Notes from the Underground: The Spiritual Journal of a Secular Priest

A celebrated priest uncovers the spiritual riches beneath a church covered in scandal and doubt.At a time when many Catholics are questioning their church, Donald Cozzens sheds light on the widespread underground church that cherishes the vision of a renewed and reformed church preached by Pope John XXIII, a church open to the currents of grace flowing through cathedrals and marketplaces, chanceries and ghettos, through women and men, through people of good will. Writing in a fresh way about faith, prayer, communion, and church, Cozzens calls this new underground church a pilgrim people that believes that the Holy Spirit is loose in the world and whose rumors of wisdom might be found in any of God s people as well as in their ordained leaders. I m hardly alone in the underground church. I take comfort in that. Cozzens describes and inspires a church that wants to be simply adult a church not of children or adolescents hesitant to think and reflect on the lessons of human experience and their effort to live the gospel. A church closer to the spirit of Yves Congar and Teilhard de Chardin, to Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, a church in step with the spirit of the gospel.