Tweeting With God: # Big Bang, prayer, Bible, sex, Crusades, sin, career…

Tweeting With God: # Big Bang, prayer, Bible, sex, Crusades, sin, career…  By Michel Remery, Ignatius Press, 2015.

 

Twitter’s impact on social media is complex.  Twitter allows people to post short messages and share information with others.  Twitter promotes conciseness, but it does not necessarily promote understanding.  Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is the enemy of comprehensiveness.

 

Catholics have discussed the New Evangelization at length, and it seems that the Internet and social media will play a role in reaching out to both the faithful and those who have yet to believe or understand.  Fr. Michel Remery is a Dutch Catholic priest, who left a promising career and relationship in the secular world in order to enter religious life.  This book is his attempt to use the power of social media, namely Twitter, in order to answer some common questions about the Catholic Church, its history, and what it teaches.  The book is filled with very short chapters, each two pages long. Each begins with a short question on some aspect of Catholicism, and is followed by a brief essay explaining the answer to that question.  

 

The book is divided by subject.  Part 1 is “Tweets about God: the Beginning & the End.”  It is split into subsections such as “Creation or coincidence?,” The Bible: True or False?,” “Reading the Bible,” “Chief events of the Old Testament,” “What has Jesus done for us?,” “What does the Holy Spirit do?,” “Evil and Suffering,” “Mary and the angels,” and “Heaven, hell, or purgatory?”  Each subsection addresses several questions, sometimes three, sometimes ten.  The section “Reading the Bible” covers the questions, “Should I follow all the rules in the Bible?,” “How can you know what is literally true in the Bible, and what is not?,” and “Aren’t those incredible Bible stories just fairy tales?”  Later sections move on to Church history, prayer and sacraments, as well as faith and ethics.

 

Throughout the book, there are very short articles briefly addressing questions tangentially connected to the main question being asked.  For example, in response to the question “Do science and faith contradict each other?” Fr. Remery’s lengthier response is punctuated by a brief essay, “Was the Church wrong about Galilio Galilei?”

 

“The Italian scholar Galileo Galilei (†1642) is often mentioned as an example of a scientist at odds with the Church.  As the story goes, Church leaders silenced Galileo simply because he had said that the heliocentric theory of Copernicus (†1543 was true, that the earth revolved around the sun.  This notion met with a lot of opposition, both inside and outside the Church, and lacking sufficient proof, Galileo was forced to withdraw to his villa for the rest of his life. Still, his daughter became a nun.

 

Later Galileo was proved to be mostly right.  However, the Galileo affair is much more complex than often portrayed, with misunderstandings on both sides, and on more matters than the solar system.  When the scientific evidence became clear, the Church accepted that the earth revolved around the sun.  The contributions of Galileo to science have since been praised by the Church, and his name has been cleared of all blame.  Pope Pius XII called him a great scientist (Dec. 3, 1939).  Pope John Paul II regretted that Galileo suffered much at the hands of Church leaders (Nov. 10, 1979) and formally asked forgiveness for their treatment of him (Mar 12, 2000).” (pp. 24-25).

 

This short explanation is an example of the problems inherent in Fr. Remery’s super-brief informational pieces.  There’s no room for some of the major details, such as the fact that Galileo insisted that planetary orbits were perfect circles rather than ellipses, that Galileo engaged in a war of personalities and insulted the Pope (thereby provoking retributions against Galileo), and other details regarding the trial that need to be addressed for a fuller understanding of what really happened.  For more information, see the following links: (http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html, http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy).

 

This is not meant to denigrate the book, but to point out that the strict limits on length mean that the book works best as an introduction to these religious matters rather than as a thorough explanation.  Still, the briefness of the chapters makes for easy reading, and the points made in the book are simple to absorb.  Large quantities of the book can be studied in a single sitting, or perhaps people who have trouble making time for their religious studies can allow themselves the chance to read one or two little chapters a day, making for five-minute Catechism lessons.

 

The little two- or three-paragraph essays focus on narrow topics, while articles addressing slightly broader questions surround the smaller ones.  The longer two-page essay surrounding the aforementioned essay begins with the following statement:

 

“Sometimes it may seem as if faith and science contradict each other.  But that really isn’t true.  Science has never shown that faith in Jesus Christ is unjustified.  The Church does not oppose scientific research.  Quite the contrary: there have always been plenty of Catholic scientists.  Also there has been a Pontifical Academy of Sciences for centuries.

