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The Divine Physician and the Doctor

The Divine Physician and the Doctor | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

…for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
—2 Corinthians 12:10

He’s back. My favorite recent incarnation of the alien Time Lord known as the Doctor arrived again this month, sonic screwdriver (or sunglasses) at the ready. Peter Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor is prickly, intelligent, standoffish, and alien in ways that harken back to the first decade of Doctor Who. It’s worth pondering that on a series fifty years old, sometimes a return to origins feels fresher than “new” directions, which often end up taking a show in the same direction all the other shows are going. In the opening two-parter The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar, the Doctor once again faces Davros, the maniacal creator of the Daleks, in what may be the best use of the character since Tom Baker’s Doctor faced him when he was first introduced in Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

In these two opening episodes of the series, the Doctor is facing not only two of his oldest enemies: Davros and the Master (now regenerated into female form as the Mistress)—but also the question of whether his own weaknesses may be his ultimate downfall.

—

What some people call NuWho, the show since it’s revival after a long hiatus, has been hit and miss. But so was the original. The budget has increased vastly since the original run of Doctor Who, which at times had the homespun charm of watching a community theater production. I can remember as a child realizing that various monsters were made of such things as bubble wrap and tape. Unlike slick Hollywood productions, on Doctor Who the seams were all visible: a rampaging robot might brush a “metal” wall and make the whole set wobble. But the actors playing the various incarnations of the Doctor, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker especially, had a charisma that could make you forget the low budget. As an adult, I began to delve further back into Doctor Who, back to William Hartnell’s crotchety First Doctor and Patrick Troughton’s Chaplinesque Second Doctor.

In the 1980s Doctor Who began to misstep. Stories began to be cynical and dark, and often complicated and confusing. Though Peter Davison, who played the Doctor in the early 80s, was a dashing figure, his replacement was Colin Baker, written as a garishly dressed (even by Who standards) and aggressively unpleasant Doctor. The show never really recovered from this, though Sylvester McCoy, who followed Colin Baker, starred in a series of episodes that showed a great deal of improvement. The television show was suspended in 1989. In the 90s an attempt was made to revive the series with a television movie co-produced by American investors, starring Paul McGann as the Doctor (very good) and Eric Roberts (wait, what?!) as his nemesis, the Master. It failed to jump-start a revival.

It was in 2005 that Doctor Who came back starring Christopher Eccleston and garnered a new generation of fans. Modern Whovians glommed on particularly to David Tennant, the Doctor from 2005 to 2010, whose portrayal of the Doctor was probably the most human of all the incarnations. He was followed by my son’s favorite Doctor, the Eleventh, played by Matt Smith, who departed in 2013. Which brings us back to Peter Capaldi.

My oldest son, who is on the autism spectrum, was upset at first when he heard that Matt Smith would regenerate into a new Doctor. He went so far as to write a letter to Smith, giving him the heads-up that “you will regnrat in to Petr Capaldy.” It was touching then, to see Peter Capaldi take some time to speak to another young fan with autism in the UK, reassuring her that it was okay with Smith that he was the Doctor now. Capaldi also filmed a special message for a nine-year-old boy with autism whose grandmother had just died, helping the boy process his feelings. It made me a bigger fan of his work than ever before.

—

The Doctor values humanity. He sees the rights of the downtrodden and steps in to aid them whenever he can. His gruff or frivolous or snarky behavior (depending on his incarnation) is just a mask for the deep generosity of his character. And it’s here that I want to go a bit deeper.

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

Reviewers Wanted! Get a free copy of “We’ll Never Tell Them”!

From IPNovels.com:

Do you have an active blog? Ignatius Press is seeking bloggers to help us spread the word about our wonderful new novels! For a limited time, Ignatius Press is offering bloggers a FREE e-book of our new novel, We’ll Never Tell Them by Fiorella de Maria. In exchange for the e-book, we ask that you review the book on your blog and post the review on all social media outlets, Amazon, etc. We will also republish the review on our website www.ipnovels.com

Please email Rose Trabbic at [email protected] if you would like to participate and spread the word about great Catholic literature from Ignatius Press!

About the novel:

Kristjana, a nurse in England, flees twenty-first-century London in order to avoid a decision about her future. While attending a dying man in a Jerusalem hospital, she escapes into another woman’s past and discovers there the courage to embrace her own destiny. Through his vivid storytelling, Kristjana’s cancer patient, Leo Hampton, recounts his mother’s life—her upbringing in colonial Malta, her education in Edwardian England, and her service as a volunteer nurse during World War I.

Captivated by the story of Liljana Hampton, Kristjana is pulled into the agonies and the ecstasies of a previous generation, which almost seem more real to her than those of her own life. Through her vicarious experience of another woman’s personal history, Kristjana discovers the secret of fearlessly embracing her future.

With her passionate and colorful prose, award-winning author Fiorella De Maria seamlessly weaves back and forth between the past and the future. She realistically brings to life the cobbled streets of Old World Malta, the halls of an English boarding school, and the trenches of the Great War as she explores the age-old quest for some sense of security in a dangerous and uncertain world.

And the author:

Fiorella De Maria was born in Italy of Maltese parents. She grew up in Wiltshire, England, and attended Cambridge, where she received a BA in English Literature and a Masters in Renaissance Literature. She is the author of the novels Poor Banished Children and Do No Harm. She won the National Book Prize of Malta.

And what some notable folks are saying about the novel:

"Shows us that the sufferings of one life can be the source of the authenticity that gives life to another."
— Michael D. O'Brien, Author, Father Elijah

"An enthralling historical novel."
— Lucy Beckett, Author, A Postcard from the Volcano

"Moving and beautifully written."
— Piers Paul Read, Author, The Death of a Pope

"Engages from the very beginning to the very end."
— Michael Richard, Author, Tobit’s Dog

"Fiorella De Maria is not afraid of the complexities of life and is capable of mixing its suffering with poetry and love."
— Mother Dolores Hart, O.S.B., Author, The Ear of the Heart

"A story about connecting—heart to heart, mind to mind—even across the years."
— Roger Thomas, Author, The Accidental Marriage

New: "Elijah in Jerusalem: A Novel" by Michael O'Brien

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Elijah in Jerusalem: A Novel

by Michael O'Brien

Elijah in Jerusalem,the long-awaited sequel to the acclaimed, best-selling novel Father Elijah: An Apocalypse,is the continuing story of the Catholic priest called to confront a powerful politician who could be the Antichrist foretold in the Bible.

