May Meeting: The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest (2)

We were glad to welcome Father Lawrence back from his travels and to hear a bit about his experiences.  Such a joy to have him back!

Discussion of the book began by touching on some difficulties with its frequent mention of persons met, visited, and/or helped by Gerard, and those who were of help to him.  Some members found this initially confusing, and one found it quite off-putting.  We went on to consider who were the people Gerard was calling “schismatics”,  and why he found them “much more difficult to move”. Talking about the dangers people faced, both personal and social, we could understand, to some extent, why people would change their religion based on the command of the king or queen.  We also talked about the differences between that society, where religion was very important and indeed a way in which an individual might find his identity, and today’s society.

From members talking about Gerard’s insistence on an exact and well-considered examination of conscience for those wanting to convert, Father Lawrence went on to talk about making a general confession, and in answer to some questions gave details about the circumstances in which a person might make a general confession.

In choosing a book for July, we considered that perhaps we have had enough history for a while, and chose the autobiography “The Story of a Soul” by St. Therese of Lisieux.

St. Margaret Clitherow

For those who have access to EWTN,  that network will air an hour-long program on the life and death of St. Margaret Clitherow, who was executed in a particularly terrible way for hiding hunted Catholic priests during the reign of Elizabeth I.  This should be very interesting as it relates to our reading of The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest.  The program will be on May 23 at 11 a.m. and May 25 at 3 a.m. Pacific times.

Click on the above link to see what Wikipedia has on this remarkable woman.  This drawing of the saint is taken from Wikipedia.

English: Margaret Clitherow old depiction. Source is here (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest

Above is the title of the book we focused on for our April meeting.  Actually, we only discussed the first half, saving the second part for the May get-together.  The book is quite fascinating, and is by John Gerard, S.J., a priest who ministered to Catholics in England during the reign of Elizabeth I from about 1588 – 1606.  He was hunted, hidden in specially-constructed priest holes, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, escaped, and continued to work as a priest.  As I understand it, he originally wrote of this period under the order of his superior, writing in Latin and intending the book only to be read by other Jesuits.  In the early 1950′s, his writings were translated and published but went out of print,  and this book was re-issued only last year by Ignatius Press.

We began the meeting with a bit of historical background, considering Catholicism in the reigns of Henry VIII, his daughter Mary, and daughter Elizabeth I.  We also talked a bit, based on our previous reading, of the ongoing attempts of the English Crown over the centuries to control the Catholic Church and to foster suspicion of Catholic loyalty to the Crown because of the religious authority of the Pope.

As for our featured book, members spoke of being astonished by its contents and questioned why they had known nothing of these events.  Father Tom was particularly moved by Gerard’s ability to  debate, persuade, and convert so many people. We look forward to discussing the second half of the book at our May meeting.

As I read the second part of The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, I jotted down a few topics that seemed interesting to me, and on which I would like to hear others’ views.  I’ll list them here.

• Was it because the times were so dangerous that Gerard was able to convert so many people?
• Were people generally more devout then?
• Gerard says the “schismatics” were “much more difficult to move than heretics”.  Why do you think that was?
• Gerard advises people to make a “good and exact” examination of conscience, and often had them take several days over it.  Does our practice differ today?  If so, why?  Any comments?
• Gerard tells of many people who influenced relations and friends to convert (of course, there were also many who could not).  Would that be possible for us today?

That’s all for now.  I’ll let you know how our May meeting goes.

Fourth Anniversary, 2013

In March we celebrated our fourth anniversary with the usual potluck dinner and play reading, but we went all out in our choice of play.  Since we had read several histories of the Church during 2012 and had had additional practice with dramatic readings, we judged that we were ready to take on the very challenging “Murder in the Cathedral“ by T. S. Eliot.  As we did preliminary readings of the play and prepared our parts, we were impressed by its poetic quality and beauty.  We also learned  a bit of the historical background and brought ourselves up to speed on the central incident, the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury.

The dramatic reading left us enthused and exhilarated, feeling that we had done ourselves proud.  It was a great kickoff to our fifth year.

The Blog is Back!

This blog hasn’t kept up, but the book club has enthusiastically continued to read, meet, and enjoy discussing books. We are adding new members and expanding our horizons as we have moved into some serious reading in church history.  We’re not getting bogged down, though, as we have included related historical fiction!

At our August meeting we had a wonderful time at our first-ever summer potluck dinner (thank you, M.R.), and sketched out some plans for our reading over the next few months.  Check out the Our Next Book link above to see the details.  At our September 10th meeting, we will need to set a different date for the October meeting, since our usual second Monday will fall on the Thanksgiving holiday, so please give some thought to what date would work with your calendar.

So, for September 10, be prepared to discuss Count Belisarius.  We’ll be meeting at Father Lawrence’s, 7:30 as usual.  See you there!

Jan. and Feb Meetings; Anniversary Play Reading!

 A variety of health issues have kept me from being faithful to this blog, but I am determined to update before our March meeting, so here goes:

At our January meeting we discussed The Song at the Scaffold, talking about conditions in the Church in France at the time of the Revolution.  We also looked briefly at the differences between the novel and the opera that was based on it, Dialogues of the Carmelites by Poulenc.  The horrors of the Reign of Terror are certainly brought out forcefully by the novel, slight though it is.

We were pleased to welcome a new member!  No doubt she will keep us on our toes in the coming months.

