October/November/December 2020
A People’s Tragedy: Studies in Reformation
Eamon Duffy
ISBN: 978-1472983855
Bloomsbury 2020
Hardback 272 pp £20.00
Pastoral Review bookshop £18.00
(To be published on 26 November 2020)
Nearly thirty years since the publication of The Stripping of the Altars, the effects of this ground-breaking study of the English Reformation are still being felt as a result of its positive appraisal of late medieval and early popular Catholic spiritual life in this country and its demonstration of the popularity of Catholic devotional practices, in spite of everything, until the later part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. While Duffy has been prolific ever since, the most controversial follow-up was his survey of the Catholic revival under Queen Mary, The Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. Perhaps the controversy is a sign that religious faith is not entirely marginalised.
Domestic Monastery
Ronald Rolheiser
ISBN: 978-0232534122
Darton, Longman & Todd 2019
Paperback 89 pp £6.99
Pastoral Review bookshop £6.30
I begin this review with a confession. I received this book just before Christmas, read it on a grey misty day, made some notes for review, and then put it aside. The Christmas festivities and work demands took up my attention from there, and then the Covid crisis hit. In many ways, this has proved providential. For if Fr Rolheiser’s new book was relevant BC (before Covid), it is essential reading AC (after Covid). His premise is simple: he hopes to persuade us that ‘monasticism’, ‘silent retreat’ and ‘spiritual seclusion’ are not just for a cloistered elite but are accessible and even essential for all, especially those with busy family and work lives. To this end, he weaves a short punchy text that is charmingly illustrated with old woodblock drawings and etchings (no references given, alas). Those familiar with Fr Rolheiser’s style already – straightforward and honest spiritual reflections founded on good learning and often delivering a punch at the end – will not be disappointed.
Every Tribe: Stories of Diverse Saints Serving a Diverse World
Sharon Prentis
ISBN: 978-0281080854
SPCK 2019
Paperback 160 pp £9.99
Pastoral Review bookshop £9.00
At a time when so much political leadership in the world is deeply flawed, it is good for Christians to be assertive in sharing the witness of people who have shown great holiness and virtue. We do this easily in relation to canonised saints – although perhaps less than we did in the past – but all Christians are able increasingly to share a common heritage of those across different traditions who speak powerfully of love and faith. Dr Sharon Prentis is an experienced Anglican priest with leading responsibilities for Black, Asian and ethnic minority affairs in the Church of England. We can share in a common heritage by learning more and being open to how God’s grace acts in the lives of men and women in every age and setting. Prentis in this short and accessible book looks at a selection of lives of saints and holy people aimed at reflecting the rich diversity of Christian communities, making use of a wide selection of contributors.
Outside the City
Intrepid Media
Available on DVD and to download from iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play
82 minutes
Leicester is known for its ethnic and cultural diversity, and the fast pace of life that comes with it, the busyness of city life and the need for different communities to negotiate what it means to live and work alongside each other – not least for different faith communities. This new film describes the life of the Trappist monks of Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire, a community ‘outside the city’. ‘Outside the city’ is, according to the letter to the Hebrews, where Christ died to make us holy with his blood (Hebr. 13.12).
This is by no means the first ‘monastery documentary’, but it is delightfully free from patronising commentaries of a presenter driven by the need to ‘explain’. Nick Hamer lets the monks speak for themselves, without apology for their life of prayer and work. This is a community of men who have lived with each other and most importantly before God, some of them for decades.
Pilgrims
Matthew Kneale
ISBN: 978-1786492371
Atlantic Books 2020
Hardback 344 pp £16.99
Pastoral Review bookshop £15.30
Despite the restrictions on travel during these months of pandemic, the interest and fascination with the idea of pilgrimage has not waned, even if many of these pilgrimages are by necessity virtual rather than actual. In a time when journeys are often beset with difficulty, reading about a very different and much more dangerous experience of travel may not be a bad thing.
Matthew Kneale’s latest novel uses a familiar format, the tales that a motley crowd of pilgrims tell each other as they are on their way to their destination, tales perhaps of the many and varied reasons why they set out in the first place and what they are seeking to find. Among those journeying to Rome in 1289 is Tom son of Tom who seeks to atone for the death of his much beloved cat and other things besides.
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
Kyle Harper
ISBN: 978-0691192062
Princeton University Press 2019
Paperback 440 pp £15.99
Pastoral Review bookshop £14.39
‘Of course, the plague pandemic was a natural disaster in much the same way as the destruction of a hurricane that erases a settlement built precariously overhanging the sea. The pandemic was an unintended conspiracy between wild nature and the constructed ecology of the empire.’
Writing over three years ago, this passage is Professor Harper’s judgement on what is known as the ‘Justinianic plague’, an early bubonic ‘Black Death’ which ravaged the late Roman empire in the sixth and seventh centuries. Kyle Harper’s monumental study re-examines a well-trodden path – the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – paying special attention to climate change and infectious diseases. His words, read in the summer of 2020, are chillingly prescient.
The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom
Stephen Tomkins
ISBN: 978-1473649101
Hodder and Stoughton 2020
Hardback 384 pp £20.00
Pastoral Review bookshop £18.00
Until comparatively recently Catholics in England and Wales were given in Catholic schools a thorough grounding in the sufferings of our forebears in penal times, ‘of dungeon, fire and sword’. This historical narrative has helped to shape the community, even if we probably reflect on it less than in the past; part of the reason for this is ecumenical sensitivity, a gut feeling that dwelling too much on the wounds of the past can impair their healing. The other side of this coin is that those born and bred as Catholics have not been taught very much about the sufferings in the Reformation period and afterwards of other Christians, whom in the past we would have been taught were ‘heretics’; the implication was that in contrast to the glorious martyrdom and heavenly triumph of Catholics, the Protestants killed in the reign of Queen Mary perhaps in some way deserved their fate.
Theology, Comedy, Politics
Marcus Pound
ISBN: 978-1506431628
Fortress Press 2019
Paperback 258 pp £12.99
Pastoral Review bookshop £11.70
Marcus Pound’s book is published in a series called Dispatches: Turning Points in Theology and Global Crises. Within this apocalyptic frame, theology and politics are firmly at home as disciplines that are used to tarrying with crisis. Comedy, however, seems like the ‘odd one in’ (to quote one of Pound’s key contemporary interlocutors for the book, Alenka Zupancic). So, as Pound writes in the preface, ‘What relevance has comedy for the global crises of modernity and the theological critique thereof?’
In order to answer this question Pound must suspend our assumptions about comedy’s relation to truth. This involves uncovering three major ‘elisions’ of comedy from classical thought, theology and liturgy, re-occurring through history. What accounts for the forgetfulness of the Christian tradition towards the various examples of intensively theological and social comic practices in the late Middle Ages? What happened to the risus paschalis (a tradition obliging parish priests to include a joke in the Easter Day homily), the comic portrayals of Christ in the York mystery plays, or the yearly conference organized by the University of Paris purely on the question of whether or not Jesus laughed? Pound outlines the presuppositions that have had the effect of screening out these Church-sanctioned comic feasts.
Michael A. Hayes 1957 - 2017
Michael A. Hayes 1957 - 2017
It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Rev. Professor Michael Hayes editor of the Pastoral Review.
Many friends and readers of the Pastoral Review and The Tablet will have been shocked and deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Michael Hayes early on Easter Saturday. Read More
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