Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men

Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.  By Dwight Longenecker, Regnery History, 2017.

 

Every Christmas, Christians see manger scenes featuring three wise men, and the Christmas carol “We Three Kings” is sung regularly.  It’s widely accepted that three monarchs visited the manger where Jesus was born, and that they rode in on camels, were of diverse ethnic backgrounds and homelands, and were named Balthasar of Arabia, Melchior of Persia, and Gaspar of India.

 

But is this depiction of the past historically accurate?  In Mystery of the Magi, Fr. Dwight Longenecker argues that much of what the faithful think they know about the Magi is based primarily on legend and folklore.  The Biblical information on the Magi is comparatively meager, and it’s necessary to delve into existing historical evidence in order to figure out what really happened.  

 

In his opening pages, Fr. Longenecker writes:

 

“In the midst of secular Christmas, with Frosty the Snowman and Santa, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Bing Crosby dreaming of a white Christmas, we want the wonderful story of the Christ child born in a stable, heralded by angels, honored by shepherds, and worshipped by kings who followed a star.

 

Even the most hardened cynics want to keep Christmas.  Despite the rise of casual unbelief, most of us want to hand the family Nativity set on to our children.  Hypocrites and agnostics, we still gather for church at that one time each year.  It may be far from our everyday lives, and we may not really believe, but many of us want to believe.  Even if we don’t, we want to hear again the story of the innocent mother and the faithful father.  Even if we have doubts, we want to hear about the angels singing to the shepherds and the sweet old story of the wise men who were enchanted by a miraculous star.

 

But is there any truth to it all?”

 

Throughout the book, Fr. Longenecker criticizes both skeptics who refuse to give any credence to the supernatural and the miraculous, as well as those individuals who have faith but refuse to view certain stories or events critically.  Fr. Longenecker dubs these people “believers with blinders,” suggesting that they act as if the slightest query over the veracity of any Christian story is a slippery slope towards angry unbelief.  Rather, Fr. Longenecker argues that rigid fundamentalist interpretations can blind religious people towards various important aspects of their faith. 

 

Observing how common presentations of the Magi have changed over the centuries, Fr. Longenecker notes that there are reasons why many critical Biblical scholars have rejected large portions, if not the entirety, of the Nativity story as mythical, writing that:

 

“The Christmas story has been cluttered up with so many customs, traditions, legends, and strange characters over the years that it’s difficult to imagine that any of it might be rooted in history.”

 

Yet the scholars who dismiss the story of the Magi following a star based on nothing more than folklore receive chiding from Fr. Longenecker for failing to do their homework on the real historical evidence behind the Magi story.  The narrative of the Magi varies widely from region to region and century to century.

 

“The fact of the matter is that facts matter.  If an event is historical, it is real, and if it is real, then it affects the rest of history.  If an event really happened, we have to pay attention and fit it into our vision of reality.  If we regard the Bible stories as fairy tales but then learn that they are historical, we are compelled to reconsider our understanding of history and the other claims of Christianity.

 

The problem is that when we are dealing with ancient stories, separating fact from fiction is rarely east.  History and fantasy get jumbled up together.  A good example is King Arthur.  Historians believe there probably was a real chieftain named Arthur who ruled some British tribes during the time of the Saxon invasions.  Who Arthur was, however, and how he lived and where Camelot was located are difficult to ascertain.  Furthermore, the historical Arthur is a far cry from the character in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King– not to mention Disney’s animated Sword in the Stone or Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

 

Over the course of the book, Fr. Longenecker finds ample evidence that there really were Magi– although the point that there were exactly three of them is never confirmed in the Bible.  The idea of there being three stems in part from the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, though there is no textual evidence that each Magi brought just one unique kind of gift.  Fr. Longenecker also explains that the common image of the Magi riding in on camels may be flawed– horses may be a more likely means of conveyance.  Contrary to the belief of many scholars, there is also hard evidence that a real astrological phenomenon occurred during this time.

 

At the heart of the book is a desire to find out the truth behind the Magi, which means that scholarship of dubious accuracy is particularly singled out for criticism.  Fr. Longnecker explains how much of mainstream Biblical scholarship has begun on shaky principles, writing that:

 

“Biblical scholars are not preachers.  They are not necessarily Christian believers.  Their task is the painstaking analysis of the ancient texts so that all of us can understand them better.  Biblical scholars therefore approach the gospels with the tools proper to literary, historical, archaeological, and linguistic research, building on the results of over one hundred years of detailed Biblical scholarship.  Like detectives, they sift through the Biblical texts and the other evidence in an attempt to discern what is historical in the stories and what is not.

