Book Reviews – July 2024

Pope Francis and Mercy: A Dynamic Theological Hermeneutic. By Gill K. Goulding. Reviewed by Fr. Vien V. Nguyen, SCJ. (skip to review)

Memoirs. By Jószef Cardinal Mindszenty. Reviewed by Fr. Joseph Briody. (skip to review)

Gift and Communion: John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. By Jarosław Kupczak, OP. Reviewed by Fr. Robert Sprott. (skip to review)

Preachers at Prayer: Soundings in the Dominican Spiritual Tradition. By Paul Murray, OP. Reviewed by Casey Chalk. (skip to review)

Pope Francis and Mercy – Gill K. Goulding

Goulding, Gill K. Pope Francis and Mercy: A Dynamic Theological Hermeneutic. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2023. 245 pages.

Reviewed by Fr. Vien V. Nguyen, SCJ.

In 2013, Pope Francis made headlines and touched the hearts of many people worldwide when he affectionately embraced Vinicio Riva, a man disfigured by von Recklinghausen’s disease, in St. Peter’s Square. In Pope Francis and Mercy: A Dynamic Theological Hermeneutics, Gill K. Goulding argues that mercy has been the theme of Francis’s papacy and the lens through which he exercises his papacy. Goulding defines mercy as “a refusal to see anyone or any situation as definitively lost and a refusal to argue according to the binary logic of victims and perpetrators” (133). As pope, Francis has prioritized four fundamental governance principles: time over space, unity over conflict, realities over ideas, and the whole over the part. His approach, rooted in mercy, fosters openness to dialogue and discernment.

Pope Francis’s embrace of mercy is deeply rooted in the Ignatian spirituality, Goulding explains. The Spiritual Exercises, the core of Ignatian spirituality, are a process of discernment that, with God’s help, leads to growth in freedom of love and reorientation toward an intimate encounter and deepening relationship with God. Divided into four weeks or periods, the Spiritual Exercises invite us to reflect on sin and God’s boundless love and mercy, the desire to participate in Christ’s redemptive mission, the willingness to walk in the way of the crucified Christ, and the grace to experience the joy and glory of the risen Christ. As both receiver and giver of the Spiritual Exercises, Pope Francis lets the Ignatian spiritual heritage shape his understanding of life’s purpose, fosters growth in his interior freedom and holiness, and inspires his quest for union with Christ.

Pope Francis’s merciful living and leadership is rooted in the centrality of the heart of Christ as the revelation of God’s mercy and the invitation to participate in the redemptive love of God. Here, Goulding illustrates Romano Guardini’s influence on Pope Francis. Guardini understood Christ’s heart as human and divine. Guardini also contended that “human life becomes meaningful in the encounter with the mystery of the person of Jesus” (47). Christ’s heart perfectly expresses God’s heart. For Guardini and Pope Francis, believers encounter Jesus’s self-disclosure and merciful love in scripture, the Eucharist, his incarnation, and his death on the cross. Goulding analyzes how Pope Francis embodies God’s merciful love within significant papal documents, particularly Evangelii Gaudium, Misericordiae Vultus, and Misericordia et Misera.  

The manifestation of God’s love is found in the Son’s self-emptying or kenosis. Here, Goulding engages with Hans Urs von Balthasar to stress that “understanding kenosis only in Christological terms is insufficient” (72). Our encounter with Christ leads us to a deeper understanding of the mutual exchange of self-gifts between the three persons of the Trinity and the outflow of the Trinitarian self-gift into human life and created order (133). The Father gifts the Son his very self, an act of “self-expropriation.” The Son’s kenosis love for the Father is expressed through a reciprocity of a loving self-gift and self-surrender to the Father’s will (76). The love of the Father and the Son breathes forth the Holy Spirit, whose mission is to guide and teach believers and direct them to the Father and the Son. This dynamic Trinitarian kenosis draws human beings into divine merciful love, brings human beings into the profound life of the Trinity, and unites us with one another.

