84 - The Splendid Risk: An Existential Approach to Christian Fulfillment

The Splendid Risk:
An Existential Approach to Christian Fulfillment
By Bernard I. Mullahy C.S.C.
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame, 1982. 246 pp. $12.95.

The title's "splendid risk" is that of loving, of believing, of letting go of securities in order to journey into the future with the God in whom Christians trust. This book's thesis is that we arc involved in one of the most profound cultural revolutions in history, and that from this cultural change there is emerging a new spiritual climate of openness to the world and concern for personal dignity and liberty. This climate calls for new spiritual styles which positively appreciate rather than fear the risk of welcoming other persons, the material world, and history into the spiritual life. Without making light of this risk, the book aims to show how splendid a risk it is and why it must be taken in order to achieve a genuine Christian life.

When a Roman Catholic spiritual theology book announces that the central issues are accommodation to radical cultural change and a new openness to, rather than flight from, the world, you know the book comes directly from the era of Vatican Council II, the mid 1960s. In fact the substance of this book has been distilled from lectures that Fr. Mullahy

85 - The Splendid Risk: An Existential Approach to Christian Fulfillment

gave in the later '60s at a theology school set up in Rome for Catholic sisters from all over the world. Using his prior experience as a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame, the author develops an existentialist, personalist approach to themes that were the key issues in Vatican II debates and documents: the function of Scripture, the primacy of charity, fellowship, the church as a pilgrim people, worldly holiness, the sacred and the secular, salvation history, the present and future mystery of Christ.

Some of the approach and content of this book remain very valuable into the 1980s. Its existentialist approach avoids philosophical jargon, explains central issues clearly and persuasively, and tests the authenticity of a new spiritual theology by its capacity to integrate into the new all that is best in the heritage of the past. In a lively and perceptive way, it summarizes the Second Vatican Council's theology of person, church, and world. With appropriate caution and nuance, it stresses compatibility between seeking God and seeking self - fulfillment, and the harmony between holiness and human wholeness. Each chapter concludes with a fine annotated bibliography of the best sources from the '60s. (Occasionally Mullahy also mentions a book from the '70s.) The explanation of Teilhard de Chardin's theology of the mystery of Christ and of Karl Rahner's early essays on church, Christ, and world are helpful.

But the book would be much more useful if it had been revised to include more recent theological approaches and themes. For example, although the book stems from courses given exclusively to women, the language is not sex inclusive and there is no sensitivity to the problems of a patriarchal church. Overemphasis on celibate life - style could have been rectified by inclusion of married persons' experience. Its treatment of Christian poverty is not linked to issues of social justice, nor is there any development of social, structural sin. Whereas contemporary theology of lay and religious life stresses their shared characteristics and ministry, this book defines them as different "states of life" and as directed in different ways: toward the secular and the sacred, respectively. Mullahy's stress on future hope and on an ultimately triumphant cosmic Christology would benefit from current sobering emphasis on action now to stop the arms race and prevent a future nuclear holocaust. While showing the existentialist philosopher's appreciation of time and history, the author does not incorporate the psychologist's awareness of how life - span developmental tasks affect Christian spirituality. These issues - feminism, social justice, shared ministry, and life - span developmental tasks - have profoundly influenced the concrete experience of contemporary spirituality. The book's explicit aim, "to give to the spiritual life ... a contemporary orientation and perspective," would have been more fully realized had it included such perspectives.

Joann Wolski Conn
Neumann College
Aston, Pennsylvania