 

The problem is that Biblical scholars often work under their own set of prejudices.  Assuming that miracles are impossible, they conclude that the supernatural elements of the gospel stories must be imaginary additions.  This bias infects everything they do.  If the believers with blinders assume that everything in the Bible stories must be true, the scholars and skeptics too often assume that everything in the Bible is false.

 

In fact, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and one of the exciting things about exploring the story of the Magi is that we can embark on a fascinating adventure of discovery.  To do so we will take advantage of the strengths of both sides of the debate.  Assuming, like the believers, that the Bible stories are essentially historical and trustworthy, we will use the tools of the scholars to examine the text, study the elaborations, cut away what is legendary, and learn more about the context and history of the New Testament times.”

 

After reading this book, one is unlikely to ever listen to “We Three Kings” the same way ever again, nor is one likely to listen to the latest “debunking” of a major Bible story without turning a critical eye towards this new scholarship.

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

 

Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be Too) & Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter With God

Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be Too).  By Brandon Vogt, Ave Maria Press, 2017.

 

Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter With God.  By Fr. Donald Haggerty, Ignatius Press, 2017.

 

Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be Too) and Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter With God are two different approaches to the same questions. What does it mean to be Catholic, what happens when one becomes Catholic, and what does it take to stay Catholic? Both are written to appeal to the reader’s intellect and soul although anecdotes, arguments, and in Vogt’s case, humor.

 

Brandon Vogt opens his book on Catholicism and conversion with the following autobiographical musings.

 

“Anything but Catholic.

Spirituality, great.  Religion, fine.  Attending church, maybe.

But why in the world would anyone become Catholic today?  Isn't Catholicism a backward, intolerant, bigoted religion?  Isn't it run by pedophile priests and full of scandals?  Doesn't it degrade women and LGBT people and obsess about sex?  Isn't it plagued by pointless rules that stifle real faith?

I was not raised Catholic.  Some of my friends must have been Catholic growing up, but I never knew it.  I grew up in a Presbyterian church, which provided a warm community and great formation.  Yet like many young people, the life of faith never took root in me.  This was almost certainly my fault, not the church's.

As a teenager, I probably would have identified as "spiritual but not religious."  But then in college at Florida State, while studying mechanical engineering, I fell in with a Methodist group on campus, which dramatically affected my faith.  I found a deep, vibrant community that welcomed me in.  They weren't afraid of hard questions, and they exposed me to the fascinating world of the Bible.  I started praying on my own and began devouring books about God and faith and philosophy.

But then, as a twenty-year-old senior with a budding faith, and on the cusp of graduating, getting married, and starting a new engineering job, I did something few people could fathom, something that didn't fit with all those other sensible decisions: I became Catholic.

To say friends and family were surprised would be a vast understatement.  Most were profoundly confused, and remain so.  Though I've discussed it often, trying to explain what led me into the Church, it's still hard for people to understand how a young man with an apparently well-functioning brain would not only look favorably on an institution such as the Catholic Church but also actually choose to join it.”

Vogt’s book is deeply personal. It touches upon themes of family, logic, courage, and going against the flow. It’s a consistently upbeat book– there is no browbeating or anger in the prose, just warmth, happiness, and encouragement. Vogt comes across as a man whose life has been deeply enriched by his faith, and that he now seeks to spread his happiness and purpose by sharing the sources of that jot with as many other people as he can find.

Throughout the book, Vogt stresses that being a faithful Catholic generally means distancing oneself from the popular and prevalent trends of the time.  I should mention that Vogt’s description of the hostility towards Catholicism (and the respect for other religions one might consider embracing) in the introduction is far from universal. It’s certainly common enough, but it’s also just one experience.

 

In his introduction, Vogt writes:

 

“Choosing to be Catholic is provocative.  It's countercultural.  It's literally the opposite direction our culture is going.  The Pew Research Center completed a massive, national religious study, surveying more than thirty thousand Americans, which found that exactly half (50 percent) of millennials who were raised Catholic no longer call themselves Catholic today.  That's massive attrition.  Half of young Catholics have already left the Church (with more likely following in the future).  That explains why "former Catholic" continues to be one of America's largest religious groups.

The study also found that roughly 80 percent of people who left the Catholic Church have left before age twenty-three.  These aren't lifelong Catholics who stay on the fence for decades before drifting away.  They're young people, people in high school or college, or young adults — people the same age I was when I chose to become Catholic.”

Often, Vogt draws upon the intellectual influences that shaped his spiritual journey.  The works of G.K. Chesterton are chief among them.

 

“It's easy to swim downstream, to accept the status quo.  What's hard is to be a rebel, to look with fresh eyes on something most people reject and say, "What if they're mistaken?  What if 'anything but Catholic' should perhaps be 'what else but Catholic'?"

