Some years ago, Paul Collins went bushwalking in the
remote NW corner of Tasmania known as the Tarkine. Somehow
the silent, numinous wilderness of the Tarkine spoke
to him and effected an unmistakable expansion of soul
- a conversion experience if ever there was one. Later
he wrote a short record of this encounter, calling it
sacramental: "I had come in contact with something
disturbing, living and profound, and I knew that somehow
the natural world had now become the primary sacramental
symbol for me of a a transforming divine presence.'
His account of the Tarkine experience pulses and glows
at the heart of the central chapters of his new book,
Between the Rock and a Hard Place: Being Catholic Today
(Sydney: ABC Books: $29.95). The felt experience of
his account is real and authentic, as real and authentic
as Blaise Pascal's record of his conversion in the 17th
century or John Wesley's in the 18th century. I do not
hesitate to make these comparisons, because Paul Collins's
vivid paragraphs are worthy of inclusion in a world
anthology of religious writing.
Its personal note signals one of the best traits of
this book: without being egocentric, it tells how he
himself learned to address the strains and challenges
of being a committed Catholic in today's world. This
personal dimension, at times subterranean at other times
overt, powers the book along, making it easy reading.
As with all the best modern religious writing, it does
not obscure the author behind church documents or official
teaching but makes him reveal himself. So when Collins
writes about prayer, or the pertinaceous culture of
Catholic schooling, or the absurdities of oldstyle religiosity
(now being revived in new religious movements such as
the Neo-Cats and Opus Dei), you feel he knows what he's
talking about.
Take for example his pages on prayer, something that
has been a problem for Christians since the first disciples
asked Jesus how to pray. For Collins prayer is a ruminative
swallow flight over a sacred text, self-forgetful and
thus inviting the transcendent to speak to our listening
selves. He quotes a Benedictine sage who says it is
a duet with God, rather than a dialogue; and adds, "Its
delicacy is Mozartian as we dance around each other
forming a pattern of interaction, relationship and love."
These words appear towards the end of a chapter on
Catholic spirituality, a chapter sandwiched between
one of the case for-and-against staying a Catholic and
one on the Catholic imagination. Read together, they
show Collins arguing with himself on why he stays where
he is. Put in one sentence, he stays there because he
cannot imagine himself as anything but Catholic. And
that despite all the troubles he's had; although there's
little enough about those troubles: only in passing,
for instance, he mentions that he has been blacklisted,
whatever that may mean, in three dioceses; and George
Pell's name comes up now and then.
That's the first half of the book. The remaining chapters
are on ecology, on conscience, and on fundamentalism.
Here the standout chapter is the one on ecology, which
is fresh and intelligent rather than mushy. People interested
in Pell's odd campaign against the doctrine of conscience
will want to read the chapter on conscience. The fundamentalism
chapter gives a useful survey of the new religious movements.
Readers of this chapter should search out David A Vise's
The Bureau and the Mole (New York: Grove Press: US$14.00)
for a fuller portrait of Robert Hanssen, the Opus Dei
man and FBI agent and sexual fantasist who spied for
the Russians, doing more damage than any other spy in
FBI history. You won't find Vise's book in an Opus Dei
library.
There is a strange disparity between both halves of
Between the Rock and a Hard Place, as if they were written
under different conditions. The prose of the front of
the book is hurried, repetitive, at times careless.
Thus, within the first 75 pages by my count the accolade
of 'great' is given 15 times: Newman is great, Anselm
is great, Maritain is great, Rahner is great … and so
it goes. On one page - page 118: check it out - there
are no less than four 'greats'. Allied to this, in his
early chapters Paul Collins relies heavily on hectoring
adverbs and adverbial locutions to push his argument
along. He was a broadcaster before he became a writer;
and some pages read like the transcript of some shock
jock.
In spite of which, what a nourishing book this is:
Australian Catholic Book of the Year, in my estimation.
by Edmund Campion
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