Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams by Ian Bradley (review)

96BOOK REVIEWS As often as not the solution is found in the annihilation of the clergy and/or the Jews. The book is as up-to-date as Pat Robertson, Waco, Texas, and the thirtynine suicides at Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego in 1997. As for useful practical information it has been discovered (p. 205) that if one adds the nine-digit zip codes that the U.S. Post Office used to the nine-digit numbers of the Social Security Administration, the total is eighteen, which when divided by three is six, i.e. 666, the number of the beast of the Apocalypse. All in all the book is a gem for readers and a gold mine for theft by students writing papers and preachers preparing sermons. John R. McCarthy Cleveland, Ohio Celtic Christianity:Making Myths and Chasing Dreams. By Ian Bradley. (New York: St. Martin's Press. 1999. Pp. x,246. $45.00.) Celtic Christianity, regardless of how one defines it, plays an important role in the spiritual life and thinking of many English-speaking people. The main question is: does it have some objective reality, even when mixed with various accretions and imaginings, or is it entirely a figment? (Celtic should always be understood here as if in inverted commas.) Ian Bradley, whose previous writings promoted Celtic Christianity for its spiritual benefits, now takes a long, cool look at its history and its validity. There is immense erudition in the book. It covers six periods from the seventh century to the present day, pointing out how in each the supposed golden age of a Celtic Church has been exalted above its prosaic reality. There are just short of 600 footnotes. In post-Reformation times, many writers have taken a denominational stance, the commonest being to assert the Celtic Church's independence and to contrast its freedom of spirit with the authoritarian and legalistic Church of Rome. On the whole, however, Catholics and Protestants have not reacted very differently. Differences, though by no means clear-cut, are now rather between scholars, or the more hard-headed, and the devotees. Surprisingly , devotees abound in England more than in the Celtic fringe: Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. One's background, as Bradley shows, is relevant. My own ancestry is at least three-quarters Celtic and since my teenage years I have lived in the Scottish Highlands, in a spot hallowed by a seventh-century abbot of lona. For over fifty years I have spoken and read Gaelic and been familiar with Carmina Gadelica, a magnificent collection of Gaelic folk prayers. I consider the traditional prayers, even in translation, to be remarkable for their vivid language, their imagery , their awareness of God in the natutal world, their integration of the ageold tasks of peasants and fisherfolk. This Celtic spirituality, however, is not a separate entity but merely a very attractive expression of Christianity integrated BOOK REVIEWS97 into a simple society. Its charm for the harassed city-dweller and the devout Christian disenchanted with church administration is obvious. Dr. Bradley does not differentiate enough between a reasonable re-creation of the past and a total figment. Man does not live by facts alone; there are always elements of creation and imagination. It was natural to choose hallowed sites when founding monasteries, natural to promote some saints at the expense of other saints or of historical fact, natural to adapt ancient prayers and devotions to suit modern tastes and needs. Precisely the same happened in secular affairs. No doubt the prayers in Carmina Gadelica were adapted or edited, but so too were the Gaelic folk-songs. That does not make them spurious. Scottish Catholics have their local saints and holy places dating from ancient times but have hardly been touched by any Celtic revival, though St. Columba's centenary in 1997 stirred great interest. Others, however, including New Age people and some charismatics in England, have taken up Celtic spirituality. This book provides an excellent scholarly introduction to modern Celtic revivals and the present-day cult of Celtic Christianity. Mark Dilworth, O.S.B. Edinburgh, Scotland Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia. ByJo Ann Kay McNamara . (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1996...