\nby Elizabeth Scalia
\nAve Maria Press, 2013<\/p>\n
He paused at the coffee table, riveted by the cover of Elizabeth Scalia\u2019s Strange Gods<\/em>, with its brilliant design depicting a church window\u2019s stone Gothic tracery, with multiple Internet icons (representing everyday idols) where the stained glass would be. He picked up the book, reverently, and brought it me.<\/p>\n \u201cNana,\u201d he asked, \u201cis this a whole book of apps<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n When I had finished laughing (and giving thanks for such a great way to kick off this review), I explained. \u201cNot really a book of apps,\u201d I told Luke, \u201cbut a book about how we sometimes use things like apps to take time away from being with God and being with each other.\u201d He looked dubious. \u201cNot that the things in these pictures are bad\u2014just that we can do too much of them for our own good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs Super Smash Bros [that\u2019s how he pronounces it, actually] on here?\u201d he asked, knowing that access to his new favorite video game is sometimes limited for the sake of his sleep cycle \u00a0and the carpal nerves of his teenage cousins. \u201cAre videos?\u201d (This said by a kid who can already multitask by using a second iPad to look up videos on how to beat the level of Angry Birds Star Wars he\u2019s playing on the first iPad.)<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d I said. But Luke took it to a higher authority. \u201cDaddy, look!\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a video game controller, and a movie, and videos-on-YouTube! And food, Daddy! We spend a lot<\/em> of time with food!\u201d<\/p>\n It turned into a pretty good discussion for the couple of minutes before Luke decided that what he really needed to do was CUT THINGS WITH SCISSORS, and WHY DON\u2019T YOU HAVE KID SCISSORS, NANA? and I WILL<\/strong> CUT THINGS WITH NANA-SIZE SCISSORS BECAUSE I NEED<\/strong><\/em> TO!<\/p>\n Which is still right on topic, because what my friend and boss and blogmother The Anchoress<\/strong><\/a> points out so beautifully and painfully in this new book of hers is that we are all, in some way, in some form, always teetering on the edge of going-on-four, with the world revolving around us, with stuff that we will<\/em><\/strong> have or things that we will<\/strong><\/em> do because the strange god that is the \u201cI\u201d in idol demands to be served. One of the biggest lessons I learned from Strange Gods<\/em> is just how limited my definition of idolatry was. There\u2019s a bit of a blogalog (OK, a lot of cheering and booing) going on right now around Barbara Nicolosi\u2019s suggestion<\/strong><\/a> that a return to the Baltimore Catechism would be just the thing to reverse the effects of what\u2019s usually referred to around here as 30 Years of Miserably Bad Catechesis (otherwise known as My Career), but all I can say is my childhood formation by the B.C. left me woefully unprepared to understand idolatry in terms more sophisticated and relevant than that scene from The Ten Commandments<\/em> when they\u2019re all dancing around the golden calf. Not me! I ain\u2019t no pagan idol worshiper (pace<\/em>, Pagans). OK, well, yes, I did get a Golden Calf Award from The Wanderer<\/em> once (see My Career, above), but honestly, my religious education pretty much summed up idolatry as reading the daily horoscope, lining up to see a fortune-teller at a fair, or (worst of all) Visiting a Protestant Church (pace<\/em>, Protestants). In other words, steer clear of gypsies, tramps, and thieves and you\u2019re cool. While a memory-jogging search of Google images does remind me that there was a little more to it in the Baltimore Catechism (pace<\/em>, Buddhists), it\u2019s still not a sin I ever imagined myself committing every damn day<\/em>.<\/p>\n Elizabeth performs an immense catechetical favor by reminding us\u2014er, me\u2014that we are both the golden calf and the golden calfee. The idolatries she explores in Strange Gods<\/em>\u2014Ideas, Prosperity, Technology, Coolness, Sex, Plans, and the Super-Gods of ideologies\u2014are much closer to us than, much more likely to receive our sacrifices and our incense, much more in the way of our relationships with one another and with God than any golden calves. They are graven images that distort the image of God in us. They are all, in essence, the worship of self. I<\/em>-dolatry indeed.<\/p>\n Like the best spiritual writing, Strange Gods<\/em> is personal testimony before it is preaching. I can\u2019t think of a more apt comparison than Augustine\u2019s Confessions<\/em>, not only because of the autobiographical details and the quality of the writing, but because both are aimed like salvation-seeking missiles at the same goal: union with God, and asskicking out of the way anything and everything not<\/em>-God that competes for our worship.<\/p>\n The whole point is this: when we have cleared away the idols we have placed before God\u2014imagine using your arm and just sweeping away all those trophies from the mantle so there is nothing between us and him\u2014we open up a direct line to God who is all in all. He is all love, all mercy, all light, all power, all compassion, all goodness, and all wealth. God is the God of all our longings fulfilled, in whom no voids remain. And that is all God wants and needs from us\u2014our willingness to keep the direct line open so that he may be with us and be all of those things for us, with nothing standing between our love. (p. 61)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you won\u2019t take my word for the importance of this book in this time, take the pope\u2019s. There\u2019s been a running joke around the Patheos Catholic Channel<\/strong><\/a> that Pope Francis has been cribbing from Lizzie\u2019s book. Maybe a divine kwinkydink, but His Holiness has been calling out idolatry in just such \u201cElizabethan\u201d language since the beginning of his papacy, which coincided with the book\u2019s going to print. On May 13, in his homily<\/strong><\/a> at St. Martha House, +Francis had this to say:<\/p>\n And when a little vanity creeps in, when someone believes themselves to be a winner of the Nobel Prize for Holiness, then memory is also good for us. Memory is a great grace, and when a Christian has no memory \u2013 this is a hard thing, but it\u2019s true \u2013 he is not a Christian, he is an idolater. Because he is before a God that has no road, that does not know how to move forward on the road. Our God is moving forward on the road with us, He is among us, He walks with us. He saves us. He makes history with us. Be mindful of all that, and life becomes more fruitful, with the grace of memory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/197\/2013\/05\/Elizabeth-Scalia-Strange-Gods-194x300.jpeg\" "\\"Elizabeth-Scalia-Strange-Gods\\"")
<\/a>While over for dinner the other night with his parents, my going-on-4-year-old grandson was engaged in his usual sweeping of my apartment for Interesting Stuff. I\u2019m trying to keep the acquisition of things to a rigorous minimum, but Luke can occasionally spot a new refrigerator magnet, a surprise toy, or something chocolate, so this surveillance is part of the arrival ritual.<\/p>\n
\nAs with everything Elizabeth Scalia writes, I learned from and was moved by and want to make everybody sit down and listen while I read them passages from Strange Gods<\/em>. Elizabeth has a unique voice. She speaks poetry in what my grandmother would call \u201csensible shoes\u201d: the ineffable deeply rooted in the down-to-earth, a warm hug that isn\u2019t afraid to end with a Leroy Jethro Gibbs slap to the back of the head, an uncompromising commitment to truth-telling. (I think that Elizabeth\u2019s writing must get some of this ora et labora<\/em> quality of uniting the prayerful with the practical from her spiritual roots as a Benedictine Oblate; it\u2019s black-and-white magic.)<\/p>\n