Losing God.

Losing God, by Michael Paul Gallagher.

Twenty-Third Publications, $7.95, 127pp.

It is always a boon to find a good volume in the flood of often quite embarrassing popular literature that passes for Christian spirituality. Michael Paul Gallagher's little book is such a volume. An Irish Jesuit who spent many years as a university professor of literature, Gallagher offers us some examples--framed with stories from his own experiences as a teacher and a missionary in Latin America-of how he deals with those who come to him with deep problems of faith and practice. This is not an apologetic work in which Father has all the answers to all the stock questions. It is, rather, a series of examples in which he tried to puzzle out, along with those who question him, some approaches to the life of faith and prayer.

I am not sure that it is possible to take his exempla and turn them into strategies tot us or others to use. What does seem useful is to adopt his stance: be a patient listener; realize that the problems of others are real problems; and assume a due modesty. When a young person reacts against a too religious upbringing he says, in effect, that maybe the person has had too much church and that "too much church" is a stumbling block (a skandolon--scandal) to genuine faith. Ditto with prayer: try listening instead of saying; think of genuine prayer as the willingness or openness to pray.

The simplicity and straightforwardness of Gallagher's prose should not beguile us into thinking that he has written a "simple" book. Alert readers will detect a counselor who has absorbed Ignatian principles ( directly and through Rahner and Lonergan, I suspect) and a sapiential reading of the Scriptures at a deep level. What he can do is communicate and turn what appears to be abstruse doctrine into lived experience. In one place, for example. he brings a young woman to a sense of trinitarian prayer by simply noting that genuine prayer is prayer to God above us and beside us and within us. Like many things in this very good little book, that is nicely said. For that reason I used some of its ideas for conferences ~ recently gave to a sabbatical program for clergy and then circulated the work for their more leisurely perusal.

The Way of a Pilgrim is a nineteenth-century Russian classic of spirituality. The unknown author recounts his wanderings through prerevolutionary Russia as he learns and practices the "unceasing prayer" that is such a hallmark of Orthodox spirituality. Armed only with a Bible and a copy of the classical anthology of Orthodox spirituality, the Philokalia, the author recounts his encounters with monks intellectuals. peasants, convicts, exiles, foreigners, hermits, and farmers as he moves through the vast Russian landscape interiorizing his ceaseless prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner." Although he never made good his intention to get to the Holy Land--a favored destination of the Russian pilgrim-- he seems to have covered vast distances.

My original copy of this book is about thirty years old so it pleased me no end to get this translation (first done in the 1970s) in a serviceable format and at a reasonable price in the esteemed series of Image Books from Doubleday. Anyone who desires to enter the world of Russian spirituality would do well to read this work. It is a classic for even those who are disinclined to practice its discipline. Its shining sense of Christ, its predilection for the hidden life of poverty, watchfulness, conversion, and solitude is a good antidote for those who only know the more splendorous version of Russian piety reflected in onion domes, icons, and gorgeously sonorous liturgies. There is something almost Dostoevskian about the tone of this little classic and it gave me immense pleasure to reread a book I have known for many years.

Foster is a Quaker who is gaining a fine reputation as a spiritual writer. His current book seeks to name the experience of prayer so as to aid us in disentangling what is authentic in that exercise and what is illusory. The single chapters borrow from the classic "types" of prayer (e.g., simple, sacramental, meditative, etc.) and interweave description and the experience of himself and others. The result of all of this is an extremely readable and non-technical work of devotion in the best sense of the term.

The range of prayer experiences which Foster treats is quite broad but there is no hint that he feels that this or that approach to prayer is the approach. He is especially good at describing the intersection of ordinary life and prayer in chapters like that on the prayer of the forsaken where, in undramatic but realistic terms, he talks about prayer and doubt.

I made good use of this fine little book in preparing talks and conferences but those not so employed would also find it useful for straight spiritual reading. It would rank high, in my judgment, as a book to be worked through during Lent or when on retreat.

What has always fascinated me about Ignatius of Loyola is how he recapitulated in his life so many of the models that one finds in the history of the Christian tradition. He spiritualized his original career of soldier/courtier via a period of being a hermit and a pilgrim before going on to being a scholar and religious founder. He lived at a time of intense turmoil (Ignatius was a contemporary of Luther) and, especially in his native Spain, was the subject of the attentions of the Inquisition on more than one occasion.

When Ignatius finally settled in Rome, his mature years were spent in a small house from which issued directives and letters as he shaped his religious order, later known as the Jesuits. It was a trying life spent in fending off at least one hostile pontiff, chatting up aristocratic ladies, ordering about wayward clerics, and generally attempting to keep his ever growing society intact. The basic glue holding the society together was the shared experiences of the Spiritual Exercises, a book of seeming banality when read but of revolutionary potential when lived.

Meissner tells this story with great verve and, equally, with an impressive command of the published literature. Meissner's biographical narrative is followed by a section on Loyola as a mystic and, finally, a psychoanalytic portrait of the saint. The latter section should come as no surprise since the author is both a Jesuit priest and a practicing Freudian analyst.

