Benedict Books

The Sacrament of Charity is an Apostolic Exhortation, written by the Pope after the eleventh Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, October, 2005. The Pope explains in detail the Eucharist, its importance to liturgies and relevance to the life of the church.

According to Benedict, the Eucharist is the very center of all we think and do in the church. Benedict explains that Eucharistic faith is the "mystery of God himself and his Trinitarian love." He explores this concept with a fascinating discussion of the relationship between the Eucharist and each person of the Trinity.

The sacramentality of the Church, according to the Pope, is closely tied up with the Eucharist. He celebrates each sacrament in light of the Eucharist. He details how the works of the apostolate are "bound up with the Eucharist. The church, itself is a sacrament that unites us in our journey with the Lord.

Benedict suggests that I receive a "mission" when I celebrate the sacred mysteries. My commission is to be a Christ like "witness" with my life. I receive a mission to be an active "witness" to the Love of the Lord.
The Pope further teaches that I cannot possess Christ just for myself. I can only be with HIM in union with others, especially the least ones. This gives me social responsibility. I must care about the plight of others in God's creation, the homeless, displaced, hungry, and the poor.

One lesson in this detailed meditation that was especially meaningful to me was that our catecheses, our presentations in RCIA and any instruction concerning our faith, especially for the sacraments of initiation, "must be constantly directed" to the sacrament of Eucharist. As an instructor for confirmation, I know this applies to me. As teachers we must live "personally what we celebrate". Our "process of Christian formation" must be experiential, it should be a "vital and convincing encounter with Christ".

The Sacrament of Charity is a scholarly work, with extensive notes and detailed explanations of each point the Pope teaches regarding the Eucharist. It is not as easy to read as some of Benedicts other writings. Reading this book is a bit like sitting in a class taught by a master professor. One drinks in the detailed knowledge and carefully records the professor's extensive references to support each of his teaching points. It is worth the effort to explore the many concepts he teaches. I recommend this book for anyone who loves the Eucharist.

This is a great and short read, though perhaps not a brief one since there is much to ponder and pray on, which beautifully illustrates Catholic belief on the Eucharist. Pope Benedict is a great writer, and his love for God shines through his words. It can be weighty at times, but very nourishing as well!

I came to interest in St. Benedict after the current pope took his name. Obviously this saint has been an influence on many throughout history not only to those have adopted his namesake, but also to the thousands of monks that have served in his monestaries.

As is the case with many saints, St. Benedict left a life of privilege at a young age to pursue the religious life. Originally he only wanted to become a hermit. But after befriending a monk, he found himself drawn to a monestary where he quickly became a leader. The author chronicles many of his great works and miracles in the chapters that follow.

This is a handsome book with illustrations that add to the story though the book seems to be written more as a children's/young adult's book. The chapters are short and the stories lack thoroughness, yet I feel as though I learned about St. Benedict through this book.

The famous life and great miracles of St. Benedict, for all children 10 and up. The story of poisoned wine, saving a boy from drowning, raising one from the dead, plus, how he founded the Benedictine Order, his sister, St. Scholastica, etc.

This is such a lovely book from the Pope with his truly inspiring and insightful meditations on a wide variety of interesting themes year round, including joy, peace, prayer, silence, vacation & rest, play & life and feasts like Candlemas, Easter, Advent, etc. It is so beautifully produced with a classy gift book design and many classic art pieces illustrating the work throughout, all printed on heavy art paper. And top it off with a bonus of a nice silk ribbon marker.
The profound yet practical meditations on important subjects by this great spiritual leader combined with the glorious art work and beauty of this volume make it a spiritual gem of a book for anyone at any time.

This beautiful book, first published in 1986, offers sermons and meditations of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger(Pope Benedict XVI)and displays them as thoughts to ponder throughout the liturgical year. Among the 28 topics the reflections cover are Advent, Lent, Pentecost, "may devotions", and "vacation time".
The book is wonderfully illustrated with great works of art. He includes paintings of Michael Angelo, El Greco, and Fra Angelius. He provides numerous gorgeous icons. I would buy the book for the art alone.

The book has meditations but most are also teaching lessons from a master professor. Benedict includes the background and development of some of the holidays. The teaching is marvelous. He refers to such famous authors as Dickens, Julien Green, and Thomas Aquinas. As he considers various events in the church year, he shares the meaning and spiritual significance of the feasts.

