Book Reviews

FORTRESS CHURCH. The English Roman Catholic Bishops

and Politics 1903–1963 by Kester Aspden, Gracewing,
Leominster, 2002, Pp. ix + 353, £ 20.00 pbk.

The author declares that his intent in writing this book is to study the
attitude and responses of the English Roman Catholic bishops to a
range of social and political problems in the period 1903 to 1963.
Aspden has gained access to a wide ranging number of diocesan and
other archives and private papers relating to his theme. He is to be
commended for the amount of energy and perseverance expended.
The sources are scattered across England and are not always filed
and conserved in ways that make for easy study.
He organises his study into an Introduction followed by 7 chapters
and then a Conclusion with an Appendix listing the bishops of
England and Wales 1903–1963. The chapters are: [1]. ‘Docile, Loving
Children’: Social and Political Action 1903–1918; [2]. ‘Imperialism
and Snobs’: The Bishops and Ireland 1918–1921; [3]. Social Recon-
struction and the Labour Party Question 1918–1924; [4]. The Eclipse
of Social Catholicism 1924–1935; [5]. Spain, Fascism and Commun-
ism; [6]. The Sword and the Spirit; [7]. Safety First 1943–1963.
Aspden follows a largely chronological sequence with some over-
lap. The attention allocated to periods and topics is somewhat
uneven. The first two thirds of the period is addressed in some 240
pages, while the last third is presented in some 40 pages only. This
imbalance casts doubts on the author’s selection of themes that
provide a foundation for passing judgment upon the ‘attitude and
responses of the English Roman Catholic bishops to a range of social
and political questions’ (p. 2). The title of ‘Safety First 1943–1963’ for
the chapter in which he covers this period indicates his conviction
that bishops ought to be consistently pro-active on political and
social matters.
The author covers a period in English history of considerable
social change and movement so some selection of topics is inevitable.
He chose not to give detailed attention to the impact of the Great
Wars of his period. This is a pity since he could have broadened the
foundation for his conclusions had he paid more attention to these
socially very significant events. These wars, in addition to the dis-
location of people’s lives and the impact upon the ordinary operation
of each diocese, made considerable demands upon the teaching duty
# The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA
248 Book Reviews

of the bishops on the moral issues brought to the fore by the conflicts
in their origins and progress. Aspden has ranged widely over the
actions and opinions of the bishops in the period 1903 to 1963. His
own point of departure in arriving at a judgment on the bishops is
fairly obvious. He is in favour of a pro-active episcopacy in social
and political matters provided that the initiative of suitably qualified
laity in these affairs is not impeded or controlled by the bishops. In
the main he finds the bishops inadequate on most counts. Some
individual bishops he is able to praise for their initiatives and stances
over the political and social issues of their times.
I find myself unconvinced by Aspden’s general conclusions on the
English bishops in the period in question. This is not a matter of
episcopal solidarity. I was born in 1923, and so have a fair memory as
a layman of a substantial part of the period. I became a bishop in
1980, well after the new beginnings set in train by the Second Vatican
Council. Yet I am able to sympathise with the bishops in England of
former times, with the pressures of sustaining the Catholic schools,
having to found new parishes, to respond to the needs of immigrants
from many countries coupled with a sense of insufficient priestly
vocations to serve the people. Aspden does accept that these demands
placed on the bishops were met with responses that were sometimes
heroic. It is of the nature of the episcopal office that the spiritual
and practical needs of the Catholic people come first in the bishop’s
order of concern. Political and general social maters will come after
these.
Taking account of the priorities that bishops are bound to observe,
in the matter of the stances adopted by the bishops in political and
social issues, I am much more of the opinion advanced by Jeffrey
Paul von Ark, in From Out of the Flaminian Gate, that the English
Catholic engagement with society was and is best fulfilled by penetra-
tion of that society and not by specifically Catholic organisation or
episcopal politicking.
Aspden, in my view, has paid insufficient attention to the signifi-
cance of the YCW (the Young Christian Workers) in the English
Catholic scene in the period of his study. He makes only passing
reference to this dynamic organisation. The YCW takes its inspir-
ation and manner of operating from Joseph Cardijn, a Belgian priest
later a Cardinal. Cardijn’s approach aimed at the creation of a sense
of dignity and mission in the young worker by the christian forma-
tion of the individual. Essential to this process is the active yet
non-intrusive presence of a chaplain to the groups. The bishops of
England must be commended for their unflagging support of the
YCW in the era after the 1939–45 conflict especially by the provision
of priest chaplains. The fruit of that support is to be found in the
formation of lay Catholics who later made and are making a con-
siderable Christian contribution to political and social challenges.
# The Dominican Council 2004
 Book Reviews 249

It is accurate of Aspden to hold that the English bishops in the

period 1903–1963 produced no bishop of the national standing
enjoyed by Manning in the 19th century. Yet I hold that the con-
tribution made by the bishops to the formation of laity was prophet-
ically, even if unconsciously, anticipatory of the teaching contained
in Gaudium et Spes par.76 concerning the relations between the
Church and the political community. Aspden’s title, Fortress Church,
does not represent the state of affairs in the English Church that I
remember as a layman. I regarded the Catholic Church as called to a
mission to the whole population of the land and not as an embattled
stronghold. I did not need defending by my bishop, but I did expect
him to represent the teaching of the Catholic Church. I believe that I
carried these sentiments with me when I became a Conventual
Franciscan and later a priest.
Despite these strictures, I recommend Aspden’s work as essential
reading for those who are interested in the English Catholic Church
in the period 1903–1963. His industry in collating his findings from
many primary sources and his comments will be invaluable for those
who wish to study the developments in the Catholic Church in
England and Wales subsequent to the Second Vatican Council that
terminated in 1965.
þ JOHN JUKES OFM Conv.

