Living Love — Restoring Hope in the Church by Jack Dominian, 2004, Darton Longman and
Todd Ltd, London. ISBN 023252153. Rrp $31.95
Reviewed by Katy Gerner
Jack Dominian is a psychiatrist and author of
several books including One Like Us: A Psychological
Interpretation of Jesus and Let’s Make Love: The
Meaning of Sexual Intercourse. His latest book
describes a new vision for the Catholic church,
and covers the church today, the concept of love,
marriage and the family and the wider family.
Living Love is full of riveting and sometimes
controversial ideas delivered with style. If I quoted
every sentence of his I admired, I would be writing
another book. But I will limit myself to a couple
of gems.
On authority — “The Church must listen and
take heed of the laity, for it needs to reflect the
truth that belongs to the whole Church and not
just to a minority.” (20)
“(H)idden within these vocations were often
a number of unconscious issues that are now
recognised. The first was immaturity. From an early
age, boys were incarcerated in an environment that
fostered infantility, immaturity, dependence and an
ignorance of how to be human” (166)
On Marriage — “It is my view that Christianity
fails seriously in its advocacy of marriage by not
proclaiming loudly the reality of healing, within
it, and that there is more healing in the totality of
marriage than in all the healing achievements of
the psychiatric couches of the world.” (95)
Dominian’s thoughts on authority in the
church often refer to babying of church members
encouraged by church leaders, to the church’s
detriment. Not only, he argues, did it take on
young leaders who would give up their priestly
role when they gained confi dence and matured.
It also does not meet the needs of an educated
congregation, who like to think over their spiritual
decisions rather than obey without question.
Dominian feels that the appointment of
conservative religious leaders who obey their leaders
and expect obedience from their congregation will
only exacerbate the numbers of people leaving the
church.
He also believes that limiting the role of the laity
disadvantages the church. For example, Dominian
believes that the married laity has much to off er
in preparing a theology of marriage, love and
sexuality.
“The truth that it proclaims must indeed be the
truth. For this to be so, the experience of the Pope,
bishops and priests is not enough, particularly in
sexual matters. The laity are not seeking executive
powers but to be consulted seriously, especially in
matters that are their domain and where they have
special experience.” (20)
Dominian praises marriage throughout his
book, and believes that it is underrated by the
church, often limited to being viewed as a means
of procreation and an acceptable form of sex.
His writings proclaim it to be a truly
beautiful
relationship and he gives sound advice on how to
find and maintain a happy marriage.
I found Dominian’s thoughts on prayer interesting
and thought they reflected his experience as a
psychiatrist.
He speaks sympathetically of the person who
has already prayed over a problem and is dismissed
by a priest, who “has not got a clue how to handle
the problem” with the words, “Pray and I will pray
for you.” (43) Dominian feels that talking over the
problem is an important part of prayer.
“Without doubting the spiritual validity of
prayer, these situations require more. They need
time to be spent, if necessary a long time, to listen
to the story, not so much because an answer will be
found, although it may be, because dialogue itself
is God’s presence in the encounter. The exchange
is with the visible, listening God, the mystery and
complexity of the situation is being unravelled
without necessarily being solved, and the person
is being heard, recognised and empathised with.
These encounters are prayerful human answers.
They come before any invisible answers arrive.
These encounters are the prayer.” (43)