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Books
Peter Heinegg
Hans K uuml ng b 1928 may well have been the 20th century rsquo s most important Catholic theologian mdash not the most original or profound to be sure but the most influential because of his astonishing breadth energy productivity and pedagogical skills in explaining liberal orthodoxy to an
Gerald F. Kicanas
Two summers ago I passed through the entrance gate to the camp at Auschwitz in Poland and read the chilling phrase, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free). I wandered the now still streets of that concentration camp viewing the scuffed, unclaimed luggage, some marked with its owner&rs
Columns
Thomas J. McCarthy
Comes another autumn and nature’s reminder that life is most authentically itself because of its impermanence. The cycle is indisputably natural, and yet much of it is tinged with irony, especially here in northern climes. Trees lose their covering just when they seem to need it most, the loons take their plaintive songwhich would have been so in tune with the season of loss and longingand fly, the overabundant tomatoes we’ve hardly kept pace with in their September ripening die with the frost, at the same moment we regret having given away so many. Death is life’s opposite and enemy, but also its most defining moment. It is the cessation of life and a metaphor for the implacable threat to the fragile beauty of what we hold most dear.

Friendship is the instinctive and defiant alliance we form against death. When that bond dies, then, the loss is at once cosmic and profoundly personal. Over the course of the past decade I’ve been losing my best friend. I have been watching him die a slow death, and he has taken part of me with him. Physically he is as fit as he was when we first met 23 years ago on a fall afternoon, tossing a football on the Washington Mall and nursing beers late into the night, trading stories of Jesuit high school, sharing our faith and doubt, and sculpting our vision of the perfect woman we hoped to marry someday. What I have seen fade in him is not his idealism but an emotional and psychological hold on reality. At every step along the way, despite being separated for most of the time by continents and oceans, we have stood together and stayed inside each other’s mind and heart, supporting and listening and telling the hard truths that no one else could know or would utter. Then came the day when the very honesty that cemented our uncommon bond drove a wedge between us.

When it turned out that the choices he was makingspecifically, staying in a physically and emotionally damaging relationshipwere harmful to him, I said so. Ever since that day 10 years ago, our friendship has been a frustrating dance of truth-telling and recognition and resolution and denial; it has become a threadbare string of incomplete conversations around the relationship I think is destroying him. The honesty that had always been the hallmark of our unconditional love for each other became a thorn in his side, another burden he had to bear in a life that had spun out of control.

While I was relentless in my assessment of his situation, he wavered between resolve to save himself from further harm and resignation to make the best of it. Faced with a Hobson’s choice between no relationship at all and a deeply painful one, in which I either broached the unresolved subject uppermost in both our minds or else assiduously avoided it, I did not abandon him. Or maybe I did. Years of walking the line between honesty and compassion, between nurturing our intimate bond and confronting an excruciating inability to see my friend through a crisis, left me dispirited and depleted. While his insight into the reality he lived may have been clouded, he never lost his keen insight into my character and feelings, so he knew at every point exactly what I would be thinking and how difficult it was for me. Finally, at some point last summer my sadness became overwhelming, and I walked away.

Knowing that friendship without honesty is unworthy of the name assuages all too little my feeling of having lost a friendship when I could have kept it. If the past is any guide, soldiering on would have been a painful and confounding roller coaster. Arguably such is the test of a friendship, to be solid and steady ground when the other has lost his moorings. Tough love wore me down, though, and I became incapable of trudging along any farther under the crushing sorrow and disappointment his choices brought me. On some levelperhaps on every levelI sacrificed friendship for principle. There was a time when the concept of being true to myself seemed pellucid and obvious and meant everything, when being true to my friend and true to principle were identical. Not any more.

The choices we make, however inelegantly executed, demonstrate our demons as much as our values. A loss of innocence and a death, a lost friendship is a rite of passage. But to what? However measured and inescapable the decision may be, turning away from a friend is a choice fraught with guilt and self-doubt. Unless one sets out to be either friendless or without principle, being unable to reconcile the unambiguous exigencies of principle with the untidy realities of friendship is a failure, no matter how manifestly inevitable it may seem. And while keeping a friendship in spite of one’s principles may be a poor friendship indeed, there may come a moment when standing alone with one’s principles makes one wonder if the price is too high. For, right or wrong, when we turn away from a soul mate in dire straits, we forsake part of ourselves and are thus torn apart.

While certain that speaking and hearing hard truths is divisive but necessary, nevertheless as I survey the ruins of a once noble and beautiful temple, I ruminate: Am I the friend I think I am?

