Madrid also doesn’t mince words. When he discusses the ways that the teachings of Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses contradict Scripture, for example, there is no equivocation.

Madrid surprised me in two ways. First, he included not just the well-known New Testament verses that justify Catholic doctrine, but delved into Old Testament passages that (frankly) aren’t in my usual repertoire, such as 2 Kings 13:20-21. Second, when it came to familiar verses, he took the route less traveled. For example, his commentary on Matthew 16:13-19 could have taken the route of “See, this justifies having a Pope!” Instead, he relates the rock to Panius, a looming cliff well-known to Our Lord’s audience.

This review was written as part of the Catholic Book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on 150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know.

Instead, the problem is that I read the foreward (by Christopher West) and the Introduction for each book, then thought, “Isn’t this a little theologically dense for a teen?”

In fact, it is.  These books are not the sort to hand to a teenager and say, “Here, read this.” Adult guidance is needed.

But this dual text is good for a parent to use as a tool, or for a parochial school to use as a text.

Of the two sides, Theology of Her Body is the weaker. In part it’s because the Song of Songs is the reference point.  It may illuminate the mystery and beauty of feminity, but it’s still a metaphor. However, the section about modesty in dress alone is worth the price of the book.

Theology of His Body is stronger because Evert is a guy. Using the Book of Tobit as a reference point, he focuses on the strength of Man On a Mission. Evert’s dissection of manipulation and, conversely, the fear of commitment is excellent. He addresses homosexuality also, clearly and charitably.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Theology of Her Body and Theology of His Body.

The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known – it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

- Pope Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope ~ Spe salvi (2nd encyclical)

Life can seem like a battle of the wills: our will versus God’s will. (p. 80)

Gina Loehr’s Real Women, Real Saints has the subtitle Friends for Your Spiritual Journey. This isn’t a typical book on the lives of the saints. It focuses solely on women, including ones who haven’t been canonized, like Blessed Josefina Naval Girbes and Servant of God Dorothy Day.

It also lends itself for use in daily reflections, both because of the brevity of its entries and their arrangement. Typical entries run a page-and-a-half.  The women are grouped into categories by the hallmark of their saintly lives; e.g. “Women of Charity”.

Loehr didn’t write typical biographical entries.  Most begin with a statement such as “Even when human love fails, God’s love remains” (p. 56, St. Bertilla Boscardin). Entries contain sketches of the women’s lives, but don’t go into great depth; e.g. no mention is made of St. Bertilla’s birthplace. In the case of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the entry contains little biographical information and more reaction to her life.  As Loehr states in her introduction, each entry highlights ”a relationship between the Savior of the universe and a woman who loved him enough to live in harmony with his will.” (p. 2)

Overall, this is a wonderful little book (166 pages) and a great springboard for further reading.  The “Notes” section contains references to books still in print and several on-line sources.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Real Women, Real Saints.

Elizabeth Scalia, aka The Anchoress, was writing about  pessimistic comments about society changing, not for the better.  Senator Ted Kennedy told some friends that when they became his age,  ”the whole thing is going to fall apart”. And Roger Ebert, he of movie criticism fame, recently opined that politicians must work together because “It’s all coming to pieces”.

I was enjoying a cup of tea while I read.  I began to post a short response, but it grew. That happens a lot lately. Sheesh - reading The Anchoress is turning into homework. And my tea is cold.

Anyway, Sen. Kennedy’s “the whole thing is going to fall apart” and Ebert’s “It’s all coming to pieces” are nothing more than mortality rants.

Men and women both have them, but I think maybe women start earlier.* They come when a person starts looking back at the great days and perceives that few of those days lie ahead. Vain women complain, for example, about the unfairness of aging or the birthday with a zero in it.

Self-important men worry about leaving a legacy that will stand for all time and, as they see more years behind them and watch all the young men coming forward, it galls them. One of my uncles (not a Kennedy) was quite the philosopher when he was in his bottle.  I got the feeling that “The world is going to hell” was a favorite theme and, as he was not a God-fearing man, it wasn’t a religious sermon. It was more pragmatic.

