Borrowed Time

Borrowed Time

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

–Chris Chan 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

I was expecting inspiration.  I was not expecting grace.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

–Chris Chan

How I Stayed Catholic at Harvard: 40 Tips for Faithful College Students

How I Stayed Catholic at Harvard: 40 Tips for Faithful College Students.  By Aurora Griffin, Ignatius Press, 2016.

 

Many religious parents mourn the fact that a disturbingly large number of young people graduate from college considerably less religious than when they entered.  This is a common problem, no matter where one goes, though many of the most prestigious universities is the nation are known for being particularly secular.  On the television series The Sopranos, even though the titular parents made their living through organized crime, during the second season Tony and Carmela Soprano were particularly concerned about their daughter Meadow’s choice of college, worrying that the feared evangelist atheist influence of Berkeley would prove to be detrimental to their daughter’s spiritual life, leading Carmela to use whatever influence she had at her disposal in order to nudge her daughter towards Georgetown.

 

Aurora Griffin is a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes scholar who studied philosophy at Oxford, and plans to pursue a career in business.  How I Stayed Catholic at Harvard is her first book, where she describes her undergraduate faith life, where she describes how she maintained and expanded her religiousness in an environment that was not particularly conducive to faith.

 

In his introduction to the book, Peter Kreeft writes,

 

“Few things can be more important than the faith of the next generation.  The future of our civilization, that is, the goodness and truth and beauty of our culture, depends on the Source of all goodness, truth, and beauty, God; and the umbilical cord to God is faith– not just faith in anything, but the Faith, the one God invented, not us.  And the Faith is not automatic (it doesn’t just “happen”), not is it genetic (God has no grandchildren); it must be rediscovered, reaffirmed, chosen, and kept anew by each generation.  If it falls into the abyss of the current “generation gap,” our culture will fall into an abyss of even greater nonsense, immorality, and ugliness than it already has.  Nothing is more practical than drawing a line in the sand here and now.

 

And no place is more important than the university, because the university has replaced the church, the state, and even the family as the primary teacher and cultural determinant.  Everyone who is influential in our culture is formed by the university: media people, pastors, teachers, politicians, scientists, businesspeople, lawyers, doctors, creative writers, journalists– almost everyone but rappers and professional football players.  This is the battlefield, now is the battle, and here is a very good set of weapons.”

 

The “weapons” in question are a series of tips that Griffin advises as a means of maintaining a vibrant religious life.  The forty tips are divided into sections: “Community,” “Prayer,” “Academics,” and “Living It Out.”  Of course, this book presupposes that that the person reading this book has a strong interest in staying Catholic and living a religious life throughout college and afterwards.  For the already lukewarm or disinterested young person raised Catholic, there may be little incentive to take the extra steps to strengthen one’s faith life, nor is there any particular desire to avoid the entertainments and distractions that lead many young people away from traditional Catholic morality.

 

There are a wide variety of tips, ranging from engaging in an assortment of religious activities to maintaining a diverse and supportive group of friends.  In each case, Griffin provides her own autobiographical experiences, explaining how each of these steps helped her.  At times, it seems like Griffin was constantly under pressure from all sorts of directions to drift into a state of unbelief or at least to start ignoring the tenets of the Church.  

 

She writes: 

 

“For a Catholic going to a secular university, it is all too easy to get swept up in what the world says is important in college.  The attitude at most secular universities is that college is about having fun and finding yourself by casting off old ways of thinking, leaving your faith and values behind.  For many, it becomes about partying and embracing radical philosophies.  A worldly lifestyle promises glamour and excitement and fulfillment, but in the end it is empty.  Only as we become the people God made us to be, do we become freer, happier, and more ourselves.”  

 

One of my favorite experiences in college is when an acquaintance did the math to figure out just how much a single fifty minute class cost, when subtracting food and housing from the annual tuition and dividing appropriately.  I don’t have the exact number, but about fourteen years ago, every missed class was approximately $180 down the drain.  My acquaintance and I put that line on the dormitory whiteboard as a kind of motivator for the hungover students who believed that attending class was optional.  The cost has gone up dramatically in recent years, and as Griffin points out, there are many intangible and priceless benefits from college that may be missed through improper use of time.

