Did you ever watch a movie made from a favorite book and feel let down because the filmmakers left out all the things you liked about the story and fecklessly added and changed many other things? That’s what I felt last Spring after seeing the movie “Paul the Apostle of Christ,” which became available this summer on DVD.

The filmmakers left out all my favorite parts of some of my favorite books of the New Testament.

The Scriptural story about how St. Paul converted from a persecutor of Christians to a lover of Christ is riveting. So is the story of how he walked thousands of miles and suffered beatings and deprivations to spread the good news that was revealed to him by Christ, of the remarkable letters he wrote to the local churches he helped found, how he ended up in Rome by shrewdly claiming his rights as a Roman citizen after he was brought to trial in Jerusalem, up to what little we know of how he met his death as a martyr.

But the movie—not so riveting. If I could have left without disturbing the woman to my right in her recliner seat, I would have walked out soon after the movie started. I was surprised that the few reviews I had read beforehand were positive and spoke of the solid acting and production values.

I agree that the actors in the major roles (Jim Cavaziel—who played Christ in “Passion of the Christ”—as St. Luke, along with previously unknown-to-me actors James Faulkner as St. Paul, and so-called Gallic heart throb Olivier Martinez as Mauritius, the Roman commander of the prison) acted well, but the minor actors all seemed to take a second at the start of each scene to adjust their facial expressions to the feelings they were supposed to be portraying. There was nothing otherwise jarringly wrong about the production, except that the scenes and the costumes were a bit too prettily color-coordinated in soft pastel shades when they weren’t disturbingly dark and oddly blurred.

As Luke walks through Rome, and we see Christians “burning like candles” to light the streets by Nero’s order, I began to suspect that the filmmakers were not-so-subtly interjecting violence to emulate the shock value of the “Passion of the Christ” movie.

Some say you won’t be able to follow the story unless you know the Acts of the Apostles, which isn’t going to be a good thing for most viewers. But then, I know the Acts account well, and I couldn’t follow their story either.

The scriptwriters didn’t quote the Scriptures in any coherent way, even though they claim in interviews to have started with the Scriptures. Part of a sentence of dialogue from Paul will be an authentic quote, and the rest of the sentence will be made up. The next sentence doesn’t follow from the first, so the true doctrine of Christ doesn’t ever get spoken.

Based on one verse in one of St. Paul’s letters saying “only Luke is with me,” in the movie Luke comes to Rome to find Paul in prison. By prearrangement, Luke connects with a group of Catholics led by Priscilla and Aquila who are living together in hiding.

In the New Testament account, Paul met the couple Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth and lived with them and made tents with them, after they had been expelled by Claudius from Rome because Aquila was a Jew. Paul was never in Rome while the couple lived there.

The scriptwriters portray Luke writing the Acts of the Apostles while visiting Paul. For some reason Luke is allowed free access to Paul after he is found sneaking into the prison and brought to the prison commander, although the movie doesn’t believably portray the commander’s motivation.

One other much-stressed dramatic point is that the Catholics in hiding are undecided about whether to flee Rome to avoid the fate of many others who are being captured and sent to die in the Coliseum. Priscilla wants to stay because she is helping people.

This reduces Christianity to be kindness and social work. The Christians who are hiding out together resemble a group of well-meaning hippies. In reality, the early Christians would have taken care of each other but wouldn’t have had “helping people” as their main focus. The movie doesn’t show them worshiping together or remembering Christ’s death as He told us to remember Him in the Mass.

An especially irritating line in the last meeting between St. Paul and the Roman jailer was “Love is the only Way.” Maybe John Lennon and Yoko Ono were channeling St. Paul?

But seriously, applying simplistic motives to the heroes of our Faith is just not good enough. That is not the message of Christ. He told us He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. And even more importantly, He told us, to show that you belong to Me, keep My commandments.

There is a lot of complexity to the Catholic faith, with mysteries such as Baptism, the ordained priesthood, the papacy, and the Eucharist, but our minds are only opened to understanding it all when we realize who Christ is and respond with love to what He did for us.  And what He, and St. Paul, did for us was to live in great poverty and humility, and to travel and teach and suffer and die to save us.

Which is not reducible to a simplistic slogan.

Mathew Walther has a great piece up at The Week about Evelyn Waugh fanatics. It’s worth a read in full, but here is how he identifies the Waughian Set.

