The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961: Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh

The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961: Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh.  By Ian Ker, University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

 

In this book, Ian Ker presents profiles of six of the most prominent Catholic British authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  All but Belloc were converts to Catholicism.  Throughout their careers, these authors continually incorporate themes of faith, the clergy, and theology in their writings, ranging from fiction to nonfiction to poetry. 

 

Nearly all of the authors discussed in this book (I am as of this time unfamiliar with the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins) are favorites of mine.  I am not a fan of these authors simply because they are Catholics. Rather, I am captivated by the way that these authors invigorate and enrich their work through the worldview expressed in their books, and it just so happens that their worldviews are driven by their faith.  One of my favorite quotes on literature comes from the novelist, essayist, and social critic Alice Thomas Ellis, who quipped, “Once you take away the religious element, you can’t write fiction. Well, you can, but it’s boring.”

 

Other than a brief introduction and an even briefer conclusion, Ker’s book is composed of six chapters, each devoted to a short biographical overview of one of the authors, as well as a critique of some of each author’s work and the Catholic themes that permeate it.  The chapters grow longer as the book proceeds.  The first chapter on Newman is only about thirty pages, which is far too short to do justice to the man’s life and work.  Comparatively, the final chapter on Waugh is around fifty pages, composing nearly a quarter of the book.  The added length makes for a much better analysis, since far more of Waugh’s books are referenced here.  Casual readers should be cautious– some major plot points and spoilers are included in the chapters on Greene and Waugh.

 

Given the lengths of these profiles, and the details provided about each of these authors’ writings, these chapters might work best for readers with introductory-level knowledge about these authors.  Those who are well-versed on these writers will find a great deal of factual information that they already know, but the main attraction of this book will be for people who seek to find out how great writers were able to blend faith into their work.

 

The first two chapters on Newman and Hopkins are good overviews of the authors and their work, but their primary shortcoming is their brevity.  Ker touches upon some intriguing autobiographical information on the pair, but only a handful of sentences are provided on the topics before the direction shifts.  Herein lies the central difficulty of a work such as this.  When dealing with extremely talented authors who deal with massive themes and important topics, it takes considerable skills to condense the men and their writings into a few dozen pages.  The Newman and Hopkins chapters are the weakest– the two men are not sufficiently developed as individuals.  Thankfully, the next four chapters provide vivid images of the men in question.

 

The chapters on Belloc and Chesterton give extremely enjoyable glimpses of the authors and their work.  Some problems lie in the critical analysis of the pair.  Belloc is summed up as a minor writer, whose greatest works were his comic verse and his book The Path to Rome.  Belloc was a brilliant humorist and poet, and The Path to Rome is a classic, but I strongly disagree with Ker’s categorization of the man.  Indeed, Belloc’s histories, which sought to debunk the Whig version of history, which denigrated Catholic England in favor of the rise of Protestantism, are critical to understanding his Catholic literary mindset.  Belloc’s economic treatises, which blended Catholic moral teachings with monetary concerns, are another field where a social science was infused with faith.  By not including Belloc’s historical and economic studies, let alone his fiction, this chapter seems oddly hollow.

 

At one point, Belloc’s famous Christmas song, blending the joys of faith with tongue-in-cheek curses is cited.  When I hear this song, it brings on the warm fuzzy feelings in a way that “Frosty the Snowman” never could:

 

Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!

A Catholic tale have I to tell!

And a Christian song have I to sing

While all the bells in Arundel ring.

 

I pray good beef and I pray good beer

This holy night of all the year,

But I pay detestable drink for them

That give no honor to Bethlehem.

 

May all good fellows that here agree

Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me

And may all my enemies go to hell!

Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!

May all my enemies go to hell!

Noël! Noël!

 

In order to give proper due to the man and his work, the poem and its themes, hidden meanings, and humor would have to be analyzed and discussed. Unfortunately, the poem and others like it are not sufficiently critiqued, perhaps due to Ker’s insistence that Belloc is a “minor” writer.  Given the limited information provided, it is understandable that the reader who is uninitiated in the books of Belloc might concur that the man was a “minor” writer, but this would be a gross shortchanging of a remarkable wordsmith.

 

Ker refers to Chesterton as “Dickensian,” and with good reason.  Chesterton has many similarities to Dickens characters, such as Mr. Micawber from David Copperfield.  The major disappointment of this chapter is Ker’s seemingly selling Chesterton short.  Chesterton’s massive religious-themed output is barely addressed here, and his theology-saturated Father Brown mysteries are referenced but not discussed, and his novels are similarly ignored, despite the heavy spiritual themes of The Man Who was Thursday, The Ball and the Cross, Manalive, and The Flying Inn.

 

Ker argues that Chesterton’s best work is his collection of critical essays on the work of Charles Dickens.  There is something to be said for this selection– his book in Dickens is certainly a masterpiece, and shows Chesterton at the height of his powers, yet to focus on this work at the expense of all of his others, and to categorize Chesterton as yet another figure in the tradition of Victorian nonfiction prose stylists is accurate, yet oddly incomplete.  I should reiterate that this an original, intelligent, and well-crafted depiction of Chesterton’s work, and yet Chesterton’s chapter, like those of Newman, Hopkins, and Belloc, seems to only say a little bit about a very big subject.

 

The best essays are the last two on Greene and Waugh.  Both authors are given fairly substantial biographies, although I have grown tired of the typical characterizations of Greene as a man who was very much a “burnt-out case” in the later decades of his life, and Waugh as a Catholic left adrift in the wake of Vatican II.  There is a lot of truth in these depictions, yet after reading their work from that period I can’t help but feel that there was far more to their stories than that.  Wisely, Ker ends his chapter on Greene by mentioning my favorite anecdote about Greene, which coincidentally happens to be my favorite anecdote about Waugh, as well.

