Reading Catholic

Reading Catholic and catholic

Saints

Meet a Reader: Fr. Andru O’Brien {@TheCatholicPost}

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Following is the “Meet a Reader” feature that appears in the current print edition of The Catholic Post.

How you know me:

I am Fr. Andru O’Brien, one of the two men that Bishop Jenky ordained this past May. I am now serving at St. Jude Parish in Peoria. I graduated in 2010 from Normal Community and immediately entered seminary. During summers I have spent time in Peoria, LaSalle, Pontiac, Monmouth and Oglesby. For school, I was sent to Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Minnesota, Mundelein Seminary in Chicagoland, and then I finished my studies off at Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland. If one were to go back through all the seminarian posters from my time, they would notice a year I do not appear. I spend a year studying with the Archdiocese of Atlanta where my family lives, but immediately came home earning me the affectionate nickname amongst some of our older priests of “The kid who left and came back.”



Why I love reading:


When one sits down to write, the pages serve as a blank canvas. The boundaries are non-existent and the possibilities endless. The only thing an author puts down on the page is what moves them at the deepest level. Always approaching books with this mindset, reading has become for me an encounter with another’s most personal experience of reality. And when reading is done well, it also becomes a dialogue between the author and us. In non-fiction I always ask if my experience confirms what the author is saying or not. In fiction we are able to enter into the mind of a character to feel what they are feeling. While most modern entertainment has become a break from life, reading has always been more attractive to me because it allows me to engage life on an even deeper level.


What I’m reading now:  

I always have a few books going at a time. Right now I have going a biography of Don Luigi Giussani, the founder of the ecclesial community Communion and Liberation. For spiritual reading I am working through St. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule. On the fiction side, I am reading Michael O’Brien’s Sophia House. This is the prequel to a trilogy focused around a priest named Father Elijah.

O’Brien is a master of character development, and this book is entirely devoted to the early life of Father Elijah. Growing up as a young Jewish boy, he escaped the Nazis and ended up in Israel where he would discover Catholicism and the Carmelite Order before being called to Rome on a special mission for the Pope. The storyline shows a young boy’s exposure to good and evil in a dramatic way that makes it difficult to put down.

Along with Sophia House, I am also reading A Devotional Journey into the Mass by my old professor Christopher Carstens. In it he breaks open the various parts of the Mass to show how one can more fully answer Vatican II’s call for ‘active participation’ in all the faithful. He successfully shows that Mass is only boring when we do not understand what is actually happening before us.

My favorite book:

It is difficult to name just one book as my favorite, so here is an overview of the favorites. Anything by Pope Benedict XVI is amazing, but topping the list are his work The Spirit of the Liturgy and the Jesus of Nazareth trilogy.

A book that I have found myself going back to again and again is Becoming Human by Jean Vanier. Vanier is a philosopher by trade, who left his position at university to work with the disabled in his organization L’Arche. In this work, he speaks of the lessons that he has learned from his time with the L’Arche community. To a world filled with competition and individualism, he shows a Christian perspective of human life and flourishing. It is absolutely brilliant.

Finally, I will throw out Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In this book, Huxley depicts a society free of pain and full of stimuli, but when one character breaks from the mold he discovers a world much greater than the ‘perfect’ society he had previously known.

8 Things I’ve Learned in 8 Years of Reviewing Catholic Books {My column @TheCatholicPost}

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Following is my column that appears in the current print edition of The Catholic Post. This will be my last regular column for The Catholic Post, but I may be filling in occasionally.

This marks my final regular monthly column reviewing books for The Catholic Post. After more than eight years, hundreds of books reviewed, and nearly 100 columns and “Reader” profiles, I’ll be stepping away from writing book reviews to pursue other projects.

To be honest, I’m uneasy about what this change in status will mean for my spiritual life & prayer life.

Searching out and reading good Catholic books has become normal these past eight years. I’ve spent hours in adoration reading potential good books—an excellent way to discern whether a book is review-worthy. And because my husband Joseph has been the first reader of my columns, his feedback and our discussions as I fine-tune my thoughts have strengthened our spiritual friendship in marriage.

