Reading Catholic

Reading Catholic and catholic

Catholic memoirs

Venerable Solanus Casey, pray for us.

by

Today’s Feast–maybe it’s not a feast yet, since he’s only Venerable.  But anyway, it is that of Venerable Father Solanus Casey, a Detroit Franciscan,  doorkeeper, and holy man of God.

When I visited family in Michigan back in 2008 or 2009 (my husband had to stay at home for work), I took my then very-young kids the see the Solanus Casey Center in Detroit.  I can’t find any photos of our time there at the moment, but it was quite moving.  There is a church there, as well as a small museum about his life as a Capuchin Franciscan.  You can read this small biography of this humble, simple soul.  He died in 1957.

I have several books about him that I purchased at the Center’s gift shop, but none can be located.  What could be found? A coloring book about his life–no kidding!  Somehow there’s something appropriate about that since he was such a simple man.

Fortunately, the coloring book includes a page full of “sayings of Father Solanus Casey.”  Because I’m home today with a sick child, I had the chance to make several “edits” with quotes from the page:

Solanus1

Solanus Casey

This one turned out a little fuzzy.  I think I need to take a class in how to design and produce edits quickly and well. Does anyone know of a place to do that? I just don’t have the time to play around with it too much.  But this works.

Solanus Casey greatness

Here’s another version of that one:

Solanus Casey greatness2Do you have a preference?

I’ve just added to my calendar the private Novena beginning November 30. recommended by the Solanus Casey Center this year. November 30 is also the beginning of the St. Andrew Christmas Novena. The more, the merrier, novena-wise, since it’s Advent.

I also see that EWTN will air a Mass from the Solanus Casey Center on Sunday, November 23–the 144th anniversary of Fr. Casey’s birth.

Are you at all familiar with Father Solanus Casey? If you’re not, I hope you’ll explore some of the links and ask him for something special this year.

Father Benedict Groeschel, Rest in Peace

by

I learned this weekend that Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., died on the eve of the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  May he rest in peace!

He was such a sensible, holy voice in so many ways. Anyone who saw him on EWTN‘s “Sunday Night Live” for many years will recall many great interviews and insights there.

Here are four books that I consider Father Groeschel classics, from a quick perusal of my bookshelves.  I know he wrote many more, and I loved many more, but it’s a start.

Father Groeschel was a psychologist, and worked in the field for many years, so his advice about matters emotional and mental is both time-tested, professional and sensible, but with gentleness.

Here is where I briefly reviewed Arise from Darkness: What to Do When Life Doesn’t Make Sense, along with several newer classic book about mental health issues.  But it’s a gem.

Travelers Along the Way: The Men and Women Who Shaped My Life is a  relatively easy read, but very substantial and edifying at the same time.

I’m going to excerpt from my prior review of this great read:

This book is like a “who’s who” of Catholicism, from mini-biographies of saints and blessed, the famous and the obscure, in fascinating color. Each chapter is a little gem of anecdotes and memories of the particular fellow “traveler,” from Cardinal Cooke to Groeschel’s secretary.

The prolific Fr. Groeschel is easy to read (in the best sense of the word); he’s such an excellent writer that he makes it look easy to write in a conversational, relational style. Travelers Along the Way puts that great style to good use, as you can easily pick up and read one “traveler’s” story.

The Saints in My Life: My Favorite Spiritual Companions is very similar to Travelers Along the Way, but instead of stories of people Fr. Groeschel knew, the stories here are about his spiritual friendship with saints over his life and vocation. Nicely organized and useful for considering how the reader is impacted by saints.

Finally, here is a book I couldn’t locate on my bookshelf–I must have loaned it out to someone.  But even thinking about this book again brings up strong emotions.

In , A Priest Forever: The Life of Eugene Hamilton, Father Groeschel writes so beautifully about the life of a young man who had a longtime vocation to the priesthood. From the description (since I can’t peruse the book, nor can I find where I’ve written about it before–it must be offline):

This is the true story of Eugene Hamilton, a young man who dreamed of becoming a priest; a young man stricken with terminal cancer as his life was just beginning; a man who was ordained, by papal dispensation, just hours before he died.

My memory of reading it:  I  was a new mother with one baby when I first read this book.  I found myself weeping about his death, but also deepening my sense of by the nature of vocation, the gift of the priesthood to the rest of the people of God, and the beauty of life and death.

Do you have a favorite Father Groeschel book?  Any impressions of his life or advice?

Theology for the Rest of Us {my September column, The Catholic Post}

by

(Following is my column that appears in this week’s print edition of The Catholic Post.)

