Easy Summer Reading
Posted by Daria Sockey in Reviews on Thursday, July 29, 2010 6:00 AM
Recently, I shared with you a few novels that have been my companions at the beach and on the back deck. Now for the non-fiction.
Annulment: 100 Questions and Answers for Catholics
by Pete Vere and Jacqui Rapp
I know, I know. This doesn’t sound like pleasure reading. But I was intensely interested in the topic. I know enough people who have experienced the annulment process. Sometimes it is hard to understand how what was to all appearances a solid Catholic marriage could be declared null. Those feelings of doubt are not helped by statements from liberal theologians who seem to rank compassion towards divorced catholics as a higher value than defense of the sacrament. So I was happy to find a short, question&answer style book by a canon lawyers whose orthodoxy creds are beyond question. After only 117 pages, I had a much better understanding than previously about the annulment process and a fascinating overview of grounds for annulment. The chapters on Impediments and Consent were not only informative, but at times, fun. For example, the reader is asked to consider whether Jabba the Hut could have validly married Leia after capturing her. (The answer is no, unless he had had first set her free.)
Maria of Guadalupe -Shaper of History, Shaper of Hearts
by Paul Badde, Ignatius Press
There’s something about books by German journalists who set out to be reporters and in the process become ardent believers. First there was Peter Seewald’s biography of Pope Benedict. Now I am enchanted by Peter Badde’s exploration of the Juan Diego’s tilma. I actually wasn’t in the mood for a book about the Blessed Mother when I picked this one out of a pile of Marian titles I received for possible review. But I opened it at random to a page where the author described showing a copy of the Guadalupe image to an acquaintance:
“you’re an expert in art — what would you say about this picture? ... Thomas Schroeder pushed his plate aside, adjusted his glasses, and chin in hand, examined it carefully ... ‘This is a modern painting, probably from the first half of the twenetieth century’, he finally answered, ‘by a painter completely familiar with the history of Western art from the Gothic period.’ ‘Not bad, Thomas, but now, if you will permit me, I would like to tell you something about this painting ... The modern age began with this image. It has changed both the weight and the balance of the earth.’ He raised his eyebrows. I took another sip of wine. ‘Don’t you want to know how?’
Well, after reading those lines, I sure wanted to know everything this author had learned during exhaustive research that took him to Mexico, Rome and Jerusalem. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s fascinating stuff. (Did you know that a banner based on the Guadalupe image was the battle standard at the battle of Lepanto?) And the most fascinating subplot of all — where a sophisticated man of the world finds himself falling in love with the Mother of God.
Miracle on the Hudson: The Survivors of Flight 1549
by William Prochnau and Laura Parker
What’s it like to know you are going to die in a horrible accident within the next two minutes? Here are the testimonies from 118 of the 145 passengers from Flight 1549 who—miraculously—did not die after all. Although the story as a whole is filled with nailbiting tension, I was strangely reassured by most of the testimonies. For most part the passengers were able to overcome initial panic and in those remaining seconds compose their spirits and face what appeared to be certain death with relative calm. Needless to say, many of them found that peace through prayer, including some “Men and women who had no idea that they were religious until that moment, converts in a kind of flying foxhole.
The Prayers and Personal Devotions of Mother Angelica
Raymond Arroyo, editor
Did you know that before Mother Angelica founded EWTN, she already had a following as a writer of devotional pamphlets during the late sixties and early seventies? Now that illness has silenced Mother’s voice, (other than Mother Angelica Live re-runs), her wisdom is coming to us once again through the print media. In this volume, lovingly collected and edited by Raymond Arroyo, we find prayers that Mother herself composed, along with her favorite devotions from the treasury of Catholic practice and devotion. In addition are passages from her personal prayer journal, records of a time when Mother experienced a “dark night of the soul”, despite the sweet smiling face she presented on her program each day.
This has been my bedside spiritual reading in recent weeks — just one short prayer or meditation each night. As I read, I can hear Mother’s gentle, matter of fact voice, just talking over her day with Jesus. It’s a fantastic model for the rest of us who aspire to that kind of loving familiarity and confidence with God.
— Senior writer Daria Sockey writes from her home in Pennsylvania.
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