My translation of H. G. Stoker's magnum opus on conscience to be released March 30th

Yesterday I was privileged to be interviewed about my translation of H. G. Stoker's book, Conscience: Phenomena and Theories, which the University of Notre Dame Press is scheduled to release in the next few days. Stoker's book is the most comprehensive and fascinating analysis of conscience that I have seen in any language and was originally written as a dissertation under Max Scheler.

I want to thank two fine men, Jonathan Frances, Marketing and Communications Manager for Sacred Heart Major Seminary for arranging the interview, and Erik Coules, regional coordinator for the Archdiocese of Detroit, for conducting the interview.

link to the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Conscience-Phenomena-Theories-Hendrik-Stoker/dp/0268103178/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522118433&sr=8-1&keywords=Stoker+Blosser

Translation project completed: Book to be published

H. G. Stoker, Conscience: Phenomena and Theories, translated by Philip E. Blosser (University of Notre Dame Press, March, 2018)

I have been waiting long to see this project to completion -- a translation of a book by H. G. Stoker, possibly the most exhaustive study of conscience in any language -- and from a perspective informed by phenomenology and the traditions of Christianity. It's more expensive than I would like, but it's not overly technical and should interest a wide audience -- anyone interested in conscience, its psychology, religious and moral significance, how it 'works,' historical theories about it (from ancient Greece, through Medieval thinkers to the likes of Kant, Nietzsche, Cardinal Newman, and F.J.J. Buytendijk), terms used for it in multiple languages, it's development, reliability, and whether it is primarily intellectual, intuitive, volitional, or emotional. The book will go on sale the end of March.

For more details, see the promo page over at the University of Notre Dame Press (Here)

Conscience: Phenomena and Theories was first published in German in 1925 as a dissertation by Hendrik G. Stoker under the title Das Gewissen: Erscheinungsformen und Theorien. It was received with acclaim by philosophers at the time, including Stoker’s dissertation mentor Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, and Herbert Spielberg, as quite possibly the single most comprehensive philosophical treatment of conscience and as a major contribution in the phenomenological tradition.

Book review: Pierre Manent's Beyond Radical Secularism

Fr. John McCloskey, Review of Beyond Radical Secularism, by Pierre Manent (St. Augustine's Press, 2016) 

Beyond Radical Secularism was originally published in Europe in the fall of 2015, when it caused quite a ruckus, and became even more relevant with the Nov. 13, 2015, incident of terrorism in Paris. The author, Pierre Manent, is a Frenchman who wrote the book after the earlier terrorist attack in France the previous January.

Manent's main thesis is that radical secularism does not have the capacity to counter the challenge presented in our era by Islam.

Although he believes that the threat posed by Islamist fanatics requires a resolute response, security measures alone are insufficient to protect the French (and European) way of life and to assimilate the large numbers of Muslim immigrants in their midst.

Manent believes that the several-centuries-old Western tradition of the secular state should be maintained and cherished. However, he argues that trying to "solve" the problem of Muslim assimilation in France by attempting to turn them into model French secularists as adrift morally and religiously as many of those they find themselves among will fail. Instead, France must recognize and accept its Christian heritage and culture, as well as its small-but-significant Jewish presence, as foundational to its national identity.

So what is the solution?

Manent reaches for a way of recognizing and defending European roots while retaining religious tolerance.

In Manent's view, Muslim immigrants seeking to make a home in Europe must make their peace with having moved beyond the borders of sharia (Islamic law) and to a certain extent be willing to shift mindsets. However, the established French customs, mores and traditions that make up the structure of a healthy culture have already been rejected by the radical secularist. That's why Manent insists that France must rediscover her national form, which at some point will require secession from the European Union. Meanwhile, he recommends forbidding Muslims in France from taking money from foreign powers, whether governments or religious organizations. This would better establish their identity as French Muslims.

His second major recommendation is to invite Muslim immigrants to enter into French common life. After all, in order to enter into the fullness of French citizenship or identity, they need to contribute to the country's well-being in ways that go beyond the economic benefits of a young labor pool.

Manent's many specific observations and proposed solutions can be debated without affecting the force of his central insight.

"Without vision, the people perish," says one of those outmoded Judeo-Christian books that the French secularists — and radical secularists elsewhere — have tossed into the rubbish heap of history.

Whether the Western people perish in the near or intermediate future will likely depend a lot on what identity they embrace.

First appeared on National Catholic Register in October 2016.

[Hat tip to Sir A. S.]