The secret

Portfolio
Edwina Gateley
This book, Christ in the Margins, took shape on a red plastic tablecloth in a diner in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is where I met the artist Robert Lentz. The two of us spent hours sharing ideas to bring his vision to reality. Perhaps as we sat together, eyes shining, words tumbling, arms gesticul
The Word
Dianne Bergant
Some might wonder why we celebrate the dedication of a basilica that most of us will never visit Is it simply because it is the ldquo pope rsquo s church rdquo Or as the ldquo mother church rdquo of all churches should this basilica and this commemoration remind us that we are all children o
Books
Richard W. Garnett
The United States Supreme Court seems to have settled on the view that our Constitution limits regulates but in the end still permits the death penalty So what Franklin Zimring calls the contradictions of American capital punishment will likely be resolved if ever through dialogue and debate in
Editorials
The Editors
Last week the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its quadrennial statement on political responsibility, Faithful Citizenship. These statements, published since 1976 one year in advance of the presidential elections (to avoid even the appearance of partisanship), have provided guidelines for
The Word
Dianne Bergant
I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in rdquo Who has not heard that rousing hymn and wanted to be part of that glorious parade But the fee seems so high One has to go through a time of great distress to wash one rsquo s robes in the blood of the lamb In other words to be
James Martin, S.J.
With the appointment of Sean Patrick O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., as archbishop, the city of Boston seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. For the new archbishop appears to be the right man for one of the most difficult jobs in the church in the United Statesheading up an archdiocese that Arc
Letters
Our readers

Right Here

One of my duties as a newly ordained religious priest working in another diocese was that of offering the Eucharist and hearing confessions every Saturday morning in a state-run institution for about 1,300 troublesome girls, age 13 to about 25. I was reminded of those years, 1950 to 1954, as I read the review of The Magdalene Sisters by Richard A. Blake, S.J., and recalled that right here in the United States the girls in those state-run institutions had their heads shaved for major infractions of the rules, as in Ireland. For lesser violations, and far worse in my eyes, they were forced to take a pill that would make them sick to their stomachs for three or four days. Moreover, if the state officials decided that the girls were unfit to bear children, they would mutilate the girls’ bodies to that end. If someone wants to make a movie about the misuse of authority in such institutions, is it really necessary to go to Ireland and pick on Catholic sisters who, by and large, gave their lives for the well-being of young girls?

Edward V. Griffin, O.S.A.

Books
Bruce Nelson
What makes a life story worth retelling beyond the sympathetic confines of family and friends Is it who we are who we know what we stand for or where we have been Or perhaps all of the above John Cort rsquo s recently published memoir encompasses all of the above but he chooses to organize his
News
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Pope Launches Anniversary CelebrationsBuoyed by the cheers of pilgrims and serenaded by Polish choirs, a frail Pope John Paul II kicked off 25th-anniversary celebrations with a reflection on prayer and divine grace. Addressing some 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 15, the pope spoke
The Word
Dianne Bergant
Where do we go when we die This is not a frivolous question It has puzzled people of all cultures from the beginning of time and it continues to puzzle many today This question in no way suggests a lack of faith Rather it underscores some of the mystery surrounding death nbsp In the past th
Tom Vander Ark
I married my high school sweetheart. When we started dating, this was not a popular thing to do; we attended cross-town rivals, Denver Christian and Denver Lutheran. The Metro League also included two urban Catholic schools, Machebeuf and Holy Family (who ruined a perfect season for us in the state
Of Many Things
George M. Anderson
St. Patrick’s Cathedral—no, not the famous one on Fifth Avenue in New York City, but the original one of the same name in lower Manhattan—is not far from where I live, and from time to time I stop by to enjoy its soaring space and historical associations with the Jesuit order. Offi
John F. Kavanaugh
I recently made my yearly pilgrimage to Abercrombie & Fitch. Actually, it’s only a three-year old tradition, prompted by a Time magazine article from February 2000 that gave an account of that company’s phenomenal success. Its sales had increased from $165 million to over a billion d
Faith in Focus
Paul A. Janowiak

Almost immediately after I unpacked my boxes for a sabbatical at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley this past January, I found myself returning to certain favorite places that had been important to me during the time of my doctoral work in the 1990’s. As a creature of ritual, with an interest in that topic that extends far beyond my scholarly concern with liturgical studies, I was particularly drawn to the running trails in the Berkeley hills, which I had shared with partners every Saturday morning for much of my earlier stay. What I never expected to encounter was a sense of communion: a complex, real presence that ran along with me as I rediscovered oak and cedar woods that had once been as familiar to me as the back of my hand and whose dense pleasures I could never have adequately captured back in Seattle simply by isolated memory. These paths resonate with memories of loved ones—fellow religious and close friends—and the stories we shared of love and hope, pain and shame, faith and deep doubt as we struggled up those steep, muddy canyon roads just a few miles from our crowded Berkeley neighborhood. The memories embrace much more than the content of the stories we shared. They involve the relationality and intense bonding of people who loved one another, trusted one another enough to risk a vulnerable revelation and were crazy enough in graduate studies to go to bed early on Friday night so they could meet faithfully, rain or shine, at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

