Faithful Dissenters.

Faithful Dissenters
Robert McClory
Orbis, $16, 180 pp.

The title of Robert McClory's book is slightly misleading since not all the persons profiled in this highly readable account were "dissenters" in the technical sense of the term. Hildegard of Bingen, for instance, did go mano a mano with some local hierarchs, but her theological vision was not so much dissent as it was a fresh way of thinking about things. She also enjoyed the support of powerful people, including the redoubtable Bernard of Clairvaux. Catherine of Siena should be seen less as a dissenter and more as a prophetic figure. Neither Mary Ward nor the Australian Mary McKillop was a dissenter: they were very tough women who became victims of clerical stupidity and episcopal bullies and whose vindication came only after their deaths. The Vatican has honored both, but one hopes that posthumous church honors will also include profound apologies for the way certain prophetic women have been treated by those who wield clerical power.

McClory is concerned with the ways in which certain figures stand in tension with the institutional church. In light of recent actions from Rome (think of the scandalous badgering of Jacques Dupuis, S.J.), one finds some consolation in knowing that Yves Congar suffered in a similar fashion only half a century ago. History, of course, is full of these cautionary tales, as McClory makes abundantly clear.

Perhaps the most interesting section of Faithful Dissenters is McClory's account of the struggles over usury in the sixteenth century. Using the seminal work of John Noonan, McClory details how theologians, bishops (including Charles Borromeo), and Rome tried to get out of the impasse of the magisterial teaching that condemned the taking of interest on loans as intrinsically evil. At one point a pope allowed exceptions for those who held 5 percent interest contracts if the persons were "miserable" (for example, widows). In other words, exceptions were made to the observance of a prohibition against a practice called "intrinsically" evil. The chapter on usury will be of particular interest for those concerned about the church's current teaching on contraception.

McClory, a frequent contributor to the Catholic press, teaches journalism at Northwestern University. One expects him to write clearly and persuasively; that expectation is met. Though not a professional theologian, he is quite capable of writing about theology and does so lucidly (see his chapters on Theodore of Mopsuestia and Hincmar of Reims). In the contemporary climate of theological debate it is good to remind ourselves of what Cardinal Newman wrote to a potential convert worried about papal infallibility. Everything coming from Rome, the eminent theologian noted, must be interpreted by the theologian and must be received by the church. That process of reception, as this readable book makes clear, is not always immediate or gracious. At times it results in disaster, as in Rome's ignorant reaction to the pioneering efforts of Matteo Ricci to inculturate Christianity in seventeenth-century China. One reads that story, briefly recounted, as something vividly contemporary. One thinks, almost instinctively, of the contemporary travails of Dupuis. After forty years in India, Dupuis tried to think through Christian faith in the light of the world's religions only to spend his older years writing memos to hacks in the Vatican explaining why he is not heterodox.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.