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John Cogley
David Lawrence read it RightLippmann saw a liberal lightWilliam Buckley sounded coolishPearson's line was mostly foolishCourtney Murray wasn't certain(We haven't heard from Thomas Merton)Nation-readers learned to hopeThat J.F.K. would heed his PopeWelch saw Red, red, redder than titianAs
John Cogley

Some day you would like to write a book about Catholicism in America as you have known it. You keep putting it off, and the relentless years keep passing. The book will probably never be written. But as time goes by, experience broadens, understanding is enriched, complexity becomes more evident. The result is that this year's unwritten book is better than last year's, and next year's promises to be the best yet. Thinking about it, though, is like paging through an album of yellowed snapshots, watching yourself age while the perennial youth of the Church becomes ever more verdant.

The first impressions begin in the parochial school. You can evoke certain sights, sounds and smells from the past and take satisfaction in the knowledge that they are part of the present life of your children: "...with liberty and justice for all, goodmorningsister"; the clink of heavy rosary beads and rustle of black veiling; the exultant swell (combined frequently with a sense of deliverance from captivity) of "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”; the sudden spring of a May altar; the clinging sweetness of funeral incense hanging on in a church, like the presence of death, after the mourners have left; the special shouts of schoolboy encouragement when one of the Sisters takes a turn at bat; the pastoral eloquence of a report-card compliment; the shattering realization that there is disorder in the universe when ink is spilled on a nun's immaculate white bib.

(You recall such things and realize, all these years later, that because the school was attached to a parish church, with its baptisms, weddings, funerals and liturgical markings of the Christian year, life, love and death seemed as natural as breath; you were steadily exposed to their claim on man—and you even knew, if only in a dim way, that the manifestations of the liturgical cycle taking place at the altar were tied in with the life around you because they celebrated a greater birth, a more inclusive love, a more terrible death, and yet held out the assurance of resurrection.)