Sex Abuse and Episcopal and Papal Cover-Up: What to Do?

As a Canadian (as well, of course, as a man of heroic modesty and saintly humility) I am constitutionally averse to promoting my own work, but if there is any moment where it might be helpful to people, now is it. 

The McCarrick report came out of Rome this week. I have been interviewed about it already and asked to write about it. The first article came out this morning in the Catholic Herald. More will follow, there and likely elsewhere. 

The question I have already been asked by editors is this: what can be done about the catastrophically broken system of governance and episcopal appointment in the Church? 

My answers are the same as those I began giving more than a decade ago: the closed system of papal appointment and promotion must be destroyed. Not tinkered with, moderately reformed, mildly changed, slightly altered: destroyed. Blown up. Annihilated. Cremated, and its ashes fired out of a space cannon to the dark side of Saturn or Jupiter.  

That system, people must come to learn, is a total novelty anyway, scarcely a century old. The idea that it is some longstanding part of sacred and holy Tradition is a pernicious fantasy that must itself now die. Only with the 1917 code of canon law is the claim--the novel and wicked claim--made that the pope of Rome has the right to appoint all the world's bishops. That claim is so staggering, so modernist, so untraditional, so without theological justification, that the eminent historian Eamon Duffy has rightly called it a coup d'Eglise. 

What must also die is the even worse fantasy that the current system is somehow required by the claims of Vatican I (repeated verbatim at Vatican II) that "universal jurisdiction" of the pope of Rome requires him to appoint bishops universally. That is nonsense, and the easiest proof of that is the existence of the Eastern Catholic Churches, most of whose bishops are not in fact appointed by the pope but elected by their own synods. So the current system is neither required nor any longer defensible. Indeed, it is a millstone around the neck of the Church: either we kill it or it will continue to kill us all. 

What might or should replace it? Synodal election is the best system to my mind. I argued this out in some detail in my Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power, published early last year. Have a look and let me know if you can think of a better way forward. 

On Receiving--or Not--the Great Schoolman Thomas Aquinas

One of the most fascinating books I read in the last decade was and remains Marcus Plested's Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, about which I interviewed him on this blog. It must surely be counted as a key piece of scholarship in dismantling the bogus and tendentious tales told by Orthodox apologists about the Big Bad Schoolmen, and in that way serving as "ecumenical scholarship" of the most precious sort. 

Plested now teams up with the indefatigable Matthew Levering to bring us, early next year, The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas. The book contains several chapters on Eastern, Byzantine, and Orthodox responses to Aquinas in a variety of different historical contexts--along with many other riches. About this book the publisher further tells us this: 

The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas provides a comprehensive survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years.This Handbook will serve as a necessary primer for everyone who wishes to study Aquinas's thought and/or the history of theology and philosophy since Aquinas's day. Part I considers the late-medieval receptions of Aquinas among Catholics and Orthodox. Part II examines sixteenth-century Western receptions of Aquinas (Protestant and Catholic), followed by a chapter on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Orthodox reception. Part III discusses seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic receptions, and Part IV surveys eighteenth- and nineteenth-century receptions (Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic). Part V focuses on the twentieth century and takes into account the diversity of theological movements in the past century as well as extensive philosophical treatment. The final section unpicks contemporary systematic approaches to Aquinas, covering the main philosophical and theological themes for which he is best known. With chapters written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this volume provides a valuable touchstone regarding the developments that have marked the past seven centuries of Christian theology.

Cold War Mary: Ideologies, Politics, and Marian Devotional Culture

I confess that I have long found the myth of Fatima among Catholics to be impossible to take seriously for reasons I have written about on here and elsewhere. It is so clearly a species of illusion in the strict Freudian sense (that is, as an infantile wish-fulfilment) that I am surprised the great man of Vienna did not feel moved to use it as Exhibit A for his Future of an Illusion. Any idea that the Mother of God talks in the hectoring and quasi-narcissistic fashion she is reported to have in 1917 is as impossible to believe as is the idea that her "message" had nothing to do with "Red scares" of the time, a thesis I expect to receive some attention when a new book is published next year: Cold War Mary: Ideologies, Politics, and Marian Devotional Culture (Leuven University Press, 2021), 432pp. 

