April 13, 2008
Classic Lit Bleg
(Tim Jones)
Hey, Tim Jones, here.
One thing I have wanted to do for a while is go back and read all the classic Western literature I missed in college. They don't exactly require a lot of reading from art students (which is a pity) so I feel impoverished in that area.
What I would like is some guidance. If anyone knows a good list of, say, the top 100 works of Western literature (the Must Read stuff), please let me know and provide a link, if you can. Also, please feel free to make your own classic lit recommendations in the combox.
I'm already primed to read a few by Dostoevsky. That's him, pictured. A portrait by Russian artist Vasily Perov (1834-1882).
(Visit Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine).
Posted by Tim Jones in Books | Permalink | Comments (38)
February 20, 2008
The Tripods are Coming
(Tim Jones)
Kewl! The Tripods,
the science fiction trilogy by John Christopher (real name Samuel
Youd), is one of the stories well known and oft quoted in our
household. My son even named his cat Ozzy, after the character
Ozymandias. We read the books and watched the BBC TV series until the
venerable VHS tape finally gave up the ghost a few years ago. We hadn't
given it much thought for a while, until my son found some video clips
on YouTube. It was fun rediscovering the series and covering old,
familiar ground. I'll have to look around and see if the series may be
found on DVD.
It occurred to me, after reading some comments on YouTube (always an intellectual treat) that the themes of the book could be interpreted as a slam at religion. I'd considered the idea before, but dismissed it, however... that was before Hitchens, Dawkins and Pullman labored to make the world safe for anti-religious bigotry, dragged it out of the closet and onto the New York Times Bestseller list.
For those unfamiliar with the story, the world has been conquered completely by aliens who travel around in gigantic tripods (okay, not terribly original, but consider it flattery to H.G. Wells) and the population are kept in line through the use of an electronic wire mesh "cap" that is stamped onto their cranium around the age of 16 (when young folk typically begin having serious rebellious thoughts) and that makes them content, docile and obedient to the tripods. The cap keeps them from thinking in certain ways, eliminates violent and deceitful thoughts, but also wonder and inventiveness. Human kind is restricted to about an 18th century level of technology. The heroes run away as their "capping day" draws near, in search of a secret enclave of human resistance, based on nothing but a rumor and a map picked up from a "vagrant" (a human whose capping has gone wrong, they are considered insane).
I never interpreted the story as anti-religious, and in fact saw the cap in much broader terms as the common tendency for the Spirit of the Age (any age) to become tyrannical and oppressive, or the readiness of people to give up thinking for themselves in exchange for the promise of peace and safety. These are human themes into which religion of one kind or another might figure... or not.
If the story was meant as a veiled anti-religious screed, it's odd that an unabashed religionist like myself would find so much in the story to relate to and delight in. To me, the Map could just as well represent Holy Scripture, the Resistance the Church, and the Cap atheistic materialism. I always assumed that once a person was capped, religious impulses would be the first thing to go.
I Googled around a bit and couldn't find any blatantly anti-religious sentiments attributable to to Mr. Youd (aka John Christopher), but I'd be interested to hear from someone who may know more.
Visit Tim Jones' blog, "Old World Swine"
Posted by Tim Jones in Books, Film and TV, Religion | Permalink | Comments (40)
January 07, 2008
He's Everywhere!
(Tim Jones)
Old World Swine, at it again;
As other Catholic bloggers have ably pointed out, presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, in his victory speech after the Iowa primary, quoted - and cited - G.K. Chesterton. Okay, technically he misquoted Chesterton, but not badly. It was still heartening to hear.
Any time I see GKC gaining influence in the world, I count that as a good thing. So I was delighted to see him popping up in a book I was given recently, written by Evangelical author Ravi Zacharias.
The book - Can Man Live Without God (Thomas Nelson)- was a Christmas gift from my sister and her husband. They would describe themselves - I think - as Bible Only, non-denominational Christians, or (in their view) just basic Christians. My brother, a pastor who's church they attended for some time, maintained that this faith was not even Protestant... that it was just plain meat-and-potatoes Christianity and had nothing at all to do with any historical Christian "movement" of one stripe or another. He truly believed this.
I was a little leary of the book, therefore. But, one of the things I have hoped to accomplish this year is to read more, and seeing as they were thoughtful enough to give me the book, I was only too happy to read it.
Mr. Zacharias got my attention right away by mulling over the lyrics of King Crimson, one of my favorite bands (although I prefer their later work - Discipline more than Court of the Crimson King). He waits until chapter 8 to begin quoting G.K. Chesterton, but he returns to him more than to any other Christian source - several times throughout the book - as well as drawing heavily on Malcolm Muggeridge and C.S. Lewis.
Few, I think, would have their mind changed one way or another by reading this book. Zacharias says nothing new, which is fine by me (I saw on television a Christian ministry that advertised their charismatic leader had "a message unlike any other in the Christian World!" - exactly what we don't need). What Zacharias manages is to pull together a quick survey of the most dominant philosophical voices of the twentieth century (that is to say, atheists of differing flavors), outlines the major defects of their thought and its disastrous consequences for society, and gives voice to the most able defenders of Truth. He straightforwardly presents Christ as the answer to all of man's deepest longings.
I think Francis Schaeffer did a more thorough job of dissecting atheist philosophy and the ills of modern society (from this perspective) than does Mr. Zacharias. The book is too brief for him to be very philosophically rigorous, but he does provide a workable introduction to these broad ideas and their historical background for those who are not already familiar with them. He quotes Nietzche, Kant, Descartes, Huxley, Bertrand Russel and the like from the Life is Meaningless side, and refutes them using Chesterton, Lewis, Pascal, Muggeridge and others (including contemporaries like Norman Geisler and Peter Kreeft). He has good language for Mother Teresa (Mr. Zacharias is of East Indian heritage) and St. Augustine, and takes no overt jabs at the Catholic Church. The book is forwarded by Charles Colson, a friend of Catholics (or as some would have it, a dirty rotten Papist sympathizer).
On the whole, I was very cheered that the book drew from such sources (especially Chesterton, of course). It ought to make any observant reader want to read both Chesterton and Muggeridge. It also gives me a terrific opportunity to pass on some of Chesterton's writing, from which the world can only benefit.
Have others noticed Chesterton's thought beginning to loom large on the Christian horizon? Is sanity breaking out here and there? Are post-modern, post-Protestant Christians ready now to hear what he has to say?
Posted by Tim Jones in Books | Permalink | Comments (103)
June 22, 2007
In The Mail
(Jimmy Akin)
John Allen's book on Opus Dei actually came out a while ago, but the publisher just sent me a review copy.
I was pleased to get it because I like John Allen's journalistic work, and I'd trust him more than most writers to handle the subject in an informed manner that is fair--neither uncritical nor overcritical.
