The turned card: Christianity before and after the wall.Desmond O'Grady, The turned card: Christianity before and after the wall, Loyola Press (Chicago), 1997, 231 pages, hardcover, $22.95 (US) Desmond O'Grady is a British Catholic journalist who writes on religious affairs from Rome. He also travels a great deal. The book's title seems to be equivalent to "When the Tables are Turned," since the book deals with the religious situation at the end of Communist rule in Eastern Europe Eastern Europe The countries of eastern Europe, especially those that were allied with the USSR in the Warsaw Pact, which was established in 1955 and dissolved in 1991. in 1989. It describes the situation of Catholicism and other Christian religions in the Eastern European countries in the period before 1989, that is, when they suffered under Soviet terror, and also in the few years after it. The book, first published in 1995, has been translated into six languages, and has been reprinted in an updated and expanded form for North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , and all this for a good reason. The high points of the book are gripping accounts of bishops, priests, nuns, and lay men and women who underwent imprisonment Imprisonment See also Isolation. Alcatraz Island former federal maximum security penitentiary, near San Francisco; “escapeproof.” [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 218] Altmark, the German prison ship in World War II. [Br. Hist. and torture and, while having to do menial MENIAL. This term is applied to servants who live under their master's roof Vide stat. 2 H. IV., c. 21. work, still found time to say Mass, administer the Sacraments, and evangelize e·van·gel·ize v. e·van·gel·ized, e·van·gel·iz·ing, e·van·gel·iz·es v.tr. 1. To preach the gospel to. 2. To convert to Christianity. v.intr. To preach the gospel. . Their heroism Heroism See also Bravery. Achilles Greek hero without whom Troy could not have been taken. [Gk. Lit.: Iliad] Aeneas Trojan hero; legendary founder of Roman race. [Rom. Lit. is scarcely credible to men and women in our Western culture, so weakened by the soft affluent lifestyle of our day. Before 1989, Christians were trying to survive under an all-encompassing totalitarian police regime, and lived with fear and suspicion, enclosing themselves defensively with a ghetto mentality. When the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain Iron Curtain Political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas. came down and freedom appeared in an imperfect and haphazard way, they could hardly be expected to become different persons overnight. In addition, in the case of Eastern-rite Catholics, the Vatican was trying to dialogue with the Orthodox with whom the Eastern-rite Catholics were at loggerheads log·ger·head n. 1. A loggerhead turtle. 2. An iron tool consisting of a long handle with a bulbous end, used when heated to melt tar or warm liquids. 3. , thus causing a strain between Rome and its Eastern-rite members. Well-intentioned mistakes were made. After the fall of the tyrants, many who had supported the Church fell away, some because they had supported it for political reasons, some because the new-found "freedom" led to a desire for the luxuries, or even the necessities, of life, or for a release from sexual restraint, in an understandable wish to imitate what they thought the West was like. And old scores were settled in different ways in different countries. Also, newly-restrengthened nationalisms threatened domestic and international peace. If we are to assess the present needs of the former Communist empire we must study this period, and this book is a good start. |
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