About this forthcoming collection, the publisher gives us these details: 

One hardly known but fascinating aspect of the Cold War was the use of the holy Virgin Mary as a warrior against atheist ideologies. After the Second World War, there was a remarkable rise in the West of religiously inflected rhetoric against what was characterised as "godless communism". The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church not only urged their followers to resist socialism, but along with many prominent Catholic laity and activist movements they marshaled the support of Catholics into a spiritual holy war. In this book renowned experts address a variety of grassroots and Church initiatives related to Marian politics, the hausse of Marian apparitions during the Cold War period, and the present-day revival of Marian devotional culture. By identifying and analysing the militant side of Mary in the Cold War context on a global scale for the first time, Cold War Mary will attract readers interested in religious history, history of the Cold War, and twentieth-century international history.

Contributors: Michael Agnew (McMaster University), Marina Sanahuja Beltran (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), William A. Christian, Jr. (Independent, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), Deirdre de la Cruz (University of Michigan), Agnieszka Halemba (University of Warsaw), Thomas Kselman (University of Notre Dame), Peter Jan Margry (University of Amsterdam / Meertens Institute), Katharine Massam (University of Divinity, Melbourne), David Morgan (Duke University), Konrad Siekierski (King's College London), Tine van Osselaer (University of Antwerp), Robert Ventresca (Western University Canada), Daniel Wojcik (University of Oregon) and Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz (University of Kansas)

Russian Conservatism

It is striking but not surprising that we have both president and patriarch pictured on the cover of a book that was published in 2019 in hardcover, and in the spring of next year will come out in paperback: Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2019/2021), 300pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Russian Conservatism examines the history of Russian conservative thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. As Paul Robinson shows, conservatism has made an underappreciated contribution to Russian national identity, to the ideology of Russian statehood, and to Russia's social-economic development. Robinson charts the contributions made by philosophers, politicians, and others during the Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. Looking at cultural, political, and social-economic conservatism in Russia, he discusses ideas and issues of more than historical interest. Indeed, what Russian Conservatism demonstrates is that such ideas are helpful in interpreting Russia's present as well as its past and will be influential in shaping Russia's future, for better or for worse, in the years to come.

Through Robinson's research we can now understand how Russian conservatives have continually proposed forms of cultural, political, and economic development seen as building on existing traditions, identity, forms of government, and economic and social life, rather than being imposed on the basis of abstract theory and foreign models.

Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology

I have often commented on here and elsewhere over the last five years or so how fascinating and relentless is the retelling of Crusades history in our time. I am hard-pressed to think of other areas where the historiography is so controverted so regularly if not continuously. Adding to what we know of this period is a hardcover version of a book that came out in 2017 but the paperback will appear in 2021: M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology (Cornell University Press, April 2021), 376pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Throughout the history of the Crusades, liturgical prayer, masses, and alms were all marshaled in the fight against the Muslim armies. Invisible Weapons is about the prayers and liturgical rituals that were part of the battle for the faith. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin tells the story of the greatest collective religious undertaking of the Middle Ages, putting front and center the ways in which Latin Christians communicated their ideas and aspirations for crusade to God through liturgy, how liturgy was deployed in crusading, and how liturgy absorbed ideals or priorities of crusading. By connecting medieval liturgical books with the larger narrative of crusading, Gaposchkin allows us to understand a crucial facet in the culture of holy war.

Women of the Soviet Catacombs

Early next year, will see the publication in English translation of Women of the Catacombs: Memoirs of the Underground Orthodox Church in Stalin's Russia, trans. W.L. Daniel, with an introduction by the late Aleksandr Men (Northern Illinois University Press, March 2021), 252pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The memoirs presented in Women of the Catacombs offer a rare close-up account of the underground Orthodox community and its priests during some of the most difficult years in Russian history. The catacomb church in the Soviet Union came into existence in the 1920s and played a significant part in Russian national life for nearly fifty years. Adherents to the Orthodox faith often referred to the catacomb church as the "light shining in the dark." Women of the Catacombs provides a first-hand portrait of lived religion in its social, familial, and cultural setting during this tragic period.

Until now, scholars have had only brief, scattered fragments of information about Russia's illegal church organization that claimed to protect the purity of the Orthodox tradition. Vera Iakovlevna Vasilevskaia and Elena Semenovna Men, who joined the church as young women, offer evidence on how Russian Orthodoxy remained a viable, alternative presence in Soviet society, when all political, educational, and cultural institutions attempted to indoctrinate Soviet citizens with an atheistic perspective. Wallace L. Daniel's translation not only sheds light on Russia's religious and political history, but also shows how two educated women maintained their personal integrity in times when prevailing political and social headwinds moved in an opposite direction.

