Volume 1, Number 4 · October 17, 1963
Les Caves du Vatican
By Frank O'Connor
Letters From Vatican City
by Xavier Rynne
Farrar, Straus, 289 pp., $3.95
One of the contradictions of the modern world is that hundreds of millions of people believe in truth as revealed by experiments and statistics; hundreds of millions in truth as revealed by apparitions and miracles. Sometimes they are the same people: a Protestant friend in Dublin was treated by a radiologist who first rubbed the affected part with Lourdes water; Irish Airlines has its aeroplanes blessed annually. This contradiction can rapidly turn into persecution. Lack of enthusiasm for the Bleeding Statues of Templemore or the Kerrytown apparitions, particularly if combined with concern about infant mortality or the flogging and cropping of innocent school children, would blast the career of any Irishman. A Yugoslav bishop who had his hips broken by Communists—men, no doubt, with a proper reverence for science—is one of the heroes of a remarkable document called Letters from Vatican City. This report, written by the pseudonymous 'Xavier Rynne'—rumored to be two or maybe three persons—is an account of the proceedings of the Ecumenical Council, before it was interrupted by the death of Pope John XXIII.
Review, 1099 words
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