Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People.

I usually find it difficult to read books on theology and ecology. Most of them seem predictable in their theological approaches are sentimental or hortatory in style. Northcott's book, by contrast, is a sober volume that manages to do two things quite well. First, he surveys recent writing on religion and ecology by constructing a useful set of categories: humanocentric views of ecology (of whom the most famous exponent would be John Paul II); theocentric views (for example, Jurgen Moltmann); and ecocentric orientations (Matthew Fox; Sallie McFague; John Cobb). Each of these visions of the relationship of religion to ecology is subject to fair criticism. Northcott, for example, judges the pope as "limited" because John Paul relies too heavily on an account of natural law which cannot give due balance to the moral significance or the moral goods of the natural created order. According to Northcott, this reading of the natural law, most systematically represented by John Finnis and Germain Grisez, does not do justice to the medieval view of natural law either. On this point, I agree with the Tablet reviewer who wrote that Northcott would have benefited from reading some revisionist Thomists.

Northcott goes on to set out his own vision of ecological theology. The ecological crisis derives, he writes, from a breakdown in moral purposiveness and the demise of social justice. Thus, the ecological crisis is not an isolated problem. Its solution requires a recovery of a sense of justice and of the common good. Toward that end, in some very rich pages, Northcott recommends the resources of the biblical tradition. He proposes that we embrace a renewed sense of the Hebrew vision of the created order as well as the Christian understanding of the Trinitarian creator and incarnate redeemer. To those classical biblical doctrines he adds a "thickened" view of natural law which, he argues, is manifest not only in the West but in several sources of Eastern thought.

I especially liked Northcott's reflections on the Hebrew account of creation. Instead of focusing on the "domination" model (a cliche since Lynn White's essay in 1967), he insists on the ordering of creation and, further, on the implication of the covenant. I was also impressed by his trinitarian approach to theology since it shifts (as Moltmann and others have insisted) away from monistic ontologies toward a vision of the outpouring Trinity where, at least in the formulation coming from Irenaeus, there is a "ground for differentiation of self and other, of the many and the one, for the diversity of human and nonhuman life, and for the embodied and material life in the cosmos, including the order of human life." Finally, Northcott is to be commended for his attention to the role of the church in this issue. In other words, to his sophisticated reading of current moral theory and theology, he also brings a pastoral concern for the world which has come to us from God as "good."

Restless is the operative word in the title of Beumer's book. The late Henri Nouwen was born in Holland, ordained a priest for the diocese of Utrecht, did advanced work in theological studies in Rome, psychology at the Menninger Institute in Kansas, and, after a stint teaching in Holland, in the psychology department at Notre Dame. Later he held a professorship at the Yale Divinity School. His spiritual searching would lead him to a stay at a Trappist monastery in New York, an unhappy period at Harvard, extended visits to Latin America, and finally to the L'Arche community in Toronto, where he served as chaplain.

Beumer shrewdly notes that Nouwen left Holland before the seismic changes in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. As a consequence, he was able to reflect on contemporary Christian spirituality with a sort of anguished confidence but without having had personal experience of disappearing theological faculties, emptying parishes, and "virulent religious indifference" in his native country. His vocation was not to speak to the indifferent; he searched to deepen spiritual experience within the context of supporting communities, thus providing his writing, as the author says, with a certain graceful quality.

Nouwen was one of the most popular spiritual writers of our time. His writing combined a testimony of personal vulnerability, deep reading of the gospel, compassion for the poor, and a sense of what touched people most deeply. If Nouwen had a fault it was that he was afflicted with a kind of furor scribendi which led him to publish too much with too many reworkings of the same material. What he did best was to touch on real problems - fear, anxiety, death. Only time will tell if some of his books have staying power.

Beumer was a long-time friend of Nouwen who knows the Dutch scene well. A Protestant theologian, his most penetrating comments are often found in his extended footnotes. This work is very much a loving tribute to a dear friend and a great Christian. What we still need is a much thicker critical biography. For now we have a gracefully written first introduction to Nouwen's life. The book provides a bibliography of Nouwen's work in English, but no index.