 

The Church does teach, however, that scientific research must take place within certain moral and ethical limits.  For example, research may never deliberately harm human dignity or life.  For this reason, research that involves the destruction of human embryos should not be allowed.”  (p. 24).

 

Here and there, a Twitter-length post is included in the text, such as, “The Bible is the Word of God: it contains a message for you at this moment.  If you open yourself to it, you can hear God speaking to you.” (p. 35).  Others include, “Your ultimate happiness can be found only in God, who made you, knows you, and loves you: Do you need any other reason to believe?” (p. 29) and “Just like an artist, God reveals something of himself in his creation.  Surely the order and beauty that we see did not come about by accident.” (p. 27).

 

The title “Tweeting With God” may seem a bit precious at first, but the point of the title is to show ways to reach out to a technologically trained generation more used to sound bites and quick pictorial memes than detailed arguments and carefully written monographs from past centuries.  This book’s Twitter theme may make the book appear to be geared towards a younger crowd, and to some extent it is, but in the end this book is for anybody who wants to learn more about Catholicism.

 

The point of the book is to make these truths accessible to everybody who wants to read them.  At one point, Fr. Remery tells “A little fable about truth,” writing that,

 

“An old fable tells of a group of blind men who encountered an elephant for the first time in the palace of the rajah.  The blind man who stuck out his hand and touched the elephant’s side said that an elephant is as smooth as a wall.  But the man who touched its trunk said that an elephant is as round as a snake.  The one who took hold of its tusk said that an elephant is as sharp as a spear, and the one who grasped the tail said that an elephant is as thin as a rope.

 

What’s the truth?  The rajah said that all the men were correct in a way, but that they could discover the whole truth about the elephant only by putting all the pieces together.  This fable is often cited in order to illustrate that no single is right, that each one reveals a little bit of God.  This conclusion is overly simplistic, just look at how much the different religions directly contradict each other.  The funny thing is that the fable is often used to say that we can never learn the real truth.  But the rajah in the fable rightly said that the blind men could know the truth by putting all the pieces together.  The elephant does not change because of the way in which it is talked about.  Although the men had different, subjective conceptions of the elephant, in reality there was only one elephant in the palace, with objectively determinable characteristics.  So there is one truth after all.  In the same way there is only one God.  We can find pieces of the truth about him in creation, in the words God has spoken to us, and in the life and death of Jesus.” (p. 31).

 

Tweeting With God is a book meant to teach in a clear and concise way.  Super-short questions and answers are not necessary the apologetics of the future, but they are a useful way of reaching out to people who want to expand their knowledge of religion.

 

 

 

–Chris Chan

The Woman Who Was Chesterton

The Woman Who Was Chesterton: The Life of Frances Chesterton, Wife of English Author G.K. Chesterton. By Nancy Carpentier Brown, ACS Books, 2015.

 

(Full disclosure alert.  Nancy Carpentier Brown is a colleague and friend of mine.  I have not let my friendship with the author affect the content of my review.)

 

The life of G.K. Chesterton has been studied extensively in many biographies.  By all accounts, he was very much in love with his wife, Frances, but Frances’s life is largely overlooked, and her story has largely been overshadowed by her husband’s massive reputation.  In the first full biography of Frances Chesterton’s life, Nancy Carpentier Brown pieces together the life of an intelligent, devout, and loyal woman who shunned the spotlight.  Though Gilbert Keith Chesterton may have served as the cause of a metaphorical eclipse, with his imposing frame blocking his wife’s light from the world, it appears that to a significant extent Frances Chesterton’s shunned a position of prominence, preferring instead to keep her privacy where possible.

 

In his introduction to Brown’s book, Dale Ahlquist writes:

 

“This is a love story. But it is also a detective story. And best of all, it is a true story, told here for the first time.

 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a romantic, a writer of detective tales, and a teller of the truth. His own story and the stories he told are becoming better and better known. But what has remained unknown is the story of the most important person in his life: his wife Frances. She has been a mystery. In spite of how much we know about him, we know so very little about her. Part of this was by her own design. Although she accompanied him everywhere, she kept herself under his ample shadow and thus out of the limelight. She even asked him to keep her out of his autobiography, a request which Gilbert of course honored, but it must have been a handicap to write his own story and having to leave out half of it, and what he would have insisted without cliché, the better half. “

 

Now that nearly eighty years have passed since Frances Chesterton died, it might seem like it is difficult to reconstruct the details of her life, but Brown has risen to the challenge by searching the existing biographies of G.K. Chesterton for details about his wife, some additional secondary literature, personal correspondence, and Frances’s own poems and other writings in order to create an image of Mrs. Chesterton.  In Brown’s book, Frances comes across as an intelligent, caring woman, who preferred to let her husband stand in the limelight.  

