Thomas Prufer on Brideshead Revisted

From the archives:

Thomas Prufer. The Death of Charm and the Advent of Grace. Waugh’s Brideshead Revisted. (1983). From the text:

Brideshead Revisited has been criticized for being lush, ornamental and sentimental in style,  on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for theological harshness. It could be said that the book oscillates between a surface romanticism and an intrusive eschatology or even that it falls apart into these two extremes. Has the earlier Waugh,  taut and funny, given way to a combination of gluttony and bigotry?

My concern is to make the case that this criticism is a distortion. It misses the heart of Waugh’s achievement: to have made a work in which the integrities of both art and faith are respected in their interaction. Indeed, they are respected precisely because of their interaction. The richness of the style and the stringency of the theology interact and thus intensify each other.  Full text (pdf)

Readings for Holy Week 2011

Marc Ouellet. The Mystery of Easter and the Culture of Death (1996)
Juan M. Sara. Descensus ad inferos. Dawn of Hope. Aspects of Holy Saturday in the Trilogy of Hans Urs von Balthasar (2005)
Christoph Dohmen. The Suffering Servant and the Passion of Jesus (2003)
José Granados. Toward a Theology of the Suffering Body (2006)
Jan-Heiner Tück. The Cross as the Locus of Truth: Joseph Ratzinger’s Meditations on the Way of the Cross (2006)
Hans Urs von Balthasar. Joy and the Cross (2004)
Jean-Pierre Batut. Does the Father Suffer? (2003)
José Granados. The New Hosannah in the New Temple: Jesus’ Entry Into Jerusalem (2009)
Robert Spaemann. When Death Becomes Inhuman (2006)
Jan-Heiner Tück. The Utmost: On the Possibilities and Limits of a Trinitarian Theology of the Cross (2003)

Adrian Walker on Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth

The current issue of Communio publishes an article by editor Adrian J. Walker, the English translator of the first volume of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Living Water: Reading Scripture in the Body of Christ with Benedict XVI (pdf).

For more on Jesus of Nazareth see:

Denis Farkasfalvy. Jesus of Nazareth and the Renewal of New Testament Theology (2007) and
Roch Kereszty. The Challenge of Jesus of Nazareth for Theologians (2007)

Also by Adrian Walker:

On ‘Rephilosophizing’ Theology (2004) | ‘Rejoice always.’ How Everyday Joy Responds to the Problem of Evil (2004) | Personal Singularity and the Communio Personarum: A Creative Development of Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of Esse Commune (2004)  | Benedict XVI: A Co-Worker of the Truth (2005) | Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal (2005) | ‘Sown Psychic, Raised Spiritual': The Lived Body as the Organ of Theology (2006) | ‘Clouds of Witnesses': Introducing Why We Need. . . (2007) | The Gift of Simplicity. Reflections on Obedience in the Work of Adrienne von Speyr. (2007)

Jörg Splett: The Evangelical Counsels in Marriage?

Jörg Splett (bio). The Evangelical Counsels in Marriage? (2004).

From the text:

We can formulate the following universal principle: for the “I,” his hunger, thirst, desire, pleasure, and so forth are first a “physical” matter, while those of the “Thou” are first a “moral” one. (I am to give to others of what is mine, but not take what is theirs; the others are “widows and orphans,” not I. Conversely, I am the one who has to turn the other cheek, not they. And, in the extreme case: I may never sacrifice another—certainly not for myself; but perhaps I not only may, but must sacrifice—myself.) All of this, moreover, I have to do for the neighbor who is, literally, right next to me.

Poverty for the married consists, first of all, in generous sharing of common income and possessions. This does not exclude “private property,” by the way, but rather expressly includes it. In other words, each one can take from the common “petty cash”—so as to have the means to give the other (and others) a gift. (The right to have is ancillary to the ability to give to the point of giving even oneself. This holds for the possession of things, of one’s own bodiliness, and even of the preserve of one’s person and its mystery.)

Poverty does not concern only I and Thou, but transcends them. It becomes an affair of the couple as such in their relation to children. No one lives for himself. . . . (full text).

See more articles from the Fall 2004 issue devoted to “Consecration and the States of Life.”