Two unique topics are Fasching (Mardi Gras) and vacation time. He contemplates our requirement for escape from our busy lives. He investigates our search for meaning in our lives. He considers that we, like the apostles, need recuperation.

I highly recommend this book. I intend to ponder this remarkable little book frequently during the year.

For a comprehensive view of these darkening days tenty years ago, and an understanding of the forces at play, please read this work in companionship with the Reverend Father Charles Curran's Faithful Dissent and Loyal Dissent: Memoir of a Catholic Theologian (Moral Traditions) and the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx's Schillebeeckx Case, etc., and the Reverend Father Hans Kung's Why I Am Still a Christian and the several others in this vein such as the ever excellent Peter Hebblethwaite's The New Inquisition? The Case of Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Kung and those of other such subjects of the eighties.

Discover how our Church on the brink of leaping as did Saint Paul across the river to Asia Minor to bring the Gospel to the whole world, and become truly a world religion, instead retreated into a much diminished and restrictive silent pre-conciliar Polish National parish and now tightly centralized corporation with hand picked rubber stamp legislature.

This too shall pass. Why I am still and ever Catholic, hiding out with our "preferential option for the poor," learning and living the truths of our Faith among our most unlettered.

Harvey Cox, Protestant professor of theology at the Harvard School of Divinity, world-renowned author of The Secular City, here writes his take as an independent (and thus not subject to silencing and interrogations) yet informed and sympathetic observor, discerning certain signs of the times in the Eternal City of the eighties, and in Brazil. Here he weaves a brilliant tapestry from many perspectives, including inside the Vatican and Petropolis, etc., whose warp and woof is nevertheless occassionally jarringly interrupted by a stylistic pebble in the thread, such as an inexact adjective (the term gothic for example is normally associated with the present Pope, and principal of this gothic tale,'s native Bavaria and not with the first centuries of our Church) or the superficial understanding of an outsider straining to understand.

Nevertheless, as a trained academic, Professor Cox does his homework completely and well, doing much research and travel, reading where we might not read, and interviewing all of the players, including the then prefect Ratzinger. Unfortunately his report of that interview consists of telling us the questions he wished he had asked had he not been so intimidated by the inquisitiotnal odor. However Cox does manage here one of the best and most complete analyses available of the infamous Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, interviews done with the vacationing prefect just prior to his interrogation of the Reverend Father Leonardo Boff.

On the twentieth anniversary of the publication of this work, therefore, we do well to revisit her in order to understand our present coyuntura, much as Cox's Secular City was also once, or twice, Revisited.

The theological reflection is excellent, and the second half of the book, once the narrative of Boff is handled, is engrossing and clear and sets it all within a millenial context and all of salvation history, yet written in a way not just for the specialist, and with an academic skill presenting all the major school of theologies, including von Balthazar, who stresses the post-Resurrection Christ superceding the preaching, teaching and life of Jesus, superceding even the earlier accounts of salvation. Cox fairly presents the Ratzinger evolution of theological thought fully, and very rarely permits us to glimpse the theology of Harvey Cox, except for one mention of a position which he holds to be true. Rather he dedicates this page-turner to a full and fair presentation of all of the facts and of all of the perspectives, which some will therefore read as leaning against Ratzinger. He seems to fall at times for the Wojtyla/Ratzinger good cop/bad cop game, which Father Curran oddly read inversely in his own narratives of persecution.

There is much of urgent interest in this book, urgent for all the baptized striving to pratice our salvation authentically, urgent for every believer, for every seeker. reading the varying perspectives so cogently presented by Professor Cox is gripping, and lucid, and I could not put this book down all night, and am still only half way through, and unable to face now the challenge of presenting a few brief representative citations; there is so much here that is so important and so good. This is not just all about Boff; this is about our present and our future as a Church.

INterestingly, as by the fruits you shall know them, less than one fifth of the anticipated turn out greeted the new Pope, the old prefect, on his recent trip to Brazil. The only fruit of the silencing of Boff is the extinguishing of the Catholic candle in Brazil, and relegating that great and once Catholic nation to the sects. The only reason his silencing was lifted, imposed after a long conversation about a detail of Latin translation and the meaning of "in substance" from a document unrealted to Father Boff, was the unity of the BRazilian cardinals forcefully in his defense. Wojtyla had not yet stacked the College of Cardinals to assure his hand picked successor (Ratzinger) and his own canonization process, and had to pull an about face to please them.