I called Rolheiser's book my "automobile volume," which is to say that it was tucked away in my car so I could pick it up while waiting, for example, for my daughter to get out of school for the day. The book consists of brief meditations, first published, as far as I can determine, in Canadian and British Catholic newspapers.

These meditations are a felicitous blend of scriptural reflection, shrewd psychological observations, and generous portions of letters sent to Rolheiser and his responses. Rolheiser is widely read in theology, literature, spiritual writing, poetry, and psychology. He possesses a rare combination of authentic piety, lack of pretension, and a real concern for the problems of real people. He engages, without pontification, people who have lost children or those on the verge of marriage or coping with illness or addictions. He is a listener. Even when he is uncomfortable with what he hears, he is eager to offer support.

Rolheiser organizes his short essays under twelve large headings ranging from the presence of God in creation through sections on the moral life, family situations, the sacramental life of the church, the relationship of sacraments to social justice, and to the life of prayer. Especially good are his reflections on imagination and the Christian life. Tolkien's remark to C. S. Lewis when the latter was on the cusp of religious conversion serves as a starting point: Your reluctance, Tolkein said to Lewis, "to understand [the mysteries of faith] comes from a failure of the imagination." Rolheiser speaks of the "paschal imagination" in which we can envision the death of the old as a prelude for the birth of the new. His applications of that insight would give everyone food for thought, especially his notion, to which I fully subscribe, that what often passes for lack of faith is really lack of imagination.

This book could well be used by the homilist or the retreatant or those who simply have a bit of time waiting for the school bell to ring. Oh yes, I hope Father Rolheiser, who thanked his Oblate community in two different places, did not feel offended by being turned into a Franciscan on the back cover of his book. He is an OMI not an OFM, but one could imagine him either!

It has been long known that the rosary developed from the custom of substituting prayer formulas (first the Pater; then the Ave) for the 150 psalms sung by the literate monks in their monastic choir. It was the "psalter" for the mostly illiterate lay brothers. How this practice developed in tandem with meditations on the mysteries of the life of Jesus and his mother is a far more complex question. Even more complex is how this practice came to be called a "rosary," even though the mystical significance of the rose is a commonplace in medieval culture.

It is the burden of Winston-Allen's tightly argued book to provide answers to these questions. Already in the nineteenth century, a Bollandist scholar proved that the identification of the rosary with Saint Dominic was false; that the rosary should have been attributed to a fifteenth-century Carthusian of the same name. Subsequently, in 1977, an earlier rosary text was founded datable to circa 1300. Winston-Allen investigates the extant vernacular literature, picture books, and artistic iconography to disentangle the long history of the development of the rosary and its enormous popularity as a devotional device on the eve of the Reformation. By a careful, indeed somewhat tedious examination of these sources, she develops some interesting observations about the relationship of prayer to visual texts and their ritual use.

What interested me most was the author's argument that the development of the rosary and rosary confraternities was linked to church reform on the eve of the Reformation. Rosary devotions and literature cognate to that devotion had close links to the observant orders like the Carthusians, to many lay-centered pious associations, and to the mendicants with their struggles against the hegemony of the secular clergy. While these devotional impulses had their abuses and superstitions (like hiring poor people to say the rosary on behalf of the rich, who might then accumulate indulgences), they were also a vehicle for genuine spiritual fervor and devotion. Winston-Allen is also quite good, if somewhat rushed, in her discussion of how the term "rose" and its derivatives were linked to the most loved biblical book of medieval spirituality: The Song of Songs.

Winston-Allen's book should be seen in the light of recent work by Eamonn Duffy, among others, who examine "popular" religion in a new and sympathetic light. Such investigations are a response to those scholars, most conspicuously Etienne Delaruelle, who see late-medieval religion as a farrago of externalism, superstition, and quasi-magic. Apart from those discussions, anyone interested in the history of spirituality and/or Marian studies will find this a useful text.

Winston-Allen's work is one of history. But it did make me wish that someone would reflect on the changing place of the rosary in the contemporary church. It seems not to be popular in the lives of my undergraduates here at Our Lady's university, but there is still a coterie who are there, beads in hand, praying at the grotto. How did they get the rosary tradition?

