I Was A Monk by John Tettemer (review)

176 BOOK REVIEWS as an accurate thinker. Often he misses the whole point of a problem and invents a solution that confounds the original difficulty. Certainly Dr. Shahan has shown something can be done with Whitehead's thought. Yet, there is little solace in r~writing a man's philosophy in order to extricate him from his own contradictions. The real problems still remain. Of course, Whitehead did advance some thoughtful objections to traditional solutions of old problems. Unfortunately, his answers are, in all too many cases, so obscure as to be almost worthless. His main value seems to lie in his capacity to stimulate thought. DCJ'T/'Unican HOU8e of PhiloBOphy, Springfield, Kentucky RAYMOND SMITH, O.P. 1 Was A Monk. By JoHN TETTEMER. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951. Pp. 281. $3.50. Professional anti~ Catholics will find little comfort or ammunition in this • sad, strange odyssey of a quondam Passionist. Although published as the "Autobiography of John Tettemer," it is rather difficult to ascertain just how much of this book is the work of John Tettemer. Editor Janet Mabie, the daughter of a lnin.ister, who worked with the advice and assistance of Tettemer's widow, fails to enlighten the reader on this very interesting point. She does, however, add a rather vacuous foreward by Jean Burden and also an introduction as vague as it is enthusiasti~ by John Burton. The general effect is to leave the reader with a feeling of sadness and pity for a man who lost his way. The first thirteen chapters tell in a rambling but exceptionally friendly style the story of a youth whose background was typical of many another priest. John Tettemer's mother was a pious Irish Catholic; his father was a devout convert from Presbyterianism. His home life was a most happy one, since he grew up in an atmosphere of faith and friendliness. His brother became a diocesan priest. Hence when he asked permission to leave home to join the Passionists, nobody was very much surprised. On September 21, 1896, he pledged his vows after a difficult year of solitude, prayer, and strict monastic observance. He took the name of lldephonsus of the Sorrowful Virgin. After fiv.e years of study in this country and in Rome, he was ordained by Cardinal Respigli in the Cathedral of St. John Lateran on S~pt. 21, 1901. He remained in Rome for three more years as a student priest, and then returned to the United States to enter upon a career that was unusual, meteoric. Four years passed, teaching and directing students. Recalled to Rome, he helped to organize and direct the new International College for BOOK REVIEWS 177 PaBsionist Students at the MonaBtery of Saints John and Paul. New experiences crowded the next five years. Having .long since made his mark as a splendid student and teacher, he merited the distinction of serving as a consultor to two of the Congregations of the Holy See. When the time came for Fr. lldephonsus to return home again, Pius X manifested his esteem and affection for him in a most paternal manner. Soon after his return, he waB elected rector of St. Francis Monastery, a new foundation at St. Paul, KansaB. From this office in 1914 he was elected to be one of the Consultors General, a highly important position. This new duty requiring residence in Rome, he returned there, and continued to charm all with his warm and gentle disposition; his ability and integrity were apparently unquestioned. Indeed, he refused a bishopric and he received more than gentle hints that a cardinal's hat was in the offing. In the midst of this activity, sickness torced him to leave it all for the peace and quiet of a sanitarium in Switzerland. Here. something happened . The long days of enforced idleness, spent in what he called detached contemplation, resulted according to him, in the birth of a new faculty of knowing, rendering all former knowledge false and illusory. Soon he came to believe that the sense of " I " is a great illusion, since all consciousness is one. Losing one's own personality in that of alarger consciousness that he may call...