THE GLENSTAL BOOK OF ICONS: PRAYING WITH THE

GLENSTAL ICONS by Gregory Collins OSB, The Columba
Press, Glenstal Abbey, 2002, Pp. 138, £9.99 hbk.

It is unusual to read a prayer book with the task of reviewing it at

hand. And this is a prayer book, offering a collection of icons from
the Benedictine abbey of Glenstal in Ireland as a starting point for
contemplative meditation, cast in a small, very personal format to be
carried about and opened at a silent opportunity. Yet it is much else
besides, seeking as it does in its brief explanations after each picture
to inform, instruct and broaden one’s perspective of faith. The ten-
sion between alert appraisal and abandoned receiving that I experi-
enced from my particular viewpoint is in fact at the heart of the book
itself. The question is whether this tension is fruitful.
Fr Gregory’s perspective in approaching this subject is intellec-
tually stimulating. It proceeds from a genuine interest in the riches
of a different tradition, that of Eastern Orthodoxy, while perceiving
both its common, Byzantine roots in the undivided Church and the
continuous interrelationship of Catholic and Orthodox theologies
well into the modern era, for example, with Nikodemos the Hagiorite
in the second half of the 18th century, and in the influence of Western
# The Dominican Council 2004
250 Book Reviews

painting on icon painting, which he points out in some 19th-century

Russian examples. While the theme of East-West dialogue runs
throughout the book, it peaks in the commentary on the icon of
St Athanasius: ‘His icon is a sign of unity in diversity, not only of a
mixed iconographic tradition, but more importantly of the very essence
of catholicity. Christianity cannot be monopolised by any national
group. It is not only Latin and Greek – or even Coptic – but universal.
Athanasius, spanning East and West in defence of Jesus Christ, the one
Redeemer of the world, is a striking witness to this fact’ (p. 101).
This meeting of traditions, or ultimate understanding of the one
God, is not only visually mediated by the recognition of familiar
saints (such as St Nicholas) or motifs (the feasts of the liturgical
calendar) in their Eastern form, but is carefully prepared and pre-
sented through a theological understanding of each theme or mys-
tery. The contribution of the East is highlighted, for example, in the
emphasis it has given to the episode of Christ’s baptism as theophany
as against the Western tradition of Epiphany, and this fact of liturgi-
cal historical development is used to highlight what the faithful can
gain in their meditation on the image of Christ and John the Baptist.
Points of debate are not muted, though, as Fr Gregory’s kind ear to
the Eastern viewpoint on the Trinity is balanced by a fair account of
the Western struggle to comprehend such mystery. Happily, he has
before him both an icon of the Eastern Trinity (the hospitality of
Abraham) and one of the Western Trinity (with Father, Son and
Dove) to hook his historico-critical notes on the theological debate,
and to look at the ‘deeper truth’ in which the two approaches can be
complementary (p. 127).
Thus, in reading and meditating on the Glenstal icons, that span a
good variety of iconography from the Eastern tradition, we are
actually enacting this complementarity – Collins assumes his reader-
ship is predominantly Western, though not exclusively Catholic. In
fact, we are experiencing the challenge, set out in the scholarly
introduction to the book, of practising lectio divina not from the
written text of Scripture, but from the visual text of these inspired
images. Yet the reader is not left alone with such visual texts, but is
guided by Fr Gregory’s short commentaries that follow each picture,
interwoven, as all good spiritual preaching, with Scriptural quota-
tions that bring us back to the traditional source of the lectio. Each
section is concluded with a short selection of prayers, often drawn
from disparate liturgical sources. It is a matter of choice for the
reader, based on his or her particular inclinations or momentary
requirements, which aspect to privilege among these three constitu-
tive elements. This is indeed a rich prayer book, and one in which
East and West meet in hope.
BARBARA CROSTINI LAPPIN

# The Dominican Council 2004

 Book Reviews 251

AUTHORITY IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH: Theory and

Practice edited by Bernard Hoose, Ashgate, Aldershot 2002,
Pp. xii + 253, £45.00 hbk.

