Faith & Spirituality in Review

The Little Angel Released: A little book of inspiration, Christopher Gleeson sj, ATF Press.

Madonna readers will already have enjoyed Christopher's Gleeson gift for the
telling quotation and the mellifluous turn of expression. You continually find
yourself stopping to savour a striking thought that stands out from the
conversation. So it was a happy thought to select many of the piquant phrases
from his book, The Angel Released, and to set them in a little book, accompanied
with evocative photographs of faces, flowers and landscape. A book to rummage in at Christmas, as children used to rummage through their helping of Christmas pudding, looking for coins.
The quotations show the breadth of his reading and interest – ranging from
Timothy Radcliffe to Anne Sexton. The combination of sayings and images make it a good companion to prayer, especially in dry times.

 

Ignatius of Loyola, Miguel Berzosa Martínez, ATF Press.

Reading comics always seem a slightly disreputable thing to do. Perhaps reading comics evokes memories of being rebuked for reading them under the desk during maths classes, or exhortations to abjure them in favour of good literature like David Copperfield. But many of us still remember the excitement evoked by Mandrake or Prince Valiant when we first began to read letters as words.

So the idea of Jesuit comics is quixotic and engaging. Ignatius of Loyola is the English translation of a Spanish publication. It handles the early adventures of Ignatius particularly well, moving the action along in true comic book fashion and
making the most of every confrontation. Once Ignatius is settled in Rome as Jesuit General, it inevitably slows down a bit. The pictures are appropriately colourful and in your face.

The text balloons do ask a little more of the reader than do traditional comics, with their simple English phrases like Kpow! Kthump! and Kwack! Here Ignatius often speaks in full and improving sentences, like 'Oh, I feel so close now to my home, but I must be strong and not let myself be ruled by my feelings.'

This comic life of Ignatius is designed for young people, but I suspect that people brought up on Hotspur or Champion may well look guiltily around to see if they are observed, and then enjoy the story. They will find food for reflection.

 

Loreto in Australia, Mary Ryllis Clark, University of New South Wales Press.

Effective organisations are often like mountain streams – clear, limpid and effortlessly sustaining life. But look more deeply at them and their waters are a theatre of struggle and full of turbulence.

Mary Ryllis Clark's beautifully written account of the Loreto sisters in Australia suggests this image. It does full justice to the steady and inspiring work of the Congregation over 130 years and shows how many people's lives were blessed by it.

But the writer also pays full attention to the struggles in the history of the Congregation and its Australian branch. The life's work of its visionary founder and even her memory seemed annihilated by a papal edict. The surviving members of the congregation struggled to recover her vision and preserve her memory. In the first half of the twentieth century the move to unify the various institutes under a single rule that acknowledged the legacy of Mary Ward caused divisions within and between the Irish congregation and the Australian mission.

The remarkable thing is that the Loreto sisters of the time taught, administered and lived focused on their mission, while suffering silently.

Mary Ryllis Clark's history does justice to the many sisters who quietly carried on the work of the congregation, and gives rightful space to one decisively influential woman, Mother Gonzaga Barry. In 1875 she came with the first sisters to Ballarat, having already helped to shape the institute in Ireland. She dealt with church leaders and founded works around Australia. She was inspired by the memory of Mary Ward, and fatefully placed the Australian sisters under the Irish congregation in order to assure institutional stability. At the time, the leadership in Ireland sought union. The link with Ireland later caused great anguish when changed circumstances and a narrow vision in Ireland forgot Mary Ward and made a unified congregation seem dangerous.

The honesty of this book shows that the battle for Mary Ward's inheritance was later won, as was the cause of union. Generations of Australian women will be grateful that, despite all the provocations they endured, the Australian Sisters were able to keep their eyes firmly on what mattered – the glory of God and the good of the people whom they served.

 

The Riddle of Father Hackett: A life in Ireland and Australia, Brenda Niall, National Library of Australia.

Those of us who first knew Jesuits in schools and parishes find it hard to rid
ourselves of the conviction that their lives are uneventful. After all, teachers' lives
are by definition boring, while the rhythms of parish life are measured in
centuries and noted in births, marriages and deaths.

So the Xavier boys who met Fr William Hackett in 1922 would have assumed that
his world, too, had been confined to the classroom. But Brenda Niall's wonderful
biography disproves that impression. The riddle that the book seeks to untangle
is why a Jesuit who had been intimately involved with the Irish struggle for independence found himself in Australia at a critical time. Fr Hackett had known all the players in the Irish factions, cycled by night to secret meetings, and was regularly in dangerous situations. Many of his friends were executed, including Erskine Childers. To have found himself so far away in an ncomprehending
Australia was agonising.

Brenda Niall explores this central mystery of Hackett's life, puzzling at the deeper riddle of how his experience may have shaped his life in Australia. Archbishop Mannix looked to him as a constant companion. He was able to realise a dream that he had harboured for Ireland when he founded the Catholic Library in Melbourne.

Through this he became chaplain to the Campion Society whose
members helped shape the Catholic presence in public life for coming generations. They included Gerard Heffey, the editor of the Catholic Worker, and B A Santamaria. Ironically, the great enterprises he supported both in Ireland and in Australia ended in bitter division.

One of Fr Hackett's endearing qualities was his trust that even when it was absent, money would be found for good causes. He had a broad and confident vision of his library as inclusively Catholic at a time when the life of the mind was often regarded as dangerous rather than as good, and bought indefatigably.

Brenda Niall writes beautifully and searchingly about Fr Hackett. It is a must read about a man whose inner life was as eventful as his external life.

 

Stars, Life and Intelligence: Being a Darwinian and a believer, Terry Kelly, ATF Press.

Fr Terry Kelly, who has taught science in Jesuit schools for forty years,
encapsulates his life's work in this book. He considers from a scientist's
perspective the opposition between science and religion, focusing on the
challenges to faith that Darwin's theory of natural selection has provided,
particular through recent polemical writers like Richard Dawkins.

The haunting cover picture of a prophetic Darwin illustrates the seriousness of the question that he explores. He asks whether purposeful creation and natural selection can both be true, and argues in the face of many scientists and religious
people that 'a case can be made out for purposeful creation via natural selection'.

The book is of special interest because it does not begin by outlining the claims of religious faith, but takes the reader through the current state of knowledge about the origins and development of the universe, and particularly the science of life. In short chapters Fr Kelly deals with the origin of the cell, the beginnings of life and the development of human life. He then examines Darwin's theory of evolution and reflects on how we might understand the Christian God from an evolutionary perspective. In each chapter he raises questions for faith that the science provides and weighs briefly different theories that respond to these questions.

This is the work of a good teacher. The writing is clear and logical. It is well illustrated with diagrams and photographs throughout that help the scientific novice. Novices may find that the detail of the argument beyond them, but its general shape is clear.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of Stars, Life and Intelligence is less its detailed argument than the evidence it provides of a life spent in reflecting on the issues, and the writer's happy and confident approach to the questions he addresses. The book says loudly, 'The world is God's world. Do not fear to explore it and to ask questions'. This word is much needed in our day.