Category: Reputable Vendors

DVD Review: Father of Mercy

Tiber River is the catholic media-review project sponsored by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods. After a few false starts, I finally got going as a reviewer this past week, with the DVD Father of Mercy. I chose it from the available review items because it seemed like a good fit for my eldest child’s study of just warfare this year. Not disappointed. Not at all.

What It Is: Father of Mercy (“The Children’s Angel” is the Italian title) is the made-into-a-movie telling of the story of Father Carlo Gnocchi, an Italian priest who served on the front lines as a chaplain in World War II, and afterwards undertook a massive work of mercy taking care of the many children injured and/or orphaned by the war. Fr Gnocchi was beatified in 2009, and the network of hospitals he founded is still in operation

The story is told in two parts. Part one begins during WWII, and tells of Fr. Gnocchi’s decision to leave his post as a high school teacher and university chaplain, and go to the front lines – first to the Albanian front, and later to the Russian front. Part II picks up during the Italian/German retreat from the Russian front, and tells the story of the vast works of mercy that Father Gnocchi undertook once back home. The two stories are told seamlessly in a single narrative, Part II literally beginning right there in the snow where Part I ended, with only a short intermission-style bit of music to tell you at the end of Part I to please go to bed and take it up again in the morning. (Total running time is 200 minutes.)

The DVD also includes a short study guide produced by Ignatius Press – excellent supplement, very helpful, provides both some historical background and a good breakdown of the moral issues presented in the film.

The story is somewhat fictionalized – timeframes are compressed or glossed over, and some real events are told via fictional characters (ie: Father Gnocchi did donate his corneas, but he donated them to others than the person depicted in the film). There is a love triangle among three youngsters thrown in for the purposes of building up of themes, and frankly in order to keep more of a plot going through the second half. (One of the supporting characters also helps ground us morally as the others are headed off to war in support of fascist Italy.)

What I Thought: Well, it was exactly what I had hoped. My boy watched the whole thing through in English, and hung around for a second viewing in Italian. (He tells me the light weapons were all authentic to the period, though he couldn’t verify the tanks.) We got to see a heroically-brave priest (and some heroically-brave soldiers), the honest horrors of war, and the waging of peace. More than I had hoped for: We get a film that is morally complex without being morally ambiguous. A mother and a catechist falls in love – yay! It’s a keeper! This is a movie you are perfectly happy for your youth to watch over and again. Even better: That study guide is VERY HELPFUL for those who need some assistance navigating the moral complexity.

But Was It A Perfect Film? No. Here are a few things you should know up front, so you don’t send me hate mail because I said it was a great movie and it turns out it triggered a pet peeve.

  • I don’t usually mind voice-over, but . . . it sure seemed to me like the original Italian had much more depth and vivacity than the English voice-over. And there are a couple spots in Part II where children-extras sound like they’re being faked by adults. Subtitles were fine.
  • I don’t do the “drama” genre much . . . so to me, the intensity of the playing pushed my suspension of disbelief, particularly in Part II. Part I held up fine because war, well, it really is that dramatically intense. But in Part II, I’m afraid I maxed out on the warm-hearted orphan scenes. (I would have preferred a good accounting-thriller for Part II. That’s a lot of hospitals the man founded – how come we only get to see the funding of the first one?? But perhaps my tastes are in the minority there.)
  • The story-telling was not as neat as I’d have liked. Some of the supporting characters were a little thin, and at times character development and plot points felt abrupt. Part of it, I suspect, was the effort to squeeze such a rich story into limited minutes. [Note: My children complained about none of these things, and probably most people who are used to watching TV and stuff wouldn’t notice either.]

I would say above all, and this is not so much a problem as a fact: There is definitely a genre divide between Part I and Part II. Part I is an intense WWII film, and very honestly it is exactly the one I wanted. The portrayal of war rings true with what I have heard from combat veterans, and it is stunningly lovely to see difficult questions of faith dealt with in a war film, with no namby-pamby mushy platitudes for the conclusion. Part II is more soap-opera-meets-warm-hearted-family-drama. (I know many people who would hate Part I, love Part II. It’s a taste thing. Though I think there is actually more kissing in Part I, hehe.)

And speaking of kissing, violence, graphic horrors of war, etc . . . the film is not rated. I give it a solid PG-13. Language is clean, kissing scenes are strictly kissing. (And not for nearly as many seconds as a certain 10-year-old-boys complained.) But the war violence is definitely there – scary, suspenseful, morally demanding. At times you get to see good guys do the wrong thing. And though the gore is very restrained, blood does spurt and wounds are shown; whole corpses (no piece parts) lay about in those places corpses are wont to lay, often with faces clearly visible. We see the lead-up to an unmedicated amputation, and there is a firing-squad scene where Fr. Gnocchi blocks our view right before we hear the shots fired.