The Waughian wears tweed jackets, often if not always ill fitting. He smokes a pipe or one of the expensive additive-free brands of cigarette. He drinks gin and, partly out of spite for craft-beer nerds, Miller Lite. He is a Catholic but has vaguely romantic feelings about English church architecture and says “Holy Ghost” instead of “Holy Spirit.” He insists that the Church has been in a crisis since the Second Vatican Council and the introduction of the new liturgy. He rides a bicycle, or at least owns one, and rails against the iniquities of the automobile. He loathes democracy and longs for the restoration of the Stuarts to the English throne. Insofar as he has any opinions about contemporary American politics he loathes the GOP and has a a tendency to romanticize marginal quixotic figures in the Democratic Party

The description is prescient, but I have a few slight, alternative proposals. Here are some thoughts towards helping you identify a Waugh Fanatic in the wild.

• Politically, I suspect they’ve now moved well beyond any American categories into vaguely Rerum Novarum influenced reveries. They wax nostalgic about feudalism, village commons, and throw around the word solidarity with reckless abandon.

• They’re obsessed with Leo XIII but probably have more in common with Leo X.

• 

  Stillman’s Metropolitan

  Whit Stillman is easily their favorite movie director and they may talk to you at length about Metropolitan. Be prepared for this. They eschew primary sources and will talk to you about whether Stillman’s view of Jane Austen is accurate but probably have not actually read an Austen novel.

• They drink gin, yes, but be particularly wary of the Waugh fanatics who are so far gone as to actually prepare and consume Pink Gin on a regular basis. This is not a beverage fit for human consumption outside of certain older gentlemen within the confines of the Yale Club who have built up their tolerance to it over many years.

• Seeing modern art sends them into convulsions and they immediately demand to be taken outside to sit in the garden for some fresh air and a cigarette.

• They do have a propensity for tweed, but fit is actually more important than the physical condition of the jacket. The jacket itself may very well be in tatters.

• They have a horror of modern technology and pretend that it is intolerable.

• They proudly put forth that they have no morals, but in reality adhere strictly to the dogmas of the Catholic Church.

• Jeremy Irons is their favorite actor, but David Niven is a close second.

What say you? What other marks are there by which may identify a Waugh Fanatic?

I don’t know if I believe in Teen Lit. Well, I guess I believe it exists as a genre but, as a parent, I have a hard time trusting it. In fact, I tell my kids to avoid the Teen Lit section at the library because I really don’t feel like having to read it all.

So, I’m left with a problem – How to find good books for teens? They read too fast! I’ve tried to give them Lord of the Rings to slow them down, but it didn’t seem to work. I’m considering giving them Moby Dick, but I just want them to slow down, not quit reading forever.

Teens, especially young teens and precocious pre-teens, are in a bind when it comes to reading. There’s some good stuff out there, sure, but they read so quickly that it’s hard for parents to keep up with curating their selections. Once they graduate emotionally and intellectually and are ready to read the classics, it won’t be a problem to discover a lifetime of reading. For now, though, the struggle continues.

This is why I was so intrigued when the good folks at CatholicTeenBooks.com sent me their latest anthology, Secrets: Visible and Invisible.

Basically, it’s an anthology of short stories from different writers. If any of the stories grab your attention, they have plenty of other novel-length work they’d love for you to check out. I like the idea, and I’ll say that while not every story resonated with me, several of them did and I’m definitely interested in following up with a few of these books for my kids.

I got in touch with one of the authors, Leslea Wahl, and asked her a few questions.

How did this particular collection of writers come together?

Leslea: Author Susan Peek and I had met online through the Books for Catholic Teens Facebook page. I was scheduled to do a book talk in Kansas for a homeschooling group and asked Susan to join me. We shared many Catholic teen books with the group and afterwards one of the mothers asked if there was any way for all the books we mentioned to be found in one place. When we got back to our homes we sent out an email to others we knew in the FB group and brainstormed the idea of a joint website – CatholicTeenBooks.com.

There are now 13 Catholic authors who all have a passion for writing for teens and hoping to encourage and strengthen their faith o the website. Someone proposed the idea of anthology and this particular one worked for 7 of us. Hopefully we can do some others as time goes on and get even more of the authors involved

I notice there’s a wide selection of genres included, is this on purpose?

When we decided to write the anthology we thought it best if we all wrote a short story that reflects our published books so readers could get a taste of our writing styles and genres. This is why there are different genres.

Are these all written with the same reading level/age group in mind?

While some of our novels are aimed at different age groups within the teen population – middle school vs. mature highschoolers – we wanted to make sure these stories would work for most everyone. On our website our novels are listed with age appropriateness in mind under the Teacher tab.

Do you find it challenging to write for teens, or do you simply write a story and then realize that it works well for teens?

We all have a passion for writing for this age group in particular. I myself was drawn to writing because I could not find appropriate books for my own kids. We searched and searched for fun books they wanted to read but also reflected the values we were trying to instill in them. I now read and review Catholic and Christian teen books on my website and several other places in hopes of sharing these kinds of books with other families.