He was a construction worker and very proud of his work. He mentioned once (and only once) that one of his buildings had been torn down to make way for “a big box”. His face took on an expression that I’d never seen before (or since).  

Kennedy and Ebert are looking back at more years than they have ahead of them. The senator especially may wonder if he’s made a lasting legacy or if everything will be “destroyed” (by conservatives?) It’s only natural. It’s bad enough when one’s strength flags and one’s ideas turn to familiar routines, but it’s compounded by seeing the eager young men with strange new ideas and (perhaps diametrically-opposed)values. 

That doesn’t mean the world will fall apart when the senator is gone. 

Leonard Wibberley, one of my favorite Irish-American writers, knew about mortality rants. In Stranger at Killknock, he puts these words in one of his characters, a fisherman:

It is a true thing that the world was born with me and it will die with me. It did not exist for me before I opened my eyes and it will go forever the day I shut them for the last time. It is my world. I created it when I was born and I will destroy it when I die. Sorrow for the world then, the day I draw my last breath.

I think he’s being Irish. I imagine that the world will go on, but differently. Things will eventually go to hell – in the Biblical sense, in the natural sense as our sun dies, etc.

*I had my midlife crisis at 20, just to get it out of the way.

There are also subplots involving a sabateur out to destroy the fledging school, a sinister classmate who is brilliant yet cruel, a gun-toting masked man, and wrestling team rivalry.  And that’s not counting the crickets… which I wouldn’t even attempt with a calculator.

Like most children’s books with multiple characters, the adults are reduced to a single dimension. A few teens are distinguished by their role rather than their personalities; for example, the Innocuously- Bad Girl who dresses to impress boys. (I will admit, however, that my favorite character is prankster JP, the Trickster character.) 

The main characters are fleshed out more. George Peterson, the male protagonist, is particularly appealing, especially in his attempts to protect his friend Colin. The author also captures the internal conflict between following the Catholic faith and trying to fit in. 

A couple of notable elements set Catholic, Reluctantly apart from other young adult literature. One is the use of photos as a preface to each chapter. No credits explain who stepped in to play the characters, but they capture the mood of each chapter and look like they had a blast. The other is text-messaging within the story. The female protagonist Allie Weaver texts often, which helps the reader quickly understand the tug-of-war she feels between her old and new friends.

My main criticism of the Catholic, Reluctantly is that the writing is uneven. One effective bit is a poem Allie recalls as she considers what it means to really live her faith.  Likewise, a scene in which George was trapped by his rival was truly suspenseful.

However, the relationship between Allie and her boyfriend was unrealistic (and not because it’s a non-kissing book). Neither he nor other antagonists have redeeming qualities. This is no small flaw because, for example, the brilliant student is so uncharitable and so mean that little short of demonic possession can explain his behavior.  I hope the author shows more of his humanity in the next books.

Because this is the first book in the series, several questions are left unanswered:  Who is the sabateur? Why was Allie threatened – and by whom?   Some of the answers seem fairly obvious – but no doubt there will be red herrings and twists for the next volume.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Catholic, Reluctantly.

Can you hear the Gospel ringin’, ringin’ softly through the pines? Death has taken our dear mother. We are walking in a line; we are walking in a line. – “Walking in a Line” by Grey Delisle, from her country album The Graceful Ghost

Danny Gospel is the first book by author David Athey.  Dean Koontz’s Odd Hours is the fourth novel in a planned series of seven.  So why am I reviewing them together?

It’s not just because both protagonists – Danny Gospel and Odd Thomas – have mighty strange monikers.

Strong parallels run between them. Both protagonists live with grief. Danny Gospel is haunted by the death of his family, the estrangement of his surviving brother, and the fear that his ex-fiancée Rachel died on 9/11. Odd Thomas still grieves for his true love. Both have supernatural visions. For Danny, it takes the form of a mysterious woman. For Odd, the spirits of the dead appeal for justice and, in this particular book, a recurring blood-drenched dream tells him what will happen if he fails. Both men are on what Marvin Olasky would call a “mad mission,” a calling to help others that is risky. 1

She was an average woman, perfectly lovely, dressed in white. She leaned down and kissed me lightly on the lips. Trembling, I wondered: is this normal and happy, or just a dream?