Summary: I’m very glad I got this DVD – it was everything I had hoped and then some. Inspiring, well-told despite my quibbles (nicely produced, by the way), pleasure to watch both times through. I definitely felt pushed and moved – this is a story that stuck with me. My boy was inspired to go learn more, so it was an academic success as well. I give it a “buy” recommend if you want a solidly catholic movie that fits this era and these genres.

Follow-on to the review below:

If you are a catholic blogger who needs a steady supply of free, top-notch spiritual reading, I see that the The Catholic Company is still accepting new reviewers.  Highly recommended program, well-run and I have never, ever, had any difficulty picking a new book from the list of available titles.  There are usually a dozen or more options across a wide variety of mostly non-fiction genres.  You pick one out, they ship it to you, you post your review, you pick a new one out.  Very well-run.

–> My next pick (so look for a review one of these days) is Jimmy Aiken’s The Salvation Controversy, which promises to set me straight on my TULIP problems.   Well-timed.

Also look for a review here of the DVD Father of Mercy, my first blog-review for Tiber River.  Finished watching it (once in English voice-over, then with much relief again in the original Italian), just need to type up my thoughts.  (Hint: I don’t pick lousy product.)

So that should be posted soon, assuming no more exciting sub-plots here at home.  Been one of those weeks, hehe.  And also maybe a review of John Hathaway’s Prayer CD “Hide Me In Your Wounds: Daily Prayer with the Saints”, soon as I get through the whole thing.

In real life: We’re doing a math-n-craziness theme at school this summer.  New school year starts August 15th, and I’m planning to pretty much hit it running from the get-go.  Oh and we joined the YMCA.  Man I love that place.

Book Review: Sex Au Naturel

Sex Au Naturel: What It Is and Why It’s Good For Your Marriage

By Patrick Coffin

Emmaus Road, 2010

Having already blushed my way through the opening lines of Dark Night of the Soul, of course I had to jump on any Catholic Company review book featuring a picture of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss on the cover. Survival of the species might very well depend on it, you know.

Well, sorry, go ahead and put away the candles and silk sheets; turns out Patrick Coffin’s book isn’t quite about that.  What it is, however, is a pretty good one-stop overview of the Church’s teaching on birth control, in the context of contemporary culture.

Coffin opens with some background: How we got the encyclical Humanae Vitae, and why from the very beginning it was not universally embraced. He shares his own spiritual history by way of example, and also the reasoning that made him eventually accept the church’s doctrine.

From there the book moves into a comprehensive review of the major elements of NFP-apologetics.  There are chapters on:

  • Church Tradition concerning the use of birth control
  • Birth Control in the Bible
  • The Sacrament of Marriage as a reflection of the Holy Trinity
  • Natural Law arguments against contraception (including a nice explanation of what “Natural Law” actually is)
  • Contraception myth-busting — one chapter covering a potpourri of topics, and a second addressing the question of population control
  • How sterilization fits into church teaching – both for those considering the procedure, and those who have already been sterilized
  • What, exactly, are the differences between contraception and Natural Family Planning?
  • How do modern fertility treatments fit into church teaching?

An appendix provides a useful array of recommended resources for those who want to learn more, including contact information for the major NFP methods taught in North America.

The book is short (134 pages) and the tone is conversational.  Each chapter is compact and easily readable — at times to the point of being a mite choppy.  I think the book would be most helpful to a catholic reader who wants to quickly dive into the subject and get a good grasp on the major issues. Between the appendix and the many well-known authors quoted throughout the book (Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, Christopher West, etc.), for any given topic, Coffin’s book is a jumping-off point: You get the main ideas, and he gives you clues for where to look if you want to dig deeper.

I don’t, however, think the book would normally be helpful to a reader still struggling with the church’s teachings on sex.  In such a compact work covering so many topics, there isn’t space to develop arguments as thoroughly as such a reader would need. At times as I read I thought, “But what about____ objection?” or “But that wouldn’t makes sense to someone who has ____concern” or simply, “This argument needs to be developed more explicitly”.

I am hopeful that Sex Au Naturel will go into second and third editions. There are areas where I think a more thorough or carefully developed treatment would be helpful. But at its base this is a great first go-round at attempting to put a lot of material into a compact and readable form, accessible to ordinary catholics.   I firmly intend to keep it on my own shelves for future reference, and should also add this is a good title for the shelves of any parish library.