These same questions struck G. K. Chesterton.  He was one of the most popular and prolific English journalists of the early twentieth century, writing more than a hundred books and more than five thousand essays, and lecturing all over the globe.  But in 1922, he stunned the world by announcing his conversion to the Catholic Church.  Friends and family were just as confused as mine were almost a century later.  They thought this normally straight mind had gone horribly off the rails, asking him accusingly, "Why would you become Catholic?"

Chesterton replied, as was his wont, with an essay.  He titled it, plainly, "Why I Am a Catholic," and he began it by saying, "The difficulty of explaining why I am a Catholic is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true."

In contrast to Vogt’s ebullient work, Fr. Haggerty’s book Conversion is less colloquial, but full of comparably strong insights into the nature of conversion and maintaining one’s faith. There are many references to the fact that one’s faith must not be allowed to become complacent or repetitive. At one point, Fr. Haggerty mentions Pope John Paul II’s dictum that priest must strive not to fall into the trap of treating their duties like those of being an office clerk. Otherwise, the prayers and duties of the vocation become mere tedium, missing the power that comes from the zeal of a burning faith. It’s not exactly clear what a better comparison would be, perhaps a soldier in a never-ending battle would be a more ideal standard, or perhaps a relief worker or medic in a disaster area.

 

Fr. Haggerty writes:

 

“The aftermath of a conversion is as significant as the conversion itself.  The soul’s response to grace in this period after a conversion has a crucial impact on later life.  It is one thing to be a prodigal son who returns to his father after coming to his senses and repenting.  It is another thing to open one’s eyes fully to the new life that beckons in the glowing sunrise of a recent conversion.  The recovery of grace is always only a first step toward a discovery of immense possibilities in a life with God.”

 

Both of these books do an excellent job of encouraging their readers to find a lasting faith in the Catholic Church.  Neither writer ignores a very potent truth: faith can be vital, but it’s rarely easy.

 

 

(More information about Why I Am Catholic and supplementary resources can be found at https://whycatholicbook.com/get-book.)

 

 

–Chris Chan

Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context

Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context.  By Fr. Paschal Scotti, Ignatius Press, 2017.

 

The story of Galileo and how the Catholic Church treated him in the wake of his proclamations of a heliocentric universe has been told often, but has rarely been told accurately.  In most of the incarnations of the story, the Church is hidebound, brutal, dogmatic, anti-science, and Galileo is a heroic paragon of truth and freedom of intellectual inquiry.  It’s a simplistic morality play with science versus religion at the center, and all of the points go towards science.  This narrative has become a part of the shared international discourse, and like many stories that “everybody knows,” it’s a combination of truths, half-truths, outright lies, distortions, misinterpretations, overlooked facts, and biased opinions. 

 

(For an overview of the historiographical position critical of Galileo, check out Michael F. Flynn’s article “The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown and Down-and-Dirty Mud-Wrassle” http://www2.fiu.edu/~blissl/Flynngs.pdf.  A much longer version can be found here: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html.)

 

Fr. Paschal Scotti’s new book Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context provides a fresh look at the oft-told story, one where the Catholic Church comes across as a much more sympathetic force, and one which calls a lot of the traditional elements of the narrative into question.  

 

Early in the book, Scotti writes:

 

“Galileo is one of those iconic figures in history for whom there is endless fascination.  Besides an abundant scholarly literarture, the “Galileo industry,”as one author put it, there also has been great general interest in him, as we see in a stream of biographies…”

 

All of us have grown up with the idea of the warfare between science and religion.  While the idea began with the Enlightenment, it reached its high-water mark in the Victorian period.  Thomas Huxley (1825-1895). The “Pope of Science,” pushed the military metaphor in his attempt to professionalize science, moving it from a part of Christian apologetics, the preserve of Anglican gentlemen and clerics, or rather, gentlemen clerics, into a hard-edged secular discipline financed by the state, and ordered to public usefulness.  Only by discrediting the religious culture of the traditional, Anglican-landed Establishment could his science come into its own.  Who can forget his pugnacious line, “Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.”  This polarization, or at least the attempt to create polarization, was part of the means by which he achieved it; and it was as much about class, power, and prestige as about the pursuit of truth.  This was equally true of the United States, which, while not having an official Protestant Establishment, was a society profoundly influenced by the Protestant churches and where the clergy were among its cultural and political leaders.”

 

One of the major points of this book is that most narratives about Galileo are sadly deficient in providing salient details about the case, the time period, and anything else that might provide nuance, complexity, and contradiction to an otherwise oversimplified story.