To paraphrase Marcus Welby, M.D., I’m not a theologian, nor do I play one on television.

And while I do plenty of reading and reviewing of Catholic books in various genres, consider me firmly in the “normal layperson” category. Believe me, I can be just as intimidated by a heavily theological book as the next Catholic. Despite that, I’m like many people, who strive be able to know and understand better the rich intellectual history of the Catholic Church and her saints.

It can be good to have a “translator” to help bridge the gap between important Catholic thought and normal readers like me. Here are some good recent books to help us to branch out.

——-


In Saints and Social Justice: A Guide to Changing the World, author Brandon Vogt uses the lives of saints to illuminate and explore each of the seven themes of social justice.

The idea behind this book is brilliant—who better than the saints and the lives they led to explain key tenets of our faith? But it’s Vogt’s execution is what makes this book a stand-out.

Each social justice theme is highlighted through two saints; usually one better-known, one less so. For instance, for the justice theme of rights & responsibilities, Vogt profiles both St. Thomas More and St. Roque Gonzalez, a Paraguayan Jesuit. And the theme of life & dignity of the human person uses the lives of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, as well as St. Peter Claver.

Vogt explains why he uses saints to illustrate the themes of social justice:

“Catholic social teaching should be well-known, well-understood, and, most of all, well-practiced. The saints knew this best and so it’s the them we turn.”

Each saint profile is both succinct and packed with detail about how he or she lived a heroic life, told through the lens of one of the social justice themes. Helpful sidebars quote from church documents and tell other stories to bring social justice alive. It’s a great combination.

—-

I, personally, have always been a little intimidated by St. Thomas Aquinas, even though he is a doctor of the church and for many the theologian. When my husband and I were dating in Washington, D.C., we sometimes attended a St. Thomas Aquinas study group led by a saintly older Dominican priest. But I use the word “we” loosely, for while everyone was very nice, the discussion was often on a different plane than my non-philosophical mind.

I wish more than 20 years ago, I had had for translation, The One Minute Aquinas: The Doctor’s Quick Answers to Fundamental Questions” by Kevin Vost, Psy.D. This new book is a great bridge from St. Thomas Aquinas, theologian and doctor, to the rest of us.

In “small, digestible portions” Vost offers an outline of St. Thomas’ major works and his wisdom in counseling others. What I love best about The One-Minute Aquinas is that can pick up the book at any point, rather than read it as a start-to-finish. Finally, I’m able to (slowly) learn at my own pace about this great saint and how his mind worked.

—

I am intrigued by St. Teresa Benedita of the Cross (St. Edith Stein), but I’ve never known how to start reading her writings. So I was delighted to find Embracing Edith Stein: Wisdom for Women by Anne Costa.

Costa writes beautifully about how she came to love Edith Stein (known now as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). It’s part biography, part spiritual memoir of both Edith Stein and Costa herself, and a great introduction to this fascinating 20th century saint.

I found myself writing down quotes as I read, both of St. Teresa herself as well as Costa’s insightful journey of knowledge.

Costa writes at one point about Edith Stein, pre-conversion, being strongly impacted by a woman coming into church for a visit: “What strikes me most about this encounter is that, as intelligent and knowledgeable as Edith was and as satisfied as she was with her ever-widening circle of friends, she never closed her mind or heart to new ideas and experiences. Her keen sense of observation and engagement with the world around her wasn’t just an intellectual exercise, but a spiritual one.”

And finally, a wonderful quote from Edith Stein:

“It all depends on having a quiet little corner where you can talk with God on a daily basis as if nothing else existed..and regarding yourself completely as an instrument, so that you treat your most frequently demanded talents, not as something that you use, but as God working through you.”

—–

Quirky aside from me.  When I wrote the first line for this column, it never occurred to me that it wasn’t Marcus Welby, M.D. (actually, actor Robert Young) who spoke those famous words, so much a part of my cultural knowledge is that concept.  It turns out I was wrong, but I’ve kept it in since most people make a similar mistake.  Here is an article to get you started, and here’ s a link to a video of one of Robert Young’s decaf coffee ads.

Meet a Reader: Molly Cull

by

Molly Cull

How you know me:

I am currently a student-athlete at Illinois State University, and I’m from St. Mary’s Parish in Metamora, IL.I am involved at the St. John Paul II Catholic Newman Center at ISU. I recently returned from a mission trip to inner city Miami, Florida, with a group organized by the Religious Community of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Some of my book selections are inspired by a vigil held during that mission trip on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart and the Feast of the Immaculate Heart.