Check out Secrets: Visible and Invisible and lots more at CatholicTeenBooks.com

Also, all you Teen Lit writers out there who might be interested in joining CatholicTeenBooks.com, send an email to catholicteenfiction@yahoo.com for more information.

The illustration above is from a 12th-century manuscript called the Hortus Deliciarum (“Garden of Delights”), compiled by nuns as a sort of encyclopedia for novices. It contained over 300 illustrations of philosophy, history, theological, and morals. This particular illustration depicts Philosophy and the Seven Liberal Arts which flow from her like rivers from a spring. Astronomy, Grammar, Geometry, and the like all have their pride of place. However, outside the realm of Philosophy we see four figures—at first reminiscent of the Four Evangelists, but we quickly see that the spirits whispering in their ears are black as pitch and look like fiendishly misshapen birds. These are the Magicians and Poets, whose arts are taught by demons.

Plato dreamed of founding a republic without poets—without those smarmy, blasphemous spinners of tales, those avaricious movers of men’s passions, those excessively-vocabularied hipsters. The proper ordering of the passions was a high priority for the philosophers in the School of Socrates, and whereas music could be properly used for curing the disorder of men’s souls, the poetical songs of professional storytellers were often in opposition to this psychological betterment. Homer sang of a philandering Zeus, Hesiod of gods who wantonly committed patricide, and Aristophanes of philosophers who had their heads in the clouds. Clearly the poets lacked the virtue of piety and had a mind to debase higher things.

And yet, the poets have never quite been banished. Because of his troublesome nature, the poet is potentially as much of a gadfly to society as Socrates was to the Athenian ruling party. Aeschylus might be writing plays for the established religious ceremonies, but that doesn’t mean he won’t insert some commentary about improving the social order. Dante might write a Catholic poem that reflects orthodox teaching on morals and the afterlife, but that doesn’t mean he won’t put a few popes in Hell. And yet, Aeschylus repeatedly won first prize at the Dionysia and Dante eventually got the support of a papal encyclical. For all the trouble they cause, nobody wants to be totally rid of the literati.

The Catholic poet today—and by that term of course I include all fictionists and dramatists—is at a strange crossroads. The ecclesiastical hierarchy no longer cares to exercise its power of censorship on the arts, so the Catholic artist (the only artist who would even potentially care about the hierarchy’s rules) stands largely free of suppressive influence. The poet of old Christendom might have taken advantage of this freedom to satirize the loose morals and hypocrisy of clergy and religious. We laity seem to lack the moral formation necessary to see even the sins of our rulers clearly, much less their virtues. Perhaps multiple centuries of clericalism has built up too much momentum to exhaust itself within one generation of the Council that empowered the laity.

Instead, the Catholic poet appears to be caught up in the general malaise of our times, the so-called “quiet desperation” that permeates the rich and poor alike. If we cannot see more clearly than the atheist and pagan, if we cannot walk more straight than the harlot and lecher, then what do we have to offer? Are we not the blind leading the blind? Poets today are inspired by the dark grackles of agnosticism and anxiety. Evelyn Waugh vivisected the culture of contraception with biting clarity. Likewise, the mere thought of doubting the Real Presence brought Flannery O’Connor to the border of apoplexy. Their example and art helped others order their passions in the right direction, but how many among us can get even slightly worked up at such things?

The old schools of poetry are as dead as the old system of the Seven Liberal Arts, as dead as the old Catholic catechetical programs. Those who wish to learn any of these must do so as an autodidact. There is something a little perverse about receiving a tradition, sacred or otherwise, according to one’s own initiative and arrangement, but the alternative can only result in perpetual melancholy. We need not be slaves to our age. In the land of the blind, even the one-eyed autodidact can be king.

Never leave your reader comfortable: “make your vision apparent by shock,” and then you will have begun to flex those ancient poetic muscles. Please, instruct, and entertain, but never pander. The Muse helps those who help themselves, not those who merely daydream about her gifts.

Are you missing out on life? If you aren’t on social media, you probably are. At least, that’s the rumor I hear. I use social media so I wouldn’t know. I may be a rat in a cage but at least I’m being fed creative hashtags. I actually only use one social media platform. I don’t have any of the major social media apps on my phone, still have time to read actual books, and don’t show any signs of severe addiction, and yet when I don’t check my feed for a day or two I do feel a slight fear of missing out (#FOMO) and a persistent, nasty little compulsion to get out the laptop and scroll just a little bit (just a little bit). I don’t fight it too much, but I do hope that if it ever becomes a problem those who love me most will take my electronics away and intervene to save me.

