The Gentle American. The Life and Times of Brother Charles Henry Buttimer, First American Superior General of the Brothers of the Christian Schools by Ronald Eugene Isetti, F.S.C. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS127 The GentleAmerican. TheLife and Times ofBrother Charles HenryButtimer, FirstAmerican Superior General ofthe Brothers ofthe Christian Schools. By Ronald Eugene Isetti, F.S.C (Landover, Maryland: Christian Brodiers Publications. 1994. Pp. 450. $20.00 hardcover; 810.00 paperback.) This biography is straightforward in its organization, working the "and times" in at die right points chronologically. Brother Charles Henry Buttimer was born in the United States ofimmigrant parents from Ireland. His childhood in a huge New York parish is redolent of those thousands of bright young people born, at that time, to be overqualified. Paternal resistance to young Tom's vocation (for Charles was his religious name taken upon entry to the novitiate) was not, however, of the more typical clericalist variety. There were, for some decades, four hundred Christian Brothers in New York City and its environs, so "why not go all the way?" was heard a bit less than elsewhere. Very early on, Charles was assigned to doctoral studies at Cadiolic University and to the formation of undergraduate Brothers there. Nothing thrilling for the general reader here, though he may have been one of the best spiritual directors anywhere. He was later part of the booming fifties in American religious life, heading a spin-off province, building a large house of formation just in time not to be needed, and then taking the post of regional assistant to the superior general for the United States provinces and missions. In 1966, at die momentous general chapter charged widi implementingVatican Council II, Charles was elected the first non-French general in the three-hundred-year history of the Institute. The pull-and-tug of diat process makes interesting insider reading. But the decade ofBrother's generalship was no royal progress; it was tinctured with the sadness of signing thousands of dispensations for memberswho had decided to leave. Moreover, a tiny band ofultraconservative French Brothers consumed a wildly disproportionate amount of his time and energy as diey ran to willing ears in Vatican middle management. But the general courageously pressed on with renewal. The years from 1976 onward bade fair to be calmer and yet productive back in Charles's home province of Long Island-New England; but a stroke, from which he never fully recovered, brought deep frustration into his later years. The achievements of a biographer, clearly, will be to take this relatively hidden life and make it significant for those who didn't know the man, while satisfying those ofBrother Charles's own generationwho might have preferred hagiography. In taking on his task, Brother Isetti has given us a foundational work for the understanding of religious life in our century, in terms of one life within it. For one whose own life followed along in that history, even under Brodier Charles's direction as an undergraduate member of the order, every page of 128BOOK REVIEWS this book brings on a re-living of the past half-century. Great, by coincidence, for a serious retreat. But the literary question ofthe target audience has to arise. I cannot imagine what some parts of this work could mean to someone fully outside the subculture . Yet the author has grasped his subject without having known him personally, largely dirough having entered the order just in time to live both halves of the history. (His Called to the Pacific is a gritty chronicle of the California province of the Brothers, with many insights about the "wise men from the east" that were readily transferable to the religious politics in Charles's life.) Components that will surely transcend the cultural limitations are the poignant chapters on the Buttimer family, the struggles diere about young Tom's leaving home at so tender an age, the canny navigation of Roman reefs and shoals by a non-clerical classical Ph.D., the international conflicts as things seemed to come apart in the decade '66 to '76, and die anguish of re-entry to his home province in "retirement." Brother Charles's life certainly offsets any cookie-cutter images of the lay brotherhood, especially those congregations founded for education. He would never be a jock, never even teach high school (the dominant apostolate by far in United States...