What Catholics Really Believe

Posted on April 6, 2011 by smellincoffee

What Catholics Really Believe: 52 Answers to Common Misconceptions about the Catholic Faith
© 1992 Karl Keating
155 pages

Last week a friend of mine introduced me to the chat client PalTalk, and since then we’ve been spending our evenings together, usually participating in or listening to conversations about religion and philosophy. We’re both especially fond of a room called “Catholics What We Believe and Why” because of the genial host, and my experience in there has proven to be elucidating — though it also makes it plain to me how shallow my understanding of Catholicism: I know only what I have gleaned from the study of European history.

Unfortunately, that limited understanding has not been much remedied by this book, in part because it is written by a Catholic to Catholics: Keating doesn’t explain the tenants of Catholicism to outsiders, and his answers to many questions seem to be written more to assure or calm concerned Catholics who are having their doubts than to satisfy the serious student. Though Keating is regarded well by Catholics (at least those I’ve asked), his answers to more meaty questions (regarding the inerrancy of the Bible, for instance) were frustratingly simplistic — like applying a band-aid to a bullet wound. When commenting on contradictions within the Gospels, for instance, he chooses an example that can be easily reconciled with a little imagination and expects the reader to be content that this example speaks for the rest.  Fixing a single pot-hole doesn’t repair the rest of the street, to say nothing of the broken bridge.  Perhaps all of the contradictions can be resolved with sufficiently creative imaginations, but convoluted what-if scenarios are unnecessary, unhelpful, and unconvincing to outsiders. Keating encourages Catholics worried about the integrity of the Bible to view it through Catholic eyes, to assume it is inerrant…and then all will be well. You only see contradictions if you’re LOOKING for them, he says. I have no idea how someone can write that so un-selfconsciously. Again, it speaks to consoling readers rather than fundamentally resolving the issue.

Though Keating’s work has the benefit of being conversationally easy to read, what information I learned from it I could have gleaned from another book just as well — and perhaps from an author with a more respectable approach.

Related:

  • The Jewish Primer: Questions and Answers on Jewish Faith and Culture, Rabbi Dr. Shumuel Himelstein  
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Teaser Tuesday (5 April)

Posted on April 4, 2011 by smellincoffee

Once again, it’s Tuesday Teaser…time..
..or it will be at some point.

As he walked down the hallway, I remember watching with anthropologist-like fascination and thinking, This is interesting, watching these college kids get indoctrinated in the U.S. military; you can see that they’re afraid. I wonder if the drill instructors practice this, the walking-down-the-hallway moment. I wonder what’s going to happen next.  Staff Sergeant Lewis grabbed me by the green collar of my fatigues, walked me back three steps, pressed me against the wall, and yelled, “Join the rest of this sorry group!”
I realized then that I was actually in the Navy.

The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL. Eric Greitens.

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Gallows Thief

Posted on April 1, 2011 by smellincoffee

Gallows Thief
© 2002 Bernard Cornwell
297 pages

It’s the year 1817, and the conflict between England and Napoleon which dominated the minds of Europe for nearly two decades is finally over — and yet, still haunting those who survived it. Captain Rider Sandman returned home from fighting in Spain and at Waterloo to find that his father had driven the family into debt and shot himself. Though of ‘noble’ lineage, Sandman is now penniless and without prospects, save his skill at cricket. His skill at “batting” may keep him from starving, but it won’t be enough to marry his longtime love. Thus, when Sandman is asked by the Home Minister to investigate and confirm the guilt of a man who will soon be executed for the murder of a noble, he accepts the generous fee offered and sets about the task of obtaining a confession.

Naturally, it’s not that simple. As soon as Sandman questions the man, he realizes the account of his guilt can’t be true. Fortunately for the accused — a painter who had the bad luck to leave an aristocratic lady’s home shortly before her rape and murder — Sandman is a firm believer in Justice.  England means something to him: he didn’t help defeat Napoleon just to come home to a land where the innocent are hanged.  As his investigation continues, Sandman stumbles upon a secret society of artistocrats who will murder just to prove they can get away with it; if Sandman doesn’t leave things be, he may become their next victim.  Sandman must race against time with multiple lives hanging on the balance, and the painfully suspenseful ending will keep readers on the edges of their seats until the final page.

