With God in America: The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit. Compiled and edited by John M. DeJak and Marc Lindeijer, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2016) 253 pages; $19.95. ISBN: 978-0-8294-4454-4. Reviewed by Patrick M. Laurence.
The Great Commentary of Cornelius A. Lapide: Saint Paul’s First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians and Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, originally trans. by Thomas W. Mossman, B.A. (Rector of Torrington, Lincolnshire); trans. and revised and completed by Michael J. Miller (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2016). 758 pages; $50.00. Reviewed by Sharelle Tamaat.
Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching: A Defense of the Church’s True Teachings on Marriage, Family, and the State by Anthony Esolen, Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2014, $19.95, 208 pages. ISBN: 978-1-62282-182-2. Reviewed by Kenneth Colston.
Msgr. Joseph DeGrocco, A Pastoral Commentary on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2011. 242 pages. $22.95. ISBN 978-1-61671-038-5. Reviewed by Mr. Justin Rowan.
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With God in America: The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit. Compiled and edited by John M. DeJak and Marc Lindeijer, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2016) 253 pages; $19.95. ISBN: 978-0-8294-4454-4. Reviewed by Patrick M. Laurence.
We sometimes encounter the argument that great suffering proves God does not exist. For God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. But such a being would not allow great suffering (the argument goes), since that would mean either God is unable to stop it, or He is unaware of it, or He is unwilling to do anything about it. But suffering is present everywhere. Therefore—it would seem—God does not exist. What a paradox, then, that people who experience exceptional suffering in this world often have a close relationship with God. Not only do such persons believe God exists, they also tend to be zealous advocates of His divine providence—of His powerful, wise, and good governance made manifest even in those heaviest of crosses which draw their bearers right up to the brink of despair.
Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., for example, was an American priest who endured 23 years of hard labor and brutality in Soviet prisons and labor camps. Following his return to America in 1963, Ciszek authored two books about his exile: the first, With God in Russia, chronicles the events of his confinement, while the second, He Leadeth Me, expounds upon the spiritual lessons learned. In the latter work, Ciszek explains that he had been tried in Russia “like gold in the furnace.” Yet the length of his years in isolation—its tedious monotony and sufferings experienced hour-after-hour, day-after-day, year-after-year—had taught him to discern God’s hand at work in the very minutiae of daily existence. “The plain and simple truth is that His will is what He actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems…. No man, no matter what his situation is ever without value, is ever useless in God’s eyes. No situation is ever without its worth and purpose in God’s providence.”
Now Loyola Press has published With God in America: The Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit, an excellent collection of mostly unpublished writings on Ciszek’s post-imprisonment life and thoughts. Both a biographical and spiritual work, the book contains excerpts of interviews with some of the many people whom Ciszek counseled as well as his own reflections, letters, and notes. The writings were compiled and edited by John M. DeJak and Fr. Marc Lindeijer, S.J., both of whom have been actively involved in the promotion of Ciszek’s cause for canonization. Unlike Ciszek’s first two works, which were penned with the assistance of Fr. Daniel L. Flaherty, S.J., With God in America offers the reader perhaps a more direct and unvarnished examination of Ciszek’s thought and spirituality. Here we find Ciszek’s familiar theme of “the sacrament of the present moment” and many others besides: generosity, humility, patience, suffering, gratitude, prayer, marriage, Mary, the Eucharist.
With God in America largely spans the last 20 years of Ciszek’s life, which were occupied as a much-sought-after retreat master, confessor, correspondent, and spiritual director. In these roles, we see how Ciszek’s abandonment to divine providence worked out in daily practice. No matter how busy or tired he was, all guests who showed up on Ciszek’s stoop were received as heaven-sent. “If a drunk came to the door,” recalls Brother Philaret Littlefield, “he would tell him to come in and sit and talk with him and give him a sandwich. There was just no fanfare at all.” According to Fr. John Catoir, “He would accept anybody! He put God’s will first and did this with anyone he encountered. He would not read bad motives into anybody.” Likewise, the voluminous letters Ciszek received from correspondents seeking spiritual direction were handled like so many telegrams from God. Whether the reader is a busy priest with demanding parishioners, or a busy parent with demanding children, Ciszek’s ability to accommodate and accept everyone in the light of God’s providence is a virtue many will find admirable.
One of the most refreshing aspects of the book is the non-hagiographical descriptions of Ciszek offered by his Jesuit confreres. For example, according to Fr. Robert F. Taft, S.J.:
He was very much the real American Jesuit, very masculine, one who hates anything that smacks of fastidiousness and pseudo-piety, who doesn’t like pretense, who tends to be just a good manly companion. An example: when I went to confession to Wally in his room, in the hot and humid summers of New York, Wally would be sitting there in his underwear, without any irreverence; it just didn’t make any difference to him. He was a very normal companion of Jesus.