I look forward to reading it. (When I can find the time!)
In the meanwhile,
GET THE BOOK.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Books | Permalink | Comments (40)
September 06, 2006
In The Mail
(Jimmy Akin)
I recently received an advance copy of a book called Saints Behvaing Badly by Thomas Craughwell and I'll offer my thoughts on it soon, after I've had a chance to go through it.
The book looks at the human side of saints--the side that is often diminished or dimmed in pious saint stories.
The fact is that the saints were often human, all too human as the phrase goes, and while some might consider it impious to point this out (and while it would be impious to dwell on it obsessively), it also can be inspirational to realize that the saints were indeed imperfect but nevertheless were able to overcome and display heroic virtue.
In that sense, looking at the imperfections of the saints can play a useful and encouraging role for those of us whose salvation is not yet won.
In the meantime,
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Books | Permalink | Comments (9)
May 30, 2006
The Physics Of Star Trek
(Jimmy Akin)
I decided to take a little road trip over the Memorial Day weekend, so I loaded up the truck and I went over to Phoenix. While there I went square dancing with the Bucks & Bows club of Scottsdale, which was very enjoyable, and I also got in a good bit of listening to audio books while shooting through the desert.
One of the books I listened to was Lawrence M. Krauss's The Physics of Star Trek. It was a nice read.
It came out a good while ago, so it didn't go all the way up to the end of recent Star Trek history, but it was nice to hear a professional physicist's take on the show.
It was clear that Krauss enjoys Star Trek and can appreciate episodes even when they contain physics mistakes. He also handled the subjects he considered in a quite balanced way, regularly avoiding the trap of saying "This could never happen" while making it clear that the current understanding of physics would make it very, very hard for it to happen.
One of the things that Krauss was most impressed with was how good the technobabble on the show can be. While a bunch of it is just junk (from a physics point of view as well as a dramatic point of view), there are a startling number of times where the writers of Star Trek seem to have picked terminology for things that eerily mirrors the actual terms scientists use, started using after the show, or might plausibly use in the future. (An easy example is a TOS episode in which the writers referred to something that sounds like a black hole--before the term "black hole" had been coined--as a "black star.")
After discussing warp drive and time travel and deflector shields and inertial dampers and the like, Krauss concludes the book with a couple of chapters dealing with particularly good and particularly bad physics moments on Star Trek.
I was kind of surprised that in the bad physics moments that he picked on a few things that dealt with minor matters of terminology that I wouldn't have included in a top 10 mistakes chapter. I was also kind of surprised that he omitted some of my favorite science errors on Star Trek (like where the heck is Spock getting all of his body mass from as he's rapidly re-growing to adulthood on the Genesis Planet in Star Trek III? I mean, he should be stuffing his face with food every second, if it were even possible for him to metabolize it into body mass that fast.)
But then that's the fun of top 10 lists: Debating whether they actually are the top 10 or not.
Krauss also handles the subject of religion quite well. He's respectful to religious sensibilities and interested in the theological questions that are raised by Star Trek technology, such as the implications for the transporter on the question of whether the soul exists.
In his discussion of this topic, though, I think he makes a mistake in reasoning, though it is a forgiveable one since it would require significant theological background to spot the problem and, after all, "He's a physicist, not a theologian, dammit!" (Please excuse the bad word in deference to Dr. McCoy.)
Here's the issue: If a transporter takes you apart molecule by molecule (or particle by particle), it would seem to kill you. If it then assembles an identical copy of your body (either out of the same atoms or new ones) and that new copy works properly then--one might suppose--it looks like we are nothing more than molecules in a particular, replicable pattern. In other words: There is no soul.
Krauss remains neutral in the book on whether souls exist, but I would take issue with whether the above line of reasoning works.
From a Catholic perspective, everything that is alive has a soul. Not everything has an immortal soul (only rational beings have those as far as we know), but life and the possession of a soul are concomittant.
So if a transporter makes an identical copy of your body and it's alive then it has some kind of soul. If it's clearly rational then it also clearly has a rational and thus an immortal soul. (But be careful here: The reverse is not necessarily true. If it isn't clearly rational then that doesn't mean it automatically lacks an immortal soul. Irrational people still have immortal souls by virtue of their membership in a rational species--mankind--even if their exercise of reason is impaired.)
If a transporter made a down-to-the-particle copy of you and it was not rational then I would say that this constitutes evidence that the soul does exist since clearly something other than a molecular copy of your body is needed for you to be rational.
But if it makes a copy and the copy is rational then I don't think we have evidence one way or the other about the existence of the soul.
Why is that?
Because the evidence is consistent with either the hypothesis that we are nothing more than patterned molecules or the hypothesis that the copy has a new soul (yours presumably having departed when you were taken apart and killed).
To see the basis for the second hypothesis, let's set aside the issue of killing: Suppose that the transporter doesn't destroy your body. It just scans it and makes a copy of you, so now there are two of you. In this case, the transporter is functioning as a kind of high-tech cloning device, one capable of making an identical copy that doesn't even have to grow up and acquire new memories. It's a totally identical clone in the best tradition of bad sci-fi cloning stories.
But this would put the theological issue on the same footing as cloning, which theologians have already had the chance to chew over in real life.
As I've often pointed out before, if you were able to clone a person (either by fissioning an early embryo or by nuclear transfer) and you got a rational being as a result then it would be unambiguous that the clone has a rational soul.
Why is that?
Well, all you've done in this case is come up with a new human body by a morally illicit means. God means human bodies to come into existence as the result of sexual union between a husband and a wife, and at the moment the body comes into existence, he provides it with a soul. That's how he set things up to work for our species, and that's the only way that it is moral for us to bring new humans into the world.
But God has already shown himself willing to provide souls even when human bodies are not generated in a morally licit manner. Humans have had the ability to create new human bodies in immoral ways for a long time (e.g., by premarital sex, by adultery, by rape). Recently we've added some new techniques (e.g., in vitro fertilization). And we may soon add more (e.g., cloning). But it's all the same thing: You're just coming up with a new human body by immoral means.
God has been willing to endow people who were born in such ways with rational souls as is evidenced by the fact that they are both living and rational. Jesus even had some people like that in his family tree (think: the Tamar incident in Genesis 38).
So if--in addition to artificial twinning and nuclear transfer--you come up with a new cloning technology (transporter cloning) then you haven't changed the playing field theologically. All you're doing is coming up with a new human body (a rather mature one) by immoral means, but that won't stop God from endowing it with a rational soul.
So it doesn't seem to me that having a transporter produce rational copies of you would be evidence for the non-existence of the human soul.
It would be evidence for the existence of the soul if the transporter couldn't produce rational copies that were known to be particle-for-particle identical to you. In that case we would have found an instance where God doesn't provide a soul even though we're providing a body. But the reverse isn't the case.
