Banned (Catholic) Books Week

Banned Book Week was last week. Did you miss it? 

For anyone who took it seriously, let me just say this: Banned Book Week is a complete fraud.

The books highlighted during Banned Book Week are the opposite of banned. If you look at any list of so-called banned books, you'll see titles that have been continuously promoted world-wide and most have sold millions of copies. They're not banned. They're everywhere. 

And given the cultural climate, you already know what kinds of books these are. Most are books that in any other era would have been correctly classified as obscenity. Worse, many of them are books specifically designed to introduce young children to deviant sex acts. 

The promotion of these so-called banned books is said to be a freedom of expression issue. It is, therefore, the ultimate irony that many of the libraries, bookstores, schools and cultural entities promoting Banned Book Week on social media last week summarily shut down their comments section. Why? Because many of people commenting have gotten wise to the fraud. They rightly point out that parents demanding that books promoted to their children be age-appropriate are not calling for book bans. But this reaction to Banned Book Week is, apparently, banned.

Let's look at some numbers, shall we? Let's see how the supposedly banned books are doing as compared to, say, popular Catholic books for the same age-range which are theoretically not banned. Catholics are, by the way, the largest religious group in the US in terms of sheer numbers, so one would think that books for and by Catholics would be well-represented in our libraries.

Get a copy here.

First, let's compare two books for children. On the one side, we'll start with Angel in the Waters by Regina Doman. This is a beautiful little book about an unborn baby and his guardian angel first published by Sophia Institute Press in 2004. The book follows the baby during his development in the womb until after his birth, and is engagingly illustrated by Ben Hatke. With a very pro-life message, Angel in the Waters has sold well over 100,000 copies since release and may be found in the collections of almost every big family. 

Checking WorldCat, which is a catalog of books in public and academic libraries, we can see that Angel in the Waters may be found in 96 libraries. Not bad, right? 

Now, let's look at another book for children: I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings. This is a book for children published in 2014 about one of the culture's pathologies-du-jour: transgenderism. Of course, it is heralded as a banned book. It has, in fact, been banned so successfully that WorldCat shows this book in 1,726 libraries — That's 18 times as many libraries as Angel in the Waters.

Get a copy here.

Moving on to the young adult category, we'll start with Angels in Iron by Nicholas Prata. An intense historical novel for teens and young adults chronicling the Great Siege of Malta of 1565, Angels in Iron is Arx Publishing's bestseller, with over 10,000 copies sold. Since publication in 2005, it has received rave reviews in Catholic media which has lauded the novel as an exciting adventure that should be read by all Catholic youth. The book been included in several bookseller and homeschool curriculum provider catalogs. 

Despite the book's enduring popularity among the nation's largest religious group, Angels in Iron has found its way into only 33 libraries nationwide.

Let's compare this to the #1 "banned" book—Gender Queer by Mia Kobabe. Published in 2019 for the teen/young adult market, this book is a memoir in graphic (and I do mean graphic) novel form about a poor confused soul who uses made-up pronouns. The book's promo text boasts that it includes explorations of "bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction." You'll be surprised (or not) to find out that this profound work of literary genius, though "banned", is available in 2,259 libraries, or 68 times as many as Angels in Iron.

Finally, let's compare two books for teen and young adult readers that have been published for a long time. 

Get a copy here.

On the one hand, we have The Joyful Beggar, one of the best-known works by prolific novelist Louis de Wohl. Originally published in 1958, The Joyful Beggar tells the parallel stories of Francesco Bernadone—the man who would become Saint Francis of Assisi—and the fictional knight errant, Roger of Vandria. This brilliant historical novel would be turned into a motion picture in 1961 and the edition by Ignatius Press remains popular with Catholic audiences to this day. I reviewed it a few years back—it's a personal favorite. It's the kind of book that should be required reading in every Catholic school. The Joyful Beggar is found in 309 libraries according to WorldCat.

Let's compare this with The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison which is #6 on the "banned" book list compiled by the "Unite Against Banned Books" website. If one reads the summary of this novel, originally published in 1970, it sounds like a fairly typical exploration of racism in America. What few of the summaries reveal is that the book contains ugly and graphic depictions of sex, including a horrifying scene where a very young girl is raped. This book showed up in my house when I was a kid, and I read it as a teen, having no idea of what was in it. To this day, I wish I hadn't. And yet, amazingly, this book is regularly assigned as required reading for high school students. The Bluest Eye is found in 6,015 libraries or 19 times as many as The Joyful Beggar. 

So in case it's not abundantly clear at this point, none of the books on the banned books lists are actually banned. In fact, a strong case could be made that books with sexually explicit content—especially deviant sexual content aimed at children, teens, and young adults—are favored in libraries and are generally ubiquitous.

At the same time, excellent works of literature which promote themes of heroism, saintliness, the sacredness of human life, moral courage, and the glorification of Almighty God are much more rarely found. Dare I say that such books are largely banned from our nation's libraries?