A convert from Judaism, a survivor of the Holocaust, and a participant in the founding of Israel, Father Elijah was for decades a monk on Mount Carmel, the mountain made famous by his Old Testament prophet-namesake. In the events of the preceding novel, the Pope commissioned Father Elijah to meet the President of the European Union, a man rising toward global control as President of the soon- to-be realized World Government. Recognizing in the President a resemblance to the anticipated Antichrist, the Pope asked Father Elijah to call the President to repentance, a mission that ended in failure.

In this sequel, now-Bishop Elijah, wanted for a murder he did not commit, tries again to meet the President. Accompanied by his fellow monk Brother Enoch, he enters Jerusalem just as the President arrives in the holy city to inaugurate a new stage of his rise to world power. This time Elijah hopes to unmask him as a spiritual danger to mankind. As the story unfolds, people of various backgrounds meet the fugitive priest, and in the encounter their souls are revealed and tested.

Elijah perseveres in his mission even when all seems lost. The dramatic climax is surprising, yet it underlines that God works all things to the good for those who love him. 

Michael D. O'Brien, iconographer, painter, and writer, is the popular author of many best-selling novels including Father Elijah, The Father's Tale, Eclipse of the Sun, Sophia House, Theophilos, and Island of the World. His novels have been translated into twelve languages and widely reviewed in both secular and religious media in North America and Europe.

“Rapid cultural decline makes the moving completion of Father Elijah's story particularly compelling. O'Brien's eloquent call for faith and courage needs to be heard throughout the world.”  

Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-chief, World

"A book you can’t put down. O'Brien is a master in narrating to us how the diabolic opposition to God might play itself out in our time."  

 Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.,Author, The Order of Things

“I have read all of O’Brien’s novels, but only while reading this one did I clearly notice the most significant power all of them have: something, or Someone, in these novels wakes me up, makes me wiser and holier.”

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., Author, Because God Is Real

“Equal parts a thriller, a meditation on the life of faith, and a Canterbury Tales–like series of vivid snapshots of men and women struggling with good and evil, Elijah in Jerusalem offers a cinematic and thought-provoking reading experience.” 

Holly Ordway, Ph.D., Author, Not God’s Type

“It’s been twenty years since the dullness of contemporary literature was set ablaze by the brilliance of Michael O’Brien’s classic novel, Father Elijah. It is, therefore, a true joy that this long-awaited sequel has finally been published.”

Joseph Pearce, Author, Catholic Literary Giants

“O’Brien is a masterful storyteller and a gifted artist. This beautiful depiction of human struggle and good versus evil will move and inspire you.”

Danielle Bean, Editor, Catholic Digest

“Elijah in Jerusalem takes the reader on a journey through Christianity’s ancestral heartlands that is at times both moving and terrifying. Michael O’Brien’s spiritual epic holds up a mirror to the moral chaos of the contemporary world without depriving the reader of hope.”

Fiorella De Maria, Author, Poor Banished Children

"Elijah in Jerusalem is one of O'Brien's best-crafted books, a fast-moving, suspenseful page-turner adorned with lyrical graces and moments of joy which alternate with stark terror and evocations a powerful presence of evil so palpable that it will prompt sober reflection on our troubled times.” 

David Lyle Jeffrey, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Baylor University

“The story of Father Elijah, who fights against the most misleading forms of evil with the weapons of Christ—courage, humility, charity—will appeal to anyone who is in search of heroism and truth. A thrilling novel full of deep intelligence and spirituality, tenderness and beauty.” 

 Astrid de Larminat, Le Figaro newspaper

The Gnostic Christ fails, the True Christ heals

"Christ Healing the Blind Man" (c. 1640) by Gioacchino Assereto [Wikipedia Commons]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, September 6, 2015, Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
Is 35:4-7a

Ps 146:7, 8-9, 9-10

Jas 2:1-5
Mk 7:31-37

How do you know the gnostic writings provide us with a less historically accurate depiction of Jesus than the Gospels?”

 

That question was put to me a few years ago after I had given a talk about The Da Vinci Code at a Catholic parish. The man who asked it was apparently upset I doubted Dan Brown’s claim that the so-called “Gnostic gospels” described a believable, human Jesus, while the four canonical Gospels had created a deity who had little or nothing to do with the real world. 



My answer was simple: “I read them.” No need to take my word for it when the evidence is readily found on the printed page. The Gnostic “gospels” aren’t gospels in the sense Christians use the word. They lack historical narrative, concrete details, historical figures, believable people, and details about social and religious life. The Jesus they describe has hardly any interest in the material realm. After all, the primary goal of Gnosticism, which came to maturation in the second century, was to escape the physical world. The Gnostic Jesus talked endlessly (and often nonsensically), but wouldn’t get his hands dirty.

Compare that with today’s Gospel reading, the story of Jesus healing the deaf mute, which is unique to the Gospel of Mark. It is a masterful and pithy account, filled with theological and spiritual riches. Jesus and the disciples were spending time in Gentile territory, circling north and then east before traveling south to the district of Decapolis, which is east of the Jordan River and south of the Sea of Galilee. During his previous visit to the region, Jesus had freed a man from demonic possession by sending the unclean spirits into a herd of swine (Mk. 5:1-20). Word of his return had apparently spread, and he was asked to heal a man who was both deaf and mute. 

The primary source for Mark’s Gospel was Peter, and the detailed description of the healing indicates the head apostle was profoundly moved by what he witnessed. There are seven specific actions described by Jesus: he took the man away from the crowd, touched his finger to the man’s ears, spit, touched the man’s tongue, looked to heaven, groaned, and said, “Be opened!”

