Review

It helps to have friends all over the world. All the way from Africa, Steve Payne pointed me towards a book review in the recent Carmelite Review magazine of A Better Wine, in which my translation of a work by Jerome Gratian appears. The review of the book as a whole is rather mixed, but the author -- I have to admit he is a friend of mine -- has only kind words for my effort.

There’s a real gem in the collection which was quite a surprise—a translation into English of set of ‘Constitutions’ written by Teresa of Avila and her collaborator and friend, Father Jerome Gratian.

A few years ago, a book was published called How Not to Say Mass by Father Dennis Smolarski. The book gave examples of mistakes, most quite comical, that have been done by priests saying Mass. It is a training manual, by offering only negative examples, of how to then properly say Mass (by avoiding these examples yourself). Well, it turns out that Teresa and Gratian did exactly the same thing. After completing the Constitutions of the newly reformed group of Carmelites called “discalced Carmelites” they then wrote another set of Constitutions of what not to do as a religious, which they called the Constituciones del Cerro. And they used a lot of humor in these ‘anti-constitutions.’ When reading this delightful gem, I laughed and laughed.

As to whether I give this volume a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down,’ I am going to give it a ‘thumbs sideways.’ Yes, it is a rather uneven volume with essays ranging from mere rehashings to profoundly insightful. But that translation of the highly humorous Constituciones del Cerro made reading the whole book worthwhile.

Greg (the reviewer) did not read my introductory material carefully enough to see that this was not written by Teresa in collaboration with Gratian, but it was a work of Gratian alone, although possibly based on some conversations he had with Teresa.

Anyway, I had been hoping to see a review of the book somewhere, and I appreciate Steve telling me about one I would like. And a word of thanks to Fr. Greg Houck for his kind remarks. I'm glad I made him laugh.