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.

MEETING CANCELLED

The meeting for Monday, May 9, 2011 has been cancelled.  Sorry to give so little advance warning, but new information just came in today.

As a result, our May book, In This House of Brede, will be pushed forward for June, and the book that was to be for June, Catholics, will be discussed at the July meeting.

Some Info on A. J. Cronin

I thought that bringing forward some facts about the author of The Keys of the Kingdom might add to our discussion at our next meeting, March 14.  Here’s what I have gleaned.

                                                         

A.J. Cronin, in full Archibald Joseph Cronin   (born July 19, 1896, Cardross, Dumbartonshire, Scot.—died Jan. 6, 1981, Montreux, Switz.), Scottish novelist and physician whose works combining realism with social criticism won a large Anglo-American readership.

Early life

Cronin was born at Rosebank Cottage in Cardross, Dunbartonshire, the only child of a Protestant mother, Jessie Cronin (née Montgomerie), and a Catholic father of Irish extraction, Patrick Cronin, and would later write of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. His paternal grandparents were the proprietors of a public house in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire. His maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage, Cronin’s parents moved to Helensburgh, where he attended Grant Street School. When he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent and commercial traveller, died from tuberculosis. He and his mother moved to her parents’ home in Dumbarton, and she soon became the first female public health inspector in Scotland.

Cronin was educated at the University of Glasgow and served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy during World War I. He practiced in South Wales (1921–24) and then, as medical inspector of mines, investigated occupational diseases in the coal industry. He opened a medical practice in London in 1926 but quit because of ill health, using his leisure to write his first novel, Hatter’s Castle (1931; filmed 1941), the story of a Scottish hatmaker obsessed with the idea of the possibility of his noble birth. This book was an immediate success in Britain.  

 Cronin’s strengths were his narrative skill and his powers of acute observation and graphic description.

February Meeting, 2011

For the celebration of our second anniversary, we met on a Saturday evening so that we would have enough time to do a complete read-through of a play.  We also had our first potluck supper for a festive start to the evening, gathered at the refectory table.

After a delicious supper, we settled down to a dramatic reading of Robert  Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons.  Seven members plus a friend of the book club were sufficient, with doubling, to cover all the roles in the play.

Everyone read with conviction, and the play moved swiftly from scene to scene.  We took a short break between Acts, and got right back into the thick of it.

Sir Thomas More

 The tension of the confrontational scenes kept us pushing on as Cromwell plotted and Richard Rich schemed.

The Common Man considers his options

When we finished, we had plenty of comments and questions, along with jokes about how we were ready to take the production on the road.  The fact that no one wanted to leave for some time showed how involved we had all become.  We praised the play and its author, commented on the staging and effects, and talked a bit about the movie which had been made from the play.  The evening was declared a definite success, and suggestions were made for other plays which might be read.  It was a great anniversary celebration!

The Cast of Characters

Another View - don't miss Thomas More's dog!

A Possible Book For Us – Things As They Are

This is an article that recently appeared in Dappled Things, a quarterly of ideas, art & faith.  This novel by Paul Horgan is one we may want to consider for future reading; I’ll put it on our Suggested Books page.

On Things as They Are

Amy Welborn

You’d think that when it came to the coming-of-age novel, Catholics would be the masters. It’s the story of redemption after loss—isn’t that the basic Catholic story? Loss of innocence, exposure to the real world, hints of redemption, recollections glimmering like small jewels worked into an antique tapestry… you’d think.

In reality, though, there few instances of the genre in the Catholic literary pantheon. After Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the landscape of novel-length literary treatments is arid. Oh, pop culture is replete with them, crowded with Catholic school youths bumping and grinding against the constraints of frigid nuns and hypocritical priests. Short literary fiction boasts fine examples: Flannery O’Connor’s “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and Bernard MacLaverty’s “The Beginnings of a Sin” come immediately to mind. These stories are funny and wrenching, just like the human experience they reflect. But is there a Catholic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye, a novel that’s an honest literary rendering of the moments when the veil is lifted on the adult world, when pedestals shatter and idols fall?

—

Things As They Are was written by Paul Horgan and published in 1951. It is not a rollicking or picaresque novel. It’s quiet, episodic, and subtle. But it’s also powerful, lucid, and authentic—a hidden gem of English-language Catholic literature and of the coming-of-age novel.

I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of it myself before a couple of years ago, when, as the editor of the Loyola Classics series of mid-century Catholic novels, I was talking with George Weigel, who had written the introduction to our edition of Evelyn Waugh’s Helena. Had we given any thought to Things as They Are, he wondered. I confessed I had no idea what he was talking about. Get it, he said. Read it. He was sure we’d want to include it in the series.

He was right. We read the novel. We were completely taken with it, and astonished that it had slipped out of almost everyone’s consciousness in the half-century since its publication.