 

Eucharistic memory operates in the same multivalent way. It employs four modes of presence that cannot be isolated if we are to be true to the rhythm and harmony of God’s faithful promise in Christ. From this perspective, bread and wine are considered as food “taken, blessed, broken and shared”; the word is preached and proclaimed with the same dynamism; the assembly praying and singing undergoes a consecratory transformation much like that of the word and elements; and the presider who gathers the community into communion first surrenders any claim of individual control or personal power, just as Christ identifies himself with the body in the communal self-offering that occurs at the table. Together they body forth Christ’s saving deeds in the liturgy, as the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” declared over 40 years ago. This complex of divine relationship with us in mystery makes present the enduring promise of redemption and liberation in this time and place. One sacramental theologian, David Power O.M.I., describes this eventful character of our worship as follows in his book, Sacrament: The Language of God’s Giving (1999): “To keep memorial is to relate the present, which is characteristically in flux, to the past and to the future. The past does not repeat itself, but it has left its traces and testimony, and thus transmits its power to change history and lives by a pattern of action that emerges from it.”

Liturgical memory and practice cradle our immediate reality and invite its transformation and consecration, and—out of the context of our faithful gathering—orient the future hopes and dreams of a waiting world. Any sacramental claims we make today about the real presence of Christ in the liturgy must embrace this relational, dialogical and participative shape, which springs from God’s unquenchable desire to be in relationship with us, in and with Christ, through the indwelling grace of the Holy Spirit.

Sabbaticals make one think about one’s work in a new way and in very different circumstances from the familiar office and classroom of ordinary time. My scholarly interest in the issues of real presence and liturgical memory followed me on my runs in favorite places. On one such memorial run, in a regional wilderness area very close to my Jesuit community house, I had trouble finding the trailhead for a route that had been a favorite of my partners and me every Saturday morning for five years. Memories immediately began to surface as I searched to find this exact place of past encounters. The steepness of the trail had frightened me every week years ago, and now I was eight years older. I remembered John, a Holy Cross religious, and Giselle, a former Jesuit Volunteer, as well as Mike and Otter, two Jesuit scholastics, all of whom goaded me out of bed in a weekly ritual of survival and the thrill of athletic achievement. Some of us once shared a case of poison oak on our legs, because we had been intentionally jumping into puddles on that very trail. We wanted to have battle scars of mud to show the regulars when we made the ritual visit to Peet’s Coffee on our way home. This complex of experiences was part of a shared identity, and the wounds of faithful practice were part of the witness. This is the memory-laden trail that I finally discovered again on that January morning in 2003.

As I stretched on the wooden fence where we had prepared so many times before and then started up the winding, rutted path, I soon discovered I was accompanied in this solitude and beauty. My faithful companions and our shared experiences in this place of ritual came alive in a fresh way. I felt loved and sustained and very grateful—a slowly emerging sense of being held. This sense showed its contours gradually, just like the gathering of sweat as the limbs and muscles and arteries began to labor mightily together. That gratitude came in the form of the fragrance of eucalyptus and the unique sound its leaves make in the slightest wind. I heard it in the staccato clicking sound made by the Anna’s butterfly, natural to this area, searching for nectar in the vegetation. I reached a certain turn and a steep section, and I remembered how we always used to say at this precise spot, “Tell a story!” to make the next few minutes of ascent a little easier.

My friends were present to me, not simply in past events or as individualized, static personalities. Even more, I longed to celebrate communion with them again. I was grateful for the gifts they are in my life now, and was determined that the connections be refreshed and renewed. I can say, these few weeks later, that they have been. The trail, like the host and the cup, provides an arena of encounter and uncovers layers of real presence.

As the run unfolded, stories of courage and struggle seemed to be associated with certain parts of the varied terrain. I remembered loves lost, fears about ordination revealed and exciting plans for kayaking, hiking and conquering the academic world, all spun into a vision of the future. At one point, the woods yielded up the memory of a huge owl that once flapped majestically across the clearing of the trail when I was running here alone, and I had voiced out loud in my awe, “Praise God!” The run was becoming a strange mixture of past deed and present concern, revealing to me something about the future, the ambiguity of which so often dampens my spirit. That is what faithful practice in community does, and it crosses over into the participants’ private devotion and prayer. That particular day, I stopped in the middle of a descent that looks out over a ravine where oaks and reeds vibrate with holiness, and I made a gesture of raised hands in a circular motion—part stretch and full of grateful praise. And I bowed in deep happiness.