 

“Recent scholarship has been much more positive about the Church’s role in science.  The respected historian of science Edward Grant rather sees Christianity as supportive of science and the Christian Middle Ages as laying the foundations for the Scientific Revolution.  Despite the clear religious orientation of the Middle Ages, science was given enormous institutional support in that uniquely medieval creation, the universities, where the arts curriculum was basically a scientific one and whose main job was the training of clerics.  This respect for science was equally true of astronomy as of any other science.  As J.L. Heilbron put it in his study of churches as solar observatories: “The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.”

 

It should be noted that Scotti’s work is on a historiographical spectrum, which ranges from directing the brunt of the criticism towards the Church or towards Galileo.  In his conclusion, Scotti spreads the blame around widely, saying that, “there is more than plenty of blame to go around, and Galileo was far from the only culprit.”   He argues that Galileo’s personality hurt his cause, as did the Church’s approach to dissent in the wake of the rise of Protestantism, and that Galileo’s envious rivals in the scientific community encouraged his downfall.  In the end, Scotti defends Galileo’s work and even suggests the possibility of reconciliation through canonization, though this is far from a universal opinion.

 

There are a bunch of interesting points that Scotti does not address in as much depth as he could have in this book, such as the problems connected to Galileo’s flaws and false assumptions in his theories, such as the issue of perfectly circular planetary orbits as opposed to elliptical ones.

 

For all the references to Dava Sobel’s influential book Galileo’s Daughter, which reignited interest in Galileo’s life, no mention is made of another book by Sobel of particular contextual importance: Longitude, the story of John Harrison, who almost single-handedly solved the problem of calculating longitude while at sea, solving a critical problem affecting navigation of the oceans.  In the eighteenth century, the British scientific community (largely secular and/or Anglican) near-universally believed that the best (indeed, the only) way to make such a calculation would be to devise a complex mathematical equation that could discern longitude through calculating the positions of the stars.  It was to be a beautiful, elegant solution for gentleman astronomers.

 

It was, in reality, a deeply flawed and inefficient plan.  One could only perform the calculations at night.  What happened if it were cloudy?  Or if something happened to those who understood the calculation system?  Indeed, since no reliable formula was ever devised, the idea might be impossible.  But the scientific establishment was determined to crush Harrison, who devised a mechanical device the size of a pocket watch, which successfully calculated longitude instantly, any time of day, and easily determinable by anyone.  Harrison solved the problem, but the leaders of the scientific community refused to acknowledge it, partly because it rendered their own lifetimes of work largely futile.

 

The point of this anecdote is that perhaps the conflict between science and religion is not as applicable to the Galileo case and similar cases as the conflict between one scientific theory and another scientific theory.  The general belief in a geocentric universe was not based solely on religion but on the science of the time (and to an extent, going back through antiquity).  Similarly, the scientist who first discovered that ulcers were mainly caused by bacteria and not stress was widely castigated before he was vindicated and won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

 

Scotti’s book does a fine job of explaining how the history of the Galileo case is much more complex– and interesting– than it is usually credited as being, yet the broader context of similar cases, as well as the other influences of political considerations and the problems of scientific verification and the then-slow dissemination of information, need further analysis.

 

–Chris Chan

 

Kidnapped by the Vatican?: The Unpublished Memoirs of Edgardo Mortara

 Kidnapped by the Vatican?: The Unpublished Memoirs of Edgardo Mortara.  By Vittori Messori, Ignatius Press, 2017.

 

The Edgardo Mortara case is often used as a truncheon to strike the moral legitimacy of the Catholic Church.  A young boy from a Jewish family had been baptized without his parents’ knowledge, and after a great deal of controversy, Pope Pius IX decided that the Church had a duty to raise the child and assure his Catholic upbringing.  The case generated a vast amount of anti-Church sentiment, and is widely credited with being an instigating factor in the general dissolution of the Papal States.

 

In the introduction to Kidnapped by the Vatican, the case is succinctly outlined:

 

“The circumstances of the case are straightforward.  At the time of the incident, the Mortara family resided in Bologna, within the Papal States that were under the rule of Pope Pius IX.  Contrary to the law at the time, the Jewish family employed a Catholic nursemaid, who surreptitiously baptized the infant Edgardo when he was at the point of death.  The infant unexpectedly recovered; later, when the circumstances became known, the Mortara family was informed that since Edgardo was now a baptized Catholic, they would have to give him a Catholic education, as the law in the Papal States required for all Catholic children.  Pressured by anticlerical forces, the parents steadfastly refused, requiring the pope to remove the child from his family in order to provide that Catholic education.

