By LeRoy Lawson
Pope John XXIII
Thomas Cahill
New York: Penguin Books, 2008
Armenia: A Journey Through History
Arra S. Avakian
Fresno: The Electric Press, 2008
The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied
Yair Auron
Valley Cottage: Contento De Semrik, 2013
My Age of Anxiety
Scott Stossel
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014
On March 13, 2013, the Roman Catholic Church”s papal conclave elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as the new pope. We commoners held our collective breath. So much depends on the character of the man, his leadership style, his ability to hold together his far-flung, disparate, often rebellious flock. What was the church getting this time?
This time, it quickly became evident, the church was getting a pastor, a humble man of the people, far more concerned about the needs of the poor and binding up the wounds of a bleeding humanity than about the trappings of religious royalty.
The church was getting, following so many years of sternness and regulations, a lover in the mold of Pope John XXIII, the fat, approachable peasant-priest who drew the affections of the world to him and, surprising everybody, in his short reign dragged the calcified Roman religious institution into the 20th century. He set Vatican II in motion, the great conclave of bishops that has had the greatest impact on the Roman Church in five centuries.
Thomas Cahill”s Pope John XXIII is a brief introduction to the life and papacy of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who did for the 1960s what it appears Francis I (Bergoglio”s chosen name) is doing now: he brought the embrace of a concerned shepherd to the whole world. Against the calculated advice of the curia”s conservatives, he reached across borders to Anglicans, to Orthodox Christians, to other faiths, even to Communist Russia, in his quest for peace on earth. He made the love of Christ believable to a restless, rebellious generation.
Where his timid predecessor (Pius XII) kept mum about the plight of the Jews under the Nazis, Roncalli personally worked to rescue them from Hitler”s clutches. The poor found a friend in him, and non-Catholics of the day heard the Catholic leader refer to them as “brothers and sisters.”
I”m fascinated by the way the current pope has captured the media”s attention. I haven”t seen the likes since I was young and the twinkly (but deceptively able) old man Roncalli made even us non-Catholics sit up and take notice.
The first third of this biography is a sweeping, helpful review of the popes from the beginning. For the most part they are not an admirable lot, unfortunately as susceptible as we ordinary mortals are to the temptations of power and money and sex. Only a few stand out for their spiritual sincerity and moral probity. John XXIII is among the most outstanding.
Proud Nation, Hostile Neighbors
Our French-Armenian-Australian son-in-law turned 50 last summer. Half a century! That”s reason to celebrate, and Michael celebrated””in a very big way. He took along his wife, his adult sons, and his in-laws (“You are my only parents now,” he said; his biological ones have died)””and went exploring his roots. They are planted in Armenia. Until he came into our family, I confess we knew very little of this much-abused country. What I knew is that we love our daughter”s husband, so when he said, “Come with me,” we went.
At its most prosperous, Armenia””the first country to adopt Christianity as its national religion””once boasted an area 10 times its current size. It sprawled from the Black to the Caspian seas east and west and to the Mediterranean in the south. Now it huddles, like a discarded leftover, completely landlocked by Turkey to the west, Azerbaijan to the east, Georgia to the north, and Iran to the south. Noah”s Mount Ararat dominates the southern skyline of Yerevan, the capital city, so close and yet so far. Now in Turkey, this mountainous masterpiece was once the pride of Armenia.
Unfortunately located so strategically between opposing forces, the country has been overrun by the empires of Rome, Byzantium, Persia, the Ottoman Turks, and most recently by Soviet Russia. Tensions remain; the borders are not all friendly. In spite (or because) of its precarious perch, it boasts a population of brave, loyal citizens””and a diaspora reaching all over the globe.
Our noisy entourage enjoyed the tourist sites and conversations with the locals, but we fell silent as we visited the Genocide Memorial overlooking Yerevan. Erected to honor the nearly 1.5 million Armenians slaughtered when the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire drove them to their deaths in 1915 and after, the memorial is mute testimony to humanity”s most depraved capabilities. It was a personal moment for us, for in that genocide (often called the Forgotten Genocide, because to this day Turkey and its allies refuse to own up to their responsibility in it) Michael lost most of his ancestral family.
To prepare for this journey, I found a couple of helpful guides. Arra Avakian”s Armenia: A Journey Through History provides a concise overview of the country”s epochs, heroes (and villains), artists, generals, cultural characteristics and artifacts, and much more, including the meaning of family names. The Kardashians of TV fame, for example, descend from Armenian masons.
The more moving guide was Yair Auron”s The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied. Written by an Israeli for Israelis, the book deals with the shameful””and mostly forgotten and denied””attempt to obliterate Armenia and Armenians. To have Auron”s information in mind as we toured the country was to relive the painful memories that will not be forgotten by these people.
If you are as ignorant on this subject as I was, you will welcome this opportunity to gain an understanding of this proud self-identified Christian nation so beset by its hostile neighbors.
Struggle to Survive
Reading Scott Stossel”s My Age of Anxiety heightened my own fears for some friends whose anxiety, depression, and even despair have taken charge of their lives. Heightened them, that is, because the author ends where he begins, with his own life as a strong argument for the near-incurability of chronic, debilitating anxiety.
Tortured by myriad social phobias, including the fear of vomiting, Stossel has spent decades in psychotherapy, downed a pharmacy of drugs, fortified himself with alcohol in order to get through public appearances, pursued this panacea and that, yet still remains a captive of both his genetic inheritance and his personal circumstances. He writes, “The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture.” It can be measured scientifically, can be produced by nature and by nurture, and can be conceptualized as both a hardware (“I”m wired badly”) and a software (“I run faulty logic programs”) problem. It is almost overpowering.
He takes on drug companies, yet at the same time cuts them some slack.Â
Yes””drug companies are out to make money, but: The drugs, many other studies suggest, can work””yes, only some of the time, in some people, with sometimes rotten side effects and bad withdrawal symptoms and dependency problems. And, yes, we don”t know what long-term damage they”re wreaking on our brains. And, yes, the diagnostic categories have been artificially inflated or distorted by the drug companies and the insurance industry. But I can tell you with hard won personal authority that there is legitimate underlying emotional distress here, which can be quite debilitating, and which these drugs can mitigate, sometimes only a little, sometime profoundly.
The book”s balance is whimsically captured by a quotation from Carl Elliott”s The Last Physician: Walker Percy and the Moral Life of Medicine: “Just because I can explain your depression using terms such as “˜serotonin reuptake inhibition” doesn”t mean you don”t have a problem with your mother.” Nature and nurture.
Don”t look to Stossel for a quick fix or an easy explanation. In fact, what he gives you will be exactly the opposite. My Age of Anxiety records one man”s unending struggle to survive. A struggle that pits him against physical and psychological forces he inherited from his forbears and, to his horror, now sees coming out in his 8-year-old daughter”s emerging fear of vomiting.
And yet, the man who admits he is mentally ill, has in fact survived. He is a successful professional, husband, parent, and friend. He wrote a book!
After reading his story you will never again be quick to judge another sufferer. “Well, you”ll just have to get over it” doesn”t work for someone who just can”t “get over it.”
LeRoy Lawson is international consultant with CMF International and professor of Christian ministries at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, Tennessee. He also serves as a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and on Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee.
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