There is much theological as well as machiavellian analysis in this book, much we need to read and reflect upon, , very carefully in every chapter, but here is one crucial turning point indicating which side of the wall we have fallen off, and whether we can be put together again. How much of Jesus do we find in Christ? How Jewish is Jesus?:

"Both sides insist that 'Jesus' and 'Christ' must always be held together. But for Boff and Sobrino, Jesus gives the content to Christ, while for Ratzinger and von Balthasser his being the Christ is what ultimately is essential about Jesus. The liberation theologians contend that the life and teachings of the Nazarene give substance to the Christ of Faith. It was not just anyone who was raised on Easter. It was a particualr man, along with what he said and did. Their critics think this emphasis loses the esseential combination by putting too much weight on 'Jesus.' Von Balthasaar, who is sometimes called 'the pope's favorite theologian,' frequently makes this case against going back to Jesus, ending the argument in one book with the stern Latin warning Aut Christus aut nihil (either Christ or nothing. (p. 153)"

For more on this please read the tomes of the learned and holy REverend Father Edward SChillebeeckx Jesus: An experiment in Christology and Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord as well as Father Boff's own Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for Our Times. Further words from this section (there are so many throughout) contrast the Liberation theologist seeing God's saving action for His people throughout salvation history as rescuing the poor and oppressed from exploitation and political domination, as in Egypt and Babylon, with denying that pre-Christian history and seeing the Resurrection as fully superseding all that went before, making the Old Testament an irrelevant anachronism and devoid of any salvific import or value. Thus:

"Admittedly the supersessionist position that von Balthasaar and Ratzinger take - that the Christian church has definitively replaced Israel as the 'new people of God' - has been the dominant one for centuries. But starting about two decades ago, spurred by the painful recognition that the supersessionist view may well have contributed to the anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust, scholars began rethinking both the biblical evidence itself and this inherited theological depreciation of the Jews. . . .(p. 154)"

As you can see there is much of great substance to consider in this slim volume. Please get one soon while we may, and pray with it, and for the future of our great Church.

"Takes the reader behind the scenes of the silencing of Leonardo Boff (a Latin American priest/theologian) into the chamber of the Prefect and the cloister of the Friar and into the mindsets of Joseph Ratzinger and Leonardo Boff. This is not just a religious book with a parochial interest but a treatise that any who wants to stay abreast of social and political developments in the world must read" -- Ignacio Castuera (from the back cover of the book) Includes a great exposition of the character of Boff's thought and theology! Really good stuff.

Carl Benedict was broke when he decided to write this short book about his first year tending cattle on the Texas range; he says he "had a wild hope that it would make me some money." Whether it did that I can't say (though my doubts are strong), but the book has had a decent success. It was first published by the Texas Folklore Society, which seems the perfect venue for it: it is simply told, straightforward, unpretentious, and has the wide-eyed innocence of many a tall tale.

Benedict became a cowboy for the Figure 8 outfit on the Texas panhandle, and we get his impressions of herding cattle, duststorms, thunderstorms, crossing streams, going to town and dancing with the ladies, favorite horses, types of equipment - everything another cowboy might be interested in hearing. And that's the book's triumph: Benedict writes for an audience that he assumes will be just like himself. He's honest and ordinary - and wonderfully fresh. It's a classic in cowboy literature. [Gyp water, by the way, is the sulfur-like water found in some water holes, to be drunk only as a last resort.]

"Intelligence, a sense of humor, rightness of heart, observant sympathy for nature, and gentle sensitiveness are manifest throughout this book," said J. Frank Dobie, who wrote an introduction for it. In 1894 Carl Benedict was still wet behind the ears but crazy to get away and work on the range. In the summer, he hooked up with the Figure 8 Ranch to round up cattle in the Texas Panhandle. Out of that experience came this book, published fifty years later, about what it was really like to be a cowboy in some ornery country checkered by canyons and gyp water springs. A Texas cowboy classic

Benedict Kiely, born in Co. Tyrone and now living in Dublin for over 60 years, turned 80 in August 1999. "There Was an Ancient House" tells the story of a young man's struggle with other novices trying to conform to the religious life. Kiely, Ireland's finest novelist, writes with humor, honesty and clear, lyrical prose. It is a classic novel.

Note: This "review" is the only way I can find to communicate with you that Ben (a great friend) has just had published two new books:

"The Waves Behind Us" (Metheun) is the second volume of his memoirs. The first volume, "Drink to the Bird" came out in 1996.

