Borrowed Time

Borrowed Time

Borrowed Time. By John Nolte, Bombardier Books, 2023.

Borrowed Time is a novel fueled by big ideas and the little moments that make up life.  It’s both an epic tale and a collection of miniatures, a story of an ordinary man with a supernatural ability that’s probably more curse than blessing.  Throw in a romance that’s both ordinary and extraordinary, a cast of memorable characters including some of the best-written villains in recent memory, and a serial killer with a grudge against all that is holy, and the result is one of the most resonant and powerful novels in years.

 

The central character is Joshua Mason, a man who’s average in every way save for his immortality.  Born millennia ago, he has made it into the present day as a perennial forty-something, never aging.  He can be wounded or killed, but immediately afterwards he comes back to life by an isolated tree in the desert, healed and whole. Mason has no desire to leverage his unique ability into fame or fortune or power.  All he wants is to exist, quietly savoring moments and trying to stay off the radar of those who might learn of his longevity and exploit it, though as the twenty-first century dawns, that grows increasingly challenging.

 

But after thousands of years of living forever with nothing to live for, Mason met Doreen, the proprietor of a motel in the American Southwest that’s barely staying afloat.  They married and enjoyed a simple but happy life, raising Doreen’s grandson Charlie, who was left severely mentally impaired after a car crash that killed his parents.  As they’re often in need of money, Mason has been forced to turn to drastic measures, selling himself to the rich and powerful who see homicide as a sport, knowing that for him, death is only a temporary inconvenience.  After a few decades pass, Doreen reaches the end of her natural life span, rejecting Mason’s offer of sharing his immortality as an unclean thing, leaving Mason adrift and responsible for Charlie’s care, with murderous forces converging all around them.

 

Gradually, more and more snapshots of American life are revealed, from the venal manipulators who use their influence to control and destroy others, to broader cultural cancers with the potential to crush millions of people.  Societal ills, human frailties, and larger movements with seemingly benign intentions and destructive results abound.  It’s a very dark story, but amazingly, it’s also a warm story, because even as Nolte targets everything that’s wrong with the world, he never loses an opportunity to illustrate how important it is to savor life’s moments of joy.  There’s plenty of danger and no despair.  At times, the forces of darkness in Nolte’s world seem unstoppable, but there are little lights of hope, humanity, and divine grace that make it clear which side will win in the end, even if so much of what people are obsessed with today is nothing but rapidly-fading vanity.

 

Nolte’s personal worldview is tightly intertwined with the story of Borrowed Time, but it never comes across as blatant message-pushing.  Whether it’s wonderment and horror at the leviathan nicknamed “the All at Once,” or bewilderment at the damage people inflict on themselves as a distraction, morality (not moralizing) is front and center in the story.  Taking tropes from other novels and putting his own personal spin on them, Nolte creates a man who “tends to his own garden” in a novel that’s more humane than Voltaire’s Candide, a dystopian government that’s as terrifying as Orwell but closer to our present reality, and a vision of the world’s end that’s told with Vonnegut’s wit but with more faith.

 

It’s the characters that make the novel shine.  There are fiends in human form but no saints, although there are several very good people who are striving to live virtuous lives in their own ways.  Interestingly, many individuals aren’t who they appear to be at first.  A seeming innocent is filled with inhuman darkness.  A ostensible slacker jerk turns out to be in the middle of a personal redemption arc.  An otherwise decent person is revealed to have done something that hurt someone else terribly, only for this transgression to rebound tragically decades later.  Borrowed Time also has plenty of brilliant villains, including a bureaucrat with ambitions for dictatorship, a vile plutocrat who’s disinclined to seek divine forgiveness and is cocky enough to believe that he can charm Satan, and a hit man filled with sleaze and self-loathing. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming in characterization is the case of a multiple murderer, where an insufficient attempt is made to explain why that person is so broken.  It’s a case where evil is left inexplicable.  In contrast, many other characters, some of whom are only around for a few pages, are given heartbreaking character arcs, explaining why they made terrible decisions that sent their lives into downward spirals.  For almost every other character, devastation and tragedy are the result of a deliberate choice to pursue selfish sins instead of decency and virtue, and while the main villain’s motives are explored, the ultimate cause of the never-healing wound needs more attention.  It’s one misstep in a remarkably well-crafted collection of characters.

 

Nolte has claimed that this is his first and only novel.  With such a powerful debut, one hopes that he changes his mind and keeps writing.