 

Brown addresses some of the rumors that have circulated regarding the Chesterton’s marriage.  Most of the gossip that paints the Chestertonian marriage in a strained light comes from the book The Chestertons by Gilbert’s sister-in-law Ada.  Ada was a Communist writer who was briefly married to Gilbert’s brother Cecil after seventeen years of acquaintance (Cecil died in the First World War).  Ada described Gilbert and Frances’s marriage as scarred by sexual frustration, but this is widely by biographers seen as a malicious fantasia crafted by Ada as a means of making the couple look unhealthy and strained.  

 

Brown stresses that she believes that Ada’s narrative has no foundation in truth, and throughout her book, Brown treats the Chesterton’s marriage as an inspiring love story and a mutually beneficial partnership.  However, not everybody else in Frances’s circle of friends and family was quite so convinced that the pair were made for each.  Often the blame comes from the beliefs that Gilbert was not quite right in the head, and the influence of Gilbert’s overpowering personality.

 

“By the time they were engaged, Frances was convinced that Gilbert was a genius with a promising future. She just needed to persuade her family and friends he was the right man for her. This she never fully accomplished. Such was the case with Isabel Sieveking, one of her close friends, whose son later wrote:

 

“Frances…was one of my mother’s closest friends. One bond between them was the devout Christianity they shared, and another was the fact that each lady thought the other’s husband an unsuitable husband for her friend, a point of view which was not altogether without foundation.”

 

This concern may be partly derived from the conception (shared by some) that Frances was subsumed into her husband and somehow lost. Indeed, in later years, it would be said of Frances that she had an amusing habit of saying on the next day what Gilbert had said the day before—not because she had no opinions of her own, but because she seemed to agree with almost every sentiment her husband expressed. The flourishing of talent brought about through the uniting of these two minds and hearts can be seen very early.”

 

One of the hardest parts of the Chesterton marriage was Gilbert’s sudden illness, which left him bedridden and Frances struggling to keep going in the middle of an uncertain future.  Chesterton hovered between life and death for a month, before making an abrupt recovery and surviving for several more years.

 

“While Gilbert lay sick, Frances worked on a collection of his poetry for publication, correcting proofs—and much more. The book, called Poems, had a section called “Love Poems”—which Frances selected and added herself—all but one of which had never been published before. Frances worked beside her ill husband, searching through the love poems he’d written to her years before, selecting the less personal of them. Re-reading the poems must have brought back many keen feelings and affections for the man she had known and loved for so long, bringing special intensity to her hope and prayer that he would get well again.

 

Many things may have prompted her to work toward publication of these most private poems. Frances may have decided that it was time to share with the public how much Gilbert loved her. In addition, she may have been working on the poetry book to provide income while Gilbert was ill. Interestingly, later on, when Gilbert was well and the book was reprinted, he removed some of these love poems from the book.”

 

The other major challenge of the Chestertons’ marriage was Gilbert’s embrace of Catholicism.  Chesterton became a Christian early in his relationship with Frances, then a devout Anglican.  As the decades passed and Gilbert became increasingly interested in Catholicism, and was widely seen as a Catholic apologetic long before he entered the Church, Gilbert’s conversation was for some years a strain between the Chestertons, until Frances finally became a Catholic herself.  Brown writes:

 

“Frances’ resistance to converting alongside her husband came from many sources. She may even have been resistant because of his very enthusiasm. From Gilbert’s previous comments, he felt a responsibility towards Frances for bringing her to the truth, once he converted. Frances nearly always believed Gilbert was right about things, and almost always shared his opinions. She seemed to know she would convert eventually, but wanted to do it in her own time, at her own pace.”

 

G.K. Chesterton and his close friend Hilaire Belloc were so closely connected in the public eye that George Bernard Shaw coined a phrase to describe them: the Chesterbelloc.  Due to the intertwined relationship between Gilbert and Frances Chesterton, it seems as though the couple could be comparatively described as the “Franbert.”  In Brown’s description, Frances was the grounding force for the absent-minded Chesterton, looking after his physical appearance (including giving him a hat to cover up his unruly hair), organizing many personal matters, and constantly joining him on trips in order to make sure that he didn’t get lost.  During their engagement, some of Frances’s friends and family thought that Gilbert was not quite right in the head, and that to marry him would be pure folly.  In The Woman Who Was Chesterton, Brown creates the impression that Frances would have been foolish not to embark on this mutually beneficial and deeply loving relationship.

