Books, Books, Books: Part Three

One person gave me these three books! It's extraordinary to say that I have never read Night by Elie Wiesel, which is now assigned in high school (9th to 12th grade):

It is 1944. The Jews of Sighet, Hungary are rounded up and driven into Nazi concentration camps. For the next terrible year, young Elie Wiesel experiences the loss of everything he loves — home, friends, family — in an agonizing journey through Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. The greatest tragedy of our time, told through the eyes of a 15-year old boy.

Night is a terrifying account of the Nazi death-camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, his innocence, and his god. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Nor have I read anything in French for awhile:

This is the first mystery Simenon wrote with Inspector Jules Maigret! I guess if I can't read it in French, I'll have to buy the "crib"from Penguin!

And, in keeping with my other post today on the state/fate of Notre-Dame de Paris, it seems appropriate to highlight this book too:

According to Pan Macmillan:

In this wonderfully readable book, Alistair Horne tells the huge and romantic story of Paris through seven ages of turmoil and change: the Middle Ages, the 100 years war, the Paris of Louis XIV, the age of Napoleon, the Commune, the Empire days of Louis-Napoleon and Eugenie, and the First World War and De Gaulle. Interweaving historical narrative with telling detail, this is a fluent and definitive work of social and cultural history.

Soon, I'll let you know about my favorite books read in 2019!

Books, Books, Books: Part Two

This next set of books offers some humbling challenges, starting with learning how to be more humble from St. Benedict of Nursia, via a Benedictine monk of the St. Louis Abbey:

Saint Benedict's fifth-century guide to humility offers the antidote to the epidemic of stress and depression overwhelming modern young adults. But the language of The Rule by Saint Benedict is medieval, and its most passionate advocates are cloistered monks and nuns. How then does this ancient wisdom translate into advice for ordinary people?

With candor, humor, and a unique approach to classical art, Father Augustine, a high school teacher and coach, breaks down Saint Benedict's method into twelve pithy steps for finding inner peace in a way that can be applied to anyone's life.

Drawing upon his own life experiences, both before and after becoming a Benedictine monk, the author explains every step, illustrating each chapter with color reproductions of sacred art that he has embellished with comic flourishes. The winsome combination is sure to keep readers from taking themselves too seriously—which is already a first step on the path to humility.

Becoming humble is part of metanoia, isn't it? Therefore, this book by Bishop Robert Barron seems appropriate:

"This book rests upon the conviction that real metanoia, the transition from a mind of fear to a mind of trust, is possible. Due to the playful, strange, unpredictable, and relentless love of God, the imago in us can be polished and the great soul can emerge." - Excerpt from And Now I See

Bishop Robert Barron offers an accessible exploration of Christian theological concepts that anyone can comprehend. He divides his book into three sections as he examines Christianity as a source of human transformation.

In his first section, Bishop Barron argues that human nature is alienated from itself and thus humans are in need of a mediator who can draw them back to God and self. The second section takes up a renewed understanding of God in light of the alienated nature of humanity. In his final section, Bishop Barron contends that Christ is a healer and reconciler who seeks to draw humanity back into relationship with God. Along the way, Bishop Barron draws on sources as diverse as Dante, Paul Tillich, Thomas Merton and Flannery O'Connor.

I also received a copy of Humility of Heart by Padre Gaetano Maria de Bergamo, translated by Herbert Cardinal Vaughan, the third Archbishop of Westminster, and edited by Michael Augustine Church. The author is also known as Father Cajetan de Bergamo. Jonathan Coe describes the book and the translation (in another edition) in Crisis Magazine:

Humility of Heart was translated into English by Herbert Cardinal Vaughan (1832-1903), the Archbishop of Westminster, during the last months of his life. He had read the book dozens of times and it was his constant companion for much of his adult life.

Father Cajetan (1672-1753) was professed a Minor Capuchin in 1692 and became one of the great Italian missionaries of the eighteenth century. His eulogy was brief but redolent with meaning: “Second to none in the customs of religious life, first in writing on things of every kind.”

