The Seven Storey Mountain
Thomas Merton
ISBN-13: 978-0156010863

During Lent my spiritual director loaned me a copy of the early autobiography of Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.  I didn’t know much about Merton prior to reading this.  I knew he was a Trappist monk who was somewhat of a controversial anti-war activist, and that he died rather young due to some sort of accident overseas.

The Seven Storey Mountain was an amazing book.  Merton packed quite a deal of life experience into a relatively short number of years prior to entering the monastery at Gesthsemani, and he had a gift for prose that was nothing short of amazing.  In the book, Merton describes one colorful detail after another from his youth in Europe to his college years in New York, and the years leading up to his conversion.

Merton, much like me, was basically an atheist in his youth.  He had no place for God in his life, much less organized religion.  He fancied himself an intellectual and read just enough philosophy to convince himself that believers were somehow delusional.

I won’t spoil the entire conversion story for you — you really should read this book — it’s quite inspiring.  But Merton, again like me, first came to some sort of intellectual conversion.  He recognized the logic behind the belief in a creator, and then recognized that the only truly sound and reasonable choice was Catholicism.  This shocked him as much as it did me.  But even after receiving the Sacraments of Initiation into the Church, Merton continued to live sinfully.  Though he had converted his intellect, he failed to align his will with the will of God.

Eventually all of this changed of course, through some discipline and the mercy and grace of God.  Merton entered into a rigorous religious life that would frighten most of us.  It’s very inspiring really.  I couldn’t put this book down.  Regardless of your opinions about Merton’s politics and activism, you owe it to yourself to read this beautifully written classic.

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(5/5 Crosses)

Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church
Michael S. Rose
ISBN-13: 978-0895261441

Generally speaking, I don’t like the terms liberal and conservative. These words are too ambiguous, too subjective, and too divisive. Rather than consider myself liberal or conservative, I consider myself Catholic. I’ll even take it a step further by saying that I consider myself an orthodox (small “o”) Catholic. I believe that my faith is the only thing that really matters in my life, and I attempt to frame all of my decisions with that in mind.

With that being said, I can say for certain that this author considers himself conservative, and this book is about a group that he considers liberal, but despicable would be a more accurate term.

I decided to borrow this book from my local public library because the description sounded rather interesting and exciting. The book was indeed very interesting and exciting — for awhile. While the book was informative, it was also rather repetitive. I think it could have been shortened by about 40 percent, or perhaps the author could have included some opposing content.

Essentially, this book is an investigation into the priest shortage that many U.S. dioceses currently face. The author paints a grim picture of typical seminary life during the 70′s 80′s and 90′s, which is shocking, sickening, and saddening at the same time. The author explains that many of the teachers in the average seminary were/are presenting information that is totally contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

The most shocking accounts in the book are the revelations of rampant homosexuality and its apparent acceptance — even promotion in many seminaries. In addition, it seems to be the norm in many seminaries for instructors to publicly denounce the male, celibate priesthood, while they promote the ordination of married men and women.

Young orthodox men have often been denied an opportunity to follow their vocations because of those in charge who labeled them as “rigid” and “outdated” for their pious devotions to things such as the rosary or Eucharistic Adoration. This book lists many accounts of former seminarians who were driven from the priesthood for what appears to be plain orthodoxy.

Where this book falls short is that it is ridiculously repetitive. The same themes are rehashed in nearly every chapter. I had the general idea of what the author felt was the problem with our priest shortage after just a few chapters. I had to wait until the last couple of chapters to read his suggestions for fixing the problem.

In summary, some reprehensible things have gone on at a lot of U.S. seminaries. The priest shortage has been likely caused, at least in part, by members of our own church. If all dioceses would follow the strategies used to recruit orthodox men for the priesthood in the successful dioceses, we would likely not have a priest shortage at all.

This book is not a must read, but it’s very illuminating.  Of course, it’s just one side of the story, so take it for what it’s worth.

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(3/5 Crosses)

Introduction to the Devout Life
Francis De Sales
ISBN-13: 978-0375725623

This is a spiritual classic — and I just couldn’t finish it. I checked it out from my local library and renewed it twice, but I didn’t make it more than halfway through. It’s not that the book isn’t good. It’s a great spiritual work. But it’s very tedious to read. The English translation is quite old. The result is that I spent a lot of time trying to understand the grammar that I was reading, rather than just concentrating on the meaning.

To get anything out of this book, you really have to read a page or two at a time and then reflect on what you’ve read. In the future, when I’ve got more time on my hands, I’ll probably buy this book and attempt to read it a little at a time. For now, I prefer to move on to something that I can finish in a week or so.

Let’s Pray (Not Just Say) The Rosary: Classic Edition; Luminous Mysteries Added
Richard Rooney, SJ
ISBN: 9780764816567

This is a booklet of rosary meditations. I often have difficulty concentrating when I pray. I’m very easily distracted by both the external world, as well as my own thoughts. When praying the rosary, it’s extremely important to be focused on the appropriate mysteries in the life of Christ. Otherwise, we’re just saying the same prayers, over and over. That’s not really how the rosary is intended to be prayed.

The few times that I have been able to concentrate more fully on the the mysteries of the rosary, I have felt a much stronger connection with God. That’s where this small booklet comes in. I originally bought it at our local Catholic book store (luckily we still have one) for a loved one, hoping that it would encourage them to pray the rosary. Instead, I’ve been hoarding it all to myself because I’ve found it so helpful.

For the beginner, this booklet explains the details of how to pray the rosary, like which prayers to say and when to say them. But the booklet also has a set of ten meditations for each mystery, so that you have something related to the mystery to meditate upon with each Hail Mary prayer. I have seen other booklets that try to do the same thing, but the reflections given just don’t work as well for me as the reflections in this title.

Sure, you can get this same type of information on the Internet. But I’m trying to avoid distractions. I don’t want to pray in front of my computer! I highly recommend this booklet. It is available for under $2 from the link at the top of this post.

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(4/5 Crosses)

Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis
ISBN-13: 978-0060652920

In my atheistic youth, I read a lot of philosophical books on religion, which all had one thing in common: they sought to prove, through “reason,” why God did not exist.  At the time I didn’t want to “waste my time” with books on “Christian propaganda” because in my mind they were all a bunch of rubbish for the weak.  In hindsight, what I was doing was reading books that supported how I already felt.  Doing so made me feel better – because I was the one who was (and continues to be) weak.

I often wish I had read books like Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis when I was younger and more impressionable.  It seems like life would have been easier if I had discovered Christ sooner in my life.  I imagine though that I would not have been very receptive to the message at the time.  The virtues of faith, hope, and charity probably wouldn’t have appealed to someone who was angry, drunk, and selfish.

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My Life With the Saints
James Martin, SJ
ISBN-13: 978-0829420012

Having been inspired in the past by reading biographies of the Saints, I decided to check out from the library My Life With the Saints by Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest.  On the surface, the book appealed to me because it covered several saints, a few of whom I had no previous experience with.

While this book is an interesting spiritual memoir, and Fr. Martin is a very compelling writer, this book was somewhat of a disappointment to me.  It was a disappointment not because it was a poor book, but because it was not what I was expecting.

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