I would thus say that the existence of the soul is to some extent verifiable but not falsifiable by transporter technology.
That doesn't mean I'd be theologically comfortable with transporter technology. If it works as advertised then it's basically a murder/cloning device.
Fortunately, in at least one episode, they indicate that you remain conscious through the transporter process, and if that's the case then it doesn't look like you're being killed at all but simply adjusted in some way that allows you to pass through solid matter without actually being killed.
I'VE WRITTEN ABOUT THAT BEFORE.
So I differed with Krauss's reasoning on this point, but it was still nice to listen to him tackle the obvious theological question that transporter technology would pose, and it was a pleasure to listen to his balanced and informed take on the physics of the show.
If you'd be interested in hearing an actual physicist offer a sympathetic but critical look at the subject then be sure to
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Books | Permalink | Comments (45)
May 15, 2006
How To Judge A Book By Its Cover
(Michelle Arnold)
Perhaps you have heard the old adage that you should never judge a book by its cover. Nonsense! … At least when we’re speaking literally, anyway.
The apologists here at Catholic Answers often get calls from inquirers asking whether we have read such-and-so book and, if so, what do we think about it. Unless the book happens to generate a lot of inquiries -- on the order of, say, The DaVinci Code -- the answers are often “No” and “We don’t have an opinion on it.”
Don’t despair. There are ways to glean a lot of information about a book without having to read the thing. Here are some tips:
Title: What does the title say about the author’s approach to the subject? If you were wandering through the parenting section of your local bookstore, a quick scan of the titles can give you insight into the approaches taken to parenting. The Strong-Willed Child may suggest a more combative approach to childrearing than Raising Your Spirited Child. If you have a gentler parenting philosophy, you’re more likely to be drawn to Unconditional Parenting than to Laying Down the Law.
Author: What else has this person written? What are his credentials in the field? These answers to these questions and many more can be found by plugging the author’s name into Google. These days, when many authors maintain personal web sites as marketing tools, you’re likely to find out a great deal about an author from the Internet.
Cover blurbs: Who is endorsing this book? Have you heard of them before? Do you know their reputation? If we move back to the parenting section example, if names like James Dobson or Dr. William Sears appear on the dustjacket, you’ve found an important clue about the author’s parenting philosophy. In the Catholicism section of the store, an endorsement of a book by Fr. Richard McBrien will suggest one thing, while an endorsement by George Weigel will suggest something else.
Publisher: What other titles has this company published? What is the company’s target audience? What does its web site reveal about the company? If the book is on Catholicism, is the publisher a Catholic company? If so, is the Catholic publisher orthodox, heterodox, or is it a mixed bag? Is the company secular? If so, what other religious titles has the company produced?
Copyright: If the copyright date is old, will there be current information missing? A book on nutrition from decades ago might still talk about the four food groups rather than the newer food pyramid. A Catholic book written before 1983 might reflect the 1917 Code of Canon Law and thus be out of date in some matters of ecclesiastical law.
Notes: If the book is non-fiction, does the author cite sources? Does he cite sources in a uniform manner, or is his citation haphazard? Are the bulk of the sources primary (e.g., studies, academic papers) or does he rely on general information books in his field in which the authors agree with his thesis? (You’d be surprised at how sloppy some researchers can be.)
Bibliography: What titles did the author use for research? Does the author recommend certain titles? If so, do you know anything about these titles or authors?
Acknowledgements: Who does the author thank? Thanks to experts in the field is helpful and the names can be plugged into Internet search engines for information about credentials and philosophy.
Foreword and Afterword: Who wrote introductory and/or summary matter? What is that person’s experience in the field? A book on the liturgy with an introduction by the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger would suggest that the book would be orthodox, while an introduction by Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, would suggest something quite different.
After your gleaning, take stock. Are there red flags flying? If so, the book may not be worth your time. If you do have time to spare and your curiosity continues to be piqued, you may still want to read the book but you’ll know to rev up your Purity Filter before reading. In any case, you’ll have a pretty good gauge of the book before diving in. So, yes, you can judge a book by its cover!
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (6)
March 31, 2006
Shakespeare Sale
(Michelle Arnold)
If you have a spare 3.5 million lying around (pounds, that is; in U.S. dollars you'll need $6.1 million), you may want to consider investing it in an original Shakespeare First Folio that will be auctioned off by Sotheby's in July:
"Hailed by auctioneer Sotheby's as the most important book in English literature, the First Folio is credited with saving for posterity many of the bard's plays including 'Macbeth,' 'Twelfth Night' and 'Julius Caesar' which had never before been printed.
"'The First Folio preserves 18 of his plays, including some of the most major, which otherwise would have been lost for all time,' English literature specialist Peter Selley said as the volume was put on show on Thursday.
"'Relatively complete copies of the Folio in contemporary or near contemporary bindings very rarely come to market. There is only one copy recorded as remaining in private hands,' he added."
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February 20, 2006
Holy Terror, Batman!
(Michelle Arnold)
Who do you turn to when U.S. military intelligence and Special Forces cannot ferret out Osama bin Laden? No, not Ghosbusters. You put out a page for Batman.
Of course.
"Bored with pitting his wits against the Joker and the Riddler, Batman is setting his sights on a more challenging target -- Osama bin Laden.
"Holy Terror, Batman! an upcoming graphic novel from famed Batman writer Frank Miller, sees the caped crusader facing off against Al-Qaeda operatives who attack Gotham City.
"Miller, who has already inked his way through 120 pages of the 200-page opus, told a recent comic book convention that the novel was an unashamed "piece of propaganda" in which Batman 'kicks Al-Qaeda's ass' [crudity in the original]."
The Daily Planet has confirmed that Hollywood moguls are seeking to acquire the rights to Holy Terror, Batman! Christian Bale is expected to reprise his role as the Dark Knight from Batman Begins but there is no word yet on which actors are being considered for the role of archvillain Bin Laden.
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January 05, 2006
Catholic Book Publishing Blog
(Michelle Arnold)
While skimming Amy Welborn's Holy Blogs of Obligation (her blogroll), I surfed into an interesting blog on Catholic book publishing, a personal blog titled People of the Book by Jim Manney who is an editor for Loyola Press. If you're involved in Catholic publishing or just like Catholic books, be sure to check it out.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 28, 2005
Stories Of Terri
(Michelle Arnold)
To coincide with the first anniversary of her death this coming March, the Schindler family will be releasing a book on their struggle to save her life:
"Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings are writing a book about their struggle in the epic end-of-life case that divided the country and captured the attention of everyone from the Pope John Paul II to President Bush, their publisher said Tuesday.
"The yet untitled memoir by parents Bob and Mary Schindler, brother Bobby Schindler and sister Suzanne Vitadamo will be published in March to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of the brain-damaged woman, whose feeding tube was removed after her husband won a court order to do so.