 

In the mid-1950’s, Graham Greene informed Evelyn Waugh that he was seriously considering ceasing writing about God in his novels, and Waugh firmly replied “Oh, I wouldn’t drop God if I were you.  Not at this stage anyway.  It would be like P.G. Wodehouse dropping Jeeves halfway through the Wooster series.”

 

I liked this book a lot.  Perhaps my major problem with it lies with me, and not Ker.  The plain fact is, if I were to write a book like this– and I hope to some day– it would be radically different from The Catholic Revival in English Literature.  The focus, arguments, and critique would be utterly unlike Ker’s.  I can’t blame Ker for not being me.  Yet I can’t help feeling that this book reinforces the popular mindset that these Catholic writers are a subset genre, talented certainly, yet not part of the “canon.”  Perhaps my feelings are better expressed by Chesterton in his opening pages of his book on Charles Dickens:

 

In everyday talk, or in any of our journals, we may find the loose but important phrase, "Why have we no great men to-day? Why have we no great men like Thackeray, or Carlyle, or Dickens?" Do not let us dismiss this expression, because it appears loose or arbitrary. "Great" does mean something, and the test of its actuality is to be found by noting how instinctively and decisively we do apply it to some men and not to others; above all, how instinctively and decisively we do apply it to four or five men in the Victorian era, four or five men of whom Dickens was not the least. The term is found to fit a definite thing. Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means. Even the fastidious and unhappy who cannot read his books without a continuous critical exasperation, would use the word of him without stopping to think. They feel that Dickens is a great writer even if he is not a good writer. He is treated as a classic; that is, as a king who may now be deserted, but who cannot now be dethroned. The atmosphere of this word clings to him; and the curious thing is that we cannot get it to cling to any of the men of our own generation. "Great" is the first adjective which the most supercilious modern critic would apply to Dickens. And "great" is the last adjective that the most supercilious modern critic would apply to himself We dare not claim to be great men, even when we claim to be superior to them.

 

–Chris Chan

 

In Soft Garments: A Collection of Oxford Conferences

In Soft Garments: A Collection of Oxford Conferences.  By the Right Reverend Monsignor Ronald Knox, Burns Oates, 1942.

 

Ronald Knox (1888-1957) is one of the leading Catholic English writers of the early twentieth century. Though he was raised an Anglican and entered the Anglican priesthood, five years after his ordination he converted to Catholicism and became a Catholic priest soon afterwards. 

 

Throughout his career he worked to evangelize the masses through essays and radio lectures, although he also wrote mysteries and pioneered the use of pseudoscholarship in exploring literature.  Knox became famous for a series of essays on Sherlock Holmes, where he combed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mysteries for facts and trivia, and drew ingenious conclusions and speculations regarding discrepancies and unanswered questions in Doyle’s work. In Soft Garments is a collection of talks he gave to Oxford students, mostly on the role of religion in contemporary life.  The title comes from the Book of Matthew, which states, “They that are clothed in soft garments are in the Palaces of Kings.”

 

There are twenty-four essays in this volume, with titles such as “The Church and Human Progress,” “Morality and Convention,” “Unselfishness in Marriage,” “Faith Lost and Found,” and “Immortality.”  Knox’s first essay, “The Cross-word of Creation,” discusses the validity of various justifications for the existence of God, and concludes that some oft-cited “proofs” of God’s existence are too facile to hold under critical scrutiny, and then moves on to cite better evidence and reasoning to prove that God is real.  “The Cross-word of Creation” ends thusly:

 

“It’s not necessary for us to prove that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, it doesn’t matter (for the purposes of our present argument) whether the laws we find in nature are beneficent or harmful in their operation; the point is that order exists in the Universe, and that it is logically impossible to conceive of order existing without a Mind.  And if we denied the existence of that Mind, and went on thinking about it hard, it wouldn’t be very long, I fancy, before most of us would go out of our own.” (7).

 

Some of the essays deal with real-world situations, such as how Catholics who want to live up to their Church’s teachings ought to respond to divorces.  Knox observes that it is easy for Catholics to get caught up in uncomfortable situations, such as when a divorced friend asks a Catholic to be involved in the wedding party for a second marriage.  In “Cutting the Knot,” a penetrating look at the reasons why divorce is not acceptable, Knox writes,

 

““The Catholic Church forbids divorce”– so we are always reading in the newspapers.  Of course, that isn’t true.  It isn’t the Catholic Church which forbids divorce; Almighty God forbids divorce, and all the Catholic Church does is to say she’s very sorry, but there it is; the Divine Law will not allow a marriage to be dissolved, so she is afraid she can’t very well do anything about it.  If it was the Church that had made this law, she would be able to dispense people from this law; the whole point of the situation is that the Church is powerless; she can do nothing.  She can no more prevent a person who has two wives being in mortal sin that she can prevent a person who falls off a precipice breaking his neck.  It is not part of her legislation that a married man should not remarry.  It is part of her doctrine that a married man cannot remarry, so long as his first wife is alive.  If he goes through the form of marriage, it is an empty farce.” (166).

