Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union’s Cold War Against the Catholic Church.

Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union’s Cold War Against the Catholic Church.  By John O. Koehler, Pegasus Books, 2009.

The USSR liked to talk as if it had an iron grasp on the minds and spirits of the people under communist control, but in truth the Soviet leadership was petrified of the continuing presence and power of religion in their subjects’ lives, especially the influence of the Catholic Church.  Throughout the twentieth century, the Soviets strove to eradicate the influence of the Vatican, and crafted an immense espionage network to learn about the Church’s actions and plans to counteract communist authority.

Koehler dedicates Spies in the Vatican “to those who paid with their lives or suffered imprisonment for defending their religious beliefs against communist tyrants.” (v).  The book opens with a disturbing recounting of Soviet Russia’s first persecutions against religion:

“Before dawn on Easter Sunday 1923, Monsignor Konstantin Budkiewicz kneeled on the steps leading to a row of cells at Moscow’s infamous Lubyanka Prison.  A single bullet fired from a communist executioner’s Nagant revolver shattered the back of the 65-year-old Monsignor’s head.  The Catholic Church in Russia had its first 20^th-century martyr.  His crime?  Resisting religious persecution by the Bolsheviks, thus “committing a counterrevolutionary act.”  The Monsignor was a defendant in the first major show trial in the Bolsheviks’ quest to destroy the Catholic Church in Russia.  The chief target, Polish-born Archbishop Jan Cieplak, and more than a dozen priests were also convicted.  The archbishop was sentenced to death as well, but was quietly exiled after intervention by the Holy See and a number of Western governments, winding up in Latvia and eventually in Rome… The others were given long sentences they served in Gulags, the communist concentration camps where many died.  Four years earlier, after the Bolsheviks pledged to “liberate the toiling masses from religious prejudices and organize the broadest scientific, education, and anti-religious propaganda.”  Archbishop Baron Edward von der Ropp of the Mogilev diocese was arrested on trumped-up charges of engaging in “illegal economic speculations.”  He undoubtedly escaped a bullet in the head when the Bolshevik leadership decided to exchange him for Karl Radek, the Ukrainian-born Bolshevik confidant of Vladimir I. Lenin.” (1-2).  

There are many other anecdotes of brutality and diplomacy in this book, although the vast majority of the narrative revolves around the cold war between the Church and the Soviets, including incidents such as one communist official giving his relative (who was a high-ranking churchman) a religious statuette containing a wireless transmitter listening device.  The bug provided the communists with information for years until increased scrutiny in the wake of the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II led to its discovery.

This book was made possible because many Soviet records have finally been made available to researchers.  It is fortunate that so many files survived.  This preservation is due in part to the fact that in the chaos after the abrupt and unexpected demise of the Soviet Union, large quantities of documents that might have been destroyed by the Soviets due to their embarrassing and incriminating content.  Despite the massive amounts of time and effort the communists placed into crafting a spy network, the Soviets did not want their espionage efforts made known, due in part to the public relations back that would inevitably follow.  With the breakdown of the communist government, there was no force to compel the destruction of the remaining documents.  It is impossible to tell how many other revelations might be found in the remaining documents sprinkled throughout various former communist locales.  

What is clear from an overview of the existing materials is the Soviet Union’s continuous fear of the Church’s power to subvert communist authority.  For all of the oft-repeated usage of Marx’s “opiate of the massage” dictum, the Soviet authorities did not believe that religion would just fade away with the imposition of communism. Indeed, after studying the available evidence, the Soviets appear to have been deathly afraid that the Church would destroy them, and as later events would prove, this anxiety was justified.  The communists sought to corrupt or recruit members of the clergy in order to gain more information about the Church’s actions. The Soviet spy network thrived by having contacts within the Church.  In Poland, between ten and fifteen percent of the nation’s clergy were thought to have collaborated with the Soviets at some point, tempted by threats, bribes, or blackmail. (272).  Even some high-level Church officials proved to be Soviet spies, but their traitorous activities were only revealed after the USSR fell and the long-hidden documents were released.  Koehler writes:

“The efforts of East European communist governments and the Soviet regime to burrow their way into the inner workings of the highest level of the Church certainly were to be expected, as they viewed people’s loyalty to the Church certainly were to be expected, as they viewed people’s loyalty to the Church a direct betrayal of their loyalty to the Party and, therefore, “subversive activity” that had to be stopped.  How well they succeeded, however, would not have been believed had the collapse of the regimes not occurred so rapidly that their intelligence services did not have sufficient time to destroy all of their explosive documents.  Unfortunately, the documents obtained by me only date back to the late 1960’s and cover merely a bit over a decade.  Nevertheless, had the East European communist bloc managed to hang tough and overcome its domestic difficulties, the opponents of democratic nations would have had valuable tools for managing their foreign policy.” (31)