Why I love reading:

I love reading because reading seems to be the Lord’s window of words He uses to speak to our hearts. His Love can be received and matured in our hearts through reading His divine words written obediently by the hands of his servants. What a beautiful gift! In a particular way, the following books often place me humbly with St. Therese in the School of Love for the Heart of Jesus through the Heart of Mary.

What I’m reading now:
I am currently reading Divine Mercy in My Soul, the Diary of St. Maria Faustina. It is a beautiful diary of the journey of her soul and union of her heart with the Heart of Jesus, filled with the direct words of Our Lord to His bride, St. Maria Faustina. She consoled the heart of Jesus by consecrating her life to fulfill her mission as the Apostle of Mercy and she lived in obedience always trusting in His merciful love. This diary was very moving divine dialogue to read throughout the vigil on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.

“For you I descended from heaven to earth; for you I allowed myself to be nailed to the cross; for you I let my Sacred Heart be pierced with a lance, thus opening wide the source of mercy for you. Come, then, with trust to draw graces from this fountain. I never reject a contrite heart. Your misery has disappeared in the depths of My mercy” (Diary, 1485).

My favorite book:

While I have many favorite books, The Story of a Soul, which is the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, would certainly be one of my favorites. St. Therese performed no extraordinary acts. Rather, she lived a life of humility, confident abandonment, and sacrificial love, walking with her Beloved Spouse each day as a pure flower in God’s garden of love. She offered her life as a victim of holocaust to God’s merciful love, uniting her sufferings joyfully with His to save souls all through His abundant mercy and grace. Her little way of love, living simply yet also in a very profound way, as love in the heart of the Church shows the deep beauty of her simple heart and creates a most beautiful story of a soul.

“Jesus, my Love, I have at last found my vocation; it is love! I have found my place in the Church’s heart, the place You Yourself have given me, my God. Yes, there in the heart of the Mother Church I will be love!”

I also very much enjoy reading the various writings of St. John Paul II and Mother Adela Galindo, foundress of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary as well as True Devotion to Mary: with Preparation for Total Consecration (Tan Classics), and The Imitation of Christ (Dover Thrift Editions).

“Love in essence is always seeking to be given away…Freedom of the heart is the capacity to love, to give ourselves unconditionally and totally, without reserve.” (Mother Adela, Foundress, SCTJM)

“Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” St. John Paul II

Note from Nancy: I’ve known Molly since she was a baby, so this is a very important “Meet a Reader.”  I’ve seen her grow into a lovely young woman, filled with grace. She hasn’t just been a family friend or a terrific babysitter when my children were younger, but a true friend in Christ.

I also know one of the reasons she chose “The Story of a Soul” for her favorite book–her confirmation saint is St. Therese, and I learned that when my 13-year-old daughter chose both St. Therese as her confirmation saint and Molly as her sponsor.

Twitterature, August 2014: The Assumption of Mary Edition

by

Happy Feast of the Assumption of Mary!

I had planned to make an edit for the Assumption, but ran out of time .  Here is the quote I planned to use.   I asked my theologian husband for some help, and he offered several different passages  from today’s Byzantine liturgy.  I may yet get to it today.  If not, there’s always next year:

“Neither death nor the tomb could hold the Mother of God.  She is always ready to intercede for us, forever our steady hope and protection.”

But, today I’m linking up with Anne at Modern Mrs. Darcy for her  monthly “Twitterature” link up of mini-reviews of favorite recent reads:

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan.  Highly recommended.

I laughed and cried, sometimes at the same story in this book. Corrigan writes so well of the mother-daughter relationship, how one’s view changes of our parents as we become adults, and again when we have children of our own. It’s called Glitter and Glue because her mother told her how she was the glue in the family, and her more easygoing husband was the glitter. How Corrigan perceives the difference between them changes after she spends part of a year as a post-college grad nannying for an Australian widower and his family, and later when she has a family of her own.

I wrote down many, many quotes from the book.  You can read some of them at my GoodReads review, but since this is meant to be short takes on books, here is just one:

“Raising people is not some lark. It’s serious work with serious repercussions. It’s air traffic control. You can’t step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.”

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. A laugh-out-loud classic.

I was at a book group earlier this week (coincidentally, we were discussing a book that is reviewed in my August column for The Catholic Post (that column will post here in a few days), and several of us were professing our love for Dear Mr. Knightley. No one else knew that the book was a combination of Emma and Daddy Long  Legs.  And no one else had read it!