In many ancient cultures, saliva was believed to possess healing properties. What is perhaps more striking for the modern reader is the intimate physicality of the action, as when a mother uses her saliva to rub dirt from her child’s cheek. The healing was not the work of a dispassionate doctor, but of the Lover of Mankind, the healer of body and soul. The Son, in becoming man, did not reluctantly put on flesh and blood, but was truly Incarnate, embracing humanity fully, completely, wholly. “That power which may not be handled came down and clothed itself in members that may be touched,” wrote Ephrem the Syrian, the great fourth-century theologian, “that the desperate may draw near to him, that in touching his humanity they may discern his divinity.”

Whereas the Gnostic Christ fled the material realm and ultimately failed to meet man where he lives, the real Christ—the Creator of all things seen and unseen—entered into time and history, experiencing the heat, the hunger, the sorrow, the weariness, and the pain. 

But this miracle, like all of Jesus’ healings, was about far more than relief from physical ailments and illness. It was a sign that the Kingdom was established, that streams of living water had been loosed in the desert, and that the poor were being offered the riches of faith and everlasting life. Jesus embraced all of humanity—Jew and Gentile, healthy and ill, hearing and deaf, speaking and mute—because each of us needs to be touched and transformed by his hands and his word.

So, one reason (out of many) the Gospels are far more believable than the Gnostic writings is they describe real people in the real world meeting a Man who really heals both body and soul.


(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the September 6, 2009, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Read the first chapter of "We’ll Never Tell Them" by Fiorella de Maria

Read the first chapters of the novel We’ll Never Tell Them by Fiorella de Maria. If you like what you’re reading, visit the novel’s page to learn more or order!

PROLOGUE

She had been to this place before. That was why, in her darkest hour, Kristjana had returned; she remembered the city from some far away dream of happier times and had come searching for it as though it were still to be found. She had not felt lost the last time she had stepped through Damascus Gate and walked among the hot, narrow, noisy streets of old Jerusalem, or if she had, she had not cared then. At eighteen years old, everything—even loneliness—had felt like an adventure. The space of a few short years could change everything, and Kristjana told herself that she might as well be an old woman, walking cautiously down the stone steps to a crypt where she felt more at home than among the jostle of the living.

She found the place she had sat on her last journey, partially hidden by a wall of smooth rock. It sheltered her from the gaze of anyone else who might wander round, and it was close to the tabernacle and the glow of the sanctuary lamp. When she had sat there as a gap year traveller, her head had still been full of the literary classics she was cramming for university, and she had thought in a pretentious moment that it would be a good idea to do what Sebastian Flyte had suggested in Brideshead: leave something precious in that place so that if life did not turn out as she had so hopefully planned it, she could return again and find the object. That way she could remember for a moment what it had felt like to be young and free and contented.

Kristjana was still young, though she had never been truly contented with life and was certainly not free. She was Scheherazade, a woman with a story to tell or to discover, whose only weapon to evade death was to be found in the weaving of stories. And somewhere in amongst all those mysterious threads of memory and make-believe, she thought she could discover a powerful enough reason to stay alive. Kristjana knew that if she stepped outside into the heat she had so recently escaped, she would find a stone pool where long ago a blind man was sent to wash the mud from his eyes and saw the world for the first time. That was why they all came, the tourists and the pilgrims in their orange baseball caps, visitors by the air-conditioned coach load. They were all explorers of a kind, hoping that in this most sacred and most divided of cities they might find the world and all its meaning in a blaze of overpowering light.

Kristjana was not like them, she was not an explorer by nature. If she was anything, she was a deserter hoping to hide among this forest of humanity—and where better for a refugee than a land of refugees? She was not even sure what she was running from, but in that worst year of her entire life she felt desperately frightened, not of the past, the place from which most people run, but of the future and what might be in store for her.

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

It was never easy to know where to start any tale. That was why writers and storytellers relied on formulas to get the narrative moving: “Once upon a time”, “In the middle of the journey of my life”, “Tell me, Muse”. Kristjana’s story began with the words of Tennyson: “When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see”. That was how she had come to find herself hundreds and hundreds of miles away from home, sitting in ponderous silence. That was how it had started, far away in London, the city she called home, when she had looked into the future and seen nothing. Nothing, the sum of all human fears. She had convinced herself that she had no future, that there was nothing to look forward to, nothing to work for, and it was in that bleak, bewildered frame of mind that she had committed the craziest act of her entire life.

1

There is a little part of every person that dreams of doing this, but most adults are too rational and too anchored by life to contemplate actually going through with it. 

Continue reading at www.IPNovels.com.

Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery

 

Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery | James Casper | IPNovels.com

No quality in art and fiction writing is more elusive and perplexing than sincerity.

No cemetery is quieter than one where nuns lie buried.

No school memories are richer or more compelling than those the Sisters left for us.

Insincerity ought to be easy to detect, there being so much of it close at hand in the form of self-deception and self-promotion. It is not easy, though. I first saw its ghostly presence years ago under the watchful eyes of Sister Almeda, SSND. I hear her saying, “Don’t rationalize, James. Don’t make things up!” It was not the first time she said it to me and to others. She would have embroidered those words on a school patrol flag lowered down over a street named Self-serving Excuses.

This is tough love, Sister Almeda, especially for school children and writers and readers of fiction. After all, what do kids and novelists do but make things up?  What do readers want these days but pleasure and escape?

It is almost too easy for a novelist to deceive. When confronted with a few doozies, Dan Brown reminded his critics again and again that The Da Vinci Code was fiction. No matter that readers by the thousands went to Paris and London expecting to see what he saw. More than a few must have scratched their heads as they searched for that huge Opus Dei complex under construction in New York City. For Dan Brown, fact and fiction are as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile.

Sister Almeda would have shaken a finger in his face.

If truth and honesty are not ever-present in fiction, if all that matters is making things up for the sake of selling books, what is wrong with an entire story being a pack of lies? Brown is a talented writer and an accomplished storyteller. His novel is far from a pack of lies, but honesty is especially called for when stories are wrapped in appearances of competent scholarship blurring the line between fact and fiction. (See The Da Vinci Hoax, Ignatius Press 2004).