Koehler believes that the USSR was so afraid of organized Catholicism that they may have considered assassination as a means of protecting their own position.  On November 13, 1979, several high-ranking Soviet officials passed a decree on how the USSR ought to deal with the election of Pope John Paul II and the moral and spiritual authority he inspired in Catholics and even non-Catholics, especially in Soviet-controlled Poland.  The decree read, “Use all possibilities available to the Soviet Union to prevent the new course of policies initiated by the Polish pope; if necessary with additional measures beyond disinformation and discreditation.” (88).  Nine members of the Soviet Secretariat signed this KGB order, including Mikhail Gorbachev.  Koehler theorizes that this order may have contributed to an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, but he asserts that the truth of the matter cannot be determined for certain based on the available archival materials. 

The penultimate chapter of the book ends with a quote from Pope John Paul II, where the pontiff declared, “The claim to build a world without God has been shown to be an illusion.” (264).  For all the Soviet Union’s posturing about its own strength and indestructibility, faith and dedication to moral principles proved fatal to the regime.  Koehler’s book is fascinating, althougth one is left with the distinct impression that there are many more stories left to be told about communist espionage and the Catholic Church’s role in the Cold War.  This tale of espionage focuses on character, psychology, and politics, making it far more in the vein of John le Carré than Ian Fleming.  The next time you hear someone doubt that religion is still relevant in the modern world, tell that person just how much the Soviet Union worried about the influence of the Church.

–Chris Chan

My Peace I Give You

My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.  By Dawn Eden, Ave Maria Press, 2012.

FULL DISCLOSURE ALERT: Dawn Eden is a friend of mine, but nepotism has not affected this review in any way, shape, or form.

What do you do when you have a wound that you feel will never heal?  One of the deepest and hardest to alleviate wounds is an intangible one: the pain caused by sexual abuse.  In My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, Dawn Eden explains how the examples of some saints can help rape victims to deal with the aftermath of these traumatizing events.

My Peace I Give You is Eden’s second book.  Her first book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On, was written after her conversion to Christianity but before her conversion to Catholicism.  The Thrill of the Chaste is a stirring defense of Christian sexual morality, drawn upon Eden’s own poignant life experiences with relationships and dating.  A brief autobiography is included in My Peace I Give You, expanding upon some incidents mentioned in her previous book.  Having read her previous book, we already know that Eden’s parents’ divorced when she was quite young, but a further, even more harmful scene is revealed.  Eden was sexually abused as a child.  Eden describes her personal experiences clearly, strongly, and beautifully.  The subject matter is very disturbing, but Eden writes with quiet grace and dignity.  There is no trace of anger in her words, but her prose reads as if it has been touched by grace:

“The tears came because, even at that young age [seven], I had suffered sexual abuse.  What’s more, for the previous two years, since my parents had split up and my mother gained custody, I had been living in an environment I would now consider to be sexually porous.  I don’t recall any clear boundaries; I was not well shielded from adults’ nudity, substance abuse, dirty jokes, sex talk, and swearing.

Like many victims of sexual abuse, I identify with the words of the messenger in Job 1:15: “I alone have escaped to tell you.”  As far as I know, there is no other living person who admits to witnessing the evils that were done to me.  Certainly, my mother recalls things very differently than I do.  When I told her of the incidents I planned to relate in this book, she denied several of them, including that her home was a “sexually porous environment during my childhood.”

Eden’s main point is that even though being molested as a child leaves lasting intangible scars, that healing, happiness, and peace can come eventually through the grace of God.  Eden has a rare gift for talking about her own life experiences in a way that it does not sound so much like she is talking about herself as she is speaking of the entire human condition.  There is no smug sanctimony in her words, she is only stating facts about divine grace.

“Learning about the ongoing aid that grace provides in the moral life was encouraging, helping me be patient with myself as I began to “walk the walk” of a faithful Christian.  As time went by, however, my initial confidence began to erode.  My greatest desire was to have the blessing Jesus promises to the “pure in heart,… for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8).  Yet, even when I was doing everything I could to live in purity, I was unable to feel pure.  I felt stained– because of what adults had done to me, or had bid me do, when I was a helpless child.

On an intellectual level, I knew there was nothing for me to be ashamed of.  No child is responsible for what an adult does to her, or induces her to do.  The sin of abuse belongs to the abusers, not their victims.  Children depend on adults and have to trust them in order to survive.  It is adults’ responsibility to show children what is good, and it is in children’s very nature to accept what adults call “good” as being truly good.  One cannot speak of “consent” in such an unequal relationship.”

