Faith & Spirituality in Review

Love and Politics: The Revolutionary Frederic Ozanam, John Honner. David Lovell Publishing, 128 pp, pb, rrp $18.95.

Frederic Ozamam remains one of the most influential Catholics of the nineteenth century. He was an academic who thought long and hard about the cultural and religious movements of his time, a writer who tried to influence the direction France took during revolutionary times, and the founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

In this splendid short book John Honner reflects on the work of Frederic Ozanam, finding rich connections between Ozanam’s France and today’s Australia. He argues that in order to be faithful to Ozanam’s spirit, Catholic agencies must retain personal contact with the poor and avoid becoming simply an instrument of government welfare policy. We must also reflect on the conditions of Australian life and how we as a nation treat the neglected in our society. Charity must temper justice but justice still matters.

John Honner has worked with Catholic charities. His experience leads him to ask is whether there is any place for charity within welfare, and whether governments can be inspired by love as well as by social justice. Agencies face the challenge to be professional in helping the poor. But they must not allow the structures of accountability to remove their gift of compassion. This resolution is never easy.

The strength of Love and Politics is the vivid evocation of the context in which Frederic Ozanam worked. It was a time of social change when the Industrial Revolution had made many people destitute, had enslaved others to machines, while enriching factory owners. Traditional ways of supporting the poor were overwhelmed. But there was fierce debate whether governments and business should support the poor.

Add a stew of political opinions ranging from authoritarianism to revolutionary communism, the aftermath of the French Revolution and a church coming to terms with loss of its position in French society, and you can see that it was a difficult world in which to see and to act clearly.

John Honner describes Ozanam as revolutionary. His revolutionary gift was to avoid easy solutions. He defended liberty, but as a means to love. He wanted to work within the church but believed in the autonomy of the laity in political life. He believed that governments had a duty to the poor, but did not believe that welfare was enough.

At the heart of his approach was the need for face-to-face engagement with the poor as human beings. He believed ultimately in love. His discovery dated from his days as a university student when, under the influence of Rosalie Rendu, he began to work with the poor. He found his work central in his own faith.

In placing Ozanam within his context, John Honner makes seemingly pious statements come alive. Ozanam, for example, gave a higher priority in his Society to the spiritual growth of its members than to its work of charity. This priority can easily be seen as spiritual selfishness.

But Ozanam’s sharp point is that when we engage in service of the poor, our service easily becomes hard and heartless unless our love is nourished. We become vulnerable to the temptation.

In this, as in other respects, Frederic Ozanam speaks very directly to contemporary Australia.
Andrew Hamilton

Dominican Approaches to Education, Gabrielle Kelly OP & Kevin Saunders OP, ATF Press, 2007, pb, rrp $38.00.

This handsome volume of essays is the second book in the Dominican Series published by the Australian Theological Foundation.

The volume treats both of the principles and the practice of Dominican education. It brings together articles by many well-known Dominicans sisters and brothers from around the world.

One of the features of the book is that it offers a thoroughly catholic view typical of the Dominican spirit. Many different approaches to theology and to the world sit hospitably together under the wide umbrella of Catholicism. The theoretical section deals well with the sources of the Dominican spirit in the central figures Dominic, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. But it also adds more edgy sources like Catherine of Siena, Meister Eckhart and Bartolome de las Casas.

Thinking about principles is always bringing out things new. Two of the most stimulating essays are by Albert Nolan and Timothy Radcliffe. Albert Nolan writes vividly, ‘I can remember the day I stopped in my tracks with the thought: Why do I have to teach people answers to questions they never ask? What about the very serious faith questions that they do have, but are not given an opportunity to ask?’ His solution is to do theology in the living context, in the public streets. Radcliffe pursues the same line of reflection when speaking of communicating faith to the young. He begins by studying where youth are, and then asking the hard questions.

These questions are taken up in the practical section. Contributors speak out of familiarity with Dominican education for the vulnerable and in situations of oppression, and goes back to the roots of the educational enterprises in wealthier societies.

The impression these studies give together is of good Dominican scholars who are deeply familiar with their tradition recognising their call to go out to the margins of culture and society. They are comfortable being edgy. We are indebted to the Dominicans for the handsome volume that asserts the importance of the Dominican educational tradition in a changing culture.

The Good Sams Cookbook: 150 years of perfecting recipes, Sisters of the Good Samaritan, St Pauls Publications, 2007, 188 pp, pb, rrp $19.95.

The Sisters of the Good Samaritan, affectionately known as the Good Sams, have put together 150 recipes to celebrate their founding 150 years ago. If you like cooking or eating you are sure to find something appealing here: the golden syrup dumplings of your childhood, scones that will never let you down, or wicked desserts like Danish rum cream with hot raspberry sauce.

It is refreshing to read recipes that make no apologies for having been around for a long time. The recipe for Granny Truss’s biscuits, for instance, has been handed down through generations since their namesake arrived in Australia in the 1880s.

For every ‘Aussie’ recipe concocted from tinned pineapple and cream of chicken soup there is one like gold rush cake, Armenian nutmeg cake or Philipino chicken and rice soup that celebrates our cultural diversity.

On the more traditional side, Violet Crumble biscuits contain those iconic ingredients—Violet Crumble bars and condensed milk—in addition to shortbread biscuits and milk chocolate. Although it might seem odd to make biscuits out of biscuits, children won’t be able to resist this one.