 

It continues to baffle me how many young people believe that they are paying tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars a year for a four-year bacchanal.  Griffin observes that college is more than just paying large sums of money and taking tests in order to get a diploma.  College is an opportunity to learn and grow, but as personal observations have shown me, many college students grow less mature, less creative, and less intellectually curious.  Griffin argues that to be a better student, a better person, and a better Catholic, you have to continually strive to be stronger– if your faith (or intellect) isn’t growing, it’s probably shrinking.

 

Griffin writes:

“It was my faith that kept me studying late at night when I was tired because I felt obligated to be a good steward of my opportunities.  It was my faith that served as the reference point for all my studies, rendering no lecture of assignment irrelevant.  It was my faith that led me to meet a great group of friends, whom I’ll cherish the rest of my life.  It was my faith that kept me out of the dangers and drama of the college party scene.  Because I made these decisions– to work hard, to invest in good people, to avoid trouble– my time in college was both successful and happy by secular standards.  And I gained so much more than that from my faith.  My college years meant something.  I grew in the most important thing of all: knowing God.  And after graduation, I stepped into the world with a peace and a sense of purpose that even my most successful secular friends do not have.”

 

If college students are determined to burden themselves with crushing debt and spend the better part of their weekends with their heads in public toilets, there is little their parents or anybody else can do to stop them (unless their parents decide to stop paying tuition).  This is one young woman’s testimony as to the importance of her religious faith in her life, and the effort she was willing to make to keep it.  Not every college students shares her tenacity and dedication, but her personal experiences are inspiring, and Griffin’s enthusiasm for being Catholic radiates off the page.

 

–Chris Chan

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? and The Books That Changed My Life

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?  By Carl E. Olson, Ignatius Press, 2016.

 

The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians, and Other Remarkable People.  By Bethanne Patrick, Regan Arts, 2016.

 

People may not believe everything they read, but what they read may have a deep and lasting effect on their mindsets and beliefs.  The two books discussed in this review, Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? and The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians, and Other Remarkable People both discuss how reading material affects people’s thoughts on all aspects of life.  Olson’s book focuses mainly on how works of Christian (and anti-Christian) apologetics may shape the minds and faith of those who read such books, whereas Patrick’s work explores how all kinds of books change the lives of people from all walks of life.  C.S. Lewis said that “a young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”  Comparatively, people of any ideological persuasion may be affected by their reading material, and these two books illustrate just how what one reads affects how one may think.

 

If a Christian were to reads only one book of apologetics about the resurrection of Jesus, whichever book is chosen may have an immense impact on the direction of that person’s belief system.  In his introductory chapters, Olsen summarizes books on Jesus’s resurrection from a wide variety of perspectives, from an Episcopalian who dismisses the supernatural, to New Age figures who believe that they have a deeper understanding of the “true nature” of Jesus than members of the Catholic clergy, to atheists who attack all aspects of belief and religious history.  Olson’s book targets each of these viewpoints in turn, arguing that none of them is as convincing or as close to the historical truth as what the Catholic Church officially teaches.

 

Olson writes in his introduction:

 

“From the start, the proclamation of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead has been met with a wide range of emotions and responses: fear, amazement, joy, perplexity, astonishment– and disbelief.  In the succinct account at the end of the Gospel of Mark, the three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who go to anoint Jesus’s body with spices were amazed to find a young man in white robes, an angel, sitting in an otherwise empty tomb.  “Do not be amazed,” he told them, “you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (Mk 16:6).  The women fled the tomb, trembling and astonished, “and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.” (Mk 16:8).

 

So afraid, we read, that they said nothing to anyone.  Who would believe them?  Why would anyone believe them?  And, sure enough, when Mary Magdalene told the grieving disciples that Jesus had appeared to her the following morning, “they would not believe it” (Mk 16:11).  In the words of Luke, the account given “seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (Lk 24:11).  “For the early Christians,” writes noted New Testament scholar Craig S. Keener, “neither the empty tomb nor the testimony of the women was adequate evidence by itself (cf. Lk 24:22-24); they also depended on the testimony of the men for the public forum (cf. 1 Cor 15:5-8).” The disbelief of the male disciples is, by any measure, both understandable and embarrassing, and Keener states that the “criterion of embarrassment indicates that no one had apologetic reason to invent the testimony of these women.”