The beautiful, amusing, profound banalities of Franky-the-Grouch Schaeffer

Franky Schaeffer has made a career of trying to get over himself and not succeeding. In Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace(2014), he has written just the kind of book to seal his place in the hearts of those whom Alasdair MacIntyre calls the "readership of the New York Times," or at least to that part of it which shares the biases of those who write "that parish newsletter of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment." Franky is clearly one of that readership's darling ex-fundamentalists.

On the one hand, he confirms their anti-religious biases by repeatedly savaging his fundamentalist parents as "deluded," mocking their belief in biblical miracles, and paying them backhanded complements like these:

[My parents] believed that to be kind is to be in tune with the way things are, or to be in tune with the way things would have been if there had been no fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. My evangelical parents were not stupid, so either they really didn't believe Eden existed, or some part of their otherwise intelligent brains snapped when they adopted the one-size-fits-all born-again version of American fundamentalist Christianity.

On the other hand, he confirms his liberal readership's moral superiority (and salves his own conscience) by showing a kinder, gentler side to his revulsion at their fundamentalism by looking for positive reasons to appreciate the practical effects of their 'indoctrination' of him in the biblical 'myths' of his childhood:

Ironically, although mom and dad may have been deluded by their fundamentalist certainties, I am mostly at peace in my home ... because I was indoctrinated in knee-jerk guilt. I realize now that my parents were often right for the wrong reasons. For instance, I feel guilt when I shout at Lucy and Jack. And when it comes to the "big sins" I would not have burned in hell for sleeping with the many women I've looked at longingly, but adultery would have ruined my marriage and the home where I play with my grandchildren.

Hence, although he mocks his parents' view of adultery as "derived from a tribal myth about God proclaiming the law from a mountaintop," he can still posture as exhibiting filial piety and gratitude for "sometimes liking the result of my parents' delusions" (emphasis mine).

What a stand-up fellow! His parents may have had ridiculously wrong reasons for the virtues they inculcated in him as a young lad, but they were right and praiseworthy insofar as their sentiments about those virtues conformed to those celebrated by his liberal readership. God help us. To see Franky as exhibiting the virtue of filial piety here would be like admiring the 'courage' of the terrorists who piloted their passenger jets into the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The mainstream reviews, of course, are predictably rapturous, cloying, fashionably liberal, and religiously obtuse: their darling ex-fundamentalist has seen the light, and his book is "extraordinary," "profound," "tender," "sensitive," "beautiful," "brilliant," "thought-provoking," "redemptive," "honest," filled with "great insight and unselfconscious humor" and "amazing grace."

Yet there is little if anything approaching real filial piety in this self-absorbed exercise in narcissistic therapy, even if there is much to admire artistically in this as in many of Franky's works (I, for one, superlatively enjoyed his autobiographical novel, Portofino, and would recommend it to almost anyone). Whatever artistic beauty and humor may be found in the present work, however, there is more than enough resentment, mockery and cynicism to make up for it.

What we see here is the Franky reflected in the image of his portrait on the cover of his book: an artist holding paint brushes and possessing many skills, yes; but a sad and bitter little old man who thinks he's being intellectually profound and beautiful (and witty) when he's really only wallowing self-indulgently in his own cynicism and depression. A "Christian atheist" or an "atheist Christian" is not a profundity. It is an absurdity. And that is a fact, no matter how much Franky may posture as intending to "give love, create beauty, and find peace."

One can only pray and hope that Franky's progeny will live to survive his legacy with more spiritual integrity, forgiveness, and joy than he has exhibited in his treatment of his parents. I feel genuinely sorry for him.

Huzzah! Shattered glass!

One brick through the pane glass window of established scientific wisdom ...

Dwight Garner, "Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Kingdom of Speech’ Takes Aim at Darwin and Chomsky" (New York Times, August 30, 2016)

... and another brick though the stained glass window of much of the ruling class of the Catholic Church ...

Edited by Daniel M. Clough, Genesis According to the Saints (Loretto Publications, 2016).

Brilliant!

[Hat tip to JM]

Attention Catholic teachers and home schoolers: announcing new ancient history textbook

The eminently capable Phillip Campbell, who teaches history at St. Augustine's in Ann Arbor, with its highly-regarded classical curriculim, has just published the first volume in a series of 5th-7th grade-level history textbooks (publisher: TAN Books). The First volume is entitled The Ancient World: The Story of Civilization. Available with the textbook is a Test Book, Teacher's Manual, Activity Book, Timeline, Drama CDs, and Streaming Lecture Series.

If anyone is looking for a 5th-7th grade-level ancient history text written from a faithful and richly-informed Catholic perspective, look no further. This is what you want.

Mother Angelica? Read Raymond Arroyo's book

Raymond Arroyo, Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles (Image Reprint ed., 2007). And don't forget to pray for her; I'm sure we can count on hers.