I leave it for the reader to ponder how this situation has come to pass, what effect it is having on children and young people, and what should be done about it.

“True and Living Friendship Can Not Thrive Amid Sin” ~ Saint Francis de Sales and the crisis of post-Christian friendship

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A lamentable feature of modern post-Christian life in the West is the inability of many people to form strong, lasting friendships. This observation has popped up with increasing frequency in the secular media, particularly as it relates to the Millennial generation. A recent poll that made the rounds last year indicated that 22% of Millennials who responded said that they had no friends at all, 27% said that they had no close friends, and 30% said that they had no best friends.

The article accompanying the poll suggests that social media usage has been a major driver of this phenomenon. Online "friends" may be myriad, but they are also distant and illusory—not really friends at all in the traditional sense. Most young people seem to understand that implicitly.

As families shrink, and young people grow up without knowing the joys of a multitude of siblings and cousins, this lack of friends means that more and more people are feeling isolated, lonely and are lacking any sort of social safety net to help them when they encounter financial, health, or emotional problems.

But this sad dilemma should not be left at the doorstep of social media alone. Rather, I posit that the problem is at least partially due to a general loss of the traditional Christian virtues as a given among most people, and the tendency to fill that void by congregating together based on vain and trivial interests or worse, outright sinful desires and activities. As St. Francis de Sales taught in his excellent work, Philothea: Introduction to the Devout Life, such trivialities can never form the basis of a true friendships. Instead, true friendship requires that we bear with the trivial, actively discourage the sinful, and encourage virtue in our friends. It should go without saying that the same should be true of married couples and family members.

In Philothea, Saint Francis explains the difference between true and false friendship in great detail:

“Friendship demands very close correspondence between those who love one another, otherwise it can never take root or continue. And together with the interchange of friendship, other things imperceptibly glide in, and a mutual giving and receiving of emotions and inclinations takes place; especially when we esteem the object of our love very highly, because then we so entirely open our heart to him, that his influence rules us altogether, whether for good or evil.”

The distorted modern concept of “love” is often rendered as being unconditional and all-accepting. That is, we are enjoined to demonstrate our love for each other by accepting, celebrating, or even adopting the faults and sins of our friends and family members. Saint Francis continues, saying, to the contrary:

“Of course we should love him notwithstanding his faults, but without loving those faults. True friendship implies an interchange of what is good, not what is evil….Saint Gregory Nazianzen tells us how certain persons who loved and admired Saint Basil were led to imitate even his external blemishes, his slow, abstracted manner of speaking, the cut of his beard, and his peculiar gait. And so we see husbands and wives, children, friends, who, by reason of their great affection for one another, acquire—either accidentally or designedly—many foolish little ways and tricks peculiar to each. This ought not to be, for everyone has enough imperfections of their own without adding those of anybody else, and friendship requires no such thing. On the contrary, it rather constrains us to help one another in getting rid of all sorts of imperfections. Of course we should bear with our friend's infirmities, but we should not encourage them, much less copy them.”

It should be pointed out that St. Francis is only talking about small flaws here—personal idiosyncrasies and imperfections. As to actual sinful behaviors and desires, he speaks without any equivocation: these should never be encouraged or tolerated in our friends. To do so renders the friendship a perverse fiction that can not be maintained without considerable self-deception:

“Of course, I am speaking of imperfections only, for, as to sins, we must neither imitate nor tolerate these in our friends. That is but a sorry friendship which would see a friend perish, and not try to save him, would watch him dying of an abscess without daring to handle the knife of correction which would save him. True and living friendship cannot thrive amid sin....Friendship will banish a casual sin by brotherly correction, but if the sin be persistent, friendship dies out—it can only live in a pure atmosphere.”

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As to those who attempt to lead their friends into sinful behavior, St. Francis says adamantly that we should not consider anyone who does so a friend:

“Much less can true friendship ever lead any one into sin. Our friend becomes an enemy if he seeks to do so, and deserves to lose our friendship, and there is no surer proof of the hollowness of friendship than its profession between evil-doers. If we love a vicious person, our friendship will be vicious too. It will be like those to whom it is given. Those who draw together for mere temporal profit, have no right to call their union friendship. It is not for love of one another that they unite, but for love of gain.” [de Sales: Philothea, Part III, Chapter 22]

In a previous chapter, St. Francis describes what a true friendship should look like:

“Love every one with the pure love of charity, but have friendship only with those whose interactions are good and true, and the purer the bond which unites you so much higher will your friendship be. If your relationship is based on science it is praiseworthy, still more if it arises from a participation in goodness, prudence, justice and the like. But if the bond of your mutual liking be charity, devotion and Christian perfection, God knows how very precious a friendship it is! Precious because it comes from God, because it tends to God, because God is the link that binds you, because it will last forever in Him. Truly it is a blessed thing to love on earth as we hope to love in Heaven, and to begin that friendship here which is to endure for ever there. I am not now speaking of simple charity, a love due to all mankind, but of that spiritual friendship which binds souls together, leading them to share devotions and spiritual interests, so as to have but one mind between them. Such as these may well cry out, ‘Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity!’” [de Sales: Philothea, Part III, Chapter 22]

Today, January 29, is the feast day of St. Francis de Sales on the traditional calendar. This great saint and Doctor of the Church had many profound things to say about friendship, love, and other aspects of life that are sadly forgotten today. Click here to read more from his Philothea: Introduction to the Devout Life.

