Brown's "The Lost Symbol" pulpy and preachy

"The Lost Symbol,"

by Dan Brown

Can the writing style of a novelist get boring by just the third book?

I'm sure Doubleday is going to sell enough copies of Dan Brown's latest puzzler to wallpaper every monument and public building in Washington, DC inside and out. However.

Although I really liked "The Da Vinci Code," "Angels & Demons" wasn't that good and didn't hit the charts until Da Vinci made the author famous, and frankly "The Lost Symbol" got to be 500-plus pages to fight through.

By chapter 126 I was struggling to stay awake, and there were seven more chapters and an epilogue to go.

First-time readers of Brown may find the sleuthing of main character Robert Langdon fun to follow, but readers of Brown's first two Langdon novels are likely to see the tramping about Washington in search of clues as formulaic -- way too similar to the tramping about Paris and Rome in those earlier works.

Throw in the usual gruesome deaths and violent tortures, Brown's usual mysterious society -- this time the Masons -- and you've got your typical pulp novel. Of course that doesn't make for a 500-page book, so Brown does readers the real disservice of going way too deeply into explanations about ancient philosophies, symbols, religions, languages, sciences, archeology, plus off-the-chart mind-over-matter silliness, all of which seems like filler in what should be an action-packed story.

Anti-religion once again

Catholics and others who practice a traditional life of faith will notice that Langdon, Brown's protagonist, continues in this latest novel the insidious assault on organized religion and its traditions that he put forward in "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons."

Brown does his best to work in subtle jabs at the Catholic Church in particular and other faiths as well, questioning the veracity of truths they teach in some cases, in other times bluntly alluding to what he paints as errors.

An example is a passage half-way through the novel. You need not even know the context to see what I mean:

"Then he discovered the writings of Aleister Crowley -- a visionary mystic from the early 1900s -- whom the church had deemed 'the most evil man who every lived.'"

Really Mr. Brown? Two sources I read credit the British press -- not "the church" -- with calling Crowley "The Wickedest Man in the World." And your brief reference to him as "a visionary mystic" hardly do justice to the depraved person Crowley was.

Interested readers should Google Aleister Crowley to see what kind of person Brown is holding up to his readers as he puts down "the church."

Minus the overbearing scientific explanations and the graduate-school lessons in antiquities, "The Lost Symbol" might almost be a decent page-turner of a story. But then Brown succumbs to the temptation to get preachy.

Much of the reading satisfaction that was to be savored gets sucked right out. -- bz

Bishops are people, too! Who knew?

"Effective Faith,"

by Bishop Thomas J. Tobin

I've just read Bishop Thomas Tobin's book for the second time, and I liked it just as much as I did the first time.

I'd only spent a handful of hours in the bishop's company a few years ago, but I was invited to read a proof of a collection of newspaper columns that he'd written for diocesan newspapers in Ohio and Rhode Island.

What I said about the writing of the Bishop of Providence then ended up as an endorsement on the back cover:

"Bishops are people, too! Who knew? Expecting a book by a bishop to be dry and theological? 'Effective Faith' . . . is the antithesis. Meet a down-to-earth, self-effacing human being who happens to be a Catholic priest and bishop."

Teaching without preaching

I added at the time that this collection of columns deserves a wider audience, and I'm glad that Seraphina Press from Minneapolis has made that possible with this easy-reading, 175-page paperback.

What the bishop does best is take the news of the day -- the topics real people are talking about -- and make them the perfect subject matter to grab readers' attention and engage them in the lessons that life keeps teaching him.

That means writing about sports, about casinos, about how life changes, about all the "stuff" in his life and ours and the need to get rid of some of the baggage.

One of my favorite chapters is "The Gospel at 30,000 Feet," where he describes getting the third-degree about the church from a non-Catholic seat-mate on an airplane. The questioning is priceless!

There's a beautiful chapter about his interior thoughts as he held the baby he'd just baptized and pondered the world she would find on her journey.

"Ashley's World" lets us all into Bishop Tobin's world, if you will, and the questions we all have about what the future holds.

The chapters are short, worth savoring one a day for 40 days, worth reading and spending time reflecting on our own view of life, faith, the issues of our day and our own little world.

Nice job, bishop. -- bz

Catholic values pop out of major novelist's mystery

"Where Are You Now?",

by Mary Higgins Clark

With more than 30 titles under her belt, Mary Higgins Clark knows how to write a mystery.