This book, a collection of fifteen essays, forms part of a project

sponsored by the ecumenical Queens’ Foundation, Birmingham,
whose principal partners are Anglican, Methodist and URC. The
aim of the collection is to highlight problems within the Roman
Catholic Church associated with ‘authority’, that is, its nature, exer-
cise and lived experience, and, as editor Bernard Hoose of Heythrop
College, London puts it, to articulate ‘the strong conviction within a
large section of the Roman Catholic community that where authority
is concerned, things simply cannot remain as they are: they must
change, and they must change soon’(p. ix).
The essayists are mostly Roman Catholics, and leading theological
lights. In fact, the ‘things’ which must change form the now well-
ventilated litany of needs to do with collegiality: i.e. to reform the
papacy, to reduce the excessive concentration of power and decision-
making in the Roman curia, to devolve church government to con-
ferences of bishops and to local bishops, to change the way episcopal
appointments are made, to bring about a greater participation in
government by the laity, and to review the training of future-priests
so as to eschew the ‘caste system’ – those who ‘see themselves as set
apart and ontologically changed through ordination’ (p. 238) – and
to ensure instead the adoption of collaborative attitudes that do not
sideline women. There is at the moment, it is said, a ‘growing ten-
dency in Vatican circles to attribute a quasi-infallibility to curial
documents’, with teaching coming ‘from the centre and not . . . from
proper consultation’ and with Vatican officials silencing ‘theologians
with whom they do not find themselves in immediate agreement’ or
who refuse to toe ‘the current party line’ (p. 11 and 245). All these
problems between the magisterium and theologians as with ecclesias-
tical governance in general within the Roman Catholic Church, need
urgently to be confronted, editor Hoose declares, since they not only
impair the internal life of the church but throw up further obstacles
to ecumenism.
This hardback is grouped around six loosely-defined themes.
Gerard Mannion, Hugh Lawrence and Nicholas Lash tackle the
history and nature of authority, whilst Francis Sullivan and Richard
Gaillardetz address doctrinal issues to do with the sensus fidei and the
reception of doctrine. Paul McPartlan and Nicholas Sagovsky
explore the ecumenical dimensions of authority and its exercise, one
the oriental, the other the Anglican. Next come two essays, one by
James Sweeney, the other by David McLoughlin, on the ‘organisa-
tional culture’ within contemporary Roman Catholicism, and these
are followed by offerings from Margaret Frazer and John O’Brien on
# The Dominican Council 2004
252 Book Reviews

those whose voices are often marginalised in the church, namely

women and the poor. Bernard Hoose draws the collection to a
close with his ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’
Globally speaking, all the essays are about ‘synodality’ and its
revisionist implications for the day-to-day governance of the church.
By its nature, a book like this is bound to be bitty. The reader will not
find here a sustained, systematic treatment of the topic, but instead a
veritable smorgasbord of savouries. A few of these are singularly
disappointing, essays which unfortunately are written with a flimsily-
veiled slancio and which pay scant regard to biblical exegesis, the
function of holy orders within ecclesiology, or even the philosophical
context of late modernity. It seems to be taken as a dogma that the
purpose of the eleventh century Gregorian Reform movement was to
bring about the triumph of a ‘hierocratic ideology’, which ‘enjoyed a
late Halloween summer in the hands of the Ultramontanes of the
nineteenth century’ and which expressly ‘sought to exclude the laity
from any form of ecclesiastical governance’ (p. 77). Yet amidst the
gristle, there is also much red meat, with some well-modulated if
challenging contributions to the debate. Thus the serenely erudite
and limpid pen of Paul McPartlan convincingly demonstrates how
much the West can learn from the East and its eucharistic ecclesiology.
Nicholas Sagovsky rightly points out the riches of the 1999 ARCIC II
document The Gift of Authority. Richard Gaillardetz does indeed
throw new light on the vexed issue of the reception of doctrine and
David McLoughlin, despite the odd jangle, rightly pulls us back to a
foundational perspective by showing how the root of communion is
embedded not in ecclesiology but in the Blessed Trinity (p. 186).
It is unsurprising that the present ‘crisis of authority’ in late
modernity should raise searching and far-reaching questions for con-
temporary catholicism. But as a diocesan priest with hands-on
experience of parish, hospital and university ministry – all of which
would have been unimaginable without the generous collaboration
and hard work of numerous christian faithful – I found the argument
of sola structura unconvincing: that if only we changed the Church’s
‘political’ structures, then all would be well. Moreover, the incessant
lobbying for internal devolution of power from Rome left me
anxious, wondering what impact this would have on our already
busy Conference of Bishops with its limited resources. Indeed, for
me it was Nicholas Lash who put his finger on the root-cause of the
current crisis of ecclesiastical authority and obedience. As Lash
argued, the Church is at the service of Christian discipleship: she
exists to be a school of formation that helps us grow in holiness,
friendship and understanding. This is why ‘authority is . . . a far wider
term than governance’ (p. 68).
PHILIP EGAN

# The Dominican Council 2004

 Book Reviews 253

MARY FOR EARTH AND HEAVEN: ESSAYS ON MARY AND

ECUMENISM, edited by William McLoughlin and Jill Pinnock,
Gracewing, Leominster, 2002, Pp. 386, £20.00 pbk.

This is a compilation of 32 papers delivered at meetings of the

Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The articles broadly
split into the ‘academic’ and the ‘autobiographical.’ The academic
side contains some very fine pieces, especially Ireneu Craciun’s
‘Theotokos in a Trinitarian Perspective’, John McHugh’s ‘The Wed-
ding at Cana’, and the whole section devoted to ‘Mary and Councils,’
with articles by Cecily Boulding, Marie Farrell, and Norman Tanner.
The systematic-theological and church-historical chapters are excep-
tionally clear and informative: if specific chapters find their way onto
academic reading lists, Mary for Earth and Heaven should have a
large undergraduate audience. It is worth ordering it for university
and college libraries, and checking to see what can be used for
courses on ecclesiology, the Holy Spirit and Christology. I most
enjoyed the autobiographical detours, like where Keith Riglin
expands his interesting discussion of the idea of invoking the saints
in Calvin, Barth, and P.T. Forsyth into a description of how a
‘Reformed Pastor’ moved toward a sense of ‘unbroken fellowship with
our dead in Christ’. The most moving academic/autobiographical
crossover comes from Frances Young. Professor Young gives us
both a learned description of Cyril of Alexandria on the ‘Theotokos’
and two of her own poems, inspired by the kinship between two
couples – herself, as the mother of a severely disabled child, and
Mary, likewise mother of a ‘broken’ child. The book is full of poetry,
from the strange, mystical verses of Mother Teodosia Latcu, cited by
Craciun, to Anselm’s prayers to the Virgin, in Benedicta Ward’s
article on 12th-century Marian devotion, to John Macquarrie’s conclud-
ing chapter on ‘Mary and the saints in early Scottish poetry’. Mary for
Earth and Heaven would do just as well as a bedside book as in an
academic library.
FRANCESCA ARAN MURPHY

ABBA. THE TRADITION OF ORTHODOXY IN THE WEST.

