Book Review

I
don’t remember where I had read about the book God
and His Image: An Outline of Biblical Theology by Dominique
Barthelemy, but I am glad I added it to my Wish List and got around to
ordering it.  Fr. Dominique Barthelemy O.P. was an
internationally recognized expert on Old Testament studies and a member
of the Pontifical Biblical Commission who died in 2002.

The book is exactly as it advertises an overview of Bibical Theology
and thus salvation history. Fr. Barthelemy asks very
interesting questions throughout and then writes to answer them as to
what can be known from the scriptural evidence.  What I like
is that he doesn’t overstep what can be known just to advance some
theory.  He also has the ability to write deeply on scripture
while at the same time not becoming too technical and overwhelming the
reader.  I certainly don’t claim to be any kind of expert, but
I found at no time in the book did I get lost in the points he was
making.

I think just the chapter he wrote “The idols and His Image” to be worth
the price of the book by itself.  When he writes that when man
tries to build bridges to God he creates idols and when God builds a
bridge to man it was the Incarnation.  His insights make you
look at what you might already know and to see it fresh and more
deeply. Viewing Biblical theology in this outline view helps you to see
the big picture of salvation history that is mainly concentrated within
the Old Testament but sees its fulfillment in new Testament.

I do hope that more of his work is translated into English if this book is any indication and
since this book was published by Ignatius Press I hope they bring more
of his work to us if possible.

 
One
of my favorite parts of G.K. “Chesterton’s Saint Thomas Aquinas:
The Dumb Ox” is when he does comparisons between St. Thomas Aquinas and
and St. Francis.  I thought it was a very good tool in seeing
anew
both saints and to understand them better.  A couple of years
ago
I picked up a book called St. Benedict & St. Therese: The
Little
Rule and the Little Way that did this comparison with these
two great
saints and Doctors of the Church.  I use to use it at times
during
Eucharistic adoration for spiritual reading, but unfortunately manged
to lose the book.  Thankfully the author, Fr. Dwight
Longenecker,
supplied me with a new copy for a review.

At
first glance when you think of either saint you don’t really make any
comparisons between them in your mind.  They seem far apart
both
in time, spirituality, and in the way they lived their lives when you
casually think of
them.  There are always commonalities in the saints since they
are reflecting Jesus in the first place, but their reflection like a
mirror ball often shows us different aspects.  Fr. Dwight
Longenecker is really a wonderful writer and I so enjoyed his
comparisons of these two saints.  Being the thorough-going
Chestertonian that he is he also has the ability to use paradox in a
instructive way and to switch around ideas in a sentence that really
makes you stop and think.  He will write something that is the
equivalent of a speed bump forcing you to slow down and mull over what
was just written.

I have read a lot of books on St. Therese and am quite familiar with
her Story of a Soul, yet this book could make me see her again fresh by
seeing her with St. Benedict.   I had only a casual
familiarity with St. Benedict knowing his basic story, but not being
familiar with his rule that has lasted in practice to the present day.
 The discussion of these two saints who are as he describes
saints of an ordinary way is really quite fascinating.  Large
than life St. Benedict really understood the ordinary way to sainthood
was not great actions, but paying attention to the ordinary details of
everyday life.  Parts of his rule might appear as something
written by a micro-manager instead of something written to firmly
anchor his monks in the life of prayer.  He was able to
incorporate what had already been tested with his own ideas which have
stood the test of time.  This idea of course fits in perfectly
with St. Therese’s Little Way which is paved with ordinary acts.
 We often think of the great saints in terms of perhaps their
martyrdom  or other events in their lives and forget about the
daily life that got them their.  Their daily response to grace
is left out of the picture.

I really wish I had the ability to write the review this book deserves  I do
believe that this
book will take you deeper into the spiritual life of these two saints
regardless of how well you were acquainted with them before.

* Fr. Longenecker will be conducting a pilgrimage/retreat in France
that will explore these two saints.

Fr. Longenecker’s blog is here.

The
Father Brown Reader is a new book
that contains four adaptations of the Father Brown stories by G.K.
Chesterton.  Nancy Carpentier Brown has done the adaptations
along with illustrations from Ted Schluenderfritz.  The book
is primarily designed for ages 9-12 and I think are quite perfect for
this age group.

As an avid Chesterton fan myself and one who has read the various
Father Brown mysteries a couple of times I believe the four selections
of “The Blue Cross,” “The Strange Feet,” “The Flying Stars,” and “The
Absence of Mr. Glass.” to be a very good representation to introduce
children to the writing of Chesterton.  I surely wish I had
been and sadly never read anything from Chesterton until my forties and
then read everything I could get my hands on.  Please don’t
let this omission happen to your children.