 

 

–Chris Chan

Socrates: A Man for Our Times & To the Heights: A Novel Based on the Life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

Socrates: A Man for Our Times.  By Paul Johnson, Penguin Books, 2012.

 

To the Heights: A Novel Based on the Life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.  By Brian Kennelly, TAN Books, 2014.

 

The difference between hagiography and biography can be a slight one.  Hagiography is a book about saints, and ideally, an explanation of what makes them saintly.  A biography revolves around the facts of someone’s life.  Often, however, there is not a lot of evidence to know the internal life of a person and the workings of that individual’s mind, and the writer is compelled to speculate or use dramatic license.  Such approaches are in evidence in two very different books about very different figures: Paul Johnson’s biography Socrates: A Man for Our Times and Brian Kennelly’s historical fiction novel To the Heights: A Novel Based on the Life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.

 

Johnson’s book is strictly factual, at least as close to historical fact as is possible after so much time as elapsed.  The central theme of his book is that Socrates’ life and attitude towards virtue and knowledge ought to serve as a model for contemporary people who believe that living well means acting and thinking well.

 

“Socrates was in no doubt that education, by making one virtuous, was the surest road to happiness.  He was the first seer we know of who pondered deeply on what makes humans happy and how such a blessing can be acquired.

 

Such a man is well worth knowing about, and for 2,500 years the learned and intellectually enterprising in all countries have sought to know him.  At a superficial level, it is easy.  Socrates is the quintessential philosopher, the seeker and conveyor of wisdom.  But the more one penetrates from the superficial to the essence of the man, the more difficult it becomes.  Socrates wrote nothing.  Nor did Confucius.  But whereas Confucius was listened to attentively by scholars who then collaborated to produce an exact transcript of his teaching– rather as in the twentieth century the pupils of Wittgenstein, another philosopher who wrote little, tried to remember and set down every word from his life– Socrates had a quite different experience.  Two remarkable men attached themselves to him and sought to immortalize him in words.  Xenophon was a country gentleman, a traveler-adventurer and a general who, thanks to Socrates, whom he venerated, became an amateur student of philosophy…  it has to be said that Xenophon never comprehended and so could not reproduce the sheer power of Socrates’ mind, its unique combination of steel, subtlety, and frivolity.  If he were our sole authority for Socrates, we would never have learned to venerate him as the founder of philosophy as an expert science.”  (pp. 8-9).

 

The problem with writing a book about Socrates is that there are very few surviving primary sources about the man’s life, and the secondary descriptions of him, such as the writing of Plato, may not be entirely reliable, as Johnson takes pains to note.  Xenophon’s records are useful, but they provide an incomplete image of the scope of Socrates’ life and interests.  Comparatively, Plato, who is most commonly linked with Socrates in the popular mindset, has created a heavily edited and perhaps fictionalized version of Socrates which may tell the reader far more about Plato himself than Socrates.  Describing the unreliability of Plato’s evidence, Johnson writes:

 

“Our chief source, who sought with all his astounding ability as a writer and thinker to perpetuate the work of Socrates, was his pupil Plato.  Plato was a genius, which is both our boundless delight and our misfortune.  Being taught by Socrates was the central event of his life, and after his master’s death he spent much of his remaining time recording what he said in a series of dialogues or conversations.  More than a score have survived, plus two companion documents: Socrates’ verbatim defense when on trial for his life, and a record of his last hours before his death sentence was carried out.  These two documents, plus the earliest dialogues, are authentic records of Socrates the man, the historical seer at work.” (p. 9). 

 

The passage of millennia has severely limited our knowledge of Socrates.  It is hard enough to get an accurate understanding of a man’s personality and when he is alive and able to answer questions.  It is even more difficult to figure out who a man like Socrates was when he is viewed through the distorting lenses of other significant figures, and through the veil of time and legend.  Johnson’s major point is that Socrates becomes the product of other people’s views and opinions of who the great man should have been, according to the desires of the contemporary author.

 

“It is particularly damaging to our understanding of Socrates in that the line of demarcation in Plato’s writings between the real Socrates and the monster [a hybrid creature created by Plato’s imposition of himself on Socrates’ personality and views] is unclear.  It has been argued about for centuries, without any universally accepted result, and anyone who writes on the subject must make up their own mind, as I have done in this account.” (p. 12).