In "Where Are You Now?" she pulls out the expected array of clues and characters.

The story-line starts 10 years after a college senior disappears. Once again on this Mother's Day he calls home. His attorney sister decides to try to locate him, but the police detectives she turns to quickly make a connection: the brother may be their best suspect in a murder and the disappearance of three young women in the same New York neighborhood.

All the good mystery pieces are there: the passionate protagonist, the love interest that may or may not be true, the greedy landlord, the nervous apartment caretakers, the demented perpetrator, the likable victims, the suspicious chauffeur, the pain of post-abortion trauma.

What?

A major American novelist works the pain of post-abortion trauma into a book that a major publisher -- Simon & Schuster -- prints and promotes?

Catholic writer includes her values

Okay, I'll be clear: "Where Are You Now?" is not a mystery about abortion.

It's just that the way abortion usually is found in mainstream publishing is that it is extremely one-sided, treating the taking of the life of the in utero baby either casually and matter-of-factly or sympathetically toward the pregnant woman with no regard whatsoever for the other living being in the picture.

It's usually "Abortion? Nothing to it. Get it done and get on with your life."

Author Mary Higgins Clark has found a way to live her Catholic faith in the marketplace in which she is one of the high-ranking celebrities.

And it's a good read!

Like all good, page-turner mysteries, Clark works interesting characters through clues and dead ends, throwing suspicion on a number of them, challenging readers to ponder motives and to try to guess "who-dun-it."

Oh, did a mention the kindly and wise old Irish monsignor? -- bz

Why Catholic managers shouldn't fear unions

“Catholic Administrators and Labor Unions,”
by William Droel and Ed Marciniak

Labor unions should be seen as making employees partners with management in carrying out the mission of Catholic institutions and ministries.
That’s the teaching of a little, 49-page, pocket- or purse-size booklet produced this year by the Chicago-based National Center for the Laity.
It’s a tract, really, that takes its foundation from an essay the late Ed Marciniak wrote in 1983.
Marciniak was a towering figure in the labor movement and Catholic lay movement in Chicago for more than 40 years, and Bill Droel – Marciniak’s colleague at the National Center for the Laity – has updated his work, adding recent references, particularly thoughts of Pope John Paul II.

Filled with facts
Catholic teachings with regard to labor begin with the dignity of every person and see collective bargaining as upholding and even furthering that dignity. This booklet makes the point over and over that union activity should be regarded as a necessary societal experience, not one to be feared or deplored.
Rather than management seeing labor organizing as a sign of failure on its part, the fact that employees want a union can be accepted as a development in the skills and the commitment of employees.
Church-related institutions are advised to model good labor relations by participating in good-faith bargaining; as the authors put it, “Preaching the gospel necessitates living the gospel.”
Workers cannot be exploited just because they choose to work for the church or a Catholic entity, a point the booklet makes clear:
“There is simply no basis in Catholic teaching for workers or employers to conclude that collective bargaining is excluded from the church, no matter how dedicated and holy are those workers or employers.”
Where unionizing and contract bargaining is sometimes perceived as an adversarial relationship, the authors say union activity can hold Catholic employers to high standards for transparency and thoughtfulness. In contentious issues, a contract allows policy – not personalities – to prevail.

Mutual benefits
What happens as well is creation of a partnership style of management – labor together with management – where a “respectful connectedness” is allowed to blossom. When union members and management partner, a mutual responsibility for the mission is created.
The booklet reminds:
“A union, in Catholic doctrine, is more than an economic agent to negotiate wages. It is supposed to be a community of persons who . . . claim responsibility, grow in the exercise of freedom and contribute to a spirituality of work.”
And it works to the benefit of all.
“A fair amount of evidence links humane management with profitability,” the booklet notes, “or, in the case of non-profits, other measures of excellence.”
Where some might fear the forming of a union as something that will drive the company or institution out of business, good managers instinctively understand that, especially in rough times, a company needs as many interested participants as possible, particularly from its employees. It is a mistake as well to conclude that managers are more invested in the institution than the employees, the authors warn.
Catholic doctrine demands that persons conform to the will of God by nurturing others. We sustain and spread faith in God through participation in family life and social groups, and doing so is not an option. “Catholics are obliged to join intermediate groups because they are essential to a relational (Trinitarian) expression of Christianity,” Droel and Marciniak note.
Voluntary groups are prized by Catholicism as a best harbor for freedom and human development, the thinking that brought John Paul II to say, “Unions are indispensable in society.”

