In Search of Saints |
by Diane Singer |
Check out Jim Tonkowich's review of A Crisis of Saints: The Call to Heroic Faith in an Unheroic World. The book's author, Fr. George Rutler, evidently has much to say about "saintliness" -- which Tonkowich defines as "the God-given ability to exercise heroic virtue in the face of cultural breakdown." If we want to heal our culture (and I suppose most of us Pointers and Pointificators do), then we must begin with the spiritual renewal of the Church. Rutler claims that "any crisis in culture is a crisis of saints, and no reform is radical enough unless it is a redemption from sin."
The final essay in the book deals with G. K. Chesterton, who was able to demonstrate his saintliness in, "of all places," the journalistic world. The difference between Chesterton and modern media types, according to Rutler, "is Chesterton's subordination of the self to truth. This is far more significant than the breath of knowledge" (though, goodness knows, Chesterton had that, too).
In closing, Tonkowich offers these encouraging words from Rutler's book: "If there were giants in the land then, there can be giants now. It is, after all, the same land, and we are of the same human stock, and the times and issues are certainly no less important. And God is no less faithful to those who ask...."
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