 

It is therefore clear that the image of Socrates presented in this book is Johnson’s version of the man, and is sure to be challenged by other scholars.  In Johnson’s eyes, Socrates is a man who appreciated knowledge, was dismissive of glamorous reputations and luxurious possessions, celebrated health and wellness, and clung to his principles despite assorted pressures.  Johnson dismisses interpretations of Socrates as a proto-revolutionary, and attacks recent presentations of Socrates’ sexual proclivities as being high in innuendo and low in fact.  Perhaps the most unrealized part of Johnson’s analysis is his portrait of the relationship between Socrates and his wife, which appears to have been a contentious union, and a very interesting one that would have benefited from further attention.  Johnson notes that Socrates lived long before the time of Christ, but Socrates’ insistence on a virtuous life supplemented with good citizenship, serves as a model for Christians in the public sphere.

 

Is Johnson’s version of Socrates more than that of Plato’s?  It’s impossible to say, but it is clear that Johnson has painted Socrates as a fascinating and inspirational man.  Similarly, Kennelly attempts to make a lesser-known young man from the early twentieth century accessible, warm, and admirable.  Kennelly’s novel about Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young man growing into adulthood and trying to find the virtuous path that God wants him to take, uses fictional license in order to reach the heart of the young man’s moral and spiritual journey.

 

When acknowledging that his book is a work of fiction based on fact, Kennelly explains his work by writing that,

 

“So why embark on such a project?  Why not just write a biography?

 

There is certainly a place for biographies in the libraries and bookshelves of our world, especially of the Saints.  They are informative, inspirational, and integral to spreading the Faith.  But most are not told through the medium of a story, and there is nothing more powerful than this; one need only look to the greatest Teacher we’ve ever known, who chose to teach in parables.

 

There is no denying biographies have the ability to teach us many things about the colossal figures of our past, lessons we may even be able to apply to our own lives.  But does it have the ability to make us cry the way a story can?  Does it journey into the caverns of our soul, where the deepest truths hide, and bring those truths back to the surface?

 

I have always felt that reading a biography, or any non-fiction book, is like looking through a pair of binoculars, while reading fiction is like looking through a kaleidoscope.  In both cases you’re presenting something new to your senses, but the binoculars merely draw you closer to a reality that is a distant part of this world, while the kaleidoscope draws you closer to the possible realities of the world beyond, where lights and colors dazzle in such a way we are not accustomed to here on earth.  The beauty of historical fiction is that it combines the two, so that perhaps you’re looking through the lens of a telescope at the glittering lights of the cosmos, helping you to make sense of your humble place in the universe.  But beyond any poetic analogy that can be made, the truth is that when you fall into a story, your own story begins to have more meaning.

 

It’s my hope that in relaying the life of a young man like Pier Giorgio Frassati through the prism of a story, we can come to know him better than we would in the pages of a biography, or even a book of his own letters.  We can place ourselves in his shoes, relate to him, and view life through his eyes.  His experiences become our experiences, and he holds our hand as we learn from them.” (pp. vii-ix).

 

Pier Giorgio Frassati is presented as an exemplary young man.  Though we see hardly any real flaws in his character, Kennelly makes him more than a plaster saint.  Young Pier is not a model of perfection that the average person can never replicate.  He is, quite simply, a young man striving to be the best person he can possibly be.  This is a story where the hero’s goal is not to slay the dragon, win the heart of the princess, or to gain wealth and status.  Instead, Pier is constantly trying to figure out how to make himself and the world better through simple but effective actions, and how to win over his family, including parents who are suspicious of their son’s piety and desirous of leading him into the family business of journalism and politics.  Throughout the book, the goal seems to be to make Pier a real person.  For people unfamiliar with his life, Pier’s story is one of trying to be a light shining in the darkness, and his journey is both rousing and heartbreaking.

 

“But beyond his spiritual life, he was a good-looking, charismatic, and popular young man who loved to disappear in the rugged Alps of Northern Italy, climbing toward the heights and above the clouds.  He had dozens of friends, girls loved him, and he possessed an eternal zest and optimistic attitude in everything he did.  To use a modern term, he was simply “cool.”  There is a quote attributed to Pope St. John Paul II where he claims that the Church needs saints who wear jeans and sneakers instead of veils and cassocks, and saints who eat pizza and go to the movies.  If our late Holy Father truly said this, he needn’t look further than to this young Italian.”  (p. x).