And here she is on a roll against liberalism in the Church:

The Mosque of Notre Dame

According to the Wikipedia article, this dystopian novel (The Notre Dame de Paris Mosque), was written by Russian author Elena Chudinova in 2005:

The novel became a bestseller in Russia, garnered widespread publicity, and was awarded the Bastkon literary prize for 2005. Later, the book was translated into several European languages: French, Serbian, Bulgarian, Turkish, English, and Norwegian.

After the French translation was completed, for a long time, a publisher in France could not be found. According to the book's French publisher Jean Robin, potential publishers ignored the book because of its politically-incorrect theme.

The author and the translator were planning to upload the text of the novel for free distribution on the Internet, but in 2009, a publisher was found - the French publishing house Tatamis, which released the novel on April 15, 2009.

In Turkey, the novel was released in a pirated, unauthorized translation. Authorized translations of the novel were published in Serbia (2006), Poland (2012), and Bulgaria (2013).

The beauty, glory, majesty, authority and power of the Holy Catholic Church

I'm sure it was hard for any Jewish contemporary of Jesus, under the ruthless Roman occupation of Palestine, to imagine the "Kingdom of Israel" as something great. Where was their king? Where was their kingdom? Where was the evidence of those ancient traditional prophecies of a Davidic kingdom that would endure forever? (2 Sam. 7; 1 Chron. 17:11-14, 1 Chron. 6:16)

In a similar way, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many Catholics in our day to imagine the Catholic Church as something great, as wielding power, possessing authority, manifesting glory, majesty, and anything like beauty. Think how much more difficult it would be if Rome itself were overrun by foreign enemies, St. Peter's Basilica destroyed, turned into a mosque or a museum, with the papacy dismantled. Of course Christ promised to be with His Church until the end of days, though all that would be needed for that promise to be fulfilled is for a single shepherd and a remnant flock (of even one or two!) to endure.

Not that I have any inkling that such an outcome lies in store for the Church. I don't. But one would think our Lord might expect us to be able, at least, to interpret the general signs of the times: "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens.... You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky; but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Lk 12:54-56)

Remember our Lord's haunting question: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Lk 18:8) Again, His brief discourses on the end of days are grim: "[M]any will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold." (Mt 24:10-12)

Yet all I need do to remind me of the Sun shining above the clouds of our present darkness is to read a short prayer composed by Pope Leo XIII, a prayer I clearly remember reading not long after I was received into the Church back in the early 1990's. It was sent to me by a nun in California who has been a constant correspondent of mine for nearly three decades now. The prayer is The Exorcism Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.

The prayer is nothing short of awe-inspiring. (See my earlier post on this prayer: "Giving the Devil his due - Part II," Musings, February 3, 2009.) When I read this prayer, I can't help but (1) wonder at the awesome power and authority that the Church and her ordained priesthood was once understood to possess, and (2) ask myself why this sense of power and authority seems almost to have evaporated in the contemporary incarnation of the Church.

All-too-often, unfortunately, one finds on the Internet the caveat that this prayer is "To be said by a priest only," which is a little misleading. The point is that only a priest with appropriate faculties from his Ordinary can licitly and safely say the prayer formally as an exorcism, not that the prayer cannot be read privately as a personal petition to ward off diabolical influence. (In Pope Leo's own words: "The faithful also may say it in their own name, for the same purpose, as any approved prayer.")

Providentially, a new book by Kevin J. Symonds, with a Foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael(2015), a comprehensive examination of the complex puzzle of the prayer's historical origins. The book (upwards of 200 pages), carries multiple imprimaturs, multiple appendices, and an interesting and balanced discussion sorting out legend from what can be known of Pope Leo's reputed horrific vision of the diabolical attack on the Church throughout the world in the generations after him.

What once was, and how it was lost

The title is taken from Galadriel's voiceover at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, which begins with "The world is changed ..." and ends with: "Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it."

The last part may not QUITE be true for any religiously astute Catholic octogenarians living today, who were born in 1935 or earlier and were in their twenties and thirties when the subterranean currents of revisionism begin to surface and overtly express themselves, initially in liturgical experiments proposed and implemented in the Mass already before the Council. But it is probably true for the vast majority of Catholics of nearly every stripe: the past is simply not part of their map of reality.

A particularly well-written book generously gifted to me by a reader and friend, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition(2015), by H.J.A. Sire, takes a close look at these changes. It begins with the Ancient and Medieval Church, as one reviewer describes it, with "a robust introduction to the history of the Church from the perspective of its moments of supreme crisis [such as the Arian crisis]. How did the Church react when its fundamental dogmas or structures or practices were rejected? Sire also builds up a convincing portrait of the Enlightenment background to the Modernist crisis and the postconciliar collapse."

