Cardinal Gerhard Müller who is Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has a new book coming out on October 10th during the Synod of Bishops as they discuss ‘The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization.’ The Hope of the Family: A Dialogue with Cardinal Gerhard Müller. This book is done in the interview format with questions from Spanish journalist Carlos Granados. I’ve never read any of Cardinal Müller’s writings so I was... Read more
The Sacred Year: Mapping the Soulscape of Spiritual Practice — How Contemplating Apples, Living in a Cave, and Befriending a Dying Woman Revived My Life by Michael Yankoski My rating: 4 of 5 stars Father Solomon spoke again, and the shaking of my foundation continued. “The God who called you into existence ex nihilio—out of nothing—is the same God who holds you in existence this moment and every moment. Were he to withdraw his hand, you would vanish wihtout memory.... Read more
One of my GoodReads friends said that watching me try to force myself to finish Great Expectations was better than the book itself. I feel rather proud actually as my usual practice is to just toss a book when it’s not working for me. Even the classics (especially Russian classics). But this is Charles Dickens who I learned to love with A Tale of Two Cities, and who left me awestruck after reading Bleak House and Little Dorrit. And I... Read more
The Protestant’s Dilemma: How the Reformation’s Shocking Consequences Point to the Truth of Catholicism by Devin Rose is a rather interesting read. Many apologetics books in this area concentrate on a couple of arguments such as the faults of interpretation such as Sola Scriptura. What I found most interesting is that this book uses a variety of arguments taking the consequences of various Protestant theology to their natural conclusion. That often some of these Protestant premises really prove too much... Read more
The Feasts: How the Church Year Forms Us as Catholics by Donald Cardinal Wuerl My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Church’s calendar is an intricate, complex, and beautiful technology. It is the work of many human hands and human minds trained to deal with holy things. The seasons turn and the feasts interplay like the gears in a priceless clock. They regulate our religious life and enrich our spiritual life. They seem to happen automatically, but only because the... Read more
This week John C. Wright released a novella called One Bright Star to Guide Them. First off, I can’t remember being so filled with a novella. I feel as if I read a 400-plus page fantasy novel. So much to unpack from it and think about and the story is really something I want to re-read. It contained an interesting premise where a group of children had previously gone on an adventure together and survived the quest in some instance... Read more
NORTHANGER ABBEY. It began with Northanger Abbey. I’m considering reading this on my podcast so I reread it after having done so many years ago. (And then Jesse from SFFaudio asked if I wanted to discuss it in November. Hey, I can tell when a book is haunting me.) I know this was an early work and also that it is not as polished or accomplished as Austen’s later books. That being said, I am still very fond of this... Read more
Here’s something else on the bookshelf that isn’t a book but I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to mention it in a lot of places. And, as I always say, we’re all about stories no matter how they are told! Coach Bob Ladouceur: Winning a lot of football games is doable. Teaching kids there’s more to life? That’s hard. Most sports movies show us the underdog team fighting their way to the top by the end. When... Read more
We’re discussing Pavane by Keith Roberts, an alternate history from the times when that genre was new — way back in 1966. With lots and lots of Catholic stuff to talk about! Join us at A Good Story is Hard to Find. Read more
Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-box at the Vatican Observatory by Guy Consolmagno My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is structured around a half dozen particular questions we’ve been asked time and again—questions that are interesting in themselves but that tend also to presuppose a conflict of some sort between religion and science. This intent leads to rich, interesting dialogues. I use the word dialogues intentionally because the book... Read more
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