 

Pier Giorgio Frassati and Socrates were wildly different men with contrasting careers, achievements, and legacies.  Despite the points of dissimilarity, it is equally important to note that both were charismatic men dedicated to lives of virtue and making the world better.  Socrates lived a life of the mind, but his actions spoke as loudly as his words.  Pier Giorgio Frassati performed acts of charity and spread kindness and dignity in many little ways, and shaped the lives of everybody he touched for the better.  These are two strikingly different approaches to depicting exemplary men, but they are both effective in their results.

 

 

–Chris Chan

The Reality of God & Who Designed the Designer?

The Reality of God: The Layman’s Guide to Scientific Evidence for the Creator.  By Steven R. Hemler, Saint Benedict Press, 2015.

 

Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God’s Existence.  By Michael Augros, Ignatius Press, 2015.

 

Logical arguments for the existence of God are an integral part of theology, and two new books, Steven R. Hemler’s The Reality of God: The Layman’s Guide to Scientific Evidence for the Creator and Michael Augros’s Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God’s Existence are both works that defend theism from a Catholic perspective, though the approaches taken by the authors are significantly different.  Neither work should be taken as the sole, definitive work that finally provides conclusive proof of God’s existence after millennia of theological debates, but both, in their own ways, provide new arguments and reasoning for theists to ponder as they deal with the major questions of existence.

 

Hemler has advanced degrees in both Pastoral Studies and Civil/Structural Engineering.  Hemler’s perspective is both that of a man of science and as a man of faith.  Hemler also serves as the President of the Catholic Apologetics Institute of North America.  In his preface, Hemler writes:

 

“The question “Does God exist?” is critical to understanding our place in the universe and how we will live our lives.  That’s because what someone believes about God affects everything else he or she believes and does.  Indeed, the five most consequential questions in life are these:

 

1. Origin: Where did we come from?

2. Identity: Who are we?

3. Meaning: Why are we here?

4. Morality: How should we live?

5. Destiny: Where are we going?

   

Our answer to each of these questions and consequently how we live our lives depends upon whether or not we believe God exists.  Therefore, this book provides a basic introductory overview of evidence for the existence of God to help us answer the foundational question, “Does God exist?” for ourselves and in discussions with others.  As such, this book is intended to help strengthen our own faith and provide valuable information for discussion with those who may doubt the existence of God.”

 

Hemler’s book focus on both logical proofs and interpretations of tangible evidence in order to argue for God’s existence.  The book is divided into three sections: Cosmic Evidence of God’s Existence, Biological Evidence of God’s Existence, and Human Evidence of God’s Existence.  At times the arguments used are complex and may require a bit more than a basic knowledge of scientific principles, but the point of the book is to provide the average reader with reasons why religion dos not have to be in conflict with science, and emphasize that atheist materialism is an inadequate perspective for viewing the universe.

 

Hemler explains his approach, saying that:

 

“While we may have subjective (personal) reasons for belief in God, this book provides objective (scientific and philosophical) reasons that justify God’s existence.  As such, this unique book provides a clear and concise overview of key scientific evidence, philosophical reasons, and insights drawn from human nature itself demonstrating God’s existence.  

 

In this book, you will find “the rest of the story” (to quote famous radio personality Paul Harvey).  In the first two parts of this book, we explore aspects of scientific discoveries that you are unlikely to hear in scientific lectures, publications, or television shows, namely how recent scientific discoveries actually provide compelling evidence of God’s existence.

 

This, this is a book of Christian apologetics, which is the branch of theology that is concerned with the rational explanation and defense of the Christian faith…” 

 

These two books have the same goals, but their approaches are distinctly dissimilar.  Hemler’s focus on tangible evidence and scientific interpretations is expressly rejected by Augros, who prefers to take a specifically intellectual approach through mostly intangible arguments.  Augros’s perspective is that of a philosophy professor, studying the arguments for theism through first causes and logical defenses.  The book is written colloquially, and one does not need any special knowledge of philosophy in order to read it. 

 

In his introduction, Augros writes:

 

“The purpose of this book is to put forward a solution to these vexing questions [about how to prove the existence of God].  Specifically, my intention is to show, by purely rational means, that there is indeed a first cause of all things and that this cause must be a mind.  So far as that goes, this book is indistinguishable from a fairly continuous stream of “there is a god” books.  So why bother with this one?

 

For five reasons:

 

1. This book takes a fresh, nonpolemical approach to the question of a designer.

 

2. It slowly and carefully develops a single proof for the existence of a mind behind the universe.

 

3. It does not call on you to trust in the observations or theories of others, such as scientists, but instead reasons exclusively from things you can verify for yourself.