FESTSCHRIFT FOR BISHOP KALLISTOS (WARE) OF DIOKLEIA
edited by John Behr, Andrew Louth, and Dimitri Conomos, St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood. New York, 2003, Pp. 376,
£ 14.99 pbk.

Beginning theology in the spiritually and doctrinally arid Western

Catholicism of the 1970s, I was lucky to have Bishop Kallistos induct
me into the sources of the Christian ascetical tradition, as well as the
# The Dominican Council 2004
254 Book Reviews

dogmatic writings of the Greek fathers. So it is a particular pleasure

to draw to the attention of readers of New Blackfriars this Festschrift
in his honour.
After gracious salutations from the Ecumenical Patriarch and his
London exarch, the book opens with a biographical sketch from
Professor Andrew Louth of Durham. This is a well-balanced account
which does justice to Bishop Kallistos’s varied priorities. In a nut-
shell, these are: in research, the patristic and Byzantine spiritual
writers; in translation work, the wonderful Propers – to use a Wes-
tern term – of the Byzantine Liturgy as well as that classic Orthodox
spiritual anthology, the Philokalia; in lecturing, Christology and
theological anthropology; in ecumenism, the Anglican-Orthodox
bilateral dialogue, and its older-established supporting networks;
and in pastoralia the creation at Oxford of a parish of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, as well as the laying of some wider foundations for a
distinctively English Orthodoxy. For as Louth points out, what holds
all this together is a desire to communicate, at every level, the riches
of Orthodoxy to a British audience. The labour seems sufficient for
several lifetimes, but it flowed with seeming effortlessness, and a
charm at once very English and definitely exotic, from a North
Oxford house and garden where the present reviewer netted
raspberries with Brigadier Ware (the Bishop’s father) in intervals of
presenting to the recipient of this Festschrift an essay on the Pseudo-
Denys. As Graham Speake mentions in a short piece on Mount
Athos, one of Bishop Kallistos’ most attractive theological ideas is
‘sacred geography’.
The main body of these essays falls into three parts: historical,
theological, spiritual. The historical group do not form an especially
coherent collection. Of the six, two are devoted to Ephrem Syrus who,
it has to be said, does not figure prominently in Bishop Kallistos’
oeuvre. The first, by Sebastian Brock, considers on the basis of the
author’s encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Syriac, how Ephrem
has been viewed down the centuries in West; the second, by Ephrem
Lash, looks at the pseudonymous writings which explain a good
deal of Brock’s narrative, and helpfully identifies if not three
Pseudo-Ephrems then three sub-species of the breed. An essay on
early Egyptian asceticism by Norman Russell, one of two Catholic
contributors, charts the uncertain relations, in the Nile Valley,
between bishops and monks who might sometimes practise an
intellectual mysticism that was insufficiently baptised, but could
equally remain stubbornly attached to older forms of biblical expres-
sion when the doctrinal consciousness of the Church had moved
on. Light is thrown on this by a fascinating contribution from
Fr Alexander Golitzin in the ‘spiritual’ section, on which more in a
moment. These essays are framed by two pieces from Orthodox
bishops, one on the early history of theological education in the
# The Dominican Council 2004
 Book Reviews 255

Christian East (actually a plea for a more spiritually integrated

priestly formation in present-day seminaries), the other a study of
the history of Orthodoxy in Britain (it turns out to be chiefly pre-
Conquest). An unusual piece on ‘music as religious propaganda’,
which looks at how a pro-Union Greek composer brought elements
of early Western polyphony into his writing for a (never realised)
post-Union Byzantine Liturgy, is a suitable tribute to Bishop
Kallistos’ own love of musica sacra.
The theological essays fit better together. They consider in turn
what in Catholic parlance would be fundamental theology, soteri-
ology, Mariology, theological anthropology and cosmology. The first
of these, by John Behr, argues in subtle fashion that an Irenaean
account of the Scripture-Tradition relation would see Tradition as
Scripture transmitted in a particular fashion that corresponds to its
own ‘hypothesis’ or internal principle – a principle, however, needing
reference to the apostolic preaching, and thus to the Church, for its
discernment. Behr evidently considers that much contemporary
Orthodox theology is insufficiently Scriptural and Christ-centred,
too much taken up with Trinitarian metaphysics, the ontology of
communion and the like. Thomas Hopko on theodicy passes Behr’s
test – though it is notable that his essay could just as well have come
from the pen of an Evangelical writer. Possibly the remaining three
doctrinal essays could have benefited from a more ‘Irenaean’
approach in these regards, though Wendy Robinson on our Lady is
both touching and sharp, Nonna Verna Harrison has produced the
clearest account of how the unity of human nature is to be married
with the uniqueness of human persons and the mutual relatedness of
human beings I have come across, and Elizabeth Theokritoff pro-
vides a theology of the cosmos, from Anglophone Orthodox sources,
which is the just the kind of thing a Western Christianity unhappily
positioned between uncontrolled anthropocentrism and excessive
ecologism needs to learn.
So, finally, to the spiritual essays. Louth on the prayer of the heart
and the rationale of the Philokalia makes out a good case for this
being in no way an anti-dogmatic, anti-sacramental work (just look
at the other writings of Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, for a
start!); Dom Columba Stewart takes a new look at the spiritual
teaching of one of the Philokalia’s sources, Evagrius Ponticus, but
considered as monastic pedagogy simply (this enables him to avoid a
current controversy over the ultimate doctrinal bearings of Evagrius’
‘system’); John Chryssagvis considers how certain of the Fathers
anthologised in the Philokalia (or known from other sources)
approached spiritual direction, treating their counsel as more non-
directive, in fact, than has generally been supposed; Peter Bouteneff
revisits a topic on which Bishop Kallistos has also written: holy folly
(the Russian tradition is by and large just ultra-serious asceticism, the
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256 Book Reviews