The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey, and other ‘blockbuster’ novels often hyped as mesmerizing are just that, the works of modern day Svengalis.  Anyone reading George Bousant du Maurier’s Trilby, a nineteenth-century best seller, will know that du Maurier’s Svengali employed a mixture of science, superstition, gullibility, and guile to mesmerize his victim. Svengali was anything but sincere. Brown and E. L. James are not evil geniuses, but they know how to cast spells, and they both strike me as disingenuous.

I suppose there are many ways to distinguish sincerely written novels from those playing tricks on the reader. Certainly the latter seem more at home in the flotsam and jetsam of screaming hype—Mesmerizing! Riveting! Sexy! Five Star! Some so touted seem fit for pitching by the carnival barker on an old-fashioned midway, the sort our parents cautioned us to avoid. Imagine that.

Which novels give us hope and while entertaining, also uplift and inspire? Which ones would you feel comfortable reading near the grave of Sister Almeda or maybe the grave of your mother?

Continue reading at www.IPNovels.com.

Faramir’s Rangers and the 21st-century Church

Faramir, as portrayed in Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings"

Faramir’s Rangers and the 21^st Century Church | Thomas M. Doran | CWR

Today, we don’t know whether the Western democracies will keep drifting away from faith and virtue, or if a turning will occur

I’m not much for writing sequels to my own novels (though I’ve read some good ones by other authors), but feedback from my recent Catholic World Report article, “Denethor’s Ghost”, prompts me to offer a “Denethor’s Ghost” Part 2 that shines a brighter light on the character of Faramir in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of The Rings”.

Though they aren’t called rangers in Tolkien’s story—that designation is reserved for Aragorn’s kin in the north—Faramir’s band functions as rangers, ranging far and wide in a former garden land turned wilderness east of the river Anduin, keeping the Ithilien border lands as free and as clean as possible with the few men and resources available to him, all this while Sauron’s forces are on the move and rapidly multiplying. Thus, Faramir skirmishes when he can, retreats when he needs to retreat, and hides when he needs to hide.

What does this have to do with 21^st century Christians? In “Denethor’s Ghost”: “storytelling is altogether different (than rational argument, religious tracts, etc.) in the way it affects our thoughts, emotions, and imaginations. While a story may not say anything new, truths are depicted in a new way, a way that allows us to see them in a different light”, even when the story is drastically different from the here and now, as is Tolkien’s story.

Faramir has a demanding life, with few consolations. He’s realistic about the dire threats he faces but he doesn't let them break his spirit, a mark of humility. His father Denethor’s pride stokes the despair that comes from gazing into a Palantir, while Faramir’s humility ameliorates the darkness that comes from his impossible mission, and even from the Ringwraith’s attack on him on the Pelennor fields.

Likewise for us, when we are confronted with assaults on faith and culture, pride pulls us toward despondency, while humility—not rose colored glasses—keeps us attentive to what we can do and can influence.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Graham Greene’s Cobbled Road from St. Mary’s

Graham Greene’s Cobbled Road from St. Mary’s | James Casper | IPNovels.com

Graham Greene, often mentioned in these pages, had a troubled and chaotic relationship with the Catholic faith to which he converted the year before his marriage, so much so that his motives for conversion have even been questioned. At the same time, more than any writer of his day, he wrote novels rich in Catholic themes seeming to reflect his personal moral conflicts, some of which were British tabloid news of his era.

Absent his problematic Catholicism, would the Greene we know today, be recognizable at all?

Perhaps Greene wrote about matters Catholic precisely because by some standards he was not a very good one. His faith was the shoe that did not quite fit. His novels endure for the very reason that he had more questions than answers, more doubts than convictions, and found more pain than most as he limped his way along. It’s a strange business, though, for a writer to wander into a world where he could feel so little at home and ultimately found so little comfort.

His conversion made him the novelist he was. His struggle with matters Catholic may have been all the more penetrating because of his own misgivings and lapses. He was not reluctant to wade into murky waters where his lean prose belies his struggle to simply stay afloat.

Complacency might make for a good night’s rest, but it never leads to much when it comes to writing once morning arrives. And it never makes for a good novel.

My wife and I encountered the Graham Greene story in a personal sense, at almost its beginning when we lived in Hampstead a few years ago, and attended Mass at St. Mary’s Church.

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

Denethor’s Ghost: Lessons from "Lord of the Rings"

A scene from Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", depicting the character Denethor. (Wikipedia/Photo by Pierre Vinet - © 2003 - New Line Productions)

Denethor’s Ghost: Lessons from "Lord of the Rings" | Thomas M. Doran| Thomas Doran | CWR blog

Can a story about wizards, elves, dwarves, and goblins teach 21st century believers something that Catholic apologetics, devotional books, and reasoned arguments can’t?

21^st century Catholicism is up against it, not the first time in history but the first time for many living Catholics. The glorification of the lesbian-gay-transgender lifestyle is the newest commandment of the new religion of the land, and any objections make you a bigot, and sometimes a pariah. There are fewer abortions, but the “right to choose” is still the entrenched law of the land, and euthanasia is gaining greater public acceptance. Gluttonous consumerism has many admirers. The ghetto-izing of traditional Christian beliefs is underway. Human life keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, at least those human lives that are less equal than others, as George Orwell might say. Even Atticus Finch has gone off the rails.

In response, many Christians think that the only options are retreat, resignation, or rebellion.

Can a story like The Lord of The Rings teach us anything important about humanity’s present age and Catholicism’s present challenges? Lest we think that he was just an ivory tower storyteller, J. R. R. Tolkien lived through two terrible wars where the lust for power threatened to destroy the world, with Tolkien experiencing World War I firsthand in the European trenches. Because we moderns know that the world and liberty weren’t utterly destroyed in these wars, we forget that victory was by no means certain to those who lived through those cataclysmic years, with many, like Denethor in Tolkien’s story, succumbing to hopelessness or the accommodation of evil.