 

4. It solves certain fundamental problems of theism, or which the atheists are aware, but which current theistic books largely ignore.

 

5. The certainty reached in this book is greater than that attained in science-based books for or against a designer.”

 

The book calls out the “New Atheists” who have made careers and headlines promoting unbelief, ranging from recent celebrity atheists like Richard Dawkins to earlier twentieth-century figures like Bertrand Russell.  Notably, Augros is invariably cordial and even flattering towards these figures, which goes towards his approach of attacking ideas rather than people, and this approach seems to have been affected by his personal experiences.

 

Ultimately, one of the most telling passages in Augros’s book is a personal account of an intense debate he had once with an atheistic friend.  After arguing passionately for God’s existence for hours, Augros found that the atheist no longer had any rebuttals to the arguments for theism, and expected that his friend would now have to cede the point that God was real.  The result was rather anticlimactic.  The atheist conceded that he no longer had any defensible arguments to support his unbelief, but refused to convert to theism.  This illustrates that books that contend to prove God’s existence are helpful for bolstering theists in debate and defense of their faith, but in order for someone to receive the gift of faith, it is necessary to have something more than a watertight argument. 

 

It is said that humans cannot convert other people to faith– only the Holy Spirit can do that.  These books can help people keep their faith and defend their faith, but they will serve as a continuing part of the ongoing battle between belief and unbelief rather than a permanent resolution of that conflict.

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

Bergoglio’s List: How a Young Francis Defied a Dictatorship and Saved Dozens of Lives

Bergoglio’s List: How a Young Francis Defied a Dictatorship and Saved Dozens of Lives.  By Nello Scavo, Saint Benedict Press, 2014.

 

When Cardinal Bergoglio was elected to the papacy and became Pope Francis, mostly only people from his home in Argentina and people interested in prominent Church figures knew about him and his work.  Instantly becoming one of the most famous men in the world, journalists scrambled to find out more about the man who was now seated upon the throne of St. Peter.

 

Over the course of the first several hours after white smoke wafted across the sky over Vatican City, a series of contrasting stories came over the news and popped up over the Internet like mushrooms after a heavy rain.  Some of the stories were laudatory, praising the new pope’s simple lifestyle, piety, and kindness.  Other stories were far less complementary.  A number of reporters pounced upon the rumor that decades earlier, Fr. Bergoglio had been an active participant in the atrocities that took place in the middle of Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

 

In order to explain the historical background, it is necessary to explain the details of Argentina’s “Dirty War,” and the context of these allegations: 

 

“At this writing, summer of 2014, two generations have grown up without having lived through Argentina’s “Dirty War,” which pitted a far-right-wing military dictatorship or “junta” against anyone considered subversive.  The “subversives” targeted by the junta ranged from genuine Marxist guerillas, to members of trade unions, to Catholic “church ladies” who dared petition the government to reveal the fates of family members who had been arrested and then just disappeared.

 

To this day there is no accurate count of how many people fell victim to the regime.  A rough calculation is 19,000 shot down in the streets, 30,000 “disappeared” and presumed dead (among them approximately 500 children), untold thousands imprisoned, and perhaps as many as two million Argentinians who went into exile.

 

At the same time, there is no accurate count of how many escaped thanks to the courage of men and women who risked their own lives to save others, sometimes complete strangers.  Their heroism recalls the men and women in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II who saved the lives of countless Jews, Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, and other targets of the Third Reich.”

 

It is undeniable that many tens of thousands of people were slaughtered during the “Dirty War.”  What is more controversial is determining who was involved in the atrocities, and who actively opposed them.  As is often the case in the wake of a major massacre, there was little actual justice and a great deal of finger-pointing.  One person who found himself being accused of complicity in the crimes was Fr. Bergoglio.  After the fall of the junta, and again around the time of the new pope’s election, Fr. Bergoglio was targeted as an example of Church corruption.  In Bergoglio’s List, Nello Scavo attacks these accusations as the foulest and most baseless slander, the product of unscrupulous and morally bankrupt individuals who wished to distract from their own culpability and to cast aspersions upon one of the most prominent figures in the Argentine Church.