At the same time, it was clear to Fr. George C. McCauley, S.J. that Ciszek “was a saintly man, even a saint.”
[He] had achieved a special insight about accepting and doing the will of God. The specialness and stark simplicity of that insight I would phrase this way: if something is really happening to you—some turn in your life, some burden of personality, some accident of health, some arbitrary political regime, some missed opportunity, or even some sin—then that’s the starting place for any authentic spirituality. That’s a kind of acceptance that I think few people achieve.
With God in America contains a number of anecdotes which indicate Ciszek had little time for the disputations of intellectuals and philosophers. For him, belief and trust in God did not come through a syllogism but through the infused virtue of faith. “In Russia, when he argued with atheists, it was not intellectual reasoning that affected them, but the faith he manifested regardless of the difficulties.” Academics might argue about the complementarity of God and suffering, but Ciszek’s education had taken place in the frigid mines and labor camps of Siberia. His belief and confidence in God, obtained through the crucible of hard experience, was more compelling than any philosophical demonstration.
Ciszek’s letters and retreat notes cover a broad gamut of spiritual topics, each organized by chapter. Perhaps the most useful in understanding Ciszek’s spirituality is his “triangle” of humility, prayer, and faith. In a number of different places, he emphasizes the importance of this triad:
It takes humility, prayer, and faith again in him: being filled in this manner by his grace, we can act and be effective.
Like many saints before him, Ciszek recognized that humility was the foundation and beginning of the spiritual life. According to Ciszek, humility is “the recognition of what we are in God’s eyes.” It is a form of self-knowledge whereby we learn “that we are nothing: that we have nothing of ourselves to give to others; that no matter how brilliant or holy we are, all this is from God.”
Humility, therefore, leads to prayer because the humble person recognizes his utter dependence on God. “Only the humble person can truly pray.” According to Ciszek:
Prayer is the basis of spiritual life. Without prayer, do not even attempt to begin living for God … Prayer should become your second nature; it should be the motivating force of your life.
Finally, the pinnacle of Ciszek’s spiritual triangle is faith:
{F}aith is the virtue by which we accept all the truths that God has revealed because he has revealed them.
Importantly, though, faith is not just “a bundle of dry truths”. It is also “a trusting faith, an acceptance not just of truth or word, but an acceptance of Him as a Person who can and will change our lives, if we let Him.” Living faith, in other words, is trust in a divine person. And here we find the source of Ciszek’s acceptance of all persons, all circumstances, and all sufferings as a manifestation of God’s will:
Knowing God’s revelation means nothing, but knowing him in every action of every day, this is living, acting, trusting faith.
With God in America is not one-time reading. Though biographical, it is also a spiritual reference guide which can be kept within arm’s reach for those times during the grist and grind of daily life when we need a spiritual shot in the arm. If we reflect upon and implement its message then, along with Ciszek, we might be able to say at the end of our lives:
With simplicity of heart, I have offered all to you, my God.
Patrick M. Laurence, an attorney, writes frequently on legal, cultural, and philosophical issues from Orange County, California.
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The Great Commentary of Cornelius A. Lapide: Saint Paul’s First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians and Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, originally trans. by Thomas W. Mossman, B.A. (Rector of Torrington, Lincolnshire); trans. and revised and completed by Michael J. Miller (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2016). 758 pages; $50.00. Reviewed by Sharelle Tamaat.
Loretto Publications has spent a lot of time and money over recent years producing translations and editions of Fr. Lapide’s commentaries which have long been hidden from the eyes of most Catholics. These commentaries are so complete and scholarly that they were practically the universal commentaries used for hundreds of years by Catholics, and were available only in Latin. Fr. Cornelius Cornelii a Lapide was a Flemish Jesuit and exegete who lived from December 18, 1567 to March 12, 1637.
The relevance of this volume for today is St. Paul’s insistence in urging the Corinthians and Galatians to speak and believe the same thing, with no schisms among them. On the keeping of the moral law, he warns that “it is absolutely heard … that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as the like is not among the heathens …” (91). Even the unconverted were not as immoral as his own converts, and St. Paul was not happy.
Fr. Lapide says: “Learn from this how careful not only prelates, but all the faithful, should be to remove from the Church scandals and scandalous men” (92). Referring to the commentaries of Saints Ambrose, Anselm, and Augustine, the purpose of such excommunication is that “the soul and mind, gaining wisdom and renewed by this punishment, may be saved on the day of judgment” (95). The whole purpose of keeping the moral law and excommunicating those who do not, according to these Church fathers, is to gain salvation and avoid damnation.
