Catholic Inklings: What We’re Reading Wednesday....

Yay! I get to do a WWRW! What We're Reading Wednesday, that is. When I first saw this link up, I thought it was just such a great idea, and “I should do that!” Then I didn’t and the next week rolled around, and the next, and, well, you get the idea. You are also getting an idea of how I write. This is a new blog! And I get to do a WWRW! Onward and upward!

First book: Campaigners for Christ Handbook, by David Goldstein. I found this lovely gem at an antique store, I’m sure. Or maybe it was a flea market? I don’t even remember anymore. But it fit my criteria for a “take home” book - published before 1955, and with an Imprimatur, no less! The first printing was in 1931, the Nihil Obstat was by Patrick J. Waters, Ph. D., and the Imprimatur by William Cardinal O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston.

According to the forward:

“This book is a handy compilation of doctrinal, historical, and statistical data and arguments to be used by Campaigners for Christ in their endeavor to reconcile their fellow-Americans of differing beliefs to the cause of unity in Christ and His Church. In it will be found the basic teachings of Catholicity as well as answers to inquiries and objections with which the campaigners are likely to be confronted while addressing open-air meetings in the interest of things Catholic.”

There is no one book that you can read to fully understand the faith, but there are many, many books that give a good general overview. I think this book is one of them. Each chapter covers a different topic, presents the Catholic’s belief on the subject, then briefly explains that belief. This book was written to be used by Catholic lay street preachers, essentially, and the chapters were to give them some extra tools in their work with those who did not believe. I’m only on Chapter 4 right now. What really stood out to me this week while reading the chapter on Religion, were the quotes from George Washington’s Farewell Address. To quote here a part, Washington said:

“Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Wise words.

AquinasandMore.com

Also this week, a bit of Chesterton. I hope I always have Chesterton on my WWRW. He is quite possibly my favorite author. I’m working on reading the last three chapters of Orthodoxy in preparation for our Chesterton Meeting this Friday. I should say I am listening to the last three chapters. I downloaded it from LibriVox, so I can listen while doing dishes, or crocheting, or driving. I do not recommend Orthodoxy as a first jump into G. K. Chesterton’s work. It is very, very Chesterton. He has a way of telling things that brings you around in many circles and gets you very lost, then drops you off at your destination in such a way that you realize you now know exactly where you are - most of the time. It is absolutely delightful, like a roller-coaster. And like roller-coasters, it is best to start on the small, slow ones. Orthodoxy is more the upside-down-and-vertical-drop kind. I love it.