The second book, "A Raid into Dark Corners" (Cork University) is a compilation of 26 of his essays written over the past years on various Irish authors from George Moore to Sean O'Faolain to Seamus Heaney. The title of the book is from a definition Heaney gave to poetry, which he likened to "a raid into dark corners."

I bring this latter book to your attention because some weeks ago you had listed "Of Clay Gods and Men" which was the title of this book of essays by Wolfhound Press. That deal fell through and Cork University published it as "A Raid..."

Ben is an extraordinary writer and I hope this information will enable you to list his complete works. Thank you very much.

Benedict Kiely, born in Co. Tyrone and now living in Dublin for over 60 years, turned 80 in August 1999. "There Was an Ancient House" tells the story of a young man's struggle with other novices trying to conform to the religious life. Kiely, Ireland's finest novelist, writes with humor, honesty and clear, lyrical prose. It is a classic novel.

Note: This "review" is the only way I can find to communicate with you that Ben (a great friend) has just had published two new books:

"The Waves Behind Us" (Metheun) is the second volume of his memoirs. The first volume, "Drink to the Bird" came out in 1996.

The second book, "A Raid into Dark Corners" (Cork University) is a compilation of 26 of his essays written over the past years on various Irish authors from George Moore to Sean O'Faolain to Seamus Heaney. The title of the book is from a definition Heaney gave to poetry, which he likened to "a raid into dark corners."

I bring this latter book to your attention because some weeks ago you had listed "Of Clay Gods and Men" which was the title of this book of essays by Wolfhound Press. That deal fell through and Cork University published it as "A Raid..."

Ben is an extraordinary writer and I hope this information will enable you to list his complete works. Thank you very much.

Benedict's thought-provoking book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the myths of rape that continue to pervade our culture. Benedict places media coverage of sex crimes into historical perspective and casts light on our understanding of sexual violence and gender relations. This is a smart, readable book.

Ms. Benedict has written a remarkably thorough, well-researched, informative book that still avoids being dry or preachy. Anyone with an interest in media, crime, women's issues, or cultural criticism in general would do well to read this book.

Great books for this age group are difficult to come by, and Leda Schubert has created two of them with Winnie Plays Ball and Winnie All Day Long. A hugh, lovable dog, Winnie proves to be a totally appealing character for young children, and her activities engage their imaginations. These books have the same classic charm as Cynthia Rylant's Henry and Mudge stories, and they are enormously popular with very young children.

These simple stories are loved by my children, age three and five. My five year old, just learning to read, loves the fact that he can pick out certain words which are often repeated, as well as look at the pictures, and 'read' the story without help. The gentle humor is just right for this age group, and the illustrations are sweet. We read our Winnie series almost every night and the kids don't get tired of them. I highly recommend them for all beginner readers!

Leonard Edward Feeney was born in 1897 in Lynn, Massachusetts. After high school, where he was a classmate of the future Cardinal of Boston, Richard Cushing, Feeney became a Jesuit novice. By the time he was thirty he was a published poet. From the late 1930s until 1948 when he and around 80 followers launched "the Boston Heresy Case," Feeney's reputation among American Roman Catholics soared to a level approaching that of his friend, the popular radio personality, Monsignor Fulton Sheen. Feeney's FISH ON FRIDAY became a best seller. He wrote a charming biography of the early American Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. He was for four years literary editor of AMERICA magazine, the national Jesuit weekly. His admirers included Presidential candidate Al Smith, Clare Booth Luce and the future theologian and cardinal Avery Dulles.

Always in terrible health, half his stomach having been surgically removed in his early Jesuit years, diminutive Father Feeney had a mean talent for mimicry and was a master of English prose and poetry. In 1944 his Jesuit superiors, acceding to a request by the charming co-founder and director of Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, Mrs Catherine Goddard Clarke, appointed Leonard Feeney to be chaplain and spiritual director of the recently founded Center just outside Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the end of World War II, many returning war veterans sought out the Center for its exciting rediscovery of old "integral Catholicism," including the philosophy and theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas. They complained bitterly that Harvard was teaching the Axis ideologies they had just been fighting.

August 1945 devastated the Center's main-stream Catholic complacency. Two atomic bombs were dropped: on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the latter the center of Catholicism in Japan. How could this happen? An atrocity slaughtering thousands of innocent women, children and non-combatants. Why were most Americans cheering? Why did the bishops not lead the nation in mourning? Center leaders sensed that America had lost its moral and theological moorings. And they thought they had discovered the reason why: the American Catholic Church was no longer militant, crusading to bring all men to Christ through baptism and personal submission to the authority of the pope. It was going "Americanist," assimilating to the Protestant establishment, grateful to be increasingly accepted socially. It was that simple.