How has Pope Francis’s emphasis on mercy impacted the Church? Goulding examines the ecclesiological ramifications of mercy. With ad extra, Pope Francis embraces mercy as the operative tool in handling political affairs and diplomacy. This is evident in his approaches to the challenges in Europe and in his emphasis on the church as a field hospital, his advocacy for peace in the Middle East, his traveling to vulnerable areas during his apostolic journeys, his attentiveness to the plight of the most vulnerable, his efforts to bring those on the peripheries to the center, and his use of mercy as an ongoing process of integration. With ad intra, Goulding delves into the ramifications of mercy within the Vatican Curia itself, emphasizing the necessity of reforming the Curia, preaching the Gospel, calling the Church to prioritize the poor, working for peace, and promoting ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue.

As illustrated in Pope Francis and Mercy, mercy is the pope’s not-so-best-kept secret. He is a practitioner of mercy in the footsteps of Jesus. He has written books on the subject: The Name of God is Mercy and The Church of Mercy. As Pope, he called for an Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, and he frequently visits different marginalized groups. His coat of arms has the words of St. Bede describing the calling of Matthew, the tax collector: miserando atque eligendo (“by having mercy, by choosing him”). Although Goulding focuses on mercy from the beginning of Francis’s papacy, one would think that his embrace of mercy happened long before his election to the papacy, during his time as a Jesuit priest and as bishop and cardinal of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is reported that at the age of 17, Pope Francis experienced God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which became a turning point in his life that led to his priestly vocation as a Jesuit.

The chapter on “Trinitarian Horizon” (Chap. 4) is the book’s highlight. Goulding presents Balthasar’s perspective on kenosis and the kenosis event within the Trinity convincingly and clearly. With a deep understanding of Balthasar’s theology, she showcases her mastery and specialization in the subject. This chapter, along with the rest of the book, inspires readers to explore the depth and essence of God’s self-emptying love and redemptive work. It challenges readers to conform to God’s merciful heart in order to discover life’s meaning and purpose and to embody the Trinitarian kenosis love. This transformative journey involves becoming faithful witnesses to God’s unchanging love and practicing merciful love in a world marked by increasing division along political, theological, and economic lines. Following Pope Francis’s example, embracing a merciful, loving life begins with discernment.

Fr. Vien V. Nguyen, SCJ, is a priest and provincial superior of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (Dehonians or SCJs) in the United States. Holding a doctorate in Sacred Scripture from Santa Clara University, Fr. Vien was an assistant professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, before his election to provincial leadership in 2022.

Memoirs – József Cardinal Mindszenty

Mindszenty, József Cardinal. Memoirs. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2023. English Translation, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1974, with new Foreword and Introduction. 445 pages.

Reviewed by Fr. Joseph Briody.

On February 12, 2019, Pope Francis declared Cardinal Mindszenty venerable, recognizing “the heroic virtues of the Hungarian Servant of God.” Born in Mindszent (Hungary) on March 29, 1892, he died in Vienna on May 6, 1975.

After some background, including his childhood and earlier priesthood, we are moved swiftly to March 29, 1944, his fifty-second birthday, the day Mindszenty arrived at Veszprem as bishop. The Nazis had already occupied Hungary for ten days. Soon, Bishop Mindszenty became despised by the Hungarian Nazis because he and his brother bishops condemned the persecution and deportation of Hungarian Jews. In June 1944, the Hungarian bishops vigorously opposed the placing of Jewish people in ghettos. Mindszenty severely criticized the “Arrow Cross” Nazi party of Hungary. That same year, Mindszenty and the Hungarian clergy were criticized by the government commissioner for Jewish affairs, who reported: “Unfortunately the clergy of all ranks have taken first place in the efforts to save the Jews. They justify their activities by appealing to the commandment to love one’s neighbor.” (65) The Arrow Cross Nazi regime used a very different slogan for conscripting the youth of Hungary: “Annihilate or be annihilated!” Meanwhile, the Russians were advancing on Budapest, leaving a trail of devastation and suffering. Hitler and Stalin were colliding on Hungarian soil. (66)

