On the Eighth Day

Much of the extant literature focused on Christian connections to sports reveals a glaring bias: the Christian adjective is synonymous with Protestant. Catholicism, the largest Christian denomination in the world, is typically occluded in these works. Matt Hoven, J.J. Carney, and Max Engel fill this gap on the Catholic engagement with their book On the Eighth Day: A Catholic Theology of Sport. The title itself has a playful double meaning. The authors draw the title from an anecdote of a young fan unfurling a banner at an Edmonton Oilers ice hockey game in the early 1980s that read “On the eighth day, God created Gretzky” in reference to hockey phenom Wayne Gretzky. The secondary meaning derives from Catholic theology, which describes Christ’s death and resurrection as an eighth day of creation, a mark of new life and new beginning. Thus, the authors aim for their book to capture a “new day,” one that looks “toward sport in the modern era and the continuing call to redeem and elevate sport in service to the human person and the glory of God” (11).

Following the title, the main body of the text is appropriately structured into eight chapters. The first chapter covers a brief historical overview of Catholic Christian engagement with sports, from biblical citations to the modern-day papacy of Pope Francis. Chapter 2 examines philosophical and theological inquiries into the essentially human and natural tendency for play and its relation to sport, which is a manifestation of this playful nature. The third chapter presents a uniquely Catholic concept, the sacramental worldview, that distinguishes the book’s discussion from more Protestant-centric literature. The sacramental worldview teaches that Jesus Christ's incarnation shows God's love for humanity and helps people see God's presence in all aspects of life; in other words, the divine nature is found within human experience. It is through this worldview that all human experiences in “sport and life offer profound opportunities to reflect on God’s presence” (50). In chapter 4, Hoven, Carney, and Engel expand on this theme using Catholic theological anthropology—one that grounds God as the “Ultimate Reality” and avers that sports “offer a unique opportunity to examine the best and worst of humankind’s potential” (85).

The fifth chapter’s focus, suffering and loss in sports, might contain the book’s most contentious thesis. Hoven, Carney, and Engel present the stories of Michael and Maya, composite figures based on stories of real-life students, and examine their respective pain and loss of identity as athletes due to injury and displacement. The authors correlate these examples with the Paschal Mystery of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to illustrate a deeper point about how the nature of suffering and loss are potential avenues that lead to transformation and new life. Readers who are more theologically minded may take exception to this close comparison of sacred and mundane phenomena, but the authors defend the analogy and use it to draw attention to Michael and Maya’s renewed commitments to their Catholic faith following their challenges.

Chapter 6 analyzes the distinction between ritual and superstition, reminding readers that superstitions reduce an athlete’s identity to their sporting performance and obscure their connection to deeper community. The seventh chapter explores how sports can cultivate a virtuous life, as defined by the Catholic moral tradition, which emphasizes disciplining good habits. Chapter 8 situates sports as an appropriate platform for Catholic social teaching, highlighting papal teachings on the social utility of sports, as well as the works of Bishop Bernard Sheil (who created the Catholic Youth Organization in Chicago) and Father Robert Ayiko (who founded an ecumenical soccer league in the Bidi-Bidi refugee camp in northwestern Uganda). The book concludes with an eschatological vision of hope, one that looks at “salvation and redemption in sport on an ecological, communal, and personal level” (167).

The strengths of the text are its brevity and clarity of prose. The text is easily accessible and well-structured for undergraduate, graduate, and non-academic audiences alike. Readers oriented toward historical or social scientific methodology may find the book’s brief discourse on these topics to be disappointing, but the arguments that Hoven, Carney, and Engel present still offer valuable insight into Catholic thinking on religion and sports. Readers most interested in pastoral theology and its practical implementations in Catholic sporting environments may find the most value in this text, sharing it among their peers and applying it to their vocations. Overall, the authors successfully provide a clear vision of the Catholic understanding of sports in the modern world. This book would be a welcome addition to any reading lists or syllabi concerning the study of religion and sports.

Ryan Halloran is an independent scholar.

Ryan Halloran

Date Of Review:

July 26, 2024