Simeon Frank's Unknowable Ontology

Simeon (Semyon) Frank remains a fascinating figure from the so-called Silver Age of Russian letters. I have noticed an upsurge of interest in him over the past decade or so as more of his works are translated and studied, including the publication this year of his The Unknowable: An Ontological Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, trans. Boris Jakim (Angelico Press, 2020), 346pp. 

About this book and its author the publisher tells us this:

The Unknowable is arguably the greatest Russian philosophical work of the twentieth century. In its density and profundity it is comparable to Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth and Sergius Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb. In 1937 Frank described The Unknowable as “the best and most profound thing which I have so far written.” The Unknowable was the culmination of Frank’s intellectual and spiritual development, the boldest and most imaginative of all his writings, containing a synthesis of epistemology, ontology, social philosophy, religious philosophy, and personal spiritual experience: the soul transcends outward to knowledge of other souls, thereby gaining knowledge of itself, becoming itself for the first time; and the soul transcends inward to gain knowledge of God, acquiring for the first time stable, certain being in this knowledge.  

S. L. FRANK (1877–1950) was one of the leading Russian philosophers of the twentieth century. Some authorities consider him to be the most outstanding Russian philosopher of any age. His active philosophical career spanned the half-century from 1902 to 1950. Over the course of this period he produced seven book-length treatises on philosophy, as well as several long philosophical essays, in addition to a mass of articles and reviews. When young, he took part in a Marxist group and was arrested and banned from major Russian cities. Yet, like a number of other Russian thinkers, he was not satisfied with Marxism and turned first to Idealism and then to religious philosophy. In 1922, along with other major ideological opponents of the Communist State, Frank was expelled from the Soviet Union. He worked in exile until his death in London in 1950.

In Praise of Maps and Atlases

Every semester for more than a decade I have made regular use of maps in my classes, especially those devoted to Muslim-Christian relations both ancient and modern. I am an unapologetic believer that understanding the lay of the land--noticing, e.g., where the river valleys are, or mountain ranges, etc.--is crucial to understanding much of the history. 

In that light, I am looking forward to getting my hands on Christianity: A Historical Atlas by Alec Ryrie with maps by Malcolm Swanston (Belknap/Harvard UP, October 2020), 224 pages + 121 color maps, 18 illus.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

With over two billion practicing believers today, Christianity has taken root in almost all parts of the globe. Its impact on Europe and the Americas in particular has been fundamental. Through more than one hundred beautiful color maps and illustrations, Christianity traces the history of the religion, beginning with the world of Jesus Christ. From the consolidation of the first Christian empire—Constantine’s Rome—to the early Christian states that thrived in Ireland, Ethiopia, and other regions of the Roman periphery, Christianity quickly proved dynamic and adaptable.

After centuries of dissemination, strife, dogmatic division, and warfare in its European and Near Eastern heartland, Christianity conquered new worlds. In North America, immigrants fleeing persecution and intolerance rejected the established Church, and in time revivalist religions flourished and spread. Missionaries took the Christian message to Latin America, Africa, and Asia, bringing millions of new converts into the fold.

Christianity has served as the inspiration for some of the world’s finest monuments, literature, art, and architecture, while also playing a major role in world politics and history, including conquest, colonization, conflict, and liberation. Despite challenges in the modern world from atheism and secularism, from scandals and internal divisions, Christianity continues to spread its message through new technologies while drawing on a deep well of history and tradition.

Voting about God

I noted this book on here many years ago when it first came out, but this year we have a papaerback edition of Ramsay MacMullen's Voting about God in Early Church Councils (Yale University Press, 2020), 182pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

In this study, Ramsay MacMullen steps aside from the well-worn path that previous scholars have trod to explore exactly how early Christian doctrines became official. Drawing on extensive verbatim stenographic records, he analyzes the ecumenical councils from A.D. 325 to 553, in which participants gave authority to doctrinal choices by majority vote.

The author investigates the sometimes astonishing bloodshed and violence that marked the background to church council proceedings, and from there goes on to describe the planning and staging of councils, the emperors' role, the routines of debate, the participants’ understanding of the issues, and their views on God’s intervention in their activities. He concludes with a look at the significance of the councils and their doctrinal decisions within the history of Christendom. 

