Spring
Books An
odd collection of catholic classics
FROM DANTE TO DEAD
MAN WALKING: ONE READERS JOURNEY THROUGH THE CHRISTIAN CLASSICS By
Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Loyola Press, $19.95, 242
pages |
REVIEWED By WILLIAM
GRIFFIN
A mind is a terrible thing to waste,
or so weve been reminded in television ads, but a mind is a lovely thing
to enrich, or so Jesuit Fr. Ray Schroths latest would have us think.
Coming from the family that owned and operated the historic
Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, Schroth has lived, written and taught
journalism. Among generations of students at five Jesuit colleges, he has a
golden reputation as a tough teacher and a good confessor. Hes also done
a fairly creditable biography of Eric Sevareid, a journalist himself.
Every book reader in the United States, it seems, has composed a
list of the 100 Best of this or that genre in this or that century.
Schroth himself did it in 1987: Books for Believers: 35 Books That Every
Catholic Ought to Read. Now hes done 50 books, from Genesis to
Ellsbergs All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and
Witnesses for Our Time.
He set out three principles of selection. Each book had to have
passed the test of time; in this he consulted others. Each author didnt
have to be religious, but had to have dealt in a meaningful way with the great
issues of life and death. Each title had to be understandable by the commonly
educated reader, with the obvious exception of Elisabeth Schussler
Fiorenzas In Memory of Her.
Among his selections:
Scripture: Genesis, Job, David, Luke, John.
Fiction: Dante, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Sigrid Undset,
François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Alan
Paton, John Powers, OConnor (Edwin and Flannery).
Hagiography: Michael Walshs one-volume condensation
of Butlers quixotic four-volume Lives of the Saints and Robert
Ellsbergs eccentric All Saints, which includes John, Joan and
Jogues, but also Mozart, Van Gogh and Camus.
Spiritual writers: Augustine, Kempis, Cardinal Newman,
Thérèse of Lisieux, Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Religious and
secular intellectuals: Schweitzer, Teilhard, Rahner. Biographers and
autobiographers. Eight women. Three African-Americans. And lots of priests.
Supreme choice: Edward Steichens The Family of
Man, the volume commemorating the 1955 photographic exhibition of the same
title at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art. A happy reminder that not all
books are meant to be read.
Schroth frames his interesting observations on Steichen with a
continuing reference to the first meditation of the second week of The
Spiritual Exercises in which Ignatius Loyola called for a picture. Not
inappropriate, I admit, but I wonder if it shouldnt have been the other
way around. When it came to photography, Steichen didnt need help from
Loyola to be understood and appreciated. Loyola was the one who was enriched by
being associated with a photographer like Steichen who truly knows what a
picture is. Again, a supreme choice!
Overall, its an odd collection, but in a good sense. A
catholic as well as Catholic work. Obvious choices and indeed surprise choices.
He calls Shusaku Endos Silence one of the most depressing
novels Ive read -- but Ive read it three times.
Schroths book, on the other hand, is such a pleasure to
read. Its also a reminder of the pleasure of reading in general. Also, it
makes me want to review the occupants of my own bookshelves with a view to
making up a list of my own. In each of Schroths book descriptions,
theres something of a reflection, a stinger or a fervorino.
At the end of Schweitzer, theres a polemic on the
expensiveness of drugs needed by the poor. At the end of Jonathan Schells
The Fate of the Earth, theres a coda about weapon development,
from the blunt instrument Cain used to the so-called smart bombs of today. At
the end of Kempis, Schroth contrasted a young ad exec surrounded by the perks
of his rapid ascent in this world with Kempis description of the
execs possibly rapid descent in the next.
At the end of Fiorenzas In Memory of Her, As
long as women Christians are excluded from the breaking of the bread and
deciding their own spiritual welfare and commitment, ekklesia (the
kingdom) as the discipleship of equals will not be realized and the power of
the gospel will be greatly diminished.
With sadness Schroth concluded with Cardinal Newmans saying
that liberal education cant make persons better. If I believed that
for a moment, Id have to quit all my jobs of teaching, preaching, and
writing. Schroths opinion is that we grow morally by
confronting the virtues -- and vices -- in our fellow men and women.
Of course, whats a classic for one Christian isnt
necessarily a classic for another. One of the two books that almost made
Schroths list was Paul Johnsons History of Christianity
(1976). When that already-contracted-for manuscript arrived on my desk at
Macmillan in New York in 1975, I rejected it on the grounds that both author
and manuscript were bonkers. Lord Weidenfeld, the British publisher, was not
pleased. Within hours, even in its unread state, Athenaeum accepted the work
for publication. The rest has been publishing history. Oh well.
William Griffins latest book is a contemporary
translation of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
(HarperSanFrancisco).
National Catholic Reporter, February 1,
2002
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