Despite the darkness of the subject matter, this book’s tone is consistently warm, friendly, and reassuring.  References to fairy tales and Peanuts comics give the book a gentle innocence.  Readers should not be afraid of reading this book, because it will be sure to leave them more spiritually renewed than emotionally drained This is not just a book for victims of abuse, the lessons in it can be applied towards any traumatic experience.

“Over time, as that image of the loving and merciful light streaming from Jesus’ wounds deepened its hold on my consciousness, I began to re-examine the times in my past when I had doubted God’s mercy.  That in turn led to a conversation with God that I had been putting off for a long time– asking how I could embody his mercy toward those I found hardest to forgive.”

It is too easy to think of saints as paragons of virtue to which mere mortals can never compare.  Unfortunately, many people believe themselves to be incapable of living up to the high standard of piety exemplified by the saints so they never even try, rather than set themselves up for failure at the slightest sign of bad temper. Eden points out that the saints were not perfect all of the time: 

“Another surprise was discovering how human the saints were in their reactions to abuse.  They weren’t all sweetness and light.  It was a guilty pleasure to read how the young Bernardine of Siena reacted when a rich man propositioned him while he was playing in a field with schoolmates.  According to an early biographer, the little saint to be promptly whopped the man upside the head.  (While he may very well have been justified, perhaps this is an apt moment to recall the old saying– often quoted by Dorothy Day– that one could go to hell imitating the imperfections of the saints.)…

Here is where the saints have something to show us.  We tend to think of the saints in heaven as being perfect, which they are, but it would be more descriptive to say they have been perfected.  Likewise, we think of the saints as being pure, which they also are, but it would be truer to say they have been purified.  The prophet Malachi spoke of this purification when he described the Messiah as “like a refiner’s fire,” adding that “he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver till they present right offerings to the Lord” (3: 2-3).”

My Peace I Give You should be recommended reading for everybody who needs help or healing.  The lives of the saints demonstrate that there is no wound so great that God cannot heal it, and Dawn Eden has created a stirring and genuine reminder that no matter what problems one might have, there is always cause for hope.

–Chris Chan

The Hound of Distributism

The Hound of Distributism.  Edited by Richard Aleman, ACS Books, 2012.

FULL DISCLOSURE ALERT: Some of the contributors to The Hound of Distributismare colleagues of mine at the American Chesterton Society. 

Distributism is one of the most misunderstood and controversial forms of economic theory. It has often been dismissed as religious fanaticism applied to the economy, and criticized by capitalists, socialists, and Marxists alike.  Distributism is not capitalism, nor is it socialism, and even less is it Marxism. It is an entirely different form of economics built upon philosophy, namely Catholic social and moral teachings. It is easy to mislabel or misunderstand Distributism or reduce it to nothing more than a variant of any of the aforementioned economic systems.  The numerous articles in the anthology The Hound of Distributismare an excellent means of informing people about the true nature of Distributism and how it ought to be implemented, and a fine way to easily dispel misconceptions about all of these economic philosophies.

Contributors to The Hound of Distributisminclude Dale Ahlquist, Phillip Blond, Peter Chojnowski, David W. Cooney, William Fahey, Donald P. Goodman III, the Hon. Race Mathews, Philippe Maxence, John Médaille, Joseph Pearce, Bill Powell, Russell Sparkes, Thomas Storck, and Mark and Louise Zwick.  A handful of essays by G.K. Chesterton on Distributist theory are also sprinkled throughout the book.  Since Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are the major twentieth-century innovators of Distributist thought and philosophy, they are frequently referenced and explained throughout this work.

The title of this volume is not a reference to the famous Sherlock Holmes story. As the book’s introduction states:

“Domini canes or “The Hounds of the Lord” is a name given to The Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominican Order. According to tradition, while pregnant with the great saint, St. Dominic’s mother had a vision of a black dog with torch in mouth setting fire to the world with the Gospel. In art, St. Dominic is typically depicted with a white or black canine by his side. As the symbol of the historic Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, the Distributist fraternity of craftworkers in Ditchling, England, the hound has also grown to

be with the great saint, St. Dominic’s mother had a vision of a black dog with torch in mouth setting fire to the world with the Gospel. In art, St. Dominic is typically depicted with a white or black canine by his side. As the symbol of the historic Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, the Distributist fraternity of craftworkers in Ditchling, England, the hound has also grown to
be associated with Distributism.”  