Byzantine is truly zany, and perhaps sometimes this was grace mak-
ing salvific use of not so much apostolic strategy as mental disorder).
An odd man out is the only (I think) Anglican contributor, Donald
Allchin, the Bishop’s erstwhile prefect at Westminster School. Allchin
has elected to write on early medieval Welsh Christian poetry. Some
of these texts seem rather thin, but two, from around 1200, are more
substantial and even in translation very fine. The pie`ce de re´sistance
of the whole Festschrift, to my mind, is Fr Alexander Golitzin’s essay
on the Anthropomorphite controversy in late fourth century Egypt. In
a breath-taking sweep of reference, he argues that those Coptic
Christians who considered that God was (before the Incarnation) in
the form of man were not theological illiterates but drawing on
the Old Testament theophany tradition as continud in the inter-
Testamental literature and various ancient Christian sources. The
question is whether the divine ‘form of glory’ can be considered to
bear some relation to the transfigured human being. If man is the
image of God, is there some sense in which God is the archetype of
man? This is one of the many respects in which help could be sought
from the sophiology of Father Sergei Bulgakov – a figure whom
many Orthodox avoid as still overshadowed by the charges of hetero-
doxy brought against him in the 1930s. Western Catholics who have
since known far less reliable theological guides might take up the
point. Meanwhile, they can salute in Bishop Kallistos a beacon who
has taught some of us to receive a great deal of light from the East.
There is a full bibliography of Bishop Kallistos’ writings, but I
could find no notes on the contributors.
AIDAN NICHOLS OP

NOTES ON NATIONALISM by Ramón Masnou Boixeda, with a

Foreword by Cardinal Narcı́s Jubany, Gracewing, Leominster,
2002, Pp. xviii + 146, £ 12.99 pbk.

As a result of its history, Spain is not at all a homogeneous country,

and it embraces within its territory various peoples and cultures. The
Constitution of 1978 is a highly significant stepping stone in this
regard: it has recognised the heterogeneous nature of the country,
and it has set up a political system which is clearly closer to a federal
than to a central state. This was a response to the long-established
cultural and social pluralism of Spain, and it has resulted in the
constitutional acceptance of a variety of nacionalidades and regions
in its territory.
The topicality of Bishop Masnou’s Notes on Nationalism is unques-
tionable. Nationalism is a very important issue in Catalonia and in
the rest of Spain, as it is in much of Europe and elsewhere. In the first
# The Dominican Council 2004
 Book Reviews 257

chapter, the author (who is the Bishop Emeritus of Vic) highlights

terminological problems, and he even wonders whether nationalism
should or should not exist. A problem that researchers of this topic
must face is the mistaken identification between nationalism and
violence. In the second chapter, Masnou seeks to promote better
relations between Catalonia and other nations and regions in Spain,
whilst pointing out the continuance of an anti-Catalan syndrome in
the rest of the country. The third chapter deals with the issue of
nationalism in depth, including a clarification of concepts and an
explanation of three types of nationalism. Concepts and theories
which had already been noted in the first chapter are developed at
this point. The definition of terms such as nationalism, nation and
state enables Masnou to explore the reality of plurinational States.
Bishop Masnou then turns to a most significant question: ‘What
about Spain?’. In this fourth chapter, the title of which can undoubt-
edly sound confusing, the author aims to describe nationalism at
state level, instead of focusing on the reality from a Catalonian
perspective. In fact, Bishop Masnou has no qualms in regarding
himself as a Catalan nationalist and a Spaniard at the same time.
Furthermore, he is openly critical of radical Spanish nationalism,
because throughout the years, this movement has tried to deny the
existence of the idiosyncratic nature of Catalonia in Spain. The
author values the achievements of the Spanish Constitution, mainly
its recognition of the importance of the Catalan language, but he is
slightly pessimistic about the proper fulfilment of its goals. In the
epilogue, Masnou proposes the ways of peace, love and dialogue,
and, in the postscript, he addresses his Spanish-speaking brothers
living in Catalonia and welcomes them sincerely; from them, he
expects an understanding of the culture and a respect for the identity
of Catalonia within the state.
Finally, this book has two appendices. The first is devoted to
Church documents concerning nationalism. The author has made
good choices in selecting these texts, not focusing exclusively on the
Holy See’s perspective, but also considering pronouncements of the
Catalan hierarchy. On the other hand, appendix two contains poli-
tical documents, some opposed to Catalonia as a national, cultural
and linguistic reality, others relatively positive in their recognition of
Catalonia as a reality.
I consider this book by Masnou to be a remarkable piece of work.
As well as concentrating on a very interesting subject, its topicality is
beyond doubt. As some Spanish politicians wonder whether the
federal pattern is suitable for their country, these Notes on National-
ism are timely. This is a book written in a fascinating first-person
style, and it is also written from the heart. However, some critical
points may be made. First, it is obvious that the author does not want
to hurt or offend his brothers (he uses this term, in fact) in other
# The Dominican Council 2004
258 Book Reviews

