Paulist Press Research Articles

366 BOOK REVIEWS Faith in the Face of Doubt. Ed. by JoHN P. KEATING. New York: Paulist Press, 1968. Pp. 173. $1.45. This book is a collection of eight talks given at the Catholic student center at the University of California at Berkeley. The five contributors are Jesuits. They make a gallant effort to show an understanding and sympathy with students whose studies and environment may breed a challenge to their faith. Generally, the case for faith is ably stated. But, to create sympathy with a critical audience, some uncritical and challengeable assertions are made. I quote a few. Fr. L. Patrick Carroll writes: " Biblical criticism has demythologized the historical facts related to the gospels and reduced much of our knowledge of the man Jesus Christ to the fact that a particular group of people in a particular time experienced something that dynamically orientated their lives, and this ' something ' was Jesus Christ." (p. 78) We are not told whose biblical criticism or which historical facts. Is such a sentence capable of leading a young man from doubt to certainty? Fr. John A. Coleman, writing on grace and St. Augustine's reply to Pelagius, says: "St. Augustine reaffirmed man's entire dependence on the gracious God. Unfortunately, Augustine muddied the waters by making grace seem like a thing. At times he portrays God as very choosy about his friends, demanding of man an abject, infantile stance of dependence." (p. 96) Yet, strangely enough, it is from these " muddied " waters that the Council of Orange draws its teaching on grace. The same author, speaking of the change God brings about in us, says: " Some theologians choose to call this change in us by the name of grace." It is not merely some theologians but the Church itself that uses this word to describe the healing and complete readjustment of our nature which God brings about. The Church does not use this word to describe only " God'~ loving initiative, respectful of our freedom." Grace is not just God's graciousness. (Cf. Denz. 821, can. 11 on justification.) Is it fair for Fr. Roger J. Guettinger to suggest that in I Cor. 6 :16 " St. Paul is saying among other things, that the sexual act-even when it is performed with a prostitute-can express either love or something less than love and can be a source of either growth or dehumanization "? If St. Paul values fornication so positively, why does he say: "Fugite fornicationem "? Several statements are unfairly critical of the Church and of its members. Fr. L. Patrick Carroll, writing of the challenges of non-belief, says: " The men who challenge or ignore religion are not naive, or sophistic, or even uninformed. They are honest men who know much about religion in general and Catholicism in particular. We have fostered whatever misconceptions they entertain." (p. 117) Has the Church preached a misconception of God's true self? There is still room for the sin of rejecting the light, and BOOK REVIEWS 367 especially among intellectuals whose temptation is pride. Indeed, it is strange that in this book nobody mentioned the need of humility, except in the act of ridiculing St. Augustine for demanding " an abject, infantile stance of dependence." In a book on faith, even to college students, one would have liked to hear quoted: " unless you become as little children." In the same essay it is stated that: "we must admit the obvious morality of many non-believers and must assent to the fact that their approach has often flowered in more concrete loving activity in the world than has been furnished by a trans-temporal Christian faith." (p. 121) But, why should we foul our own nest in this way? After all, it is God's Church. Has Fr. Carroll reflected on the complete failure of the unbelieving world even to tackle the problem of poverty and disease? Is it just to make such a statement without mentioning the martyrs of charity in the Catholic Church? I put these questions not to damn a book of many merits but to express my disagreement with these loose and inaccurate ways of speaking. Perhaps they gain the passing sympathy of a...

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