Benedict Books

"In the Town" is a wonderful book for 3-6 year olds. There are a number of beautifully detailed pictures of various scenes of life within a town - at the school, the supermarket, the dockyards and broader views across a number of streets. On each page there are about 15 items that the reader needs to look for but there is so much going on in each picture that there is plenty to discuss or look at.

This is a marvellous book on so many levels. My two children have both adored hunting through the pictures to find the items and have built their vocabulary in the process. The quality of the illustrations is exceptional. While there are other books out there that have similar premises, I have never come across one where the pictures are as gorgeous or as packed with detail. On almost every page there are cats, dogs, people on bicycles, people in wheelchairs, buses...the permutations and ways to interact with the book are endless.

This has absolutely been both my sons' favourite book ever and I recommend it without hesitation to any parent or grandparent.

Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics, Improvement of the Understanding and A Theologico-Political Treatise.

Benedict de Spinoza made significant contributions in virtually every area of philosophy. Very interesting reading. Great ebook!

Fantastic! Casey is perhaps the most under rated Irish historian. Make sure to check out his other books as well!

Anselm Grun, a Benedictine monk with a doctorate in theology, couldn't be more practical. To set the stage, he points out the similarities between Benedict's time and our own. Fifteen hundred years ago, Benedict responded to the continual changes of the day with a demand for "stability." Interpreting Benedict's rule, Grun suggests that self-imposed external order brings order to one's moods and feelings as well, rather than simply pushing them down.

Grun applies Benedict's message to the twenty-first century plight of feeling overburdened by work. Today, he writes, many wish to leave the world of work altogether, often a flight from both reality and God. But Benedict's rule and the rhythm of the monastery guide us toward managing work in the light of prayer. Grun provides well defined steps for dealing with irritations on the job, clarifying goals, doing one's best then "turning off" the world of work. Throughout the chapters on discernment, peace, and community, Grun follows the same format, connecting Benedict's writing with the modern world and offering concrete suggestions.

This is a valuable, easy-to-follow resource for individuals and small groups, who might find some surprises in the section on community.

I heard about this author from a couple of friends who had taken a class from him on comedy and religion (didn't know there was any comedy in religion but there you go). So I looked him up on the net and read samples of his novels and ordered Benedict XVI because it's the only one he's published so far. I'm still laughing. The sample was good but the novel gets better and better and ends up as the best damn comic novel since, you fill in the blank. What sets it off from the standard "bestselling" novel is the characters. Benny Good the charming bastard, Ariel the Southern California airhead, Esther Geld the virginal agent who sets Benny up as pope, Ron Something, whose last name Benny (and the author?) can't remember, Maven Plum, the Barbara Walters of this crazy world-the list goes on and on. Plus the plot. You think you know where things are headed but no, the story takes you in another direction entirely. Breathtaking roll-on-the-floor funny. What we have here is not a failure to communicate, what we have here is an undiscovered comic genius. If you like the Coen brothers you'll love this stuff!

Did I mention the cover is a gas?

Although only 140 pages, this is an excellent and thorough book about the new pope, Joseph Ratzinger. It gives relatively brief information about his early years and youth, rather concentrating on Ratzinger as a power within the Catholic church as Prefect, a noted theologian and apologist, and from his position of authority within the CDF (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). There is a significant focus on some of his decisions made within the CDF and his strong, possibly ruthless role on many occasions within that. Ratzinger's theology is presented in such a way that quite complex thought can be understood, and within the wider context of other thinkers, both Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, of that era. Although discussing the shortcomings of the man, particularly in his pastoral role, and highlighting decisions that many have questioned, the overall portrait is that of a humble man whose love of the Church has been the mainstay of his life. An excellent read.

This is a good book. On my first reading, I liked it as an introduction to Benedict. On my second reading, I liked it even more, and thought it a very good overview to his thought. To those who are itching for some dirt, or who belive that every appraisal of a person is incomplete without detraction - look elsewhere - there are many in the media and elsewhere who ably fulfill that function.

Hemming touches very briefly on Benedict's early life, then traces Benedict's academic formation as a doctoral student through to his various academic posts, and alongside, explores the influences and theological controversies of the day that contributed to his thinking. Hemming goes on to discuss Benedict's appointment to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and some of the issues he faced during his tenure there, such as the question of liberation theology, speculative theologians such as Hans Kung, Matthew Fox and Tissa Balasuriya, and the impact of an aggressively negative Western media on the perception of the man and the office.

The last part of the book is entitled "Aspects of the Thought", in which Hemming spends a chapter each on a few of the current issues which have concerned Benedict: Vatican II, scripture, revelation, Europe, truth in society in a time of change. At the end, there is included a list of Benedict's published works in English, although it seems that some are out of print.

It is obvious that for a person such as Pope Benedict, with such a long and distinguished theological career, a book such as this cannot possibly cover Benedict's entire theological depth or range. However, as an introduction, Hemming does an admirable job. Like the teacher he is, Hemming writes clearly, concisely, and is able to distil and explain theological concepts with simplicity and clarity. It has made me more appreciative of the theological treasure contained in Benedict's work, and I'm interested in delving further.