 

Throughout his books, Olson argues that the early Christians had no reason to make up a story about Jesus’s resurrection, and that accusations that the early Church was less than honest are unfounded.  In an early chapter, Olson addresses the theologian Gerhard Lohfink, and notes that the Church needs to make its teachings– what it believes happened and why– absolutely clear, because people have a habit of selecting what they like to think is most reasonable, rather than what might actually have happened.  

 

Olson describes Lohfink’s position, writing that:

 

“Lohfink says that amid such confusion “it is the church’s urgent and even essential duty to make clear what is specifically Christian.”  Such a task is difficult, in part because the Enlightenment project has aided an even promoted a dismissal of religious belief and has also encouraged a reactionary syncretism in which an often irrational stew of religion and spirituality is set up against the rather cold and rational forces of scientism and technocracy.  Thus, to put it simply, Christianity has been attacked from one side as superstitious and anti-reason and from the other as too exclusive and dogmatic, and thus fundamentalist.  Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in a remarkable homily given at the Mass prior to the papal conclave in which he was elected pope, asked, “How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking?”

 

Olson fills his short volume with reasoned arguments, and one of his most interesting and compelling sections is a “question and answer” chapter where he explains the reasoning for Catholic teachings on Jesus’s resurrection and why Christians need to believe in it as a real event, not just a metaphor or a legend used to make for a better story or to inject mysticism into a more prosaic story.  Describing the reasons his own approach, Olson writes:

 

“In short, Christianity without a risen Christ– truly alive and with a real, glorified body– is an essentially empty, even false belief system.  “If Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead,” argues philosopher David Baggett, “then at most we would have to settle for a demythologized and deflationary analysis of Christianity.  The fact is, classical Christianity would be false and Jesus usually a philosopher at best or a madman at worst.  If Jesus did bodily rise from the grave, what could be more important as a clue to the meaning of life?  The resurrection matters.”  The stakes, in other words, are high; it really is an all-or-nothing proposition.”

 

Olson covers a wide swath of recent literature about religious apologetics, and explains that not all books are created equal.  Many books seem convincing because they never challenge their central theses within the context of their volumes, which is why someone can set down a book completely unaware that the arguments that sounded so unassailable on the page have been thoroughly rebutted by other researchers.  Olson sets up his book to be a counter-argument to all of the bestsellers and prominent voices he cites in his work.  He knows that books can be incredibly formative influences, and seeks to make his book a counter-force, discrediting those other works.

 

While Olson criticizes other books on the grounds of bad logic, poor theology, and twisted history, Patrick celebrates all books rather than taking a stand on whether or not some books are better than others.  Patrick asked scores of writers, actors, politicians, doctors, and other notable people if there was a book that served as a transformative influence in their lives.  Patrick describes her project, writing that:

 

“One of the parts of this project that makes me happiest is that although no one interviewed was given a list from which to choose and although none of them were told others’ choices in advance, there is only one duplicate title on the list.  That doesn’t mean all the books spoken about meet any parameters.  There are children’s books, poetry collections, biographies, classic novels, modern favorites, and even a comic book included.  What this says to me, and I hope to you, is that life-changing books don’t come with “Read Here” labels attached.  They have as much to do with the reader’s perspective as with the author’s voice.”

 

The essays in Patrick’s book are a very mixed bag.  Some are shallow and self-serving, while other essays are virtue-signaling “aren’t I clever and/or empathetic” puff pieces.  Still, throughout the book, there are some genuinely moving or inspiring pieces, and a handful of them are genuinely spiritual pieces, focusing on the religious aspects of literature.  Most of the essays are only two or three pages, with a few lengthier exceptions.  One of the best passages is by Patrick herself, as she writes about the novel Silence by Shusaku Endo:

 

“[I]n the late winter of 1988, someone in the group selected a novel by a Japanese author I’d never heard of: Silenceby Shusaku Endo.  First published in 1966, a winner of the Tanizaki Prize, and considered by many to be one of the best novels of the twentieth century, Silence is the story of a Portugese missionary to seventeenth-century Japan whose fidelity to Roman Catholic dogma is challenged by armed persecutors of local Christians in hiding.