Habsburg History

Eastern Christians, especially some of those we today call, or who call themselves, Ukrainians, were for a very long time bound up with the fortunes of the Habsburgs, not least in Austrian Galicia. Galician history, as I indicate at the link, is itself fascinating, not least as told by Larry Wolff, and Robert Magosci and Christopher Hann. 

Habsburg history takes place on a much wider front, of course--indeed, a global one, and is even more interesting. It is an area I have long wanted to read more of, and now I have new incentive to do so thanks to the wonderful London Review of Books, in its 24 September 2020 edition, where we find a laudatory review of a new book: Martin Rady, The Habsburgs: to Rule the World (Basic Books, 2020), 416pp.

About this new book the publisher tells us this:

In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built -- and then lost -- over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in just a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. The Habsburgs continued to dominate Central Europe through the First World War.

Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. The Habsburgs is the definitive history of a remarkable dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world.

The Deceptions of Desire

Regular readers of this blog, and especially my book Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power, will be aware of how indebted I am to the Spanish Jesuit priest, theologian, and psychoanalyst Carlos Dominguez-Morano and his landmark and brilliant book Belief After Freud. That book remains, far and away, the most theologically sophisticated, compelling, and important engagement of Freud for decades. 

Well, to my enormous excitement, I see that Lexington Books is bringing out another of his books in translation next month: The Myth of Desire: Sexuality, Love, and the Self, trans. Veronica Polo Torok (Lexington, November 2020), 254pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

In The Myth of Desire: Sexuality, Love, and the Self, Carlos Domínguez-Morano draws on psychoanalysis to explore the broad and complex reality of the affective-sexual realm encompassed by the term desire, a concept that propels individual aspirations, pursuits, and life endeavors. Domínguez-Morano takes a global perspective in order to introduce a methodology, examine the present sociocultural determinations affecting desire, review the main stages in the evolution of desire, and reflect on affective maturity. Domínguez-Morano further explores the five basic expressions of desire: falling in love and being a couple, homosexuality, narcissism and self-esteem, friendship, and the derivative of desire by way of sublimation. Scholars of psychology, philosophy, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Authors

Morwenna Ludlow is well known among patristics scholars, not least for her book Gregory of Nyssa, which I profitably read many years ago. She has a new book just out on Kindle, and set for November release in hardback: Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors (Oxford University Press, 2020), 288pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Ancient authors commonly compared writing with painting. The sculpting of the soul was also a common philosophical theme. Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors takes its starting-point from such figures to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft. The ancient concept of craft (ars, techne) spans 'high' or 'fine' art and practical or applied arts. It unites the beautiful and the useful. It includes both skills or practices (like medicine and music) and productive arts like painting, sculpting and the composition of texts. By using craft as a guiding concept for understanding fourth Christian authorship, this book recovers a sense of them engaged in a shared practice which is both beautiful and theologically useful, which shapes souls but which is also engaged in the production of texts. It focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nysa) and John Chrysostom, all of whom were trained in rhetoric. Through a detailed examination of their use of two particular literary techniques--ekphrasis and prosōpopoeia--it shows how they adapt and experiment with them, in order to make theological arguments and in order to evoke a response from their readership.

Sadomasochism and Pseudo-Christian Culture

At the Other Place, you will find some thoughts on sadomasochism and its dynamics in a Christian context. 

Saving Russian Iconography

At the end of this month will emerge a paperback edition of a lovely, important, fascinating book first published several years ago. For all those interested in Russian history, and in iconography, this book needs a place in your library: Irina Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography, trans. Paul Grenier (Paraclete Press, 2020), 224pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

This dramatic history recounts the story of an aspect of Russian culture that fought to survive throughout the 20th century: the icon. Russian iconography kept faith alive in Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. As monasteries and churches were ruined, icons destroyed, thousands of believers killed or sent to Soviet prisons and labor camps, a few courageous iconographers continued to paint holy images secretly, despite the ever-present threat of arrest. Others were forced to leave Russia altogether, and while living abroad, struggled to preserve their Orthodox traditions. Today we are witness to a renaissance of the Russian icon, made possible by the sacrifices of this previous generation of heroes.

Ministry After Freud

One of Freud's longest and closest friendships was with Oskar Pfister, a Swiss Reformed pastor (discussed briefly here) who immediately saw the pastoral applicability of psychoanalytic techniques. Pfister visited Freud and befriended his entire family in Vienna over many years. It was perhaps with him in mind that Freud spoke of the ideal psychoanalyst as being neither a priest nor a physician, but instead a "secular pastoral worker." (That did not stop numerous Catholic--mainly Jesuit--priests from becoming analysts, as I documented in part here.)

