RELIGION BOOKNOTES.

Convened every year at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus, the Nostra aetate dialogues bring together two distinguished scholars, one Christian, one Jewish, to discuss a topic germane to Jewish-Christian relations. This volume provides the papers and discussions from five such dialogues held between 1993 and 1997. The topics, in order, concern the Jewishness of Jesus (John Meier and Shaye Cohen), the Death of Jesus (Raymond Brown and Michael Cook), Catholic-Jewish Dialogue in the coming millennium (Ismar Schorsch and Cardinal John O'Connor), the heavenly and earthly Jerusalem (Michael Fishbane and Robert Wilken), and the late Abraham Heschel (in a special session in which his daughter, Susannah, participated along with Daniel Berrigan and Eugene Borowitz).

What distinguishes these dialogues from many other interfaith exchanges is that they deal with a tightly focused issue discussed by highly competent scholars at a level that is both serious and accessible. The late Raymond Brown's vast commentary on the Passion narratives (The Death of the Messiah) concludes that Jewish authority did play a major role in the execution of Jesus, but that responsibility does not engender blame. Michael Cook did not dispute the scholarly conclusions of Brown, but worried (as did the audience) about the fallout at the popular level if the Passion narratives are not read with nuance. The exchange between Robert Wilken and Michael Fishbane on the meaning of Jerusalem in early Christian and Jewish thought is learned and enlivening. They keep their historical focus despite the almost reflex instinct to ponder the sad fate of Palestinian Christians who, caught between the Israeli state and militant Islam, leave their land in droves.

In general terms, these dialogues are models of how such exchanges should be done: respectful, scholarly, honest, and genuinely enlightening. There is also ample opportunity for the explosion of cliches. John Meier, to cite one instance, observes how overblown is the idea that Paul was the real founder of Christianity. He points out that the gospel writers all had visions of the Christian community without showing the slightest knowledge of the thought or work of Paul.

One can only hope that such exchanges have not ended with the publication of this volume. Rabbi Burton Visotsky, in an opening essay, refers in a jocular manner to the space between the two coasts as the "great, flat Christian heartland." This is one such flatlander who finds that, on occasion, New Yorkers (and their invited guests) have important things to say.

In 1920 Catholic nuns maintained about five hundred hospitals in this country, fifty women's colleges, and over six thousand parochial schools. In addition, these sisters (there were roughly ninety thousand of them) administered orphanages, private academies, and homes for the elderly, the handicapped, and unwed mothers. The growth of the Catholic church in the United States was in large part due to the labors of these women who, despite real obstacles from both within and without the church, put a human face on an institution that was the subject of not only suspicion but organized prejudice for most of the previous century.

It is the burden of Spirited Lives to tell that story with a focus on one religious community, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondolet. This community began its work early in the nineteenth century when six French nuns arrived in Saint Louis after an extended sea voyage. Within a decade, these women, enriched by some new candidates from the local church, were engaged in education of the deaf, running a small school, and soon taking orphans under their care. From those modest beginnings the sisters began to find new venues for their work. By the 1860s nearly half of the congregation was American-born and their presence was found in Minnesota, upstate New York, and four other states as well as the territory of Arizona.

Separate chapters in this rich work of archival research describe the internal life of the communities as they sought to integrate themselves into a church whose leadership was both masculine and authoritarian. (At times the mother general needed to tell a local pastor that the mission of the nuns did not include cleaning his house or cooking his meals.) Frequently the sisters had to raise the monies to augment their meager stipends as parochial school teachers by giving piano lessons, selling handicrafts to raffles, or, when all else failed, begging.

Over and above the rich detail describing the growth of the Carondolet Sisters of Saint Joseph, one appreciates this book for its sensitivity to the social milieu in which these sisters flourished. These women were able to palliate ethnic and class differences by integrating recent European immigrants and native-born women into a single community with a coherent spirituality. Furthermore, they created a locus in which it was possible to become far more educated than many of their contemporaries. They even adopted a public image of recluses shaped by "convent manners" when they were, in fact, highly skilled in negotiating in the largely masculine world of public affairs.

The authors end their story in 1920 for a number of reasons. It was in this period that the American church ceased to be considered mission territory by the Vatican. More important, the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917 meant a more severe set of restrictions on religious women. The somewhat freewheeling experimentalism of the previous century fell victim to close administrative control of travel, obligations regarding the cloister, etc.

While this estimable volume is fundamentally a history of one religious community and, as such, will attract the attention of a particular audience, its larger merit is bringing into sharp focus something that needs regular emphasis: the historical role of women in the church. Such a focus allows us to peer into the minds of those nineteenth-century sisters who, in the Arizona missions, lead prayers and hymns on priestless Sundays, baptize dying infants, and "sprinkling the home-made coffins containing [the] dear ones, say some prayers, and then go to the grave for the older people as well as for the younger ones."