The adaptations themselves work quite well for the target audience and
highlight both the whimsy of Chesterton, but also the deeper truths
contained in the stories.  The illustrations go along
perfectly with the stories and I think Chesterton himself would have
approved of them.   I wouldn’t have thought the stories
collected to be that adaptable for younger readers, but after reading
the adaptations I can now see how much of Chesterton and aspects of his
stories can carry over very well to this audience and really how much
of his fiction has a child-like quality to them.

I had fun re-reading the adaptations even if I was already thoroughly
acquainted with the stories and the illustrations went along perfectly.

I
recently read How
href=”http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/Store.ItemDetails/SKU/20467/affiliate/TheCurtJeste4635/T/3″
target=”_blank”>How The Catholic Church Built Western
Civilization by Thomas E.
Woods, Jr., Ph.D. I have heard and read some of the information Dr.
Woods provides in this book, but he goes into much more detail on a
variety of topics that include, science, economics, international law,
art & architecture and many others.

class=”blog”>


I remember first coming in contact with
some of the information on my way into the Church and much of it was a
total surprise to me.  History as taught in public schools and
other educational institutions has done a great disservice by pulling a
1984 in a extensive revision of history.



After reading this book I feel even
more robbed by my education that consisted of so much misinformation.
For me and I am sure for many others the only time the Catholic Church
seems to have entered history is in the case of  Galileo and
then she promptly bows back out of it again.  The chapter on
science was especially interesting for me as it details the profound
effect that the Church has had on science throughout the centuries and
especially how the Jesuit order in such a really short period of
history has contributed to science in an amazing degree.  Dr.
Woods does give one of the better explanations of the Galileo affair
that neither dismisses mistakes made or takes Galileo off the hook for
his errors in judgment.  He also gives a good short
discussion  on the excellent work of Fr. Stanley Jaki on how
it is Christianity that lead to the scientific method and that all
other cultures failed to break out of their world view to do this.

class=”blog”>


It is also quite amazing how time after
time in subject after subject that a father of a discipline can be
traced to a Catholic and how many time those Catholics also happened to
be a cleric.  This book was really fun reading with
all  the information contained and it is quite well researched
giving a depth of details on a wide range of subjects.  It is
just truly amazing what the Church has contributed right from the
beginning.



It does make me wish that their was a
movie that did a
style=”font-style: italic;”>It’s a Wonderful Life
class=”blog”> treatment of the Church.  In this
movie you would have a Christoper Hitchens’ type complaining about how
the Catholic Church has ruined everything and in a moment of
frustration  shouts out “I wish the Catholic Church had never
been born.”  We would then move to a world where Jesus did not
become man and of course his Church never coming to exist.
This world would make Potterville look like Utopia by
comparison.  You would need some really good writers to pull
this off.  Trying to imagine a world that was never influenced
by the Church would be so alien to what we take for granted on a
day-to-day basis.  It is hard to imagine a world without
hospitals, universities, taking care of the poorest among us, the
intrinsic worth of every human person.  A world where women
where treated like they were in Pagan cultures.  Even Paganism
as it exists today and other religions have been Christianized to some
extent from their contact with Christianity.  It is just about
an impossible task to come up with a parallel history where the Church
did not exist that would seem credible.  Though the more
credible the attempt the less likely we could believe the outcome.

class=”blog”>


I highly recommend
class=”blog”
href=”http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/Store.ItemDetails/SKU/20467/affiliate/TheCurtJeste4635/T/3″
target=”_blank”>How The Catholic Church Built Western
Civilization as both a great
read and a greatly informative book.

How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D. I have heard and read some of the information Dr. Woods" data-image="" data-button="">

I had read that The Diary of a Country Priest: A Novel by George Bernanos was a classic of Catholic literature and I just finished reading it. I had thought this would be a nice pious book of the life of a country priest ministering to the pious country folk around him. I could hardly have been more wrong. Instead it is the story of an idealistic young priest and his life ministering in post-enlightenment France with characters so real you can easily imagine the flesh and bones counterparts of them today. Wow, this is truly Catholic literature and the last sentence of the novel nearly knocked me over.

Being a steady listener to the Laura Ingraham show over the last four years or so I was quite happy to be sent a copy of her new book Power to the People. This is really an excellent book on politics and the culture and what we can do about both of them.