 

In this essay, and all of his other essays, Knox explains the Catholic Church’s position by first debunking the widespread popular opinion that the Church has adopted a certain perspective out of sheer arbitrariness.  Catholic doctrine is not meant simply to be mean or contrary or rigid, but instead is formed the way it is because it is compelled to follow a specific code of conduct because to deviate from the prescribed path will in all likelihood lead to something sinful, destructive, or unbearable.  Actions have consequences, and the many “don’ts” of Catholicism is to warn people of potential pitfalls that may not be immediately apparent.  Knox observes that Christian morality is far more than just an attempt to prevent people from doing whatever they want, it is a guide that has the wellbeing of everyone involved at heart.  Knox writes:

 

“Those are the people who are asking nowadays, “Why shouldn’t I?”  And the obvious answer is, “If you think morality a mere matter of social convention, if you are only concerned to consider what other people will say about you, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”  Nobody will think very much the worse of such a man nowadays if his irregularities are not too blatant.  And if he cannot see that morality means something more than a code of human conventions, there is no more to be done with him.  What we have to try and persuade him of is: First, that there are such things as right and wrong.  Second, that the art of living and, if I may so describe it, the fun of living, can be found only in regulating your life according to fixed principles of conduct.  Third, that there is one single standard of morality, ideally for all people, and practically for all Christian people.  And fourth, that if you are really a Christian, the irksomeness of merely obeying negative rules is exchanged for the positive joy of trying to live so as to please our Lord Jesus Christ.” (163).

 

Too often, people look at Catholic codes on conduct and denounced them as repressive or irrelevant to the modern world.  Knox uses numerous plausible real-life examples throughout his work in order to illustrate how behavior restrictions apply to contemporary everyday life.  Knox’s primary theme in these essays is to point out just why acting as the Church teaches is vital to long-term safety and happiness.  Though certain codes of morality may clash with short-term interests and base desires, no modern argument has been able to prove Christian behavioral doctrines wrong.  As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”

 

In Soft Garments, though written for a young audience nearly seventy years ago, is still accessible to readers of all ages today.  These were meant to be comparatively casual yet salutary talks, and in book form they make for chapters that are both easily read and challenging intellectually.

 

 

–Chris Chan

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume III– Miracles, Devotion, and Motherhood

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume III– Miracles, Devotion, and Motherhood.  By Mark P. Shea, Catholic Answers, 2009.

 

Mark P. Shea concludes his impressive trilogy on Mary’s true role in the Catholic Church and Christian civilization with Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume III– Miracles, Devotion, and Motherhood.  This volume centers on the enduring legacy of Mary, how her intercession helps Christians in countless ways, and the role of the miraculous in the world.  As in the first two volumes of this series, Shea utilizes historical analysis, logic applied to real-world situations, humor, popular culture references, and spiritual insight in order to explain why Christians have no need to fear venerating Mary.

 

Shea uses an intriguing array of sources for quotes in order to buttress his information.  On a couple of occasions he cites from anti-Catholic (or at least Catholic-critical) websites in order to reference their positions or erroneous views, and then provides counterpoints in order to contradict them.  Shea is unafraid to state that many of those people who harbor viewpoints contrary to his own (at least on Marian historical/theological matters) are wrong, but he largely avoids the common trap of painting his opponents as fools or deliberate liars.  There is a major difference between pronouncing someone’s statements as being incorrect, and impugning someone else’s integrity and intelligence, and for the most part Shea simply references opposing perspectives so he can criticize the ideas and not the people promoting them.

 

G.K. Chesterton, who Shea describes as one of his heroes, is referenced multiple times in order to explain Catholic doctrine on Mary further.  One of the most common allegations against Catholic beliefs and traditions is that they steal from pagan practices, thereby diluting or masking Jesus’s true message.  A primary goal of Mary, Mother of the Son, is to refuse such allegations.  Sometimes this takes a strictly factual approach, other times a theological, logical, or emotional tactic is utilized.  In one instance, Shea quotes from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy in order to explain how Catholicism is more than just paganism with additional trimmings:

 

“Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light.  Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration.  But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light.  Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination.  Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution.  He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types.  He is an unselfish egoist.  An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion.  Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light.  Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within.”

 

This quote is used to illustrate Shea’s point that humans require extra help in order to save themselves and keep themselves spiritually sane– there is no shame in needing a little intercession.

 

A substantial portion of this book consists of explaining the rosary and what it means for proper veneration of Mary.  Prayer beads have been used in non-Christian religious practices, but that does not make their use idolatrous or in any way improper.  As Shea notes, rosary beads are meant solely as a tool to help the faithful keep track of their prayers.  One could pray the rosary on one’s fingers if one likes.  The point of the rosary is not to mumble prayers mindlessly, but to use the time and repetition as a guide to direct one’s mind and spirit as one reflects on Marian Mysteries and making oneself stronger, more focused, and purer spiritually.  The rosary is not a superstitious bauble, it is a guide to self-betterment and a means to bring oneself closer to God. 

 

My favorite part of this book is Shea’s take on how a political figure like Pontius Pilate would fit into the modern media.  Pilate, after all, was a skilled and powerful politician who was one of the most prominent and influential people of his day.  Shea imagines a theoretical television interview between Pilate and Barbara Walters, where Pilate is pitched a series of softball questions about his political career, personal life, and where Pilate responds with subtle false modesty about his imperfections and shortcomings, but glosses over it all with a slick narrative about having done the best he possibly can and that all things considered he has done a pretty good job.  At the end of the interview, Walters would pronounce, “Pontius Pilate: A Man to Remember.”

 

Shea’s wry commentary underscores just how ersatz much of contemporary television can be.  We see politicians and celebrities speak on-camera with apparent sincerity or weep softly with apparent regret, but the camera can lie.  Prominent figures go to great lengths in order to look good on television, win people over, and shape their personal legacy in a way that flatters them best.  Pilate almost certainly believed that his name would be remembered throughout the ages, possibly for his strong government or useful infrastructure projects or for general competency.  In any case, in today’s society even the most blundering and venal politicians strive to craft lasting pictures of themselves that depict them in the most positive light possible, and it is not to much of a stretch to postulate that the public figures of two millennia ago similarly tried to assure that their historical legacy would be a glowing one.

