Because I come from a Roman Catholic background, and because I have published a book-length study of the work of a Roman Catholic priest, Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), who published two short books about the future of American Catholicism, FRONTIERS IN AMERICAN CATHOLICISM (1957) and AMERICAN CATHOLIC CROSSROADS (1959), the words in the subtitle of Marian Ronan's book about "the Future of American Catholicism" caught my attention. But I found her short book (approximately 200 pages) very disappointing to read.
Ronan's book consists of four chapters about four Roman Catholic authors (James Carroll, Mary Gordon, Donna Haraway, and Richard Rodriguez), bookend by an introduction and conclusion, along with notes, a bibliography, and an index.
First, I want to discuss the words in the subtitle of her book about "the Future of American Catholicism." As I just mentioned, Ong published two short books about this topic in the late 1950s. However, he was blown out of the water when Pope John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council, which met in Rome from 1962 to 1965. Ong was fond of the New Testament imagery about leaven (a.k.a. yeast). No doubt the official documents of Vatican II were designed to provide certain leaven to the Roman Catholic Church. However, the leaven of those documents also unleashed the dreams of many American Catholics -- especially of James Carroll, the most prolific of the four authors discussed by Ronan.
When young Jimmy Carroll was a teenager, he and his father and mother and brothers had an audience at the Vatican with Pope John XXIII. On that occasion, the pope memorably hugged young Jimmy, who subsequently went on to become a seminarian for the priesthood and then an ordained priest for a period of years and later an officially laicized former priest. But through it all Carroll has remained true to the spirit of John XXIII as he understands it -- through his twenties, his thirties, his forties, his fifties, and now into his sixties.
As a thought experiment, let's say that Ong had had his heart set on leading his fellow American Catholics in ways that he outlined in his two short books in the late 1950s. I've already noted that things did not work out that way for Ong, because John XXIII and Vatican II blew Ong out of the water. But for the sake of discussion, let's say that Ong had had his heart set on his dreams of the way things should be in American Catholicism, so he proceeded to write book after book in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and up to his death in 2003 advancing his views and his dreams for American Catholicism. Perhaps the following that his two books in the 1950 had garnered among his fellow American Catholics would have grown with each of his new books advancing his dreams of American Catholicism -- to include perhaps James Carroll and Marian Ronan (who were both in their teens in the late 1950s). Of course that is not how Ong's long and highly productive life unfolded in the 1960s and later decades. For whatever reasons, he did not pursue further the trajectory that he seemed to have set his course on in those two books in the late 1950s. But if this non-pursuit involved mourning the loss of any dreams that he may have had for himself and for American Catholicism, I know nothing about any such mourning he may have experienced because I never thought to ask him about it.
I mention the possibility of his having mourned the loss of any dreams he may have had regarding American Catholicism because the central thesis that Ronan works with involves the allegation of an inability to mourn. To make this allegation, she draws (pp. 7-8) strongly on the 1975 book THE INABILITY TO MOURN: PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR by Alexander Mitscherlich and Margarete Mitscherlich, with certain qualifications that Ronan draws from the 1999 essay by Anahid Kassabian and David Kazanjian. Fair enough. Ronan has set forth the central conceptual framework that she uses as a touchstone throughout the book.
However, in recent years I myself have read more professional literature about mourning our losses than Ronan refers to in her notes and bibliography (she cites no books, for example, by Susan Anderson, Thomas Attig, Pauline Boss, John Bowlby, John Bradshaw, Theresa A. Rando, or J. William Worden). Because Ronan's central allegation involves the inability to mourn, we might expect her to clarify certain matters. For example, when certain individuals are able to mourn, how do we tell when the person's mourning process is healthy and when it is not healthy (i.e., unhealthy)? Healthy or unhealthy along the way in the mourning process, how do we tell when the person's mourning process has run its course and can be said to be completed (or resolved, as distinct from unresolved)? Without setting forth careful considerations and operational definitions of these key matters, Ronan proceeds to hurl about her allegation regarding an inability to mourn. In the final analysis, the admittedly interesting idea of an inability to mourn remains seriously under-developed in Ronan's book.
However, because I take Ronan to be concerned primarily with the loss of dreams, even though she herself does not fame matters this way, I hasten to add that the inability to mourn the loss of dreams may be a seriously under-explored experience in the contemporary literature about mourning our losses. I've come across only one pamphlet on mourning our loss of dreams.
But this observation leads me to comment on our Christian religious conditioning (for those of us who come from a Christian religious tradition). No doubt the historical Jesus died a heroic death. When he learned that John the Baptist had been executed, Jesus could have turned back, gone home, and mourned the loss of his dreams. However, even though the writing was on the wall that he faced likely death by execution if he continued to pursue his dreams, he walked forward heroically into his death, just as Achilles went back into the war to face certain death (because his goddess mother had revealed this fate to him).
Perhaps James Carroll fancies that he is going to pursue his dreams heroically unto death if necessary. But Carroll's apparent inability to mourn the loss of his dreams also suggests that mourning the loss of our dreams may be more painful than merely dying would be. I am deliberately trying to make light of the possible pain that may be involved in mourning the loss of our dreams.
But let me go on. The close followers of the historical Jesus were crushed by his execution and death. His death involved the loss of a loved one that probably would have been every bit as painful for his close followers as the loss of her spouse was for Joan Didion and as the loss of her spouse was for Kay Redfield Jamison. See Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING (2005) and Jamison's NOTHING WAS THE SAME: A MEMOIR (2009). But in addition to losing a loved one, the close followers of the historical Jesus underwent a loss of dreams! But did they mourn their loss of dreams in ways that were healthy? Or were their reports of apparition experiences really hallucinations engendered through manic reactions due to their inability to mourn their loss of their beloved Jesus and their loss of their dreams in connection with him?
In the spirit of Didion and Jamison, the close followers of the historical Jesus set to work to make sense of their loss of such a wonderful man and such wonderful dreams by fabricating the greatest story ever told. When they fabricated the story about his supposed second coming at the end-time, they took all the pain and suffering out of his execution and death -- probably as a way to defend themselves from suffering the excruciating pain of mourning not only their loss of their beloved Jesus but also their loss of their dreams in connection with him.
In any event, when we frame the issue involved for many idealistic post-Vatican II Roman Catholics as their dreams, then we can frame their inability to actuate their dreams as the loss of dreams. With warrior resolve, they may hold steadfast heroically to their dreams until they die. However, should they allow themselves to have second thoughts about the adequacy of their dreams and about their adaptiveness to the frustration of their dreams, then they may be opening themselves up to an excruciatingly painful process of mourning the loss of the dreams that so deeply influenced the shape of their lives.
