The well-received, award-winning movie can be ordered online from Ignatius Press. Or place your order toll-free at 1-800-651-1531.
And if you missed it last summer, here is Steven Greydanus's article, "Bella," about the making of the movie, written for the August/September 2007 edition Catholic World Report.
Shaw, the author of several books including the just published
Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church (Ignatius, 2008), has written a lengthy piece, "On Clericalism" (ht: Mark Shea) for InsideCatholic.com:
Imagine a man who wakes up in the morning with a headache, fever, and chills. The symptoms persist and are there when he goes to bed that night. Next day, it's the same thing again -- headache, fever, chills. This continues day after day, week after week, over and over. Finally the poor man starts to think: "I guess this is how people always feel. I just have to live with it."
The Catholic Church is something like that man. In the Church, the illness is called clericalism. We Catholics have suffered from it so long that most of us take it for granted. In fact, we're clericalists ourselves. "That's how it is," we say. And our symptoms persist.
They look like this:
- A pastor lords it over his people, consulting no one and habitually making unilateral decisions. His people are a passive, dispirited lot, quick to complain and slow to cooperate.
- A bishop routinely goes far beyond fundamental moral principles in talking about political issues. He advocates highly specific solutions to problems that admit of more than one legitimate view and makes no secret of his political partisanship.
- A carefully planned, highly touted diocesan vocations recruitment program aimed at attracting men to the priesthood turns out a flop. Its planners scratch their heads and wonder what went wrong.
Clericalism is operative in all these cases and many others. After all this time, you'd think people would have caught on and taken remedial steps. But even now, many haven't. "That's how it is," they say. And the symptoms persist.
In Nothing to Hide, Shaw argues that clericalism is the key to understanding the sex abuse scandal, especially how it was handled (or, rather, mishandled):
But visible or not, clericalism and the clericalist culture were at the heart of the sex abuse scandal. ... Clericalism did not cause the sex abuse, nor did sex abuse cause clericalism. But the connections are very real. Sex abuse in a clericalist social setting naturally takes on a clericalist coloration, making it difficult to keep the two things separate and distinct. To put it simply, the attitudes and behavior patterns tied to clerical elitism time and against came into play when priests were found by their superiors to have engaged in abuse. (p 15)
Read more about Nothing to Hide.
Chopra's Christ: The Mythical Creation of a New Age Panthevangelist | Carl E. Olson | A review of The
Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore, by Deepak Chopra | May 5, 2008
I'll begin with a positive
note: Deepak Chopra's new book, The Third Jesus, has a well-designed, eye-catching dust jacket.
Now the negative: the rest
of the book is not nearly so attractive. Not even close.
In fact, it is often
downright ugly, in a New Age fundamentalist, Christian bashing, intellectually
vapid, historically dismissive sort of way.
Chopra, a one-time medical
doctor who was described in 1999 by TIME magazine as "the poet-prophet of alternative medicine," subtitled his
book, "The Christ We Cannot Ignore." Would that we could ignore this book and
the false Christ it presents. But Chopra, who has authored some fifty books and
has earned millions of dollars from his particular brand of neo-Hindu monism
for the masses (he studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of
Transcendental Meditation), is quite popular. And it appears that The Third
Jesus, published in February 2008,
has sold well, having spent several weeks on The New York Times top ten bestsellers list for "Hardcover Advice"
books. [1]
Worse, The Third Jesus has been praised by a number of Christians, some of
them well known "progressives" such as John Shelby Spong and former Catholic
priest Matthew Fox. A few of them are Catholic. For example, Father Paul
Keenan, the host of "As You Think," a program on The Catholic Channel/Sirius
159, says, "In The Third Jesus
Deepak Chopraunfolds for us the spirit of Jesus and with a reverence that
is at once simple and profound makes his spirit accessible to us in our
everyday lives." Perhaps Fr. Keenan didn't actually read the book. I hope that
is the case, for if he thinks the Jesus conjured up by Chopra has anything to
do with the historical, biblical Jesus worshiped by orthodox Christians, he
needs to find a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and shore up his knowledge of Christology 101.
Read the entire review...
Ratzinger's Faith and Reason | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | In
Appreciation of Tracey Rowland's Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope
Benedict XVI
"Benedict believes that the
Mass is a Holy Sacrifice, offered ritually as worship, not a fellowship meal, that
those who attend do so for the purpose of Divine Worship, that music which is
based on most contemporary popular musical forms is completely unworthy, and
that everything that is related to the Mass and other liturgies of the Church
should be marked by beauty. Beauty is not an optional extra or something
contrary to a preferential option for the poor. It is not a scandal to clothe
sacred words in silken garments. Catholics are not tone deaf philistines who
will be intellectually challenged by the use of a liturgical language or put
off by changeless ritual forms." — Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger's Faith
"From the beginning,
Christianity has understood itself as the religion of the 'Logos', as the
religion according to reason. In the first place, it has not identified its
precursors in the other religions, but in the philosophical enlightenment which
has cleared the path of tradition to turn to the search of the truth and
towards the good, toward the one God who is above all gods." — Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, "The Subiaco Address"
I.