regions and nations in Spain, but Bishop Masnou continuously

apologises and this can become tedious. Secondly, in some respects
this book appears to be over simplistic. The author is undoubtedly
aware of the Catalonian situation, but he underestimates the variety
of nations within the Spanish territory. He insists on explaining the
Catalonian problem as a conflict between Catalonia and Castile.
Finally, he seems to overdo the feeling of victimisation when con-
sidering the anti-Catalan syndrome. Without denying the existence of
misunderstandings in other nations and regions of Spain about the
Catalan reality, defining them as a sort of malaise is excessive and
counterproductive.
Despite these minor criticisms, Bishop Masnou should be
congratulated. The simplicity of his style is to be praised, and his
book can be recommended to all those with an interest in national-
ism, Catalonia, Spain or Catholic social teaching.
JAVIER OLIVA

IMAGES OF REDEMPTION: ART, LITERATURE AND

SALVATION by Patrick Sherry, T&T Clark, Continuum, London,
2003, Pp. viii + 213, £16.99 pbk.

Those who have learned their soteriology from the writings of

F.W. Dillistone and the late Colin Gunton will find here a compan-
ion guide useful for teachers and students alike. Chapter Two
especially, ‘What is Redemption?’, is a clever distillation of recent
thinking in the English-speaking world on ‘atonement’ that incorpo-
rates insights from Eastern Orthodoxy and continental Catholicism
without compromising the complexity and ambiguity of the doctrine.
Although the average person might feel daunted by Sherry’s ease of
movement between Antigone, Flemish painting, and twentieth-
century Roman Catholic novelists (to scratch only the surface) the
soteriological concepts he clarifies and presents are ready to hand for
the active reader. Where one’s own knowledge is less wide-ranging
than Sherry’s, either in scholarship or in the arts, he defines terms
and causes the reader to draw upon more familiar experiences of the
arts, thus expanding the dialogue and creating an author-reader
exchange of interpretations.
The principal argument of Images of Redemption is that art and
literature can act as ‘primary expressions’ of religious ideas and
doctrines (cf. Chapters One and Nine). What this means is that the
‘arts’ are often able to ‘show’ us what religious ideas look like. When
they do so, they inhere in our imaginations with a somewhat autoch-
thonous primacy and it is possible, Sherry suggests, that doctrines
and ideas are formed from a backward glance at our artistic and
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 Book Reviews 259

literary experiences. This is not to say that the arts do not often
‘illustrate’ or depict ideas and doctrines, or that thinkers expounding
upon ideas and doctrines cannot criticise the arts in what they ‘show’.
Rather, Sherry is arguing that our experiences of the arts form our
life and perceptions: a ‘primary expression’ adds depth to discursive
knowledge through experience, whereas an ‘illustration’ is more of a
confirmation through experience of what is already discursively
known. Stated in another way, art and literature do not ‘argue’ or
prove theories, but that they show forth, analogously to God’s self-
revelation, life in a new light (184). Since there are many art forms
that ‘show’ the world in different lights, one ought to be confronted
with the question: ‘who has seen life more fully and deeply, and
portrayed it more convincingly (184)?’
In the case of ‘arts of redemption’ (a phrase borrowed from John
W. Dixon’s Nature and Grace in Art), the ‘artist is occupied with the
redemptive act itself or the kind of world that results from the
transfiguration of creation in redemption’ (Dixon, 72; Sherry, 4).
Such art is an implicit critique of Nietzsche’s quip that Christians
‘do not look redeemed’ (3, 38, 81) as well as Martin Buber’s state-
ment that ‘to the Jew the Christian is the incomprehensibly daring
man, who affirms in an unredeemed world that its redemption has
been accomplished’ (39). Art, in other words, ought to help us to ‘see’
the possibilities of redemption in the here and now, either through
the example of transfigured characters or in subtle intimations of
grace, and call us to action in a manner analogous to theologies of
liberation.
Sherry uses von Balthasar’s notion of ‘drama’ (Chapter Three) as
an organising principle for Images of Redemption. He notes that
‘redemption is a process which is worked out over a period of time’
(13) and thus privileges the notion of ‘drama’ because it is the broad-
est term available for encompassing the arts that involve the depic-
tion of change across time (narrative). The book, in fact, is broken up
into ‘a drama with three Acts, which are interlinked, namely salva-
tion history, present human life, and the life to come’ (49). These Acts
are bracketed by Sherry’s conceptual clarifications and the develop-
ment of his arguments. The bulk of Images of Redemption is thus
devoted to demonstrations of these Acts in various arts and litera-
ture. It is most heavily weighted towards ‘present human life’, and
thus ‘narrative’ arts such as drama, novels and film, receive the
greatest attention, due in no small part to our resonance with the
depiction of characters groping after grace: we sympathise with
Mauriac when he says that ‘it is easier to find the ‘primitive flame’
that still exists in the worst characters than to depict virtuous ones’
(117).
Images of Redemption ends with two chapters further distinguish-
ing between ‘illustration’ and ‘primary expression’ summarised
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260 Book Reviews

above. In the end, this distinction is directed at artists and theolo-

gians as a principle for dialogue and mutual critique. Patrick Sherry
is calling us, in a manner reminiscent of his intellectual mentor
Wittgenstein, to reconsider the primacy that lived life and experience,
albeit aesthetic experience, have in our processes of thought. It is
when we attend to our own deep-seated images of redemption that
the arts reveal their critical potential and open the door of dialogue
onto a wider horizon of human experience.
CYRUS P. OLSEN III