The purpose of the first two-thirds of his book is to make the reader “conversant with the idea of humility in its necessity, it’s excellence and its motives.” The remaining third presents a practical examen of the virtue and a concluding meditation on the vice of pride.

A word or two on the hard-hitting tone of the book would be helpful. St. Alphonsus Liguori counseled other priests: “Be a lion in the pulpit, but a lamb in the confessional.” With Father Cajetan da Bergamo, we’re definitely getting the lion.

One consolation to the reader is that the good reverend comes clean about the issue of pride in his own life: “I am considered proud by those who know me, and they are not mistaken, for I show it by my vanity, arrogance, petulance, and haughtiness.”

If Father Cajetan is the lion, perhaps Father Wetta is a lamb? Both sound like appropriate Lenten reading!

I've decided to subdivide this list of books further, because the next three--yes, three more books--belong together because they offer different challenges. 

Books, Books, Books: Part One

My family and friends know me very well indeed. I have a stack of wonderful books to read in the new year. With two exceptions--the first two books--these are the books I've received as gifts for my birthday and Christmas and the approximate order in which I plan to read them. I've received so many books that I've divvied them up into two posts, today and tomorrow.

But first I want to finish Margaret Barker's Christmas: The Original Story which I purchased from Eighth Day Books earlier this month:

The story of Christmas is loved by all Christians, and its cultural influence is felt far and wide, not only in the art and literature of the Church but also in the Qur’an. Much of the original story, however, is not found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and so some of the detail in Christian art and literature is not always understood.

Margaret Barker uses her knowledge of temple tradition and Jewish culture in the time of Jesus to set the story in its original cultural and literary context. By examining the widely used Infancy Gospel of James, and by uncovering layers of allusion in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, she reveals what the Christmas story originally meant. She then goes on to show how this understanding can be found in later texts such as the Arabic Infancy Gospel and legends known in mediaeval Europe.

This is first book I've read by Barker, a Methodist Preacher:

Margaret Barker has developed an approach to Biblical Studies now known as Temple Theology. Margaret Barker read theology at the University of Cambridge, England, and went on to pursue her research independently. She was elected President of the Society for Old Testament Study in 1998, and edited the Society’s second Monograph Series, published by Ashgate. She has so far written 17 books, which form a sequence, later volumes building on her earlier conclusions.

BTW, Eighth Day Books is holding their annual after Christmas sale: 35% off used books! If you're in Wichita, this is place to be:

We invite you to visit us after Christmas to pick up a few used book bargains. Every "pre-owned" title on the shelf is 35% off through New Year's Eve. Don't miss the opportunity to browse this curated inventory of used books-our best selection ever!

We are open regular hours right after Christmas: 10-8 on Thursday & Friday, 10-6 on Saturday. The sale continues Monday and Tuesday until New Year's Eve. We look forward to wishing you a joyous New Year full of inspired-and inspiring-reading.

After finishing Christmas: The Original Story by the end of Christmas-tide I want to dive into Gareth Russell's latest great work: The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era, sent to me by the publisher through the author's generosity!

I'll post a review once I've come up for air!! The story of the Titanic has fascinated me for years; I've watched all the movies and read other classic accounts and am looking forward to Russell's Belfast-based view. The book has been very well reviewed!

Then I'll wade through George Weigel's latest, The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform from Basic Books:

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism’s dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America’s leading intellectuals

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Church rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism developed intellectual tools capable of rescuing the imperiled modern project.

A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two centuries of profound change in the church and the world, The Irony of Modern Catholic History reveals how Catholicism offers twenty-first century essential truths for our survival and flourishing.