A month after the 9/11 attacks, Danny Gospel has a vision of a woman and knows he must find her. She is the driving force behind his travels – both mental and physical. 

Athey takes quite a risk by presenting Danny as mentally unstable postal worker during the anthrax scare.  As the narrator, Danny flits from one subject to another and takes the reader dancing around issues, such as stolen mail. However, the unreliable narration works. The reactions of Danny’s friends give the reader an inkling that he’s more eccentric than criminally insane. And Danny himself sees details that other’s miss: the beauty of a snow squall in Iowa, the goodness in a dirty-minded mechanic, the comaraderie between people who don’t fit in.

His journey is an allegory for anyone who’s heard God’s calling. Danny has been praying to be “normal and happy”, but the vision changes him. He begins to pray “Which direction, Lord?” and, strange as the signposts may be, he follows.  

The only moment when author Athey lost me was when the setting moves from Iowa. I could accept that Danny’s friend Grease was as eccentric as he. I could utterly suspend my disbelief in a mosquito being a heavenly guide. But he seemed to meet every oddball from Kentucky to Florida. It took me out of “the zone”, so to speak. It wasn’t until just before he left Florida that I got back into the story.

Odd Hours is a more mixed bag. I’m always happy to renew my aquaintance with Odd Thomas, frycook and wanderer.  He sees ghosts, but he also sees the small details of the world. In this lastest book, he is employed by eccentric octogenarian Hutch, a former actor reminiscent of Charton Heston or Robert Mitchum. His interactions with Hutch, a badly scarred woman, and the other oddball characters are part of Odd’s philosophy about loving:

I embrace the world on a scale that allows genuine love – the small places like a town, a neighborhood, a street – and I love life, because of what the beauty of this world and this life portend. I don’t love them to excess, (…) knowing that all this is as nothing compared to the wondrous sights that lie beyond the next threshold. (p 88)

However, the Odd Thomas of Odd Hours doesn’t seem to be himself in this book. Before he could see ghosts. Now he’s developed a new gift: the ability to see visions when he touches living people. He seems to have lost something. Previous books explained a childhood incident and the horrible murder that made Odd abhor guns. But in this volume, Odd doesn’t just pick up a gun; he uses it.

In between books in the Odd series, I’ve read more of the collected works of Dean Koontz. That’s why I was particularly startled to see a reference to a time-altering event from Seize the Night, the second of his Moonlight Bay trilogy. (For readers familiar with it, the reference occurs when Odd puts on a sweatshirt that says ”Mystery Train”.) 

It appeared to foreshadow Odd’s physically grueling adventures. At times I felt as if I were reading the continued adventures of Christopher Snow, the protagonist of the Moonlight Bay series. Unlike previous books, Odd’s supernatural hints showed no real pattern: stopped clocks, a presence on a porch swing, something in a mirror, and a seemingly prescient woman called Annamaria.

However, I think that it may be deliberate. Koontz appears to carry over the time-warp from the Moonlight Bay books to the Odd series. And Odd is at a crossroads, so to speak. Seventeen months ago, he survived a massacre and began wandering wherever he was led by circumstance. 

Since that day of death (…) my life had not been mine. I had been spared for a reason I could not understand. I had known the day would come when I would give my life in the right cause.

Will you die for me?

Yes.

Like Danny Gospel, Odd Hours ends with a woman. In this case, Odd finally recognizes the mysterious Annamaria. It’s a cliffhanger ending – an intriguing but unsatisfying one. 

Of the two novels, Danny Gospel is the better.  