Though Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, and Aragorn are inspiring characters, the most instructive characters for our age are Denethor and his son, Faramir.

Tolkien’s Denethor ruled the chief city in Middle Earth. Though ostensibly a steward awaiting the return of the rightful king, so many centuries had passed since the city had a king that Denethor ruled as king and considered himself as such. Steeped in pride, he told himself that he was strong-minded enough to gaze into a Palantir, a seeing stone that revealed events far and wide. Unfortunately, Sauron was the lord of the Palantiri, and he gripped Denethor’s mind and twisted it, showing the Steward exactly what he wanted him to see—Sauron’s irresistible power, the devastation his armies were inflicting, the weakness and fickleness of his enemies. Thus, the combination of Denethor’s pride and his lust to use Sauron’s own devices against him drove the Steward to despondency and madness. “The Enemy has found it (the One Ring), and now his power waxes; he sees our very thoughts, and all we do is ruinous…Pride and despair,” he (Denethor) cried. “Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower (Minas Tirith) were blind? Nay, I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool (Gandalf). For thy hope is but ignorance. Go then and labor in healing! Go forth and fight! Vanity. For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that arises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. And even now the wind of thy hope cheats thee and wafts up Anduin a fleet of black sails. The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.”

See how his mind has been turned to despair?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

New: "Othello: Ignatius Critical Editions"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Othello: Ignatius Critical Editions

by William Shakespeare |  Editor:Joseph Pearce

Paperback, 312 pages

One of the four great tragedies—alongside Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth–Othello is among the darkest of Shakespeare's plays, illumining the shadows of the gloomiest recesses of the human psyche and serving as a damning indictment of the world in which it was written.

A cautionary tale of the destructiveness of sin and the ruinous consequences of bad philosophy, Othello seems to express Shakespeare's rage at the cynicism and brutality of the age in which he lived. From the Machiavellian menace of Iago to the blind and prideful jealousy of Othello, this classic of world literature shows us the shadow falling over a society that has turned its back on the light and life of virtue.

A look at the essays:

• "'A Monstrous Birth' Brought 'to the World's Light': The Assault on Authority and the Darkening of the Soul in Othello" – Robert Carballo
• "Is Venice in Shakespeare's Othello a Racist Society?" – Robert C. Evans
• "The Unreason of Iago: A Close Reading of the Beginning of Othello" – Jay Graham
• "Some Observations on Othello, Act 1" – Michael Hanke
• "Shakespeare's Othello and Man's Fallen Nature" – Michael M. Jordan
• "Othello as Meta-Drama" – Peter Milward, S.J.
• "Othello—the Classical-Medieval Synthesis, and the Platonic Concept of the Soul" – Rebecca Munro

Joseph Pearce situates the reader with the introductory essay.

A Fuller Reading of “The Fellowship”

A Fuller Reading of “The Fellowship” | Holly Ordway  | CWR

As an intellectual biography and an account of the Inklings as a whole, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski's new book is very strong—satisfying, engaging, and nuanced

J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams: two of these men are, if not exactly household names, nearly so—who has not heard of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings?. But what about the group called the Inklings; who were they? Why did they matter in wartime Oxford? Do they matter now, in the 21^st century?

The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski’s group biography of the Inklings—the first fully developed one since Humphrey Carpenter’s pioneering study of 1978—sets out to answer these questions. It is the first of three new Inklings-related biographies slated to be published this year, the other two being Grevel Lindop’s Charles Williams: The Third Inkling and Abigail Santamaria’s Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis. The Zaleskis’ book is to be welcomed for giving us a broad-based, big-picture view of this hugely important circle of writers. It wisely does not attempt to displace Diana Glyer’s magisterial study of intra-Inklings influence in The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community.

The Zaleskis’ overall approach is usefully set out in the title: The Fellowship evokes the Fellowship of the Ring, from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Like the varied members of that group—hobbits, men, a dwarf, an elf, a wizard—the Inklings were quite different from one another in their personalities, their literary work, their personal lives, and their faith, and yet shared certain elements of a common vision.

The subtitle, “The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams”, shows the book’s particular concerns. The Zaleskis focus on the Inklings’ writing careers, while painting the broader biographical background in enough detail for us to see how their literary works fit into the larger pattern of their lives and relationships. And, in addition to having this literary slant, the book homes in on just four out of the nineteen figures who are generally reckoned to have belonged to the group.

By following these four men chronologically, The Fellowship illuminates how the different strands of their lives intertwined. Seeing their literary interests in the broader context of historical events, work, and family provides insight into their books and to the significance of the Inklings as a whole. The Fellowship also shows, as a quiet but consistent background note, the importance of certain other key Inklings, above all Lewis’s brother Warnie—himself a successful author—whose quiet hospitality was a central element of the group’s success. Likewise, we see the importance of Tolkien’s son Christopher, a junior Inkling, who has famously gone on to do wonders in preserving and extending his father’s literary legacy. These glimpses of Warnie and Christopher, among others, suggest the need for another book, on the Minor Inklings!

Attentive readers will notice that Tolkien is—somewhat unexpectedly—listed first in the subtitle.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

New: "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen | Ignatius Critical Editions

Now available from Ignatius Press: 

Sense and Sensibility

by Jane Austen |  Ignatius Critical Editions 

Paperback, 496 pages | Editor: Eleanor Bourg Nicholson  

"All that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant—it is not fit—it is not possible that it should be so."

What are two sisters of uncertain fortunes to do when the death of their father exiles their family to live in the countryside of southwestern England? Why, fall in love, of course! Through her deft unraveling of the dramatically different romantic fates of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, Jane Austen displays her singular mastery of the English language and her equally masterful invention of colorful and realistic characters.

The author's appreciation of what it is to be human, grounded in her deeply convicted Christianity, illuminates the tale with special wisdom. In this, her first published novel, we see the sense and sensibility of Miss Austen herself, which combine to form the brilliance that shines forth in all of her works—a brilliance enlivened by her remarkable sense of humor and the affectionate kindness that could only be born of a gracious Christian spirit.