In his introductory essay, “What’s Wrong with the World (and How to Fix It),” Dale Ahlquist explains the reason for compiling this book and why it is so vital to implement Distributist philosophy in today’s world, writing that:

“Most normal, carefree people would rather avoid arguing about politics and religion. They fall in love and get married and, in the normal course of events, have children. Then they begin thinking about two things: the world in which they are raising their child, and the soul of their child. In other words, they start thinking about politics and religion. Unfortunately, most people with families don’t have the time and money to become political activists. Most of the people who do have the time and the money to be political activists don’t have families; the laws these people lobby for with great success represent special interest groups, but they do not represent the interests of that general interest group,
the family. As a result, most laws are very much anti-family.”

Distributism, after all, is meant to protect the building block of society, the family.  As many of these commentators observe, in today’s world the average family is plunged into debt by a very young age, and many people never escape from the problems of debt.  The point of Distributism is not to make people rich, but rather to make them free and happy in a way that other systems cannot.

“Towards a Description of Distributism,” by Dr. Wiliam E. Fahey, describes what Distributism really is, and, equally importantly, explains what Distributism isn’tas well.  This article is crafted in the form of a dialogue between a “Lector” and a “Scriptor,” the Lector initially being largely ignorant of what Distributism really is, aside from some very negative misconceptions, which are quickly corrected by the Scriptor. “Towards a Description of Distributism” provides a thorough overview of the definition and development of Distributism over time, as well as the reasons why Distributism ought to be considered the most moral economic system.  Towards the end, Fahey writes the following exchange:

“Lector: So, Distributism is about freedom? 

Scriptor: Some distributists have said that is the central tenet. Chesterton reminds us, however, that “the aim of human polity is human happiness.””

Throughout this volume, the authors attempt to show how Distributism can make someone’s life better, easier, more economical, and more just. One of the most interesting essays describing how to implement Distributist principles into one’s own life is Bill Powell’s “Make Your Backyard a Forest Garden,” a description of how to turn one’s backyard into an abundant and economical food source. Powell’s essay explains the principles of permaculture, a blend of the words “permanent” and “agriculture.” Many farmers today require high overhead costs, all kinds of chemicals, and large quantities of equipment in order to produce substantial amounts of food.  Traditional forms of backyard gardens require large amounts of time and effort.  Constant weeding, watering and fertilizing come with the territory, as do the high start-up costs of seedlings, which often do not generate enough produce to offset the original price of purchase.  A forest garden uses a natural woodland habitat to grow the kinds of plants that can thrive naturally in the wilderness. With only a tenth of an acre, a forest garden can be used to grow all sorts of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and fungi; enough to take care of a major portion of one’s produce bills.

The essays in this anthology deserve further analysis, but to give all of the works the space they deserve would make this review run for dozens of pages. In any event, this book is a superb introduction to Distributism, and a simple and accessible way to help people understand this oft-maligned set of ideas.  This anthology also serves to clearly and effectively present the ideas of Distributists such as G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Dorothy Day, and E.F. Schumacher.  In his essay, “Small is Beautiful Versus Big is Best,” Joseph Pearce explains how Distributism possesses a moral force that all other economic systems lack, writing that:

“Ultimately, conventional economists are making the perennially fatal mistake of ignoring the metaphysical truths that underpin physical facts. They forget that greed is a metaphysical reality and is, therefore, in a physical sense, unlimited. Greed is larger than the world and may, if unchecked, outstrip the world’s ability to meet its demands. As Gandhi said, “Earth provides enough for every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” Or, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, “Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the process loses his soul.” And Solzhenitsyn’s words are, of course, a variation on the words of Jesus Christ: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Such is the folly of economic man that he is not even leaving himself a choice. He is set to lose his soul and the world, poisoning the one with greed and the other with the pillage and pollution it causes.”

–Chris Chan

Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writings

Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writings, by Flannery O’Connor, edited by Robert Ellsburg, introduction by Richard Giannone, Orbis Books, 2003.

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) is a writer who is both beloved and baffling.  Kurt Vonnegut once referred to her as “the greatest short story writer of my generation,” who managed to create brilliant work while breaking all of the conventional wisdom about crafting fiction.  Her tales are full of violence, foolishness, churlishness, and comically flawed characters that display all of the seven deadly sins in shockingly vivid detail.  Her fiction is also filled with love, grace, faith, intelligence, and a bushel of other understated virtues.  

O’Connor’s Catholicism permeates her work, but unlike many overtly Christian writers, her integration of her faith into her prose is often easy to miss at first glance.  Her religious morals are often subtly and cleverly disguised by her focus on Southern Protestantism or the dark nihilistic void that is left in the absence of a religious moral compass.  Readers might not expect to find lessons on grace and redemption in tales of family annihilation, open blasphemy, and self-righteous preening, which is why this anthology is a useful guide to understanding the spiritual lessons of her work.