You can often run across books that points out all of the problems there are, but few books are as hopeful as this one is what we can do to address problems. Each chapter gives an accurate diagnosis of problems with litanies of actual cases, but like St. Thomas Aquinas’s Sed Contras – Laura describes positive example and steps that can be used to give people power in addressing problems. She often spells out real world examples when this type of power from the people has been used successfully.

What I really liked about this book is that the very first chapter addresses the family and the attacks on in by politics and culture. This is exactly the right chapter to start a book on this subject and is the right order from which to begin to address problems. The book also ends perfectly with a chapter on the importance of faith. Laura herself is a convert to the Catholic Church and came in during the Easter vigil in 2003.

Many of the topics of the book are what you expect such as national defense, judges, keeping it local (she needs to learn the term subsidiarity), public schools and universties, and a chapter on science and how any criticism of unlimited science gets your branded as a "flat earther." I really enjoy Laura Ingraham’s show because she frequently addresses the culture and has news stories that are normally just not covered in talk radio. People like Bill O’Reilly call themselves a cultural crusader while at the same time having a video roll run of scantily clad females for whatever the latest outrage is. A point that Laura Ingraham has made before about the O’Reilly Factor. One chapter is devoted to
"Saving our Pornified Culture" which is such an accurate term. Unfortunately the toxicity of the pornified culture gets very little attention even among many conservatives.

This book is not a Republican good – Democrat’s bad type of polemical read, but instead points out deficiencies regardless of political party. Though most of the great one liners throughout the book are mostly directed at individual Democrats. Even with the serious subjects taken on I quite enjoyed and had a lot of fun reading this book. Her writing style leads to this since it isn’t all doom and gloom, but a restatement of what the problems are and what we can do about them. All of the stories and examples made in the book are thoroughly documents and you can easily find the source of the information in the back of the book.

I highly recommend Power to the People as an excellent book on politics and the culture.

If today wasn’t Sunday it would be the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary which was established after the win by the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto against the huge Turkish fleet. I recently read The New Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden and thought today would be an appropriate one for the review.

I had seen this book and others by Mr. Madden highly recommended and finally got around to ordering it. There are few times when you can describe a densely packed history book as a page turner, but this one certainly was. In recent years more attention has been paid to the Crusades, though much of it has not been very good – especially television series done on the subject. This is quite backwards since Crusades research over the last fifty years has done much to dispute the previous myths that cast the Crusades as primarily a land grab.

What is really excellent about this book it the thorough overview of the numbered Crusades to the Holy Lands, Crusades that occurred within Europe, and partially the Reconquista to free the Iberian peninsula – though the main focus is the numbered Crusades. Looking back on the Crusades with modern eyes is quite difficult since when we thing of countries and armies we think of them in the modern context. We would see the Crusades as being ordered by the Pope and then large armies from each country simply sent to retake the Holy Lands. Most of that concept couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Crusades really started as a sort of armed-pilgrimage with many taking on the cross as a pious endeavor. This beginning was also as haphazard as you could imagine. With both groups of individuals and rulers who had taken the cross along with their armies under a very loose leadership the amazing thing is that they achieved anything at all.

Looking back it seems that if a mistake could be made, the crusaders made it. Throughout the whole history of the Crusades there were very few leaders who could both effectively command the crusaders and whose motives actually matched the ideal of the Crusades proclaimed by the Pope. There were very few King Richard the Lion-Hearted’s or Saint Louis IX’s and the Crusaders frequently went off the rails into petty disputes and fights for power among the leaders. This period of history contained enough political intrigue to launch thousands of novels and the history of the Crusades is ripe with excommunications and interdicts concerning the crusaders when once again they sough closer target as a source for riches. Many were frustrated by these diversion and would either press ahead on their own to the Holy Lands or return home.

The Crusades were neither Christendom’s finest hour or something that deserves nothing but contempt. Though certainly some specific acts should be held in contempt such as the Sack of Constantinople and other acts almost as bad that occurred within the crusader states. In some cases these cities would have been better served by an attacking Muslim army than by the crusaders. Though while the intrigues of the crusaders is shown you also get an excellent view of the various Muslim groups where there were just as many intrigues and even less of a cohesive force. Modern portrayals such as the Kingdom of Heaven often try to show how the peaceful Muslims were put upon by those mean European crusaders, yet the never mention how it is that these peaceful Muslim ended up taking over the Holy Land in the first place.