Caveats expressed
Here are just a few take-aways for Catholic managers from a text full of take-aways:
· A labor tactic may be legal but not morally justified.
· Taking advantage of loopholes in the law will generate a hostile work environment.
· Getting reputable and competent advice for negotiating with a union is recommended, but bringing a union-busting firm on board will tarnish – perhaps permanently – a Catholic entity’s Catholic identity in the minds of all fair-minded people.
· Managers need to see unions as a vehicle rather than an obstacle.

While the intended audience for this work is Catholic managers, I would think the teaching about labor and management applies to every workplace, Catholic or secular.
In a reference appropriate for 2009, the booklet notes that while Catholic doctrine does not say every workplace must have a union, it does say that employees must be allowed to decide if they want to have a union.
“A Catholic (an employee, an administrator or a stakeholder) with an informed conscience can say, ‘This union is not right for this workplace,’ The same person cannot say, ‘Unions are bad.’ That some Catholics say, ‘Unions are bad or outdated,’ carries the same moral credibility as a Catholic who says, ‘Abortion is a matter of opinion or of individual choice.’”-- bz

“Catholic Administrators and Labor Unions” is available for $3.25. Check www.catholiclabor.org/NCL.htm for details.

What's a Catholic to think about the book version of 'Angels & Demons'?

"Angels & Demons,"

by Dan Brown

Okay, it's taken me some time to get to "The DaVinci Code" pre-quel, but I figured I'd better read the book as well as see the movie if I want to have any credibility in talking or writing about the controversy that has some in the Catholic community feeling anxiety at the least and threatened at the most.

So, here on the day before the movie is released in the United States, let me say this about the book version of "Angels & Demons": Potboiler.

Nothing special in the way of literature, writing or even a good mystery.

Clever use of the geography of Rome? Yep.

A compelling story? Nope.

A page-turner? Not really.

If you haven't figured out half-way through the 700-plus pages where this puppy is going to end up, you need to read more paperback mysteries. If I tell you that the hero -- the same guy who is the super sleuth in "The DaVinci Code" -- gets the girl in the end, will you really be surprised?

The Catholic concern

So why do some in the Catholic community have their undies in a bunch about the movie "Angels & Demons?"

It's not so much that the church is attacked by the plot. The action of some of the clergy and hierarchy might be something some would say clergy and hierarchy would never do, but nowadays with some of the news our priests and bishops make, that argument is specious at best.

What author Dan Brown does is continue an insidious train of thought about the Catholic Church that tends to drive Catholics crazy. It's the matter-of-fact way of writing that makes statements about religion and about the church that have an anti-religion and anti-Catholic bias.

Some examples:

• The theme behind the plot is that science is getting revenge on religion "after centuries of persecution" by the church. References to Galileo and Copernicus are one part of the evidence for that, but conveniently missing are references to the likes of Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian priest who is rightly called "the father of modern genetics," or Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, "the father of modern chemistry," a Catholic beheaded during the French Revolution.


• There's a tangential passage that takes hero Robert Langdon back recalling a Harvard University classroom scene in which he cleverly points to Catholic rituals as being unoriginal and borrowed from other cultures. Take the Eucharist: How the "god-eating" rite of the Aztecs were supposedly "borrowed" by Christianity seems to be quite a stretch, given that a man such as the evangelist Paul, writing in the 1st century, and the writers of the synoptic Gospels for that matter -- pegged between 60 and 115 AD, aren't likely to have even known of the existence of the Aztecs, the first reference to which appears in the 6th century.


• One of the minor characters sees the church as "an innocuous entity...a place for fellowship and introspection...sometimes just a place to sing out loud without people staring at her."

And then, of course, there is that hauling out of the tired demonization of the Catholic Church for its "wealth." Looking down a hallway at the Vatican, one character "was sickened by the opulence," author Brown writes. "The gold leaf in the ceiling alone probably could have funded a year's worth of cancer research."

Is it jealousy that makes others point at the church and say it should give away all the timeless works of art therein to end poverty? Maybe the Louvre should do the same? And while we're at it, let's sell the U.S. Supreme Court Building to the highest bidder and put the court in the rented space of a closed auto dealership. Who needs artistry, craftsmanship and beauty? -- bz

Capture of Holocaust mastermind a must-read story

"Hunting Eichmann,"
by Neal Bascomb

The story finally is told how Holocaust survivors and Israel's spies found the mastermind of Nazi Germany's "Final Solution," the hideously well-organized plan that murdered six million Jews during World War II.