O’Connor suffered from crippling lupus for most of her life, leading to her early death at age thirty-nine. Her published writings consist of two novels, Wise Blood(1952) and The Violent Bear it Away(1960); thirty-one short stories (published in two short collections, A Good Man is Hard to Find(1955) and Everything that Rises Must Converge(1965), and the National Book Award-winning The Complete Stories(1971) containing the two aforementioned collections and several other pieces); numerous lectures, book reviews, and articles (many of which were compiled into the anthologies Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose(1969) and The Presence of Grace: and Other Book Reviews(1983)); and mountains of personal correspondence, some of the best of which was printed in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor(1979).

All of the aforementioned works are full of O’Connor’s thoughts on faith and religion’s role in culture and society, but as stated earlier, sometimes the “presence of grace” is hard to detect in her work amongst the muck and muddle of human folly, much as it is in real life.  Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writingsis meant to help highlight the role of religion and spirituality in her work. Even if one already owns all of O’Connor’s books, this book is valuable to readers because of a lengthy critical essay and numerous editorial and contextual comments.

The book opens with Richard Giannone’s introductory essay “Flannery O’Connor’s Dialogue With the Age.” The book is divided into five sections, reflecting O’Connor’s religious views, thoughts on the role of the Christian in society, critical assertions regarding religion in fiction, and ponderings on spiritual mysteries.  There is some topical overlap amongst the sections, with the exception of the third, which consists solely of the short story “Revelation.”  Ellsburg notes that all of O’Connor’s books have been used for this anthology.  Snippets from both of her novels, scenes from many of her short stories, passages from her lectures, and scores of her letters and reviews are included here, all arranged in order to emphasize her points about spirituality.

Like all essays that address the work of a really great writer, Giannone’s introduction doesn’t come close to capturing all of the depth and beauty of O’Connor’s work, but it’s still a very helpful introduction to her work and its themes.  Giannone provides a useful overview of the scholarship on O’Connor and a good summary of her life, as well as many salient arguments against the oft-stated assertion of secularists that religious themes have no place in serious fiction.  Another Catholic novelist, Alice Thomas Ellis, put it best when she said that, “Once you take away the religious element, you can’t write fiction. Well, you can, but it’s boring.”  Many adjectives can be used to describe O’Connor, but ‘boring’ is not one of them.

Most of the excerpts are short.  Some of her letters are only half a page in length, and some book passages only fill a couple of pages.  Each selection is carefully chosen in order to make a point either about O’Connor’s religious and artistic opinions, or how she managed to use unexpected and unconventional ways to insert her beliefs into her fiction.  A few choice scenes from Wise Blood, where the central character, Hazel Motes, proponent of the “Church Without Christ,” illustrate the folly of trying to run away from a God who is always present everywhere.

When many people think of religious fiction, they think of preachy moralizing, saccharine protagonists who are always rewarded for their virtue, and one-dimensional atheistic villains. None of that applies to O’Connor, who was never one for sugar-coating the truth.  Sometimes the innocent suffer.  Monsters walk the earth in human form.  Humans blame God for their own destructiveness.  In Spiritual Writings, O’Connor expressed her annoyance at people who labeled her a “Catholic writer,” preferring instead to call herself a “Christian realist.”  A substantial percentage of this book is devoted to O’Connor’s literary theories, and her thoughts about what constitutes the perfect balance of religious themes in fiction ought to be required reading for all aspiring writers who want to write about Christian themes.

The one short story reproduced in its entirety, “Revelation,” is an interesting choice. It’s a very good story, but there are so many others that directly address the relationship between God and man that it’s not quite clear why “Revelation” was selected for inclusion and not others.  “Revelation” is the story of Ruby Turpin, a woman who is securely convinced of her own moral superiority and increasingly exasperated by the people she views as her moral and social inferiors.  Turpin spends a rather disconcerting day in a doctor’s waiting room, and gradually the reader learns just how disgusted she is by the “white trash” that surrounds her and her patronizing attitudes towards black people.  The climax of the story, where Turpin receives a world-rocking vision about the state of her own soul and others’ souls, ought to give readers pause over their own lives and evaluate their souls in a different light. The questions O’Connor raises over what truly makes one morally superior and closer to God are not directly answered in the text, which is just as well– readers really need to come up with conclusions on their own.  O’Connor is full of opinions, but didacticism has no place in her prose.

One of the most insightful portions of Spiritual Writingsconsists of O’Connor’s letters from The Habit of Being.  In them, we see glimpses of O’Connor’s personal life, especially her friendship with an anonymous correspondent.  We see O’Connor’s wonder and joy at being a Catholic, as well as her distress when her friend decides to leave the Catholic Church, and O’Connor’s cheerful but disconcerted acknowledgement of her own impeding mortality.