"'This book is the moving story of an ordinary family caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and it will set the record straight for the first time,' said Jamie Raab, senior vice president and publisher at Warner Books in New York."
Apparently unwilling to miss out on the action, Terri's husband and murderer Michael Schiavo also plans to release his own memoir, to be titled Terri: The Truth, in which it is likely that he will tell everything but that:
"The Schindlers' book is likely to compete for space on the shelves with a memoir by Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, who fought his in-laws in court for eight years to end her life, arguing she would not have wanted to be kept alive in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state.
"Michael Schiavo said he is collaborating on the book with author Michael Hirsh. The 280-page book is titled Terri: [T]he Truth, and is planned for release in March by Dutton Publishing."
The Schindlers will not profit from their book on Terri, instead planning to "donate profits from the book to a foundation they established when they were fighting to save Terri's life, Warner Books said. The foundation now is dedicated to protecting severely disabled people."
No word yet on Michael Schiavo's plans for the money he will make from his book.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack
September 22, 2005
The Shakespeare Code
(Michelle Arnold)
You may have heard the speculation that William Shakespeare was a Catholic. Author Clare Asquith, in her new book Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, claims that the Bard of Stratford seeded his plays with subversive Catholic references that was a code for the Elizabethan and Jacobean Catholic resistance movement:
"Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith's new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England's future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.
"'It has not been picked up on before because people have not had the complete context,' she explained this weekend. 'I am braced for flak, but we now know we have had the history from that period wrong for a long time because we have seen it through the eyes of the Protestant, Whig ascendancy who, after all, have written the history.'
"It is now widely accepted that the era was not a period of political consensus, says Asquith. Instead, it was a time in which opposition voices were banished and censorship meant the burning of illegal pamphlets and printed works.
"As a result the Catholic resistance, which had been going for 70 years by the time Shakespeare was writing, had already developed its own secret code words; a subversive communication system which the playwright developed further in his work."
This story caught my eye since I am currently reading through The Winter's Tale with a reading group, in preparation for seeing the play performed. I've always been fascinated by Shakespeare, but found him difficult to penetrate and so have neglected actually studying him. Whether or not Asquith's claim has merit, it certainly does pique my desire to better understand Shakespeare.
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Patristic Recommends
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I've been studying Catholic teaching and am considering becoming a Roman Catholic. My question is: what resources ought one actually read the early fathers in? The snippets on Catholic.com are helpful but I am seeking a broad base understanding.
There are several different resources that I could recommend. It depends on what you are looking for.
The main problem is that the writings of the Chruch Fathers are so voluminous that one person could spend years reading them. If you're actually up for that, the most easily available set is a 38-volume set produced in the 19th century that, since it is public domain, is now online at a number of locations, such as www.newadvent.org.
Even this set, though, is not complete. There are other works of the Fathers not found in it. (And, as one Baptist pastor who later became Catholic noted to me, it sometimes excludes some of the more Catholic-leaning works since the editors were Protestant.)
If you're looking for a broad summary but not the texts themselves then there is a 4-volume set called Patrology by Johannes Quaesten.
What I'd really recommend if you're looking for a summary, though, is the 1-volume setbook Ealy Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly. Kelly is a Protestant, but he's very good about admitting how Catholic the early Fathers were.
If you're looking for texts (shorter than the 38-volume set) rather than summaries then I'd have to main recommendations.
The first is a 3-volume set called Faith of the Early Fathers by William Jurgens. It is like the excerpts on Catholic.Com except that it isn't organized by topic. Instead, it proceeds in historical order from Father to Father, giving passages that the different Fathers said on particular subjects. The passages also (often) are longer than the ones on Catholic.Com and will give you a broader selection of what the Fathers were saying on different topics, as well as more of the context.
If you want whole documents but aren't up for a long set, I'd recommend Early Christian Writings, edited by Maxwell Staniforth. This is a 1-volume edition of writings from the first and second centuries. It was very helpful to me when I was becoming Catholic, though it suffers from two problems: (1) It only covers a very small handful of documents compared to those that are out there (which is why it can offer whole documents while remaining 1 volume long) and (2) the period it covers is so early that the Church hadn't yet had a chance to thoroughly reflect on what had been given to it by Christ and the apostles and so there are a lot of imprecise and, at times, even bizzare things. You won't get as many of the crisply formulated expressions of theology that you will from later ages. Still, it's quite valuable and contains things like Clement's and Ignatius's letters, as well as the Didache.
Following up with any of these recommendations will give you clues about what you may want to investigate next. For example, if you do some reading in Quaesten or Jurgens or Kelly then you'll learn about documents that you may want to look up and read in more detail in the 38-volume set.
Hope this helps, and God bless!
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September 21, 2005
Reading Cycles
(Michelle Arnold)
Have you ever been through reading cycles? Bibliophile though I am, it seems my reading life is one cycle after another. Right now I'm on my non-fiction cycle and reading fiction can be a chore.
I grew up in a Reader's Haven, although some might have called it a Reader's Hovel out of exasperation at trying to climb over the stacks of books. My father introduced all of his children to reading and liked to brag of when he was a child and was the only kid in the neighborhood allowed to borrow double the allotment of books allowed by his local library because the librarians knew he'd have them all finished within the two-week loan period.
Similarly, I was also a voracious reader as a kid. When I was in sixth grade I broke the five thousand page record for pages read in a grading period simply because the teacher said it had never been done. (In retrospect, I think he simply said that to encourage kids like me to try to break that limit.) Give me a four-hundred-page book and I could have it finished in two days.
I can still wolf down books, but only if the ones I'm reading fit the cycle through which I'm currently passing. For example, for years I was a romance novel fan. Still love romance novels -- they're a sentimental favorite -- but it is now a chore rather than a pleasure to plow through them. When I read fiction these days, I usually do best with the cozy mysteries -- especially the foodie mysteries that have recipes printed in the book. I may never try out those recipes, but I love reading through them and imagining how the food would turn out. (Likely better for my waistline anyway!)
But give me a non-fiction book on a subject that interests me -- currently, Pope Benedict XVI, marriage, and parenting issues, and please don't analyze that too deeply! -- and once again I have to carefully pace my reading so I'll have enough book left to read to get me to the next payday. Does anyone else have experience with reading cycles? If so, through what cycles of the Reader's Haven have you passed?
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
September 16, 2005
Holy Envy?
(Tim Jones)
My wife has always been drawn to a particular genre of non-fiction in which people struggle against great difficulties, especially physical or mental disabilities. She has read dozens of books in which the main character wrestles with something like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness or some other malady (though disasters, abuse and hard pioneer life count also).
I have read a number of the books she has around the house and have learned to really appreciate several, not just as interesting stories, but as good, well-written books.