As a writer who thrives on attention and people hanging on my every word like I’m some sort of genius, I kind of don’t mind if you’re also slightly compelled to check out the newsfeeds to see what new brilliance has emerged today in the internet, among them my own humble thoughts. I might even optimize my writing for likes and hearts. I used to be bothered by negative reactions to what I write, now I’m kind of desensitized because I realized it doesn’t really matter what I write (TEMPORARY SATIRE ALERT BUT SADLY KINDA TRUE?). At least people clicked and read, ya know? The attention is all that matters.

To succeed at the internet writing game, you need hits. Lots of hits. I’ve seen the numbers, and even when I get those hits the rate at which readers spend enough time to fully read and absorb the writing is very low. Maybe it’s because I’m not a good enough writer. Maybe I’m boring. Maybe my beloved personal anecdotes are wearisome. Again, I already got the hit. I tricked you into clicking the link so I win.

Even better is if you give me some likes and some shares. You don’t need to read the article, just pretend you did and pass it on so I can get more hits and more likes. The easiest way for me to convince you to do this is to title the article in a way that it seems controversial and courageous but that the vast majority of readers will actually agree with and not need to think about too much. I can say, for instance that the MET Gala was lame. Or I can tell you that being a minimalist is lame. It doesn’t matter much what I write just so long as you all think I’m cool and I can convince you that you will be cooler if you share my article with your friends.

I want a quick reaction because, economically speaking, it’s a cheap way to succeed.

On her blog, Vi Hart breaks down the economics of the internet clickability into four quadrants:

1. Common human experience – Cats being awesome, terrible puns, inspirational quotes. To like this stuff is very easy, so if I inhabit this space I will succeed.

2. Common mass media experience – a controversial argument but ultimately one that is unimportant. We can debate all day long about whether Gerard Manley Hopkins is a great poet or the greatest poet, or more prosaically, whether Brideshead Revisited is Waugh’s best book or if maybe, just maybe, it might actually be Sword of Honour? These debates might get lots of traction and are really fun, but everyone knows the fate of the world doesn’t hang on getting the correct answer.

3. Common criticism – aka stereotyping. A politician said something insane and we all universally condemn it. The substance of the criticism isn’t all that controversial but it is about an important, trending topic and so garners attention. I can do it: Families are awesome so let’s not separate families at the border, okay? Easy.

4. True controversy on party lines – preaching to the choir. A specific social script has taken over the conversation and takes on a life of its own. It may be a controversial topic but is written in such a way as to bolster one side or the other.

Notice something interesting about all these categories? Actual, thoughtful, nuanced content is not optimized to succeed. Rather, the optimization is to fit a certain style of writing for the purpose of winning the internet. As a writer, it’s not about whether you like my writing, or are challenged by it, or if it begins a discussion that expands your world. I care about whether you find my writing useful to share on social media or to virtue-signal. This changes how writers write.

Vi Hart does the math:

In practice, inspiring and satisfying pieces of content are dead ends for user actions. Thoughtful pieces of content that take twenty minutes to read get one vote in the time it takes for pretty pictures and amusing memes to get dozens.

Lots of likes is better than one, got it?

We’ve gotten to the point that we don’t deserve each other’s time. Meaningful connection, at least via the digital world, is well nigh impossible. Am I overthinking this, or should we all be worried?

Being a good writer means, among other things, to make readers into your friends, to find some sort of human connection buried in the meaning of the words, the way in which we communicate with each other and find a space wherein the self unfolds within the soul of the other. But it’s harder and harder to be a good writer because shallow engagement with a bunch of strangers is preferable, or at least that’s how you make money as a freelance writer. It’s sad but understandable, because writers have to fight for an audience every single time they publish.

The social media companies hosting these conversations aren’t helping. As much as they pretend to foster genuine human community, any healthy online communities prosper in corners of the internet in spite of the big social media companies, not as part of their design. There’s a mathematical layout to social media, a feedback loop of notifications, likes, and comments that delivers direct, chemical satisfaction to users via phones and laptops. It doesn’t pay to deliver thoughtful, long-form content to your feed.

I need to retract some of what I wrote above. I’m sorry, I do care what you think of me. I honestly probably care too much. I care about you, too, and want to engage in a genuine dialogue with you or at least give you something interesting to think about. I like to write for the internet and I’ve been blessed to have found publishers willing to accept my content with a minimum of social media gamesmanship. Sure, sometimes I show my work with a “5 ways to…” format, and I never get to title my pieces with an obscure, punny title like I want to, but I’ve always been proud of the content that I’ve produced. The way I look at it, if it helps people organize the flow of thought in the essay, then I’m happy to provide bullet points. If the title has to be a certain way adn super obvious so people know what they’re clicking on, that’s fine. In a way, these practices have been helpful for me because they force my writing to be hyper-focused.