 

No, Silence did not effect my conversion.  However, I was then, and remain, a seriously spiritual person, and I’d never before encountered a book that was both a testament to faith and a work of art.  It doesn’t matter, when you read Endo, whether you are a devout Christian or a committed atheist.  Although his material is more overtly religious than, say, a fellow Catholic like Flannery O’Connor’s, like O’Connor, Endo uses his beliefs to explore the moral center that unites the greatest works of literature in all world cultures.  His fiction wastes no time on proselytizing.  It focuses on character, conflict, and truth.”

 

Both of these books provide a compelling case that “you are what you read.”  The power of the printed word can shape opinions of religion, politics, and aesthetic taste, among other possibilities.  Olson argues that no book exists in a vacuum, and Patrick puts special stress on the relationship between a book and its reader.  Patrick writes and edits from a largely secular love a books, whereas Olson is arguing about the truth of one of the major events in world history, and writes as a religious man who believes the veracity of what he argues.  Both books pay special attention as to how the written word is often a transformative influence to a reader’s mind and soul. 

 

 

–Chris Chan

Catholics in America & Champion of Women and the Unborn

Catholics in America: Religious Identity and Cultural Assimilation from John Carroll to Flannery O'Connor.  By Russell Shaw, Ignatius Press, 2016.

 

Champion of Women and the Unborn: Horatio Robinson Storer, M.D.  By Frederick N. Dyer, Science History Publications, 1999.

 

 

What should the role of Catholicism in the public sphere be?  How should Catholics live their faith and try to shape the broader American culture?  In Catholics in America and Champion of Women and the Unborn, Russell Shaw and Frederick N. Dyer profile sixteen Catholics who had a distinct impact on America, though in very different ways.  

 

Shaw is very concerned about American political culture, and worries that American Catholics are inclined to dilute or even repudiate aspects of their faith in order to better fit into the general stream of American popular opinion.  He opens his book with an observation of the conditions of church and state in the U.S.

 

“In my parish church, as also, I suppose, in many another Catholic church in the United States, two flags are prominently displayed.  One is the Stars and Stripes.  The other, unfamiliar to most Americans, including many Catholics, is the gold and white flag of Vatican City, with the papal coat of arms– the keys of Peter and the papal tiara– imposed upon the vertical white band.  In many churches, the two flags flank the sanctuary as if to salute the sacred ritual celebrated there.  In mine, they hang from the choir loft at the back of the church, where they seem to be maintaining a benign surveillance of the congregation.

 

In all my years of visiting Catholic churches, I’ve never heard anyone, priest of layperson, say a word about the symbolism of the two flags, perhaps because it’s so obvious that it doesn’t need explaining.  Their message plainly is twofold: first, that Catholics have a dual loyalty– to the Church and to the United States; second, that there is no conflict here.  On the contrary, their reply to the ancient question, “Can you be a good Catholic and a good American?” appears to be an implied, “Who says I can’t?””

 

Many Catholic pundits have noted that Americanism is considered a heresy, by which it is generally meant that American politics and social attitudes should not be given precedence over the teachings of the Church.  (It might be fair to inquire whether comparable criticism has ever been given to “Europeanism.”)    Shaw is concerned that secular and even anti-Catholic forces are affecting all aspects of American Catholic cultural life, and suggests that Catholics should play a more active role in determining the directions that America takes.  This attitude reflects the Chesterton quote, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”  Shaw muses,

 

“For the most part, that [the idea of Americanization] has remained conventional wisdom to this day.  Now, though, this may be changing.  In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that the Church needs to rethink the old project of unconditional assimilation into American secular culture.  Yes, assimilation has been the preferred strategy of Catholic leadership since John Carroll.  But should it always be?  A persuasive argument can be made that it needn’t and shouldn’t.  For the cost of assimilation to the Church has grown unacceptably high as the secular culture has become ever more inhospitable to Catholic beliefs and values, a process now observable on issues from abortion and same-sex marriage to the creeping economic strangulation of parochial schools.  Currently the question has particular urgency in light of the presence in the United States of yet another large body of mainly Catholic newcomers: the Hispanics.”