The subject of the quest, Adolf Eichmann, was the diabolical brain behind the extermination plan. It wasn't until 15 years after the war ended that he was finally found and, after a lengthy trial that was front-page news around the world, hanged for his genocidal crimes.


It's a helluva story, nonfiction that reads like a modern mystery with twists and turns, dead ends, near misses and tiny details that yield huge payoffs.


How Israel's Mossad -- helped by tips from survivors of the Nazi death camps -- tracked Adolf Eichmann to Argentina and a miserable shack with no electricity or running water is nothing short of a miracle.


How Eichmann escaped Germany as World War II came to a crashing end around him could be seen as miraculous as well. How this wanted war criminal made his way to South America, however, includes a segment that will cause shame for members of the Catholic community.



Catholic collusion


Part of the network that helped Nazis escape, Bascomb's research uncovered, included Bishop Alois Hudal, "an Austrian and a devotee of Hitler who proudly brandished his golden Nazi Party membership badge."


Bishop Hudal personally wrote to Argentine dictator Juan Peron to request visa for 5,000 Germans and Austrians.


A string of monasteries and convents in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy served as refuge to hide and smuggle Nazis away from prosecution, and Eichmann took advantage, finally making his way across Europe to Genoa, Italy, and the Church of San Antonio. Franciscan Father Edoardo Domoter, a Hungarian sympathetic to fleeing Nazi's, sheltered him in the rectory there while Eichmann secured a refugee's passport from Red Cross officials and a visa from the Argentine consulate, and soon was on the passenger ship Giovanna C headed to South America with a number of other former Nazi bigwigs.


Bascomb notes that, while cardinals and priests were involved in helping war criminals escape prosecution, "Pope Pius XII did not officially approve of the Vatican's involvement in the network, but he certainly turned a blind eye to it, primarily because of the church's commitment to act as a bulwark against the spread of communism."



Amazingly detailed research


The capture of Eichmann and especially the deception required to hide him and then spirit him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel are as close to against-all-odds material as any fiction writer might dream up.


The fact that the Israelis were able to pull it off -- find him, first of all, grab him off the street, secret him away for a number of days and whisk him off to Israel in the first El Al plane ever to visit Argentina -- is terrific storytelling.


Pulling all the pieces of the story together through interviews and historical documents is truly the work of a gifted writer and team of researchers. The 327-page Houghton Mifflin Harcourt book includes an additional 27 pages of verifying footnotes and helpful bibliography and index. Photos taken with hidden suitcase cameras, maps of Eichmann's Argentine neighborhood and even Eichmann's Red Cross passport -- using the alias Riccardo Klement -- bring life and authenticity to the pages.

The world cannot forget

What Bascomb adds, though, as icing on the cake, is the reason that bringing Eichmann to trial on Israeli soil was so important for the Jewish people, especially for the younger generations of Israelis but even more importantly for the world. Bascomb writes in his epilogue:

"As for the rest of the world, the Eichmann affair rooted the Holocaust in the collective cultural consciousness. . . . The Holocaust was finally anchored in the world's consciousness -- never to be forgotten -- by the outpouring of survivor memoirs, scholarly works, plays, novels, documentaries, paintings, museum exhibits, and films that followed in the wake of the trial and that still continues today. This consciousness, in Israel and throughout the world, is the enduring legacy of the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann."

This is history every human should know. -- bz

Sequel to novel on building of cathedral depicts life two centuries later

"World Without End,"

by Ken Follett

I loved "The Pillars of the Earth," Ken Follett's epic that delivered readers back to the 12th century to meet the people who built a great fictional English cathedral. It was a great story of achievement, of overcoming obstacles -- human and stone -- and of hope's triumph.

"World Without End" picks up the story two centuries later, delivering us to that same cathedral, now in need of repairs after two hundred years of storms.

And the characters that populate the medieval cathedral town are just as interesting and compelling in the sequel as were their ancestors in the original story, which is why this was at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

It's a bawdy tale, I must warn you, and a gory one. Some sexual scenes are very, very explicit, and the violence is bloody, but not "chainsaw-massacre" stupid.