In June 1944, Mindszenty was arrested by the Nazi regime and his residence seized. That December, he ordained nine priests in prison. He recalled Christmas Mass in prison: “Weeping, we knelt and stood before the altar on which the Body and Blood of Christ were present. Never again, and nowhere else, has a Christmas Mass so moved me as did this one.” (72)

The Red Army entered Sopron, Hungary, on Easter Sunday 1945 as “liberators.” As Bishop Mindszenty made his way back to his diocese from Nazi imprisonment, he was met by horrific accounts of the devastation left by the Red Army. One sickening example suffices: “Since the arrival of the Russians, approximately one thousand women and girls had been brought to the hospital; eight hundred of these women were infected with syphilis. Many women committed suicide at this time; others went mad.” (78) Husbands who attempted to protect their wives were carried off as “war-criminals” for resisting the Red Army. (80)

At first, Hungarian Communism promised freedom of religion. However, Marxist opposition to religion was never far away and Communist infiltration and oppression increased. Catholic media was silenced. Attempts were made to drive the Church from public life. Important figures from national and Christian heritage were canceled. The past had to be liquidated for a brave new world to be born. (124) Even Saint Stephen (of Hungary) was denounced, and teachers were required to make Marxism the basis of their teaching. (86)

On September 8, 1945, Mindszenty was asked to become Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary. He addressed the nation, noting that the Catholic Church does not go into hiding when storms come; rather “she always stands in the forefront with the Hungarian people and for the Hungarian people. The Church asks for no secular protection; she seeks shelter under the protection of God alone.” (88)

After Christmas 1948, Cardinal Mindszenty was arrested for his opposition to the Stalinist regime. He took with him only a picture of Christ crowned with thorns entitled Devictus vincit (“defeated, he is victorious”) or “once overwhelmed himself, now he overcomes all.” Mindszenty would later write: “ ‘Defeated’ was the story of my life, but ‘the hope of victory lies in the future, in God’s hands.’ ” (153)

In 1949 he was imprisoned for “conspiracy” and we glimpse the shattering of the personality that follows torture. (152) He wrote of his own shattering. Weak and worn down, he paid less attention to what he was forced to sign. “Without knowing what had happened to me, I had become a different person.” (183)

Memoirs furnishes countless examples of the dishonest manipulation of language by the totalitarian regimes. So-called “liberators” (77) left a trail of abuse, assault, death, and destruction. (77) The brutality was as stunning as the promises were empty: “There would no longer be poor people in Hungary.” (78) Ironically, the bishops, arguing for free and fair elections in 1945, were accused by the Communists of interfering in the “democratic” process. (98) Forced deportations became “public works projects.” (119) Truth is the first victim of dictatorships and Memoirs describes the real cost. Mindszenty was insistent on the independence of the Church from the State: “In an atheistic state, a Church that is not independent can only play the part of a slave.” (150) The duplicity of the Communist regime in Hungary was staggering.

Other important matters come up in Memoirs. Real ecumenism is evident. Calvinist and other non-Catholic groups joined with Catholic leaders in opposing Communism, e.g., in the fight to keep their schools. (114) Looking to the United States of America as defender of justice and liberty comes across clearly. Memoirs also portrays the very human side of the writer. Returning to his cathedral, he found it pillaged and stripped, his residence ransacked and plundered. There were even body parts lying around. The pantry was bare and there was no food. “So,” he wrote, “I did what came most naturally: I went home to Mother. She helped me get back on my feet . . .  and gave me provisions.” (79)

Spiritually, Mindszenty’s love for the Blessed Sacrament and his confidence in the Blessed Virgin’s protection are evident. (137) In prison, he only heard afterward of the proclamation of the dogma of Mary’s bodily Assumption. (264) In the Holy Eucharist, he saw the source of his people’s vitality: “Earthly bread can be taken from us, but the Bread of Angels remains with us.” (138)

Created Cardinal in 1946, he remained at heart a priest. Visting internment camps that year he wrote: “My purpose in going was that of a priest.” (109) What became clear to Mindszenty was that “only a praying humanity can build a better world,” (104) and the best defense against atheistic materialism was “a deepening of religious life” across the country. (120) He emphasized that religion is not just a private matter (123), and that love of truth is “a bishop’s most important virtue.” (122)

Freed in the 1956 revolution, he was confined to the American embassy for fifteen years. In 1971 it was agreed that he should leave the embassy and the country quietly so as not to disturb relations between the Holy See and the Hungarian Government or People’s Republic. His memoirs were to be kept secret for the moment.