Catholics Confronting Hitler: The Catholic Church and the Nazis & A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe the “Saint of Auschwitz.”

Catholics Confronting Hitler: The Catholic Church and the Nazis.  By Peter Bartley, Ignatius Press, 2016.

 

A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe the “Saint of Auschwitz.”  By Patricia Treece, Marytown Press, 1993.

 

Catholics Confronting Hitler and A Man for Others are two books that discuss the role of the Catholic Church during the Second World War.  There is a prominent branch of historiography whose views have made their way into many popular culture venues which claims that the Church at best did nothing to fight the horrors of Nazism and at worst was directly complicit is the Third Reich’s crimes.  These books directly attack this perspective, using numerous anecdotes, quotes, and reinterpretations of various events in order to advance their contentions that large portions of the Church were active opponents of Nazism throughout the movement’s existence.

 

Bartley’s opening passages set up his thesis, as he describes the Vatican’s history and official pronouncements:

 

“Long before the Nazis came to political prominence, their ideology came under attack in the speeches of the papal nuncio Archbishop Pacelli before his recall to Rome in 1929.  Years earlier, the Church’s position on racialism and exaggerated nationalism had been made crystal clear, and by the highest authority.  In the encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei of 23 December 1922, Pope Pius XI proclaimed:

 

Patriotism… becomes merely… an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family.

 

The following year, anti-Semitism was repudiated in a sermon preached by the archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Faulhaber.  At the same time, Faulhaber addressed a letter to the chancellor, Gustave Stresesmann, complaining of “the blind raging hatred of our Jewish fellow citizens and other ethnic groups.”  Letter and sermon coincided with the failed Beer Hall Putsch and brought down on Faulhaber the special loathing of Nazis, who jeeringly designated him “the Jewish Cardinal.”  At his trial for his part in the putsch, Ludendorff launched into a lengthy tirade directed against the Catholic clergy for the protection they gave to Jews.  Stresemann, however, praised Faulhaber for his moral stance.”

 

While Catholics Confronting Hitler directly refutes many of the allegations levelled against the Church, it is important to note that the book does not serve as a whitewash.  While the leading figures and official pronouncements of the Church did much to fight Nazism, Bartley does devote a considerable amount of time to castigating self-professed Catholics who were active Nazis, and he also criticizes a priest who served as the leader of a central European nation and did very little to oppose Hitler.  

 

Bartley illustrates how the Church mobilized to create as united a front as possible in order to battle Nazism, writing that:

 

“The 1930 election result rang alarm bells within the Church.  The issue of Catholic membership in the Nazi Party, which until then had been left undecided, now became a matter of urgency.  Towards the end of the year, the senior German prelate, Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, published a statement critical of “false nationalism and the worship of race.”  He and the other bishops well knew that increasing numbers of Catholics were being drawn to National Socialism, whether out of sympathy with its patriotic appeal or because of its economic aims, while remaining largely ignorant of its fundamentally unchristian character.”

 

Catholics Confronting Hitler analyzes the relationship between the Church and anti-Semitism, and concludes that though many individual Catholics and Catholic communities, as well as some influential churchmen, have been highly hostile to Jews and involved in various persecutions; that there have been many other figures throughout Church history who have defended the Jews, and that particularly during the early half of the twentieth century, the popes and other prominent churchmen did much to combat anti-semitism.

 

“The anti-Jewish boycott provoked anger abroad and drew from the Holy See the first papal note of protest sent to Berlin.  Like many subsequent papal notes of protest, it was ignored.  According to the writer Sebastian Hoffner, who left a personal account of life in Hitler’s Germany, one effect of the boycott was to place the Jewish situation firmly in the public eye.  Germans who previously had given little thought to the matter now felt it necessary to have an opinion about Jews.  Invidious distinctions came to be made between “decent” Jews and the rest.

 

While the Nazis were hounding Jews and labour activists, an intense religious struggle was taking place.  Priests had their homes searched, Catholic government employees were dismissed from their posts, and a campaign of intimidation was begun against members of Catholic organizations, all within days of the passing of the Enabling Law.  The bishops protested these indignities in a letter of 1 April.  German Protestantism suffered from being fragmented.  Unlike the Catholic Church, which was international and hierarchical, the Protestant church was, as Konrad Heiden, Hitler’s first biographer pointed out, a German church to begin with.  Hitler’s task here was not to lure believers away from their church but to win them back.  The Lutheran church generally looked favourably on Hitler’s new order.  The die-hard conservatism of most Protestants made it difficult to accept a republic born of a coalition of Socialists and Catholics.  Many harboured sentiments of German nationalism, which, for some, sought expression in the movement of German Christians, a pro-Hitler wing of German Protestantism that aimed to adapt Christianity to neo-pagan race theory.  Originating in prewar Germany, the movement was energized by the advent of Hitler. Recalling Marcion of the second century, the German Christians aspired to a form of Christianity free of Old Testament influence, the more extreme among them wishing to “Aryanize” Christ.”

