PAPERBACK THEOLOGY by Fr. Stanley Luff

Issues! ed. Urban H. Fleege (Paulist Press. 17s. 6d.) The introduction suggests that these papers take a moderate line, but in fact they vary. Far from meeting the qualification is Msgr Ivan 'Vanishing Clergyman'. If his opinions are sincere, why doesn't he say that Msgr (USA short for Monsignor)?
I recall being warned at Rome that one inevitable question at the first clerical exam. would be: What are your privileges as a cleric?' One on duties would have impressed more. Still, neither the question nor the attitude implied make me hate the Church, even the institutional Church. Hatred seems to characterise this article, The Msgr's strictures are unfair, his proposals often unpractical, and some of his statements absurd. He suspects that defecting clergy ('ecclesiastical employees') will within a generation become a majority of the Church's personnel, and urges us to pray that more will defect, His talk just doesn't describe the clergy we know, whatever their shortcomings, and the States can't be all that worse.
Some other contributions are readable, such as Noonan on contraception, but too brief to say enough. The Secular City by Harvey Cox Pelican, 6s.) Paperback edition of a classic work on man's awareness of God, if any, in the culture of the unfolding future. Augustine's 'City of God' is out, after a dull innings, and this new one is of the world, wordly. Mr. Cox calls it 'Teohnopolis'. Is it indeed technology by which we are to be judged as 'come of age', fully human at last? Who appoints and validates this criterion? Far from maturity, to me it suggests that man, like 'god', is dead, suicidally, and that this Secular Oily is only the bare location (not home, nor even meeting place) of posthumans.
All the same, it is not this Baptist theologian's aim to be a smatterer, nor an architect, but just to see and tell the outline and function of the new city as it emerges through the mists c' change. He ties up his observation with a profound biblical background, full of insights.
Style is entertaining, shrewd, and laughable even when overdone—he lets rip in a ticklish' chapter about 'Sex and Secularization' with a study of American Girl and 'Playboy' magazine.
The Secular Tvleaning of the Gospel by Paul van Buren (Pelican 5s.) By 'secular' does van Buren really mean not religious (religion equalling: a relationship with God)? He does.
f o him, secular applies to men as he judges them to he in western progressive society, long past being able to recognise any sense at all in religion-talk. It is no longer a case of putting 'God' in other words till you find a phrase that sticks; it is out. The mystery is why Jesus and his 'Easter Event' (so called so that given time you forget there ever was a Resurrection?) still matter Sc' much. There is a problem too in how to bow off the stage whoever it was Jesus would call His Father.
'Myth', in this school of writing, means the way a given culture expresses important but non-objective perceptions, or even facts, in a dress or 'style' not intrinsic to the message but inevitable at the time, As our limes are different you have to get the thought out of this guise to see it as it is and, what's more, to pick its bones. So van Buren sets out to 'demythologize' not only the Gospel but also orthodox theology up to Chalcedon (451) and, at the end, some current Christian themes. He believes this shows us what they really meant, or should mean now—in neither case God.
The Roots of the Radical Theology by John Charles Cooper (Hodder & Stoughton 16s.) If demythologizing, 'mancome-of-age', 'death of God' and suchlike arc x quantities in your religious reading, consult this book and you will learn something to your advantage. It is as clear as these subjects permit. You can look up Bultmann, Tillich and all the rest with ease.
The policy is frankness: ten possible meanings are offered for
the death-of-God tag—like stripping veils in dimming lights till you are all left in pitch dark. In a final analysis it seems to mean just what, as a paradox, it implies.
Nearly all this radical hazarding evolves or matures in USA universities—will it, given time, prove a phenomenon of parochialism?
Meanwhile it will pay Catholics to inform themselves and face these challenges before they are smuggled in. If the ostrich buries its head too long it should not he surprised by a mighty kick in the seat of its pants.
The Gospel is Good News by E. Lorna Kendall (Mowbrays I I s.)
'Gospel' means good news, and Dr. Kendall believes that when it is taught to the young it should have the impact of good news. With topics like 'People Matter', 'What is God like?' she looks for what is good and newsy about them in the Gospels. She is not consistently successful.
I did like this useful quotation from Archbishop Temple on liturgy and life: 'It is sometimes supposed that conduct is primary and worship helps it. That is incorrect. The truth is that worship is primary and conduct tests it.' Who is God? by D. W. D. Shaw (SCM 8s. 6d.) The title suggests that the answer offered may be the 'personal' God of Christian faith, Mr. Shaw wants to explain his synthesis of the essential in Christian tradition understood by a contemporary mind avoiding on the one hand the 'tired old man' concept of God and on the other the 'think-like being' of metaphysical speculation. Traditional religion seems to be convicted of presenting both these images of God to the faithful and I can't help wondering what we really did before this age of enlightenment. Did we swing in a void between the two or did we perhaps all the time live out a synthesis, the sort of thing Bill Shaw (as the cover styles him) is spelling out?
Along with other new theologians he relates his concepts to simply assimilated biblical and Gospel statements. His language is non-technical.
Evil and the God of Love by John Hick (Collins (Fontana Library of Theology and Philosophy) 15s.)
That life is a 'vale of soulmaking in which evil, however. much it remains a problem, plays a vital part, is the solution offered by John Hick.
Few have so well mastered the history of religious and other critical thought on this subject or presented it so clearly. Two main schools are distinguished within the Christian tradition — the Augustinian, and what John Hick calls the lrenaean, after second century St. Irenacus, bishop and martyr at Lyons. This latter stands for a way of thinking, more than a school of thought. It is explained here as rooted in a simple biblical exegesis which may well be useful to Catholic theologians coping with Original Sin.
An interesting feature of John Hick's personal solution is that he inclines to reject hell and hang on to purgatory.
The Infancy Narratives by Jean Danielou (Burns Oates 14s.) If you consider the Old Testament as the national literature of God's People, in which you must probe to uncover different aspects of his Grand Design, you accept that some is straight history, some stylised or idealised history, some poetry, some moral stories etc. The Gospels however are not a collection of national literature but four associated accounts with closely related purposes. Applying 'form criticism' to the Gospels can be .dangerous because unwarranted, except in a very modified and perceptive form.
Some recent criticism has not even tried to be perceptive where the Infancy Narratives are concerned—it is so convenient to cut away the roots. Fr. Dani6lou is perceptive, so this short (and expensive) book is useful.
The Annunciation and Nativity come out well, the Magi do less well than their star, the innocents remain massacred but the Flight goes off to a destination unknown.