—

Paul Horgan was an intriguing figure, the product of a period of freedom in American intellectual life, before specialization and professionalism, when a man without a college degree might write a history—or two—that might win him a Pulitzer Prize—or two.

Horgan was born in 1903 in Rochester, New York. The family moved to New Mexico in 1914 for the sake of his father’s health. Horgan attended the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, then returned to Rochester to attend college at the Eastman Music Institute. He didn’t stay long at Eastman. After a couple of years studying music and dabbling in theater, he left in 1923 without finishing his degree. He returned to his old school in Roswell, where served as the librarian until 1942.

Horgan had begun writing in the 1920s, primarily novels and short stories. He worked in Washington, D.C. during the war, at which point he began writing histories. His primary interest was, not surprisingly, the Southwest. His two Pulitzers were awarded in 1955 for a history of the Rio Grande River called The Great River (which was also awarded the Bancroft Prize) and in 1975 for Lamy of Santa Fe, his biography of Archbishop John Baptist Lamy, the first bishop of Santa Fe, and the inspiration for Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. Horgan moved to Middletown, Connecticut in 1959 where he wrote, worked at Wesleyan University, and died in 1995.

Horgan may not be included on most lists of American Catholic writers, but all of his writing is infused with a sacramental sensibility. In 1976, he was awarded Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, given to one �whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church, and enriched the heritage of humanity.�

—

Things as They Are is the first novel of a trilogy called The Richard Trilogy. Richard, the title character, is a young boy growing up in upstate New York in the early twentieth century, the much-loved only child of kind, prosperous middle-class Catholic parents. The book is episodic: Each chapter describes a different incident in the boy’s life within a clear chronology, but not, at first look, in the context of a clear narrative sequence. Though isn’t that the way all of us, particularly children, experience life? As a series of episodes, of moments that only later do we see linked by a common thread, purpose, or direction?

The episodes in Things As They Are are linked, and their tie is made explicit in the novel’s title, and in the opening lines of the book:

“Richard, Richard,” they said to me in my childhood, “when will you begin to see things as they are?”

What is that, “things as they are”? It’s life: beauty, pain, and the discovery of the human capacity for evil, particularly in our own selves. The young Richard discovers frightening things about himself in the opening chapter of the novel when he encounters, not a pear tree, but a kitten, and chooses to do wrong, for what reason he cannot tell—for no reason, for any reason. As the novel unfolds, evil continues to reveal itself in the consequences of judging a misfit; in the sad, pathetic deception of a beloved uncle; in the harshness of family; in adults who use Richard’s affection as a means to sin with each other; in the strange attraction of those who would exploit the young; and most powerfully and heartbreakingly, in the story of a mentally disabled neighbor boy who is victimized by other boys to the point of grave illness, and, Richard perceives, allowed to die by his outwardly upright and loving parents.

But this is by no means a dark book. It authentically renders a child’s-eye view, that mix of inherent egoism and deep and barely understood love, of boldness and dread, all dwelling in the same soul. And it depicts the way grace always waits for us, not above the confusion, but in the midst of it, patiently. Weigel wrote in his introduction:

Paul Horgan knew that there is nothing less sentimental than Catholicism, because Catholicism is realism. And he knew the reason why Catholicism is realism: because it is through the Incarnation, a real event at a real time in a real place, that God’s unsentimental, cleansing, and all-powerful love is decisively revealed—the divine mercy that is, according to the parable of the Prodigal Son, the defining characteristic of God’s interaction with the world. Catholic realism doesn’t deny “things as they are.” Catholic realism doesn’t deny the temptations of what an older generation called “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Catholic realism confronts the world, the flesh, and the devil in the confidence that, as Christ has conquered, so, by the divine mercy and grace, may the people who are Christ’s Body in history.

The novel is filled with moments of clarity in which Richard begins to understand that mystery, none more memorable than the evening his mother takes him out to confront a thunderstorm. The family is at their summer cottage on a lake. The father has just experienced the terrible, wrenching dissolution of a friendship and business relationship. Richard, who has seen his father as he has never seen him before—weak, wounded, and dependent on others—is terrified, as always, when a thunderstorm strikes. Defying his father’s command, he rushes to the closet to hide.

His mother opens the closet, dressed to brave the storm. He refuses to go outside. She, uncharacteristically, strikes him, and he follows her:

“Richard, look!” She shook me and pointed to the wild sky, the sweeps of rain on the lake, and then at the tearing strikes of lightening amidst the clouds. “Richard! Look! Why be afraid? It is so beautiful!” She put her arm about my shoulders and when the lightening struck I could feel how she too trembled before the power of God. But how new was her idea that this power was beautiful! I stared at the new idea as I stared at a world I had never been able to see before…

—

Over the past three years, as part of the editing the Loyola Classics series, I read a great deal of mid-century Catholic-themed fiction, the vast majority of it decidedly mediocre. It was exhausting. The stories about idealized priests and nuns and tragic, repentant heroines are mired in their time, imprisoned by their authors’ determination that what readers needed and wanted were piety and neat conversions-on-the-precipice. Those books are relics, of little interest or value today.