The reading of what is
billed as a "theology" book on a pope, of all things, will not seem to be what
this book surely is to read, namely, a distinct pleasure. Aristotle warned us
that if we do not take proper delight in all things, especially in the things
of the mind, we will not know the highest pleasures that are in store for us
when we seek to use that given faculty we call intellect. Well, that is not an
exact citation from Aristotle, but pretty close. Clearly the highest pleasures
follow from our knowing the highest truths and the reality in which they are
founded. The central point of this book is this: "What is the Christian
understanding of God?" And what is the relation of the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob to the God of the Philosophers? No doubt our best current guide to
the answer to these fundamental questions lies in the work and pontificate of
Benedict XVI.
This slim volume by Tracey
Rowland is introduced by George Cardinal Pell. He remarks, "It is a sign of the
times and a portent of the future that this excellent volume was written by a
young, married woman" well on her way to "becoming Australia's leading
theologian" (x). Tracey Rowland is from the Brisbane area, currently the head
of the John Paul Institute in Melbourne, where her husband Stuart is a lawyer.
She earned a Master's Degree in political philosophy at the University of
Melbourne and her doctorate at Cambridge University in England.
Read the entire essay...
Introduction to Adrienne von Speyr's The Book of All Saints | Hans Urs von Balthasar
This work came into being over the course of several years, as new portraits
were constantly added on occasion or at my own request. In the beginning,
Adrienne was shown individual saints during times when she was not at all
thinking of these particular people. For the most part, they were shown in
their general disposition and, then, often in prayer that was particularly
characteristic of them. Adrienne was each time able to reproduce their
disposition when we recorded the dictation, and the words they spoke in prayer
were given to her again during the dictation. Once the dictation was over, she
would most often completely forget what she had seen and heard, as always was
the case when Adrienne had "settled" something in obedience and put
herself at the disposal of a new task.
In the first period, she was also often given the vision of a saint during the
night while she was at prayer, and she would report to me the next day that she
had seen this or that saint, asking whether she could tell me about him or her.
Frequently, she would be shown the essence of the person she saw without
knowing exactly what the person's name was. Once she said, "Today I have
seen Gregory." "Which one?" I asked. She confessed that she did
not know there was more than one; she had no idea which person it was with whom
she had interacted. I asked her then to begin, and after just a few sentences
it became clear to me that it could have been none other than Gregory
Nazianzen, as the section in this book will confirm. Later came Gregory the
Great and Gregory of Nyssa to join him.
Continue reading...
Benedict XVI's Theological Vision: An Introduction | Monsignor Joseph Murphy | From the introduction
to Christ Our Joy: The
Theological Vision of Pope Benedict XVI
Although this book refers on occasion to what Joseph Ratzinger has written or said following his
election as successor of Peter, for the most part it is based on his
theological, spiritual, and pastoral writings as professor in various German
universities (Bonn, Münster, Tubingen, and Regensburg) and later as Archbishop
of Munich and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A
deeper understanding of Pope Benedict's Magisterium requires constant reference
to his earlier writings, in which the same themes are treated in considerable
depth, in the light of Scripture and the Church's tradition and in dialogue
with contemporary concerns. In this regard, it may prove both useful and
illuminating to say something about the kind of theological reflection we shall
encounter in the course of this book. Although the list is certainly incomplete,
a number of characteristics come to mind:
1. All of Joseph Ratzinger's writings are solidly scriptural. Scripture is, of course, the soul of all theology,
[8] but not all theologians make such widespread use of Scripture as the
primary source and inspiration of their reflections as Ratzinger does. While he
makes judicious use of the most reliable findings of modern exegesis, he is
careful to read Scripture within the tradition of the Church and as a unity,
centered on the person and saving work of Jesus Christ.
That quote from the great Swiss theologian Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar refers to
Book of All Saints, written by the mystic Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) and available on April 29th from Ignatius Press. It is a unique work, as the description indicates:
Adrienne von Speyr, a renowned mystic and spiritual writer from Switzerland, was received into the Catholic Church at the age of 38 on the Feast of All Saints, 1940, by one of the theological giants of the 20th century, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar. He became her spiritual director and confessor until her death in 1967 during which time Adrienne was favored with many gifts of authentic mystical prayer. Balthasar considered one of the central characteristics of Adrienne's prayer to be her transparency to the inspirations she received from God, along with a deep personal communion with the saints.
Over a period of many years, Adrienne would see the saints (and other devout people) at prayer, and she would dictate what she saw to Fr.von Balthasar - while she was in a state of mystical prayer. Through a unique charism, she was able to put herself in the place of various individuals to see and describe their prayer, their whole attitude before God. Not all of her subjects are saints in the strict sense of the word, but all struggled, with varying degrees of success, to place their lives at the disposal of their Creator. This book presents these unique mystical insights into the prayer lives of many saints taken from Adrienne’s direct visions of them in prayer. Among the long list of saints in this book are St. John the Apostle, St. Augustine, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. John Bosco, St. Bernadette, St. Dominic, St. Edith Stein and many, many more.