Since Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writingsprovides some spoilers for some of O’Connor’s fiction, this book may not be the best introduction to her work.  Personally, I would recommend this anthology to readers who are already fans of O’Connor and who want to gain a better appreciation for the religious dimension of her work.  If one is not already familiar with her, I suggest that those who have not yet discovered the joys of her work begin by reading some of her short stories and one of her novels, or possibly The Habit of Beingbefore reading Spiritual Writings.  

Spiritual Writingswill probably be of most use to those readers who are familiar with O’Connor’s fiction but would like a guide to understanding her religious themes better.  The juxtaposition of excerpts from her fiction, her personal musings on literature, and her thoughts on religion will help the reader see the hidden hand of God in each of her works, and quite possibly help readers better understand religious themes in all kinds of fiction.  Indeed, after perusing Spiritual Writings, many people may gain a better understanding of how fiction that does nottake religion seriously may sometimes be thematically and intellectually lacking.

–Chris Chan

A Father Brown Mystery

Here is a review of a local production of "A Father Brown Mystery" in Milwaukee, in the Volume 22, No. 6 May/June 2019 edition of Gilbert!

Solving a Case with Father Brown

By Chris Chan

Chestertonians who have dreamed of one day actually solving a case with Father Brown had their chance earlier this year when Morning Star Productions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin put on A Father Brown Mystery. Morning Star Productions focuses on historical and Christian-themed plays, often involving audience movement and participation. For example, their spring play Underground Railroadhas small groups of people join Harriet Tubman on an outdoor journey to help a runaway slave escape, meeting various friends and foes along the way.

A Father Brown Mystery is a fifty-minute interactive play. This production was held at St. Mark’s Episcopalian Church in Milwaukee. There are no programs or cast list, and audience members do not stay in one place very long. You start in the church meeting room, where the actor playing Father Brown (He was probably cast in part for his resemblance to Mark Williams, who plays the role on the BBC series. This is not to say he got the role strictly because of his looks– he gave a very warm, intelligent performance) greets you and welcomes you to the little 1930’s English country church jumble sale (no attempt is made to explain why a Catholic priest is holding a fundraiser at an Anglican church) and hands out slips of paper with the five suspects and five means of murder. You're supposed to put your name and email address on them, though Fr. Brown makes a point of saying that he doesn't know what an email address is (it sounds like something that will be invented in the future).

The members of the audience (usually around eighteen, give or take a few) are led into a passageway connecting the meeting hall to the main church, where you "overhear" two suspects having a discussion, then meet the first two suspects, and the local doctor explains the mysterious death. Then everybody's led into the church nave, where you meet the third suspect, then you meet the fourth suspect in the back pews, and you then walk into the narthex to meet the fifth and last suspect. At that point, the audience members have fifteen minutes to walk back and forth amongst the settings to ask the characters anything they like. The intelligent audience members will devote three minutes to each suspect and make sure to ask if they can provide any evidence to eliminate a murder method. Afterwards, everybody goes into the sacristy for the denouement, where all is explained and the killer is revealed. (It’s a busy schedule for the actors. On two consecutive weekends, they had a few shows Friday evening, a full day of performances Saturday, and several performances on Sunday.)

SPOILERS– the play is based on Chesterton’s original story "The Vampire of the Village," but I didn't get the answer right despite knowing the story well (if you do, you get two free tickets for another show) because I noticed they'd changed a handful of little points, leading me to the false conclusion that they'd changed the solution in order to prevent spoilers. Plus, I think I must have misheard a response, and forgot that the killer was probably lying. My Mom got the answer right going purely by instinct, but didn't fill out the form. 

There are some problems. The acoustics in certain rooms, and the fact that all of the actors have adopted British accents, means that some dialogue is hard to hear, so it’s easy to miss a crucial line. Father Brown is the primary role and the audience’s guide, and the five suspects are the victim’s widow Mrs. Maltravers, the actor Harold Horner, Horner’s father The Parson, villager Ms. Carstairs-Carew, and the manic actor Phoenix Fitzgerald (by far the juiciest of the supporting roles). The ambiguity of the cause of death is explained by the local doctor (the possibilities are drowning, pushing down a hill, poisoning, strangling, or clubbing), and the doctor reveals the true cause of death at the end, while Father Brown identifies the killer. The eighth and smallest role is the constable who makes the arrest.