Of course, this is a book that every Catholic should have on their bookshelves, so go ye and order a copy here.

New regalia. No Knights.

I don't know who thought this was a good idea--but it's not.

Our parish concluded our beautiful 40 Hours devotion with a glorious Mass last night. It was a celebration of Christ incarnate in the Holy Eucharist and as such, it included profound reverence, gorgeous music, and zealous preaching—the perfect antidote to the secularized Catholic culture which has largely abandoned the belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

One aspect that was missing from this Mass as compared to the recent past, however, was the Knights of Columbus. In past years, we would have a dozen or so 4th degree Knights in full regalia present. This year, we had four men in tuxes only, holding the canopy over the Blessed Sacrament during the procession after Mass. Where have all our knights gone?

Well, as it happens, the KoC board of directors decided that as of July 1, 2019, the "old" regalia of the Knights of Columbus is to be discarded. Only the new regalia — which looks like something designed by Hugo Chavez, the deceased socialist dictator of Venezuela — may be worn. As a result, the representation of the Knights in full 4th degree regalia at our 40 Hours went from about 8-12 each year...

...to zero.

Back in 2017, when this controversy first erupted, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson explained the rationale for this change in an email. He said, in part:

"The new uniform is part of a comprehensive and necessary effort to keep our Order relevant and attractive to men, particularly younger men."

If causing the Knights to basically disappear from our parish ceremonies was part of this comprehensive strategy to make the Order "relevant and attractive to men, particularly younger men"...well, great job guys.

I would argue that this type of truly foolish misstep is what commonly happens when you have a group of older guys deciding what they think the younger guys might like. To my brother knight, Mr. Anderson, I would humbly suggest that as long as you are living, no decision is forever and clinging to a bad one in the face of overwhelming evidence only compounds the error. The time has come to rescind this unpopular diktat and reinstate the old regalia. Or at least give our brothers permanent permission to wear it.

Or, you can keep enforcing this bad decision until the membership goes the
way of the Sisters of Mercy or Sisters of Saint Joseph.

As for myself, a 4th Degree Knight who never joined the color guard but looked forward to doing so when the responsibilities of middle age subsided, I have no desire to dress like a South American socialist dictator. Perhaps at some point I'll inherit someone's "old" regalia which I can keep in a closet until it may be worn again without disobeying the mandates of the guys at the top.

Fulton J. Sheen ~ Santo subito?

"We become like that which we love. If we love what is base, 
we become base; but if we love what is noble, we become noble."
—Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Deo gratias! The cause of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen appears to be moving forward again after his earthly remains were removed from Babylon-on-Hudson to Peoria, Illinois.

With the renewed interest in Archbishop Sheen, I noticed an up-tick in folks sharing some of my oldest memes on social media, including the one above.

This quote may be found in Sheen’s book entitled, Life is Worth Living, which the same title as his celebrated TV show from the 1950s. The reason for this is not coincidental. The essays in the book were transcribed from the TV show. As Archbishop Sheen wrote in the preface with his typical good humor:

“Let it never be said again that it is difficult to write a book. It is now proven that if a person talks only half and hour a week for twenty-six weeks, he already has enough material for a book.”

Here is the context of the quote, from a section in the book entitled, Knowing and Loving:

The will, when it loves anything above it in dignity, goes out to meet the demands of whatever it loves. When the will loves anything that is below it in dignity, it degrades itself. Suppose the dominant love of man was money. Man would degrade himself by loving what is less worthy than himself. In loving it, he becomes like gold. If a man loves only lust, carnality, and the pleasure of the flesh above all things, he thereby degrades his spirit to the level of sex.

We become like that which we love. If we love what is base, we become base; but if we love what is noble, we become noble. Hence the importance of the right kind of ideals and the right kind of heroes. As Our Lord said, Where your treasure is, there is your heart also. “Hence, the least love of God is worth more than the knowledge of all created things. [Sheen: Life is Worth Living, page 47]

This passage is immediately followed by another that is eminently quotable and to which I previously gave the meme treatment as follows:

Here are a few more Sheen posts from the archives:

• Venerable Fulton Sheen: “If our will is determined by forces outside of ourselves, we no longer will make amendment for our misdeeds.” 
• Social Justice and Individual Justice 
• “Stalin must one day meet his judgment!” ~ Venerable Fulton Sheen predicts Stalin’s death nine days before it happens