The focus, however, as the publisher notes, is on a "comprehensive look at the state of the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council--one of a series of recurrent periods of moral and intellectual crisis to which it has succumbed in its history."

Sire writes in his Introduction:

There are many present-day Catholics who are bewildered to hear it said that the modern Church is in decline. They have known nothing else and see nothing untoward in the present state of affairs. They should not disturb themselves by attempting to read this book. Nor am I addressing those who believe that the Catholic Church needs constant remodeling, and that the novelties of our time are simply due to modern enlightenment. Such a point of view gives little weight to scripture and authority, and even less to tradition, in devising its improvements. Its partisans enjoy the approval of contemporary culture, but they stand self-condemned by the criteria of Christian teaching. The case I am concerned to address is the one that admits the Catholic premises -- and wishes to regard the present state of the Church as compatible with them. Those who defend that position hold that there is no heresy or impairment in the modern Church, and that the aberrations we see around us are perfectly compatible with Catholic tradition. They rebuke traditionalists for ignorance of the Church's history in doctrine and practice, and acquaintance with which, they imply, would make us see the present desolation as normal. It is this interpretation of things that needs to be tested. When we have compared the Church's heritage in worship, in doctrine, in culture, and in philosophy with what exists today, we can take stock of the two, judge their compatibility, and make up our minds about their respective merits.

... Catholics who knew the Church before the Second Vatican Council were familiar by their own experience with the teaching and spirituality of tradition. To those brought up since then it is an unfamiliar world, and one which the influence of modern culture, with its disdain for the attainments of the past, makes all the more difficult to understand. A book of this kind written thirty or forty years ago could have plunged straight into the 1960s, assuming what went before; but one cannot today make a case for Catholic tradition without explaining where we stand historically and culturally. In offering that outline, I intend to present a case that would have been thought commonplace two generations ago, part of the mainstream of Catholic thinking. The fact that today it seems unfamiliar and even outlandish is a measure of how far the Church has estranged itself from its intellectual tradition.

Highly recommended, with thanks to JM.

A novel on Islam and the intellectual, moral, and spiritual decomposition of France

Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq, Submission: A Novel(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 20, 2015).

It's 2022. François is bored. He's a middle-aged lecturer at the New Sorbonne University and an expert on J. K. Huysmans [Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), decadent French aesthete novelist and famous Catholic convert]. But François's own decadence is considerably smaller in scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, rereads Huysmans, queues up YouPorn.

Meanwhile, it's election season. And although Francois feels "about as political as a bath towel," things are getting pretty interesting. In an alliance with the Socialists, France's new Islamic party sweeps to power. Islamic law comes into force. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and François is offered an irresistible academic advancement--on the condition that he convert to Islam.

Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker has said of Submission that "Houellebecq is not merely a satirist but--more unusually--a sincere satirist, genuinely saddened by the absurdities of history and the madnesses of mankind." Michel Houellebecq's new book may be satirical and melancholic, but it is also hilarious, a comic masterpiece by one of France's great novelists.

See also the review by François Maillot from the French Christian weekly, La Vie (January 5, 2015), translated at Rorate Caeli (January 15, 2015):

It is undoubtedly this which grants to this novel its exceptional strength. No takeover by Fascists, no civil war (or just briefly, quickly covered up by the media), no radical Islam chopping heads, stoning men, raping women. As in Huxley's Brave New World, it is imposed softly in a society that is numb and with no way out. If there is any violence in this novel, it is in this perspective of crushing the reader with a submission to a soft and almost consensual New Order, without any resistance being offered to it. Faced with the collapse of politics, the Islamic Republic becomes a choice like any other. Faced with the ruin of the country, petrodollars buy it all. Faced with intellectual emptiness, any kind of speech can impose itself. Faced with generalized atheism, Islam can win the day.

The central point of the novel seems to me to reside in that which however seemed, during its reading, to be its weakest point. Could the French people accept a regime that would demand of women to accept a polygamy that would place them in a position of inferiority regarding men? Those who are proud of having thrown away the cover of Catholicism, would they accept to convert to Islam to teach at the Islamic Sorbonne? Regardless of fiction, Houellebecq follows uppercut with uppercut. How much is our devotion for the equality of the sexes an idea for which we would fight, and not a thin ideological layer that the contingencies of the moment and the insatiable demands of sex will quickly crack? How much is the free thinking of our contemporaries a strong conviction that may resist the attack, even a peaceful one, of a religion that is sure of itself? As we can see it, it is in what could appear as outrageous that Houellebecq reaches the heart of the matter. It might well be, in fact, that all that our society says it believes in is nothing more than a construction built upon sand, that the weakest gust of wind would cause to collapse. This is what Submission says, that our age does not believe in anything, or at the very least, in nothing whose nature allows it to be able to oppose itself to any faith. Faced with cynical and consumerist individualism, every recognition of a collective ideal, of the overcoming of a navel-gazing horizon, contains infinite power.