 

All life, all holiness comes from you through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, by the working of the Holy Spirit. From age to age you gather a people to yourself, so that from the rising of the sun even to its setting, a pure offering may be made to the glory of your name.

 

A connectedness and wholeness shaped by memory—that is perhaps the greatest gift of these runs for me. I have been writing a lot this year about the Trinity as the relational community of God and source of our way of praying. The image of God the Father, a difficult one in these inclusive days, has been predominant over the past few weeks. The fruitful, generative Parent seemed to be lying in wait on these runs that melded what I had been thinking about (mind), how the run was cleansing and challenging me at the moment and revealing the gift of health (body), and what I was feeling about simply everything (spirit). Running, like the liturgy, gathers “all life, all holiness” into a significant whole.

A spiritual director chided me recently that I have been working too hard to find God, set the scene and discern God’s presence in the hard work of writing in the midst of many expectations. “Why not let God come to you?” she said. “Let the Father come. He’s near to you, and you are not paying enough attention to him. Listen to what God is saying to you here.” The runs allow that to happen in a way that sitting to pray amid a pile of books and journals cannot. Simply being found, smelling the beauty of it all, remembering the lives of those whose connection is an effective sign of all companionship that sustains my life and vocation evoke a holy presence. Christ, “the Book of Life in whom we read God,” as Thomas Merton used to say, visits me in sustaining ways when I take these ritual runs we always did on Saturday mornings years ago. There is something eminently sacred about sweating out the toxins, speaking out loud, “Praise God!”

But there is more. I realized that liturgical time and memory operate within that matrix of relationships and demand a certain foolish slavery to routine, as threatening as that is to liberated minds (and bodies and spirits). Consistent, faithful practice—just like going to bed early and crawling out of a warm bed into a damp, cold morning—shapes the communal memory. “Keeping memory” folds our faith lives into the spirit and grace of our ancestors, as together we are molded into Christ. We share with them this hunger for an act of communion, an intimacy with Christ and one another, for which they were willing to live and die for the life of the world and the praise of God. We simply have to make time for this practice. The liminal time of running—where 50 minutes are experienced as a significant whole in a way that 50 minutes of unfocused, often wasted, time never are—embraces within its ritual boundaries all of time:

 

 

It is truly right, proper, and helpful for salvation, that always and everywhere, in every time and season we gather to give you thanks and praise. All things are of your making, all times and seasons obey your laws.

 

Rhythm and harmony are the rule here. There is a place in that ritual dance for fear and angst, sorrow and regret, challenge and penitence. These dense parts of the human journey are colored and shaded here by a deeper joy and an experience of intimacy that only faithful practice at making relationships can generate. For most of us, the holy visitation leaps for joy solely at select and unexpected moments; but the holy presence becomes participative and inscribed into our very being over the unglamorous terrain of ordinary time, when we go to Eucharist because...because that is what we do, we go to Eucharist.

God will meet us there. Reverence for the primary symbols that make up that holy meeting fashion a place of hospitality where soulmates can meet, across time and place, in the season of joy and out of it, where presence cannot be isolated and we all have so much to say and so many ways to say it. As Edward Schillebeeckx claimed, this is God’s modus operandi. Bread and wine, fire and water and light come to mind. Stories proclaimed and chewed on and beckoning to something new are part of the mix. A faithful gatherer, like a mother who tenderly gathers her children or presides over the kitchen and the feast, plays an important shepherding role. And “the faithful ones,” the assembly praying and singing and processing in the night with tapers in the shivering cold—this is the primary sacrament that celebrates God’s saving deeds and whose life and promise have been inscribed into our corporate bones through water and fire, the word and the table of abundance. “Take and eat. This is my body.” Pablo Neruda was right: the blossom does and does not fall far from the tree. This is a real presence I shall never tire of investigating, in the study and on the trail, alone or with others.

So, when you hold

Editorials
The Editors
Head Start, the federally funded program for preschool children from low-income families, is now up for reauthorization by Congress. Begun in 1965 by the Office of Economic Opportunity as an eight-week summer initiative, it soon expanded into a full-year program for children age 3 to school age. It
Leon E. Panetta
My grandfather was a fisherman and loved the oceans. He used to say to me, Protect the oceans and they will protect you. He understood the cycle of life and the fragile relationship between our oceans and all of us. Todaybecause we have largely taken our oceans for granted and failed to protect them
Robert J. Silva
At St. Benedict’s Parish in Ridgely, Md., parish groups are sending appreciation cards to every priest who ever served in the parish, as well as to all deacons, seminarians and other religious in the community. At St. Anne’s Church in Albuquerque, N.M., a children’s Rosary Rally wi