【书评】Changing Orders: Scenes of Clerical and Academic Life

Burnheim, J. (2008). Paul Crittenden, Changing Orders: Scenes of Clerical and Academic Life, Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2008. Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association, 30.

该书是作者的回忆录。【Paul Crittenden是赖蕴慧老师的博士生导师】

书评者回忆了与作者的往年岁月。

1，澳大利亚老旧的社会风气extremely conformist、大学的教育（老师读讲义）【可见老式德国教育法的过时】，选择一眼望到头的工作Most careers were clearly predictable。

2，作者青年时期就进入了神学院，有时候不得不面对的张力：教会旧习俗ecclesiastical convention权威 vs. 打破限制束缚的圣人的挑战 （p. 118）即传统与新环境。

3，特别是，梵二会议，在书评者看来，似乎与时代脱轨了。对社会问题的领导，让位于世俗的人文学者secular humanists。

4，作者最后选择退出神职，无力作为牧师来拯救教会当局。

5，作者离开神职，进入学术界，经历一些学术界部门政治departmental politics后，终于晋升主任。

6，作者在学术界所做的事就是试图更开放地理解当代的状况。What Crittenden and other priests involved in academic philosophy were doing was to attempt to show both believers and unbelievers that the great thirteenth-century ambition of Aquinas to reconcile faith and reason could be pursued in a more modest form in the infinitely more complex situation of twentieth-century thought. [...] His task was not to produce proofs of God's existence or quick answers to objections to them, but to open up a broader and richer understanding of our situation.

总之，书评者所表达的就在于，教会目前的问题在于如何回应当下的处境our situation. 作者放弃神职，从事学术，其志向也在于此。