Books in Brief

Religion Books from Small Presses

-- Publishers Weekly, 9/23/2002

SACRED SILENCE: Denial and the Crisis in the Church
DONALD COZZENS. Liturgical Press, $19.95 (208pp) ISBN 0-8146-2779-X
"How is it that a church that is the bearer of the Word and the champion of the oppressed can maintain unholy silences while denying that obvious pastoral and ecclesial problems, indeed crises, exist?" Cozzens answers that pressing question with a call for the Roman Catholic Church to break through its wall of silence and acknowledge its leadership problems with "redemptive honesty." What follows is a sensible and thorough discussion of some of the hot-button issues facing the Church: "the perennial muting of women’s voices," the crisis of vocations, the well-publicized sexual abuse scandals, the numbers of gay men in the priesthood. Cozzens, who was in seminary during Vatican II but whose education was "decidedly pre-conciliar," has a gift for placing contemporary debates within a longer historical frame of discussion. He also has a deep understanding of human psychology, which enables him to write sympathetically about why people are complicit in the "culture of silence"—even detailing instances when he has participated in such silent conspiracies himself. (Nov.)

REDEEMING TIME:
The Wisdom of Ancient Jewish and Christian Festal Calendars
BRUCE CHILTON. Hendrickson, $19.95 (122p) ISBN 1-56563-380-6
New Testament scholar Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography, here expounds upon ideas of sacred time in the Jewish and Christian festal calendars. The general reader may feel a bit lost by terms such as "heilgeschichte" and "mimesis," or confused by the relevance of Chilton’s considerable first chapter digression about the fundamentalist-modernist debates of the 20th century. However, scholars will find much of interest here, particularly in Chilton’s third and fourth chapters, which explore the origins and meanings of various Jewish and Christian festivals, and how those celebrations changed over time. He makes the provocative argument that the Gospels have "deliberately excised" a systematic understanding of the rhythms of time from the New Testament. Chilton is sensitive to issues of theology as well as history and language, though the text is often inaccessible. (Oct.)

AN UNCOMMON LECTIONARY:
A Companion to Common Lectionaries
JOHN BEVERLY BUTCHER. Polebridge, $20 paper (264p) ISBN 0-944344-91-7
It may sound oxymoronic to claim that a lectionary could be original, but this one truly shatters the mold. It is arranged in the manner of most Christian lectionaries (though it begins with Epiphany and not Advent), following the liturgical calendar through Holy Week, feast days, and Ordinary Time. However, that is where the similarities end; whereas most lectionaries follow a three-year cycle of readings from the Gospels, this one adds a fourth year which includes not only biblical texts but snippets from pseudepigrapha. A by-product of the Jesus Seminar’s work The Complete Gospels, this companion volume uses excerpts from documents such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Book of James, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Gospel of Mary. For Pentecost, for example, the lectionary provides non-canonical readings on light and the Holy Spirit, and the Advent readings center around the nativity sequences founded in the Infancy Gospel of James. (Sept.)

WORDS OF COMMON SENSE FOR MIND, BODY, AND SOUL
BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST. Templeton Foundation, $12.95 (128p) ISBN 1-890151-98-X
Thomas Paine might have approved of this inspirational gift book, which heralds common sense in the sayings of Jesus and in world folklore. Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk in western N.Y., maintains that common sense can actually effect "healing on any level—mind, body, soul, spirit." A consummate collector of world proverbs, Steindl-Rast arranges the aphorisms around loose themes—giving, troubles, riches, truth—and comments on them on facing pages. He calls common sense "the ultimate authority" and claims that organized religion must stand up to the rigors of common sense or it will crumble. He even proposes that "each time we see ‘Holy Spirit’ printed on a page or hear it said aloud, we might replace it with ‘Common Sense’ to get the full impact." Some readers will not be willing to trust that liberally in the all-too-uncommon phenomenon that Steindl-Rast calls common sense, but they will appreciate his proverbial wisdom nonetheless. (Oct.)

GOD AT THE RITZ:
A Priest-Physicist Talks About Science, Sex, Politics and Religion
LORENZO ALBACETE. Crossroad, $19.95 (194p) ISBN 0-8245-1951-5
Monsignor Albacete, who holds degrees in both theology and physics, speaks eloquently—and sometimes iconoclastically—about science, religion, and truth claims in this collection of brief related essays. The title was inspired by an experience he had in 1997, when he was asked to speak to a group of reporters at a Ritz-Carlton Hotel in California. As the reporters peppered him with metaphysical questions, Albacete realized he had the same doubts and inquiries they did. Those questions drive this book: Why do we have organized religion? Can science and faith be reconciled? Why do people suffer? The book has a generous dose of edgy humor; whether he is drawing on Bill Cosby, Monty Python, or a New Yorker cartoon, Albacete isn’t afraid to tackle sacred cows. He also draws on such thinkers as Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Elie Wiesel, and Flannery O’Connor and offers some profound ruminations on tolerance. This far-flung and bohemian treatise makes for highly original reading. (Oct.)