 

Overall, Catholics Confronting Hitler provides an excellent look at a complex and fascinating time for the Church, and contrary to a widespread narrative, the Church did much to distinguish itself by its actions.  Bartley advances the point that it was a dangerous, live-wire situation, where speaking out too loudly could have led to the deaths of thousands and led to the endangerment of millions.  It’s a compelling and in some ways overwhelming assessment of some of the world’s darkest hours.

 

While Catholics Confronting Hitler is a panoramic continent-wide view of the Church’s actions during the era of Nazism, A Man for Others focuses on one man’s personal story of moral courage and living by example.  A Man for Others is a biography of St. Maximillian Kolbe, a Catholic priest who died in Auschwitz.  When another prisoner escape, the Nazis ordered that numerous other prisoners be put to death as retribution.  When a younger man with a family was selected for execution, Kolbe stepped up and asked to be taken in the other man’s place.  Treece notes that it is entirely possible that the Nazi guards, who often indulged in cruelty and violence, could have simply decided to take both Kolbe and the other man, but instead the latter’s life was saved, and some of the later passages focus on that man’s life after being freed after the war.

 

Kolbe once declared, “The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hetacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.”  While Kolbe’s famous sacrifice is at the center of the book, there are many other important incidents in Kolbe’s life that are also extremely interesting, such as Kolbe’s parents’ marriage, where they placed their faith over everything else, and his time in Japan.  There are many other little details that show what kind of man Kolbe was, such as his refusal to accept gifts of food without sharing them with all of the other prisoners.  

 

From international politics to one man setting a strong moral example, these two books are essential reading for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the role that the Catholic Church played in the struggle against Nazism.  Both books center on what it means to cling to principles in turbulent times, and both narratives explain how faith can shape history.

 

 

–Chris Chan 

Remembering God’s Mercy: Redeem the Past and Free Yourself from Painful Memories

Remembering God’s Mercy: Redeem the Past and Free Yourself from Painful Memories.  By Dawn Eden, Ave Maria Press, 2016.

 

(Full disclosure warning: Dawn Eden is a friend of mine.  I am still reviewing this book with as much objectivity as I would have if she had once run over my foot with a tank.)

 

Mercy is a topic that is increasingly discussed in theological circles, particularly with Pope Francis declaring this to be the “Year of Mercy.”  Mercy is sometimes viewed as a means of allowing the guilty to escape punishment, but this is a very narrow view of mercy.  Mercy is also the ability for the innocent yet suffering to escape the tribulations that constantly haunt them.  

 

Dawn Eden returns to a familiar theme with her new book.  Popular culture is filled with examples of religion as having a negative or crippling effect on people, with piety leading to guilt, neuroses, and all sorts of hang-ups.  Perhaps some people are affected in that way, but as Eden illustrates, for many people religion has a healing effect on people, providing them with redemption, peace, and joy after a world obsessed with worldly success, sex, and ephemeral pleasures has left them broken.

 

This is Eden’s fourth book, if her revised Catholic version of her first book The Thrill of the Chaste is counted as her third book.  Her second book, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints was reviewed on this website in June, 2012.

 

Eden’s work is marked by a particularly open and frank manner.  Eden’s books are filled with personal revelations that reveal her past, problems, and heartbreaks.  The Thrill of the Chaste tells a series of vignettes regarding her private life, and how the current culture of “sex is fun and harmless and shouldn’t have any consequences whatsoever” leaves people empty on multiple levels.  My Peace I Give You describes the sexual abuse Eden suffered as a child, and illustrates how the Catholic Church and God’s mercy healed wounds that she thought might never be healed.  Remembering God’s Mercy continues Eden’s autobiographical saga of her personal spiritual journey towards a level of happiness that she would never have dreamed possible just several years earlier.

