Books in Brief - Review

National Review, April 19, 1999 by William Murchison

Appointment in Rome: The Church in America Awakening, by Richard John Neuhaus (Herder & Herder, 170 pp., $24.95)

To the Pope's Synod for America, held in Rome in late 1997, went Fr. Neuhaus. What's coming for the Church in the Western Hemisphere was the topic John Paul II wanted the assembled prelates and scholars to consider. They considered it with much wringing of hands, but occasionally, reports Neuhaus, with the scent of springtime in their nostrils; the sense that tremendous, spirit-directed opportunity lies ahead.

Appointment in Rome is very Neuhausian: that is to say, droll, opinionated, self-referential, informative, and acute; a book not just for Catholics. Neuhaus would have liked, on the part of the Church's "senior management," less hand- wringing and more enthusiasm for religious pluralism and ecumenical engagement with Latin America's sheep-stealing Protestants. Yet springtime cheerfulness breaks in frequently. Among the bishops there is deep concern for holiness. Most of all there is the Pope, nudging his vast and varied flock into the millennium- "sowing seed for the future," a cardinal tells the author, who understands well enough that springtime is when seeds bear fruit. -William Murchison