One such book that I can recommend is called "Karen". It is the story of Karen Killilea, who was born with cerebral palsy. It was written by her mother, Marie Killlilea, in 1952. In the book we see how Karen fights both her physical disability and the sometimes callous response of the society around her. There is a bonus, in that the Killileas are a warmly devout Catholic family and the book touches on very relevent themes, such as the intrinsic value of all human life. The book is available at Amazon.com, and you can find more information about the Killileas HERE.
Lately I have wondered what it is about such stories that is so compelling. Everyone has enough trouble of their own, why read about people who have it so much worse than we do?
One good reason to is that these stories throw into sharp relief the virtues that we need to overcome the hard things in our own life. Our admiration for Anne Sullivan's tenacity in teaching Helen Keller helps us to be a little more tenacious in pursuit of some worthy goal, etc...
Another reason is that we are often tempted to view our own lives as dull and prosaic. Our own struggles don't seem quite as dramatic as those of people whom we perceive to be "in the trenches", and who struggle under great burdens. It is part of what G.K. Chesterton called the desire for "an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity". In a sense, we envy these people, we covet their stark, tremendous struggles because we are tired of our own small and tepid ones. We don't often see ourselves as heroes.
But not everyone might agree. It occurred to me that, in our daily battle against the World, the Flesh and the Devil, the angels may view us in a way that is similar to the way we see the heroes in these books; these people who contend with crushing misfortune, or constant deprivation. The fallen world we live in puts us "in the trenches" in a way that makes even our mundane troubles more vital and heroic.
The idea that our lives are dull and meaningless is a lie from the pits of hell. The truth is, every decision we make is of eternal importance.
Not that the angels would envy our place in the battle. If I understand my Bible, they are certainly in the thick of it themselves, and have no lack of excitement. But, if there could be such a thing as holy envy, the angels might envy our role as overcomers. Even in heaven, a scar may be a badge of honor.
An angel might say to me one day, "Tell us again how the grace of God helped you to overcome your sloth, thoughtlessness and all-around deficient faith!".
And I'll tell them.
Posted by Tim Jones in Books | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
September 12, 2005
Catholicism For Dummies
(Michelle Arnold)
A reader asks:
"Have you read the book Catholicism for Dummies? Would you recommend it for learning about the Church? Thanks!"
Catholicism For Dummies by Frs. John Trigilio and Kenneth Brighenti, two priests associated with EWTN, is, in fact, the only secular "For Numskulls"-type book on Catholicism that I can recommend. I have read others on the market, published under other "For Numskulls"-type imprints, and the ones that I have read are all deficient, ranging from somewhat to seriously so. I was so impressed with Catholicism For Dummies, however, that I recommended it to Catholic Answers to carry.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
July 19, 2005
Harry Potter 6
(Jimmy Akin)
Down yonder, a reader writes:
Read it myself.
I think we need a spoiler warning thread or we will all burst.
Your wish is my command.
One spoiler-warning thread coming up.
Abandon all right to complain about spoilers, ye who enter here.
SPOILER WARNING ON THE COMBOX!
UPDATE: Comments on this one are still going strong, so I'm bumping it up in the stack so folks who want to interact won't have to scroll so far down to get to it.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Books | Permalink | Comments (81) | TrackBack
July 18, 2005
Midnight Madness
(Michelle Arnold)
For laffs and for lack of anything better to do that evening, I decided to try and pick up my pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince at the “Midnight Magic” party my local bookstore was throwing to celebrate the release. By the end of the evening, I wasn’t laffing and I was wishing I’d found something better to do with my time. The only perk was actually getting the book.
The procedure called for picking up wristbands to claim your spot in line at 6 PM. By the time I got there after work, people were already queuing up. The bookstore’s café offered itty-bitty samples of Starbucks-esque coffee to the hot and cranky crowd, which was nice. I nearly choked on my vanilla frappacino when a small boy of about eleven said solemnly to the brother he’d been roughhousing with, “Violence is never the answer…. Except in virtual reality, where violence is definitely the answer.”
Worried about parking hassles if I waited too long to come back to the store, I returned to the store around eight, figuring I’d grab one of the comfy armchairs and spend the evening reading. With the exception of being continually distracted by hordes of screaming children running around the store in capes, Potter glasses, and homemade wands, I managed to get a lot of reading done. About a half-hour before the sale, my eyes were drooping, so I decided to cruise around the store checking out the games and crafts stations. The crowds made it impossible to see what was going on at those stations, of course.
Around fifteen minutes to midnight, I noticed a large group of people starting to crowd around the registers. Interrogation of individuals in the crowd yielded the information that this was how we were expected to get the books. Despite assurances that wristbands would be checked, it became obvious that the wristbands were a polite fiction. I could have cruised into the store at 11:45, told the clerk distributing wristbands that I had pre-ordered, and then worked my way through the crowd to the register to present myself as first in line. Fortunately for me and for the store, I was out within ten minutes with my copy, so there was no need to complain about the situation. Next time though, when Year 7 is released, I’ll go the next day to pick up my copy.
This past weekend was spent reading Year 6. All in all, very good. I'm still bleary-eyed from the last couple of late-night reading marathons. Despite the frustrations with the "Midnight Magic" brouhaha, the new Harry Potter book was well worth the wait. It's difficult to discuss my specific thoughts about the book without revealing huge, honking spoilers that would disappoint those who haven't yet read the book, so that post will have to await a future date when more people have had a chance to finish the book themselves. In the meantime, all I can say is that the climax is problematic, but I am hopeful that Rowling can play it out in Year 7 without destroying one well-loved character and another character for whom I've always had a grudging admiration.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
July 12, 2005
Peeking At Potter
(Michelle Arnold)
Did you know that the latest installment in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince is on store shelves already? Fourteen people managed to snag copies of The Half-Blood Prince before a Canadian store realized its mistake in selling before the July 16 release date and pulled the copies.
You'd think that this wouldn't be an earth-shattering event. After all, I've seen books sold in bookstores before their release date all the time. It's not kosher, but it's routinely done. Only if you're a publishing industry superstar do you rate an iron-clad "no sale" prior to the official date. When you're J. K. Rowling, you rate a Canadian judge ordering the fourteen early-buyers to keep their mouths shut about the book's contents:
"A handful of people in Canada got a sneak peak of the latest Harry Potter book, but a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ordered them to keep it a secret.
"The book was sold to 14 people who snagged a copy of J. K. Rowlings' much anticipated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when it landed on shelves last Thursday at a local grocery store.
"The book, officially set for release this coming Saturday, has been shrouded in secrecy and its debut has been highly orchestrated to enable everyone -- readers, reviewers, even publishers -- to crack it open all at once. It's the sixth in Rowling's seven-book fantasy series on the young wizard.
