How bad a year has it been? Let me not count the ways. Good books can hearten us in 2021 and beyond, though. Herewith, then, some suggestions for Christmastide book-giving:
Prison Journal, Volume 1, by Cardinal George Pell (Ignatius Press): The remarkable spiritual diaries of an innocent man who would not be broken, who refused to be embittered, and who finally bested a corrupt media/legal complex hell-bent on ruining him.
American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time, by Joshua Mitchell (Encounter Books): A highly original analysis of what ails America and an intriguing proposal for a biblically informed Great Awakening that can redeem us from the scapegoating now destroying the Republic’s cultural fabric.
What It Means To Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, by O. Carter Snead (Harvard University Press): A dissection of the false ideas of the human person that warp public policy today and the outline of a truly humanistic alternative. Professor Snead’s book should inspire everyone who believes there is more to freedom than doing things “my way”—and it might persuade some who haven’t understood that yet. Brilliant and entirely accessible.
Conciliar Octet: A Concise Commentary on the Eight Key Texts of the Second Vatican Council, by Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Ignatius Press): Exceptionally timely, given the torrent of nonsensical, conspiracy-mongering commentary now impeding Catholic efforts to live Vatican II’s teachings through the New Evangelization. Father Nichols’s book should be required reading in every seminary and every parish’s Christian Initiation program.
Eight Popes and the Crisis of Modernity, by Russell Shaw (Ignatius Press): The online and social media “debates” about the Catholic future are too often rebarbative because the combatants are woefully ignorant of the recent Catholic past that helps account for the Catholic present. I tried to do something about this in my 2019 book, The Irony of Modern Catholic History; Russell Shaw covers similar historical territory much more succinctly in this useful primer on How Catholics Got Where We Are Today.
Read Full Article »