But then Freud published Future of an Illusion, and inadvertently alienated most Jews and Christians--needlessly, as I have argued in a variety of places (including on here) over the years, and will argue at much greater length and detail in a book I'm working on, "Theology After Freud," which will doubtless get finished in fifty years or after my death, whichever comes first. For Freud is in fact the most useful adjunct theology could have for his clear-eyed efforts to diagnose and destroy illusions and idolatry which afflict us all, and often are bound up together in most ideologies, including those afflicting Catholic Christianity today. 

Pfister, as it turns out, was not alone in finding Freud useful for pastoral ministry. Along comes a new edition of a book which documents how Protestant pastors in this country found him helpful: Allison Stokes, Ministry After Freud (Wipf and Stock, 2020), 264pp. 

About this new book (originally published by Abingdon in 1985, apparently) the publisher tells us this:

Ministry After Freud tells the fascinating story of the impact of Freud's depth psychological discoveries on the practice of American Protestant ministry. It focuses on the lives and work of leaders such as Elwood Worcester, Anton Boisen, Flanders Dunhar, Smiley Blanton, Norman Vincent Peale, Seward Hiltner, and Paul Tillich, who were pioneers in the Religion and Health Movement, which brought together religion and psychology in healing ministry, and greatly influenced the practice of pastoral care and counseling. Never before chronicled and described, this Movement paralleled the Social Gospel Movement.

The book also tells the story for the first time of the New York Psychology Group, which met on Manhattan in the early 1940s. Members of this exclusive group—including Paul Tillich, Seward Hiltner, Erich Fromm, Rollo May, David Roberts, Gotthard Booth, Violet De Laszlo—shared ideas about the bearing of psychology on religion, ideas that later deeply influenced American intellectual and religious life through the articles and books these people wrote. The author identifies religion and health as a movement in theological liberalism, which historically seeks to interpret the gospel for each generation.

I have read and benefited from the book, and all who are interested in this history will not want to be without it. It is very cogently written, with a keen eye for telling detail and judicious assessments at every turn. It documents the Emmanuel Movement out of Boston in 1906 and other early movements that led to burgeoning interest in psychology and especially psychoanalysis, leading up to and developing yet further after the 1909 visit of Freud et al to this country.

It is hard to read the book now without at least a touch of wistfulness for a bygone era in which pastors and theologians sought out serious methods of pastoral counselling  and tried to learn as much as they could from Freud and related traditions of aptly named depth psychology. Who has that depth today in an era of monetized "mindfulness" apps on a phone and similar trifles? 

A New Biography of Stalin

The influence of Stalin on the destruction of Eastern Christian churches--Catholic and Orthodox--is notorious. I have read a couple biographies about him over the years, and now Princeton University Press has another one coming out this month: Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution (PUP, 2020, 896pp.

About this hefty new study, the publisher tells us this:

This is the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, a panoramic and often chilling account of how an impoverished, idealistic youth from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning and fearsome outlaw who would one day become one of the twentieth century's most ruthless dictators.

In this monumental book, Ronald Grigor Suny sheds light on the least understood years of Stalin's career, bringing to life the turbulent world in which he lived and the extraordinary historical events that shaped him. Suny draws on a wealth of new archival evidence from Stalin's early years in the Caucasus to chart the psychological metamorphosis of the young Stalin, taking readers from his boyhood as a Georgian nationalist and romantic poet, through his harsh years of schooling, to his commitment to violent engagement in the underground movement to topple the tsarist autocracy. Stalin emerges as an ambitious climber within the Bolshevik ranks, a resourceful leader of a small terrorist band, and a writer and thinker who was deeply engaged with some of the most incendiary debates of his time.

A landmark achievement, Stalin paints an unforgettable portrait of a driven young man who abandoned his religious faith to become a skilled political operative and a single-minded and ruthless rebel.