In general, though, tech has absolutely changed the way we write, and you don’t need to look far for examples of how negative those changes have been. Here’s why I’m hopeful, though. Eventually addictive tech will fade away, at least as a major force. I know that your shaking hand reaching for your mobile phone in your pocket at the checkout line to just check your email real quick belies that opinion, but ultimately tech that aligns with human flourishing will win. As facebook, twitter, google, et al overreach they’re already beginning to suffer as users are cutting back on time spent on those platforms.

Niche social apps are the wave of the future. There are some interesting examples of how really good apps use positive feedback loops not to enslave us but to promote positive habit-forming. One example I’m very familiar with is Strava. Strava is an app that tracks running and cycling workouts. I use the app while I exercise and at the end it shows me a map of my route, my speed, my mileage, and all sorts of other useful data. I can follow friends and see how their exercise is coming along and comment on how strong and amazing they are. Strava creates an online community that affects its members positively by not only giving us useful info about our exercise, but also by using some of the habit-forming tricks of social media to keep us engaged. It sends “kudos” when a friend gives you a virtual pat on the back, it allows for personal mileage challenges to be set as goals, and it creates a highly devoted user community that ends up being based not in the virtual world but through developing real life, healthy interactions.

Another social app that I’m a fan of is Ora. Ora creates a prayer network to both submit prayers and pray for others. It sends prayer reminders to jog your memory throughout the day and it sends a note each time your prayer request is prayed for by someone. There’s nothing better than getting a notification on your phone that someone is really, truly praying for you. Ora is designed to form positive prayer habits and it cleverly uses technology to promote holiness. In the end, an Ora user will not become addicted to the platform itself but to regular prayer.

When it comes to writing, I do think that while internet click-bait style writing will always be with us, writing that deeply engages readers will also continue to flourish and even make a bit of a comeback. This is because, like those niche apps, there will always be a place for quality writing and I would even guess that it will make a bit of a comeback. We already see how a million people are willing watch extensive Jordan Peterson lectures or how even longform articles about sports at sites like The Ringer get plenty of readers. This type of writing doesn’t have the immediate rewards the internet typically smiles upon, but high quality writing does build a loyal readership and there’s plenty of value in that.

Who knows if you read this far. If you did, I’m genuinely happy.

Guest post by Tacy Williams Beck.

Flannery O’Connor exhibits a humorous conception of racism in her classic story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and for me, her comic strips come to mind. We all know about her ability to reveal the truths of human nature by emphasizing the absurd and grotesque.

The snarky tone is a beguiling clue to the nature of her stories. We should go at them as we read a comic strip: ready to laugh. Her command of the sound of the South, her self-deprecating tone, and her self-awareness (so early and ahead of her time!) mixed with grace can all lead us to laugh and also to love, across races, sincerely.

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” one can see many examples of her command of the sound of the South and its effect on the listener.  You can almost envision her comic strips as she uses words like “recernized” “prechate” “yes’m” and “terrectly.” You can hear her hearing it; this can also be seen in O’Connor’s story, “The Displaced Person.” In that story, the main character Mrs. Shortly states of the immigrants, “You reckon they knows what colors even is?” The title of said story comes from The Displaced Person Act, which was originally condemned (although later approved) by Truman as discriminatory and racist.

As a Southerner, I believe her self-deprecating tone will awaken even the most deaf ears, in particular as regards racism on the part of Christians.  From the “A Good Man is Hard to Find”:

“In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?”

What could this condescension be?  Her use of a now passe term displays that the layers of pre-judgment that all black children are diminutive and would make a sentimental portrait and it goes deeper than skin tone.  Christian prejudice that precocious children come from a certain upbringing, or the pre-judgment that all Islamic people are criminals because they are displaced, is of huge concern in contemporary times. How can this token displaced “Misfit,” the story’s famous villain, apply?  He is a self-aware bad guy. So we could say this about many Christians in the South with an unspoken pecking order. Materialism and greed are excused for the sake of giving a child every opportunity.

Her symbolism makes the story shimmer in this dark night of the soul. Certainly the monkey-like description—“he was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy”—is a symbol of the culture of looking at black people and their children a dehumanizing way. It is as if they are saying: A black person could never be a clean person.

Assumption is oozing from each comment in the conversation between the grandmother and Red Sam, at the moment Red Sam claims he is a good person because of the way he does business.

“Two fellers come in here last week,” Red Sammy said, “driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?”

“Because you’re a good man!” the grandmother said at once.

“Yes’m, I suppose so,” Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.

Her comic device is this punchline, which reinforces Red Sam’s inflated opinion of himself.

O’Connor becomes a star in this story, no doubt, and if not before, she must have known that her own greatness, mixed with just the right amount of gracious humor would stun every onlooker. Her future work is a greatness that remains to be seen.