I received another book that will be fun to dip into throughout the year: Saints are Not Sad: Short Biographies of Joyful Saints, assembled by Frank J. Sheed and published anew by Ignatius Press:

"The only tragedy is not to be a saint", wrote the French novelist Léon Bloy. And St. Francis de Sales said that "A sad saint would be a sorry saint." But what is a saint? One way to answer is to analyze sanctity, theologically and psychologically. Another way, which is the path Frank Sheed chose in creating this volume, is to show you a saint-or rather, since no two saints are alike-to show you a number of saints. In this book, you are shown forty saints.

The saints Sheed chose for this collection are from various time periods: six before A.D. 500, seventeen from then to the Reformation, and seventeen from the Reformation to the middle of the twentieth century. Many are well known, like St. Anthony, Francis, Augustine, Patrick and Bernadette, while others are lesser known, for example, Columcille and Malachy.

The same can be said for the various authors of these short biographies. Among them are the famous like Hilaire Belloc, Alban Goodier and G.K. Chesterton, as well as priests and laymen whose names may no longer be familiar but whose writing still brings to life men and women whose closeness to God gave them purpose, strength, and yes, joy.

That's all for today, folks! More tomorrow when I find a new metaphor!

St. Augustine of Canterbury and Ecumenical Gifts

St. Augustine of Canterbury's Grave in the 

Ruins of the Abbey Church of his Monastery

Image Credit

Since today is the feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury, it seems appropriate to post some comments on the gifts given to the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury by Pope Paul VI and Pope Francis, noted in this article in The Catholic Herald. When Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1966, Pope Paul gave him a gift of a ring from his own finger:

Many Anglo-Catholics inferred that the ring was the Pope’s way of tacitly repudiating Pope Leo XIII’s papal bull Apostolicae Curae, which declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void”. Whatever Paul VI meant by it, it was a dramatic gesture of the kind of recognition of Christian brotherhood that was described by Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, from 1964. The two men issued a common declaration, and an official Anglican-Catholic dialogue was born. At a celebration in Rome in 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of the event, Pope Francis gave Archbishop Justin Welby a replica of the crozier of St Gregory the Great, who commissioned Augustine, later the first Archbishop of Canterbury, to re-Christianise Britain in 595.

Gift-giving has become expected. But ecumenism between Catholics and Anglicans has not succeeded in the way Ramsey and his generation originally imagined.

According to this article, Ramsey was quite moved by the gesture and wore the ring for the rest of his life. Subsequent Archbishops of Canterbury have worn the ring when meeting with the Pope. The article includes a picture of the ring.

The author of The Catholic Herald article is a former Episcopalian priest, Andrew Petiprin. He cites a comment that Ramsey made about Newman that surprised me:

For those still committed to the success of dialogue in bringing about corporate reconciliation, however, individual defections from the Anglican Communion to the Catholic Church are deemed unfortunate. By the end of his life, Ramsey went so far as to tell American seminarians about the “final tragedy” of John Henry Newman’s conversion in 1845. He regarded Newman as having made a selfish, pre-ecumenical mistake in leaving behind the English Church of his baptism and ordination. Strangely, Ramsey imagined the way for Newman to solve the dilemma of not feeling Catholic enough was to double down on being more Anglican. “He had not quite got historic Anglicanism into his bones,” he said, “and he came to it rather as one who is fulfilling deep personal needs of his own.”

As I've been preparing for my Newman presentation at the Eighth Day Institute's Florovsky-Newman week the first week of June, I'd reread Henry Cardinal Manning's opinion of Newman, which flatly contradicts Ramsey:

"I see much danger of an English Catholicism of which Newman is the highest type. It is the old Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone transplanted into the Church." (Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 609).

Newman became a Catholic, not for some selfish reason, but because he believed the Catholic Church was the one, true fold of Christ, the Church Jesus had established. Like St. Augustine of Canterbury, he was a Catholic because, as Andrew Petiprin's book title says, Truth Matters.

St. Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us!