GOD AND CAESAR: Personal Reflections on Politics and

Religion by Shirley Williams, Continuum, 2003, Pp. 147, £12.99,
hbk

Those who maintain that politics should pursue the common good
find it extraordinary that in recent times politicians have regularly
denied that ethics has any role to play in politics. In 1997 a British
Foreign Secretary (Robin Cook) finally grasped the nettle and
announced that Britain would henceforth implement foreign policy
‘with an ethical dimension’. Baroness Shirley Williams of Crosby,
who considers herself both a cradle Catholic and a convert, recog-
nizes that politics is ‘bound up with the making of moral choices’ and
requires also a religious foundation. In God and Caesar she offers a
series of reflections about politics, public life and the Catholic
Church.
Christian thinkers who contribute to political theology rarely have
political experience on which to draw. If a political theology is to be
worthy of serious consideration it must draw too on political experi-
ence. Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords and
Professor Emeritus at the John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, Baroness Williams has a wealth of experience on
which to draw both in the practice of politics and in the teaching of
political science. She was part of the Labour Cabinet from 1974 to 1979,
and has served as Secretary of State for Education and Science, and
Paymaster-General (1976–79). In 1981 she was co-founder of the SDP.
In eight brief and lively chapters spiced with autobiographical
detail the author discusses the role that Christianity has to play in
society today. She begins by discussing the secularization of modern
society and the decline and privatization of religion. While this pre-
sents a challenge to believers the modern world is faced with the same
choice between doing good or evil and the Gospel provides us with
‘the basis for that moral choice’. Deference to hierarchy based on
social or family relationships is dying and this has weakened both
political and ecclesiastical authority. There is a need for good men
# The Dominican Council 2004
 Book Reviews 261

and women to enter public life, but a Christian attracted to public life
is entering a demeaned profession and subjecting kith and kin to
unwanted media attention. Williams notes that the priesthood is
facing similar problems.
God and Caesar unapologetically promotes a Catholic vision of
international justice and highlights the achievements of Catholic social
thinking. This is an experienced politician who has great expectations
of the Church. She suggests that the Pope should assemble the best
economists and community leaders to shape a market that is just, to
put the weight of the Church behind those who are powerless, and to
demand of the rich recognition of their obligations to human society.
At a time when politicians are sceptical of the State’s ability to shape
markets this is certainly a novel idea. In an age of global terrorism
when national sovereignty has become an ‘obsolete principle’ there is a
need, says Williams, for scholars in the Church to define the global
norms for intervention. She is generally optimistic about the state of
international relations and encouraged by the growth of the European
Union the establishment of an International Criminal Court and the
growing political influence of voluntary organizations.
Those familiar with her views will not be surprised by her reflec-
tions on the Church and its moral teaching. Baroness Williams is an
old fashioned liberal Catholic – respectful of Church authority but
dismayed by Humanae Vitae. She points out that if the Church had
made a sharp distinction between contraception and abortion it
might have strengthened the hand of Catholic MPs in the debates
over the 1967 Abortion Bill. The Church should be less centralized
and the Curia less secretive, conservative and rigid. She clearly
doesn’t expect the Church to be a democratic institution in the
secular political sense but makes the valid point that in the Church
as in public life trust now has to be earned. The people of God may
still be sheep ‘but they are educated and inquiring sheep’! She would
like women to have a greater say in Church affairs and thinks that
the question of ordaining women should at least be discussed.
The warmth and ease with which Williams discusses so many
topical issues make this a very engaging book and one difficult to
put down. One expects a good politician to be well informed, articu-
late and inspiring and Baroness Williams never fails to be all three
whether in her public appearances or in her writings. The reputation
of politicians is not at its apogee and Williams puts up a spirited
defence of her fellow politicians. Whatever she would like us to
believe about her colleagues, modest, sensible, truthful, kind, are
not the epithets that one generally associates with politicians or
their books. Nevertheless, these terms do apply to God and Caesar
no less than to its author
JOHN PATRICK KENRICK OP

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262 Book Reviews

GOD’S MOTHER, EVE’S ADVOCATE by Tina Beattie,

Continuum, London 2002. Pp. xii þ 244
EVE’S PILGRIMAGE: A WOMAN’S QUEST FOR THE CITY OF
GOD by Tina Beattie, Continuum, London 2002. Pp. xi + 224,
£9.99 pbk.