 

If one rejects the objective truth of the Catholic faith, then the Catholic confessional state, represented by Pope Pius IX as ruler of the Papal States, had no right to “impose its beliefs” and remove a surreptitiously baptized child from the care of his Jewish parents in order to assure him a Christian education.  If, however, one accepts the teachings of the Church about the effects of the sacraments and the conditions for eternal salvation, might one not conclude that the pope had not only the right, but also the duty, to do as he did?  Should the pope have put greater weight on the considerations in favor of the parents, or on the eternal salvation of the Christian child’s soul?  Whichever decision he made, one day he would have to answer for it before God.”

 

This review is meant to explore the thesis of the book, not necessarily to back it,  Messori notes that “The Church has always forbidden the Baptism of Jewish children without their parents’ consent.”  Since the infant Edgardo was baptized by his Catholic nursemaid when he was thought to be dying, Edgardo was therefore licitly a member of the Church.  Messori does an excellent job explaining, comparing, and contrasting the different worldviews at play here, from the parents who wanted their son, to the government forces that sought to discredit the Church, to the clergy who concluded that they had a moral duty to make sure that all children brought into the Church received a proper religious education.

 

The opening to the book stresses that there were deep religious, theological, political, and emotional forces at work in the Mortara case.

 

“Why was the Mortara case such a cause célèbre in the second half of the nineteenth century, and why did it remain so controversial that it was the primary objection to the recent beatification of Pope Pius IX, almost a century and a half later?  The case sits at the crossroads of the greatest social transformation of modern times: from a fundamentally religious view of the world to a fundamentally materialistic one.  Those two views can lead to diametrically opposed conclusions about the Mortara case.

 

Promoting the welfare of its citizens has always been seen as a legitimate concern of the state, perhaps the primary one.  Throughout the United States and Europe today, the state is considered to have the right even to remove a child from his parents to protect the child’s physical and emotional well-being; this has been done in situations in which the child was deprived of proper medical care, left unattended in a parked car, allowed to play unwatched in a public park, or even subjected to secondhand smoke.  Although people differ on the merits of particular cases, by and large we accept the principle that at some point the welfare of the child justifies the state’s intervening and overriding the parents’ right to care for the child– but only temporal, not eternal, welfare is usually considered.

 

But what if the teaching of the Catholic Church is true?  What if, once created, the human person lives for all eternity, and the nature of that eternity– whether perfect bliss or unending misery– is dependent on the sacraments and on the person’s moral formation?  Then should not the same principle that gives the state the right to intervene for the physical welfare of the child five the state the right, perhaps even the duty, to intervene for the eternal welfare of the child as well?”

 

This book has been published for multiple reasons.  Not only does it seek to provide the Church’s side of the story, it contains an almost never-before seen document: Mortara’s own memoirs and account of his life and his relationship with Pope Pius IX.  This autobiography has been sitting in an archive for decades, and Mortara’s perspective is overwhelmingly sympathetic towards the Pope and the Church, and Mortara is absolutely devoted to his vocation as a priest.  

 

The first half of the book is Messori’s account of the case, along with details about how the story was told (and sometimes distorted) in the press and in academia (though amazingly, no one else who has written about the case seems to be aware of Mortara’s memoirs), and how the case has been fictionalized in popular culture.

 

As a priest, Mortara once wrote:

 

“I am a Catholic on principle and by conviction, ready to respond to attacks and to defend even at the cost of my blood this Church you are battling.

 

I tell you that your words deeply offend my honor and my conscience and oblige me to protest publicly.

 

I am intimately convinced, by the whole life of my august Protector and Father, that the Servant of God Pius IX was a saint.  And it is my conviction that one day he will be elevated, as he deserves, to the glory of the altars.”

 

This book is bound to provoke controversy.  In most of the accounts of the case, the Church’s actions are seen as being utterly wrong, and authors and pundits make no bones about their disapproval.  Yet as Messori briefly alludes to but does not go into much detail, governments around the world have been doing similar things for comparable reasons, and many are still doing so.  (Messori’s comment about the U.S. being particularly hypocritical on certain matters is based on a valid criticism, but Messori is complaining about the mote in the United States’ eye while ignoring the plank in Europe’s (and other continents’) eye.)  Indeed, multiple European countries are debating if the state should take away children because the government deems their parents’ religious beliefs excessive, or because the parents want to homeschool, or even because the children may be overweight– some activists are arguing that such children need to be wrenched from their parents and placed on a state-sponsored diet and exercise regime.  Governments all over the world have split up families in order to raise children in the style they deem best, but many of these cases have been largely relegated down the memory hole.  Many of the confiscated children have not wound up as happy and well-adjusted as Mortara. Recently, the Church's role in residential schools has been revisted, while secular governments have shifted blame, and after much initial anger, many allegations are now being subjected to fresh scrutiny. 