"But the store slipped up and sold 14 copies before realizing its mistake."
The individuals involved should be grateful that all that happened was that they were legally gagged by a Muggle judge. A Wizard court would probably have made them drink one of Snape's potions.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 11, 2005
I've Been Paged!
(Michelle Arnold)
... By Christopher over at Against the Grain in his page over the Harry Potter novels and Pope Benedict XVI's alleged disapproval of them.
Since the Holy Father's election, Potter naysayers have been having a field day with a German-language article that claimed that the then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had denounced J. K. Rowling's mega-popular children's series. As the release date for the latest installment draws near, the frenzy has become even more strident. So, the question is, did the Pope disapprove of the series? The answer: No, because no such statement has been offered by Pope Benedict during his pontificate. Well, what about the alleged disapproval of Cardinal Ratzinger? Here's my response:
- As far as I know, the letter sent to the German critic Gabriele Kuby has not been published. According to Lifesite.net (the site that offers an article that blares "Pope Benedict Opposes Harry Potter Novels"), Cardinal Ratzinger's letter was quoted by Kuby in a German-language interview she gave to the Zenit news agency. If the letter has been published, then I would have to read it in order to determine whether the Cardinal had been giving a private opinion or was speaking in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
- According to Kuby, as mediated through the Zenit report, Ratzinger said: "It is good that you shed light and inform us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect (children) and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (the Faith) could properly grow." Please note that the glosses in parentheses are probably not Cardinal Ratzinger's. One would have to see the letter itself to confirm the context of the glosses. Even if accurate, there is still a lot of context missing. What exactly does the "these" in the clause that starts "for these are subtle seductions" refer to? As of yet, there is no way to know.
- Cardinal Ratzinger may simply be giving a politely general response to the concerns of a correspondent, affirming that her concerns for the faith of children are valid without necessarily affirming that the series itself indeed causes such dangers. If the intriguing "these" simply refers to the concerns she raised and not to alleged problems in the Potter series, then the quote says nothing of the Cardinal's opinion of the series. Analogously, if someone wrote to Catholic Answers asking me if such-and-so liturgical abuse was a legitimate concern, I could say yes without saying anything about the particular circumstances at the correspondent's parish.
- Let's say for the sake of argument that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has read the Harry Potter novels and agrees with the Potter critics that they are bad. What does that prove? If he was speaking privately as an independent literary critic, not much beyond the fact that they are not his cup of tea. If he was speaking privately as a theologian troubled by theological issues in the series, then his opinion would carry the weight of the private analysis by an orthodox and well-respected Christian theologian. Only if he had been writing as head of the CDF would magisterial authority begin to be a question.
The trouble with articles like the one on Lifesite is that they cause a lot of controversy without much substance. The same was true a couple of years ago when Roman exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth nixed the Potter series. Naysayers pounced on this and trumpeted it to fans of the series while failing to mention that Fr. Amorth was only speaking on his own authority and not the Church's. Now that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI, naysayers are hoping to stir the cauldron again. Granted, the remarks should be discussed, even investigated, to ascertain what was said and the context in which it was said. But misleading headlines and sensationalistic articles are not the way to foster calm and reasoned inquiry.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Books | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
RedState Sees Red
(Jimmy Akin)
RedState.Org recently ran three book reviews of Thomas Woods' How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on it, but I have read the three book reviews, and I can comment on them. Each had serious flaws, but the first was of truly notable merit. Let's read . . . .
JOSH TREVINO:
"How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization," by Thomas Woods, PhD, is a book masquerading as a necessary corrective that reveals itself as an inadequate one; and a serious work of history marred by some deeply unserious historiography. By which I mean that I disagree with it theologically. The author's stated intent is to counter much of the calumny which has befallen the institution of Catholicism in the modern era -- specifically the calumny that it is and has always been an anti-modernist, anti-science, anti-humanist force -- and in this, his approach makes the fatal errors of answering the critics on their own terms, and adopting Catholic historical prejudice to a degree that weakens his broader argument. Allow me to smear Catholics up front by referring univocally to "Catholic historical prejudice." I'm still an unbiased arbiter of history, myself, though.
It is the latter flaw that we turn to first. Those familiar with Church history know that <scare quotes>"Catholicism"</scare quotes> as we understand it was a concept that emerged in nascent form only with the progressive divergence of the Greek and Latin Churches between the 11th and 15th centuries; the Catholic Church as we know it in the modern era did not emerge until roughly the 16th century.
When I refer to Catholicism as "we" know it, the "we" in question is, of course, myself and my cat, Tibbles. Tibbles is an expert on such matters and assures me that the word "Catholic" wasn't even used until roughly the sixteenth century. There was no consciousness of the Catholic Church as a distinct institution prior to that time. In fact, Tibbles' papyrological studies have revealed that the quotations attributed to St. Augustine in the fourth century displaying a clear institutional awareness of the Catholic Church in contrast to other churches are, in fact, forgeries salted into the historical record by tricky papists.
The same goes for all the other evidence for the existence of the institution today called "the Catholic Church" prior to the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers may have thought that they were protesting against an institution known as "the Catholic Church" that had been around for centuries, but in fact it had only been in existence for a few weeks, following an extensive salting campaign undertaken as part of a hoax stemming from a college fraternity's hazing rite. Please see Tibbles' doctoral disseration for the references.
This latter Church development, mostly codified in the Council of Trent, came about as the Church defined itself against a Protestant Reformation. When I say "codified," I mean "made up out of thin air" rather than "confirming what was already in existence, against which Protestants were protesting."
whichProtestantism emerged as something rather different from, and more lasting than, previous anti-hierarchical rebellions such as Arianism, Donatism, and the Cathar and Hussite movements. By "anti-hierarchical" I don't mean "against hierarchy," for each of these groups had bishops.So, when we--Tibbles and I--speak of Catholicism as understood as that Christian church led by the Pope in Rome and governed by his clerical and bureaucratic apparatus, we are certainly not speaking of the historical Church from the time of St Peter to the modern day. For there were no popes in Rome prior to roughly the sixteenth century, nor did they have any clerics associated with them nor any bureaucratic apparatus. Tibbles has shown that all the alleged "records" of such individuals are fake.
NSurprisingly, none of this seems to matter to Wood. It is as if he is completely unaware of Tibbles' brilliant work in this area. The great accomplishments of the fourth through eleventh centuries, when the Church -- and specifically the monastic communities -- essentially alone preserved the civilizational heritage of antiquity, are presented as specifically Catholic accomplishments. The nerve! It is as if Woods really believes the records purporting to show that the monastic communities of the fourth through the eleventh centuries regarded themselves as Catholic institutions!This is fundamentally inaccurate on several counts, most notably in that much of the preservation of the Roman and Greek corpus took place in imperial Constantinople, certainly never a location within the orbit of the Bishop of Rome. Yes, Constantinople was never within the "orbit" of the Bishop of Rome. Not even before the East-West Schism, when the Rome and Constantinople were in communion and councils like the First Council of Constantinople (A.D. 381) were saying things like: "The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome" (canon 3).