What I liked most about this book is the warts and all treatment of the history. The heroism of crusaders and for the most part their piety is aptly displayed, but there isn’t a dismissive view of the evils that were done. You get an excellent understanding of the times and the context enables you to more fully understand this chapter of history. There are just so many really interesting details about what went on.

The book ends with a chapter on the legacy of the Crusades and a conclusion. Much has been made of the Crusades by Islamists and other and so it will surprise many that they were not something held historically by Muslims as a sore point, but were made very little of and some of their leaders such as Saladin is more known in the West then he it is among them. He points to Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman as the first book that really recast the Crusades into what moderns think of them.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn about the Crusades and I think it is the fastest two hundred some pages that you will ever read about. Even though Thomas Madden is a scholarly expert on the Crusades, this book is written for everyone.

I admit to have been rather jealous when some my favorite writers such as Anne Rice and S. M. Stirling have responded to comments to reviews on other Catholic blogs. Though it is rather silly since some of my favorite Catholic writers have responded to some of my reviews. Maybe it is the former atheist in me that sees writers that are more popular in the secular world as more important. This is of course a failing that I have to work on (along with a myriad of others), though I now have a response from a top notch writer myself.

Michael Flynn who wrote the novel Eifelhem which was up for a Hugo Award (and should have won it) wrote in response to my very positive review which had a minor quibbling on the timing of the inquisition for Germany and using the term Holy Office in it.

Well, okay, I cheated a little. The medieval inquisition was never centralized. In fact, you can’t even speak of “the” inquisition in the 14th century. But inquisitions were made. (Remember the Cathars.) The modern translation of “medieval inquisitor” is “special prosecutor,” and that is no joke, since the role of the special prosecutor (or the French “investigating magistrate”) is to make inquiry into the appointed cases. The manuals used by the Spanish, Roman, and Venetian Inquisitions were based on manuals written in the Middle Ages. Using the term “Holy Office” was the same sort of cheat as having Dietrich coin Greek words like ‘elektonikos’ or ‘proteins.’ The reader must have some chance of following along.

Basilica Press has a new series called The Shepherd’s Voice Series that brings the teaching of Bishops and Cardinals on vital topics facing the Catholic Church today. I ordered the first two books in the series to check them out.

Catholics in the Public Square –
A Catholic Bishop Responds by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted is the first in the series and is a short booklet of 45 pages that addresses our duties and responsible as laity. This booklet addresses are duties in regards to family and as the title of the book suggests, in the public square. This is not a voters guide, but it does address some topics commonly found in voters guides such as conscience and acting on a well formed Catholic conscience in our public and private lives. This book is in question and answer format and Bishop Olmsted ably answers the questions in a short fashion without using wiggle words and pretty much laying it on the line. The issue of Catholic politicians who support positions contrary to Church teaching is also addressed. This book though goes through a range of topics besides voting.

A Will to Live: Clear Answers on End of Life Issues –
A Catholic Bishop Responds by Bishop José H. Gomez, S.T.D. is the second in the series. This 68 page booklet is really excellent in that it covers very well so many issues regarding the end of life. Topics include euthanasia, persistent vegetative states, comas, palliative medicine, and just about every topic concerning medical issues regarding the end of life.

The Bishop gives very clear answers in the question and answer format in language easy to understand by those not use to either medical or theological jargon. This book is really helpful for anybody wanting to find answers on end of life care and when a treatment is truly extraordinary and when a patient might validly refuse treatment.

Also greatly helpful is that this booklet is heavily footnoted so that you can easily find the Vatican documents that have addressed these medical situations and even gives a good treatment on what is life and what is death.

The Shepherd Voice series is obviously intended for use by parishes to help to inform the faithful and while individual copies run about $5.00, they do have discounts for mass orders. I think that any parish would benefit by having these on hand, especially Bishop Gomez’s book.

There is another book in the series that I have not yet read, but surely will. Draw Near to Me, O Lord: Heartfelt Prayers for Everyday Life by Cardinal Arinze. This book includes prayers written by Cardinal Arinze for everyday life and the samples I heard on EWTN’ Bookmark were really quite good.

Unless you are Christopher Hitchens you can find a lot to admire in Blessed Mother Teresa. The new book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light
The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta will only make you admire her all the more.

The book is written by Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. who knew her for 20 years and is the postulator for her cause for sainthood. Fr. Kolodiejchuk has given us a book that will surely be a classic on the spritual life. The book mainly contains letters that Blessed Mother Teresa wrote starting from the period she received her "call within the call" along with private letters from her Bishop, spiritual directors, and quotes from other people. Fr. Kolodiejchuk weaves his own commentary to give us both background and to better understand her writings.