A look at the essays:

• "'Everything in Such Suspense and Uncertainty'—Suspense in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility" – Raimund Borgmeier
• "The Indulgence of Sense and Sensibility: A Human Comedy" – Crystal Downing
• "'Esteem': The Enduring Foundation of Marriage in Sense and Sensibility" – Mitchell Kalpakgian
• "Why Edward Ferrars Doesn't Dance" – Theresa Kenney
• "Marriage in Jane Austen's England: Some Context for the Courtships in Sense and Sensibility" – Jennifer Overkamp
• "Marianne's Folly and the Rule of Propriety in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility" – Jack Trotter

Eleanor Bourg Nicholson situates the reader with the introductory essay.

The Actor, the Author, and the Real ‘Father Brown’

The Actor, the Author, and the Real ‘Father Brown’ | K.V. Turley | Catholic World Report

The priest who was the inspiration for Chesterton's great detective also played a central role in the conversion of Chesterton and many others

Crime fiction fans are well aware of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown and his place in the Pantheon of great detectives. Nevertheless, in contrast with the seemingly endless speculation as to the ‘real Sherlock Holmes’, there has been little such debate about the origin of the priest sleuth. However, a recent book, The Elusive Father Brown (Gracewing, 2010), by Laura Smith, goes some way to rectifying this, detailing as it does the life of the cleric who formed the basis upon which Chesterton’s characterization was based, and who played a part in at least two very public conversions.

But, before the denouement, as in the best detective yarns, let's recap what clues there may be within the Father Brown stories. On reflection, it is easier to say what we don’t have because when you join up any clues found therein they lead precisely to nowhere. Whereas Conan Doyle left bits and pieces to make up the history and character of his hero, Chesterton did no such thing. In fact one could say that H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man comes to mind more than the Great Detective when considering Fr. Brown. And yet there are clues, but, as in all the best detective fiction, you have to read the text closely to discover them.

What so we know? Fr. Brown is English, from rural Essex. One suspects that this region, known for a particularly flat landscape, was deliberately chosen for someone as self-effacing as he is non-descript, remembered more for his unruly umbrella than his face. In each story he is far from being the center of attention—not to begin with anyway—but for all his lack of ‘presence’ there is a curious air about him. Interestingly, this appears to have nothing to do with the supernatural per se as his powers of deduction are always purely logical, even when others have jumped to conclusions that are not of this world. His powers of observation are second to none; he misses nothing, especially when something is ever so slightly amiss, and it is this that often leads to the culprit being discovered.

Nevertheless, there is little if anything of physical description given to the character: ‘he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea.’ That's little help if one is waiting at a London train station to meet this priest—but we would meet him nonetheless, and the clue is in that last word: priest. He is undoubtedly that; his manner, his movements, and his speech all betray his vocation. Take, for instance, the ending of “The Hammer of God”. It is the solving of a crime and the unveiling of a murderer, but also, paradoxically, and, in the end more importantly, the saving of a soul. Rest assured no one suspects Fr. Brownof being anything other than a priest.

Perhaps that is because the character was modeled upon a real priest Chesterton had met in 1903.

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One Weird Trick to Appreciate Art

One Weird Trick to Appreciate Art | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

“Oh, is that an allusion to the Fall?”

“The what?”

“The Fall of Adam and Eve.”

“Uh, no.”

“Is it Persephone in the underworld?”

“Who?”

It was around ten years ago. I was at an open studio event held in a huge old warehouse in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. Several painters and sculptors were exhibiting their work, ranging from intentionally incomprehensible prints of layered graphics to a city made from candy to a number of rather good paintings. I was looking at one depicting a darkened landscape with a figure of a woman accepting a red fruit from a shadowy man in a robe. The artist was standing nearby, so I asked him about it. After a number of back and forth comments he shrugged and told me he had seen something similar in a painting somewhere and decided to riff on it. It wasn’t intended to be Eve’s encounter with Satan or Persephone being tricked by Hades, it was just an image that resonated with him.

Since then I’ve noticed this happening in other mediums: film or literature or music. As more and more people drift from a firm education in the classics, the images live on after their original context is lost. 

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

Wolfe, Innocence, Literature, and Rock Monsters

Wolfe, Innocence, Literature, and Rock Monsters | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

In the past week I’ve ended up saving a number of links to read and re-read, and in the hopes that others may also get some enjoyment and interest from them I’m sharing them with you.

First up, there’s a short piece in the New Yorker about science-fiction writer Gene Wolfe, titled Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius:

Moments [in his books] have turned many of Wolfe’s fans into something like Biblical exegetes, who dig deep into his texts in the hope of finding clues not only to the plots and the characters but to Wolfe’s larger intentions. Partly what readers are excavating is Wolfe’s Catholicism, which he is quick to say figures into his writing. “What is impossible is to keep it out,” he told me. “The author cannot prevent the work being his or hers.”

Continue reading here.

Over at The Catholic Thing, Daniel McInerney writes about Catholic Literature and the discussion about it between writers such as Gregory Wolfe, Paul Elie, and Dana Gioia. I’m not so sure I agree with his take on it, but it’s an interesting contribution to the discussion.

Continue reading at www.IPNovels.com.

A Message from Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.

A Message from Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J. | IPNovels.com

Do You Ever Read Novels?

That’s a Yes or No question. Here are some thoughts on each possible answer:

No? Well, you should. Or if that sounds too moralistic: reading good novels can make you a better, happier person, a “new self and nobler me” (Hopkins).

Really? Why? The reasons are many and space is too short so I’ll give just one. You can call it an argument from authority. (I’ll omit bad reasons for reading even good novels.)

Who was the world’s greatest teacher? How did he teach? He sometimes held outdoor conferences, gave sermons—even an occasional homily—and he did use the method of the world’s second greatest teacher (Greek; name begins with “S”). But he taught “with authority” which means, among other things, that he was an “author” And mainly, he told stories.

God’s eternal Word became Incarnate in Jesus Christ. And Jesus incarnated his teaching in stories we call parables. He knew that was the best way for us to learn, to grasp the non-successive (eternal truth) in the successive (temporal plot).