Cecilia Ferrazzi not only prayed the rosary but, according to her autobiographical testimony, made before the Venetian Inquisition in the midseventeenth century, Our Lady of the Rosary appeared to her. Anne Schutte, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, found, transcribed, and translated this fascinating document which consists of a series of interrogations that Ferrazzi underwent after being charged with feigning sanctity. Ferrazzi was a laywoman who belonged to an amorphous movement of women who were not nuns but who lived a life of seclusion from the world, engaged in prayer and good works. She came to the attention of the Inquisition because of her purported visions, miracles, and extravagant prayer life, as well as attempts to harbor and raise the illegitimate children of prostitutes. Church officials were dubious about any ill-educated woman who claimed such religious authority. This autobiography is a window into the world of religious practice quite removed from that of the cloister and the theological studium.

Ferrazzi's autobiography, on the face of it, is a loose narrative about running to confessors, convents, pious confraternities, of illnesses, purported cures, extraordinary graces, and so on. In Schutte's hands, thanks to her informative introduction and ample notes, it is also a revelation about a whole range of historical material about which people have opinions but no facts. Schutte argues, with a number of other scholars, against the "black legend" of the Inquisition, stating that the Inquisition's methods guaranteed the best legal proceedings to be found in early modern Europe; that the use of torture was rare; and execution rarer still. One could appeal an inquisitorial judgment, as Ferrazzi herself did. Schutte's presentation of the translated text also tells us a good deal about the practice of medicine (primitive and dangerous), social relationships, the myriad practices of popular religion, and Tridentine sacramental practice (the issue of frequent Communion, for example, is a key theme in this treatise).

This brief book is part of a series ("The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe"), to which the editors, Margaret King and Albert Rabil, provide a general introduction as a prelude to Schutte's introduction and translation. The book ends with some appendices listing the dramatis personae mentioned in the transcript, as well as the place names. In addition, there is a fine bibliography and an adequate index. Tidy and user-friendly, this volume would be a valuable, inexpensive text for courses in gender studies, or for a study of traditional religious practices. Individual readers interested in the history of the church and its practices will also find it worthwhile. The general editors list ten other titles in the series. We can only hope that they reach the quality of this one.

The essays collected in Practicing Our Faith derive from a seminar organized by Craig Dykstra and Dorothy Bass to inquire into the practices of Christians who live within various religious communities. This is not a book about spirituality for the individual, but a consideration of how spiritual practices give shape to, sustain, and identify believing communities. It is a study, in short, of spiritual formation.

A number of essays focus on scripturally warranted community practices, such as honoring the body, the right use of goods, the character of Christian witness, asceticism, and the practice of hospitality. Reflections on contemporary Sabbath-keeping, discernment, forgiveness, healing, dying well, and the place of music and singing are also included. Generally, the essays are well written and informative. There are wonderfully instructive patches in these nontechnical essays. I took notes, for example, on the very nice linkage made between the Hispanic custom of the Christmas posada (shelter) and the need for sheltering the poor, and the equal need to think of the church as a hospitable community. I also learned the meaning of the Quaker word "cumber," which points to all the material baggage which distracts and burdens a person.

These small insights do not exhaust the range or nourishment of this collection. The stated goal of the editors was to provide a matrix out of which people could speak about enhancing practices in the Christian community while keeping them close to the liturgy. The final chapter consists of a series of hints and questions to extend what has already been covered. Curiously enough, the kinds of questions and experiments that the editors suggest are examples of the kind of discernment described in an earlier essay. In that sense, each essay sheds light on others.

A brief bibliographical excursus is provided for each of the chapters, as well as a scriptural and topical index. I also very much liked the brief excerpts from various writers adorning the pages of the essays. Here is a favorite (from the poet Wendell Berry): "The breath of God is only one of the divine gifts that make us living souls; the other is dust. Most of our modern troubles come from our misunderstanding and misevaluation of this dust."

This book would be wonderful for parish discussion groups.

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