St Maximus the Confessor

This blog just passed its tenth anniversary, which I only realized now, a few weeks after the fact. If you go back to those early days of innocence and wonderment, you will see that ten years ago we were in the full flood of publications by and about Maximus the Confessor. That has recently abated only slightly, but now we have a new translation to pick up the slack: St. Maximus the Confessor, The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity, trans. Polycarp Sherwood (Angelico Press, 2020), 296pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

St. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), saint and martyr, might well be called the Saint of Synthesis. His thought, no less than his geographical wanderings, place him between Rome and Byzantium, between the theologies of East and West, and between the early Middle Ages and the ancient Church, whose representatives and traditions (which during his day had suffered much at the hands of imperial and ecclesial censure) he salvaged and brought back to the attention of his contemporaries. In this, we may take him as an exemplar for our own time, which demands of us as well such a re-excavation of the traditions of the Church as we seek also to bridge the divergences of the past (along with others that have meanwhile come to roost) in our present spiritual quest.

The Ascetic Life takes the form of question and answer between a novice and an old monk. This dialogue springs directly from the nature of Christian life, centering above all on the quest for salvation, that is, the Lord’s purpose in His Incarnation—for it is by learning to make this purpose our own that we shall be saved, or deified, as St. Maximus would say. Once this purpose has been made clear and embraced, the three principal virtues required for attaining it are then explored—love, self-mastery, and prayer. Love tames anger, self-mastery overcomes desire, and prayer joins the mind to God.

The Four Centuries on Charity is written in the form of sententious or gnomic literature, which was first fixed in “centuries” by Evagrius Ponticus, both the number 100 and the number of the centuries being significant: the first as a perfect number referring to the One, God; and the other as representing the four Gospels. St. Maximus himself offers concision as the reason for his choice of the sententious form, for it facilitates the work of the memory in order that the reader may lay by a store of memorable, pithy sayings upon which to dwell prayerfully.

Greek Christians and Arab Muslims in the Levant

Late Ottoman history, including the founding of various Orthodox nation-states out of that empire on a wave of nationalism, remains a topic of great interest to me. So this new book, released just this month, looks especially fascinating: Michael Kreutz, The Renaissance of the Levant: Arabic and Greek Discourses of Reform in the Age of Nationalism (De Gruyter, 2020), 230pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Since the Mediterranean connects cultures, Mediterranean studies have by definition an intercultural focus. Throughout the modern era, the Ottoman Empire has had a lasting impact on the cultures and societies of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. However, the modern Balkans are usually studied within the context of European history, the southern Mediterranean within the context of Islam.

Although it makes sense to connect both regions, this is a vast field and requires a command of different languages not necessarily related to each other. Investigating both Greek and Arabic sources, this book will shed some light on the significance of ideas in the political transitions of their time and how the proponents of these transitions often became so overwhelmed by the events that they helped trigger adjustments to their own ideas. Also, the discourses in Greek and Arabic reflect the provinces of the Ottoman Empire and it is instructive to see their differences and commonalities which helps explain contemporary politics.

Reformation and Enlightenment Influences on Russian Orthodoxy

One of the self-congratulatory illusions (in the strict Freudian sense) that some Orthodox apologists like to tell themselves is that their tradition has somehow been insulated or even inoculated from Enlightenment influences and, to a lesser degree, the upheavals of the various Protestant reformations of the sixteenth century. Neither illusion (which functions, as Freud saw, as a protective device as well as of wish fulfilment: in this case the desire that Orthodoxy be "protected" from what are taken to be nefarious philosophical influences, and the wish that it remain a "safe haven" free of such things after all other Christians have apparently succumbed to them) withstands a moment of scholarly scrutiny, but when has that ever gotten in the way of a good myth? 

In any event, a forthcoming study will add to our understanding of this period: A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700–1825 by Andrey V. Ivanov (University of Wisconsin Press, November 2020), 320pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The ideas of the Protestant Reformation, followed by the European Enlightenment, had a profound and long-lasting impact on Russia’s church and society in the eighteenth century. Though the traditional Orthodox Church was often assumed to have been hostile toward outside influence, Andrey V. Ivanov’s study argues that the institution in fact embraced many Western ideas, thereby undergoing what some observers called a religious revolution.

Embedded with lively portrayals of historical actors and vivid descriptions of political details, A Spiritual Revolution is the first large-scale effort to fully identify exactly how Western progressive thought influenced the Russian Church. These new ideas played a foundational role in the emergence of the country as a modernizing empire and the rise of the Church hierarchy as a forward-looking agency of institutional and societal change. Ivanov addresses this important debate in the scholarship on European history, firmly placing Orthodoxy within the much wider European and global continuum of religious change.

