Amendment means change.  We must have not only a desire, but some sort of plan to change our ways.  Otherwise, we’re really not expressing any real sense of contrition.

On a personal note, I have recently re-adopted the Liturgy of the Hours as my firm purpose of amendment.  Without the Divine Office, I tend to start my days on a very positive note, but as soon as I get out into the world I find it much too easy to slide into my old ways.  The structure of this form of liturgical prayer helps me make sure that I take time throughout the day to turn my thoughts toward God.  The Liturgy of the Hours has become my strength in the never-ending battle against the rampant hedonism of our time.

When I confess and then say my Act of Contrition, I want to work harder to make sure that I truly have a firm purpose of amending my ways.

The Seven Storey Mountain

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

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

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

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)

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.

During World War II, C.S. Lewis was asked to give a series of radio talks on Christianity.  Those talks were compiled to form Mere Christianity.  Over time they were edited and revised to be a little more readable, and the text is quite fluid – as if C.S. Lewis is just talking to you.

If you’re looking for a book that has an answer for every philosophical argument against God or Christianity, this may not be it.  But for those on the fence between belief and disbelief, or for those doubters who need to be reinvigorated in their faith, this is a wonderful book.

Lewis begins by talking eloquently about what he calls the Law of Nature, or the Moral Law.  He points to an internal standard that we and all others have – something different from our animal instincts.  Then Lewis talks about what is behind this internal set of moral standards.  He successfully makes some simplistic but valid philosophical arguments for God.

At this point, the book quickly jumps to the subject of what Christians believe.  This is where C.S. Lewis really shines.  He does a superb job of focusing his efforts on the common beliefs of all who call themselves Christian, whether or not they are Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or Protestant.

Mere Christianity covers a great deal of Christian morality, with individual chapters on Faith, Hope, and Charity.  All of this is done very eloquently, but in a simplistic enough way that most anyone should be able to take quite a bit from his point of view.

Lewis does not shy away from difficult topics such as the three-person God.  He defends his Christian beliefs admirably, and he is always very quotable.  There were several points throughout my reading of this book where I had to stop and reflect on a sentence or two.  I regret that I didn’t think to write down any of his inspirational quotes.  I guess that gives me another reason to reread this book in the future.

As this book is over 50 years old now, I was expecting it to be a little dry and possibly hard to understand.  Instead I found a fulfilling work that was nearly impossible to put down.  This book is a must read for all Christians and for anyone who’s on the fence.  Oh, and it’s fairly short too, so it won’t take up too much of your time.

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(5/5 Crosses)

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.

While scanning through the table of contents, I got pretty excited because it appeared that there would be quite a bit of information about a fairly diverse group of saints.  Fr. Martin has chapters about saints from Francis of Assisi to Thomas Aquinas to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Strangely though, he also had chapters about people such as Thomas Merton, who appeared to be one of Fr. Martin’s favorites, and Dorothy Day.

Once I started reading this book, I came to see it for what it really is, and perhaps I should have deduced this from the information on the cover.  This book is essentially about Fr. Martin.  In each chapter he writes (beautifully, I might add) about different chapters in his own life.  During these recollections, Fr. Martin talks a little bit about the saint after whom he titled the chapter.  He manages to squeeze in a little biographical information, and then he ties the saint of note together with the chapter in his life, showing the reader why this particular saint has become important to him over the years.

This book is well written, no doubt, and Fr. Martin’s experiences will certainly appeal to some.  I however, am much more inspired by biographical information that portrays the real life heroics that surround many of the saints.  I would only recommend this book to people looking to pass the time by reading about the somewhat interesting life of a well-traveled Jesuit priest.

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(3/5 Crosses)