In conclusion, O’Connor can can make us laugh and love sincerely, both at the same time.  In her prayer journal, O’Connor prays: “Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace,” which is a perfect expression of wit and faith in action. Looking to her comic strips and as well to her fierce loyalty to Christ over classism or any kind of racism, we see a refreshing picture of humanity.  She can cause us to chuckle even at harmful situations, making us see the irony of the Southern depths of darkness. She is willing to go there and ultimately it makes her shine.

Tacy Williams Beck is a wife and mother to three girls and one boy. She likes to read, bake, sew, and, of course, write. Read more of her articles at her blog and Catholic Mom. Follow her on Pinterest here.

Guest post by Belle Joseph.

To understand the situation of young women in the West today, you could do no better than to read a novel written by an English Catholic convert and priest over 160 years ago.

The first time I heard of Callista, the 1855 novel by Cardinal (Blessed John Henry) Newman, my interest was piqued immediately, and the book didn’t disappoint. Newman’s elegant prose is a delight to be relished at length. True, this isn’t a perfect novel; the plot creaks from time to time, and some of the author’s scholarly digressions won’t be to all readers’ tastes.

Yet despite its limitations, this is no ordinary Victorian novel. In fact, compared to reading other English-language novels from the time, discovering Callista is like moving from a dimly lit room into clear daylight. Grappling with questions of faith and doubt, sacrifice and duty, the novel is, among other things, an original and convincing account of a young woman’s spiritual journey, one that sounds a prophetic note today.      

Set in the Roman town of Sicca in North Africa towards the middle of the third century, at the time of the emperor Decius, the novel follows the fortunes of a number of the inhabitants during a time of persecution of Christians. At the outset of the novel, we find one of the protagonists, Agellius, an assistant bailiff on a farm outside Sicca, striving to exercise his Christian faith despite the lack of churches and clergy in the town, the taunts of his brother Juba and the disapproval of his worldly, conformist uncle Jucundus. He becomes friends with a pagan brother and sister, Aristo and Callista, newly arrived from Greece, and falls in love with the beautiful, gifted Callista. He hopes to marry her, but his hopes are dashed in quite an unexpected manner.

Simultaneously, an edict is released by Decius, ordering the execution of any Christians refusing to sacrifice to the gods of Rome. As the novel progresses, the story shifts more and more to Callista’s interior ordeal. No longer believing in the Roman religion, she is restless and unhappy in herself, yearning for truth, clarity and peace.

Agellius is an engaging, appealingly flawed character, but Callista is the real tour de force here. The boldness of Newman’s portrait of this young Greek woman is searing. Newman is no subscriber to the submissiveness of women to their men-folk, according to the ideals of his day; Callista has a mind, a conscience and a heart of her own that demand fulfilment.

At a key turning-point in the novel, Callista makes an emotional outburst against the shallow, worldly life that her brother enjoys so much: ‘Here am I, a living, breathing woman, with an overflowing heart, with keen affections, with a yearning after some object which may possess me. I cannot exist without something to rest upon. I must have something to love; love is my life.’ 

A third-century Jane Eyre? Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that both books, with their spirited and morally courageous heroines, appeared around the same time, at the height of the Victorian obsession with the domesticated, compliant woman. Yet Callista reminds me more of another of Charlotte Brontë’s characters: the emotionally neglected Caroline Helstone in Shirley. Like Caroline or, to take a later literary character, Thérèse Desqueyroux in the eponymous novel by French Catholic novelist François Mauriac, Callista is dying spiritually for lack of love.

In other ways, Callista is a woman of the twenty-first century Western world. If anything, her character is more relevant today than in Newman’s time. She is prosperous, artistic, well-educated, and employed in congenial, skilled work (carving pagan idols). Like many of her generation, she has lost her belief in the religion of her parents. The philosophy of her social circle is to live solely for the pleasures of friendship and romance, art and music, intellectual exploration and self-expression. But this blithely hedonistic life-style, with its motto of ‘enjoy the present; trust nothing to the future’, no longer satisfies Callista.

Callista’s predicament is a familiar one in modern society. She sees clearly the emptiness of a life without religion – ‘If I were a Christian,’ she tells her horrified brother, ‘life would be more bearable’ – yet at first hesitates to take the leap of faith to accept the Christian faith. ‘I am not its enemy,’ she explains to the Bishop Caecilius, ‘but I cannot believe in it.’ When asked why, she responds: ‘It seems too beautiful to be anything else than a dream.’ On the other hand, she finds certain Christian dogmas, notably the doctrine of eternal punishment, ‘odious’. ‘They revolt me,’ she tells Caecilius bluntly, and it takes the Bishop’s wise and compassionate words on the subject to slowly bring her over this obstacle.