 

What Pontius Pilate probably never would have guessed is that two thousand years after his death, he would still be known worldwide, and mentioned publicly thousands of times daily, but not in a positive way.  At masses, it is regularly recited that Christ “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”  Pilate would almost certainly have never dreamed that by far, the most pivotal action of his life would be to condemn a seemingly obscure religious figure to death, and that the ensuing events would overwhelmingly overshadow all of the other political achievements of his career combined.

 

An appendix of famous Marian apparitions is included at the end of the book.  The idea of seeing a miraculous vision of Mary (or any other religious figure) is laughable to many people, even otherwise believing Christians, who contend that such a violation of natural law and is therefore either impossible or demonic.  Shea argues that to deny that miracles can happen only serves to make people believe in a God that is smaller, not larger.  Shea cites a number of real-life cases of Marian apparitions, ranging from Lourdes and Fatima, to a notorious case where a woman claimed to have seen the face of Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich.  The latter case may be a figure of fun to some skeptics and an embarrassment to some believers, but Shea observes that miracles serve to bring people close to God, and that those who see them are free to reject them.  

 

Shea references the case of a former Catholic of his acquaintance, who impossibly heard a mass that her mother was attending from a long distance away.  The woman who heard this miraculous event remains an ex-Catholic, dismissing the miracle as useless to her because it didn’t cure her diabetes or anything like that.  As Shea reminds us, God’s grace is a gift that we are free to reject, but he strives to make us wonder why anybody would want to deny themselves something so wonderful. 

 

Shea cites two more cases connected to miraculous cures at Lourdes.  In the twin cases of Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who had left Catholicism for atheism, and Emile Zola, the famous writer and public figure and outspoken atheist; both men observed a seemingly impossible act of healing at Lourdes.  Zola denied that he had seen any solid evidence of divine intervention, but Carrel, faced with the evidence of his own observations, wrestled with this disruption to his materialistic worldview for the rest of his life, finally reconciling himself to the Church shortly before his death.  Grace, Shea declares, acts in ways that we often cannot expect.  For it to better us, we must allow ourselves to accept it.

 

After reading the entire trilogy, it is clear that it was a good decision to divide Mary, Mother of the Son into three parts.  If it were published as a lengthy tome, as was originally planned, the thickness of the spine might have put off some readers.  Divided into three easy-to-read, topical volumes, the information presented in this work is easily read and digested, without anything being lost in the sheer breath of the study’s scope.  Mary, Mother of the Son is a clear, concise, and easy-to-use resource for anyone who wants to understand the Catholic Church’s teachings on Mary better.

 

 

–Chris Chan

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume II– First Guardian of the Faith

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume II– First Guardian of the Faith.  By Mark P. Shea, Catholic Answers, 2009.

 

Mark P. Shea continues his trilogy on the life, theological role, historical impact, and contemporary relevance of the Virgin Mary in the second volume: First Guardian of the Faith.  As my earlier review mentioned, the purpose of this series is to explain the role that Mary plays in the Catholic Church, especially for an audience that has been influenced by misconceptions and pseudoknowledge.  Although Shea directs a lot of his focus towards educating an Evangelical audience, this is an invaluable reference for helping Catholics learn more about their faith, as well as helping non-Christians learn about what the Catholic Church believes.

 

While the first volume looked at how popular culture and bad theology may have influenced people’s beliefs and conceptions, this book focuses primarily on the Catholic Church’s teachings about Mary, how they were developed, and why it is important that these teachings not be distorted or misrepresented.  The reduced number of popular culture references, and the increased focus on history, religious doctrine, and intellectual development makes the book seem rather more formal than its predecessor, but Shea’s prose style is always eminently readable, and never, ever stuffy.  Shea’s great strength as a writer is his ability to present information in a clear and conversational manner, thereby crafting a rapport with the reader that a more formal style might never have achieved.

 

It is easy to see how people can develop mistaken impressions about what the Church teaches about Mary.  The 1999 television movie Mary, Mother of Jesus, starring Pernilla August as Mary of Nazareth and Christian Bale as Jesus of Nazareth, is an example of how certain Protestant doctrines or other Biblical interpretations not officially recognized by any denomination can disseminate into the popular culture.  There was nothing disrespectful about this production; on the contrary it was quite reverent towards the source material.  Nevertheless, some of the theology and character representation was distinctly different from what the Catholic Church teaches.  For example, in this film, when Joseph learns about Mary’s pregnancy, he is initially stunned, then angry, believing that the baby must be that of another man’s, only accepting the situation after an angel’s intervention.  This is a rather common view of how Joseph behaved, but Shea argues that this is not the Church’s interpretation of events.  Joseph knew Mary well enough to know that she would never betray him or commit a grave sin, and believed her immediately when she told him about the great and wondrous role that God had planned for her.  This is a reminder that we must sometime give great saints more credit than we often do.  What we call “human nature” is not necessarily how people behave when they are divinely guided.