The sin of fornication is discussed in Chapter Six because “it is a grievous wrong against God and the Holy Spirit” (117). And Chapter Seven answers questions about the laws of matrimony and the counsel of virginity and celibacy beginning with touching: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman,” (p. 123), not because marriage is to be despised but because “when man and woman touch, they feel its effects.” Joseph fled from the Egyptian woman as though he had been bitten by a mad dog because she wished to touch him. So careful was he of avoiding the sin of fornication that he threw off the cloak that she had touched (124).
Marriage is urged for those who are afraid of sinning; the marriage debt is explained “lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency,” but in the early days of the Church many married persons, in obedience to St. Paul’s wish that all men were continent, “observed by mutual consent perpetual chastity, as Tertullian tells us” (127).
Because God wants all men to be saved, He will supply the means necessary to salvation, whether they have made vows of chastity, or who have married someone who is difficult, infirm, or detestable. “For neither the married can be loosed from matrimony, nor the religious from their vows, to adopt some other state more fitting for them” (132). The meaning of “it’s better to marry than to burn” is explained, and the question of divorce/remarriage/reconciliation. To burn here means to consent to temptation. “For married people, it is better to burn and commit fornication than to marry a second time. For such a marriage would be a permanent sacrilege or adultery, which is worse than fornication. But it is best of all neither to marry, nor to burn, but to practice continence” (134).
Separation is permitted for unprovoked adultery, but if separation took place without any fault on the part of either, St. Paul would have had to order a reconciliation (137). The councils and Fathers teach that remarriage is not permitted. All these laws are expedient for salvation:
Death is pressing upon you: towards it, you are hastening with relentless speed. Judgment awaits you; eternity is at hand, long and never-ending. God is constraining and compelling you to prepare yourself for it and to hasten towards it (155).
Other chapters discuss foods offered to idols, and other issues of idolatry, veils for women, the institution of the Eucharist, and approaching it unworthily, charity, the gift of prophecy, and other subjects. Church fathers and other ancients quoted, whom I have not mentioned, include Chrysostom, Cicero, Theophylact, Erasmus, François Vatablus, St. Gregory of Tours, Clement of Alexandria, and many others.
St. Paul to the Galatians covers subjects like the certitude of his gospel, that we are justified not by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ, idolatry, wrath, revellings, and sins that keep one from attaining heaven like immodesty, effeminacy, and contraception. On the sin of contraception, referring to St. Jerome’s commentary on this passage, it is written: “if the marital act is performed otherwise than nature dictates (using some other orifice and member), … both are guilty of a mortal sin of lust, which excludes them from the kingdom of heaven” (720).
Unfortunately, this book at $50.00 is rather costly. But it would make a nice gift for a good priest who would like to preach on the moral law the way it has been taught in the past, and who needs a reference book that has been thoroughly researched.
Sheryl Temaat holds a B.A. English University of Colorado as well as a M. Ed. from RegisUniversity, and is a contributor to both Homiletic and Pastoral Review, as well as New Oxford Review.
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Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching: A Defense of the Church’s True Teachings on Marriage, Family, and the State by Anthony Esolen, Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2014, $19.95, 208 pages. ISBN: 978-1-62282-182-2. Reviewed by Kenneth Colston.
If you wish to tilt at windmills, you might as well go after big ones: Anthony Esolen would wish for nothing less than the restoration of Christendom.
Where does he find the blueprint? In the encyclicals, exhortations, and letters of Leo XIII, which, of course, are themselves inspired by the Gospel, but with surprising detail, historical precedent, and moral examples instructing how to be accepted back into the City of God, one family at a time.
Leo XIII’s writings still hold up, Esolen argues, because their foundation is on the rock of natural law and divine precept. An economy must understand the nature and destiny of human beings in order to function well, and that nature is social, and their destiny is heaven. “God alone is life,” Leo XIII writes (Tametsi futura, 1900), and therefore, Esolen continues, “to treat human nature as simply separate from God, and thus to attempt to construct a civil society without reference to God, is to treat of a thing that does not exist, and…is to rob civil society of the very thing that can bring it as close as possible to peace on earth.” To speak of a pluralistic society is to build not even on sand, but on nothing.
Esolen doesn’t look at more proximate and higher Church teaching in Gaudium et Spes, but Leo XIII’s logic continues to do battle there against the centuries-old walls secularists have attempted to build, not merely between church and state, but between science and faith, and creature and Creator:
But if the expression, the independence of temporal affairs, is taken to mean that created things do not depend on God, and that man can use them without any reference to their Creator, anyone who acknowledges God will see how false such a meaning is. For without the Creator the creature would disappear [GS, 36].
