The Virtual Abbey

I have become a collector of various books which support my religious life. I think there are a number of books one needs in order to be a functioning, practicing Catholic -- yet for many years I neglected building my Catholic library. In the last year, though, I've gotten a pretty good collection going. I now have five different editions of the Bible (including a copy of the Vulgate), the Liturgy of the Hours in both Latin and English, the Catechism, the Raccolta, the modern book of rites, a Latin-English Rituale Romanum, and two daily missals (one for the Extraordinary Form (Tridentine mass) and one for the Ordinary Form. I have numerous other works on apologetics, and a fairly big bookshelf on the topic of demonology. I got interested in the sacramental of exorcism mainly because in re-reading the New Testament for the first time in many years, I was struck by how many exorcisms are in it, and wanted to research the church's current view of it. (I've completed that research to my satisfaction; and although I'll certainly want a copy of Fr. Fortea's Summa Daemonica when it become available in English, I'm no longer that interested in the subject -- my conclusion being it's very real, it's thankfully rare, and should be left in the hands of professionals).

But the book I use most frequently, besides the Liturgy of the Hours, is the Daily Missal. In that I only attend the Extraordinary form of the mass occasionally (three or four times a year), I usually use this book most Sundays, and when I go to mass during the week, I am also prepared with all of the readings ahead of time. Now certainly, the church provides missalettes, so you might ask, "Why do I need a missal at all?" My answer is that a hand missal usually has in it a lot more than simply the readings. It also has a short form of the catechism, and devotional prayers that are helpful in preparing for mass. This particular edition of the Daily Missal has the readings for years A, B, and C of the modern lectionary cycle all on the particular day, and it is therefore easy to follow. It is a good edition, though with as much Scripture as is in the modern mass, it is a little bulky. This version is of good quality, with beautiful old woodcut illustrations. The downside is that is also a tad pricey at $75.

I got mine at Aquinas Books.

What I like about this edition is that it has an excellent collection of prayers, and has many of them in both Latin and English. There are four particular prayers in it that I now read before/during/after mass -- the prayers of St. Ambrose and St. Thomas Aquinas before communion, and the prayers of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas after communion, as part of my thanksgiving. Aquinas's prayers, in particular, are always well written, on point, and instructional. Although he is best known as a theologian, you can definitely see the clarity of his thinking in his prayers and his hymns, which are, to my mind, great treasures of the church that must be recovered. I do not have time right now to reproduce them in Latin and English, but I will at some point. Here is a page that has versions of both prayers, though the translation I have from this missal is slightly different.

And in Googling for them, I found this little book, which I'll buy soon for my bookshelf.

Called to Communion, written in the early 1990s by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now, of course, Pope Benedict XVI), is a short work on the topic of ecclesiology. Like all of Joseph Ratzinger's arguments, it is scholarly, well-researched, polite and considerate of other views, Scriptural, and, ultimately, an educational experience. It is a series of lectures compiled into a book that makes a solid Catholic argument for a traditional, hierarchical understanding of the Church, and which discusses the meaning of Apostolic Succession, the primacy of Peter, and the sacrificial priesthood. In the course of the work, Cardinal Ratzinger also takes on Libertaion Theology, and two competing models of ecclesiology -- a congregational model and a model that sees the Church as being self-contained under a bishop -- which could be construed, in a shorthanded way, as arguments against the ecclesiology of much of Protestantism and of Eastern Orthodoxy. As always, though, Cardinal Ratzinger is non-confrontational and generous in his approach.

I am deeply impressed by the Pope's theological works, though one senses, in all of his short books, written when he was overseeing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a great frustration in that he simply does not have the time to go into greater detail. I truly believe that he wanted to retire and just write books in 2005, when he was instead chosen to be Pope. But I think that he was chosen Pope for a greater reason -- and in reading his works of theology, I am beginning to appreciate why. Unlike a lot of modern theologians, Pope Benedict writes in a way that demonstrates that a) he is deeply respectful of tradition, and b) his writing is informed by faith. While his arguments are clever, there is no sophistry in them. He also demonstrates that while he is very knowledgeable of the modern historical-critical methods of Scriptural interpretation, he does not subscribe to the notion that one can "deconstruct" the Bible. He accepts some of the somewhat archaeological character of modern Scriptural criticism, while simultaneously also holding onto the concept of Scripture as a divinely written book, and while having a thorough understanding of typology and the use of recurring themes in Scripture. He thus demonstrates a flexibility and depth of mind that few modern writers have.