 

 

Cover art courtesy of Emmaus Road.

Catholic Writers Conference Live

Highly recommended.   Here’s the main site – top of the page is where you click to see the conference schedule and all that.  (See Karina Fabian’s site for yet more info.)   In case you weren’t sure, Mark Shea and Michelle Buckman are both stupendously enjoyable writers.    And this is pretty much the go-to event for hanging out with the superstars of the catholic world.   Attend the writers conference, and you get to go to the Catholic Marketing event free.  So it’s a combo deal.  Plus, the writers conference will be relatively small, which for individual attention and encouragement is much much better than some giant massive event.

If you are going to be in or near Valley Forge, PA August 4-6, plan to attend.

(Hey I thought I would add just to clarify: Sadly, I will be nowhere near VF, PA on the necessary dates.  Just in case anyone had been secretly hoping to see me there, thought I’d dash your hopes now rather than a week from now.  But all the other cool kids will be there, so go anyway.  🙂

Someone remind me to add Catholic Free Shipping to the sidebar.  And where to put it — humor?  General Catholic? Reputable Vendors?  Thanks to the Ironic Catholic for pointing out vocabulary entries such as this one:

“Mandatum”

What I thought it meant: A survey or questionnaire that by law one is required to truthfully complete, as the census.

When Father Rick saw the part in the mandatum inquiring how many children he had, he thought he ought to write down the two thousand people he  serves in his parish.

What it really means: The new commandment Jesus left with the Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper, to love one another as Jesus loved them (John 13:34-35); it also refers to the priests’ washing of his parishioners’ feet during Holy Thursday Mass.

If it were possible for every single one of his flock to be honored during the mandatum, Father Rick would have washed each foot with great humility.

*****

Meanwhile, speaking of reputable Catholic vendors, my new Catholic Company review book is Sex Au Naturel by Patrick Coffin.  So far so good, though I’m afraid it is not nearly as racy as Dark Night of the Soul.  Or, say, the Bible.   On the other hand, it seems to fill a different need.  And plus, married ladies should be made to read something a little tamer every now and then.

In other catholic vendor news, I’m sorry to see that Requiem Press is closing.  Would some technically-knowledgeable person please beg Jim Curley to make the titles available via e-book going forward?  Sad to see good books going out of print.

Mater et Magistra (et other news first)

The big news first: I’m out of the hole! Yay.  I can do things like check my e-mail, or water the garden without getting out of breath.  Actually the mowed the lawn Monday, which involves more miracles than we need discuss here. (But, note to self: When in doubt, marry a man who can maintain heavy machinery.  One more reason we call him the SuperHusband.)  Was back to fighter practice yesterday after about a month off — won’t say I was 100%, but wow it sure cheers me up, getting out and trying to stab people for a little while.

***

Now for our topic: Mater et Magistra magazine. My first issue arrived right when the baby was up with croup — she and I went out in the early morning hours to fetch the newspaper, and look, I’d forgotten to check the mail!  New magazine!  Which said 3-year-old immediately claimed, and for the first few hours I was okay with that.  Until she hid it in her room someplace to keep it safe.

But we eventually cleared up that little misunderstanding, and wow, I had no idea.  This is a great magazine!  Written by actual homeschooling parents (as the better homeschool magazines are), the tone is very practical and honest.  When you read an article encouraging you to respond to God’s grace, or persevere through a struggle, it is written, you discover, by a person who openly admits to dirty laundry.

The articles in this issue ran the gamut — encouragement, general practical tips, specific study ideas, and lots of reviews.  The style is Catholic Lay Intellectual — this is the place where all the catholic nerd moms gather to compare notes.   So think of articles a little longer, a little deeper, than what you find about anywhere else in the publishing-for-parents industry.

The Catholicism seems to me to be just normal catholic Christianity — I didn’t detect a particular strain to one extreme or another, other than a sincere desire to follow God.  In my opinion, a non-catholic who was comfortable with Catholic-y stuff might also enjoy the magazine.

The format is small — half-size, like a Reader’s Digest — and very reflective-feeling.  Lots of words, smallish print, no hype, a few pictures, mostly traditional artwork.  Interior is all black-and-white or black-and-special-color-for-the-unit-study-insert.  (Curiously: the color scheme and general format remind me a bit of this blog . . . I suppose if you hate this place, you might hate looking at the magazine, too.)