Center men and women anchored their crusade to save America by bringing all men to Christ and the pope in an old dictum dating to the third century, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," i.e. "outside the (Roman Catholic) Church there is no Salvation." Center members informed Rome that Catholic theologians in Greater Boston, tolerated by Archbishop Cushing, were tolerating a horrible heresy: that non-Catholics, or indeed anyone not baptized, might through the mercy of God conceivably be saved and attain to heaven.

The archbishop denounced them for preaching intolerance. He forbade Feeney to celebrate mass, witness weddings, hear confessions or preach. The Jesuits expelled him when he refused an assignment to leave Saint Benedict Center and teach English at Holy Cross College. The Vatican summoned Feeney to Rome to explain himself. When he declined to go until he knew in writing the charges against him, he was excommunicated by personal command of Pope Pius XII.

End of story? No way.

For 7 1/2 years Father Feeney and many male and female followers drove from Cambridge to Harvard Yard. There, protected by mounted policemen, they preached love of Christ and his mother at times to hundreds of hearers. Heckled by Brandeis University students and faculty, Father Feeney was drawn into strongly anti-semitic statements.

In 1958 a hundred or so followers of Feeney and Clarke removed Saint Benedict Center from Cambridge to rural Still River. There, on a very old farm, 24 married men and women brought their 39 children. The parents were permitted by Feeney, contrary to canon law, to profess vows of celibacy and to turn their children over to a few "Older Sisters" to be raised in something resembling a strict Catholic boarding school or orphanage. This was one of the most striking examples of a Catholic Utopia ever attempted on American soil.

Journalist Garry Potter traces Saint Benedict Center's evolution to 1995. Through review of earlier scholarly monographs, Center reminiscences and his own interviews, Potter developed considerably empathy for the Center position. Like others, he criticizes the canonical and pastoral insufficiency of Rome's initial treatment of Father Feeney and his followers. Potter admires the courage and originality of the hyper-traditionalist American men and women whose efforts to be good Catholics proved to be too far outside the nation's "Americanist," assimilating main stream to be ignored.

The story had (and has) a happy ending. In the warm afterglow of the Second Vatican Council, the very ecumenical spirit thundered against by Feeney and followers touched the dissidents. Most of them were graciously and without onerous conditions reconciled to Rome by 1974. There are now eight post-Center communities and most members are in full union with the Vatican. One original follower of Father Feeney is now a Benedictine Abott and has written his own recent history of the Saint Benedict Center movement, FROM HARVARD TO HARVARD. There is no evidence that any of the original "seceders" has any doubts that all men must be become baptized Catholics in order to be saved. But most are now more peaceable and willing to refrain from calling their liberal opponents heretics. -OOO-

Skillfully translated from the original Italian by Antony Shugaar, Against Ratzinger is a close study of the message of the current Catholic Pope, Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), scrutinizing his life and theology as well as comparing him to his predecessor Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II). Though written from an intellectual standpoint, Against Ratzinger is sharply critical of the narrow-minded aspects to Ratzinger's doctrine. Against Ratzinger has much to criticize Ratzinger upon, such as his collaboration with the Axis during World War II, his tendency to depict masturbation or consensual adult homosexual relationships as morally objectionable as pedophilia, his blindness to the ills caused by unchecked population growth in his stance against contraception, and more. Yet the greatest criticism of all is the revelation of how he has subverted philosophical reason to champion Christianity and Christians as the sole hope of combating negative social issues or societal decline in Europe, adamantly refuting the possibility that nonbelievers could also be a creative, moral, ethical, or revitalizing force. "We should reject Joseph Ratzinger's claim to philosophical authority because... he has stealthily purloined from the field of rational research its essential nucleus and objective. By defining (but never proving) the partiality and inadequacy of human reason as it has been used in modern times against the authenticity of the Christian narrative, unprovable by definition, the pontiff denies truth the opportunity to offer itself up to rational inquiry. To judge from the feeble response of many professional philosophers to the pope's strategic move, philosophy - inasmuch as it is a quest for truth - truly seems dead." Highly recommended as a solidly argued counter-argument to the values and the system of thinking that Ratzinger promotes.