The first third of her book deals with correspondence that originate from when she first heard her new call riding a train to Darjeeling on the way to make a retreat in 1946 to when she was allowed to carry out her call on Dec 21, 1950. The book reveals much more about her original call and what Jesus was asking of her than has been previously released. We also get information on a private vow she had made prior to this new call that informed much of how she responded. The media has reported in connection with this correspondence and how she had requested that her letter be destroyed. Much has been made of this in a negative connection, but the reality is that she wanted hidden her original call from Jesus since she always wanted the Missionary of Charity to be about God’s work and not her own. During this time she was thoroughly tested both by her spiritual director and her bishop and in all things she was totally obedient. Her letters show a "holy impatience" to get started prompted by Jesus asking her originally "wilt though refuse?" During this period she wrote many letters to her bishop begging him to let her go. Her bishop though acted quite properly in making sure that her call was God’s will until he was quite confident that this was so. Her pleading letters are quite beautiful and give you a real insight in how she would totally give of herself to save just one soul.

One thing that really came out in this book is the role of the various spiritual directors in her life. She was truly blessed in having good and holy spiritual directors that guided her in the spiritual life. This has been certainly true throughout history, but it is rare that we give the spiritual directors their due such as in the case of Saint Claude de la Colombière who was Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque spiritual director and of course St. John of the Cross who gave such excellent spiritual direction to Saint Teresa of Avila.

She had been with the The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loreto Sisters) for 19 years when she heard her new call and the letters reveal how happy she had been with them and how difficult it was to leave them when she went to the slums. From her spiritual director we learn that she was already in a high degree of union with Jesus in her prayer life while still with the Loreto Sisters and we learn of a new spiritual journey after she leaves them. The second major part of the book deals with the aspects that have been so played up in the media regarding her spiritual darkness. Through John of the Cross the Dark Night of the Soul has been thoroughly detailed of the time of spiritual dryness and feeling of total absence of God where prayers and spiritual reading have no effects. The extent of Blessed Mother Teresa’s dark night though is rather extensive since it deals with close to fifty years of her life with the Missionaries of Charity. Her letters reveal the depth of her hidden suffering where she could not feel God’s presence at all and they also show the depth of what became blind faith in Jesus and her truly inspiring love in the face of total darkness. The media is scandalized by this because they can not imagine acting on something that was not solidly built on feelings. They think it is hypocrisy to smile and radiate joy while at the same time to be so empty. Though to be fair this was also a worry of Mother Teresa that her spiritual directors ably handled for her. Her darkness was only relieved for about a month of time after ten years in her new call where she was given extraordinary graces and once again felt the presence of Christ as she had done before. Her darkness is often alluded to in her letters to her spiritual directors and to her bishop and she hid nothing of her spiritual life. Though because of the good advice she was given she was eventually able to embrace and to love her darkness and had even written that if she ever became a saint that she would be a saint of darkness. Her letters really give you an amazing peek into this darkness and her response to it that can do nothing but make you love her all the more. Her absolute love for Jesus, especially in the Eucharist, and her love for each individual she came in contact with certainly made me feel that yet I have put no trust in Jesus or responded as I should. Her words can certainly make you reevaluate everything about your prayer life in how to respond despite your circumstances.

The last part of the book deals with her latter years before her death and while the subject of her darkness still appears but her concerns are mostly about the problems of continuing pouring herself out and the other demands made on her time due to her celebrity. Her celebrity and public speaking were truly crosses to her and she did them out of obedience and not out of any desire to bask in the limelight. Her prolonged darkness makes you wonder about God’s motives in giving her such a prolonged dark night. Though in God’s plan we can see how this might have strengthened her humility and made her immune to the problems of celebrity so that for her everything was God’s work. This was one of her major concerns that her weakness as she saw it would get into the way of God’s work. In reality she didn’t just see herself as a pencil in God’s hand, mostly she only saw God’s hand. This aspect of her really shines throughout the whole book. The main part of the book before the appendices runs 340 pages that really puts flesh onto her life.

I had an appreciation for Blessed Mother Teresa before reading this book, but not a devotion towards her. This book has totally changed my idea of her from a much shallower (though positive) understanding of her and I will be certainly spending much more time asking this "Saint of darkness" for intercessory prayers. I consider this a "must read" book and one that will be valuable for everyone.