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Editorial:
"There's Nothing New About Change"
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Embracing the Stranger
Denise Wright
From
the Director: Change and Decay – so what's new?
David W Porter
Alwyn
Thomson
Ethel White
A
Changing Church
Chris Easton
Women,
the Church and Change
Lesley Carroll
Interview
with Noel Fallows: Multi-cultural Church Life
Anna Rankin
Urban
Grit
Ken Groves
Higher
Throne
Keith
Getty & Kristyn Lennox
2003
Conference: Reconciliation – Illusion or Elusive?
What's
Jesus got to do with Forgiveness?
Stuart Noble
Review:
Lost in Translation
Gareth Higgins
Review:
The Church Beyond the Congregation by James Thwaites
Claire Martin
Review:
A Time for Mission by Samuel Escobar
Ben
Walker
Review:
Against the Stream by David W Smith
Cheryl
Reid
Review:
Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 by Patrick
Mitchel
David Hewitt
Review:
I was a teenage Catholic by Malachi O'Doherty
Fran
Porter
reviews:
I WAS A TEENAGE CATHOLIC
by Malachi O'Doherty
Reviewed by Fran Porter
OVER A NUMBER of years Malachi O'Doherty's work in religious journalism has given him, in his own words, 'the luxury of asking others what they believed without ever telling them what I believed myself' (p 138). Not any more! Malachi O'Doherty has come out of spiritual anonymity and in this book tells us not only about the religious influences upon him, but the sense that he makes of it all. And in doing so, he has given us a most readable book. It is beautifully written, with humour and astute observation, and at times painfully honest.
Reading this book is like taking a ramble through word pictures of Malachi O'Doherty's life. The broad sweep of his book is chronological, beginning with his reflections on his childhood of 'pre-Second Vatican Council Irish Catholicism' (p 13). It then describes his time in India as writer and would-be disciple of a Hindu guru, before pulling his thoughts together in the context (in the main) of living again in Northern Ireland.
Hold it – what was that? Disciple of a Hindu guru? This is a little different from other life stories that begin in the religious ferment (be it Catholic or Protestant) of Northern Ireland. Make no mistake, this book is not written by someone who has stayed on the sidelines of spiritual exploration. The pages that describe the several years he spent in India I found unsettling, although not because they relate an encounter with Hinduism. Rather, I felt I was reading about someone who was lost and who had simply exchanged one authoritarian religious system known as a child for another, far away, and yet, no less manipulative.
It is a credit to his writing that Malachi O'Doherty can tell his story in a way that evokes such a response. And what he conveys through narrative he also makes explicit. Human vulnerability, in terms of the tasks of growing and developing and in the face of death, is a conscious theme in the book. He explores these with reference not only to Catholicism and Hinduism, but also to Protestantism and particularly Ulster evangelicalism.
I was a teenage Catholic is a religious memoir written by a self-described religious sceptic who nevertheless still believes 'in faith, that it is a decent and beautiful thing' (p 10). It is not, therefore, hostile to religion per se, nor even to those abusive religious manifestations to which he was subject. Certainly, it is a commentary on religious power on which all of us would do well to reflect. Indeed, it shows, in the main, the worst aspects of religion, where people's grasping after God is turned, perhaps in a desire to self-protect, into control over others. For those who do not think this to be the only story of faith, there will be disagreement in terms of the author's conclusions about God. But not before joining the ramble and realising this walk is made up of serious stuff.
DR FRAN PORTER is author of Changing women, changing worlds: Evangelical women in church, community and politics, Blackstaff/ECONI, 2002. Her new book, It will not be taken away from her: a feminist engagement with women.s Christian experience, is being published by Darton, Longman and Todd in June 2004.
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