To forget that God is the source and summit of human affairs, Leo XIII reminds the faithful, is not to seek man’s perfectionnement moral (Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, 1892), but to subject him to cupiditatum dominatu, “the “lordship of appetites” (“On Freemasonry, 1884). In elucidating and elaborating Leo’s thought, Esolen fruitfully and frequently returns, in nearly every document, to the original language for deeper meanings. True citizens of the City of God contend with Masonic naturalists and rationalists for veritate and virtute, not merely for“truth” and “goodness” or “virtue” but for “truth” and “manhood” or “fidelity.” The City of Man, with Deo posthabito or “God set aside,” leaves man inops—from the Latin meaning to be “utterly impoverished.” As an example of Leo’s God-filled society, Esolen offers a nineteenth-century painting of Millet’s Angelus, showing a peasant couple—a wide-hipped woman next to a man with a wide-brimmed hat—pausing in front of a sack of potatoes spilling onto the pavement, while the couple tries to bow and pray at the invitation of bells ringing out in a steeple in the background. With God set aside, society is traviata or “astray, wayward” [Pervenuti all’anno, 1902]. Without God, man thinks he is—but is not really—free.
Instead, he is with Satan at the bottom of Dante’s hell, incessantly gnawing Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, flapping his wings, but utterly silent, with aimless liberty that is perverso and praepostero, “twisted inside out, and utterly backward” [Libertas praestantissimum, 1888]. True freedom is under God’s authority, binding us through human laws, based upon the divine law given to human persons, which is the image of God. Positive law, of course, does not always follow in lock-step from the divine law, but the burden of proof is upon agitators and rebels to show that it does not; that man is better off tearing up institutions through studia and conversiones rerum novarum, the “eagerness” and “overturning of new things” [Inscrutabili Dei Consilio, 1872]. Thus, Catholic social teaching is inherently conservative to the extent that the established order has a purchase in rationality and divine order. For this reason, private property is a part of the natural law; it is the family’s possession, and the family is prior to the state. Family needs stable property.
The heart of the blueprint, therefore, is marriage and family—and these, too, have a supernatural form: the Trinitarian, sacramental marriage bond of mutual self-gift, the primary sins against which, fornication and adultery and divorce, also destroy civil society. Leo XIII declares, “Nothing has such power to lay waste families, and destroy the mainstay of kingdoms, as the corruption of morals” [Arcanum divinum, 1880]. Families are little societies; civil society is hardly more than these, and they are greatest when they are little churches. It takes training to form these aright, and the right leadership is paternal. If you want to destroy society, therefore, get the father out of the family. (For evidence, please observe The World Today, beginning with revolutionary regicides, and continuing with “pockets of poverty.”) The first icon here venerated is Norman Rockwell’s Four Seasons collection. It depicts a boy and a girl, innocently playing with, attracted to, and made for each other. They are not “alone,” but “part of the good and lovely world of trees and snow and weedy flowers and dogs,” a portrait of grace perfecting children, but from a lost aesthetic now regarded with contempt, eyes having become jaundiced and cynical.
The second is the great classic Catholic novel, Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, the Norwegian Catholic convert, and fugitive from Nazism. This trilogy of historical novels features an emblematically well-ordered, but not perfect, medieval household. It is ruled by a true paterfamilias who is “peace loving, quiet and upright, plain in his living but courteous and seemly in his ways, a rarely good husbandman and a mighty hunter,” “a good and helpful landlord to his tenants.” Esolen unapologetically holds up the ideal of patriarchy, rule of the father who is faithful to the Father, the model of the Church and society, in which justice derives not from the will of the governed, or human custom, or “raw will,” but from divine authority.
It is holy work at a wage to allow the worker to support his wife and children, to live decently, if frugally, or even in holy poverty, with guilds that train young men in craft and virtue, church societies such as consecrated and lay orders that evangelize, with schools and hospitals and churches to the four corners of the globe—these have been the buttresses to, and extensions of, the family. They, too, must be vibrant and free in order for civil society, which is really the mystical body of Christ, to flourish. That is to say, they must be ordered to man’s supernatural end, and so the final unifier of civil society is the Eucharist, which blue laws, and the third commandment, and strong rubrics, protect and enjoin.