[Hat tip to JM]

Hands down, the most inspiring native autobiography from the Vietnam War

Le Ly Hayslip, with Jay Wurts, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese woman's journey from war to peace(New Yori: Doubleday, 1989; Plume, reprint edition, 1993). "This is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down. The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters langed in Ky La, her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children.

"From the age of sixteen, Le Ly had suffered near-starvation, imprisonment, torture, rape, and the deaths of beloved family members—but miraculously held fast to her faith in humanity. And almost twenty years after her escape to Ameica, she was drawn inexorably back to the devastated country and family she left behind. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, offering a poignant picture of vietnam, then and now, and of a courageous woman who experienced the true horror of the Vietnam War—and survived to tell her unforgettable story." (From the back cover)

The story is told alternately from the point of view of the author growing up during the Vietnam War, and from the later point of view as an American citizen returning to Vietnam to visit her family for the first time since the war. The cross-cultural observations are telling, penetrating, but also graced with good will. The writing is engaging, elegant, even lyrical in places, something for which Jay Wurts undoubtedly deserves major kudos.

Readers familiar with the book will also likely know of the 1993 film directed and written by Oliver Stone, the third and final film in Stone's Vietnam War trilogy, which also includes Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Based on Hayslip's When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, as well as her second book, Child of War, Woman of Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1993), the film is called, simply, Heaven and Earth. It stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hayslip's American husband, along with Haing S. Ngor, Joan Chen, and Hiep Thi Le. The cinematography is beautiful; and for most viewers, particularly if they haven't read Hayslip's autobiography, the film would seem nearly perfect. But the book is far more detailed, and more compelling. In the first place, while Oliver Stone does a masterful job, he simply bites off more than he can chew, and tries to pack too much into the film. In the second place, some of his "ugly American" biases do come through a little too ham-handedly at times. By all means, read the book. Skip the film, unless you're just not a reader.

Heck, I just discovered that the whole film is available on YouTube. Enjoy:

In The House of Von Hildebrand

The following from our trusty underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye:

I believe I sent this before, so forgive the possible repeating. It is a 14 year old interview, but doesn't read like its gathered any dust.

I know you've already noted that AvH's Memoirs of a Happy Failureis now out (what a terrific title choice!). She provides an arresting counterpoint to the current narrative of preconcilar Catholics as uptight pre-Freudian American puritans. Really, how many 80-somethings do you know who would not hesitate to go toe to toe with someone like Christopher West when the rest of us pause as he starts mouthing words like "orgasm" and "stimulation"? And how many Catholics do you know who can manage to demur from a Pope and still give an after-the-fact accounting of their audience with him that's convincingly respectful and affectionate? She is just an example all-around. She conveys class and charm.

This interview is striking because of where it is found. Christian Book Distributors is an Evangelical outfit. I can't imagine many Catholics knowing about it, much less using it. And the few interviews they have on their site are buried deep -- pretty much easier to miss than to notice. So the number of people who have seen it must be nil.

It is also striking because CBD must have had someone within its ranks who read AvH and actually became a fan as a result. There is no other explanation for this interview's appearance. As such it is an instance of the real spiritual bond that we often find does exist between a faithful Catholic and a faithful conservative Christian outside the bounds of the Church. We think of Bible Christians as demonizing us, but often when a real encounter takes place they turn and tell their friends, "Something must be there. In this regard, I recall a letter printed in the Evangelical World Magazine (ads for Ignatius Press they ran in the late 1990s proved to be small stepping stones on my own way into the Church). The writer says: "I strongly disagree with a letter published … criticizing you for carrying Roman Catholic advertisements …. My grandmother, a staunch Presbyterian, had a close friend who was an equally staunch Catholic. The two ladies had frequent and learned theological debates, each being well versed in her own creed, but neither of them ever found a chink in the other’s sectarian armor. The debates invariably ended with: 'Minnie dear, you are a Catholic and you don’t know it;' and 'Cora darling, you are a Protestant and you don’t know it!' [(Machen 1991, 22)]

Finally the interview is striking for some fascinating pieces not found elsewhere. A comparison of CS Lewis with DvH. That's something I'd love to read!

