Gerry O'Hanlon , SJ, The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis. A Synodal Catholic Church in Ireland? (review)

Abstract

his faith, refusing to affiliate with mockers, dissenters, or pagans. As Pierce points out, the Portrait presents Stephen’s short-lived but intense period of post-retreat devotion with ‘honesty and sensitivity’ (74). Readers can only speculate where Stephen’s journey would take him, but Pierce sees the mature Joyce ‘inside the albeit outer orbit of the Church…with goodwill in his heart’(103). Or, as he says at the book’s close, ‘We [readers] are reminded of Shakespeare’s “dual residence”, only in Joyce’s case he is both inside and outside the faith of his fathers’ (187). His treatment of Joyce’s Jesuit affiliation is less precise. He finds Joyce’s famous distinction between his Catholicism and his Jesuitness to be ‘arcane’ (71), but I think it has substance. The two intersect, of course, but I see Joyce associating the Jesuits more with his education than his faith. Pierce rightly points out that Stephen conceives of Catholicism as ‘his mother’s religion’ (99); yet the Portrait repeatedly links the Jesuits with his father. His teachers share many of Simon Dedalus’s virtues and vices, and in Joyce’s life they followed the same relationship arc: youthful separation, later appreciation, and a lifelong connection that ebbed and flowed, but was never broken. Pierce makes one small mistake in referring to St Aloysius Gonzaga, whose name Joyce took at confirmation, as a Jesuit priest (71): he was an unordained scholastic, whose youth is significant since it makes him one of the order’s ‘boy saints’, with whom schoolboys like Joyce could identify. On the same subject, I would suggest St Aloysius and St Patrick as worthier candidates for Joyce’s ‘favourite saint’ than Pierce’s choice of St Thomas Aquinas. The latter might have been Stephen’s patron, but not his creator’s, at least according to Joyce’s friend in Paris, Jacques Mercanton. Finally, when Pierce considers the Portrait as ‘profoundly inner-directed’, he credits George Moore’s The Lake for inspiring Joyce. But surely its author’s twelve years of Jesuit education also had much to do with the Portrait’s deeply introspective nature, and its testing of all public values ‘in the only crucible of authentic life’ it recognises, ‘namely the privacy of conscience’ (81). These are small matters, however. I very much benefited from reading Pierce’s book and I would have no hesitation including it in a university class or recommending it to those wanting to understand and appreciate the Portrait more deeply. James Pribek SJ is Associate Professor at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 346 Autumn 2020: Book Reviews Gerry O’Hanlon, SJ, The Quiet Revolution of Pope Francis. A Synodal Catholic Church in Ireland? (Dublin: Messenger Publications; revised edition, 2019), 168 pages. Motivated by commitment to the Gospel and possessed of both scholarship and literary skill, Gerry O’ Hanlon, former provincial of the Irish Jesuits, sets out to give life to the reform agenda of Pope Francis. He has written a book which could prove to be a catalyst for the renewal of the Church in Ireland. In an Address given in October 2015, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis said that what is appropriate in the third millennium is a ‘synodal Church’ which requires decentralisation, open debate and consultation. Collegiality needs to be present at all levels of the Church which means more authority for national and regional conferences with some share in local Church governance given to the baptised laity – the ‘voice of the faithful’. The Quiet Revolution was first published just before the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland in September 2018. This revised edition was published one year later. The book is divided into four parts. First, the current problems in the Church, including the reality of post-Catholic Ireland are presented. Next the vision of Pope Francis to rebuild the Church – his ‘quiet revolution’ – is outlined. Thirdly, emerging issues of teaching and governance, including the role of the laity, are examined. Finally, the question of how we in Ireland might respond is discussed. A gradual centralisation of the Church has taken place over centuries, but especially...