THE VALLEY OF SILENCE

The theme of this collection is ""contemporary Catholic thought in Poland."" To the reader's astonishment, the book turns out to be a highly stimulating and diversified representation of what Catholic intellectuals are capable of once they are (a) forced to function in an unsympathetic milieu, and (b) effectively removed from the mainstream of Western tradition. The twenty--four essays deal with aspects of the usual subjects: man, God, society. But they illustrate two important things: first, that Catholic intellectuals need not be isolated from contemporary problems; second, that Catholic intellectuals need not content themselves, whatever their field, with that reiteration of pro forma litanies which seems to have been (and often to remain) the chief characteristic of Catholic ""thought"" in the West. These authors have new viewpoints, discover unexpected problems, explore virgin areas in every field from industrialization to education, from jurisprudence to history, from psychology to literature. If the communist revolution is able to produce such a Catholic intellectual revolution in an area never before noted for either the quantity or quality of its scholars, then Catholics in the West may entertain, at least for a moment, the possibility of voting a straight Red ticket....