Speaking of other books, it appears Image Books will be releasing its own von Hilderbrand title this month, one that sounds like it offers a galvanizing portrait of the other Dr. Hilderbrand's years in Germany. Together these two seem to comprise a bonafide real life dynamic duo.

A wonderful new book on . . . Hobbits!

Jay Richards and Jonathan Witt, The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot(Ignatius Press, 2014), have apparently done a bang-up job on this new book on Tolkien's Hobbits.

So says our undercover researcher, Guy Noir, anyway, in his latest missive: "Yes, I know," he writes, "But it has to be better than the devolving series of films about Smaug!"

But wait! There's more! "See these pretty unusually full-throttle book blurbs where no one calls the authors by their first names! Thomas Howard calls it "glorious"! And the ever edgy Spengler likes it too."

Yes indeed. See for yourself!

"Beautifully written, this work gives fascinating insights into the realm of Middle-Earth. Moreover, it is a tour of the important issues of our world through Tolkien's eyes, including limited government, man's temptation to power, freedom, just war, socialism, distributism, localism, love, and death. These topics are woven seamlessly throughout, and you will leave the book with unforgettable impressions of these themes illustrated by Tolkien's imagery."
— Art Lindsley, Vice President, The Institute for Faith, Work & Economics

"J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the most widely read but arguably misunderstood of the twentieth century's literary geniuses. In this book, Witt and Richards lift the veil on Tolkien and reveal a political and, yes, economic thinker who constantly surprises readers and whose insights are even more valuable for our time than his own. Tolkien fans who read this book will never think about this great author the same way again."
— Samuel Gregg, Research Director, Acton Institute Author, Becoming Europe

"This book is a 'drop everything and read it' book. Richards and Witt have opened up an often ignored aspect of Tolkien's work, namely the sense in which his myth bespeaks a political and economic order that stands in stark, even violent, contrast to the presiding power structures that dominate this unhappy globe. It should be made required reading in all courses in political philosophy. It's a glorious book."
— Thomas Howard, Author, Dove Descending: A Journey into T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

"Witt and Richards do a brilliant job of rescuing Tolkien's literary legacy from the clutches of the cultural left. They reveal Tolkien as a profoundly Catholic thinker, with deep insights into the fundamental issue of religion, namely man's attempt to grapple with his own mortality. As a conservative’s companion to Tolkien, The Hobbit Party renews our appreciation of Tolkien’s contribution to literature and his profound impact on our culture."
— David Goldman, Author, How Civilizations Die

Also interesting:

Tolken as a Soldier: Daniel Hannan, "Supposing him to be the gardener: Sam Gamgee, the Battle of the Somme and my Great Uncle Bill" (The Telegraph, April 28, 2014):

There’s a moment in the film version of The Lord of the Rings which doesn’t appear in the books, but which I find rather beautiful. Faramir, with a hint of repressed mirth, asks Samwise whether he is Frodo’s bodyguard. “I’m his gardener!” replies the little hobbit, in a manner which is supposed to be dignified, but which comes across as gnomic. When the hobbits later part ways with the Men of Minas Tirith, Faramir, now overcome with respect, tells Sam, “The Shire must truly be a great realm, Master Gamgee, where gardeners are held in high honour.”

Peter Jackson, the producer, was making overt what Tolkien had gently left as subtext. Sam, who is about to become the true hero of the story, has been dragged from a world of growth and fecundity into a blasted wasteland. Having previously tended to living things, he has been turned into the unlikeliest of soldiers.

... Tolkien was very clear that his books were not allegories. Still, his experiences as a lieutenant on the Western Front could hardly fail to suffuse them.... “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflection of the English soldier,” Tolkien later admitted, “of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.”

[Hat tip to G.N.]

"Deathbed Conversions and the Case of Wallace Stevens"

This is the title of a very interesting and detailed article by John Beaumont, the author of two major books on Catholic converts, (1) Roads to Rome: A Buide to Notable Converts from Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to the Present Day (2010), and The Mississippi Flows Into the Tiber: A Guide to Notable American Converts to the Catholic Church (2014). The article on Wallace Stevens appears in the June 2014 issue of Culture Wars, Vol. 33, No. 7.

Bernard McGinn's "Biography" of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas

A new book on St. Thomas's Summa. It will be interesting to see where this comes out when the dust settles. His self-identification as something other than "a card carrying member of any Thomist party," as well as his disenchantment with the pre-Vatican II "dry-as-dust version of neo-Thomist philosophy" and affection for the Nouevelles suggests some caution. We shall see.