 

“After the junta had collapsed, former members of the regime and some of their sympathizers tried to destroy Father Bergoglio’s reputation by suggesting he had been a double agent, occasionally smuggling out of the country people wanted by the regime, but more often cooperating with the regime in its round up of priests, intellectuals, and others who opposed the junta.  St. John Paul II experienced a similar detraction campaign in his native Poland under the Communists.  Publically tarring the reputation of political opponents is a common practice of corrupt regimes, including the former Soviet Empire.”

 

Bergoglio’s List takes its name from the celebrated book and movie Schindler’s List, about the man who saved numerous Jews from the Nazis.  Comparatively, Fr. Bergoglio rescued dozens of people who were target by the Junta, saving them in a wide variety of bold and clever ways.  Throughout the book, Scavo addresses various accusations and disproves them, crafting a defense and an exoneration of the Pope, as well as creating a heroic story that will make the readers wonder why the narrative isn’t better known. Scavo crafts his narrative as the story of a brave and principled man trying to battle the forces of an iniquitous and bloodthirsty government.

 

“Bergoglio’s List is the story of how then Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio– now Pope Francis– risked his life to save approximately 100 people who had been identified as “enemies” of the Argentinian junta.  It appears there were dozens more whom he was able to warn before the authorities could come to arrest them.

 

It takes incredible courage to stand up to evil on a grand scale, and that is what the military junta was.  In 1976 the armed forces launched a coup d’etat that toppled the government of President Perón.  The junta drove out of office governors and judges across Argentina; dissolved congress and the supreme court; abolished the constitution; banned labor unions; censored newspapers and other media outlets; and outlawed all forms of political dissent.

 

The viciousness of the junta’s campaign against its opponents is difficult to comprehend.  The junta created a climate of terror in which people were picked up on the streets and dragged away to detention centers.  There they were brutally tortured to extract confessions and forced to incriminate others.  Then so often these prisoners simply “disappeared.”  Many were shot and dumped into unmarked graves.  Others were thrown from helicopters while still alive into the open ocean, their bodies never to be found again.”

 

Over the course of Bergoglio’s List, Fr. Bergoglio comes across not so much as Oskar Schindler, who subverted the Nazi system from within by hobbling the Nazi armament industry and sheltering Jews, but as the Scarlet Pimpernel, the swashbuckling character from Baroness Orczy’s series of novels, where an ingenious and fearless system of heroes saved aristocrats from certain death at the hands of the French Revolution.  Most notable is the fact that Fr. Bergoglio did not just rescue faithful Catholics or members of the clergy, but also individuals who were far from friends of the Church.

 

“Father Bergoglio, at the time superior of the Jesuits in Argentina, detested the viciousness of the regime.  He began helping anyone who appealed to him for protection.  One of the people on “the List” is Gonzalo Mosca, a left-wing labor organizer who was staunchly anti-clerical.  He had hoped he could lose himself in the vast suburbs of Buenos Aires, but the military hunted him down.  When the caretaker of his apartment building warned him that the military was closing in and ready to kill him, Mosca turned to the only person he felt he could trust, his brother, who was a Jesuit priest.

 

Father Mosca said he thought he had a solution.  He called his philosophy professor from his days in the seminary, Father Bergoglio.  At a predetermined location, Bergoglio picked up Mosca and drove him to the Jesuit College of San Miguel.  There he was hidden for four days while Bergoglio organized an escape route that called for a brief air flight, a boat trip into Brazil, a stay with the Brazilian Jesuits, and finally a flight to Europe and safety.  Recalling what Bergoglio did for him, Mosca has said, “I don’t know of other people who would have done the same thing.  I don’t know if anyone else would have saved me without knowing me at all.”

 

The book is filled with stories of all sorts of people who were rescued.  One was a female judge and a mother with three children, who were hidden aboard a fruit boat bound for Uruguay.  Muckraking journalists, activists, political dissidents, and people who worked with the poor were also targeted by the junta, and had to be saved. The details of the atrocities committed by the junta are so disturbing that they make the reader wonder why these horrific events are not better known by the general public.  Several of the people interviewed in this book say that they kept these stories quiet so as to protect other survivors from assorted repercussions, or so as not to give the impression that they capitalizing on the time they spent with the man who would become pope.  Throughout the book, Fr. Bergoglio comes across as a quietly heroic figure who knows that it is often wise not to advertise one’s good deeds.

 

There are a couple of flaws in the book.  The translation could be more polished in some places– some passages are phrased in a somewhat clunky manner, and at times certain sentences could be phrased more elegantly.  Nevertheless, Bergoglio’s List is always a compelling read, and one can only hope that more stories about rescued people are revealed and made public.

 

 

–Chris Chan