On Being Catholic.
By THOMAS HOWARD. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997. 263
pp. $12.95.
Reviewed by Philip Blosser, Lenoir-Rhyne College.
Readers unaquainted with the writings of Thomas Howard have little
inkling of the rich feast of insights and literary beauty and spiritual depth
that awaits them in this book. Neither
the title nor table of contents offers much of a clue as to what the book is
about, beyond the generalization: "on being Catholic."
A word of background is in order. Howard
first achieved notoriety in his native Evangelical world while professor of
English at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts in the early seventies.
A consummate master of English, his writings celebrated the sacramental
outlook of the Western tradition and the literary achievement of writers such as
C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. His
conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1985 rocked the Evangelical world, cost him
his job, and he now teaches at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts.
On Being Catholic is Howard's
first full-length book since becoming a Roman Catholic.
It contains a sustained meditation on what it means for a seasoned
Evangelical, who spent much of his professional life as an Anglican, to now be
Catholic. Howard refers to his work as an "apologia"; but
while it would not be inaccurate to classify it as a work in Catholic
apologetics, it has neither the tone nor style one often expects to find in such
works.
In the first place, a singular virtue of Howard's writing in this vein is
what Cardinal Law calls its "unremittingly positive and irenic"
quality. For Howard, to have become
Catholic is not to have ceased being "evangelical" in the richly
Christian sense of that word, but to have moved beyond the partial perspectives
of Protestantism to embrace the "glad tidings" to be found in the
amplitude of Catholic tradition, in the deeper meaning of Catholic piety, dogma,
spirituality, vision, and practice. It
is these "glad tidings" of Catholicism that Howard communicates
remarkably well, particularly to Evangelical Protestants (but also to many
Catholics), who may be surprised that he finds so much to be joyful about in the
Catholic tradition.
In the second place, there is the matter of Howard's style.
Whoever coined the expression "a picture is worth a thousand
words" must not have read Howard. Here
is a connoisseur of English who paints pictures with words as vivid as any of
the great masters painted with oils. For
example, in one place he argues that the Christian life isn't just a matter of
passively receiving grace, but hard work and discipline, like the years of
training endured by a dancer to achieve perfection.
But knowing how easily most of us recoil from such discipline, Howard
paints a scene worthy of Bruegel: "The rest of us, full of potato chips and
sour cream dips and nachos grande, must make shift to hobble about, wheezing and
grunting, hauling our tremulous torsos and abdomens in and out of cars and up
and down the stairs." Indeed.
And if the freedom of mastery demands years of discipline, just as faith
is hard work, this is perhaps nowhere more clearly illustrated than in Howard's
own mastery of English: years of training have yielded a breath-takingly agile
command of an extensive vocabulary that will have many readers reaching for a
dictionary. (What's the last time you used the word "insouciant,"
"ebullient," "tumid," or "termagant"?)
Howard is perhaps at his best in describing the sacramental or
incarnational aspect of Catholic life and practice.
Why all the smells and bells and ceremony?
Why not a more purely "spiritual" religion?
Howard has a keen sense of how we sooner or later give visible shape to
what is in our hearts. With
commonplace examples of birthdays, cakes, candles, and gifts (that recall his
magisterial book, Chance or the Dance?), he illustrates how we are
ceremonial creatures. We mark our
awareness of significance in a visible, external, concrete way.
The same is true of faith. Only,
Catholic worship is not an arbitrary abstraction.
From the beginning its essential rubrics were presecribed.
While the Book of Acts only alludes to "the breaking of bread,"
the shape of the liturgy, like the shape of catechesis, is clearly outlined from
the earliest sources of Church history. Howard
points out that if a pagan shopkeeper in ancient Smyrna had expressed the desire
to become a Christian, he would not have simply been given John 3:16 and asked
to invite Jesus into his heart; rather, he would have been invited to meet the
bishop, become a catechumen, and start participating in the weekly liturgy.