Christopher Blosser plans a more substantial review of the book in the near future, but for now offers this post as a courtesy to the publisher who sent him a complimentary copy for review: "Thomas Aquinas' 'Summa theolgiae': A Biography -- Bernard McGinn" (Against the Grain, May 14, 2014): In full disclosure, I promised that I would give it mention on my blog while the review was forthcoming. McGinn is distinguished for his extensive scholarship of Christian mysticism and does not identify himself as "a card carrying member of any Thomist party." Nevertheless:

"... I'd been reading Thomas for almost sixty years and teaching him for over forty. When I was studying a dry-as-dust version of neo-Thomist philosophy from 1957 to 1959, I was rescued from despair by reading the works of Etienne Gilson, especially his Being and some Philosophers. . . . between 1959 and 1963, I was privileged to work with two great modern investigators of Thomas, Joseph de Finance and Bernard Lonergan. It was then I realized that no matter what kind of theology one elects to pursue in life, there is no getting away from Thomas. So the opportunity to come back to Thomas and the Summa was both a challenge and a delight." [From the Preface]

Suffice to say I am intrigued, and will have more to report once I get into it.

From the Publisher

This concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words--and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.

Here, Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, then turns to the Dominican friar's life and career, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing his masterpiece, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn gives readers a brief tour of the Summa itself, and then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. He looks at the influence of the Summa on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Summa in the post-Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.

Tracing the remarkable life of this iconic work, McGinn's wide-ranging account provides insight into Aquinas's own understanding of the Summa as a communication of the theological wisdom that has been given to humanity in revelation.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

"Get comfortable being dismissed as bigots"

Matt McCullough, "Book Reviw: An Anxious Age, by Joseph Bottom" (9Marks, 2014):

An Anxious Age—the latest from Catholic essayist and pundit Joseph Bottum—is a book about the religious dimension of American public life. And it’s about the rise of a social class with an outsized influence on the shape of American culture, a group he calls post-Protestants.

... In some ways the earliest chapters of the book reminded me of Bottum’s fellow Catholic writer of an earlier generation, Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor is known in part for her distinctive ability to make Protestant self-righteousness come to life, especially its rural southern variety. Bottum’s focus is self-righteousness too, but not among the usual suspects. His focus is not the right wing religious fundamentalists of O’Connor’s rural Georgia, but the left-leaning, city-dwelling, well-educated and well-off descendants of the social gospelers.

... Conservative pundits have referred to this class as the new “elites.” But Bottum’s main argument is that we’d understand them better if we see them as they see themselves. “They do not feel themselves elite in any economic or political sense of real personal power. What they do feel is that they are redeemed” (130). They’re set apart as a class by their ability to recognize and personally reject the forces of evil—especially bigotry, militarism, oppression, and (sexual) repression. And they enjoy a calm assurance that they’re insiders to a better world coming just around the corner. They saw a vote for Obama in 2008 as an important step toward that new world. And they move closer to that world every time they buy a pair of Tom’s shoes or tote their organic groceries in reusable bags.

... Mainline Protestantism lost its place as America’s moral center in the turbulence of the 1960s and 70s. But Bottum argues the crippling damage was done long before the sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, or legalized abortion. In Bottum’s account, the figure who best represents what happened to Mainline Protestantism and best explains the shape of post-Protestant sensibilities is Walter Rauschenbusch.

... whether nor not Rauschenbusch was as influential as claimed here, Bottum’s insight into his thought and into its implications for the Mainline and for post-Protestants is one of the book’s chief contributions. Two points are especially important.

First, according to Bottum Rauschenbusch redefined sin and redemption. Sin is not an offense against God but an anti-social force, “the evil of bigotry, power, corrupt law, the mob, militarism, and class contempt” (66). Redemption is not peace with God by faith in Christ, but “essentially an attitude of mind,” a “personal, interior rejection” of the forces of evil in society (66). To quote Rauschenbusch, this “redeemed personality” is the “fundamental contribution of every man” to what he called the “progressive regeneration of social life” (quoted on p. 70). [Guy Noir: "This sounds very much like lines from any number of papal encyclicals!"]

Second, Bottum highlights what Machen and Niebuhr recognized about the social gospel, what ultimately undermined the usefulness of Mainline Protestantism, and what put the “post” in the post-Protestant class: Rauschenbusch’s view of sin and salvation left little room for Jesus. Jesus’ teaching may have clarified the nature of evil and the kingdom of righteousness. But, in Bottum’s excellent image, “Christ seems to be only the ladder with which we climbed to a higher ledge. And once there, we no longer need the ladder” (67).