The biography is wonderfully written. The psychoanalytical portrait will be judged differently by those sympathetic to such an approach or those, like myself, who read such stuff with a slightly arched eyebrow of suspicion. Luckily, Meissner gives fair warning when the Freudian reflections begin which allows the eye to skim until one is back on terrafirma. In general, I judge this a wonderful biography and even when Meissner turns to Freud I discovered myself at places saying what Newman is supposed to have said when he read the skeptic Hume as a young man: "How awful! How plausible!"

Wilkes's book is a reprint of a longish 1991 profile that he did of Archbishop Rembert Weakland, O.S.B., for the New Yorker. I read that profile and, if memory serves me, nothing in the current text adds to what was written there. The book's subtitle ("Travels with Rembert Weakland") reflects the organization of the work: a section on Weakland at home in his diocese; at the annual meeting of bishops in Washington; and on a journey to El Salvador.

Weakland is for many (but as Wilkes makes clear, not all) the ideal bishop. A polyglot musician with profound roots in the best of the Catholic tradition (he is a monk who once served as primate of the Benedictines) his story is of a man who is whipsawed between his own instincts for dialogue and the demands of bishops to march to a centralized tune of Roman obedience. If there was ever a case study of competing ecclesiologies seen through the lens of a single person, this is it. Weakland's profile pictures a person who listens to people; tries to tell the truth as he sees it; and seems unafraid of the future facing the postconciliar church.

Rome does not like his style nor his independence. That shows up in the veto they exercised over an honorary doctorate from a pontifical faculty in Fribourg; in the exchange of letters with Rome over priestless parishes; and his own feeling that nominating potential bishops is a bootless exercise because Rome does not really heed advice. Wilkes chronicles all of this in an engagingly readable style. His conclusion is that Weakland will never leave Milwaukee for "bigger things." Lucky Milwaukee.

John Coleman's essay in the Bianchi/Ruether anthology strikes me as a compellingly sane statement: that a non-democratic church should attempt--and there is no paradox here--to estimate and act upon strategies for democratization within the church as we have it today. In the same vein (and quite correctly) Charles Curran appeals to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity to think about democratization in the church.

Other authors would go further. To the dictum that the Catholic church is not democratic they respond: why not? Elizabeth Schiissler Fiorenza sees a possibility in tilting toward the New Testament ekklesia (assembly) as a counterbalance to the historically developed kyriake (church) which is patriarchially constituted on ancient sociopolitical models. Eugene Bianchi searches the tradition for more democratic models although his praise for Pachomian monasticism over against the Benedictine model strikes me as odd; Pachomian monasteries seem to me to have been little more than pious pressgangs while Benedictine monasticism has a strong democratic mechanism built into its ethos.

What is best in this wildly uneven anthology (e.g., do we need a reprint of a 1969 essay by Hans Kung?) is the sheer quantity of data that are provided about attempts at democratization in the church. Rosemary Ruether's survey of five movements of concerned feminists in this country that attempt to live within the broad parameters of the church while being independent of the hierarchy is just interesting to know about, whatever the long-term prospects of such experiments might be. Phil Berryman's sober assessment of the current state of base communities in Latin America is worth the price of the book and serves as a cautionary tale for those who are overly enthused about such communities.

What this collection lacks, however, is a separate substantive essay to point out the problems of democratization. Does a democratic ecclesial polity translate into a more prophetic church? The recent experience of the Southern Baptists, with the tyranny of the majority, would suggest not. Does the system of lay trustees (ably described by Jay Dolan) also teach us a negative lesson? I know of one such holdover in the South where trustees, within living memory, resisted the presence of African Americans in its church despite the wishes of the pastor who was, in essence, powerless over the trustees. And, finally, how does one balance a need for some kind of unity between the churches and the Great Church that does justice to local needs while not falling into sectarianism? The writers in this book give us much material as we think through those very tough issues but they tend not to face such challenges head on.

Sanks's new book describes the church from the perspective of theology. It comes to us from a person who teaches ecclesiology at the Jesuit School of Theology (Berkeley) and it reflects his long career in the classroom. After an introductory section on methodology, Sanks has a generous middle section which reflects on the development of the understanding of the church as it has evolved from the New Testament witness down to the present day. The final third of the book takes up a series of neuralgic issues which engage theologians: the reshaping of our understanding of ministry; the challenges posed by the theologies of liberation; the need for inculturation as we move toward what the late Karl Rahner has called the World Church; the character of the local church (by which he means the church in this country); and, finally, the relationship of the church vis-a-vis the great religions of the world.

The merits of this work are considerable: a capacity for clear presentation; a good historical sense; and a nice blend of both the hermeneutics of suspicion and of trust. As such, I think that this is a book which would make a good core text for a college/seminary course in ecclesiology or as a text for serious nonacademics and, as such, I can heartily recommend his work. This book has the mark of the good teacher all over it.

If I have a criticism (and it is a common one to which many books on ecclesiology are open) it is this: I would like to have seen more consideration given to the ecclesiologies developed in the Eastern church. I make that criticism not because I have any illusions about the superiority of Orthodox ecclesiology but because the witness of that church will become increasingly important as the situation changes in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the Eastern emphasis on viewing ecclesiology with respect to the liturgy and seeing it as an outgrowth of the central mysteries of Christ offer some openings for us in the West.