Editorial – December 2020

This month Position Papers is carrying a record four book reviews (perhaps four and a half since Elizabeth Scalia’s article is all about good reading). As I promised last month we will be carrying more and more reviews over the coming months, and hopefully we’ll continue setting new records. In this way we hope to encourage you to read more, and that those of who who have children will encourage them to read more in their turn. It is hard to over-estimate the importance of this. This was brought home to me once again when I had occasion to write something about the childhood of Pope Benedict. He and his brother Georg, in respective memoirs, make mention of how much reading featured in their childhood. The young Joseph was a keen reader who delighted in the Greek and Latin classics but more especially in the works of Goethe. In his delightful memoir Milestones, he shows how reading contributed to his boyhood being “a time of interior exaltation, full of hope for the great things that were gradually opening up to me in the boundless realm of the spirit”. His older brother Georg describes how books played an important role in their family, how their mother read historical novels in particular and how his brother was particularly fond of reading the great literary masterpieces as well as the works of the important German realist Theodor Storm. Joseph Ratzinger expresses the opinion that his education in the Greek and Latin classics created “a mental attitude that resisted seduction by a totalitarian ideology” and so had the effect of inoculating him against Nazi ideology.

We can ask ourselves whether books feature enough in our lives and in the lives of our families. Perhaps we could take to heart the advice British actress Emilia Clarke used to receive from her father: “Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf.” He was a wise father! 

I for one remember the books I read as a child so much more vividly than the films I saw on TV. As a child I spent weeks travelling down the Mississippi with Tom Sawyer, and then later with his friend Huckleberry Finn. I was also washed up on various desert islands, and spent an inordinate amount of time in the company of Hobbits. (This was facilitated by a father’s reward of 5p for each newly read book.) Particular books should also be milestones in our intellectual growth. Stand-out books of my own teens were Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Orwell’s 1984, and Homage to Catalonia as well as Huxley’s Brave New World, and especially the “game-changer” The Last Days of Socrates.

It is impossible to quantify or trace the precise effects of books on our souls, especially when we are young, but it is certain that the effect is profound and long-lasting. Perhaps for this reason it is not prudent to read indiscriminately. In 1865 Nietzsche, then a young student of philology at the University of Leipzig, encountered the (not-very-good-for-the-soul) philosophy of Schopenhauer in a second-hand book shop. He later recounted the moment he stumbled on Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation: “I don’t know what demon whispered to me: ‘Take this book home.’ Back at home, I threw myself into the corner of a sofa with my new treasure, and began to let that dynamic, dismal genius work on me.”

Here I would like to put in a plug for the Delibris website (see www.delibris.org/en). As it says in the About Us section of the website: 

Delibris.org is an initiative supported by the Midwest Theological Forum (MTF) that springs from the experiences of people that share a passion for reading and are interested in the Catholic perspective on books that have caught their attention. There are many websites that provide literary information. In this book club, our goal is to provide orientation on the content of books, divided broadly into works of “literature” and works of “thought”. In this way, users can get an idea of these books, with the help of their own experience.

On that same page St John Paul II is quoted speaking about the “dilemma” he always experienced when it came to choosing what to read:

This has always been a dilemma for me: What am I to read? I have always tried to choose what was most essential. So much has been published and not everything is valuable and useful. It is important to know how to choose and to consult others about what is worth reading. (…) In my reading and in my studies I have always tried to achieve a harmony between faith, reason, and the heart. These are not separate areas, but are profoundly interconnected, each giving life to the other (John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way, Warner Books, New York 2004).

To help with this dilemma it is very useful as St John Paul II suggests, to be read what is most essential. The Delibris website provides very useful lists of recommended books under four headings: Literature, Thought and essay, General lists and Books on spirituality. In these four areas there are the great classics which have stood the test of time. Generation after generation has rediscovered their worth. As the Italian writer Italo Calvino put it, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” While it would be simply impossible for one person to be familiar with all the great classics, it would be a great pity to have no knowledge of them whatsoever. The classics always plumb aspects of the human condition in some remarkable way which is enriching to discover. I remember vividly the impact of studying Shakespeare’s King Lear as well as John Henry’s Newman’s writings on education during the Leaving Certificate. What a pity that the growing ideological hostility to the “Western Canon” as it is called – the great works of Western civilisation – means that they are often substituted on school curricula for far inferior works which nobody will remember in twenty years time. But the classics, by definition, will keep returning. And they have a remarkable way of “going viral”: an enthusiastic teacher fires up a whole class with their own love of a particular work (a friend described to me how he couldn’t wait for the daily instalments from Homer’s Odyssey by one of his teachers – in primary school!) A classic is the kind of book that a friend insists you read. I remember being introduced to George Orwell in this way. A book review is also like the recommendation of a friend, and where we simply don’t have time to read the book, at least we will have read the review. 

Delibris is also very useful resource for those who would like to receive a moral evaluation of a book that interested them. So for example, had Nietzsche checked out The World as Will and Representation on Delibris before reading it, he would have found that it was “Incompatible with Catholic doctrine” (not, of course, that that would have worried young Friedrich). If we wish to preserve our Catholic Faith we cannot read indiscriminately. St Josemaría Escrivá humorously compared this to visiting a pharmacy and saying: “I like the look of the contents of that bottle so … down the hatch. And that liquid is a nice colour so that too … down the hatch.” Of course such a person wouldn’t last long. I do remember seeing the detrimental effects of the indiscriminate reading by friends in university of Nietzsche and Sartre. Such writers are very seductive and persuasive – that is part of their genius – and in many areas they are in complete error. They have to be approached with a respectful caution.

Books on spirituality, are of particular importance. “Don’t neglect your spiritual reading. — Reading has made many saints.” (St Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, 116). In saying this St Josemaría was giving voice to a classic position in the Church. Even as far back as the fourth century the great Father of the Church St Athanasius wrote: “You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading, and to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed in his progress.” Many people are considerably learned in their area of expertise, for example in some area of science or philosophy, but their knowledge of the Catholic Faith has not gone beyond that of a child. Inevitably the Faith will always appear childish to them. Unfortunately many public intellectuals make comments on matters of Faith when they are woefully ill equipped to do so. Catholics should have a grasp of their Faith sufficiently articulated in order to point out these errors, remembering St Peter’s injunction to “Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (Peter 3:15).

Besides encouraging Position Papers readers to dust off the books, I would like to wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas.