People of God

I ache for the absence of Ms. Lernoux's assessment of current developments in our Church, including the currently seated pontiff's recent landmark barefoot prayer in the historic Blue Mosque in Turkey, and his coming courageous journey to visit Brazil's impoverished and Catholic people of God. This thick volume entitled briefly People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism reads like one in a multi-volume series, like Will Durant's historical studies, but this series stopped far too soon as the brilliant and courageous and correct Ms. Lernoux died at a very early age striken by a mysterious cancer. Nevertheless, we gratefully review this now nearly twenty year old volume, grateful for the entire Lernoux opus which God so briefly and brilliantly granted her as a truly perceptive and accurate reporter of our pilgrim Church struggling escatalogically towards the Kingdom of God based in Love. This nearly five hundred page volume gives a profound report of the state of the Vatican at that time twenty years ago within the historical context of the Second Vatican Council documents and subsequent Church developments as well as the increasingly militarist nature of US policy under the US administration of that time in the light of Church teaching and praxis. This volume therefore serves as an invaluable tool for assessing those times and their continuation by many of the same players employed by the current US administration. It also provides interesting reflections on our current coyuntura and zeitgheist now after the collapse of the Soviet Union, after the re-election of Daniel Ortega to the presidency of his now forgotten nation of Nicaragua, as well the current state of our Church as the People of God. It is impossible to present fully and in fairness within this brief space what a monumental and comprehensive study Ms. Lernoux presents here in this now ridiculously inexpensive tome. It is like trying to present in a nutshell the full meaning and message of James Joyce's Ulysses, or the Sermon on the Mount. Please read this for yourself, in peace and in commitment to the struggle to join our pilgrim people of God, in our pilgrim Church, on our march to the Kingdom of God. This book burns as a brilliant torch lighting our way, fruit of the wise virgin of the Gospel who conserved her oil to light the coming of the Bridegroom. Read this book.

I do not agree with Ms. Lernoux's leftist politics or her modernist theology. But she produces compelling information and argument for anyone concerned about the Catholic Church's destiny. The developments in recent Latin America and the United States make some of her points outdated but her sincere concern, and a rare integrity (she is one leftist who gives the former Sandinista regime both barrels of criticism) combine to make this a monumental work on the relation of church and state in the modern and (especially) developing worlds. The late Ms. Lernoux's memory is well served with this masterwork.