(Excepting, of course, a rather regrettable sixty years or so beginning 1204, which Woods sensibly omits as an accomplishment of the Catholic Church since it would harm my case.) Indeed, following the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453, the arrival of these preserved manuscripts in the baggage of Greek refugees was a major spur to the Renaissance in Italy. See! The fact that post-schism Byzantines preserved manuscripts important to Western civilization ipso facto disproves the idea that the Catholic Church had anything to do with it!
The reality is that the preservation of civilization in Europe during the Dark Ages and medieval era, while creditable to Christianity at large, was not exclusively, nor even mostly, the doing of the Pope or a Catholicism that did not then exist. By way of parallel, it is wrong to credit to the United States the spread of democracy in the world during an age of monarchy, beginning with the American Revolution. The U.S. as Tibbles and I know it today did not exist in 1776 for there were only thirteen states at the time, its people spoke a now archaic form of English, and they were far less democratic than we are. It was only with the Warren Court that what we now call "America" became truly democratic, and thus it is a category mistake to attribute any democratizing influence in the world to an America that did not then exist.
When "we" speak of America, we mean America since the Warren Court, just as when "we" speak of the Catholic Church, we mean the Catholic Church since the sixteenth century. Tibbles and I are entitled to do this since, as Humpy Dumpty told Alice, "When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."
In certain tea parties that Tibbles and I frequent in modern-day Christian Orthodoxy there is a certain (misguided, to my mind) nostalgia for "Western Orthodoxy," which is defined as the Latin or "Western" rites as they existed prior to the late-medieval split between Constantinople and Rome. According to this thesis, prior to that, all Christendom was "Orthodox," and hence we can discuss St Patrick of Ireland, for example, as an Orthodox saint. While there is theological validity to this, it is a dishonest reading of history. Historical dishonesty thus can be theologically valid. -- St Patrick almost certainly never looked to the Constantinopolitan Patriarch for guidance, for example -- and it is also an misleading interpretation of cultural heritage, for nobody should be allowed to take pride in anything that the West has ever done. Westerners must only execrate their ancestors and laud the glories of Byzantium.
The consequent establishment of "Western Orthodox" parishes in the United States and Britain, which utilize various forms of liturgy extant in the churches of the era of the Venerable Bede, is based upon this false appropriation. Westerners must repudiate all of their own liturgical heritage and adhere strictly to the one, true form of liturgy as practiced in Constantinople, "where also their Lord was crucified."
Woods is guilty of precisely this same error from the Catholic side: his interpretation of history, and specifically his presentation of Catholicism through the medieval era, leads inevitably -- though he shrinks from making this point explicit -- to the concept of a pre-split "Catholic Greece," among other things. I mean, just because both East and West regarded themselves as being part of one Church prior to the split, and just because that Church was commonly called the "Catholic" Church in that age, and just because it had the bishop of Rome as its foremost bishop according to the First Council of Constantinople (among others), that in no way allows a Catholic to lay any kind of claim to the heritage of this age!
It ill-befits any person from any Christian tradition to posit such a <adjectival meltdown>thinly-defensible, revisionist, and ahistorically exclusionist</adjectival meltdown> interpretation of Church history. By which I mean: I disagree with Woods theologically. I hold it as a theological truth that the Church before the split was Orthodox rather than Catholic. Woods therefore must be wrong historically. If the evidence is against me, so be it. As I've already established, historical dishonesty can be theologically valid.
Now, let me be up-front and state that I am coming at this from an Orthodox perspective. Yes! Disclosing one's point of view half-way through a piece is being "up front" about it! I hope, though, that the reader finds that the argument against this manner of historiography stands on its own.
The second major flaw in Woods' book stems from the first. <syntactical meltdown>In claiming all things for Catholicism, and in concurrently expanding Catholicism to claim those things he wishes to claim, he of necessity does so according to that which he wishes to refute.</syntactical meltdown> Woods finds the charge that the Church is a retarding force in the development of modern civilization -- specifically modern science, which seizes his attention, and hence his book, to a great degree -- to be one that eminently deserves answering. All of which is just to say: He wants to show that the Catholic Church isn't anti-science.
His implicit acceptance of the equating of science with civilization (I have to say "implicit" acceptance because if I didn't then he'd protest that he hasn't equated science with civilization and that I am setting up a straw man), and his explicit acceptance that the Church may be justified on these terms (whatever that means), are both profoundly wrong.
This is not the place to examine in full the contention that science is an independent, self-justifying value (since Woods presumably didn't claim this), or the contention that science is itself an independent, self-justifying indicator of civilization (which Woods presumably also didn't claim). It is enough to say that the Catholic Church and Christianity at large reject both these views. They are thus irrelevant to the matter at hand. I only mention them so I can dazzle the reader with my sparkling philosophical prose.
Modern Catholicism quite laudably espouses the position that, as a Catholic priest from my own childhood explained, "Good science and good faith do not conflict." This begs the question of what constitutes "good science." Certainly there is quite a lot of bad science: the Dachau hypothermia experiments, the eugenics movement, and the Tuskegee experiments are only the tip of that iceberg. Particularly in an era where science is pushing the frontiers of human control -- although not human wisdom -- ever further, it is the Church that has frequently been the loudest voice in reminding society that knowledge is not an end in itself, and that its application is not inherently useful, wise or right. In a faith the holy text of which begins with an allegory of unwise knowledge and its consequences, this is in keeping with its most ancient intellectual traditions. That they are still applicable and cautionary thousands of years after that allegory's first telling is a testament to the enduring nature of man and his folly.
One searches in vain for this recognition in Woods' book. Instead, we are treated to a proud catalogue of mostly monastic and Jesuit accomplishments in science and technology. How dare Woods try to prove that the Church isn't anti-science without mentioning my personal hobby-horse on the subject! Tibbles is outraged and spitting up hairballs!