 

In order to explain the influences that Catholics have played in American history, and how they inspired other Catholics to play more public roles in their culture.  Increasingly, major political figures have argued that people have the right to worship as they see fit, but they ought not to allow their personal beliefs to interfere with the dictates of the state.  There are widespread arguments that some cultural debates need to be settled, and Catholics should not try to influence or shake up the decreed consensus.  Shaw argues that this is nonsense, and Catholics have a moral obligation to keep involved and to shake up the current political, intellectual, and cultural state of affairs.  He asks,

 

“Can we still be fully Catholic while also being fully American in American secular terms?  The response of many Catholics today is simply more assimilation into the values and behavior patterns of the society that surrounds them. But for a remnant of believing, practicing Catholics, it’s a different story.  These people find themselves increasingly alienated from the secular society and deeply concerned to know what to do about it.  Perhaps they will find some help in what follows.

 

Several themes are at work here, exemplified by the following fifteen influential American Catholics: Archbishop Carroll and Cardinal Gibbons– the assimilation option as it has been accepted and promoted by leaders of the Church in the United States; Saint Elizabeth Seton, Father McGivney, and Al Smith– anti-Catholicism and the Catholic response; Archbishop Hughes and Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini– the immigrant experience; Cardinal Spellman– hyperpatriotism as an assimilation mode; Dorothy Day, Archbishop Sheen, Flannery O’Connor– the ambiguities of American culture; Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker– the feasibility of evangelization; John Kennedy and John Courtney Murray– resolving the tension between church and state.

 

Let me reply at the start to a possible objection: this is not an unpatriotic book.  “My country, right or wrong” – words associated with the early nineteenth-century American naval hero Stephen Decatur and later repeated, with disastrous results, but Cardinal Spellman– expresses an unassailably correct sentiment, provided the sentiment is understood to be, “No matter how foolishly or unjustly my country may act, it’s still my country.”  But this fundamental acknowledgement of national filiation does not excuse patriotic citizens from criticizing their country when it acts foolishly or unjustly, and trying their best to get the country to stop doing that.  These things, too, are expressions of patriotism, indeed arguably more useful than blind acquiescence.”

 

Dyer takes a very different approach to outlining the public role played by Horation Robinson Storer, a physician who Dyer believes saved so many lives that most Americans wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for his innovations in women’s medicine.  Dyer’s website includes the following description of Storer’s career:

 

“The Boston surgeon, Horatio Robinson Storer, M.D. (1830-1922), is known for his key role in creating the specialty of gynecology^[and for being the first surgeon to remove a pregnant uterus.^[ The diseases peculiar to women were little understood and poorly treated when Storer began medical practice in 1853.  Medical specialization of any kind was unacceptable to physicians at that time and a physician who paid attention to the female genitals was particularly suspect, given that there were “quacks” who pandered to women's non-medical needs.  Horatio faced strong resistance to his campaign to promote gynecology, particularly from powerful Boston physicians and surgeons who also were upset because Horatio advocated chloroform, the anesthetic discovered by his Scottish mentor, Dr. (later Sir) James Young Simp­son.  Ether was worshipped in Boston where it was the anesthetic used when anesthetic surgery was first demonstrated to the world in 1846.  Chloroform, ether's most serious competitor, was hated by these “Etherites.”” (http://horatiostorer.net)

 

Storer was instrumental in saving lives through passing laws against abortion (the crude procedures led to the deaths of countless women during the nineteenth century), pioneers safer anesthesia, and fought the medical establishment tooth and nail to institute innovations that would save many lives.  Though some of his beliefs about women might be considered sexist today, they were common for the time, and in any case, over the course of his career Storer launched so many life-saving initiatives that millions– perhaps tens of millions– of Americans owe him a very great debt.  Storer converted to Catholicism later in life after marrying a Catholic woman, and his life is certainly what Shaw would consider an exemplary case of a Catholic shaping the public sphere.

 

Shaw and Dyer have created profiles of people who have changed America in very different ways, and these biographical sketches serve as an excellent way to inspire Catholics to live their faith and “be the change that they want to see in the world.”

 

 

 

–Chris Chan