Pavel Florensky's Idealism

Angelico Press continues to have some of the most interestingly diverse lists of contemporary Catholic publishers, and continues their admirable interest in the Christian East by publishing both new works and translations of classics, as in this case: Pavel Florensky, The Meaning of Idealism: The Metaphysics of Genus and Countenance, trans. Boris Jakim (Angelico, Sept. 2020), 108pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Meaning of Idealism is a journey: from Plato and Aristotle to Neoplatonism to Medieval theories of being and knowing, from these to Orthodox spirituality, to Vedic mysticism, from Vedic mysticism to astrology, from astrology to modern science-including relativity, the mathematical theory of invariants, and the multidimensional universe.

And about its celebrated author we are told this:

Arguably the greatest Russian theologian of the early 20th century, Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) also did original work in such fields as liturgical aesthetics, iconographic theory, the philosophy of names, theoretical mathematics, and even electrical engineering. He became a Russian Orthodox priest in 1911, while remaining deeply involved with the cultural, artistic, and scientific developments of his time. Arrested by the Soviets in 1928, he returned to his scholarly activities until 1933, when he was sentenced to ten years of labor in Siberia. There he continued his scientific work and ministered to his fellow prisoners until his death four years later.

Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture

For more than a decade now, I have used Christos Yannaras's The Freedom of Morality in my moral theology courses to good effect. There are parts of the book--like every other of his books, at least among the ones I have read--that drive me to distraction by sometimes indolent polemicizing, but even that is redeemed somewhat in stirring up vigorous classroom discussion. (I rather suspect that may be part of his point, and that he would not be displeased to learn this.)

This summer a paperback edition of a book devoted to Yannaras, which first appeared in 2018, was published: Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture by Andreas Andreopoulos, Demetrios Harper (Routledge, 2020), 218pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Christos Yannaras is one of the most significant Orthodox theologians of recent times. The work of Yannaras is virtually synonymous with a turn or renaissance of Orthodox philosophy and theology, initially within Greece, but as the present volume confirms, well beyond it. His work engages not only with issues of philosophy and theology, but also takes in wider questions of culture and politics.

With contributions from established and new scholars, the book is divided into three sections, which correspond to the main directions that Christos Yannaras has followed – philosophy, theology, and culture – and reflects on the ways in which Yannaras has engaged and influenced thought across these fields, in addition to themes including ecclesiology, tradition, identity, and ethics.

This volume facilitates the dialogue between the thought of Yannaras, which is expressed locally yet is relevant globally, and Western Christian thinkers. It will be of great interest to scholars of Orthodox and Eastern Christian theology and philosophy, as well as theology more widely.

Orthodoxy and Reform in 1920s Romania

I have long had a soft spot in my heart for Romanian Orthodoxy. When I was heavily involved in the World Council of Churches in the 1990s, I had a colleague from Romania who became a friend. He gave me a lovely icon of the Theotokos, which still occupies pride of place on my desk at the university. He and I had a kind of sotto voce habit of dry and often sarcastic commentary on whatever dreary meeting we happened to be in, which was all of them. 

More recently, Romania utterly delighted me in January 2019 at the inaugural IOTA meeting where I was an official ecumenical observer and also gave a paper on papal reforms. We arrived the day after Christmas on the Julian calendar to find Iasi absolutely ablaze with decorations, which I utterly love. So it was a charming town in a country I had long wanted to visit, and it did not disappoint. (It is hard to resist thinking that even the shabbiest town in Europe--which Iasi was not by any means--is incomparably more lovely and interesting than the hideous suburban sprawl which defines just about any American city.)

All that is but preface to advise you of what sounds to be a fascinating new book by Roland Clark, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building (Bloomsbury Academic, January 2021). 232pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Romanian Orthodox Church expanded significantly after the First World War, yet Neo-Protestantism and schismatic Orthodox movements such as Old Calendarism also grew exponentially during this period, terrifying church leaders who responded by sending missionary priests into the villages to combat sectarianism. Several lay renewal movements such as the Lord's Army and the Stork's Nest also appeared within the Orthodox Church, implicating large numbers of peasants and workers in tight-knit religious communities operating at the margins of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Bringing the history of the Orthodox Church into dialogue with sectarianism, heresy, grassroots religious organization and nation-building, Roland Clark explores how competing religious groups in interwar Romania responded to and emerged out of similar catalysts, including rising literacy rates, new religious practices and a newly empowered laity inspired by universal male suffrage and a growing civil society who took control of community organizing. He also analyses how Orthodox leaders used nationalism to attack sectarians as 'un-Romanian', whilst these groups remained indifferent to the claims the nation made on their souls.