Every good story is an incarnation of truth, beauty, and goodness—a participation in the Incarnate Word’s incarnate words.

Read the entire post at IPNovels.com.

The First Chapter of "The Rising" by Robert Ovies

The First Chapter of "The Rising" by Robert Ovies | IPNovels.com

Read the first chapter of the thrilling novel The Rising by Robert Ovies. If you like what you’re reading, visit the novel’s page to learn more or order!

One

It was, as wake services go, unremarkable. Marion Klein had been a faithful wife for twenty-one years, a gracious mother for seventeen, and a genuinely loved member of the St. Veronica parish staff for nearly six. She had more than what some might consider the usual number of close friends, due both to her highly visible position as parish secretary and her natural affinity for smiling one of those smiles that surges up easily and often to signal a deep and contagious appreciation of life.

Her easy disposition was a joy not only to her husband, Ryan, but also to her children, Truman and Dawn, both teens and both the only children of a St. Veronica parish staff member not named after a Roman Catholic saint—a meaningless aside that Father Mark Cleary had rolled his eyes over in mock dismay on more than one occasion during the half-dozen good years that he and Marion worked so closely together.

Since it had been her nature to find reason to smile in what others knew must be difficult circumstances, everyone wondered how Marion would handle the spreading cancer that her doctor whispered upon her exactly three years ago this month. But as everyone who came to the MacInnes Funeral Home agreed, she handled it as well as anyone could. She fought it with chemistry and good humor until a few days into June when she finally lay too weak to walk and too toxic to pretend and let Father Mark—her pastor, employer, and friend—anoint her with the oil of a sad and quiet blessing for what Father Mark said was her peace and healing but for what Marion knew was, in fact, her death.

Now, with a thin, gray Tuesday rain sprinkling the beginnings of another humid Michigan summer and 124 friends and relatives gathered to visit and cry and smile and say good-bye to a dear friend and companion, Father Mark recalled Marion’s cheerfulness and offered a prayer that she now, at last, would be completely and finally healed in God, the One in whom, for all of eternity, “Marion’s joy will be complete.”

He felt the loss of her company personally, and everyone knew it. It was appreciated. Then he invited others to share some memory and a number of them did, including Marion’s sixteen-year-old son, who told about having to eat tomato soup and bacon at his mom’s insistence every time he broke a fever, “to get salt back into my system”, and how his mother’s jokes had helped him through so many hard times of his own, even though he was only a teenager, and that he would really, really miss her. His thirteen-year-old sister talked briefly about carnivals and how her mom had always laughed a lot, and how that is the way she would like to be, and she would be, even though she was crying now. Others cried with her. Her dad chose to avoid speaking, not for lack of memories but from the weight of too many, too quickly passed. Ryan and Marion had been married in college, and this was a hard, hard night.

After fifteen minutes of memories, which passed quickly, Father Mark prayed his final blessing, and the service quietly ended. He shook hands with Ryan and Marion’s brother, Kerry, who lived on the west side of the state but seldom visited. Dawn hugged the priest briefly and then her dad, long and hard. Nearly a hundred people came slowly up to the casket, some in pairs, to kneel beside Marion’s body and make a quick sign of the cross, a few to touch her rigid hand, some hovering very near for a long moment of reflection or discomfort or both, some nodding quickly and moving on. One leaned over and seemed about to kiss her, but didn’t, whispering several words instead. Most stood at a safe distance and simply stared, perhaps thinking of Marion’s death, perhaps thinking of their own.

Good-nights were exchanged. Doors opened. Umbrellas were raised. Giles MacInnes and his two assistants, Dave Harmon and Giles’ own daughter, Melissa, still in college and still in training, stood in black and thanked everyone for coming. They smiled, but not too much.

The mourners filed into the night carefully, as though afraid something else in their life might break. Ryan Klein finally cried, barely, and Dawn and Truman did, too. They spoke briefly to Father Mark and to Giles about the next day’s service. Then it was time to close.

Melissa went to the office to note the evening’s service for her files. Dave Harmon quickly straightened the chairs that had been rearranged during the service, then checked the restrooms for lost articles. He found nothing. He slipped on his coat, said good-night to Giles, and walked with Melissa to the parking lot, locking the front door behind them. Giles, by his own choice, was also responsible for final lockup. He glanced quickly around the now-silent viewing room. He had an efficient eye. The room was in generally good order. It always was. He would leave the red-padded folding chairs in place, probably too many for the morning, but better too many than too few. A black silk scarf had slipped to the floor next to the couch. His assistant hadn’t noticed it. There was always something. Giles picked the scarf up with a casual sweep of his hand and placed it on the coat-rack by the door, where someone would certainly see and retrieve it if they made their way back for the morning service. If not, no matter.

With that, he straightened two more chairs, glanced briefly at his watch, and turned just in time to see Marion Klein’s crystal rosary slide with a terrible grace, like the world coming to an end in sickening slow motion, over the back of her rising left hand and across her trembling, rose-polished fingernails to drop with a click as tiny as death on her slowly stirring chest.

Continue reading at www.IPNovels.com.

Kenneth Branagh's Very Christian Cinderella

Lily James and Richard Madden star in a scene from the movie "Cinderella." (CNS photo/Disney Enterprises)

Kenneth Branagh's Very Christian Cinderella

This "Cinderella" is not only free of ideological agendas, it reflects a deeply Christian vision of sin, love, and salvation

Kenneth Branagh’s “Cinderella” is the most surprising Hollywood movie of the year so far.

I say this because the director manages to tells the familiar fairy tale without irony, hyper-feminist sub-plots, Marxist insinuations, deconstructionist cynicism, or arch condescension. In so doing, he actually allows the spiritual, indeed specifically Christian, character of the tale to emerge. I realize that it probably strikes a contemporary audience as odd that Cinderella might be a Christian allegory, but keep in mind that most of the fairy stories and children’s tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm and later adapted by Walt Disney found their roots in the decidedly Christian culture of late medieval and early modern Europe.