It is customary for us in January to vote on our favourite book of the past year, and we had some difficulty with that because there had been several books not read by all the members.  We narrowed our choices down to two–In This House of Brede and Becoming Human.  Each book was argued for strongly, and after debate we decided to make them dual favourites for 2011.

Our February meeting followed our custom of getting together on a Saturday night for dinner and a reading of a play.  The catering of the dinner, which was Italian-themed, was coordinated by Father Lawrence and was deemed a great success.  We all enjoyed the chance to spend much more time than we  have at our regular meetings, getting to know one another better and to catch up on our latest news.

Then it was time to pull out our scripts and set to business.  The play chosen, “A Certain Nobleman”,  is from a series of radio plays based on the Gospels, so we had the fun of providing our own sound effects when necessary, such as crowd noises and trotting horses.  But the subject was a serious one, taking Jesus and the Apostles from the wedding at Cana to the cleansing of the Temple, and then on to the healing of the nobleman’s son.  The effect on us was powerful, as though we were ourselves immersed in the scenes.  We thought it possible that we may want to perform other of the short plays in the series in the future.

For a variety of reasons, we decided to break our reading of our next book, Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, into two parts for our March and April meetings.  First we will concentrate on Chapters 1 – 3.

December Meeting 2011

Our December meeting was a joyful event.  We had had to miss November, since most people were unable to attend, so we were glad to be together again and had much to share with one another.

Becoming Human sparked quite a lot of conversation and discussion of personal experiences with some of the topics on which Vanier focused in this series of talks.  His insights were judged to be of considerable value, especially as we grow in maturity and begin to think about the aging process.  Since there were some who had not yet finished the book, we thought we might revisit it later.

We looked at some recommendations and handouts, and decided on the following reads: 

For January, The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrude von le Fort (an Ignatius Press reprint).

For February, our third anniversary, one of the plays from Dorothy Sayers‘ play cycle on the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King.  These were radio plays produced on the BBC during World War II.  Scripts will be provided at the January club meeting.  We would like to have another potluck dinner, since last year’s dinner and playreading made for such a great evening.

For March, Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina by Michael Casey.

Stay tuned for our report on our meeting in January, when we will vote on our favourite book of 2011!

October Meeting

Father Lawrence was not able to attend this month, and we missed him, because we had lots of questions about the book, which he had recommended.

All who attended had done the reading of the first half of the book, and were unanimous in feeling that we hadn’t liked it.  The style put us off, particularly his use of characters to serve as foils for the discussion of various opinions.  Rowland also couldn’t seem to decide if he was writing a travelogue or discussing Galileo and his case, since he included photos of places that had to do with his made-up journey and characters, Berkowitz the atheist and Sister Clarice the nun. 

We felt that he could have explained his points more clearly and quickly, and found the reading hard going.  We all agreed, though, to finish the book for next month, and then choose something spiritual for the following book.

We decided that our book for the December meeting will be Becoming Human by Jean Vanier.  A Globe and Mail review of a book on his parents, Georges and Pauline Vanier: Portrait of a Couple  by Mary Frances Coady, was passed around and suggested as a possible book for the future.

September Meeting

It was great to get back together again!  Because of illness, we had to miss our August meeting, so we had lots to talk about, particularly with Father having been at World Youth Day in Madrid.

The summer had been full of interruptions and busy-ness for most of us, and therefore not everyone had read the books under discussion.  Those who had done the reading were able to comment on the books and give updates for the benefit of the others.

First to be discussed was Dear and Glorious Physician, by Taylor Caldwell.  Although the book is a fictional treatment of the life of St. Luke, some were left wanting more fact included, and some were wishing that the book had not stopped where it did, with St. Luke beginning to gather information from Jesus’ mother Mary. 

Our book for September was Why Catholics Are Right by Michael Coren, and it too was criticized on several fronts.  One member commented that it was generally well written, but didn’t bring new information on the various topics.   Another criticism was that the intended audience was unclear.  If Coren means to convince Protestants with this book, why does he not include Scripture references to go with his points?  A member commented that Scripture references don’t work for non-religious people, so if that was his audience, no wonder he (Coren) didn’t include them.  The general feeling seemed to be that those who had read this book did not find it satisfying.

We decided that our book for October and November will be Galileo’s Mistake by Wade Rowland.  Because the book is lengthy and several members expect to be  very busy, we will read the first thirteen chapters for October, and then finish the book for November.  Our October meeting will be at bookgetaway’s house, and she will let everyone know her location.  We have decided to meet on Tuesday, Oct. 11, because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  See you then!

June Meeting, 2011

(We’ve been meeting regularly this year, except for May, but for various reasons I have not kept up with reporting.  I plan to resume regular posting.  JF)

At our June meeting, we discussed the novel In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden.  We were enthusiastic about the book,  feeling that Godden had very capably told a tale that pulls the reader right into the midst of the story.  We particularly liked the way she gives a strong sense of the changing seasons, and of the liturgical year.  Our discussion involved favourite characters and plotlines, and then “bookgetaway” provided some background information on Rumer Godden, mostly gathered from Wikipedia.

We talked about books for the near future, and decided that since the book for July, Catholics by Brian Moore, was a short one, we could take on something more lengthy for August, and chose Dear and Glorious Physician, a novel centered on St. Luke, by Taylor Caldwell.   Father Lawrence mentioned that at the time of the August meeting he will be in Spain for World Youth Day, so “bookgetaway” proposed that we meet at her condo for August.  We talked about the possibility of reading Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, for September, but deferred a decision until later.