When Sewell, a Unitarian minister and an ex-Catholic, put out a call for essays from writers who also had grown up Catholic, she expected to receive texts inundated with sarcastic humor and acrimony. She got some, to be sure, but when she found them wanting, she continued to search for works with greater texture. Her willingness to go deeper makes this collection more than another mundane Catholic lampoon. Instead, Sewell has thoughtfully included such treasures as excerpts from Patricia Hampl's Virgin Time
and Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, both of which reflect the depth and richness of the ancient faith. Other contributors, such as Richard Meibers, convey a certain respect for Catholicism's beauty, even if they no longer consider themselves part of the church. Meibers, for example, writes engagingly in "Chanting Faint Hymns" of the inexplicable attraction he feels for a nun in his graduate hermeneutics seminar and ties it effectively to his memories of the nuns who cared for him in an orphan home. As with any recollections, the ones that Sewell has gathered are refracted through the lens of each writer's present set of beliefs. Thus, readers searching for accurate representations of Catholic life in the past would do well to look elsewhere. Sewell's own remembrance, for instance, contains an inexact teaching about the Catholic Eucharist. But it is her memory, and all she claims to have done in this book is to give voice to individual recollections. (Aug.)