In this powerful spiritual work, the reader is able to participate in the devotional and spiritual life of the Church throughout the centuries by learning how numerous saints and devout people prayed, thus reflecting on the timelessness and beauty of the prayer of the Church.
For more on Book of All Saints, visit the book's website, which contains the book's introduction (PDF file), praise for the book, and photos of von Speyr. And for more about von Speyr's life and work, visit her Ignatius Insight author page.
• The Confession of the Saints | Adrienne von Speyr. Chapter 11 of Confession
• Creation | Adrienne von Speyr. From The Boundless God
• Perceiving God's Will | Adrienne von Speyr. An excerpt from Light and Images
• Death, Where Is Thy Sting? | Adrienne von Speyr | From
The Mystery of Death
The book? Joseph and Chico. And here is the story, courtesy of the "We Belong to the Lord" blog.
Finding Shakespeare and Reclaiming the Classics | An Interview with Joseph Pearce, author of
The Quest for Shakespeare | Carl E. Olson
Joseph Pearce is the
prolific author of several acclaimed biographies of major Catholic literary
figures, including G. K. Chesterton, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Hilaire Belloc, as
well as several other works. He is a Writer in Residence and Professor of
Literature at Ave Maria University in Florida, Editor-in-Chief of Ave Maria University
Communications and Sapientia Press, as well as Co-Editor of the The
Saint Austin Review (or StAR), an international review of Christian culture,
literature, and ideas published in England (St. Austin Press) and the United
States (Sapientia Press).
Pearce's most recent book is
The Quest for Shakespeare, due
this month from Ignatius Press (website). He is also editor of the Ignatius
Critical Editions, a tradition-oriented alternative to popular textbook series such as
the Norton Critical Editions or Oxford
World Classics, designed to
concentrate on traditional readings of the Classics of world literature. The
three initial volumes of the Ignatius Critical Editions—King Lear,
Frankenstein, and
Wuthering Heights—will be published this spring by
Ignatius Press.
Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, recently spoke to Pearce about his
book on Shakespeare, the Ignatius Critical Editions, and the importance of
reading classic literature.
Read the entire interview...
Noted literary biographer (and fabulous speaker) Joseph Pearce will be giving three talks and having two book signings in northern California this Thursday through Saturday. He will be talking about his soon-to-be available book,
The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome:
SHAKESPEARE’S AMAZING SECRET
The Overwhelming Evidence for His CatholicismWilliam Shakespeare is perhaps the greatest writer who ever lived. He strides like a colossus across the modern age, surpassing all others and surprising each new generation with the wisdom that emerges from his work. Famous, yet almost unknown, this great man of history is also one of the most elusive. Why? Who was he really? What did he believe? Can we understand his plays and poetry if we don’t know the man who wrote them? Joseph Pearce, acclaimed literary biographer, says that most books and biographers of the Bard have gotten him totally wrong. They misread the man and misread his work. Now Shakespeare’s biggest secret can be revealed. A secret that has been largely hidden for some four hundred years. A secret that will send shock waves of panic through the secular fundamentalist academy. And bring great joy to the Catholic world.
Pearce’s exhaustive research and meticulous study of the details and facts on the life of the Bard lead to the inescapable conclusion that Shakespeare was a believing Catholic who lived in very anti-Catholic times. The world’s greatest writer was a believing Catholic! His work is full of undiscovered Catholic meaning. He knew personally some of the saints of the Church who were martyred for their Catholic faith. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism. Discover why the Bard’s Catholic faith is causing panic among the liberal elites in the school system. Discover how Shakespeare can be a powerful weapon to win converts to the Catholic faith.
Come hear best-selling literary biographer, Joseph Pearce, author of the just-released book, The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome, speak here in Northern California!
TALKS:
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 7:30 PM
St. Augustine Episcopal Church
(No Charge—Donations taken)
3825 Cincinnati Ave, Rocklin, CA
(near Sacramento)
Directions: Hwy. 80 to 65 North (Towards
Marysville)—left on Sunset—left on CincinnatiFRIDAY, APRIL 25, 7:30 PM
Trinity Grammar & Prep
(No Charge—Donations taken)
2055 Redwood Rd., Napa, CA
(two blocks west of Hwy. 29)SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 7:30 PM
Our Lady of Peace Church Hall
(tickets $10)
2800 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara
(off Hwy. 101 at Great America Pkwy.)BOOK SIGNINGS:
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2 - 4 PM
Easters Catholic Bookstore,
5441 Palm Ave., Sacramento (just west of
Auburn-Garfi eld intersection)
Info—call Easters at 916-338-7272FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 12 NOON - 2 PM
Glad Tidings Bookstore,
6700 Santa Rita Rd., Pleasanton, CA
Info —call Glad Tidings at 925-847-9787
For more info, download this promotional flyer (PDF format).