 

Shea brings up many commonly-heard arguments and tropes attempting to discredit Marian theology, the early Church, the medieval Church, the contemporary Church, and Catholicism in general, and in each case, he proves how these perspectives are based upon spurious assumptions, misinformation, and faulty reasoning.  At times, it seems as if Shea is in the middle of a theological and historical version of Perry Mason, with Shea in the title role, all things Catholic as the defendant, and the Church’s detractors in the part of the consistently misguided prosecutor Hamilton Burger.  One of the Perry Mason series’ consistent charms and running gags was the fact that the defendant was always completely innocent (or in one case, acted purely in self-defense), but despite the fact that everyone who was ever defended by Mason was invariably exonerated, District Attorney Burger never allowed himself to suspect that maybe– just maybe– he’d accused the wrong man.  The way Shea keeps advancing alternative, more reasonable explanations of Biblical passages, contradicting historical errors, and refuting horribly flawed theses; it serves as a reminder that whenever one hears any sort of attack against the Church, one should wait to find a defensive counter-argument before automatically assuming guilt.

 

A wide variety of sources are referenced in order to show just how misconceptions about Marian doctrine enter the public consciousness.  Some examples are centuries-old heresies, such as Pelagius and his denial of original sin.  Others are far more contemporary.  Shea quotes extensively from several prominent anti-Catholic websites and how they rage against Catholic views of Mary, yet he never responds in kind.  Bitter anger is repaid with logical rebuttal and calm disapproval.   A deft touch and a sense of humor serve Shea well.  When he addresses oft-mocked and even more often misunderstood doctrines such as Mary’s perpetual virginity, Shea is always firm in his defense of the faith, seeking to explain why those who disagree are wrong while never getting upset.

 

Shea often likes to poke holes at the theory that every day, in every way, humanity is getting better and better.  The idea that 2011 is four centuries wiser and more enlightened than 1611 is utter bosh.  It often seems as if for every moral lesson that the culture at large learns, it in turn forgets two or more old truths.  One of the most interesting portions of this book is Shea’s critique of the legacy of several major figures.  Shea includes a concise but very interesting chronology of some of the most influential intellectual minds of the last couple of centuries, such as Freud, Marx, and many others, as well as how some of their ideologies, when put into practice, have led people away from Catholic teachings and caused destruction to the society as a whole.  To cite one example, when discussing the career of Margaret Sanger, Shea writes:

 

“Sanger even dreamed of establishing a vast American concentration camp for "morons, mental defectives, epileptics... illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, [and] dope-fiends". In all, she wanted to forcibly imprison about one-seventh of the entire American population. Needless to say, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the pioneering eugenics done by doctors of the Third Reich. For years, her slogan summed up a philosophy warmly received by her colleagues in Hitler's scientific elite: "Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds!"

 

The problem for Margaret Sanger was that all this became a tough sell in the post-war years, what with pictures of Dachau and Auschwitz circulating in classrooms and history books. So the organization she had founded changed its marketing strategy. Instead of encouraging Americans to worship racial purity, Planned Parenthood instead seized on the much more salable notion (pioneered by Freud) that we should throw off the shackles of guilt and responsibility and worship sex. This was sold as "Birth Control" but the practical outcome was, as Chesterton famously remarked, "No birth and no control."

 

The outcome of this story is a catalogue of human misery: Massive STD rates, a contraceptive culture in which love and fruitfulness are damned as hindrances to sexual pleasure, the ever-increasing sexualization of childhood, and 1.5 million abortions in the United States alone each year. And so, as Pope John Paul II said, "The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn."

 

Though a great deal of space is devoted to describing what’s wrong with the world, this book ends on a hopeful note.  The world is undoubtedly in a bad way, but the way to fight the problems is not through anger, nor through the use of power to crush dissent, but through following the virtuous example of Mary and praying for her intercession.  As Shea observes in his conclusion, Pope John Paul II knew that the way to set an unjust world right is not to do evil so that good may come of it; but instead to promote justice, truth, and freedom.  Understanding and following the example of Mary is a crucial step towards achieving such lofty goals.

 

 

–Chris Chan

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume I– Modern Myths and Ancient Truth

Mary, Mother of the Son: Volume I– Modern Myths and Ancient Truth.  By Mark P. Shea, Catholic Answers, 2009.

 

Mark P. Shea is a prominent Catholic apologist and writer, regularly covering theological issues and current events on his popular blog, “Catholic and Enjoying It!” (http://markshea.blogspot.com/).  Though much of his work is printed solely on the Internet for religious websites, he has also published several books.  Arguably his most ambitious work to date is his trilogy, Mary, Mother of the Son.  These three volumes are intended to explain Catholic doctrine regarding Our Lady to an audience that might be unfamiliar with Catholic perspectives, or even hostile to them.  Shea, a former Evangelical Christian, writes with the specific aim of addressing Evangelical concerns that Catholic Marian veneration is hazardous to the health of one’s soul, as well as more secular criticisms towards such beliefs.  Catholics who want to understand more about their own faith will also find much to enjoy in Shea’s work.

 

This will be the first of three reviews, each addressing one volume of Shea’s trilogy.  In the first, Modern Myths and Ancient Truth, Shea introduces the reader to the goal of these works.  Volume One is meant to first explain the role that Mary plays in Catholicism, as well as to explain the ways that the earliest Christians read the Bible, and many other tips on how best to approach the history of Christianity.  Indeed, it is clear early on that this book is more than about just the life and impact of Mary, for it covers Church history, contemporary society, and multiple other aspects of integrating faith into one’s daily routine.  

 

While Modern Myths and Ancient Truth is full of historical and theological information, the book is never dry, thanks primarily to Shea’s engaging prose.  Shea has a knack for mixing sophisticated and witty socio-historical analysis with humor and pop culture references, all in a way that entertains as much as it educates.  Shea can shift from critiquing the true legacy of the Emperor Constantine to utilizing Star Wars quotes to make a point in the space of a few pages.