Given that I’m chiefly familar with Cornwell’s military work, this diversion into detective work came as a pleasant surprise. The writing and characterization are up to Cornwell’s usual standards, and to them he adds  a barrage of period slang (“flash“) and a generous dollop of cricket discussion. This last would have had me utterly confused were I not familiar with some cricket terms (courtesy of a Regency take on “Who’s on First?” which uses terms like ‘bowler’ and ‘wicket-keeper’ for pitcher and catcher).  Both bring the post-Napoleonic setting more to life, though for some reason I suspect Cornwell was amused to be able to use either. I for one would have been interested in seeing a Rider Sandman series of mysteries — like most of Cornwell’s protagonists, Sandman is strong, wily, courageous, and ‘a good man’ —  but it’s been  over eight years since Gallows Thief first saw the light of day.

Gallows is an fun,  tense mystery novel set against the grim backdrop of public executions: those interested in both historical fiction and detective stories should find it especially appealing.

Related:

  • the Richard Sharpe novels, the main character of which may have been mentioned here. I am not sure, but Sandman refers to a certain green-jacketed rifleman with remarkable shooting prowess. 
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These Weeks at the Library (15 March – 30 March)

Posted on March 30, 2011 by smellincoffee

I picked up a couple of novels from the the library’s bookstore (which sells discarded and donated books) during my visit to the library today; Michael Connelly’s Echo Park,  one of his Harry Bosch mysteries; and Crossover, a Michael Jan Friedman story in which Scotty steals a museum ship (the Constitution-class Yorktown) and races off into Romulan territory to rescue Spock.  I’ll probably read Echo Park soon, given that I’ve given up on trying to read the Bosch novels in order.

Selected Quotations:
I forgot to write down quotations before I returned the books, but I did post a few to my facebook news feed as I read them.

“One of my men saw something moving and challenged it. When it did not say anything, he fired his machine gun.”“Oh, so there’s nobody out there,” Musulin said, lowering his weapon. “Only cow. Now dead cow.”


– p. 215, The Forgotten 500: the Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of WWII

“We’ve just had the President of the United States blown to hell and gone by a lunatic. We’re not going to paralyze ourself with a political fight. And as far as the courts are concerned, let’s be serious: there’s no way on earth the public would ever stand for a court deciding who is going to be the President.”



p. 19, Then Everything Changed, the first of several references to Bush vs. Gore in 2000.

‎“You didn’t dare have more than two shooters at a time. The little birds rocketed upward in every direction, scattering in order to confound their predators. In the excitement, hunters swung their guns about so wildly that three or more shooters would post more of a threat to each other than to the quail.”

p. 11, A Man in Full. Obviously not a book Dick Cheney ever read. 


Potentials for Next Week:

  • The Heart and the Fist: the Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL. Eric Greitens
  • Roman Games: A Plinius Secundus Mystery, Bruce Macbain. Pliny the Younger must settle a mystery before the games are done in Rome, or a household of slaves will be put to death.
  • Gallows Thief, Bernard Cornwell, set during a soldier’s post-Napoleonic Wars homecoming.
  • Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal — An African-American Anthology. Edited by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings
I had intended to check out a science-fiction author, but I forgot his name “DeHandler? Handel?” and the library’s computers were down so I couldn’t check on the recommendation. (Joe Haldeman, for future reference…)
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Teaser Tuesday (29 March)

Posted on March 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday again…and for the first time in a long time, I’m almost playing by the rules! 😉

Let us completely drive away foul habits, as we would base men who have done us great harm for a long time.
The possession of the greatest riches does not resolve the agitation of the soul or give birth to remarkable joy — nor does the honor and admiration of the crowd, nor any other of those things arising from unlimited desires. 

p. 81 and 85, The Essential Epicurus. Both of these are from his Vatican Sayings.