I'm typically not one who likes those "day by day" inspirational books. They tend to be full of material that may have a nice point to make, but nothing that would stick with me through the day. The writings chosen for this work, though, are absolutely amazing. Each reading has given me a deep insight into a particular topic that somehow has a direct bearing on my spiritual life. A good book for any Christian, but particularly for theologians, seminarians and priests.

'When Mallory accepted the job of governess to Raife Benedict's niece and arrived at Morven Grange, his beautiful house on the romantic Welsh Borderland, she had no idea how much the "Black Benedits" - all of them as dark as they were called, were to affect her own future.
There was Raife, her employer, arrogant and unapproachable - Adrian, the music-lover, who had been badly injured in an accident which had deprived him of his wife - and Adrian's daughter Serena.
The three of them wove a kind of spell about Mallory and drew her, inextricably, into the pattern of their lives.'

Who was Leonard Edward Feeney and why should we care?

He was a first generation Irish-American with a half Spanish grandfather. He was born 1897 In Lynn, MA and died 1978 in Still River, MA. He became a Jesuit priest, a famous poet, with a graduate year at Oxford. Father Leonard Feeney was also a nationally known religious broadcaster and for four years an editor of AMERICA magazine in New York.

Why should we care?

In the late 1940s, residing in Cambridge, MA, across the street from Harvard University, Feeney and 100 young followers began to despair of America and even of American Catholic intellectual culture and Catholic dogmatic orthodoxy. Defying his religious superiors, he and his followers attached to Saint Benedict Center preached every Sunday afternoon for 7 1/2 years in Boston Common. Their message: to save your souls, become Catholics and submit to the Holy Father, for there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.

For his pains Feeney was expelled from the Jesuits, silenced and eventually excommunicated by direct action of Pius XII. That excommunication was not lifted for 19 years. And that only because it occurred to enthusiasts for the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1963) that reaching out to non-Catholics was not very convincing if you did not first reach out to heal ultra-Catholic Father Feeney.

Already afflicted with Parkinson's disease, Father Feeney was reconciled in 1973 to his Church, as were most of his younger followers not long afterwards.

He and they had created "The Boston Heresy Case" when they accused Jesuit professors at Boston College of teaching heresy and Boston Archbishop (and future Cardinal) Richard Cushing of condoning their heresy: namely, that maybe, just maybe non-Catholics might make it to heaven.

Professor George M. Pepper in 1988 laid out the best short history to that time of the Boston Heresy Case, based on interviews with major participants still living and research into sometimes reluctant archives. He then took insights from sociologists beginning with Max Weber to understand what Father Feeney, his Archbishop and Pope Pius XII had been up to.

Historically, Feeney and Feeneyism lost their noisy, rambunctious crusade. But they revived interest in an ancient dogma fast fading from American Catholic consciousness, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus." ("EENS"), that is, "outside the Church no salvation." They forced theologians and popes to take the old dogma seriously and give it a kinder interpretation during the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 63).

Since the Reformation the world had been going steadily more this-worldly, secular, rationalistic, specialized. American Catholics had tried manfully to come to terms with America's freedom of religion and had been slapped down by two popes for their "Americanism" and their "modernism." A 100 years earlier, Leonard Feeney would have been a hero. In the 1940s and 1950s he seemed at best a minor prophet of evils to come. Pepper credits Feeney with a dim inkling of the chaos of America's coming (1960s) chaos and moral sliding. Despite his historically arguable and lucidly presented solution (EENS) to America's and the Church's backsliding, Feeney and followers came across and are widely remembered as mean spirited, hateful, anti-Semitic, sometimes nasty-mouthed minor Cassandras of doom. He preached return to an older world of "integral Catholicism." But time and taste were against him.

After page upon page of fascinating scholarly insights into secularization, "the heretical imperative" and other sociological constructs, Professor Pepper hoists Father Feeney very simply and prosaically with the priest's own words:

"There is a great difference between a problem and a mystery. In the one you expect to find a solution, although you are in darkness about it when you tackle it for the first time. In the other you never expect to find a solution, but keep on getting more and more light as you go on. A problem is exhaustible, a mystery never" (Feeney, YOU'D BETTER COME QUIETLY, 1939, p. 22).

Pepper then argues that in the Boston of 1949 Father Leonard made the mistake of treating a profound mystery as if it were a mere problem, while Rome sailed majestically the other way. The mystery was salvation. The mystery was the role of the Catholic church as the Jesus-ordained instrument for saving all who are saved, whether Catholic or not. What is salvation? What is faith? What is the Church? Why are so many good, holy men and women -- Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, agnostics -- uninfluenced by Christ's church? Try to insist that those questions are puzzles to be solved and you inevitably get something wrong.

The Church moved on into new dimensions of what one sociologist calls "mellow certainty." Leonard Feeney died a priest in good standing. He had sacrificed fame, respect and sacred Jesuit obedience to defend an ostensibly losing and now long lost cause. Yet his influence slowly and steadily grows today, especially among dogmatically orthodox, liturgically ultra-conservative Roman Catholics. If you love the old Latin Mass, you are likely to tip your hat (or biretta) to Leonard Feeney. -OOO-