Richard Yeo

Book Review: Advent to Pentecost. Comparing the Seasons in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman RiteAdvent to Pentecost. Comparing the Seasons in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite, by ReganPatrick. Liturgical Press, COllegeville; 2012; pp. xxii + 313; pb

of standard English and there are some spelling mistakes (even in writing the tetragrammaton as YWHW (p. 90) and the Septuagint as LLX (p. 82». These errors are a great pity. The readers ability to understand his meaning is not affected, but such mistakes detract from his scholarship. It is rather odd that Dr Jeon is prepared to write YHWH in English letters, but refrains from doing so in Hebrew, when he consistently indicates the tetragrammaton by n. It is also noteworthy that his quoting of the Hebrew text sometimes uses the matres lectionis, but on other occasions omits them, and this does not always follow the text in the BHS; perhaps he is using a different Hebrew text. In short, DrJeons work is a work of detailed scholarship, but future works in English would benefit from better proofreading. As regards the project, it would have been useful if his conclusion had considered the usefulness of redaction criticism for a theological reading of the texts in question. Nonetheless he is to be congratulated on producing a work which invites the reader once again to consider the role of the redactors in the compilation of the Pentateuch.

39:95; ISBN 978-0-8146-6241-0

The subtitle of this study of chapters 31-42 of the Rule of Benedict is Growing in Mutual Love and Service. Those who have enjoyed the approach which Sister Aquinata takes in her Perspektiven derRegula Benedicti, a commentary on certain key chapters of the Rule, which came out in 1986 and has recently also been brought out in English by the Liturgical Press, will find this book similar in its approach. Sister Aquinata is known to her readers and students not only as a painstaking student of the text of the Rule, but also an imaginative commentator on its implications for monastic living today. Those students who initially feel overwhelmed by the very detailed textual analysis of the Rule which she offers come, if they persevere, to a rich understanding of its significance. She counts the number of times words or phrases appear, and draws conclusions. She sees chiastic structures which most of us have never seen before. She draws diagrams and looks for patterns in the text. She compares St Benedicts usage of expressions with those of secular writers or other Christian writers of the day. She looks at the etymologies of Latin words. At first, this approach sometimes seems pedantic and dry, but then she draws a lesson from it all and the text comes to life in a new way. Sister Aquinata maintains that these chapters (31-42) are linked, and form the central part of the second section (chapters 8-52) of the Rule. Some clarification is needed here. The link between chapters 38-42 is clear: they all refer to the monastic table. The unity of these chapters with the preceding seven is not immediately obvious. What is particularly illuminating about Sister Aquinatas approach is the way she draws our attention to patterns which most of us do not notice. For example, in the first chapter of the section of the Rule she is studying here (RB 31, on the Cellarer of the Monastery) she shows parallels and inclusions which lead her to the conclusion that vv. 9-11, on care for the weak and poor and for the goods of the monastery,

Review of Book: Around the Monastic TableAround the Monastic Table, by BöckmannAquinata OSB, translated by HandlMatilda OSB and BurkhardMarianne OSB, edited by BurkhardMarianne OSB. Liturgical Press, Collegevillez, 2009; xviii + 296 pp.; pb

unique personalities, however much they are formed by their environment. In the end, it remains difficult to speak of a legacy of Jerome beyond his writings, and evidence of continuity of approach with immediately succeeding generations is equally elusive. Williams goes so far in her concluding remarks as to speak of a failure of imagination on Jeromes part. He was, indeed, his own lifes work, one for which the mold was to be broken in the century immediately following his death [265). It is at this point that the sociological context is renewed, and only in this mode does Williams become a little obscure. Having suggested that Jerome is of more than merely antiquarian interest, she returns us to the present: in our own culture, apparently, the relations of elite education to the dispositions it inculcates, to the delimitation of the proper objects of criticism, and to the pleasures of the text are profoundly troubled [265]. What she is saying, in effect, is that in following Jeromes example too closely by denying ourselves the possibility of reading for pleasure, we risk not only imposing our own limits on the canon of literature, but also, and more insidiously, we allow the abdication of the power to choose what can and should be read. Whatever conclusions one draws from this for the future, one has to admire Megan Hale Williamss exposition of a key figure of our literary and cultural past.

29.95; ISBN-13: 978-0814618745.

Like Theophilus of Alexandria, Casiday delights in the tearing down of idols, which in his case are the unthinking use of incorrect theological and historical models. He also aims to build a bridge between two modes of intellectual activity, history and theology. In an appendix, he criticizes the notion that a supposed reserve about miracles in Cassian was partofa polemical attack on Sulpicius Severns and Martin of Tours (this phenomenon is more likely a question of genre and pedagogy). The supposed attack on recognized spiritual masters is a central plank of Goodrichs thesis. One is left with the impression that Casidays historic-theological bridge-building is a far better way to understand the Fathers and the Christian world ofLate Antiquity than Goodrichs bracketing out ofwhat writers of that time such as Cassian held to be most important.

Review of Book: Listen to the Word: Commentaries on Selected Opening Prayers of Sundays and Feasts with Sample HomiliesListen to the Word: Commentaries on Selected Opening Prayers of Sundays and Feasts with Sample Homilies by McCarthyDaniel OSB. The Tablet Publishing Company, 2009; xv + 145 pp.; hb £7.99; ISBN-10:0951616218.

to have been of significance in the history of Jesuit spirituality; while an outsider might be surprised-to infer from this article that the controversy de auxiliis left no mark on the inner life of the Society. Other articles one might draw attention to are those on Jansenism obviously a major topic; among the Johns there are the Evangelist, John of the Cross and John Chrysostom; rather interesting too is the article on Jacob, discussing the thought on the Patriarch by Jewish, Patristic and later writers. Inevitably the fascicles of a Dictionary will offer a strange assortment of topics, but there are some quite useful ones here.

Review of Book: Jan van Ruusbroec: Van den Geesteliken TabernakelJan van Ruusbroec: Van den Geesteliken Tabernakel (ChristianorumCorpus, MediaevalisContinuatio, CV and CVI). Brepols, Turnhout, 2006; 2vv., pp. 1444; €230 (vol. CV), €270 (vol. CVI); ISBN 2-503-04051-6, 2-503-04061-5.

and unofficial exorcism is within the competence of any Christian, lay or clerical. Now what the worthy Priimmer laid down was that public exorcism was reserved to those appointed by a bishop, but that privately and secretly a cleric who had received the minor order of exorcist could go to work, or even a lay person. He instanced St Catherine of Siena and St Antony the Hermit. The minor order is now abolished, but, when it flourished in the early Church, it was tantamount to the work of a male nurse, for the minor exorcists had to accompany the mentally deranged at the liturgy, where they were kept apart from the congregation in a pen of their own, rather as mothers and babies have a crying pen in some churches now. That leaves Priimmer the evidence of St Antony, which does not really help him, and of St Catherine, who was a charismatic, if ever there was one. And Vatican II said that charismatic gifts were to be kept firmly under control by the Church. In conversation with a Dutch Reformed minister, a student of exorcism, I was told that he had sought information at Trier from a German Catholic professor, who declared to him that there had not been a single exorcism in Germany since the war. One wonders what Priimmer really had in mind. It is pleasant to find in an appendix the whole introduction to the Roman Rituals chapter on exorcism here translated. One must not forget that exorcism is the one field that is truly ecumenical (Mark 9, 38).