 

“For Mortara, telling how things really had happened was also, and perhaps most importantly, a duty of justice toward Pius IX, who had been attacked, vilified, and threatened because of the “abduction of the Jewish child” and who instead deserved a hymn of thanks, affection, and gratitude.  The pope himself had told him many times, his voice breaking with emotion: “You have been for me the son of Providence, but also the son of tears.”

 

Throughout his memoirs, Mortara expresses the deepest possible affection for his family, but also for Pius IX, and his Catholic faith is very deep.  

 

Kidnapped by the Vatican? was published with the realization that many events of the Mortara case will re-enter the public consciousness soon.  Steven Spielberg is planning to make a movie about the case, and the Weinstein Company is also working on its own film version of the story.  A historian who has written about the case has recently won a Pulitzer Prize for another book critical of the Church, a popular historian has insisted that Mortara was sexually abused by top Vatican officials, and Marvel Comics recently released a wholly fictional storyline where Mortara became a priest but made it his life’s mission to bring down the Church from the inside.  

 

After reading Mortara’s memoirs, it seems like these other interpretations of the case are largely divorced from reality. If the Mortara case is rediscovered today, Kidnapped by the Vatican? may become a central part of the historical re-evaluation of these events. 

 

 

–Chris Chan

From Islam to Christ– One Woman’s Path through the Riddles of God

From Islam to Christ– One Woman’s Path through the Riddles of God.  By Derya Little, Ignatius Press, 2017.

 

From Islam to Christ is a personal memoir about the religious journey taken by Derya Little.  For various reasons, Little uses a pseudonym for herself and for most of people who feature in this book.  This is a conversion story, but it is also one woman’s autobiographical account of growing up, the personal effects of divorce on a family, her impressions on the history and culture of her native Turkey, and how faith can utterly transform someone’s life.

 

As the book opens, Little reflects on her life in America and how religion has completely reshaped her life.  In the opening scene, she waits at a garage for her car to be fixed, and she suddenly realizes just how different every aspect of her life is from her early twenties.

 

“Looking up from my book, I saw a big wooden crucifix that should have seemed out of place in the mostly metal garage, but Christ’s crucified figure did not appear to mind His surroundings at all.  I pondered the image that changed everything for me; then I smiled.  The reason for my amusement was that if my twenty-year-old self were to occupy my thirty-four-year-old body momentarily, and saw who I was, she would think I had gone insane.  The younger Derya did not drive, yet there I was waiting for my huge Honda van to be fixed.  She did not believe in marriage, yet I was waiting for the mechanic to finish, so that I could get back to my wonderful husband of six years.  A decade ago, Derya did not want any children, yet I was the mother of three beautiful and busy saint makers.  She had never traveled outside Turkey or been inside an airplane, yet I was living in a small mining town on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.  

 

Most importantly, that Turkish young woman did not want anything to do with God, yet I was filled with gratitude and hope at the sight of a crucifix in a garage.  Little by little, I had traveled far, not only physical but also spiritually. Thankfully, as wise Gandalf says in The Lord of the Rings, “Not all who wander are lost.””

 

Little provides a poignant, heartfelt, and honest depiction of her childhood.  Her father was unfaithful to her mother, although he was reluctant to break up the marriage or to abandon his mistress.  As a result, Little, her brother, and her mother lived in very limited circumstances.  The lower social standing brought about by poverty led to many humiliations, and the breakup of her family led to all sorts of emotional and mental strains.  She writes:

 

“Soon after my parents went through separation and divorce, we slipped down the financial ladder.  Money became very scarce, as my mother had to pay the mortgage and feed us with only her meager retirement salary.  Seeing all my better-off friends wearing Levi’s 501 jeans and buying New Kids on the Block cassette tapes, which were expensive in Turkey, while I had only a battered old pair of shoes and a knock-off pair of jeans, made me feel as if there was no room for me in their world.  I felt neglected by my parents and patronized by my friends.”

 

Little does an excellent job of crafting a vivid and memorable verbal picture of her hometown in Turkey, along with the history of her homeland and the attitudes of various groups there.  Early in the book, she provides a brief overview of the history of modern Turkey, as well as her impressions on the public expectations of religion and the ways in which Islam is intertwined inside all of the social and cultural aspects of life in Turkey.  She notes that when Ataturk crafted the new nation, religion took a back seat in the public sphere, and yet being Muslim was considered being integral to being a member of society.  After outlining her birth nation’s history, Little summarizes the religious culture of the early decades of modern Turkey as follows:

 

“In this Islam-lite culture, women were not allowed to cover their hair in the Muslim fashion, nor could they wear the hijab.  No manner of religious apparel was allowed in public areas, and both men and women were to dress in appropriate European attire.  Laicism, a strict version of secularism that promoted the state’s dominance over religious affairs, was embraced, and slowly, but very effectively, religion’s impact in education and public affairs diminished.