In Branagh’s telling, Ella is the daughter of wonderful parents, both of whom instill in her a keen sense of moral virtue and joie de vivre. The girl’s idyllic childhood was interrupted by the sudden illness of her mother, who, while on her death-bed, delivered to Ella the injunction always to be “kind and courageous.” Her father then remarried and brought his new wife and her two daughters to live with him and Ella. Some years later, Ella’s father left on a lengthy business trip. Before he set out, she enjoined him to send back to her the first branch that his shoulder would brush while on the journey. A few weeks later, a servant arrived with the branch in his hand and the dreadful news that Ella’s father had become sick and had died.

The now utterly isolated Ella became the victim of her wicked stepmother (played by the always compelling Cate Blanchett) and her obnoxious stepsisters, who visit upon her every type of cruelty and injustice. They even take away her bedroom, forcing her to sleep by the dying embers of the fire to keep warm. The ashes that stain her face give rise to the cruel nickname her stepsisters assign to her. Significantly, the cat belonging to Ella’s stepfamily is called Lucifer.

So we have a beautiful, vivacious, and morally upright young lady whose life becomes a nightmare through the intervention of untimely death and wicked oppression.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Past is a Foreign Country: Liturgical Latin and Fiction

The Past is a Foreign Country: Liturgical Latin and Fiction | James Casper | IPNovels.com

Much we know about the world would be lost were it not for artistic renderings of the past. Memories otherwise would seldom outlive those who remember.

Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars forced professional historians and casual readers alike to revise assessments of the Catholic religion in England in the years immediately preceding the Reformation:

If medieval religion was decadent, unpopular, or exhausted, the success of the Reformation hardly requires explanation. If, on the contrary, it was vigorous, adaptable, widely understood, and popular, then we have much yet to discover about the processes and the pace of reform.

In the almost six hundred pages following this observation, Duffy develops support for this thesis: that the Reformation in England was more of a revolution against a popular, widely-revered institution than an effort to reform something rife with problems and corruption. He can only build his case by reference to contemporary written accounts and a study of Church artistic works that somehow managed to survive state-sponsored efforts to obliterate the past.

The Tudor and Puritan road he guides his readers down is littered with burnt books, defaced statues, destroyed altar screens, and melted down church vessels. Destroy the artistic creations and traditions of an age, and when the last person who remembers it dies, a world dies also. This is where the road ends.

In our own time, those of us old enough to remember the Catholic Church as it was prior to Vatican II are also living with an obliterated past on a road marked ‘Dead End’. Inevitably, as the days move along, we are a vanishing breed on an all but forgotten journey.

These days much is made of the Catholicity of celebrated writers Chesterton, Tolkien, and Waugh. The latter two lived long enough to experience firsthand changes wrought by Vatican II, and both railed against them. (Details are at hand in the Ignatius Press edition of A Bitter Trial.) Tolkien and Waugh would never again feel at home in the Church. G. K.’s childhood memory of successful businessmen, bankers, and shop clerks falling to their knees as Cardinal Manning passed by along Kensington High Street seems to come from a world other than this one. G. K.’s old nemesis, George Bernard Shaw, might think the Church has become a bit more palatable, but what would G. K. himself think?  Given his sense of humor, he might have somehow managed whereas Belloc—had he lived to see the day—would have blown a fuse.

Tolkien is said to have been dismayed by the exiling of Latin to what would become in our time a liturgical antique shop. 

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To Be, Or Not To Be (Human)

[Photos: us.fotolia.com | © lculig © jim]

To Be, Or Not To Be (Human) | Jerry Salyer | CWR

Charles Rubin's Eclipse of Man demonstrates the right way for scholars to grapple with the multi-faceted questions raised by advances in biotechnology, robotics, and computing

The only reason we are still alive is our inconsistency in not having actually silenced all tradition.” – Gerhard Kruger (1902-72)

In Sir Arthur C. Clarke's classic science fiction novel Childhood's End (1953), a mysterious alien race known as the Overlords land on Earth. Swiftly establishing a benevolent dictatorship, the Overlords put an end to war and want and transform the world into a tranquil, rationalist utopia.

They do this not for the sake of mankind per se, however, but to pave the way for the next leap in human evolution—a leap which occurs years later, when human parents mysteriously beget superhuman children. With the watchful Overlords as their guardians, these children eventually abandon human form and merge into a disembodied collective supermind which roves the galaxy at the speed of thought. Meanwhile and for reasons not entirely clear, the human race loses its will to live, which is just as well since the transformation of the mutant children into a new collective life form unleashes terrible cosmic forces. Said forces destroy the Earth.

As Charles Rubin suggests in Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress, Clarke's Childhood's End possesses virtues that should not be casually dismissed, however objectionable the novel might be in many ways. C. S. Lewis, of all people, regarded the novel with admiration. Whatever else Clarke got wrong, felt Lewis, his story was at least motivated by a sense of man's ultimate aim being grander and more marvelous than a cozy world of well-manicured lawns and secure pensions. That said, the story also reflects a regrettably fideistic attitude toward Progress. Such fideism remains strong to this day, even after all the ecological, social, and political catastrophes of the 20^th century. Concerns about nuclear war, the greenhouse effect, and bioterrorism have even led some to “double down” on progressive ideology by calling for the transformation of man into an alien being.

The growing number who call for such a transformation are known as transhumanists. As Rubin explains,

Transhumanists argue not only that modern science and technology are giving human beings the power to take evolution into our own hands to improve the human species, and then to create some new species entirely, but also the ability to improve on all of nature. Much like the older apocalyptic visions [of the environmentalist movement], the transhumanists believe that mankind as we know it and nature as we know it are on their way out; but for most transhumanists, that is the deliberate goal sought, not a consequence of our hubris to be avoided. Indeed, the transhumanists believe that if we are to prevent some of the more common apocalyptic visions from becoming reality, we must redesign humanity so that our ruinous flaws can be eliminated. To avoid mere destruction, we must embrace creative destruction.

As with any movement, the sub-ideologies found within transhumanism are legion.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.