I’ve heard from many readers over the years about books that have helped or edified them, but truthfully, I am the one who has been most enriched by writing about Catholic books. I will always be grateful for this opportunity and my years here, and the careful editing and guidance of Tom Dermody, the editor of The Catholic Post.

Here are some of the “takeaways” that I’ve learned. I hope you will remember them, too:

  1. Catholic memoirs and spiritual biographies are an excellent genre for the reader’s spiritual growth & learning.

Memoirs, including spiritual biographies, can be very inconsistent in quality. While I’m not a fan of much modern memoir types, I have found numerous good examples in Catholic books old and new. I’ve written about ones as varied as the first book I ever reviewed, Venerable Fulton Sheen’s classic Treasure in Clay. Other great spiritual memoirs include He Leadeth Me by Fr. Walter Ciszek, The Fourth Cup by Scott Hahn, and The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows by Mother Dolores Hart.

2. Not all “Catholic” books are written by Catholics, or from Catholic publishers.

One of the most discussion-worthy books I’ve read in recent years is Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, which explores the area of death and dying, including wisdom from medieval monks, and what that means in today’s culture. In addition, books like Michael Pollan’s Cooked offer incarnational perspective on the goodness of creation.

3. Catholic authors are good for different audiences.

As I’ve written before, very few books are good for every Catholic reader, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something for everyone among Catholic books.

To consider two audiences:

For kids and teens, there is everything from saint biography books like Ablaze, & Radiate by Colleen Swaim, saint-inspired fiction like the charming, Olivia and the Little Way by Nancy Carabio Belanger, and practical works such as Your College Faith: Own It! and How I Stayed Catholic at Harvard.

For moms, there are a range of books, and newer ones released almost every year, on motherhood and balance, from pregnancy and early childhood in “Made for This” to parenting for your child’s personality in books like “The Temperament God Gave Your Kids.”

4. Praise God, the saints come in all types, sizes, and spiritualities.

I’m not going to name names, but certain saints inspire in me not devotion, but gratitude that God made all kind of people capable of becoming saints. A friend is fond of saying that the spiritual life is “individual as a fingerprint.” Readers can easily find a saint, spirituality to suit, though I have found it spiritually edifying to stretch outside my comfort zone when it comes to reading about the saints.

Some of my favorite books about saints and spiritualities include How to Pray the Dominican Way: Ten Postures, Prayers and Practices that Lead Us to God by Angelo Stagnaro, Introduction to the Devout Life  by St. Francis de Sales, and My Sisters the Saints by Colleen Carroll Campbell.

5. Healing can begin with reading books.

Some of my most popular reviews have been books about sensitive topics, especially ones relating to mental health and sexuality. Such books include Dawn Eden’s My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints and Remembering God’s Mercy, both about healing memory; Gay and Catholic by Eve Tushnet; Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach by Sister Kathryn Hermes; and the powerful Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholics by Fr. Thomas Berg.

6. You can be intellectual and Catholic.

This shouldn’t be surprising, considering that the Catholic Church gave us the scientific method, the university system, and innumerable discoveries. But in today’s culture of “cool,” the prevailing belief is that Catholicism, or any deeply held faith, is at odds with reason and “reality.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Consider Would You Baptize an Extra-Terrestrial by Vatican astronomers Brother Guy Consolmagno and Fr. Paul Mueller; The Loser Letters by Mary Eberstadt; The Case for Jesus by Brad Pitre; and any of the books by Fr. Robert Barron or Fr. Robert Spitzer.

7. Our Catholic faith is a precious gift that we should want to share and celebrate with everyone.

Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus by Sherry Weddell is a book that gets to the heart of evangelization, both within and outside of parishes. It talks about the vital importance of helping people have a deep personal relationship with Jesus, and what that means for the life of a parish or the Church at large.

8. Media literacy and critical thinking are must-have skills.

Developing the ability to discern wisely what one is reading, watching, or hearing, is more important than ever. Books like The Read-Aloud Family by Sarah MacKenzie and The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age provide not just families, but anyone, with tools and ideas for strengthening one’s critical skills in this area.

That is eight, but I have one more takeaway, since I like to “over-deliver:”

9. Reading is subservient to the goal of our faith: love.

St. Paul puts it perfectly 1 Corinthians 13:1: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging symbol.”