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Bomber

Posted on March 28, 2011 by smellincoffee

Bomber
© 1970 Len Deighton
424 pages

June 1943. The world is at war. Hitler’s armies have encompassed the bulk of Europe, and the Allies are not yet prepared for a land invasion of Europe. For now,  the United States and United Kingdom are engaged in an extensive strategic bombing campaign of Hitler’s gains,  sometimes carpet-bombing whole cities in an effort to disrupt the production of arms, equipment, and munitions. One such raid has been planned for the town of Krefeld, in the Ruhr valley — Germany’s industrial heart. On the ground and in the air, Englishmen and Germans like struggle in combat against one another and against their consciences, debating the justice of their respective causes. When a pathfinder squadron jettisons its flares in a futile attempt to stay in the air,  waves of bombers assault the wrong target — the small town of Altgarden, where all the paths of our German and English characters converge in disaster.

I first heard of Bomber as the most authentic fictional account of a bombing run ever written. It’s certainly consistent with a nonfiction account of a bombing run I’ve read, and replete with small, technical details that provide for a gritty and realistic story, but  Deighton’s unanticipated story of men at war with their consciences interested me more.  The two lead characters are Sergeant Lambert, a bombing pilot whose politics and increasing discomfort with the prospect of bombing civilians makes him a target for his superiors, and Oberleutnant Victor Löwenherz (“Lionheart”),  a German night fighter whose partner Himmel discovers chilling state secrets that force both of them to question their loyalties. Löwenherz and the other German characters who feature are written as real people. They see Hitler as a necessary evil, or as at least better than the Bolshevik alternative, but they’re people — and when reading of their efforts to resist a terrifying night attack and save their city from a firestorm,  I was hard-pressed not to root for them while at the same wishing the bomber crews a safe mission. Although this is a novel set during the ‘good war’, Deighton’s portrayal is of decent people being forced to hurt and hate the other by circumstances beyond their control.  The villains of the novel are the petty politicians who attack Lambert and Himmel for following their consciences rather than blindly accepting  what they’re “supposed” to.

It is thus a stirring and detailed account of conscience amid a bombing run gone badly, one with anti-war overtones.

Related:

  • The Airman’s War, Albert Marrin
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Top Ten Authors Worthy of More Recognition

Posted on March 28, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and the Bookish are speaking up on behalf of authors whom they love, but who no one else has ever heard of…

1. Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser
These two are a married couple who have written many books in the history of science, and their “On the Shoulders of Giants” series is a recommended read if you’re scientifically oblivious but want to amend that.

2. Greg Iles
A couple of summers ago, I read four Greg Iles books in one week. This was not intentional.  Iles writes mystery thrillers, often in the southern gothic style, and has an impressive way with characters.  The Quiet Game was his first Penn Cage novel.

3. Max Shulman
Possibly more famous in his day,  Shulman wrote  novels drenched in satire and absurdism in the mid-20th century. I found him through The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, an incomparably funny collection of short stories about a would-be romeo/intellectual who attends university in the fifties.

4. Sarah Vowell 
Vowell’s books (Assassination Vacation,  The Wordy Shipmates) are a strange mix of history, humor, and social commentary.  The only other people I’ve met who have read her tend to be like me,  public radio listeners.

5. Frances and Joseph Gies 
I know three people who recognize these two, and one of those is my former medieval history professor. They’re a great resource for people interested in daily life during the medieval epoch, and chances are their information will surprise those who consider themselves familiar with the period. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel shook up my perception of intellectual achievement during the era.

6. Christopher Moore
I’m not sure how popular Moore is, but I’ve loved everything of his I’ve read — Lamb, the novel of Jesus’ life told from the viewpoint of his best friend Levi (who is called Biff), is particularly good.  He’s written a series of vampire comedies which I’ve yet to sink my teeth into  read.