In his last days, he accepted exile from his homeland. In Rome, Pope Saint Paul VI showed him fatherly kindness. However, in December 1973, to Mindszenty’s profound dismay, Pope Paul declared the see of Esztergom vacant. His memoirs conclude: “This is the path I travelled to the end, and this is how I arrived at complete and total exile.” (348) On Easter Sunday 1974 he wrote that he wanted to show what Communism “has in store for mankind.” “I want,” he wrote, “to show that Communism does not respect the dignity of man.” (46)

Joseph Pearce provides a brief forward to Memoirs, and in his fine introduction, Daniel J. Mahoney describes a man of “heroic Christian virtue,” one who “defended liberty, human dignity, and religious freedom against the totalitarian movements . . . during the worst years of the twentieth century.” (37) Many pages of documents are included at the end of this book, adding to its completeness. (351–435) There are many spiritual gems encouraging faith and hope, despite the seeming unresolved ending of the memoirs. For the reader, the resolution is perhaps best found in Cardinal Mindszenty’s being declared Venerable by Pope Francis. In Christ, he overcame: Devictus vincit.

Fr. Joseph Briody is a professor of Sacred Scripture at St. John’s Seminary in Boston, MA. He holds his licentiate in scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and his doctorate from the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry.

Gift and Communion – Jarosław Kupczak, O.P.

Kupczak, Jarosław, O.P. Gift and Communion: John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Trans. by Agata Rottkamp, Justyna Pawlak, and Orest Pawlak. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. 230 pages.

Reviewed by Fr. Robert Sprott.

In his introduction to the book, Kupczak laments that as significant as John Paul II’s work on the theology of the body undoubtedly is, it is nearly invisible in the journals, books, and venues where serious theological work is normally conducted. He attributes this partly to the prejudice of many professional theologians, prejudice against Paul VI’s Humanae vitae which John Paul firmly upholds, and prejudice against John Paul himself who is dismissed as a conservative pope from Poland, and partly to difficulties inherent in the way that the teaching was originally presented, difficulties which remain to a great degree even in the most recent published edition of the 129 (or 133) Wednesday audience catechetical talks by which the teaching was first presented from 1979 through 1984. In writing these talks, Kupczak says, the pope uses a very complicated style, one that operates on several levels simultaneously as it conducts its analysis, all of which makes unusual demands upon even the most engaged and focused reader. Moreover, the most recent edition of the catecheses (Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, published by Pauline Books and Media in 2006) lacks “sufficient scientific means such as footnotes, explanations, references or a bibliography, which such works usually contain” (p. xxi). Given all this, the theology of the body really “require(s) a good introduction and commentary,” or as he elsewhere characterizes it, “a detailed instruction manual” (p. xx). Kupczak does not think that his own book will supply all of that, but he does hope that it will provide some of what has been wanting.

The book is divided into five chapters. The first is an introduction to the theological method employed by John Paul throughout the work, and it concentrates on how the pope’s approach to both anthropology and hermeneutics is at odds with generally accepted views. In formulating an “adequate anthropology,” the pope strives to construct a framework antithetical to that of Descartes, which he sees as still dominant in Western thought and as leading inevitably to a dualism that objectifies the human body and so encourages the human person’s manipulation of his own body, his own self, as if it (he) were just another part of the natural world. In presenting John Paul’s hermeneutics, his principles for interpreting both our current experience and the revelation contained in the Bible, Kupczak spends a great deal of time drawing out the similarities he sees between John Paul’s work and that of Paul Ricoeur. It is an interesting summary of the early work of Ricoeur, though its relevance is not made clear: Kupczak points to similarities in the two approaches without claiming or showing that Ricoeur is a significant source for anything that the pope has to say.