 

Shea quips that he wrote this book in part because he wishes that a resource like this had been available for him when he was an Evangelical seeking to learn more about Catholic practices and history.  Part of the reason why Modern Myths and Ancient Truth is so effective is that Shea knows his potential audience.  Early in the book, he has a wryly perceptive series of fictional sketches where a devout Evangelical seeks to find out why exactly Catholics believe what they do, only to be nonplussed by a badly catechized Catholic whose faith was strained by a parish scandal, a staunch but eccentric Catholic who cannot separate her religious practices from New Age beliefs, and several other characters that illustrate just how hard it is for someone who does not really know anything about Catholicism to find out what the Church truly teaches and what it all means.  There is so much misinformation everywhere, ranging from the newspapers to colleges and even some pulpits, that it is hardly surprising that so many people do not understand what the Catholic Church actually tells the world. 

 

When writing this book, Shea has to wrestle with the preconceptions and misconceptions that most people have towards the early history of the Church, as well as the current popular lies and distortions that pervade contemporary culture.  Shea dubs such accepted lies “pseudoknowledge.”

 

Pseudoknowledge is dangerous, not simply because it is a lie, but because it is so mendacious and difficult to eradicate.  There is a oft-mentioned saying that “a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on,” and Shea very capably shows how pseudoknowledge causes people to build remarkably strong worldviews and prejudices on foundations of sand.

 

Shea perceptively defines pseudoknowledge as more than just a mere lie or inaccuracy, but as something that is provably untrue that has been repeated so many times that it has latched onto the public consciousness.  The phrase “everybody knows” is bandied about far too frequently, but that is how pseudoknowledge perpetuates.  If one hears a statement often enough from a sufficient number of sources, it tends to become accepted as fact, even if there is enough evidence to refute it.

 

Shea’s debunking of several choice examples of pseudoknowledge is fascinating.  For example, every December the public is treated to multiple mentions of the “fact” that Christmas is essentially a rip-off of a long-lasting pagan Winter Solstice festival.  This tidbit of information is often used to make Christian practices appear cheapened and somehow less respectable.  The early Christians co-opted someone else’s traditions for their own ends.  Problem is, this story is pure pseudoknowledge.  Christmas celebrations actually predated the Winter Solstice holiday, which was initiated by a Roman ruler as a means of competing with the Christian holy day.  The pseudoknowledge stemmed from a scholar making the assumption without evidence that the pagan festival must have come before the Christian one, and the pseudoknowledge has disseminated because the facts have not been told often enough to counteract the misinformation.  Another example of pseudoknowledge is that during the Middle Ages “everyone knew” that the Earth was flat.  While the many of the masses may not have known the shape of the world, most educated people had known that the Earth was round for centuries.  Evidence of this can be seen in Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the Earth is clearly depicted as a sphere.

 

One figure targeted for well-deserved pillory in this volume is Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, both thrillers that claim to reveal long-buried truths about the sordid and fraudulent origins of Christianity.  One New York Times reviewer referred to Brown as an “impeccable researcher,” when in fact the historical claims put forward in Brown’s books were utter bosh.  It may seem that an inordinate amount of space is given to disproving Brown’s historical assertions, but when such a work has had such detrimental effects on popular culture and mindsets, it really only seems proper that steps to counteract such pseudoknowledge should be taken wherever they can.

 

Perhaps the one shortcoming of this book is that Shea does not produce a thorough proposal for how to eradicate pseudoknowledge and its troublesome aftereffects.  (Perhaps he does address this in later volumes, I do not know yet.)  After all, will correcting this pseudoknowledge with the truth really have a beneficial effect?  I know of several people who refuse to be persuaded that The Da Vinci Code is crammed full of inaccuracies, claiming that, “Christians can’t handle the truth.”  People can be remarkably resistant to pseudoknowledge, partially because they have to admit that they were wrong.  Realizing that long-accepted beliefs about Catholicism are totally false may not lead people directly to the Church. 

 

To use a metaphor, imagine a situation where a wife, previously very much in love with her husband, is convinced by a malicious third party that the husband is having an affair.  Despite the husband’s protestations of innocence, the wife initiates divorce proceedings.  Some time passes, and eventually the wife learns indisputably that her husband has in fact been completely faithful to her and the third party was lying in a deliberate attempt to destroy the marriage.  The couple may try to reconcile, but the wife may be unable to revive all of her former feelings, hampered by the fact that she finds it hard to trust her husband again, even though he did nothing to betray that trust.  Additionally, the wife may have great difficulty in dealing with the fact that she was completely in the wrong in this whole mess, and her husband is the injured party.  Likewise, the husband, though he wants his family back together again, may find it hard to forgive his wife for the false accusations, the uncomfortable months living in a cheap and dingy motel room after she kicked him out of the house, and the two sets of legal bills he now has to pay.  Just because the truth is known, it does not mean that everything is automatically all right.  Many Catholics leave the Church because they absorb pseudoknowledge about the Church’s history or actions, and I am very much afraid that it will take more than refuting such misinformation to bring them back and heal the damage, and I have no idea what additional steps ought to be taken to reverse the effects of the pseudoknowledge.

 

Shea refers to Mary as “the most important woman in history,” and after reading this first volume it is very hard to disagree.  Modern Myths and Ancient Truths is a labor of love, and as such contains a lasting resonance and power that sticks with the reader long after the book is closed. Volume One is an easy but very deep and rewarding read, thereby leaving me curious and excited to read the two remaining books in this trilogy.

 

 

–Chris Chan

More Christianity

More Christianity.  By Dwight Longenecker, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 2002.