Meet a Reader: Deacon Wendell Lowry {@TheCatholicPost}

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Following is the “Meet a Reader” feature that appears in the current print edition of The Catholic Post.

How you know me:

In May 2017 I was ordained to the Permanent Diaconate in the Diocese of Peoria and serve as both Deacon and Business Manager for the four churches in Logan County.  I am the oldest of 6 (5 boys and 1 girl).  I was born in Mt. Lebanon, PA (a suburb of Pittsburgh) and grew up in Ohio and I am a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan.  This year my wife Brenda and I will celebrate our 37th anniversary.  We have two sons, one married and living in East Providence, Rhode Island, and one living in Lincoln.  We were blessed to add our first grandchild to our family just two months ago; his name is Lincoln.

Why I love reading:

My parents were a huge influence on me and I think for that reason I have always loved reading.  I love to learn, and I am wired in such a way that it is important for me to know the background (who, what, where and how) of something to better understand the why.

What I’m reading now:

I am currently reading The Case for Jesus by Dr. Brant Pitre, Interior Freedom by Fr. Jacques Philippe, and The Battle for Leyte Gulf: The Incredible Story of World War II’s Largest Naval Battle, by C. Vann Woodward. I also just completed two books on World War I (A World Undone and The World Remade) written by G. J. Meyer.  In The Case for Jesus and Interior Freedom, I am able to learn and to grow in my faith and in my relationship with Jesus Christ which is by far the most important thing that I can do.  Sadly, the history of the world and war are intertwined, and it is through these books that I gain a greater understanding of the why (why war? why this battle? why this general or admiral? etc.…etc…).  I also enjoy reading about the key men and women involved and the decision-making processes that they used and finally the valor of those who fought the battles.

My favorite book:

The Miracle of Father Kapaun: Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero by Travis Heying and The Grunt Padre, The Service and Sacrifice of Fr. Vincent Robert Capodanno, Vietnam 1966-1967 by Fr. Daniel Mode.

These two books address the heroic virtues of two men – both of whom have been declared “Servants of God” – who volunteered to serve as Catholic Chaplains in combat, one in Korea and the other in Vietnam.  They are my favorites because they address both the relationships these men had with Jesus Christ and with the men whom they served on the field of battle.  Both books address the historical aspects of battles that each man participated in and further addressed how these men made the Sacraments and themselves available to the men they served and how each Priest gave their life for others.  Everything I love about reading is wrapped up in these two books. And reading The Grunt Padre was meaningful for me because Fr. Capodanno and my Uncle were friends and served as Chaplains together in Vietnam.

“Life Everlasting” A Great Resource for New & Veteran Catholics {My April column @TheCatholicPost}

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Following is my column that appears in the current print edition of The Catholic Post.

Most of us have friends, acquaintances, or family members in our community or parish who join the Catholic Church at Easter. And I know I have wondered, as do many others, what would be a good gift for a new Catholic this Easter.

A brand-new book would make a great choice: it’s Life Everlasting: Catholic Devotions and Mysteries for the Everyday Seeker by Gary Jansen.

But Life Everlasting is not just for new members of the Church— longtime Catholics and seekers interested in the Catholic faith would also find much value and interest here.

Gary Jansen, the editor of Image Books, the Catholic book imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, has written a deeply personal, as well as far-reaching book. It’s not just a book about his own life and evolution as a Catholic, but also a relatively comprehensive field guide to Catholic practice, belief, and devotions.

Jansen has a polished narrative style that is entertaining without being contrived. His book is part memoir, part instructional work in living a rich life as a Catholic believer. The book is replete with Scripture and quotes from the saints.

The book is divided into three parts. The first “The Awakening,” covers the journey ones go through to come to faith; “The Path” outlines a deceptively simple and rich seven-step path to living a Christian life; and “The Devotions” offers a range of prayers, observances, and other ways to connect with God.

“The Awakening” is a short introduction to the book, that explains both why a faith life is significant, and explaining the organizing of the remaining book.