The second chapter, the longest, is one that most readers are likely to find most helpful. It provides a thematic summary of the pope’s entire work, all six chapters of Man and Woman He Created Them. For newcomers to the theology of the body and for those who have been put off by what they have heard or read about popularizations of the pope’s thought, this chapter is a concise yet thorough presentation of the main lines of the pope’s teaching, both what he has to say about marriage and sexuality as well as its broader and deeper context, the most fundamental questions about God and human nature, and what it really means to say, as Genesis 1:26–27 says, that man is made in the image and likeness of God.

The third and fourth chapters review those aspects of the pope’s teaching that Kupczak considers to be most central and most important, and he provides the sources for much of what the pope presents. Chapter three is on gift and communion, and has an extended discussion on John Paul’s thought as it appeared before he became pope, especially as found in his The Acting Person and Love and Responsibility. Unfortunately, this third chapter is marred by Kupczak’s insistence that the pope’s primary theological source for the theology of the gift is not St. John of the Cross, but rather St. Thomas Aquinas, with an assist from St. Augustine’s De trinitate. Of course, both Aquinas and Augustine played their part in the theological formation of the Mystical Doctor, not to mention that of the young Karol Wojtyła, yet the evidence in favor of the pope’s relying principally upon the Carmelite master in his treatment of these themes is so strong and laid out so well in Michael Waldstein’s introduction to Man and Woman He Created Them (cf. pp. 29-34 and elsewhere) that both Kupczak’s characterization of his opposition to Waldstein on this — he say on p. 101, footnote 26, that he disagrees “slightly” with Waldstein here, when it is obvious that he is categorically contradicting him — as well as his attempt to make his case in a brief footnote, are, well, just odd. Nevertheless, this same third chapter contains a marvelous discussion of the theology of communion of Vatican II, how it deeply affected the then-Archbishop Wojtyła, and how he employed that theology in his much-neglected work Sources Of Renewal (back in print again in a Cluny Media reprint), all of which makes for very interesting reading and a very strong case that John Paul always was and always remained a man of the Council.

In the fifth and final chapter, the attention turns to John Paul’s key phrase “the language of the body.” As the first chapter devotes quite a lot of space to the early work of Paul Ricoeur, which does not shed much light on John Paul’s thought, so too the final chapter’s opening nine pages give a survey of how the phrase “language of the body” appears in a number of modern psychological contexts, which as Kupczak finally acknowledges on p. 178, are largely irrelevant to the ethical context employed by the pope to provide the sense and significance of the term. This chapter is important for its summary of the pope’s use of two specific biblical books, Song of Songs and Tobit, as well as for its discussion of a central goal, indeed perhaps the central goal, of the whole work, namely the provision of a defense of and a rationale for the teaching against artificial contraception presented by Paul VI in Humanae vitae. As readers of the theology of the body know, the pope does not avert his gaze from the book that contains the Bible’s most explicit sexual imagery, and Kupczak pays due honor to John Paul for the “discretion, dignity, and beauty of language” that characterize his discussion of the biblical passages that touch on female sexuality and the male’s desire, curiosity, and fascination toward her. This discretion, dignity, and beauty of language are especially noteworthy now, as we have had to confront recently the utter crassness and vulgarity of the current head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith that saturates so many of the pages of a couple of his earlier works.

The need for a good introduction and commentary on the theology of the body that Kupczak described at the beginning of his book is still with us, unmet, but Kupczak has provided an excellent companion piece for John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them. Relatively short and clearly written, it provides a guide and connecting links to the major themes in the pope’s teaching, and, aside from the unfortunate dismissal of the influence of St. John of the Cross, he also gives a solid presentation of the essential background of the pope’s earlier interest and writings on this subject, and the way it contributes to and underpins a deeper theology of revelation and salvation.

Robert Sprott is a Franciscan priest who currently teaches and does parish work in Chicago.

Preachers at Prayer – Paul Murray, OP

Murray, Paul, OP. Preachers at Prayer: Soundings in the Dominican Spiritual Tradition. Elk Grove Village, IL: Word on Fire, 2024. 120 pages.

