Books
The holiday weekend allowed me to catch up on some reading: I was able to finish two books at the in-laws'.
The first was The Habit of Being : Letters of Flannery O'Connor, a writer Thomas Merton compared to Sophocles. In her fiction, she captured the "Christ-haunted" South as only a cradle Catholic could, and as such had the kind of all-encompassing faith we converts can only hope our children will have. In her epistolary, the "Hillbilly Thomist" demonstrates how much orthodox Catholicism engages the intellect, rather than stifling it as our enemies and those who misunderstand us would have it. Yet she would rightly loathe to be called an "interlekchul," knowing the true meaning of the word. Through her letters, she brought a few souls to the Catholic Faith, and gave a good many others a truer picture of it. No, the Catholic Faith is not an "electric blanket" (her words). She also lets the reader in on the demands of being a writer (a year for a short story; seven years for a novel). A reviewer calls this the "best tutorial you're apt to ever read on how to write fiction." Knowing her fate, it is a struggle to read her last letters as she faces debilitating lupus. Yet, she bears her cross as a Catholic, never complaining nor too proud to ask for prayers.
The second was Light in the Far East: Archbishop Harold Henry's forty-two years in Korea, about one of the 20th Century's great missionary bishops. His life moves from Minnesota to Ireland, to a ship bound for China that never makes it past Korea, to a Japanese prison, a ship bound for New York via Portuguese East Africa, to England and the Invasion of Normany and the Battle of the Bulge, and back to the US before returning to Korea, surviving the fratricidal war, spending the rest of his life building the Archdiocese of Kwangju before handing it over to a Korean, and then dying on Cheju Island before the Blessed Sacrament. I cannot believe my feet have touched so many places this man of God had walked. This book serves as a great introduction to Catholicism and to Korea. It's a shame it's out-of-print. I thank the kind reader of this blog who gave me this book.
What to read next? I'll try Aquinas's Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas's Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica, which has been languishing on my shelf far too long. It's scandalous that I went through nineteen years of education in the Western Hemisphere without ever having read the Angelic Doctor, not to mention not having learned Latin and Greek. I've got a lot of catching up to do!
The holiday weekend allowed me to catch up on some reading: I was able to finish two books at the in-laws'.
The first was The Habit of Being : Letters of Flannery O'Connor, a writer Thomas Merton compared to Sophocles. In her fiction, she captured the "Christ-haunted" South as only a cradle Catholic could, and as such had the kind of all-encompassing faith we converts can only hope our children will have. In her epistolary, the "Hillbilly Thomist" demonstrates how much orthodox Catholicism engages the intellect, rather than stifling it as our enemies and those who misunderstand us would have it. Yet she would rightly loathe to be called an "interlekchul," knowing the true meaning of the word. Through her letters, she brought a few souls to the Catholic Faith, and gave a good many others a truer picture of it. No, the Catholic Faith is not an "electric blanket" (her words). She also lets the reader in on the demands of being a writer (a year for a short story; seven years for a novel). A reviewer calls this the "best tutorial you're apt to ever read on how to write fiction." Knowing her fate, it is a struggle to read her last letters as she faces debilitating lupus. Yet, she bears her cross as a Catholic, never complaining nor too proud to ask for prayers.
The second was Light in the Far East: Archbishop Harold Henry's forty-two years in Korea, about one of the 20th Century's great missionary bishops. His life moves from Minnesota to Ireland, to a ship bound for China that never makes it past Korea, to a Japanese prison, a ship bound for New York via Portuguese East Africa, to England and the Invasion of Normany and the Battle of the Bulge, and back to the US before returning to Korea, surviving the fratricidal war, spending the rest of his life building the Archdiocese of Kwangju before handing it over to a Korean, and then dying on Cheju Island before the Blessed Sacrament. I cannot believe my feet have touched so many places this man of God had walked. This book serves as a great introduction to Catholicism and to Korea. It's a shame it's out-of-print. I thank the kind reader of this blog who gave me this book.
What to read next? I'll try Aquinas's Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas's Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica, which has been languishing on my shelf far too long. It's scandalous that I went through nineteen years of education in the Western Hemisphere without ever having read the Angelic Doctor, not to mention not having learned Latin and Greek. I've got a lot of catching up to do!
Redeemed by Our Savior, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling in Pohang, South Korea, where I live with my wife, daughter, and son and teach English at a science and technology university. Baptized a Methodist and raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Buffalo, NY, I spent six years as a guest of the Anglican Communion before being received by the Grace of God into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Feast of Saint Andrew, my patron, anno domini 2002.
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