 

Despite these shifts in the perception of religion in public life, however, being a Muslim remained an important aspect of being a Turk.  You were not supposed to be too Muslim, but you were not supposed to be anything else either.”

 

In recent years, secularization has been on the wane in many areas of Turkish life.  Little takes pains to point out how decent and kind many people she knew in Turkey were, but she also describes some of the growing fundamentalism in some quarters, and how Christianity and atheism are both anathema in certain circles.  By her teens, Little started to face a lot a doubt, and eventually drifted into outright atheism.  She notes how her own lack of belief and hostility towards many religious attitudes led to contempt for people who believed.  Little illustrates how religious belief and action can be bolstered by one’s social circles.  As she grew older, she found little groups of atheists who got together, talked about all sorts of issues, and sneered at believers.  

 

“In that dark room, slowly the unthinkable seeds of doubt were sown.  They were very small seeds at first– so small, in fact, that I was not willing to acknowledge them.  But my prayers became shorter and shorter.  They were said out of habit without any heart or belief that someone was hearing the incomprehensible Arabic words.  Then I started to find excuses to delay reading the Quran.  Either I was too busy with homework, or I was not ritually clean.  One Ramadan, I simply lied to my mother about fasting.  I would wake up before sunrise with her to eat and then pretend to fast while grownups were around.  Drinking water and having little snacks when nobody was looking became the way I fasted.  By no means had I left Islam, but my adherence became only nominal.  I was becoming one of the millions of Muslims in Turkey who did not observe the religion to which they claimed to belong, and I was content with that development.”

 

Perhaps some of the most poignant aspects of the book come her failed relationships before her conversion, as Little discusses how the problems with her boyfriends stemmed in part from the breakup of her parents’ marriage, and how the two abortions she had affected her mentally and spiritually.

 

Also particularly interesting are Little’s reflections on how history was taught to her.  In America, we often hear pundits say that Americans often do not hear enough about the dark side of their history, though in comparison to other countries (definitely not just Turkey– throughout Europe and Asia, there are countless examples of horrible atrocities and embarrassments that are simply hushed up, overlooked, or whitewashed with lots of pretty lies).  If we are to understand how other people around the world think about their own histories, we have to learn about how they are taught history.

 

“The Ottoman history that was taught to me in school was written from the perspective of the winners and doctored to make the centuries of Ottoman rule look just, fair, and prosperous.  My textbooks did not mention the slavery that was legal under Ottoman rule.  Unlike American children, Turkish students do not learn about the wrongdoings of their ancestors.  There is certainly no discussion of making reparations for past injustices or of moral lessons learned from history– other than never to trust infidels.”

 

The poignant, moving second half of the book is largely driven by how Little discovered Christianity and was slowly, yet inexorably drawn to it.  She met some Evangelical Christian missionaries, and originally tried to lead them to unbelief, before gradually and unexpectedly discovering her faith again.  Eventually, she travelled to England to pursue further studies, grew increasingly drawn to Catholicism, converted, met and fell in love with a fellow Catholic online, and eventually married and moved to America to start a new life.

 

This is a particularly engrossing memoir, and one that provides a thorough and complex look at how faith and society are intertwined and what how religion can change people in all sorts of ways.

 

 

 

–Chris Chan

The Porn Myth & By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed

The Porn Myth.  By Matt Fradd, Ignatius Press, 2017.

 

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment.  By Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, Ignatius Press, 2017.

 

Normally, when Ignatius Press sends me books to review, they are placed in a white cardboard envelope with a letter describing the book.  When I received The Porn Myth and By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed (on separate occasions), they contained something extra.  The Porn Myth was wrapped in shiny black paper, while By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed was encased in brown paper wrapping, with a big sticker with a statue of Blind Justice pasted upon it.  In both cases I was intrigued.  What about these particular books gave the privilege about being done up like Christmas presents, while all of the other review copies I receive go out completely unadorned.  I unwrapped them, and found the aforementioned titles. 

 

Both address controversial topics– The Porn Myth does not contain any actual dirty pictures, but instead explains why pornography addiction is real and how it harms people who view it in various ways.  It’s a very wholesome book, given its desire to help people who may be suffering, but given the title you can’t read it on the bus without getting a lot of funny looks and probably some unwanted comments.  Meanwhile, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed addresses the hot-button issue of capital punishment.  Both are strong conversation starters.