 

In the opening to Remembering God’s Mercy, Eden writes:

 

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to “have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16)?  To be able to look back at your entire life, both the joys and the sufferings, and to see only the love of God?  That was my thought when I wrote My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.  In that book, I sought to help my fellow victims of childhood sexual abuse heal their memories through the lives of saints who, having suffered trauma, found healing in Christ.

 

The response to My Peace I Give You was unlike anything I have experienced as a writer.  Every author wants her book to be appreciated by its intended audience, and mine certainly, was; readers who were survivors of abuse told me it helped them where other books had not.  What was unusual was that, again and again, even as readers thanked me for My Peace I Give You, they asked me to give them something more.  They wanted me to write a new book– one that would present the same healing spirituality, but in a way that they could share it with loved ones who had not suffered abuse.”

 

Indeed, when one has been hurt so deeply and so painfully, it can be impossible to convey that type of anguish to someone who has not suffered in that manner.  In college and graduate school, I have warned friends from California and other warm climates about how cold the Wisconsin winters can be, and without exception, they have responded with an airy dismissal and a firm assertion that they can handle whatever chills come their way.  Then December and January come, and the blithe confidence gives way to chattering teeth and constant shivering.  People can imagine the feeling of great heat, but for someone who has never before experienced bitter cold and powerful winds.  It is similar with great anguish– people can imagine depression, hopelessness, and despair; but living through them is a totally different matter.

 

While all of Eden’s books are heavily autobiographical, her work is not all about her.  Eden’s books draw on Church teachings, history, the lives of major religious figures, and the experiences of friends and colleagues.  Remembering God’s Mercy refers frequently to the teachings of St. Ignatius and Pope Francis.  Both men describe how prayer, religious exercises, and a deep exploration of the Church can heal the mind and soul.  

 

“As I continued to research the wisdom of Pope Francis on healing of memories, and the Jesuit roots from which it sprang, something happened to me that was completely unexpected.

 

I was expecting inspiration.  I was not expecting grace.

 

But grace is what I experienced.  This book that you are now reading, although it began as an effort to answer my readers’ desire, ended up answering my own desire for greater intimacy with Christ.  Pope Francis and the Jesuits who inspired him took me on a journey that has brought me to a deeper understanding of the mercy of God– the mercy that both forgives and heals.

 

My hope and prayer is that, as you read this book, you too will find that healing grace– the grace that, as Francis says, enables us “to enter into dialogue with God, to be embraced by his mercy and then to bring that mercy to others.”

 

In Eden’s first chapter, she describes a life-threating illness that the future Pope Francis endured when he was young, as pneumonia brought him close to the brink of death, leading to surgery to remove a portion of one’s lung.  While in the hospital, people offered the ailing man simple platitudes and expressions of optimism.  Words that seek to minimize the pain or to dismiss it as a brief blip in a long upcoming future of happiness fall hollow when one is trying desperately to survive and conquer the problems that are crushing them.  The pontiff-to-be was helped only one nun’s comment to an ailing man: “You are imitating Christ.”

 

We see pain as an evil to be avoided, an unpleasantness that taints and discolors life.  What our culture rarely addresses is the fact that pain– or rather the endurance and possible conquering of pain– God’s love and guidance in making us better gives pain a purpose, and even the most hurtful memories can illustrate the love of God when viewed in the proper perspective.

 

Eden writes about how prayer can center the mind, saying:

 

““Imagine Christ our Lord present before you on the Cross.”

 

Those words from the first meditation in the Spiritual Exercises mark the first of many times in that regimen of prayer that Ignatius invites retreatants to picture themselves face-to-face with Jesus.  One could even say that the entire program of the exercises is designed to enable participants to encounter Christ directly, in the present moment.  Why then does Francis, in discussing the “encounter with the merciful Christ crucified,” speak of that meditation as though it were a matter of calling to mind something that is past?  Why does he call it a “prayer full of memory?”

 

The answer, I believe, has to do with another point Francis makes in Spadaro’s interview: “God is first; God is always first and makes the first move.””

 

Eden has a rare gift– the ability to explain complex theological matters and powerful emotions, and present them mixed with her personal experiences, describing them as if she was having a confidential conversation with a trusted friend, rather than as a book that anybody can read.  Eden’s work is not preachy, but is filled with genuine warmth, and reflective happiness mixed with residual sadness.  Eden’s books can help people because they come from a place of love, and Remembering God’s Mercy can provide comfort in those in need because it has the voice of someone who once was in great need for comfort.

 

 

–Chris Chan