These two books by Tina Beattie, which were prepared for different
purposes and audiences, are linked by a common concern to discover,
as she puts it, ‘How can one be a Catholic and a feminist . . . without
tearing oneself apart in the process’ (EP, 7). On the one hand is ‘the
sacramental and social vision of Catholicism’ that attracts her, and
on the other is the feminist critique of the ‘theological position of
women’ that persuades her to be concerned about the ‘impoverish-
ment’ of this tradition. Finding herself caught in the middle of these
oppositional stances and committed to both, she seeks a mediation,
and these books are illustrations both of the method and the result of
this reconciling effort.
As for the method – the first book, her doctoral dissertation
previously published in the CCSRG Monograph Series of the Uni-
versity of Bristol, is an analysis of the symbolism of sexual difference
that runs through the texts of the Christian tradition and that defines
gender identity in the life of the Church. The analysis is predicated on
the feminist conviction that the prevailing symbolic narrative in
general, and Marian symbolism in particular, have been shaped by
patriarchal ideologies that privilege the male body. Beattie seeks both
to demonstrate this thesis with selected examples from the tradition,
and at the same time to suggest that the potential for other inter-
pretations of these symbols can be liberated by attending to the
generative and redemptive possibilities of the female body. Her pri-
mary guide in this project is Luce Irigaray, whose various playful and
irreverent ‘insinuations’ into dominant philosophical discourses
attempt to destabilise their authority and undermine their persuasive
power. Such Beattie seeks similarly to do within the accounts of
Mary and Eve, finding the spaces within orthodox Christian thought
that could be feminist-friendly and that, through creative reinterpre-
tation, might become points of mediation.
As for the result – the second of these books is a woman’s journey
through Rome in the company of Eve, giving a more popularly
accessible illustration of the thesis that is argued in the first. Combin-
ing insights from a variety of disciplines, Beattie sets out on a pilgrim-
age of reinterpretation through a city rich with symbolism, inviting
the reader to accompany her as she visits a particular place in each
chapter. There is a reflection on creation in the Sistine Chapel, on the
fall at the Colosseum, on baptism at the Pantheon, and so on, until
the final reflection on resurrection at the Paul VI Concert Hall. She
understands the city to be ‘a work of redemption, wherein we
# The Dominican Council 2004
 Book Reviews 263

transform the garden of creation into the history and culture of our
human becoming’ (EP, xi). So these thoughts on the western cultural
inheritance are intended to disclose within such a city the grounds for
Christian hope of a new heaven and a new earth, as well as the role of
women’s insights and of female bodies in this second coming. That
they culminate with a celebration of women’s music and dance inside
a concert hall is in keeping with the cultural constructionism of her
whole project.
Two philosophical problems beset her effort in these books, in
consequence of which they cannot carry the theological weight and
significance she hopes for. Neither of these is her problem, but both
are features of the problematic condition of contemporary thought in
which feminisms have arisen and Christian faith has been gasping for
air. If the first problem concerns the entire collapse of the cosmology
within which sexual difference has traditionally been conceived, it is
well illustrated by the necessity felt today in this disoriented empti-
ness for positing the maternal body as the site of liberation and of
redemption. Much depends on this, for ‘The symbolic positioning of
the mother is the linchpin for both the perpetuation and the destruc-
tion of patriarchal values’ (GM, 108). I say ‘positing’, because Beattie
does not produce an argument about the nature of the cosmos as
such, but shares the postmodern conviction that ‘positions’ in
‘nature’ are expressions of will to power and thus malleable to
human determination. As patriarchal power has produced the sym-
bolic narrative handed down in Christianity, and still today attempts
to enforce this privilege through what Beattie calls ‘neo-orthodox’
reinstatements of sexual difference, so a counter-weight is required to
swing things in another direction. And this, her books set out to
produce. Yet without any consideration of the question of truth in
these matters, can this yield anything but another act of power – in
this case, a moral requirement to think in a certain way and with a
certain intensity of feeling, in order that humanity may be saved for
what some may consider a better future?
Beattie’s call for re-imagining bodies, for re-constructing our feel-
ings, for re-weaving a vision of life, and for re-configuring Christian
symbols – all of these phrases that recur in the two books – points to
the necessity for a willed determination to make things better at least
so far as we can see from here, commonly called re-valuation. And
this is the second problematic feature of thinking in our time. For
such language not only discloses the form of nihilism that Nietzsche
knew to be consequent upon the death of God, but also reveals its
essence to be an overturned Platonism from which multiple and
endless semblances of truth are to be generated. That feminists seek
to ground an overcoming of this nihilism in an interpretation of the
female body, where all of this diversity can be held and nurtured and
valued and ‘redeemed’ – and this means by a kind of virtual essentialism
# The Dominican Council 2004
264 Book Reviews

of woman – an ontology that is not one, as Irigaray might have it – is yet

to live out the very imperative and pretence of power that the situation
of nihilism itself imposes. In what sense then has it been broken open?
The theological responsibilities here are not trivial, nor will they
surprise those who have read Fides et ratio. For the collapse of
philosophy into competing narratives and chosen standpoints is a
sign of the failure of faith to serve the truth of the Paschal Mystery.
This cannot be undertaken by flicking a switch as though we could
make this mystery appear exactly as we would like it to be. So
Beattie’s hope that we can simply look at the Eucharist in another
way, no longer as a blood sacrifice that ‘performs the function of
preserving patrilineal structures in the Catholic Church’, but rather
as a ‘celebration of the earth’s fecundity’ (GM, 196–8), which would
reinstate the value of woman’s place in Christian symbolism – this
hope makes nothing happen. And it is precisely into this nothing that
faith must struggle to learn how to be witness to truth all over again.
SUSAN PARSONS

# The Dominican Council 2004