These in themselves are good things inasmuch as they demonstrate that the Church is not a wholly malign force in the temporal world, pace the attacks of its critics. But Woods appears to forget that the Church is not justified by those things. This is a subtle point. When I first read Woods, I missed it, thinking that he was merely conducting a negative apologia--showing that the charge of the Church being anti-science is false. But Tibbles' careful reading of the text revealed that Woods was actually doing a positive apologia, claiming that people ought to be Catholic because of how much good science the Church has done! He thus forgets that the Church is not justified by how much good science it's done!
iIndeed, from the standpoint of the believer, the Church in the world is justified by the simple act of belief and the promulgation of the worship of Christ. All those miracles and fulfilled prophecies that Jesus and St. Paul so keen about were just a waste of time. To justify it on any other terms -- say, a clever tenth-century Benedictine integration of waterwheels and trip-hammers, or a useful seventeenth-century Jesuit advance in lens-grinding -- is to implicitly accede to the secularist contention that it is material betterment that is the bellwether of human progress, and the moral justifier of institutions. In this, the Church in the modern era will lose, and lose badly: no local parish is the equal of the supermarket in the provision of bread to the masses; no bishop alive has utilized waterpower so well as does the Tennessee Valley Authority.Why, then, does Woods keep telling us that we ought to be Catholic because it will give us technological doo-dads and material prosperity? I mean, I haven't seen this kind of pro-technology apologetic for Catholicism since John Paul II wrote his most recent encyclical on the virtues of consumerism and the sacramental character of shopping at Best Buy!
Useful social advancement based upon the rational satisfaction of material needs is, of course, the basis of the domestication of dogs, just as the law of gravitation operating between bodies that have mass in the Einsteinan space-time continuum is, of course, the basis of why a domesticated dog will drop to the ground if you suddently disintegrate his legs. It is not what distinguishes nor what "built Western Civilization," nor, one hopes, is it the purpose of man on earth. Not that Woods said it was those things. I'm just showing off my sparklingly intellectual prose again.
It is that transcendent need to define and achieve that purpose--i.e., the purpose of man on earth--that the Church, and religion in general, presumably seeks to fulfill; and if it is to be justified, it must be on those terms. It is the task of the Church's apologists to do so, and to argue that that transcendence has not lost an iota of its relevance in our era. Tibbles therefore decrees that it is superfluous and counter-productive for a person to write a book on the Catholic Church's role in the building of Western Civilization. The only books that should be written are those showing the value of transcendence in the world today!
Thomas Woods shows how well the Catholic Church, as defined by him and most of mankind, has delivered on those material needs for millennia. Fine, say the critics he attempts to refute: can we not accomplish this today by means of a government program without this Jesus baggage? There is no good answer to this question in this book since it was not a book about proposed government programs. Since it is the crucial question of the modern age, it is an omission that reduces Woods' work from a serious apologia to a collection of trivia--a charge that can be equally leveled against any book published today that is not an apologia based on the value of transcendance in modern society contra irreligious government programs. That's the only kind of book that counts!
I therefore fault the book because the author chose to write on a theme not to my liking.
Tibbles, feeling generous, gives it one hairball out of a possible five.
READ WOODS' BOOK FOR YOURSELF.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Books | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
One For The Parents
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I was wondering if you could suggest any books or articles that might help my staunchly Presbyterian (and seriously anti-Catholic) parents better understand my and my husband’s decision to leave the Episcopal Church for the Mother Church? (To quote my mother, “Y’all are already almost Catholic anyway!” Ha! I wish.)
I'd probably recommend the book
It's a book of theologically-oriented conversion stories with a number of contributors (myself included) coming from a Presbyterian background. It thus might help them understand the move.
I encourage other folks to made additional recommendations in the combox (though I may delete ones I disagree with for whatever reason).
USE THIS LINK TO FIND THEM ON AMAZON
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June 10, 2005
Flannery O'Connor Tribute
(Jimmy Akin)
Russell Shaw has a piece on Flannery O'Connor commemorating the 40th anniversary of her anthology Everything That Rises Must Converge.
For those who may not be famliar with her, Flannery O'Connor is commonly regarded as one of the greatest American Catholic authors of the 20th century.
Her own stories contain chills as horrible as those of H. P. Lovecraft's--made more horrible by the fact that hers aren't supernatural. Also unlike Lovecraft, her horrors are redeemed by her staunchly Christian and Catholic worldview.
Quoth O'Connor: "All of my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it."
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June 08, 2005
Forward Into The Past
(Jimmy Akin)
Today in 1949 George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 was published.
Man! Was it that long ago?
1984, I mean, not 1949.
I remember growing up in the years before 1984, when Orwell's novel was still a dark prophecy of the future. There was no way that the world would really resemble the novel come that year, but the number "1984" was still an ominous and emblematic number, filled with cultural resonance.
Guess the passage of time took the edge of it.
The novel's still a classic, though.
Now, you may be wondering why I've got a picture of Joseph Stalin in this post. The reason is that 1984 was written in significant measure to illustrate Orwell's disappointment with Soviet Communism and, if you read the novel, it's hard not to see Joseph Stalin (who was in power in Russia at the time) and all the Soviet propaganda posters of him as the prototype for Big Brother and all the IngSoc ("English Socialism") propaganda posters of him in turn. Realizing the political context of 1984, it's hard not to imagine Joseph Stalin's face on all those "Big Brother Is Watching You" posters.
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June 06, 2005
Save the Rainbow!
(Tim Jones)
The rainbow used to be the very symbol of simple, innocent beauty. Noah's Ark, the Wizard of Oz... heck, Kermit the Frog - these are the kinds of things that used to come to mind when we thought of rainbows. As an artist, the rainbow represents all the possibilities of the limited palette; from these few colors, you could paint anything.
Nowadays, though, the rainbow has been co-opted for more nefarious uses. From GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, the rainbow has been adopted as a symbol to give a veneer of happy innocence to the twisted causes of these groups.
Now, the rainbow is being dragged even more deeply into the muck. A new book, Rainbow Party, tells the story of a group of teens who engage in a fairly new form of group sex involving girls wearing different colored lipstick (so, if your kid is ever invited to a rainbow party, just be informed that they will not be doing crafts for entertainment). The book itself would be less irksome if it were not written by an author of juvenile fiction and published by Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Scuster that specializes in books for teens.
Michelle Malkin comments on the book in the Houston Chronicle, and points out why it is closer to sex-ploitation than to education. Under the guise of "educating the yutes" it will doubtless be showing up in school libraries before long. It reminds me of Reefer Madness, a classic exploitation flick which was designed to generate ticket sales and controversy, but was billed as being for educational purposes (it was re-released at one time under the frantic title Tell Your Children!).
GET THE "COLORFUL" STORY.
Posted by Tim Jones in Books | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 05, 2005
Tag, I'm It!
(Jimmy Akin)
Michelle did the blog book meme a piece back, and now Revolution of Love has tagged me for the book meme that's going around the blogosphere, so here goes:
1) Total number of books I own –
A quick estimate of that based on shelf counting, etc., puts the number at about 4,000.
2) The last book I bought –
According to "My Account" at Amazon.Com, that would be
INTO THE TWILIGHT, ENDLESSLY GROUSING
3) The last book I read was –
Read all the way through? Well, I just finished (listening to) one today so I s'ppose that would be
THE MAKING OF MODERN ECONOMICS: THE LIVES AND IDEAS OF THE GREAT THINKERS