Reviewed by Casey Chalk.

In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis humorously notes that all Catholics “suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them, and the clergy from having to preach them.” In Preachers at Prayer, Paul Murray, OP, a professor at the Angelicum, aims to ease that suffering by equipping preachers to produce more effective homilies. And the best way to do that is what he calls a “consistent dedication to the practice of prayer.”

The book, based on talks on the subjects of prayer, study, and preaching, is divided into four chapters. The first chapter urges a recovery of the contemplative dimension. The second discusses what makes for good preaching: namely, theological doctrine that is made practical to the audience. The third chapter describes the concept of the “dark night” within the Dominican tradition, citing the works of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Blessed Henry Suso. The final chapter emphasizes the “key of knowledge” cited by Christ in Luke 11:52 — meaning knowledge of God and the Gospel — as central to preaching.

Murray, quoting Humbert of the Romans, notes that to be a preacher, “one must be a pray-er first.” Yet as much as Catholic prayer is defined by script and formula, Murray also cites a lesser known “John of the Cross,” the Dominican Juan de la Cruz, who promoted simple vocal prayer and reminded clerics that prayer is a gift of grace that should be accessible to even the simple.

Yet even for those who enter into deep contemplative communion with Christ, Murray is adamant that prayer is never simply about the one who prays. “We have not been given the fire of heaven for our own tribal comfort and consolation,” he writes. “We are not to behave as if the Good News were only good news for the righteous few and could never travel beyond the borders of an exclusive tribe or sect. No, as committed believers, we are called ‘to go up into the gaps’ and to cast our fire into the midst.” Thus prayer should ideally draw the practitioner toward the needs of his neighbor.

Good homilies will be directed to Christ present in Holy Scripture, with the objective to help listeners have an encounter with Christ that culminates in reception of the Eucharist. This can be done through making a “lively” link between grace as celebrated in the liturgy and the reality of grace in daily life. Murray also encourages homilists to hone the art of listening, especially to outsiders, so that preachers’ words can be timely and relevant.

In the final chapter, Murray offers an excellent reminder to students of theology that their work must be driven by a love of God and men rather than intellectual self-indulgence. He cites Mother Teresa: “Yes, the poor of the world are indeed starving for food, but there is another kind of starvation in the world, and it’s no less profound, no less terrible. People are desperate to know the meaning of their lives . . .” Thus, Murray argues, theology students must ensure their intellectual labors are intended to profit the Church, not only themselves, participating in what he calls contemplata aliis tradere — passing on to others the things contemplated. Moreover, academic study should invigorate, rather than enervate, one’s personal prayer life.

The preacher’s own sufferings, especially united to prayer, will also make him a more effective and accessible preacher. This should be coupled with a humility that allows the preacher to laugh at himself and the world, for in doing so he will also make the Gospel relatable. Murray quotes Aquinas: “Those who are lacking in fun, and who never say anything ridiculous or humorous, but instead give grief to those who make jokes, not accepting even the modest fun of others, are morally unsound.”

The text is peppered with fascinating anecdotes — demonstrating that good sermons require good stories. Murray relates that the existentialist philosopher (and religious skeptic) Albert Camus was once invited to give a talk to a Dominican community in France. Camus urged his listeners to retain their Dominican and Christian identity: “Dialogue is only possible between people who remain what they are, and who speak the truth.” Elsewhere we learn that Catherine of Siena once reprimanded a group of hermits for refusing to abandon their solitary life in the woods to help the church. She remarked: “Now really, the spiritual life is quite too lightly held if it is lost by change of place.”

Perhaps the only weakness of this excellent little book is the structure of the third chapter on the “dark night” in the Dominican tradition, Though interesting, it seemed disconnected from the rest of the book until after twenty-five pages it became clear that the author’s point is that personal witness — exemplified in one’s individual struggles — can be an effective tool for the preacher. Yet that is a minor complaint in an otherwise welcome series of short reflections that should exhort preachers to remember the incredible importance of their calling.

Casey Chalk is the author of The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity (Emmaus Road, 2023) and The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands (Sophia Institute, 2021).