This is a small, low-budget production.  But a really nice magazine.  If you like to read here, or places like Darwin Catholic, Eric Sammons, or anything by Amy Wellborn, and you homeschool, you will probably like Mater et Magistra.  Highly recommended.  Maybe ask someone to give you a subscription for Mother’s Day?

Blog Maintenance

Added a couple links:

The Lewis Crusade is written by John C. Hathaway, who can transform wading-pool duty at a parish picnic into an intellectual feast for the busy catholic brain.  Great guy who has a thing or two to say to you.

Uncommon Adornments & Phos Hilarion are the twin businesses of jewelry-maker Ann Rinderknecht Miko.  Very nice work, take a look.   (And if  John’s not available, she’s right up there in the entertaining-conversation department.)

Thanks to Julie at Happy Catholic for pointing readers to Unhappy Hipsters.  I actually like modern architecture, and have no particular bias against literary fiction, either — but it’s still pretty funny.  Adult humor in the proper sense of the word — parody it takes an adult to appreciate.

Just so you know, I’ve been sneaking in other links here and there and forgetting to tell you.  So if you are a feed-reader, you might want to click on the blog and peruse, one of these days when you are hard-up for reading material.

***

Speaking of reading material, I just finished Saint of the Day.  So expect a review soon.  (And yes, it did take me a mighty long time to finish it.  But hey, I read a year’s worth of saints in less than one year. How many years of saints have you read this winter?  Hmmn?  People smarter than me don’t answer that.)

Catholic Writers’ Conference

The Catholic Writers’ Guild is putting on another on-line Catholic Writers’ Conference coming up at the beginning of February.  Registration is free, and you can participate as much or as little as you want.  If you enjoy writing I recommend you give it a try.

Go ahead and register now at http://www.catholicwritersconference.com/index.php.

***

BTW: I happen to know that several of my readers here are qualified to lead workshops at this conference.   So you might, ahem, go volunteer to lend your expertise.  Good for business.

***

I attended last year, and found the conference to be very enjoyable and informative.* The conference included workshops on all genres, and is relevant whether you tend to write for the ‘catholic’ market or for the wider public.  Workshops covered both writing skills and getting-yourself-published skills.  Definitely a bias towards helping you become A Person Who Gets Paid to Write — good focus, I suppose, since being a volunteer writer doesn’t require much training.

You will benefit most if you are able to participate, and to be able to participate, you will need to clear your schedule a bit.   At the very least, plan to substitute participation in the conference for your other goofing-off activities that week.  I lucked out last year — the conference fell on a week when my schedule was wide open, complete with borrowed children to keep my own occupied.  This allowed me to participate in one workshop intensively, dabble in a few others, and browse the rest; in order to do that, I probably spent 2-4 hours a day either at the conference or on my own doing homework.   (I could have spent less time on the homework, but I got more out of the conference by putting more into it.)

Format was a combination of discussion-forum workshops and live chatroom discussions on various topics, led by catholic authors and editors with expertise in the subject at hand.  There were also pitching sessions with catholic publishers and agents, which of course were not of any direct use to me since I had (and still have) no manuscripts for sale, but I learned quite a bit about that part of the industry from the related workshops.

[Are you thinking of leading a workshop? Know that last year many of the leaders of one workshop participated as a student in other workshops.  You can do both. ]

I found all the workshop leaders (agents, authors, publishers, editors) to be polite, encouraging, and no-nonsense.  Their goal is to bring more catholic writers to the reading public, and they will not pamper you in the process.  If you are looking for someone to tell you how wonderful you are and how whatever you want to do is just fine, call your mother; if you are looking for someone to help you with your writing, try the conference.

*Same danger, of course, as reading a book on how to improve your writing: You may end up like myself, not a better writer, just a guiltier one.  Nothing quite like a new improved awareness of all your faults.

Book Review: The Fathers

The Fathers

Pope Benedict XVI

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-59276-440-2

Summary: Wow. This is a good book. You should go buy it.

The details:

I was very daunted, as you may recall, at the prospect of having to actually read this book. Although I very much wanted to read it, or specifically, I wanted to have read it, I was afraid that it would be much too hard for myself, a junior intellectual. Fear not. The most difficult chapter is the first, and even in that one, there was only one sentence that I could not understand. And which, on a second reading, I do understand. So here it is, the very hardest sentence in the whole book, found at the bottom of page 8, emphasis in the original:

Clement’s letter touches on topics that were dear to St. Paul, who had written two important letters to the Corinthians, in particular the theological dialectic, perennially curent, between the indicative of salvation and the imperative of moral commitment.

