new-fangled songs, and wish with everythingnin me that someone wouldngive her back her ‘Ave Maria’ and hern’Tis the Month of Our Mother.’ Rememberingnmy days in the choir, Inwish with everything in me that Incould hear again a Latin Mass impeccablynsung, or a crystal-clearnSightless PerceiversnThe Secular Mind: Transformationsnof Faith in Modem Europe;nEdited by W. Warren W^ar; Holmesn& Meier; New York.nby Glenn N. SchramnWritten as a festschrift in honor ofnFranklin L Baumer, intellectual historiannat Yale, by a group of his former students,nthis volume is of interest to thengeneral public for two main reasons—^thenintroduction and a chapter on apocalypticismnin contemporary literature bynProfessor Wagar, and the basic attitudesnof the writers toward the secularizationnof Western culture. Most of the chapters,nthough apparendy competent, arenon small and occasionally arcane topicsnof interest only to specialists. One othernitem of general interest is the forewordnby Jaroslav Pelikan, who, though the factnis not mentioned, combines the roles ofnconfessing Lutheran and Dean of thenGraduate School at Yale. He is also anchurch historian. It is in this capacitynthat he wrote the foreword where, alonenamong the contributors, he expressesnan awareness of the effect of educatorsnon students and thus on society. Henwrites: “The intellectual conclusions ofnone generation may become the moralnpresuppositions of the next, and it behoovesnus to consider the potential consequencesnof what we say and think andndo.”nWhether Professor Baumer alwaysnDr. Schram is with the political sciencendepartment at Marquette University.n32inChronicles of CulturenGregorian chant. Did I ever thinknI’d be so nostalgic?nCynical? Perhaps. But it may alsonbe a sign of growth. And growth—nwhich John Henry Cardinal Newmannonce termed the only criterion of life—neven if delayed, is still growth. Dnfollowed this advice is questioned unconsciouslynby Frank M. Turner and thenRev. Jeffrey von Arx, SJ., in a chapter entitledn”Victorian Ethics of Belief: A Reconsideration.”nHere they report thatn”Franklin Baumer in the late 1960snasked his students to compose a letternpurportedly written in the 1870s by annEnglish university student explaining tonhis fether why he could not take HolynOrders.” One wonders why it was essentialnthat impressionable undergraduatesnnngain empathic understanding of the spiritualncrisis of a 19th-century student andnthereby be led to question whatevernfaith they might have. Why could theynnot have written on, say, the conversionnexperience of somebody influenced byna Methodist circuit rider or by the Tractariannmovement in the Church ofnEngland?nThis same almost casual attitude towardnsecularization characterizes ProfessornBaumer’s students’ contributionsnto this book. Professor W^ar, in his introduction,nconcedes that we seem tonbe living in more secular times than ournancestors did. The concession occursnafter the rehearsal of a debate on whatnsecularization is and whether it has in feetnoccurred in the West. Professor Wagarnwould have spared himself considerableneffort if he had merely stipufeted as a definitionnthe one he quotes from DavidnMartin, the British sociologist and liturgicalntraditionalist Secularization, accordingnto Professor Martin, is the decline ofnreligious beliefe and institutions, givennthat religious refers to “an acceptancenof a level of reality beyond the observablenworld known to science, to whichnare ascribed meanings and purposesncompleting and transcending those ofnthe purely human realm.”nSecularization is often considered tonbe part of the process of modernization,nand Professor W^ar maintains that “thenturning of the balance” from premodemnto modern occurred in both Europe andnAmerica between 1830 and 1870—anposition which he claims to share withnMartin E. Marty, the liberal church historiannat the University of Chicago. It is unclearnwhat “turning of the balance” couldnmean, particularly when Professor Wagarnadmits that “the beginnings of the secularizationnof consciousness can benfollowed back to the Renaissance, andneven before.” The unclear statement did,nhowever, earn the introduction praisenas “masterful” by Professor Marty in ThenChristian Century.niJoth in his introduction and in hisnchapter on literary apocalypticism. Pro-n