 

The backstories of converts to Catholicism are widely varied, but all are inspiring in amazingly different ways.  Dwight Longenecker was born into an Evangelical Christian family from Pennsylvania.  His education took him from Bob Jones University across the Atlantic to Oxford University.  Longenecker would stay in England for years, becoming a member of the Anglican clergy and working in numerous positions until growing dissatisfaction with the state of Anglicanism led him, his wife, and his children to convert to Catholicism.  More Christianity is one of the numerous pieces of apologetic religious writing he would produce over the next several years.  Longenecker returned to the clergy in 2006, when he took the job of the Chaplain of St. Joseph’s Catholic School in South Carolina.  Later in the same year, he became a priest, which is allowable in Roman Catholicism because married Anglican clergy who have converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism may, under certain circumstances, become Catholic priests while remaining married.  His blog is titled “Standing on my Head,” (http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/) and the website serves as a news and discussion board for numerous religious, cultural, and artistic issues.

 

The title of this book is inspired by C.S. Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity, a collection of essays about the nature of Christianity and its doctrines.  The contents of Mere Christianity were originally a series of lectures about Christianity broadcast over the radio during World War Two.  (For more on Lewis’s Mere Christianity, please see the Catholic Book Reviews Monthly review for May 2007.)

 

Like Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Longenecker’s More Christianity is an adaptation of several lectures that he originally prepared for the radio.  Longenecker hastens to limit the comparisons between himself and Lewis, going so far as to call his own adaptation of Lewis’s famous title “shameless” (9).  In an introduction by Thomas Howard, Longenecker’s motives in crafting this volume are explained.  Howard believes that “Longenecker has not written a Catholic diatribe.  This is not a Catholic attack on Protestants.  Rather, with immense tact, clarity, sagacity, and learning, he takes us the rest of the way along the road charted in Mere Christianity.  Again, it must be stressed that Longenecker is not presuming to piggyback, or cash in on, Lewis’s work, nor to set himself up as Lewis’s successor” (15).

 

Lewis called his book Mere Christianity because he wished to explain the basics of the religion that all branches of Christianity share, doing so in a simple and clear way that that could appeal to a popular audience.  Comparatively, Longenecker chose to call his book More Christianity because he was attempting to explain how the Catholic Church was not a distortion, a corruption, or an unnecessary elaboration of the teachings of Jesus Christ; but instead is a fuller and more thorough understanding of the history and lessons of Christianity than any other denomination.  When explaining how Catholicism takes Christianity further than other faiths, Longenecker writes:

 

“Throughout this book I have stressed that Catholic Christianity is “more Christianity,” not “mere Christianity.”  Time and again I have tried to show that Catholics do not believe differently than other Christians; rather, they believe morethan other Christians.  We affirm everything other Christians affirm.  We simply cannot deny some of the things they deny.  When it comes to the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is especially true.  All traditional Christians affirm the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We all believe he really was true God and true man.  This is “mere Christianity” if you like.  Catholic Christians affirm the Incarnation too, but we also pay devotion and honor to that singular and extraordinary young girl through whom the Incarnation became possible.  Because of the Incarnation we honor Mary, and by honoring Mary we praise God for the Incarnation.  Without her “yes” to God our Lord would not have been born.  As a result we not only give thanks to God for her, but we also realize that because of her submission to God’s will each one of us has a Savior” (223-224).

 

Longenecker opens his book with a brief look at Lewis’s career and legacy, and moves on to discuss Lewis’s profound effect on his own religious development and intellectual formation.  Though Longenecker was accustomed to emotional, passionate approaches to faith due to his Evangelical/Fundamentalist background, he found Lewis’s cerebral, intelligent approach to exploring Christianity extremely satisfying and fulfilling.  

 

Lewis’s influence on Longenecker is evident throughout More Christianity, evidenced by more than just the numerous references to Mere Christianity.  Frequent references are made to some of Lewis’s other work.  The Screwtape Lettersare cited in order to illustrate how there is nothing sinful about many simple pleasures, and The Great Divorce is used to underscore an explanation of Catholic teaching regarding Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.  Longenecker also adopts and in some cases expands some of the metaphors Lewis often utilized in his writings, such as Lewis’s comparison of all of Christianity and its denominations to a large mansion with many rooms, as he does when he writes:

 

“If becoming a Christian is like entering a great hall, then becoming a Catholic is stepping from that entrance hall into an enormous country house… In going through the door you may feel full of apprehension and anticipation at the same time.  You may feel you have left all to follow Christ (cf. Matthew 19:27), but once inside you will discover that everything has been restored.  You will not have left home but arrived home and known the place for the first time.  You will not have denied anything of true value; instead you will have discovered the source and fulfillment of all that has gone before.  In becoming a Catholic you will have chosen not a hall or a side room but that ancient and glorious mansion that Christ himself has built” (38). 

 

While Longenecker is strongly convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, he does have some strong ecumenical messages sprinkled throughout the book.  The common ground that all traditional Christians share receives frequent mention.  Examples of dialogue, such as the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, the product of a major Catholic and Lutheran exchange and cooperation, are also cited (107).  The point of the book is not to argue for religious moral relativism, but, as Longenecker writes, “This book is intended to help non-Catholic Christians who are interested in historic Christianity to understand the modern Catholic Church more easily” (30).

 

The audience for More Christianity may actually be considerably wider than just non-Catholics who seek a more thorough explanation of Catholic teachings.  Many Catholics may be able to turn to this book for a better comprehension about how their faith differs from other denominations, as well as to dispel several prevalent myths or exaggerations about their belief systems that have permeated the popular culture.  Although Longenecker’s intention may not have been to attempt to bask in Lewis’s limelight, when crafting a religious reading list, More Christianity has an excellent claim to being read immediately after Mere Christianity. 

