Category: Catholic Topics

No news is good news on this end. Castle residents are mostly healthy, house-cleanout is progressing nicely, and VBS starts tomorrow. Violated my sewing moratorium to put together some Roman garb for myself, as the ol’ “Bible Voyage” will be wandering the Roman Empire with the Apostles.   Need to get my special-effects in order for a shipwreck on Tuesday.

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Tara Livesay has a guest post by Amie Sexton, looking at inter-racial adoption. Go read it right now.

I had much more to add, but got my finger stuck in the door on the way into Mass this morning.  Not so bad an injury, but it hampers the typing.  So you are spared my deep thoughts.  Happy Sunday.

Book Review: Saint of the Day

Our pastor included  Saint of the Day (6th edition, Leonard Foley ed.) on his recommended reading list this past Advent.   I’ve never gone wrong in taking his advice, so when the book showed up on the Catholic Company’s review list, I saw my big chance.    The result was consistent with Father’s track record: Not something I would have chosen myself, but I’m glad to have given it a try.

Saint of the Day is a compilation of lives of saints spanning from the time of Jesus through our day.  Most entries are about one page front and back, and include a brief biography, a reflective commentary, and a quote which is either from that saint, or which is connected in some way with that saint’s life and teachings.   There are also entries for most (but not all) of the event-related feasts.  (Think: the Visitation or the Immaculate Conception.)

To answer the most common question I received while reading this book:  No, there is not an entry for every single day of the year.  So, for use as a daily devotional, it will meet many readers’ needs far more precisely than we would like to admit.

Because the entries are brief, the editors naturally had to be selective about what information to include.  The general pattern is this: If it is expected that the average reader already knows about the saint, the focus is on analysis and spiritual lessons to be learned.  If the saint is either relatively obscure or relatively new, the entry provides more concrete biographical details.  Certain major saints and events don’t make the book, either because they are too specialized (St. Genevieve – Patron Saint of Paris) or so well known they needn’t be discussed at all (Feast of the Incarnation).

I  found the book most helpful for learning about new saints — especially those newly canonized, but also some of the more obscure historic saints.   I found that if I already knew quite a lot about a saint, invariably the editors had chosen to leave out some crucial detail I thought terribly important.    I was also frustrated with some entries that omitted even bare biographical details such as where the saint lived, in favor of more reflective commentary.  For example, the entry for “Teresa of Jesus” never tells us that this Teresa of Avila — I was only sure they were one and the same because I happened to have The Way of Perfection sitting on the bathroom counter,  which work was mentioned in the “Teresa of Jesus” entry.

I was very happy to confirm the commentary is all 100% straight Catholicism — neither to the left nor the right.  Because the book was assembled from the work of many contributing authors, and because my mood is highly changeable, sometimes I found the quotes and reflections a little wanting, other times they seemed to be dead-on.  For many entries, the related quote comes from a papal encyclical or other modern church document. I found myself  frustrated at times by their ponderous style, but also glad the editors chose to introduce the reader to these momentous and undeniably relevant works.

I’m still looking for the perfect one-volume, general-interest saints book.   Saint of the Day takes an honest stab at that effort, and if it isn’t perfect, I wasn’t able to find another book on the shelves of my local catholic bookstore that did as well.   For the fairly informed catholic adult looking  for a combination devotional and historical brush-up, this is a sound choice.  It probably will not be the one book that meets all your needs, but it is reliably catholic, and certainly does what any good saints book will do:  it points you in the right direction.

Interesting article re: witchcraft, the church and the state.  Quick, readable, specific enough to be useful.  Can’t comment myself, but gives you some fodder for further study.  Will say that the info Mike Flynn gives does seem to coordinate with what I have read elsewhere.  (H/T to Mark Shea for posting the link.)

Grammar & Apologetics

Picked up Living Your Faith by Robert Nash, SJ at my local thrift store the other week.  A lenten-quality kick-in-the-pants, published by Prentice Hall in 1951, originally published in Ireland under the title Is Life Worthwhile?.

So the other day Fr. Nash is onto me —  point after point about sin and salvation, our helplessness, God’s love for us, etc. etc.  And I think:  How on earth could someone (protestant) think Catholics are not Christians?   Next thing I know, I run into a line about when a Christian feels the “immense strength he has in Jesus and Mary”.

Ah.  Yes.  I can see where that would not sit quite right with the protestant soul.  Indeed, it initially struck me, rosary-pray-er that I am, as a bit off.   Then, corrected, I realized our problem is not theological, but grammatical.

The accusation of some protestants is that Catholics make a goddess of Mary.  A sentence like Fr. Nash’s seems to point that way:  Mary appears to be positioned as equal to Jesus.

Now Mary certainly holds a privileged place among God’s creatures, and Catholics do believe that the saints in Heaven are given an active role as co-heirs with Christ.  We are the Body of Christ here on earth, and we aren’t suddenly demoted to uselessness when we arrive in Heaven.  God doesn’t need us, but He lets us help him anyway.  But any role that Mary plays is of human type — appropriate to the kinds of work that God has allowed men to do.  We do not worship Mary as a goddess.  We just don’t.

So what about that sentence?   Do we have to do some kind of literary gymnastics to exonerate Fr. Nash?  Not at all.

When we see two people paired in a statement, it does not automatically mean the author considers them equal.  Everything depends on the actual relationship between the two.

So, if we read, “Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones are in surgery”, we get one idea.  We imagine two physicians, doing about the same work.      In contrast, if we read, “Dr. Smith and Nurse Jones are in surgery”, we imagine the scene differently.  We know that nurses and physicians have different roles, so we envision Smith doing what doctors do, and Jones doing what nurses do.

There is nothing contrived about this reading.  In English, we can pair two equals, we can pair two opposites, and we can also pair two related but unlike people or objects.  Doctor and doctor, doctor and patient, doctor and nurse.

Knowing nothing at all about Catholic theology would be something like knowing nothing at all about the practice of medicine.  When you read about “Dr. Smith and Nurse Jones” working together, or “Jesus and Mary” working together, if you truly don’t know what role each plays, as the reader you may have some confusion about what is being stated.

Can the reader of ill-will choose to intentionally “misunderstand” in order to make false accusations?  Certainly.  But as Catholics we have to consider that ambiguous grammar on our part  may be confusing and misleading for readers, listeners, and friends of good will.