Esolen laments the lost world of “community songfests, church socials, barn raisings, dances, concerts … beneficient societies for the poor,” and “fraternities {that} pooled their resources for the succor of widows and orphans.” These societies were superior to that proposed by the modern, socialist state, dedicated to humanity in the abstract. It is because these societies were formed of neighbors who knew each other’s names, and foibles, and truest needs. In the Eucharistic banquet, Esolen observes, these neighbors kneel and commune with a “sweet society far transcending any society upon earth, one whose capital is not built with marble, whose boundaries admit everyone who longs to enter, whose wealth is not counted in gold, and whose laws are not the objects of clever men.” Leo XIII says they “enjoy the common franchise of that city whereof Christ is the head, and the constitution is charity” (Mirae caritatis, 1902).
Esolen may be mistaken if he means to imply that the American experiment ever wished to build, or even perpetuate, Christendom, but he puts meat and bones on what a more recent Holy Father called “a civilization of love.” It was threatened already in Leo XIII’s Italy, and it is now almost nearly gone, but has the Magisterium ever sown better mustard seeds than this humanist’s inspired words?
Kenneth Colston’s articles have appeared recently in First Things, The New Criterion, New Oxford Review, and LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture.
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Msgr. Joseph DeGrocco, A Pastoral Commentary on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2011. 242 pages. $22.95. ISBN 978-1-61671-038-5. Reviewed by Mr. Justin Rowan.
A thorough commentary on the titular GIRM, Msgr. Joseph DeGrocco’s book, strives to draw out both the details and spirit of the directives found in that document. The text is nearly twice the length of the GIRM, and recommends itself as a serious sacristy and parish reference. DeGrocco himself describes his work as “a compendium of best practices,” and further reminds his readers that “liturgy as a lived reality only comes into being when the rites are enacted.”
Firmly rooted in the teachings of Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, this Commentary seeks to give flesh to the Council’s vision of a more active, meaningful participation for everyone at the Mass. It remarks on each section of the GIRM, paragraph by paragraph, teasing out both theological truths, and temporal practicalities, with the aim of deepening the experience of worship. The chapters move from more general topics, such as structures and elements of the Mass, to more specific liturgical concerns, including Masses for various needs, and the ornamentation of churches. DeGrocco concludes with a brief discussion of the rights reserved to bishops and bishops’ conferences, as well as some remarks on the norms for the reception of Communion in American dioceses.
DeGrocco excels in linking past and present, with deft and timely reminders of how the changes made to the liturgy after Vatican II are sourced in much older, pre-Tridentine rites. He presents a vision of continuity that affirms and reveres tradition. “Being faithful to the ‘norm of the holy Fathers,’” he explains, “means more than simply preserving and repeating what we … are familiar with, or can remember.” Yet, his middle course also avoids the pitfalls of favoring too much innovation. His unequivocal direct quotation of the GIRM, that a priest “is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, remove, or to change anything” in the Mass, is refreshingly welcome in an era when post-Vatican II experimentation still lingers in some quarters. He situates this concern within a thoughtful discussion of a priest as a servant of liturgy, not vice versa, emphasizing that the celebrant should, in all things, point to Christ. For these reasons, this Commentary manages to be both pastorally apt, and liturgically faithful.
Two shortcomings offset this book. First are the periodic pet peeves that DeGrocco brings into his otherwise balanced commentary. In discussing the reception of only Hosts consecrated at a given Mass, for example, he declares that “To the mind of this author, it is of crucial import, and should become a major agenda item to be implemented universally, as soon as possible, in the ongoing reform of the liturgy,” while a little further on he remarks: “One wonders why these two practices {distribution only from presently consecrated Hosts and Communion under both species} are not followed in many parishes.” The significant difference from the tone used throughout the rest of the book makes such episodes distracting. Second, this text may represent too great a gap between ideal and praxis on the parish level. One has to wonder if the average parishioner, as a non-liturgist, truly comes to Mass consciously thematizing his or her role as “the assembly … convoked by God” and not “simply a collection of people who happen to be at the celebration at the same time.” The reluctance that this reviewer has observed, in the recent practice in some parishes of greeting surrounding parishioners before the entrance hymn, would seem to lend credence to this concern.
This book will be supremely valuable to pastors, deacons, lectors, and acolytes, and parish liturgy planning teams, as it elaborates, helpfully and amply, on the GIRM’s more general outline. It also has the advantage of comprehensiveness, addressing all manner of practical matters—from homilies versus eulogies at funerals, to the elements of good public address, to the appropriate materials for sacred vessels. Most importantly, perhaps, is DeGrocco’s conviction that such rules are not merely for their own sake, but aimed at the higher goal of reverent and life-giving liturgy—a sentiment all can surely support.
Justin Rowan is a seminarian for the Diocese of Buffalo, NY.
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