So I was happy to talk a little about it–Daddy Long Legs is an epistolary (told in letters) novel between a young woman and her male benefactor.  It’s definitely old-fashioned in a lot of ways, but great good fun.

Books like Daddy Long Legs are like comfort food to me.  I’m really enjoying it again.

Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone

Extremely well-written longer-form nonfiction for kids (middle grades on up) about the first group of African-American paratroopers.  I learned so much about World War II in this book I didn’t know about–segregation in the armed forces, and efforts to change that, the war effort in the United States.  Such a fascinating read.

What are you reading these days?

There’s Nothing Like a Convert {my June column, The Catholic Post}

by

Following is my book page that appears in this week’s print edition of The Catholic Post.

Are you a spiritual trust-fund baby? Bear with me—it really is a “thing.”

If you’ve heard the expression, “there’s nothing like a convert,” you’ll begin to know what I mean. There really is something special in converts and how they look at the faith with fresh eyes and fresh faith. It really is different being a convert, and we longtime Catholics can learn a lot from that energy and passion. That’s why shows like Marcus Grodi’s EWTN’s The Journey Home  can be so compelling to watch.

It’s like Richard Cole writes in Catholic by Choice, his expressive memoir about converting to Catholicism, that cradle Catholics are like “spiritual trust-fund babies unbelievably rich with a two-thousand-year-old religious culture stacked on another three thousand years of Hebraic culture.”

And, like a stereotype of trust-fund babies, longtime Catholics can be tempted to take for granted our great wealth. Why is that?

Reading one of three recent new memoirs about the conversion process might help us look at our Catholic faith with a fresh perspective.

It wouldn’t be fair to compare these very different memoirs, so here’s a short review of each story:

Catholic by Choice: Why I Embraced the Faith, Joined the Church, and Embarked on the Adventure of a Lifetime by Richard Cole, a writer and poet.

Cole offers a wandering, luminous and complex story. The memoir is especially rich since he was older (49 at the time of his conversion) and so his conversion, and how it intersects with his life and the life of his family, is fascinating, gritty and real. Because he’s a poet, there are a lot of memorable and “quotable” quotes.


Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism In Search of Faith with a Future” by Elizabeth Esther. Esther’s book is a harrowing story of growing up in a fundamentalist cult, and gradually, as a young adult, escaping it.

Even though you know these are all conversion stories, I feel like I should write “spoiler alert!”— when I tell you she that she became, however improbably, Catholic. That’s because it is jaw-dropping how Jesus (and His Mother) drew her to the Church. It’s also amazing to read about what being Catholic means to her and her recovery from her abusive childhood.

Something Other than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It by Jen Fulwiler.

Fulwiler’s memoir tells the story of how she grew up an atheist and lived a happy materialistic existence until she gradually reasoned her way into the Catholic Church, through the writing of her popular blog, Conversion Diary, and various life circumstances.

Fulwiler is a great story-teller—many local Catholic women will remember her talk at the second Behold Conference in 2011. Her funny and clever voice, as she shares the events that drew her to Catholicism, shines through in this narrative.

As I’ve said, it’s not fair to compare the memoirs, as each person’s conversion is unique as a fingerprint. But several common themes, in addition to how well they are written, emerge:

*There are innumerable ways to be Catholic—and thank God for that. How beautiful that our Catholic —universal—faith has so many ways to be a faithful Catholic. Just as the wide variety of saints, different kinds of holiness, there are many paths to and within the Church. Three cheers for holy diversity.

*Jesus really does pursue each one of us intently, mysteriously, and with whatever people, places, and circumstances are at hand. Each of these three memoirs describes the way a diverse cast of characters and situations led them to being Catholic: blog readers, random priests in confession, quiet spiritual directors, fallen-away Catholics, Mary, severe health issues, breakdowns, and so much more. How can those lead one to communion with him and with his Church? Jesus finds a way, and it’s plain astonishing to behold in these memoirs.

*We are all, convert or cradle Catholics, “spiritual trust-fund babies.” As a result, we need to recognize that fact and always fight against complacency. There is so much richness and depth in our faith, we need to spend it and share it with each other and others, instead of leaving it in a vault.

One particular strength of Cole’s Catholic by Choice is that it was published 10 years after Cole first wrote it, allowing him to look back and share how his conversion has played out in his life. Reading his update on how his life looks as a no-longer new convert makes me wonder and wish that both Esther and Fulwiler would update their memoirs 10 or so years down the road, sharing their experiences and what is different, and the same, about being Catholic.