this as social capital. This concept looks worthwhile at first, as it aims to empower the poor. Yet Veltmeyer condemns the number one rule of such programs, which is that the poor must work within the system in order to get the resources.
Social capital programs are therefore counter-productive.
Illusion or Opportunity takes a big look at the world economic system. By its nature, this system impoverishes and dehumanizes people, tearing them away from their communities and poisoning their land and water. Rampant financial speculation in London, New York, and elsewhere, is particularly hard on the poor. Yet if governments taxed only 1% of the value of this speculation, people the world over would have enough resources for clean water systems.
Veltmeyer demands change to the entire structure of the world economy. Only that will help the poor. He cites terrible statistics to prove that neo-liberalism is a ghastly thing for the world's poor: “The richest quintile [one-fifth] of the world's people consume 86 percent of all products ... while the poorest quintile consumes only 1.3 percent....the three richest persons in the world have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries.” And so on.
This hard-hitting book examines the attempt by the U.S. since the 1970s to force countries into its neo-liberal agenda. The move to build one economic system under American stewardship and its individualistic capitalism is usually called “globalization.”
Veltmeyer, a professor of development studies in Mexico, calls this imperialism. He traces this American imperialism from its start in the Cold War, when the U.S. tried to keep countries away from Soviet domination by sponsoring “development,” which included controlling the politics and economies of these countries.
Globalization since the 1970s, the heir to this original development, tries to put a pretty face on imperialism by masquerading as democratic and economic freedom. Non-governmental agencies (NGOs) work in these countries close to the poorest people, and mask this imperialism by pretending to take their needs into consideration.
Yet these NGOs are hardly doing that, considering that they don't ask the people what they need, but instead tell them what they need – including birth control for women in Catholic or Islamic countries, where such practice goes against the local religious culture.
“Aid,” Veltmeyer concludes, “more likely serves the interests of the donor country.” Aid does not empower the poor, disempowered people, but aims to keep in place the same, neo-liberal structures that cause poverty and environmental and social destruction in the first place.
The author continues: “However, it was clear that the agenda behind these policies was not economic development but rather globalization,” which he calls “the new world order.” The only authentic policies for the poor and disenfranchised are those that confront the wealthy and powerful and that overturn the corrupt, unjust system.
Micro-policies, programs that put small amounts of resources into the hands of local poor people, do not work – and are not meant to work – because too many people have to fight over “miserably” few resources. NGOs bill this as social capital. This concept looks worthwhile at first, as it aims to empower the poor. Yet Veltmeyer condemns the number one rule of such programs, which is that the poor must work within the system in order to get the resources.
Social capital programs are therefore counter-productive.
Illusion or Opportunity takes a big look at the world economic system. By its nature, this system impoverishes and dehumanizes people, tearing them away from their communities and poisoning their land and water. Rampant financial speculation in London, New York, and elsewhere, is particularly hard on the poor. Yet if governments taxed only 1% of the value of this speculation, people the world over would have enough resources for clean water systems.
Veltmeyer demands change to the entire structure of the world economy. Only that will help the poor. He cites terrible statistics to prove that neo-liberalism is a ghastly thing for the world's poor: “The richest quintile [one-fifth] of the world's people consume 86 percent of all products ... while the poorest quintile consumes only 1.3 percent....the three richest persons in the world have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries.” And so on.
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