“The Path” lists seven steps to grow in faith life: 1)be childlike; 2) focus your mind & heart; 3) make the sign (about the Sign of the Cross); 4) say the Lord’s Prayer; 5) ask, seek, knock (about trusting prayers of petition); 6) cultivate silence; and 7) give your life away (service to God and others). Each chapter/step in this section gives good examples, based on the lives of the saints as well as Jensen’s own experience. “Cultivate Silence” is an especially good chapter, with a short introduction and explanation of St. Ignatius’ Examen spiritual practice.

In “The Devotions” part, both common and new ways of praying are offered related to the saints, angels, Mary, and Jesus. For instance, in the angels chapter, Jansen shares the familiar “guardian angel” prayer, but also offers an exercise to include one’s guardian angel in prayer time.

Not everything would be for every reader, but every reader would find something of interest and some new way to pray or express faith and grow closer to God. There’s so much I loved here, and Larsen calls them all “tools” to add to “our spiritual toolbox,” a great way to look at the many ways to pray, express our devotion, and live out a vibrant Catholic faith.

Also part of the spiritual toolbox is the ingenious “Spiritual 911,” an appendix that lists many common, basic prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer and the Memorare, and also a series of prayers “for difficult times,” to feature just a few: St. Francis de Sales Prayer for Inner Peace, a prayer to St. Dymphna for Mental Healing, and a prayer to St. Joseph for Fathers and Families. The second appendix also provides a calendar of Saints.

I’m a cradle Catholic, and yet I found a lot of content that I found fresh and interesting. “Life Everlasting” is a great read for a lot of different Catholics, or even those just interested in what Catholic belief looks like.

“The Fourth Cup” a Great Read for Lent, Easter Seasons {My March column @TheCatholicPost }

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Following is my column that appears in the current print edition of The Catholic Post.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land is an aspiration of many Christians. It won’t surprise you to know that I am among those who have that desire.

Years ago, my husband and I were watching an interview on EWTN with Steve Ray, the Catholic convert and apologist, I mentioned that I would love to go on one of his “Footprints of God” pilgrimages that he and his wife Janet lead to the Holy Land. In the interview, Ray mentioned especially that bringing the entire family to the Holy Land, especially teens and young adults, is unparalleled for growing in faith for a range of generations. We haven’t quite come to an agreement about when and how the pilgrimage will take place, but I’m still hoping it will happen someday.

Your Holy Land pilgrimage, like mine, may be far off in the future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit, especially during Lent and Easter, from meditating on early Jewish & Christian customs, culture, and place.

I hesitate to say it, but it is true that while we wait, books (and videos, too) can be the next best thing to an actual Holy Land pilgrimage.

In the past, I’ve reviewed several books that inform or inspire, like Fr. Mitch Pacwa’s The Holy Land: An Armchair Pilgrimage, or Jesus: A Pilgrimage, Fr. James Martin’s musings on visiting the Holy Land over the years. Even local son Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote a book (with fascinating vintage photographs) called, This is the Holy Land.

One of my favorite aspects of these books is their ability to put readers in the time and place Jesus lived, and help explain some of the aspects about our faith that we take for granted.

The most recent book by Scott Hahn, The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross while not a Holy Land pilgrimage book, has a similar effect and scope.

Scott Hahn is well-known to many as a Protestant pastor who converted to Catholicism in the 1980s, and has been tirelessly writing books, giving talks, and otherwise spreading the Catholic faith, ever since. He’s best known probably for his most popular book, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth.

Most people in the early 1990s, like me, learned of Hahn through an audio version of his conversion story, which was widely distributed during those years. I recall a friend giving me a cassette tape of Hahn’s first conversion story. (Yes, young ones reading this column, there are still people alive who listened to things on audio cassette. Don’t even get me starting on how people back in “my” college days painstakingly made song mixtapes on audio cassette).

But back to Scott Hahn. He was such a convincing and powerful speaker, and helped me to understand the riches of the Catholic faith that I, as a cradle Catholic, had never understood or appreciated.

Hahn is best at that—helping Catholics and non-Catholics alike, discover or re-discover the richness of the Catholic faith; how our practices—especially the Mass—are rooted solidly in Scripture; and how early Church Fathers point towards what we now practice and believe as Catholics.

As he writes in the preface to the book, when he began giving talks on his conversion to Catholicism, it was often titled, The Fourth Cup, after the fourth cup of the Passover, that Jesus omitted during the Last Supper. The “why” of that, and how Hahn discovered it over the course of his conversion through study and prayer, together make for an engaging, informative read.