I would describe his style as being "Augustinian" rather than "Scholastic" -- if you handed me a work of his in a brown-paper wrapper and told me that he was a conservative Lutheran theologian, I would have no trouble believing it in most of his writings (though naturally, Called to Communion would definitely reveal his identity as a Catholic). I think his work is very approachable by Protestants, especially because he always tries to work in a Scriptural angle to buttress his arguments. He seldom, if ever, argues from the edifice of Catholic theology, and his arguments have very much of a human face and scale to them.

I think a lot of people regard Benedict's election as Pope regard the election as a working of the Holy Spirit; but I think as with all workings of the Spirit, while we can sometimes see the surface reasons, we do not see and cannot understand the Spirit's full depth of motives. I think that one of those motives may well be a desire to give Benedict's theological writings a wider audience than they might otherwise receive. If you told me, two centuries from now, that Benedict was canonized as a saint and named a Doctor of the Church, based on my small exposure to him so far, I'd have to say I wouldn't have much difficulty believing it.

Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, by (then) Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI)

I was going to go through a lot of other things I have on my bookshelf before I reviewed this book; I'm not even done with it yet, being only about 2/3rds of the way through. I have all my Bibles, devotional prayer books, works of church history, books by saints, and the half dozen or so books on the topic of exorcism that I still have to review. But I'm home sick from work today with a miserable head cold, and am taking the opportunity to do a rebuild of my computer operating system from the disk partitions up. As I do that, I am taking far too much Robitussin, and am reading Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, by the incomparable Joseph Ratzinger.

Popular culture would portray the Pope as simply an old white patriarch out of touch with the world, or as the infamous Nation of Islam mouthpiece, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, so eloquently phrased it, "an old cracker in a dress."

I have an RSS feed that links to news stories and blog posts with the keywords "Pope Benedict XVI", and I can tell you, for the occasional interesting news story about him I encounter, there are two dozen stories or posts dismissing him in language that an eighth grader might feel bold about using about his school principal, and formed with a similar degree of insight. To dismiss the Pope out of hand is to claim a level of erudition and education that is above his; I can tell you from having read a few of the man's works, that he is not someone you can simply dismiss. He is better read, more knowledgeable, and fairer to his opponents than are any of his juvenile critics.

I have said it before, but I will say it again -- there is a reason he became Pope. And as I read Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, I can tell you that part of the reason is that his work needed broader attention. His theology is broad enough and deep enough to bridge the differences between the Vatican II reformers and the traditionalists, while maintaining continuity with the Doctors and Fathers of the Church, and most of all, with Scripture. His writing is elegant in the sense that he can illustrate his arguments with the appropriate quotation; but that elegance is deceptive, because he is not merely clever -- one senses that he chooses his sources not out of convenience, but because he has considered many, many sources and avenues of attack, and has chosen the one that is most apt, direct, and deadly. There is a vast amount of learning and reading behind Joseph Ratzinger's arguments; he is a great teacher of theology, but one senses he was a truly masterful student.

In Pilgrim Fellowship, which is a collection of short works some of his students collected to be published on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday in 2002, he considers a number of different topics -- he discusses the nature and purpose of Theology, the Holy Spirit as Communion, the Eucharist, the ministry of the Priesthood, church movements and the Apostolic mission they contain, a press conference discussing the encyclical Dominus Iesus, a series of letters with the Orthodox metropolitan, ecumenism, relations with the Jews and Church guilt, and some meditations on the Church's third millenium. It is a breadth of topics that is daunting in its scope, and though, as always, one senses he is pressed for time, he considers each topic thoughtfully, bringing to bear the vast library of his knowledge.

Pope Benedict is truly a unique figure on the world stage. To read him is to see the Church through his eyes, and what one sees is something truly remarkable indeed. To wrestle with his arguments will leave any reader a better educated person.