7. Bernard Cornwell
I don’t know if it’s the circles I frequent or not, but I only know of two people who have read Bernard Cornwell: myself and  blogger Cyberkitten who introduced me to him.  Cornwell writes historical fiction. To the degree he’s known, it would be for his Napoleonic-era war books, but my favorite is the Saxon Stories series, which follows a Saxon raised by Vikings named Uhtred as he works to regain his ancestral land while grudgingly serving King Alfred.  Cornwell became a great favorite of mine last year.

8. Robert Ingersoll
Chances are you’ve never heard of Ingersoll, but politicians used to crave his endorsement — and Mark Twain raved about him. Ingersoll was an orator in the late 19th century, who  has left a considerable body of work in the form of essays, lectures, and speeches (available here).  Ingersoll’s ideals were ahead of his time, and he wrote forcefully in defense of human creativity, liberty, democracy, and intelligence while attacking injustice, monarchy, and organized religion. He lectured on technological progress, Shakespeare, and philosophy. While I can’t imagine how he sounded in his prime, even the written versions of his speech rivet me to my seat.  (I use Ingersoll as my display picture on Blogger, by the way!)

9. Robert Harris
Harris writes political/mystery thrillers, some set in the past, some set in the present, and some set in…alternate histories.  My first exposure to Harris was Fatherland, an alt-history mystery novel in which a Berlin detective stumbles upon a truth that was hidden when Nazi Germany prevailed in its struggle against the Soviet Union. I later started reading his Roman novels, including one set in Pompeii. His The Ghost, a work of political intrigue about the life of Tony Blair  “Adam Lang”, is being converted into a movie.

10. Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (fantasy)
I first read Atwater-Rhodes back in high school: her In the Forests of the Night caught my eye, largely because of the title. She writes stories of vampires and witches, and her vampires intrigue me in a way that no one else’s, including Anne Rice’s, have.

11. Isaac Asimov.
“Hold the phone,” you say? “Isaac Asimov is plenty famous?” Well, sure – he is.  But most people just know him as a science popularize and the creator of the Foundation science fiction series.  Asimov had a considerable range — he penned mysteries and histories, provide commentaries for the Bible and Shakespeare, produced an annotated collection of poems,  wrote several collection of etymologies from mythology and history, and of course produced gobs of science-fiction short stories, science essays, and science books proper.  My favorite series by Asimov is his Black Widower collections — short stories about a group of friends and intellectuals who meet once a month for dinner and are presented with a mystery which they must puzzle through. The solutions sometimes lie in historical, scientific, or etymological trivia — but sometimes it’s just a case of thinking outside the box.

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You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

Posted on March 26, 2011 by smellincoffee

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
© 1995, 2002 Howard Zinn
224 pages


Howard Zinn not only taught history: he helped make it. The product of a working-class family in New York, Zinn left the shipyard and union he helped create to fly bombers over Germany during World War 2, returning to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and becoming a professor of history. His approach  rejected static observation of events and tributes to Great Leaders in favor of lively accounts favoring the underdogs and victims of history. He intended to inspire those he taught, encouraging them to look to themselves to create the changes they wished to see in the world.  Practicing what he preached, Zinn took up protest banners, broke through segregation barriers, faced arrest and and imprisonment, and even gambled his life a time or two.

During a question-and-answer period following a 1992 lecture, Zinn was asked to account for the strength of his convictions and the stubbornness of his hope. He grew up in slums, saw his fellow workers beaten by policemen when they protested for their rights: his first teaching job was in the south, where he saw the brutality of segregation firsthand, in which millions of people were treated like pariahs and forced to accept substandard homes, wages, public facilities, and treatment at the hands of the law — just because of the color of their skin. He entered his adult years as the costly Vietnam War waged, which killed millions and destroyed the trust between the government and its people.