The Church is neither secondary nor incidental to the Gospel, according
to Catholicism; rather, it is itself part of the Gospel's "glad
tidings."
Not only does Howard clearly explain the essential components of the
Mass. He also anticipates the
befuddlement felt by many non-Catholics upon arriving at a Catholic church, and
takes time to introduce the customs and sacramentals with which they may not be
familiar. His discussion of the protocols of the holy-water font,
genuflecting, and kneeling to pray upon entering the sanctuary, as ways of
physically disposing ourselves before God's majesty, are beautiful and moving,
and could be read with profit by many Catholics for whom these matters have
become so routine as to be thoughtless.
Particularly helpful for the Evangelical is Howard's discussion of the
many ways in which the Gospel is clearly and routinely presented to Catholics in
various parts of the Mass--in everything from the greeting, penitential rite,
Gloria, and the collects, to the scripture readings, the homily, creed,
intercessions, prefaces to the Sanctus, the Eucharistic Prayers, the Agnus Dei,
and so forth. Howard is well aware
of Evangelical doubts about all this, fueled by the typical muteness of many
Catholics when asked about their faith, in contrast to the typical loquacity of
most Evangelicals about theirs. He
confronts these doubts with a poignant scenario in which he imagines his
octogenarian Evangelical mother asking an old Catholic parishoner named Sarah
"Are you saved?" Sarah
draws a blank. "Well--are you
born again?" Sarah is
confused. And just as his mother is concluding that her worst fears
about Catholics seem to be confirmed, Howard steps in and leads the two ladies
over to a crucifix on the wall and asks Sarah who that is. Jesus. Who is
he? The Son of God. What is he doing? Suffering
death. Why?
For our sins. And suddenly Howard's mother has heard Sarah make a
confession that qualifies for the category "saved."
If Howard is gifted with a particular sensitivity for bridging
Evangelical and Catholic differences, he is no less sensitive to the differences
between traditional and contemporary Catholicism.
Especially coming to Catholicism with aesthetic sensibilities honed
within the Anglican communion, he is keenly aware that the "chant and the
polyphony of Allegri would seem to stand at a remote pole from some of the
candied ditties heard now and again at Mass."
But God will not carp. "The
Infant God is still there in the manger, notwithstanding the braying of asses to
the contrary." The Mass still
goes on. A "strange
alchemy" goes to work on our mortal worship as it ascends to the Throne,
says Howard, and "if it has been offered with humility, integrity, and
wholeheartedness, it will be received by the One on the Throne as pure and
just."
Some of the best chapters in the book are devoted to those issues, which,
from an Evangelical point of view, constitute perhaps the major problem
of Catholicism--the notion that others may share with Christ in the mediation of
God's grace, whether that mediation takes the form of prayers to saints, the
intercessory prayers of the saints, the instrumentality of Mary as "coredemptrix"
or "mediatrix," or even "offering up" one's own earthly
suffering in "reparation" for the sins of others.
Howard navigates the often perilous waters of these most misunderstood of
Catholic issues with grace, removing confusions, clarifying obscurities, and
bridging gaps between Evangelical and Catholic assumptions with disarming
agility. ("If I ask you for
your prayers for me, you do not say, 'Why are you asking me?
I'm not a comediator.'")
His description of the Rosary as a "tarrying" in
prayer-partnership with Mary is unspeakably winsome and illuminating.
His argument that a king's own glory is augmented, rather than
diminished, by his elevation of members of his court (like the Blessed Mother)
to places of high honor, is compelling. The
book is a rare gift for Evangelicals, and no less to Catholics, and to anyone
seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to be Catholic.
Philip Blosser
Lenoir-Rhyne College
Hickory, North Carolina
Copyright © 1998 New Oxford Review. All rights reserved.
Used with permission. August 22, 2005.
This review was originally published by New Oxford Review (November,
1998), pp. 47-48.