If you can read that, you can read the whole book. And if you can’t read that, you can probably still read all the other sentences, which aren’t nearly so bad. I read the entire rest of the book not knowing what that sentence meant, and never really suffered for my want of knowledge.

What is in the book?

The Fathers is a series of twenty-six biographies of church fathers, starting with St. Clement of Rome and finishing with St. Augustine of Hippo, one person per chapter. The text is taken from the Holy Father’s weekly general audiences from March 7, 2007 to February 27, 2008; depending on the person, the chapter might have been covered in a single talk, divided into two separate talks (usually “life” first and “teachings” second), or in the case of St. Augustine, three talks. So, almost blog-like in format. If, say, you had a blog written by the pope.

As a result each biography can stand alone, although they form a continuous whole if you have the time and interest for reading the book cover to cover. I recommend doing that, by the way, if you can. But if you can’t, don’t panic. You could also put the book out in a convenient space and just pick it up periodically to read a chapter at random, and you will still benefit significantly.

Each entry gives a history of the life of the church Father (all but three are saints), including the context in which they lived. It will help if you have some knowledge of the history and geography of ancient Rome. If not, this is as good a place as any to get your introduction. I had only one place-name that left me completely stumped: Aquilea. Never heard of it before. Usually the text gives some clue – the modern name of a city, for example, but for this one all we were told was that it was in the Decima Regione. I, sadly, did not know my Regione – though I do now. At least that particular one. The rest of the biographies, though, gave me no geography trouble at all.

Following the history is a section on the father’s teachings. Here again, a junior scholar’s serving of theology is helpful. I would say that if you are comfortable with the Catechism of the Catholic Church – that is to say, you can pick it up and read it and make good sense of whatever it is you are reading – then you can probably work through this book with similar confidence.

Is it a boring book?

No!

Here are the three things I found most interesting:

1. You get a real sense of the depth of the catholicness of the early church. You cannot come away from this book persuaded that early church history is just a bunch of myths shrouded in the mists of time, nor that our (catholic) understanding of it is based on a few scraps of paper interpreted how we want to read them. You really get a sense for the weight and substance of our catholic heritage.

[One possible pitfall: After reading this, if someone pulls one of those anti-catholic ‘just a medieval invention lines’, you’ll probably just stare at them dumbly and wonder where they came up with that nonsense. You’ll be thinking some piece of apologetic brilliance along the lines of ‘Are you one of those people who has twenty cats and tin foil on your windows?’ So be warned. Knowledge of history really is knowledge of the catholic church. They aren’t making that up.]

2. The biographies find a beautiful balance between breadth and depth. Each entry is substantial enough to give you something to chew on, but not overwhelming. You will feel like you’ve ‘met’ the church father – if it is your first meeting, you come away with a good idea of who he is and what he thinks, and will want to get to know him better; if he is an old friend, you’ll enjoy the chance to say hello again, and be reminded of the reasons for your friendship. Even more, if you read the whole book front to back, you will get a sense of who the fathers are as a group – how they fit together, how they fit into church history, and how their theology fits into the history of catholic doctrine.

3. There is Pope Benedict XVI’s ever fresh and practical spirituality. There is just nothing dry in any of these biographies. Every one of these church fathers could be your parish priest, speaking to you, today, about the spiritual challenges you face. The holy father isn’t trying to ‘make’ the ancient fathers of church ‘relevant for today’ – he shows you that they what they teach, both by their lives and their writings, really is as inspiring and applicable to us in the 21st century as it was so many centuries earlier.

Conclusion: This is a book to keep around the house. I definitely give it a ‘buy’ recommendation. If not for All Saints (really, you should), then put it on your Christmas wish list. Good for reading, and good as a reference for your all your quick-look-up-a-church-father needs. It isn’t an easy book, but it isn’t a hard one either. If you are a basic model catholic blog reader, it should be about your speed, challenging but not overwhelming. If you’re more advanced, it will be light and refreshing. If you are a junior junior catholic, you’ll have to work through it, but the format is such that you can bite off just a little at a time and still benefit, without having to feel like you have to read the whole thing right away.

Good book. Get yourself a copy.

**

And now a word from our sponsor . . .

This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Fathers.

. . . The opinions, of course, are entirely my own. When I say it’s a good book, it’s because it’s a good book. That said, it’s not like I’m going to sign up to review anything that looks like it’s a bad book, heh.

The Catholic Company is still accepting new reviewers, by the way. Here’s the link: http://www.catholiccompany.com/content/Catholic-Product-Reviewer-Program.cfm Free books, but of course you have to actually read them, and then tell people what you think. Not that you don’t do that with your books anyway.