It’s a remarkably efficient adaptation, although there are some places where the over-observant amateur sleuth (like me) may be sidetracked by red herrings (a reference to a cloak may lead somebody to investigate a cape hanging alone on a rack, which winds up having nothing to do with the play), and valuable time may be wasted rooting through the assorted items at the church jumble sale looking for a clue that isn’t there. It actually might’ve helped to have slipped a few clues here and there in locations for people not well-versed in church history, and it’s all too easy for audience members to spend too much time interviewing one suspect, thereby missing out on the chance to pick up crucial clues. People standing in the back can easily miss some important dialogue. These are technical issues, though, which could be swiftly fixed, and do not seriously damage the entertainment.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fun, far more faithful to GKC's work than the BBC series, and entertaining. I highly recommend it, and I’d be thrilled to see other Chesterton mysteries adapted in a similar manner.

For more information on Morning Star Productions, please see their website at http://morningstarproductions.org.

Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thought. By Terrence C. Wright, Ignatius Press, 2018.

Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thoughtis a brief overview of the life and work of Dorothy Day.  The operative word is an “introduction.”  It’s short, concise and informative.  Its brevity makes it possible to read it in its entirety in a single sitting.  However, if one is already well-versed in Day’s career and life, it’s not going to provide too much new information that the Day enthusiasts won’t already know. Therefore, this book is highly recommended for people who want to learn more about this influential Catholic figure, but it covers well-travelled ground for those who already know about her career.

An interesting point in the introduction to the book is that the author spoke to two priests, and they had polar opposite reactions to the possibility of Day’s life and career being taught to Catholics, due to political and social issues and differing interpretations of her personal philosophy.  Wright makes it clear that he believes that Day should be studied by all Catholics, that she was loyal to Catholic theological teachings, and simultaneously preached concern and protection for the poor and downtrodden.  Often, people take an either/or approach to orthodox theology and social teachings, favoring one over the other, but Wright stresses that both are necessary for a complete approach to faith and living out the teachings of one’s religion.

This book is Day’s life and ideas for beginners, highly recommended for those who are just beginning to explore her career and approach to faith.

–Chris Chan

An Immovable Feast: How I Gave Up Spirituality for a Life of Religious Abundance.  By Tyler Blanski, Ignatius Press, 2018.

An Immovable Feastis a religious conversion memoir.  Tyler Blanski powerfully and honestly describes his coming of age story, as he charts his personal development as well as the slow development and metamorphosis of his religious beliefs.

There is something deeply powerful about Blanski’s frank and detailed account of his personal growth.  He opens the story with his fundamentalist Baptist youth, and charts his adolescent path that took him away from organized religion but still kept him interested in what he termed spirituality.  Eventually, he would pursue a career as an Anglican cleric in the Midwest, and recounts his friendships, misadventures, and mental and spiritual gymnastics as he was constantly challenged.  Over time, all of his presuppositions were shattered, and Blanski and his wife took a different path, entering the Catholic Church.

This is a story about searching for love.  The twin hearts of the memoir are the love stories between Blanski and God, and Blanski and his wife.  An Immovable Feastis notable for its unflinching honesty.  Blanski never shies away from describing the time he spent wandering aimlessly, binge-watching television instead of sleeping, and working jobs that left him mentally and spiritually unfulfilled.  After Blanski finds what he thought was his vocation in Anglicanism, he dreamt of building the perfect church.  The more Blanski studied Catholicism, the more he came to believe that an even better church already existed.  We see clashes with his other Anglican seminarians and teachers, dealing with the illness of a child, and a slow, steady climb towards maturity.

There are countless conversion stories, each one unique despite the similar endings.  Gorgeously and powerfully written, An Immovable Feastis an intellectual and spiritual tour de force that is not to be missed.

–Chris Chan

The Habit of Being.  By Flannery O’Connor, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1988.

Flannery O’Connor is probably my favorite American writer.  Her work is permeated in her own unique voice: wry, earthy, humorous, frank, profound, and unflinchingly honest.  Her world is distinctly her own, filled with darkness and light, where the characters are deeply flawed but always children of God, and the morals of her stories are always clear but never obvious.

O’Connor suffered from lupus, and spent much of her far too short life on her family farm, writing and raising peacocks.  Before she died at the age of thirty-nine, she left a small but powerful assortment of writings behind her, consisting of two novels, thirty-two short stories, and assorted short nonfiction and spiritual writings.  The Habit of Beingis a collection of O’Connor’s correspondence, consisting of assorted letters that O’Connor wrote to friends over several years.  It serves as both a biography and a series of spiritual musings.

The prose in the letters is often unpolished, and it carries more weight and presence because it contains all of her typos and spelling errors.  The letters come across as an intelligent woman explaining her worldview and baring her soul, as well as explaining as why she wrote, and what parts of herself and her religious beliefs she incorporated into her work and why.