... This is not the book I would recommend if you want a full sense of 20th century American religious history. And for an account of the lost influence of Christianity in American public life, Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion is more comprehensive and—I believe—more compelling. But An Anxious Age is an enjoyable and engaging read, thought provoking even where it isn’t fully convincing.

Two lessons seem especially important. First, those of us who hold a traditional Christian view of human sexuality and marriage must get comfortable being dismissed as bigots. If Bottum is right about the post-Protestant “redeemed personality,” there is a tremendous psychological reward for identifying bigotry and very little social cost to condemning it. In this climate, there is no incentive to consider the nuance by which one can love a person and disapprove of their behavior, disapprove even because you love them and want to see them flourish.

Second, we’ve got to be willing to accept our status as outcasts from the power centers of American society before we’ll be of any use to American society. According to Bottum, Protestant Christianity was most influential in public life when Protestants were more interested in theological faithfulness than public usefulness. As he puts it, “religion actually works to ground the American experiment because we take religion more seriously than the American experiment” (291). [Oh that Rome would seem to take religion more seriously than placating and policies]. The decline of Mainline Protestantism is a powerful cautionary tale. If we assume the gospel while we aim for cultural renewal—if we redefine it in the name of cultural relevance—we’ll end up irrelevant anyway. [emphasis Guy Noir's]

[Hat tip to JM]

War hero

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become something of a saint among Evangelicals over the last thirty years. In a recent communique, our correspondent Guy Noir had this to say about the following First Things book notice about a new biography by Mark Movsesian, "A Christian Man: A New Biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" (First Things, May 7, 2014):

"I certainly admire his example, and given the testimonies, is writings must generate sparks for many, many people. All good.

But he seems far closer to Thomas Merton than to Maximillian Kolbe, and theologically closer to a Karl Barth or Karl Rahner than a Karl Adam or a Karl Stern. I think the title of this piece would more fairly run, "A Man, a Christian, and a Martyr."

[Hat tip to JM]

In case you missed it: Jeremy Beer's review of Philip Rieff's Triumph of the Therapeutic

Jeremy Beer, "Pieties of Silence" (The American Conservative, October 23, 2006).

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

"Treadmill non-apology"

Marvin Olasky of World magazine reviews Francis Spufford's Unapologetic (HarperOne, 2013), which

... shows a British writer’s recognition that belief in Christ makes the greatest emotional sense not for the “young, buff, and available” but for the aging woman with a demented husband, or the boy in the wheelchair with “spasming corkscrew limbs,” or the drug-addicted woman with “a rat’s nest of dreadlocks” who will soon be losing her child.

Spufford sees Christianity as the religion that acknowledges the hard things and finds grounds for hope in spite of them. He acknowledges that coming to Christ is not primarily an intellectual assent to propositions but a matter of feelings: “I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don’t have the feelings because I’ve assented to the ideas.”

Spufford also stresses, as did Walker Percy, the way we often distract ourselves with stuff, until at a certain point “you’re lying in the bath and you noticed that you’re 39 and the way you’re living bears scarcely any resemblance to what you think you’ve always wanted; yet you got here by choice, by a long series of choices for things which, at any one moment, temporarily outbid the things you say you wanted most.”

The churches he looks for are those that tell the truth, “the authentic bad news about myself, [but] in a perspective which is so different from the tight focus of my desperation that it is good news in itself; I have been shown that though I may see myself in the grim optics of sorrow and self-dislike, I am being seen all the while, if I can bring myself to believe it, with a generosity wider than oceans.” Amen.

Olasky also reviews Baylor professor Rodney Stark’s The Triumph of Christianity, which, he says, was WORLD’s 2012 book of the year:

Stark was a journalist before entering the academic world, and his clear writing shows it. He skewers classicists who mourn ancient Rome’s downfall, and calls the fall of Rome “the most beneficial event in the rise of Western civilization, precisely because it unleashed so many substantial and progressive changes. … Disunity enabled extensive, small-scale social experimentation and unleashed creative competition among hundreds of independent political units.”

In a chapter entitled “The blessings of disunity,” Stark goes on to show that the Dark Ages weren’t dark, the Vikings and the Crusades have gotten a bad rap, the medieval church fought slavery, the Middle Ages witnessed global warming and then global cooling, and the Black Death contributed to the end of serfdom.

And more debunking: Native Americans did not have a reverence for the earth, the European settlement of the Americas was not a brutal act of genocide, Spain following the Age of Exploration never declined because it never truly rose, Islam never had a golden age and was not tolerant, Christianity was not hostile to science, and European nations did not profit from colonialism.

You gotta love this stuff!

[Hat tip to JM]