Shabbes Goy. (Book Review).

Ted Schmidt, Shabbes Goy. ISBN # 0-9730505-0-0, Paperback, $21.50

Shabbes Goy, written by the current editor of the Catholic New Times, is a glance into the world of Toronto during the 40s and 50s, seen through the eyes of a young Catholic boy raised on Palmerston Boulevard, and from this vantage point the book is in many ways an enjoyable read. There are some genuinely inspiring seconds in this book, and on the whole it highlights the poverty of modern individualism that took root in the late 60s and early 70s.

The author begins and continues with an insightful and accurate diagnosis of what is wrong with contemporary pop culture. But from a theological point of view, the book is a disappointment. It is so replete with subtle ironies and contradictions that a relatively careful reader eventually realizes that the author, for one emotional reason or another, had not given enough thought to what it was that he was writing. In short, the book was simply not ready for publication. It is these contradictions that keep this book from becoming the charming heirloom it has the potential of being.

The author promises that the reader will not detect even a whiff of victimization "so popular today", but his promise is broken almost immediately. He speaks of the Church of his youth as overly defensive and reactionary, but every attempt at theological commentary within these pages is little more than a distasteful reaction to his early education.

The author finds nothing wrong with the defensive, traditional, and reactionary posture of orthodox Jews, among whom he lived and whom he adored. Indeed, the title, Shabbes Goy, refers to a Gentile who would do things for Jews forbidden them on the Sabbath. But for some reason, the author has no patience for orthodoxy within his own religious tradition.

With almost Olympian condescension, he speaks of the complete lack of "theological sophistication" of his early elementary school teachers, whom he refers to as "largely unmarried spinsters with blue hair and not much education, theological or otherwise", parroting age-old truths, sexually repressed, and "drenched in an obsession with sexual morality". And yet in another part he laments the injustice of the popular television depiction of nuns as "caricatures of saccharin-like and sexually repressed females." He even refers to his First Communion photo, featured on the cover, in which he squints from the brightness of the sun: "Is it the sun, or am I winking as if to say: don't take this too seriously!" He is referring to the education he was in the process of receiving, thus depicting himself as a gifted critical thinker at such a young age. He refers to this education as inadequate, truncated, and "not up to the task of evangelizing young minds into the mystery of God." The author mocks the Brown Scapular, the Miraculous Medal, the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and even the canonization of Maria Gorretti, and he regards the Marian apparitions of the 19th and 20th centuries as teenage hallucinations based on "deep yearnings related to the mother and the inbreaking of adolescent sexual energies."

Then, an inexplicable mood change occurs. He begins to reminisce. In Grade 1, he wore his scapular. By Grade 5 he was wearing a Miraculous Medal. "It made me feel really wonderful. To me this is what the Incarnation of God signifies. I felt blessed, special, surrounded by God. The Beyond really was in our midst, the transcendent was in the ordinary, the ultimate in the immediate. God was all around us....All my life I've been ready to be surprised by joy at any time, anywhere. I've no doubt that this orientation was in part prepared by those teachers at St. Peter's." Suddenly his teachers have become "the sacramental presence of the Creator". He describes his Grade 1 monthly preparations for Confession: "We were surrounded by "sacramentals" - holy water, the sweet-smelling...incense,...the Fourteen Stations....This was our initiation into mystery."

Later on in the book he refers to this period as holding "beautiful memories" for him, "a time of cohesion and broad consensus" that "can never be recreated today". According to his testimony, not only were his teachers equal to the task of initiating young minds into mystery, but the evidence put forth suggests that the school system and quality of Catholic teachers was superior to what we are left with today. How many students can currently boast of being "initiated into mystery", of experiencing "the Beyond in our midst" and "the transcendent in the ordinary"?

The author claims that the "monastic, celibate approach to the flesh triumphed in ecclesiastical circles, creating a dysfunctional, schizophrenic and hopelessly one-sided view of sexuality in the Catholic Church." Is this tortured rhetoric? "Dysfunctional" and "schizophrenic" suggest at least emotional illness and unintegrated personalities. Yet the living example of the priests in his life contradicts this. In fact, it is his presentation of religious such as Father Maurice McMahon and Sister Mary of the Cross that is the most inspiring part of his book.

Of Sister Mary he writes: "Her weapons were those of any great teacher: dedication, a great love of kids, intelligence and a fantastic sense of humour... .She even would hike up her cumbersome habit to square dance and play baseball." He goes on to mention that she had "a real love for the weak and abandoned", and that "she pioneered in the treatment of emotionally disturbed children". The author writes: "...it seems fashionable in an increasingly secular age to patronize, if not dismiss, those in the religious life. This is unfortunate. One would have to be in the grip of massive denial not to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution of the ordained celibate clergy and nuns like the Cross. And there were hundreds like her over the years. There remains a massive debt which, even though it can never be repaid, must be acknowledged as religious orders decline."

The more he describes these early teachers, like the Basilian Fathers or Christian Brothers, and their dedication to the poor, the more it becomes obvious that they weren't as regressive and ignorant as one is originally led to believe. But in his final chapter he writes: "The Catholics among the above largely never recovered from the privatized morality they had grown up with, a faith so terribly truncated that it virtually had no effect on the world." One can only ask: "What faith is he referring to?" In light of previous chapters, one would have to be "in the grip of massive denial" to suggest that the Catholic faith of his youth "virtually had no effect on the world".

The inconsistencies and contradictions remaining are too numerous to expose in an article of this size. But other difficulties with this book include name-calling, belittling, adolescent obscenities, political oversimplifications, and, ironically enough, a truncated theology. The author clearly misunderstands extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church no salvation), blurs the distinction between nature and grace, and gives hints of pantheism, and his rhetoric betrays a false dichotomy between conscience and authority. But most importantly, he operates within a biblical hermeneutics rooted in the 19th-century rationalism of Georg Hegel, who held reason to be higher than faith and revelation. Thus, anything in Scripture that transcends the grasp of human reason is accordingly "demythologized".

After I had read this book, a number of things came to mind, one of which was that perhaps what we need in Catholic education today, more than anything else, are more theologically unsophisticated teachers. After all, Jesus did say: "I bless you, Father, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children" (Mt 11; 25).

Doug McManaman is a religion teacher at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy, Toronto, ON.