 

The description of The Porn Myth explains that the purpose of the book is to illustrate that pornography has a destructive effect on not just people who look at it, but on those around them as well”

 

"The Porn Myth is a non-religious response to pro-pornography arguments. It draws from the experience of porn performers, recent research from neurology, sociology, and psychology to build a case for why pornography is destructive to individuals, relationships, and society. Matt Fradd provides insightful arguments, including the latest scientific research, on nearly every relevant subject imaginable, exposing the negative impact pornography has on our minds, our relationships, and our culture.

This book addresses the neurological reasons porn is addictive, helps individuals learn how to be free of porn, and offers real help to parents and the spouses of porn users.

Thanks to such new research on pornography's harmful effects on the brain, on relationships, and on society, there is today a wave of passionate individuals trying to change the cultural norm inspiring others to pursue real love and avoid its hollow counterfeit. Today's younger generation wants a love that is untainted by warped perceptions of intimacy and by selfish desires. Millions are now recognizing pornography for what it is and rejecting its influence in their lives. This book is part of that movement.

The Porn Myth will help readers to separate the myths from the reality about porn, and to reclaim real love in their lives. Matt Fradd masterfully articulates and dispels the falsehoods that have helped to spread porn addiction and sexual dysfunction, and he inspires us to take action against them."

Throughout the book, we see glimpses of couples who can’t connect on all sorts of levels, we see stories of deep-seated loneliness and emotional isolation, and we also see heartbreak in multiple forms.  It’s not an easy book to read, for after all, it’s a story about addiction and pain, bad choices and seeming hopelessness.  Yet there’s a deep, counter-cultural poignancy to every page, as our sex-saturated popular culture suddenly stops looking glamorous and starts looking tawdry and sick.

 

In an interview, the author, Matt Fradd, described his personal experiences with pornography:

 

“I was looking at porn every day and when the Internet came it was good night; it was multiple times a day,” said Fradd.

                          

But at the age of 17, Fradd attended World Youth Day in Rome and experienced a conversion, yet his addiction to porn persisted.

 

“I was living a duplicitous life - these two sorts of views of the human person cannot live in the same mind for long,” said Fradd.

 

What eventually broke Fradd's dependency was realizing Christ's passion redeems all humanity, extending to those featured in pornography. No longer could he gaze at an image without recognizing the dignity of the person.

 

“There's an old stereotype that if you're against porn you're against sex,” said Fradd, attacking the myth that pornography prevents sexual repression. “There's a third option, ya' know - chastity, that virtue, which enables you and me to love in accord with our dignity.

 

“We have science and love on our side and the porn industry has the money,” said Fradd.”

 

Fradd’s book is propelled by a desire to make society a better place, as he outlines all of the different ways that relationships ranging from marriages to friendships can be harmed by this form of sex addiction.  In comparison, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed addresses the issue of capital punishment, and argues that it is a morally licit form of justice that is in accordance with Catholic teaching.  In recent years, there have been an increasing number of voices coming from the very top of the Church arguing that the death penalty is unacceptable morally, and Feser and Bessette make a point of addressing all of the arguments against capital punishment as they try to refute those perspectives.

 

They write:

 

“The restoration of what Aquinas calls “the equality of justice” by inflicting on the offender a harm proportionate to his offense is known as retribution, and it one of the three traditional purposes of punishment, the others being correction or rehabilitation of the offender and the deterrence of those tempted to commit the same crimes the offender has. Other purposes are incapacitation … and restitution.

 

Society will lose sight, first of the idea of proportionality, then of the idea of desert, and finally of the idea of punishment itself. And when the idea of punishment goes, the very idea of justice will go with it, replaced by a therapeutic or technocratic model that treats human beings as cases to be managed and socially engineered [rather] than as morally responsible persons. Nothing less is at stake in the death-penalty debate.”

 

While I am not sure that many people who are deeply convinced that the death penalty is a moral evil will be completely swayed by the arguments in this book, while reading this, I was reminded of my experiences in high school, when entire days were devoted to the exploration of studying perspectives on major issues like the death penalty.  We read a wide variety of opinions from all sorts of people on capital punishment, and a book like this would definitely find a place on a such a reading list, and any debate team would be advised to study a book like this, though there are many other arguments against capital punishment would be brought up in response.

 

The authors insist that:

[I]t is the irreformable teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate, not merely to ensure the physical safety of others when an offender poses an immediate danger (a case where even John Paul II was willing to allow for the death penalty), but even for purposes such as securing retributive justice and deterring serious crime.

Both of these books provide insight and complexity to major issues and debates shaping society, and it would be interesting to learn just how many opinions and hearts are changed or reinforced by these works.

 

–Chris Chan