In one letter, she writes:

“I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic. This is a fact and nothing covers it like the bald statement. However, I am a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness, that thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary, and guilty. To possess this within the Church is to bear a burden, the necessary burden for the conscious Catholic. It’s to feel the contemporary situation at the ultimate level. I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. This may explain the lack of bitterness in the stories.”

O’Connor has often been described as a creator of Southern Gothic, a crafter of grotesques and eccentrics.  This is both true and an oversimplification.  O’Connor was not creating a fantasy world or an exaggerated or caricaturized version of society, but instead, she accentuated certain flaws in society and in her characters in order to better illustrate how sin is a poison and how the worst dangers to society and individuals can be the problems that most people least suspect, or what is even more likely, how things that people don’t believe are problems turn out to be far more dangerous than the average person ever imagines.

O’Connor writes:

“The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. I believe that there are many rough beasts now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born and that I have reported the progress of a few of them, and when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.”

Going into more detail as to what she means by “Christian realism,” O’Connor writes:

“I believe too that there is only one Reality and that that is the end of it, but the term, “Christian Realism,” has become necessary for me, perhaps in a purely academic way, because I find myself in a world where everybody has his compartment, puts you in yours, shuts the door and departs. One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.”

In her letters, the people O’Connor is “conscious of writing for” are often close friends, though others are more distant acquaintances looking for details of her thoughts on religion, Catholic doctrine, and all sorts of other principles.  O’Connor never comes across as a proselytizer, but rather as an explainer– she provides her own pithy definitions of terms and explanations of doctrines.  She always comes across as well-educated and original in her attempts to explain details that might intimidate lesser writers.

“Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God. The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in. For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind. Henry James said the young woman of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex.”

As talented as O’Connor is at serving as a Catholic apologist, she is just as skilled as describing herself, her goals, and her relationship with her work.  

“I won’t ever be able entirely to understand my own work or even my own motivations. It is first of all a gift, but the direction it has taken has been because of the Church in me or the effect of the Church’s teaching, not because of a personal perception or love of God. For you to think this would be possible because of your ignorance of me; for me to think it would be sinful in a high degree. I am not a mystic and I do not lead a holy life. Not that I can claim any interesting or pleasurable sins (my sense of the devil is strong) but I know all about the garden variety, pride, gluttony, envy and sloth, and what is more to the point, my virtues are as timid as my vices. I think sin occasionally brings one closer to God, but not habitual sin and not this petty kind that blocks every small good. A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him…

However, the individual in the Church is, no matter how worthless himself, a part of the Body of Christ and a participator in the Redemption. There is no blueprint that the Church gives for understanding this. It is a matter of faith and the Church can force no one to believe it. When I ask myself how I know I believe, I have no satisfactory answer at all, no assurance at all, no feeling at all. I can only say with Peter, Lord I believe, help my unbelief. And all I can say about my love of God, is, Lord help me in my lack of it. I distrust pious phrases, particularly when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat.”

A recurring theme of O’Connor’s fiction and letters is the idea that grace is found where one least expects it. Throughout her letters, she hammers home the point that the people who see the Catholic Church as twisted mass of complex and unnecessary rules are flat-out wrong.  For O’Connor, the Church is force that frees, inspires, and educates. Leaving the Church would mean entering a darker, duller, and danker world, lacking the fullness of grace.

“In the face of anyone’s experience, someone like myself who has had almost no experience, must be humble. I will never have the experience of the convert, or of the one who fails to be converted, or even in all probability of the formidable sinner; but your effort not to be seduced by the Church moves me greatly. God permits it for some reason though it is the devil’s greatest work of hallucination. Fr. [Jean] de Menasce told somebody not to come into the Church until he felt it would be an enlargement of his freedom. This is what you are doing and you are right, but do not make your feeling of the voluptuous seductive powers of the Church into a hard shell to protect yourself from her. I suppose it is like marriage, that when you get into it, you find it is the beginning, not the end, of the struggle to make love work.

I think most people come to the Church by means the Church does not allow, else there would be no need their getting to her at all. However, this is true inside as well, as the operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug…

I have some long and tall thoughts on the subject of God’s working through nature, but I will not inflict them on you now. I find I have a habit of announcing the obvious in pompous and dogmatic periods. I like to forget that I’m only a storyteller.”

The Habit of Being is an easy and enjoyable read– O’Connor’s short missives make for concise, clever, and clear apologetics, and make their points with more wit, style, and good humor that most writers.  O’Connor comes across as more than a skilled writer– after reading The Habit of Being, one soon wants her as a pen pal.

–Chris Chan