One element of the millennium hoopla is the emphasis on pilgrimage. Civil authorities in Rome tremble at the expected hordes coming to celebrate the jubilee while Israel also braces for huge numbers of pilgrims. Pilgrimage, of course, is a staple of Christian piety whose roots stretch back into the early patristic period. The meaning of pilgrimage has been amply explored by such savants as Edith and Victor Turner while historians, theologians, and others have noted the polyvalence of the practice. Perpetual pilgrimage was a feature of Celtic asceticism (exile and wandering might be the better term) while pilgrimage as a remedy for sin was a regular feature of medieval devotionalism as Chaucer and Margery Kempe testify.

In Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail, Nicholas Shrady, an American resident in Barcelona, describes a series of his own pilgrimages. In separate chapters he recounts his saunters (from the French a sainte terre) to the apparition site of Medjugorje, a boat trip down the Ganges to explore Hindu spirituality, a walking trip in India to follow the footsteps of the Buddha, the pilgrimage walk to Saint James in Campostella, a journey to Jerusalem, and a visit to the tomb of the Sufi saint and poet, Rumi, in what is present-day Turkey. These voyages are replete with derring-do, descriptions of exotic scenery, and some religious reflections.

Pascal said that most of the world's problems could be solved if people could only learn to stay in their own rooms. By the time I finished Shrady's book, this Pascalian truth seemed all the more true to me. Still, it is nice to have someone else do the more exotic traveling and then report to us. For that reason I enjoyed Shrady's reportage which, despite his own protestations, fits more into the genre of spiritually tinted tourism than into spirituality as such.

If one likes books of this genre, my recommendation would be to read William Darymple's brilliant From the Holy Mountain (1998) which retraces the travels of the seventh-century monk, John Moschus, through the Christian, largely monastic, world of the Middle East. By using Moschus's The Spiritual Meadow as his template, Darymple is able to keep his narrative sharp and focused. Shrady's book, by contrast, is more like one of those "If this is Tuesday, we must be in Varanasi" reports that keeps us moving relentlessly into ever more peculiar places.

The millennium celebration in Rome is also the year of what the pope calls "The Great Jubilee." This is the twenty-sixth time that a pope has declared such a "holy year," with the first, in 1300, announced by the unlovely Boniface VIII. Desmond O'Grady, a contributor to these pages and long-time resident in Rome, has written a history of the jubilees while, at the same time, commenting on the evolving history of the papacy. He uses the word "reshape" in his title for good reason. He points out that the great streams of visitors to the Eternal City for the various jubilees have had a large impact on the city and its monuments. Such landmarks as Michelangelo's Pieta, the Spanish Steps, the dome frescoes of San Andrea della Valle, as well as, a number of Bernini's public works were all hurried along in anticipation of a jubilee year.

The original idea was to have a jubilee year once every century; that was soon modified to every fifty years and then to twenty-five. The increasing frequency of these celebrations coincided with the development of the doctrine of indulgences. More jubilees often meant more offerings from visiting pilgrims. Some celebrations were marred by various historical upheavals such as the Avignon exile of the popes or the sixteenth-century tumults brought about by the Reformation. A piece of sixteenth-century German doggerel in a volume of satirical poems contrasted the jubilee of Christ and that of Rome ending with the admonition: "Who wisely reads this book at home/Will not for pardon run to Rome."

What makes O'Grady's book such an excellent read is the interweaving of history, social commentary, and anecdote. We meet pilgrim enthusiasts like Philip Neri and Ignatius of Loyola. We learn that the Society of Jesus was missing from the 1775 jubilee because the Jesuit general was in prison in the Castel Sant'Angelo while the order underwent a process of suppression. We hear from Oscar Wilde, who loved being in the presence of the pope and was not unaware of the young clerics in the city. Among the minor characters in this panorama, my favorite was Master Titta who, from 1796 to 1864, served as the papal executioner, dispatching more than five hundred persons to the next life either by rope or by axe.

The final chapters of this enormously readable book provide a resume of plans for the millennial jubilee. While the Vatican promises plenary indulgences for various pilgrim activities, such spiritual benefits play a rather insignificant part in the overall plan of activities. O'Grady puts more emphasis on the plan to honor twentieth-century martyrs, the papal desire for a jubilee forgiveness of debt to aid the poorer nations of the world, and the desire for reconciliation both inside and beyond the church. Whether all of these hopes will turn into reality is, of course, impossible to judge. Given the papal taste for the symbolic, one can only pray that some of John Paul's desires will find fruition.

O'Grady's book is not a scholarly one, but his long-time residence in Rome and his reputation as a well-prepared "vaticanologist" makes this a wonderful read. As an occasional resident of Rome myself, I found the book both highly informative and entertaining. Finishing it in two sittings, I desired even more. That is praise enough for this timely and well-written work.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame; his most recent book is Thomas Merton and Monastic Wisdom (Eerdmans).

No Religion Is an Island:
The Nostra Aetate Dialogues
edited by Edward Bristow
Fordham University Press, $18, 184 pp.

Spirited Lives:
How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life: 1836-1920
by Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith
University of North Carolina Press, $19.95,
327 pp.

Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail
by Nicholas Shrady
HarperSanFrancisco, $22, 268 pp.

Rome Reshaped: Jubilees 1300-2000
by Desmond O'Grady
Continuum, $24.50, 224 pp.