The book is organized into 14 chapters, almost all directly relating to the Passover in the Old Testament, and how that directly prefigures Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. The first chapter is “What is Finished,” when the young Protestant seminary student Hahn was challenged by a pastor to find out why Jesus said, “It is finished” just before he died; and the remaining chapters help explain how he discovered it, and how it led him directly to the Catholic Church. the rest of the chapters a range of chapters that help explain how the Passover is a type, or prefiguring, of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross; to the final chapter “The Paschal Shape of Life,” how we can apply that in our own lives.

One clever aspect of The Fourth Cup are the dozens of sly puns in nearly every sub-headings of sections sprinkled throughout each chapter: such as “Pasch, Presence, and Future” or “A Lamb is Bread for This,” or “Greeks Baring Gifts.”

I found myself writing down multiple quotes from the book, such as:

“God taught Israel to sacrifice not so that his Chosen People would be humiliated but so that they would learn to lay down their lives, to turn away from sin, and to live in the covenant. ‘The sacrifice acceptable to God is broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.’ (Ps 51)”

As I’ve written before, I’m a lay person when it comes to theology, and so I appreciate a straightforward, manageable read to help me grow in my knowledge and contemplate some of the riches of our faith. The Fourth Cup is just such a book.

Meet a Reader: Kimberly Lange

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Following is the “Meet a Reader” that appears in this month’s print edition of The Catholic Post.

 

How You Know Me:

I live on the border between Washington and Morton with Philip, my husband of 27 years, and our five children.  I am the High School Faith Formation Coordinator for Blessed Sacrament Church and am a member of the Bishop’s Commission on Women. 

Why I love Reading:

My parents were always big readers, and I grew up with a rule that I had to read for a half hour each night before bed.  However, I did not fall in love with it until I became a mom and had the responsibility of cultivating a love of reading in my own children.  Teaching each of my children how to read was also a boost for appreciating this skill that opens up so many doors.  If you can read, you can pretty much learn about anything you need, and I cannot resist living vicariously through the lives of the characters I  meet, and appreciate the lessons I learn (the easy way).  Reading enhances my everyday reality, and makes even the most mundane of days brighter. My favorite literature genre is historical fiction, but I am ALWAYS happy with a cookbook in my hands. Makes the mundane tastier, too!

What I’m reading now:

I have slowly been working through a 10-volume series of private revelation called Direction for Our Times as Given to Anne, a Lay Apostle.  While it must be understood that private revelation is not considered part of the “deposit of faith”, it can be recognized as a help to live the Catholic faith more fully in a certain period of history.  This series carries the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur which declare the book free of doctrinal or moral error and declare that ecclesiastical permission has been granted for publication.   he books are a collection of teachings and exchanges between Anne, a lay apostle from Ireland, and both Jesus and Mary (as well as various other saints in volume seven), that took place between June of 2003 and October of 2004.  Many times as I struggle through prayer at mass or during Eucharistic adoration, I wish I simply had a direct hotline to Heaven.  These books make me feel as if I do!  These recorded conversations with Jesus and Mary exude all the love, tenderness, care and concern of a groom for His bride and a mother for her children.  They are comforting, reassuring, inspirational, and educational, and bring peace to my heart.

I am also reading A Philadelphia Catholic in King James’s Court by Martin de Porres Kennedy.  It’s an emotionally charged apologetics novel that makes me not only feel good about being Catholic, but invites us to study and understand our faith so that we may joyfully share its truths with others! 

My Favorite book:


The first time I thought to myself, “This is my favorite book,” was when I read Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls in junior high English class.  This book made me laugh out loud, cry real tears, and took me through every emotion in between.   I remember being so amazed and delighted  by its power to do that. 

 

On a different note,  Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World ranks as a favorite because it somehow took what I knew (God loves me unconditionally) but did not yet fully believe (when I get this part of me cleaned up, God, then we can REALLY be friends) and turned it into an unquestionable reality for me (I’m His bride. Now.  As is. Trust Him).  This understanding, of course, changed my life, and I re-read this book every year, lest I forget who I am.