Callista’s existential loneliness and depression – what she calls being thrown back upon her ‘dreary, dismal self and the wounds of my memory’ – her dissatisfaction with the materialism and pleasure-seeking of her peers, and her emotional and intellectual struggles in accepting Christianity all give Newman’s creation a curious modernity. Apart from a few details, her story could be the story of many young women living today, coming to terms with the inadequacy of contemporary social values and ideals to give complete joy and meaning to their lives.       

Newman takes a definite counter-cultural stance when he denies Callista the happy ending of marriage, perhaps just as discomforting for modern-day society as for Victorian readers. He does not deny the beauty of marriage; far from it. But he understands that human love can only partially fill the emptiness in a woman’s heart. As Professor Janet E. Smith once put it in a talk: ‘Marriage does not eradicate man’s loneliness, but only alleviates it.’ Sensitive as they are to their own spiritual and emotional needs, women are, perhaps, especially prone to the mistake of seeking total spiritual fulfilment and emotional satisfaction in their spouses – a gift that even the most exemplary husband might have some trouble in ensuring.   

The answer, then, to woman’s deepest desires? For Newman, it is both simple and radical: complete fulfilment is found in a Person and that Person is Jesus Christ. Only a pure and complete love can satisfy woman’s soul; only the love of Christ can fully answer her longings.

Callista is not for the faint-hearted. Less because of its accounts of martyrdom than because it shows without varnish the demands that the Christian faith makes on us. C. S. Lewis put it with his inimitable forthrightness in his book God on the Dock: ‘Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.’ There is no room for the ‘moderately important’ brand of Christianity in Callista’s world, where religious belief is literally a matter of life and death.   

What are the implications of this truth for today’s world? Perhaps Callista has something to tell us about women today, at a time when anxiety, low self-esteem and insecurities are rife among young women. In the formation of young women, there is a tendency, even among Christians, to emphasize external accomplishments: intellectual, sporting and practical achievements. While these are all very good and necessary, any intelligent woman will sooner or later fall into despair if she believes such success is all there is to life.

As the great saint and philosopher, Edith Stein, explains, the young girl’s spiritual development has to come first in her formation. She must be put in relation with the Person Who alone can love her totally. The deepest and most lasting desire in woman, Stein writes in one of her Essays on Woman, is to ‘achieve a loving union’. Stein had a special interest in Newman’s life and work (she translated his letters and diaries into German) and her words about love echo the thoughts expressed by Newman in his novel. 

Indeed, Newman, whose episcopal motto was ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’ (‘Heart speaks to heart’) understood as few others have the primacy of the heart, and in particular, the call that every woman’s heart sends out for a love capable of understanding her completely. Just like Charlotte Brontë’s heroines, Callista cannot be satisfied with a loveless existence. Unlike them, she finds the love and purpose she craves in Christ, rather than in human love. It’s a historical novel, and a spiritual meditation as well, but Callista is first and foremost a love-story, the story of a woman who falls in love and discovers a joy beyond all her hopes.

Belle Joseph lives in Canberra, Australia, where she teach French. She has a doctorate from the Australian National University (ANU) in French Studies.

Twenty-five year old Catholic Artist John McCoy from Cincinnati, Ohio painted a 10 x 20 ft. life-size Crucifixion mural for All Saints Parish in Alpena, Michigan. The work entitled “The Crucifixion” was blessed by Bishop Steven Raica of the Diocese of Gaylord, MI on June 1st, 2018.

This is the second artwork by McCoy to adorn the sanctuary space of St. Anne Catholic Church of All Saints Parish. In 2016 he created a 60 x 9 ft. mural depicting 62 life-size saints. His latest mural, which is acrylic on panel, was completed with 13 days of painting.

While working on “The Crucifixion” McCoy joined the All Saints Parish staff in Morning Prayer before beginning each day of work. “In my work,” he says, “I continually rely on the Holy Spirit for inspiration and believe prayer to be an important part of my process.” The painting focuses the attention of the viewer on the center point of the liturgy, the Eucharist, with compositional elements leading the eye toward the tabernacle.

What is the trouble with religious art? Joaquín Navarro-Valls, longtime director of the Holy See Press Office, has some thoughts. Religious artists, he says, “seek to represent [saints] in a paradigmatic moment of their existence. And this results in the plastic image of holiness usually appearing in a context of exceptional circumstances, thus giving the impression that these are the only ones that can form the context of a saint’s life.”

Can the life and writings of Pope John Paul II be understood outside of the context of Polish Romanticism? Czesław Miłosz did not believe so. “Karol Wojtyła was undoubtedly formed by Polish Romanticism. From early on in his life the poetry of the Polish 19th century bards fascinated him. He wrote poems referring to them, studied under the direction of outstanding experts in Romanticism, and during World War II he created dramas firmly rooted in the tradition of Polish messianism.”