Things as They Are, however, still resonates. Richard is us. The world he sees with wonder and even sadness is our world. The fallen idols he mourns are our idols. But in loss, grace shimmers, faint but unmistakable. For if we are to recognize the voice of God in the midst of things as they are, the idols must fall.

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Amy Welborn writes Open Book, a highly-respected blog on culture, theology, Church news, current events, devotion, and a host of other topics. She is the author of many works of catechesis and apologetics, including A Catholic Guide to the Good Life, The Words We Pray, and The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints. She is also a popular speaker and the editor emeritus of Loyola Classics.

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January Meeting, 2011

The  January meeting was our opportunity to discuss Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI’s bestseller.  Some people joined us specifically because they were interested to hear our discussion on the featured book, and we also welcomed a new member, Father John.  Two of our regular members were away travelling.

We spent some time at the beginning on planning for our second anniversary celebration in February, working out the menu for the potluck and planning the dramatic reading. 

Then we got down to our discussion.  Everyone had high praise for the book.  The general consensus was that, because it is so deep, reading small sections and then letting those thoughts and explanations sink in is the best approach.  Weaving together so many elements of the Scriptures to build his images of Christ, explicating parables, clarifying Jewish thought, referencing the works of other scholars of Scripture–these were some of the instances mentioned as people praised the pope’s efforts.  People agreed that it was a book which could be read over again with much benefit, and several expressed enthusiasm for the following volume due to be published this spring.

We finished with a vote on our favourite book of 2010, and Silence by Shusaku Endo was the winner, with second place going to John Henry Newman: His Inner Life.

Why Read Fiction?

Here is an excerpt from a post on Why Read Modern Fiction from The Philosopher Mom which I thought of interest:

Why should we read things like Brideshead Revisited, Silence, A Man in Full, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Love in the Ruins, The Lord of the Rings, Kristin Lavransdatter, or even… Love in the Time of Cholera? If time is short, shouldn’t we be almost exclusively reading the Catechism, the Bible, or various devotional works?

 

I’d like to think about this question sincerely, because there was a time in my life when all I wanted to read were works by saints or works on points of doctrine or ideas. There’s nothing wrong with these seasons of life, so long as we do not absolutize them for ourselves or others.

The place of fiction and, in particular, modern fiction in the life of lovers of wisdom–philosophers!–has to do with knowledge of self, knowledge of the world, and knowledge of God.

The most important thing to remember is that all truth is one, and ultimately is found only in union with God. This does not mean, however, that only art or literature explicitly devoted to God speaks truth. As Augustine wrote, the human heart by nature groans and aches for God alone–all human works, however broken or disgusting, can give expression to this desire and thus to the fulfillment of this desire.

We should be reading the great works of modern fiction (amen, time is short, so skip the trash unless you’re on a brain-vacation!) and helping our of-age children to do the same. We should read fiction because it speaks the language a whole dimension of ourselves that perhaps the Summa Theologica does not: the imagination, the will, the heart. It engages our intellect, too, in a new way: Rather than an analysis of a problem, it invites the reader to inhabit the questions at hand. If holiness or viciousness are only fully grasped in an encounter with a living person who is either holy or vicious, then fiction can draw us ore closely to a lived experience of these realities.

We should be reading modern fiction because we are moderns. Even more than that, we are post-moderns. It does not do for us to stop with the Greeks, the Medieval poets, Dante, or even Shakespeare. The reality is that, for us and our children, the world is a different place now than it was in 1900. I am glad I had to read 1984, Farenheit 451, In Cold Blood, Ordinary People, and even… ugh… Catcher in the Rye. I am even more glad that my 20th-century reading list did not end with high school but went on to include the works listed at the top of this page–and many more.

In reading the works of modern authors, we listen to the voice of our immediate companions on earth. We hear the influence of Nietzsche, WWI and WWII, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, the loss of confidence in natural science, the loss of so much. We also see the ongoing thirst for truth, beauty, and goodness–and the unlikely moments in which these are found in our own context. We learn to speak the language that those around us speak. This is the only way we ourselves can grasp the truth of our condition: in order, creatures, humans, moderns.

Now, truth is sometimes depressing. Especially Ray Bradbury’s fiction. Ugh. Tom Wolfe is no walk in the sunshine, either. But they articulate and paint for our souls images, allegories, and stories from which Christ himself does not shrink. Neither should we. All truth is one; all truth is of God.

 

Follow the above link to her blog if you would like to see more of what she has to say.  I’ll be interested to hear your reactions at our upcoming meeting.