1. Marvin Olasky’s column about his own “mad mission” is well worth reading.  http://townhall.com/Columnists/MarvinOlasky/2008/05/15/mad _missions

Holy Cross Church in Marine City, Michigan, has the usual Christian symbols: the Cross, angels, a slain dragon, grapes, etc. Other images seem to evoke the area’s maritime history: a ship and a lighthouse in the northern window dedicated to prayer for sailors.

The window depicts Jesus walking on water and Peter, even in his moment of doubt, calling out to Jesus to save him.  On either side of the scene are medallions with boats: Noah’s ark on the right and a tall-masted ship on the left. Beyond the ship is an ancient tower lighthouse that casts its light upon the water (see photo above).

I’d studied the window numerous times, puzzled by the contrast between the modernity of the ship and the antiquity of the lighthouse. I didn’t understand the meaning behind the image until I read Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols, written by Mike Aquilina and illustrated by Lea Marie Ravotti.

Signs and Mysteries focuses on Christianity, art, and history. In less than 200 pages, author Mike Aquilina explains 25 images used by early Christians. Some symbols are familiar, like the fish (ichthys). Most Americans have seen the ubiquitous car icons (including their Darwinist counterparts) and Christians know the Greek word for “fish” is an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior”. However, Aquilina explains how the fish comes from the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and ultimately represents the Eucharist.

In the introduction to Signs and Mysteries, Aquilina discusses how the Christian minority of Syria were revitalized in their faith and culture after archeologist Dr. Emma Loosley reintroduced them to the symbols of the ancestors. Aquilina writes:

…Christians who truly know the cross, and the fish, and the lamb, and the lighting of the lamps – those who truly know the ancient symbols of the Church’s doctrines and rites – are Christians who are rooted in the faith, and they know their roots run very deep indeed.” (pp 8-9)

So what does the tower lighthouse mean? It’s a symbol of the Church: constructed from the “stones” of the Apostles and other saints, rising from the waters of Baptism, reaching to Heaven, and guiding a ship (a Christian) by night across troubled waters. 

Signs and Mysteries is a short, pithy book. I hope Aquilina writes a sequel to explain symbols that developed later, such as the pelican.

One caveat: the publisher could use darker print. This book is printed in a light brown ink like a coffee stain. I suppose the printer meant to give it an aged appearance, but it detracted from Lea Marie Ravotti’s fine illustrations and made the print difficult to read.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Signs and Mysteries-Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols .

It is, but not in the way I thought.

A Civilization of Love is a great book, a book of contrasts and connections. Anderson traces the call for universal values of equality and human dignity from Paul’s address to the people of Athens* into modern times. His title comes from an encyclical of Pope John Paul II, and the book incorporates ideas from John Locke, Thomas Macauly, Pope Leo XIII, and other sources. I very much appreciated the notes section and excellent bibliography.

Anderson characterizes the source of division in our current civilization as primarily a split between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death. The former places intrinsic value on the individual, while the latter takes a utilitarian view. 

Too often, people are treated as nothing more than objects – of value only because they are seen as being useful to achieve some purpose, whether it is personal, social, or economic. But the person who is the object of our love is of value because he or she is loved, not because he or she is useful or productive. – p. 14

I was impressed by the examples he chose to show the contrast: two 1964 Noble Prize winners, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jean-Paul Sartre.  The first chapters are dense with history and the effect of attempts to negate Christianity (and, by extension, its values).

However, Anderson isn’t just informative. At the end of each chapter, he includes a section based on the chapter’s theme, called ”Suggestions for Contemplation and Action”. He calls for people to change their ways of thinking and paying attention to others. Anderson really hits his stride in Chapter 4, when he gives poignant examples of why it’s important to volunteer and not just donate money. Instead of waiting for political solutions to economic and educational problems, Catholics in particular and Christians in general must take personal initiative to make opportunities for the disadvantaged.

Final Note: This excellent book belongs on the shelf with the social commentary of Fr. Benedict Groeschel and George Weigel.

 *See The Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 17.

This review was written as part of The Catholic Company product reviewer program. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on A Civilization of Love – What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World.