A new exhibition of artifacts from the life and work of J.R.R. Tolkien is on display in Oxford. “The exhibition’s theme is the creation of Middle-earth. Gathered from the U.K., the U.S. and France, there are manuscripts, artwork, maps, letters and other artifacts. ‘Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth’ includes more than 200 items, 60 of which have never been displayed before, from Bodleian’s extensive Tolkien Archive and Marquette University’s Tolkien Collection, as well as from important private collections, with many items drawn directly from the author’s family.”

I thought you all might enjoy this Shakespeare-based homily that I’m preaching for my long-suffering parishioners this weekend. Full disclosure, I stole a lot from Chesterton. If you’re interested in the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which is a truly fascinating holiday, Jonathan McDonald’s piece is well worth reading.

Today is the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. He, along with the Blessed Virgin, is the only saint whose actual birthday we celebrate. The other saints are all celebrated on the anniversary of their death. John’s birth was miraculous, though, and closely connected with that of Christ. The Scriptures tell us that John was six months older than his cousin Jesus, so you always know that on the Nativity of St. John, Christmas is only six months away. Start making your wish list for all the toys you want.

This day also occurs very near the summer solstice, which is the longest day of the year. It’s the subject of Shakespeare’s great play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the events of that play occur on the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John. The plot for that play is fairly simple: a group of normal, sane people meet some fairies and things get funny.

G.K. Chesterton says it’s a study of a spirit that unites mankind. “The sentiment of such a play,” he says, “can be summed up in one sentence. It is the mysticism of happiness.” What he means is that, in life, we should never forget that we live in a borderland in which we may find ourselves very quickly and easily in a heavenly atmosphere, not only through being serious and profound but also by being extravagantly happy.

In the Catholic Church, one of the things I appreciate is that we do know how to talk about sorrow and how to find God through suffering. Let me tell you, I have visited people in the nursing home, and I encounter them when they’re in a very difficult phase of life. In the midst of physical weakness and limitation, they are struggling to recollect their lives, to remember who they once were but understanding that they are losing the battle with each passing day. They know they are leaving pieces of themselves behind and as we talk they cry. These moments are profoundly heartbreaking and I don’t know how anyone could handle them if we didn’t know that Christ suffers right along with us, and that through suffering the spirit can be strengthened. It is very important that we see how God is at work even in our darkest moments.

But what about happiness? We all want to be happy, but it’s almost as if, when we are we can’t help but feel guilty about it. Like we’re doing something wrong, or we don’t deserve it, or it isn’t the most spiritual way to live. This may sound way too simple, but God wants you to be happy. The saints are happy, and even when the Church is penitential and serious, she is happy.

Chesterton claims that people misunderstand Shakespeare’s comedies because they are themselves so profoundly unhappy. They believe that religion must be dour and serious and puritan. But happiness, true happiness, points us to a very important fact. The happiness of this life is a participation in the happiness of the life to come.

That is perhaps where the misunderstanding comes from. Happiness is not a frivolity that distracts us from heaven. It is a gift from God to lead us to heaven. Take joy in your life, your children, your family, your friends, your hobbies. Take a vacation, drink good coffee, go to a play, this is the joy of the saints. St. Francis de Sales says, “A sad saint would be a sorry saint.”

Because happiness comes from heaven, we find it by diving deeper and deeper into the life of faith. This is Shakespeare’s whole point with Midsummer Night’s Dream, that when heavenly happiness overtakes us we are drawn more and more into the life of the world to come. I think that, when we look at American society right now, we see a lot of sad people who have rejected God. They are bitter, and depressed, and lost. Our celebrities seem profoundly unhappy, our politicians spend all their time bickering, suicide rates are epidemic, divorce and loneliness are destroying the lives of so many. In chasing a false happiness that pulls them away from heaven, they have been misled and cheated out of the joyful life that every person deserves.

For us to be happy, we must re-integrate our faith with our daily lives, to see that both the natural world and the supernatural world are intertwined, that both are real.

John the Baptist says, “I must decrease and God must increase.” John is the waning of the old light, Jesus is the rising sun. From here on the days grow shorter as John decreases until right at Christmas and the birth of Christ when the light begins to increase. This eclipse of his own personality made John profoundly happy, because in it he was able to leave behind earthly concerns and seek out a heavenly reality. The only way to discover your purpose in life is to reflect the light of your creator. This is how we are drawn into the communion of saints and find that each one of us is a lamp burning brightly.

At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s the sound of little feet and elves peek into a normal, human house. “Suppose we are the realities and they the shadows,” they wonder. When it comes to earth or heaven, which is real? Maybe it’s both. This is the sacramental reality, to inhabit the borderland where God’s grace infuses every part of our lives and draws us steadily onwards to true happiness.