Situated at the intersection of transnational history, religious history and the history of reading, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania challenges us to rethink the one-sided narratives about modernity and religious conflict in interwar Eastern Europe.

The Art of Minorities

As a longtime defender and fan of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, especially the Armenian and Copts, I look forward to the reading a new book that features both of those traditions and others: The Art of Minorities: Cultural Representation in Museums of the Middle East and North Africa,ed .Virginie Rey (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 336pp. 

About this collection the publisher tells us this:

How are issues related to identity representation negotiated in Middle Eastern and North African museums? Can museums provide a suitable canvas for minorities to express their voice? Can narratives change and stereotypes be broken and, if so, what kind of identities are being deployed? Against the backdrop of the revolutionary upheavals that have shaken the region in recent years, the contributors to this volume interrogate a range of case studies from across the region – examining how museums engage inclusion, diversity and the politics of minority identities. They bring to the fore the region’s diversity and sketches a ‘museology of disaster’ in which minoritised political subjects regain visibility.

Orthodox Revolutions and Lesser Transitions

I am not by nature the sort of person who easily or regularly finds himself attending political rallies, marches, and protests. But I have not forgotten standing in the freezing ice storm in December 2004 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa as the Orange Revolution was unfolding in Ukraine, where I had taught English just three years before that. A goodly number of Ukrainian-Canadians turned out for that rally to show support to those fighting for a new government in Ukraine. 

That was one of several "colour" revolutions in the former Soviet Union. What role did the Orthodox and Catholic churches play in them? In the case of Ukraine, the answer has to be: a very considerable one. But in other countries? That is the question asked and answered in forthcoming book set for release at year's end: Orthodox Christianity and the Politics of Transition: Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia. by Tornike Metreveli (Routledge, Dec. 2020), 200pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book discusses in detail how Orthodox Christianity was involved in and influenced political transition in Ukraine, Serbia and Georgia after the collapse of communism. Based on original research, including extensive interviews with clergy and parishioners as well as historical, legal and policy analysis, the book argues that the nature of the involvement of churches in post-communist politics depended on whether the interests of the church (for example, in education, the legal system or economic activity) were accommodated or threatened: if accommodated, churches confined themselves to the sacred domain; if threatened they engaged in daily politics. If churches competed with each other for organizational interests, they evoked the support of nationalism while remaining within the religious domain.

Post-War Ukraine

As we have just finished the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, we continue nonetheless to learn about its aftermath. I remain, as noted on here, a longterm inveterate reader of martial history of both global wars of the last century and many other conflicts. So I am looking forward to the December publication of Remaking Ukraine after World War II: The Clash of Local and Central Soviet Power by Filip Slaveski (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 200pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Ukraine was liberated from German wartime occupation by 1944 but remained prisoner to its consequences for much longer. This study examines Soviet Ukraine's transition from war to 'peace' in the long aftermath of World War II. Filip Slaveski explores the challenges faced by local Soviet authorities in reconstructing central Ukraine, including feeding rapidly growing populations in post-war famine. Drawing on recently declassified Soviet sources, Filip Slaveski traces the previously unknown bitter struggle for land, food and power among collective farmers at the bottom of the Soviet social ladder, local and central authorities. He reveals how local authorities challenged central ones for these resources in pursuit of their own vision of rebuilding central Ukraine, undermining the Stalinist policies they were supposed to implement and forsaking the farmers in the process. In so doing, Slaveski demonstrates how the consequences of this battle shaped post-war reconstruction, and continue to resonate in contemporary Ukraine, especially with the ordinary people caught in the middle.

Introduction
Part I. The Battle for Land between the People and Local and Central Soviet Authorities:
1. A brief survey of illegal appropriations of collective farmland by local state and party officials
2. Taking land: officials' illegal appropriations and starving people in Raska, Bila Tserkva and elsewhere
3. Taking land back: the people and central authorities' recovery of land and prosecution of local party and state officials
Part II. The Cost of the Battle for Land to People and the State:
4. The cost of taking land: the damages caused by illegal appropriations of collective farmland to kolkhozniki, communities and the state
5. Then and now: the shaping of contemporary Ukraine in the post-war crises
Conclusion
Appendix. Archival source locations and guide for further research.