The Dividing of Christendom

The Dividing of Christendom.  By Christopher Dawson, Sheed and Ward, 1965.

 

The respected historian Christopher Dawson wrote extensively on all sorts of subjects connected to the Christianity, and it is not surprising that one of his most famous books covers the fracturing of Christian Europe from the rise of Protestantism up through the growing trends of nineteenth-century secularism.  The Dividing of Christendom.  This book was written when Dawson served as the Charles Chauncey Stillman Chair of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at the Divinity School of Harvard University, the first Catholic studies chair at a United States Protestant-founded theological seminary.  

 

Douglas Horton, the dean of the school and the man who picked Dawson for the position, wrote in his introduction to this volume that, “This is a book for all, but I hope that Protestants will not fail to read it– and I cannot think they will, when I remember the reception they have accorded the author’s previous writings.  This cannot but be of special interest to them, since it tells their story as a wise and honest Catholic understands it and so initiates dialogue at the highest level.” (viii).

 

The historiography of the schisms that split Christian Europe, as well as the impact of the theological divisions between different branches of Christianity, is fascinating.  There have been many studies of the time period, many of which are sympathetic to the Protestants and the anti-Christian revolutionary forces, and another branch that strongly defends the Catholic position.  Dawson is clearly in the pro-Catholic camp, but in contrast to more bellicose defenders of the faith such as Hilaire Belloc, Dawson strives to maintain a moderate and balanced tone throughout the his book.  While his title talks of division, his recurring theme is one of reconciliation amongst all aspects of Christianity, and the healing of long-held historical grudges and rifts brought about by false impressions and distorted histories.  Early in his book, Dawson writes:

 

“Of all divisions between Christians, that between Catholics and Protestants is the deepest and the most pregnant in its historical consequences.  It is so deep that we cannot see any solution to it in the present period and under existing historical circumstances.  But at least it is possible for us to take the first step by attempting to overcome the enormous gap in mutual understanding which has hitherto rendered any intellectual contact or collaboration possible.  From this point of view the problem is not to be found so much in the sphere of theology, strictly speaking, as in that of culture and historical tradition.  For the changes that followed the Reformation are not only the work of the Churches and the theologians.  They are also the work of the statesmen and the soldiers.  The Catholic and Protestant worlds have been divided from one another by centuries of war and power politics, and the result has been that they no longer share a common social experience.” (3).

 

Dawson covers several critical eras of schism and change, such as the continental development of Protestantism, the English break with Rome, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, American Wesleyanism, “Enlightenment” thought, and the French Revolution.  Since many of these time periods overlap, the narrative at times jumps a bit chronologically, but Dawson’s writing is always clear and detailed.  When reading this book, it may be helpful to have at least a basic knowledge of these time periods, but it is not necessary to be extensively educated in the theological and historical details of the time period.  Similarly, there are many more extensive histories of the time period, but there are not many scholars with the prose skills that Dawson possesses.

 

Interestingly, Dawson largely writes his book as a history without villains.  There are a few mentions here and there of people who did not behave as they should have.  Dawson shows some unmistakable disappointment at the fact several ecclesiastical figures and positions had become largely secularized.  There are a few figures that are targeted for particular criticism.  When discussing the growth of Lutheranism, Dawson writes, “It must be admitted that viewed externally the German Reformation was above all the work of the princes, and a more worthless collection of individuals has never controlled the fate of mankind.” (74).  This “worthless collection” is painted a conglomerate of petty, power-obsessed rulers with only a minimal interest in anything God-related.  A similar expression of disapproval can be found in his assessment of the aristocrats who plundered the resources of the Catholic Church in England when Henry VIII broke with Rome.

 

In his introduction, Douglas Horton writes that “we can thank Christopher Dawson not only for these words but for innumerable others which will help to heal the division of Christendom.” (viii).  Indeed, there is a ecumenical aspect to this work that most other histories, written with a Protestant, Catholic, or even an anti-religious perspective, totally lack.  While Dawson may have avoided writing a book with villains, he has indeed managed to write a book with heroes, namely those individuals from all walks of life who strove to liven in a decent, virtuous, and Christian manner, namely the many clergymen and anonymous laymen whose efforts have often gone overlooked amongst the machinations of power-hungry monarchs and nobles.

 

The purpose of this book is to trace the roots of the political and ideological forces that split Europe along lines based in culture and temporal power, as well as to gain a better understanding as to why secularism gained traction in European culture.  Many other Catholic writers use argument and strong rhetoric when attempting to win over opponents by proving them wrong, or at least misguided.  There is much to be said for such an approach.  Dawson, in contrast, intends to win over his readers by calling for conciliation through education and understanding, not capitulation through abandonment of principles, or even the abandonment of all religion altogether.  Too often, contemporary pundits call for people to come together through airy declarations of human unity and shallow desires to prevent conflict by simply destroying religion and anything else that might divide people.  This last perspective is, quite simply, creating a desert and calling it peace.  Dawson’s path to unity is through something richer and more fertile: the use of history to understand why peoples were brought apart in the first place.

 

The last words should go to Dawson, who states his belief that true peace can only come to Europe through better education into the forces that led to the wars and corrosive ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It seems that knowledge of true Christian history and Christianity are fairly scarce nowadays, and false knowledge has a stronger impact on cultural and political forces than the truth.  Dawson writes:

 

“Yet as an historian I am convinced that the main sources of Christian division and the chief obstacle to Christian unity have been and are cultural rather than theological.  Consequently, I believe that it is only by combining the study of the history of Christian culture with the study of theology that we can understand the nature and extent of the problem with which we have to deal.” (17).

 

 

–Chris Chan