St. Thomas More for Christmas

My husband surprised me with a wonderful Christmas gift: a portrait of St. Thomas More by Pieter Paul Rubens (after the famous portrait by Hans Holbein). When Crisis Magazine published my article on St. Thomas More in June this year, they used a detail of this portrait:

He gave me hints to find the hidden present--he had kept me away from the door when it was delivered earlier in the week--and then we hung it in our living room beside our secretary:

Pieter Paul Rubens' version of Holbein's portrait--which is itself a great work of character and introspection--depicts More as a little more vulnerable. More is not wearing his Collar of Esses with the Tudor Rose nor is he set against such a rich background as in Holbein's original. According to the Museo del Prado:

This is a free copy [meaning that Rubens copied it freely with his own interpretation] of Hans Holbein´s portrait of the Thomas More, the English humanist and statesman. He wears a cape with a fur collar and a magistrate's cap. In his hands, he holds a paper alluding to his condition as an intellectual. Holbein was a favorite of Rubens, who copied his works on numerous occasions, especially at the beginning of his career. The present portrait was made in the sixteen twenties and reflects his great interest in the northern esthetic, as well as his approach to the world of humanist philosophy. It is first listed in 1746 in Isabel Farnesio´s collection at the La Granja Palace.

Dame Alice More wrote to Henry VIII during the Christmas of 1534, begging Henry to be merciful to her husband, herself, and Thomas's son John. Since Thomas More had been attainted a traitor, all his assets were forfeit to the Crown; Alice was afraid that she and John would be left without resources. Alice also asked Henry to have mercy on her husband because he was ill ("great continual sickness of body and heaviness of heart"). She asked Henry to release her Thomas More to her care and declared herself to be Henry's beadswoman, praying for him constantly.

St. Edward the Confessor and Papal Gifts

Pope Francis wisely featured St. Edward the Confessor (in the center of the left half of the Wilton Diptych, behind Richard II) in his gifts to both Queen Elizabeth II and her great grandson Prince George. St. Edward is a shared saint between the Church of England and the Catholic Church--primarily because he was canonized by Pope Alexander in 1161 and his cult extended to the entire Catholic Church by Blessed Pope Innocent XI in 1679 (!) According to the Vatican's report of their meeting, "The Pope . . . presented the Queen with a replica of a decree from the Vatican archives, dating from 1679, by which Pope Innocent XI extended the veneration of St Edward the Confessor to the Universal Church, establishing his feast day on October 9^th." (Except that sources I found say his feast day is October 13, since that is the date of the translation of his relics to Westminster Abbey.) It is interesting to think that Blessed Pope Innocent promoted this feast while Catholic priests in England were being executed because of Titus Oates' "Popish Plot". It's also important to remember that Innocent did not approve of Catholic King James II's methods in promoting Catholicism in England--nor of James's closeness with King Louis XIV of France (and probably not of Charles II's, either).

Additionally, St. Edward the Confessor was featured in the other gift Pope Francis presented to the Queen for Prince George, third in the line of succession to the throne:  "It was a blue, lapis lazuli orb, topped with a cross of St Edward the Confessor and around the base a dedication reading ‘Pope Francis to His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge’."

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip faced a greater challenge in giving ceremonial gifts to Pope Francis: what do you give to the man who does not really want anything? In keeping with the informal nature of the visit, they gave him a hamper "stuffed with goodies from her royal estates: honey from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, venison, beef and some best bitter from Windsor Castle, cider, apple juice and a selection of chutneys from Sandringham and some shortbread and whiskey from the Balmoral estate in Scotland."

We should recall that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams knelt together in prayer before the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor on Friday, September 17, 2010 during the ecumenical Evensong in Westminster Cathedral:

Pope Benedict, in his address, said he was grateful for his welcome and described his visit as a “pilgrimage”, by the Successor of St Peter, to the tomb of St Edward the Confessor. He said King Edward was “a model of Christian witness” and “an example of that true grandeur to which the Lord summons his disciples in the Scriptures we have just heard: the grandeur of a humility and obedience grounded in Christ’s own example”.

St. Edward the Confessor, so-called because he was not a martyr, is the only English king to be proclaimed a saint.