Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The most recent Amazon reviews of Sr. Elizabeth Johnson's marvelous book on the God who is everywhere are little more than a spate of ringers planted here after a group of Catholic Bishops attacked the work. The attack did not allege any heresy or theological error. It simply states that it is ill at ease with Sr. Elizabeth's insistence that our God is truly everywhere, especially in the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed. Their miserly condemnation does not stand up well at all beside Sr. Elizabeth's bracing generosity. If you want God-talk that has a traditional Catholic lilt, check out the authorized Catholic Catechism. It doesn't need to be rewritten; it's there trussed up in all its medieval busks, corsets, mantles, and surcoats, and nothing Sr. Elizabeth writes contradicts any of it. She simply knows that our God is not bound by any era's intellectual corsets, and THAT's pure Catholic doctrine (Aquinas, Summa Theologicae, 1a, 13). Her book will not mislead Catholics about God; it simply won't bore them to death. Yes, God is eternal; he doesn't need updating. But we humans do need updating. Just as Augustine used the Platonic lingo current in his time (and NOT in scripture) to bring the Triune God to the people of the 5th century and Aquinas cribbed from Aristotle (NOT in scripture) and the medieval philosophers to square God with 13th century ways of thinking, so Sr. Elizabeth finds the same immutable God in the fabulously mutable world of 21st century humanity. I think she committed the cardinal sin of Catholic teaching: being interesting. She (Sr. E, not God) is following in a 2,000 year old tradition that started with Jesus's rather noted update in the 1st century: "You have heard it said...but I say to you..."