Despite this, Zinn maintained his belief in the tenacity of the human spirit — for in all these desperate moments, Zinn saw acts of individual courage in which people stood up for themselves and human dignity, despite the odds and power arrayed against them. Some of these moments are justly famous — the Civil Rights marchers in Selma come to mind —  but Zinn’s life saw many such heroes. He witnessed a group of young women at Spelmen college force the public libraries to integrate all by themselves, and during Vietnam he helped a group of rogue nuns hide a radical Catholic priest named Dan Berrigan, a man wanted by the FBI for his acts of civil disobedience.  Every dark hour of history saw a glimmer of light in it, as people unfailingly decided they weren’t going to take this abuse lying down. Strengthened by the courage of their convictions, they refused to accept the status quo — and they changed history for the better.

Zinn believes in using history to create consciousness about injustice, for it cannot be fought in ignorance. His  autobiography, interlaced with the story of America in the 20th century,  is effective in this: his sections on conditions for the working class and for blacks are particularly harrowing to read.  Civil Rights and the Vietnam War dominate the book, though there is a single chapter on “growing up class conscious”.  The book’s most prevalent theme is the importance of active dissent — in both keeping democracy healthy and in fighting injustice.  I imagine most people who read this are already familiar with Zinn’s work (I watched the documentary movie based on this book after reading one or two of his books,)  but unless you’ve read The Zinn Reader there should be a few surprises in store. I’d definitely recommend it to those who want a look inside the Civil Rights movement (Zinn made the history of my hometown come alive), or those interested in the justice or frailties of war.  Even those who have read The Zinn Reader would benefit from a refresher, though: I read this because I was feeling discouraged, and the hours I spent with it have left me feeling renewed.

Related:

  • The Zinn Reader, a collection of Zinn’s articles and essays throughout the years on a variety of subjects.  Despite growing up in Selma, Alabama, the Civil Rights struggles that took place here never meant anything to me until I read his on-the-ground history of events. Last summer I started walking around town on foot, visiting places like Brown Chapel and the bridge.
  • A Power No Governments Can Suppress, also by Zinn and about the role of civil disobedience and protest in maintaining democracy. 
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This Week at the Library…

Posted on March 23, 2011 by smellincoffee

This Week at the Library began in 2006 when I started keeping track of my reading on MySpace.  Most of my friends are readers, and it allowed us to share recommendations more easily. After a few months I realized I would be better served having the posts on Blogspot.com. At first I continued to update both platforms, but eventually my MySpace account fell into disuse.  While the original format consisted of a huge wall of text, posted weekly, in which I rambled on about what happened at my trip to the library,  comments on what I’d read last week and what I intended to read the next week, eventually I shifted into individual reviews for every single book.   I retain the weekly posts, though they are used to preview the next week’s reading and possibly share quotations from the previous week.

As of 27 August TWATL’s home remains blogspot, but I intend to create this into a backup and mirror in case of blog outages. If Google’s upcoming rebranding goes south, I may also make this account TWATL’s home.

You can follow my reading on Twitter and Shelfari by searching for the username ‘smellincoffee’.

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A note to WordPress users

Posted on March 23, 2011 by smellincoffee

For the past few weeks I have had a strange and recurring problem with WordPress: when I try to comment on someone’s post, my comments just seem to disappear. I hit “submit”, and the page takes me to the post — but without my comment having been added, and without a notice that it is pending moderation. At first I just started trying to reply over and over again, to no avail — and then, hours later, I’d spot my comment right where it should be. At other times, it never appeared.  I’m not sure what is happening here, but I think all my comments were going straight to spam, for reasons unknown to me. (I only share links at Should be Reading and the Broke and the Bookish on Tuesdays).  This may be some miscommunication between my browser (Chrome) and wordpress’s software.  

I’d started to assume that my comments were just floating around in the digital ether and would appear at some time, but I’ve talked with a wordpress user who doubles as a friend of mine, and she says none of my test comments came through.  This means that for several weeks my attempts to respond to people who have dropped by and commented here have been  for naught.  I make a point of visiting everyone who visits here: I think it only polite, so this is somewhat embarrassing.  If you’re a wordpress user, I haven’t been ignoring you — my comments have just gotten lost somewhere!

In any case, I’ve created a wordpress username, and signing in seems to have taken care of that little problem.   ( I should be easy to recognize, as I used ‘smellincoffee’ just as I do here.)

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