Remember, it's fiction

Catholics who read "World Without End" will have to keep in mind the fictional nature of this book, because elements of the Church of Rome play the black hat roles in many cases. Bishops, priests and nuns do things in the novel that we would hope bishops, priests and nuns don't do. I don't think modern-day readers can deny that incidents described in Follett's novel never happened in reality; some of the more contemporary sins by church people would be pretty good evidence that there is at least a possibility that 14th century clergy and religious were not immune from such sin.

For the most part, though, offenses of the moral kind are not held up to be celebrated; rather, the protagonists stand for what is good and right and moral despite displaying their humanity, sins and all.

It's a huge novel -- 1,014 pages in New American Library's paperback version -- and every bit a great read. -- bz

Monk's poetry invites us to view biblical stories and characters from non-traditional perspectives

"God Drops and Loses Things,"

by Kilian McDonnell

Bible stories we've read before, biblical characters we've met before, but never this way. That's what fills the pages of Benedictine Father Kilian McDonnell's third book of poetry (St. John's University Press).

Perhaps you -- like myself -- feel you are out of your area of expertise in reading, no less reviewing, poetry. But take a chance, challenge yourself and try to see with the eyes of this monk from St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.

I stuck a Post-It note on at least a dozen of the nearly 50 works because they said something to me.

For one thing, Killian gives a voice to the women of Holy Scripture -- Miriam, for example, and Mary Magdalene -- whose thoughts the Bible authors mainly ignored.

My favorite might be "Widow Rachel: Matchmaker," as much a short essay as a poem, but cleverly imagined thoughts from the mind of a woman trying to find a wife for the carpenter, who doesn't seem to be interested:

"Mary needs grandchildren. The man is thirty and still at home with his mother, so of course the women whisper as they gather at the market stalls."

It's a treasure.

See how quickly you find the "prodigal daughter" entry.

Moving from the Hebrew Testament to the New Testament, Father Kilian re-writes parables with a new, imagined tone that somehow makes the stories of Jesus mean more to today's hearer.

I loved "The Catholic Thing," an accusation in poetic form that correctly charges us Christians with being so unchristian at times.

Toward the end Kilian favors us with a few pieces that come from his person -- family and Benedictine family -- that are filled with rich images, take us to the places he chooses to share with all of us. We're so blessed that he does. -- bz

Come look inside John Paul II's Vatican

"Pope John Paul II: An Intimate Life,"

by Caroline Pigozzi

One thing you have to say for Caroline Pigozzi: She's got guts.

The French journalist talked her way into getting behind the scenes at the Vatican to observe the late Pope John Paul II in his day-to-day rituals inside St. Peter's, inside the offices of the Holy See, and inside the papal apartment.

Once she gets her toe in the Vatican door, she meets and befriends the right people who open yet more doors, and her persistence at documenting what she see and what she hears makes -- surprisingly for me -- interesting reading.

As I was, you may be poped-out on John Paul by now, but this very different, detailed look at the life of a pope isn't so much about what the pope said or did as it is about how the pope lived: what he enjoyed, whose company he relished, how he operated as the leader of a world-wide church. With the "ski" at the end of my name, it was interesting for me to read about the special treatment Polish clergy and seminarians received and about the "parallel curia" of Poles that some accused the former Karol Wojtyla of building at the Vatican. Fair warning: Pigozzi as an author is pretty much a hero-worshiper, so you're not going to read about the dark side of John Paul (if there is one) in this book published under the Faith Words imprint (http://www.faithwords.com/).

You don't have to read this book to feel that you know what John Paul II stood for, but if you want to know more about the man and how he lived, Pigozzi has detail after detail -- some as innocuous as who polished the pope's shoes -- that give insight into the whole man. -bz

Peter Kreeft passes pearls of wisdom to next generation

"before i go,"
by Peter Kreeft


Oft-quoted in Catholic circles, Boston College prof Peter Kreeft has compiled 162 -- what, statements? pearls of wisdom? life's lessons? -- in a tiny-yet-thick Sheed & Ward book subtitled, "Letters to Our Children about What Really Matters."

I can say there area 162 of them -- whatever you want to call them -- because each is numbered.

Few are longer than one page. Most are just a paragraph or three or four.

And the book's concept is excellent. How many of us have had that thought that we'd like to get down on paper things we'd like our children to know?

Not 162 great thoughts

I usually love this kind of work, because I can pick it up and read for just the bit of time I might have at that moment and grab a great thought to wrestle with. There are a number of those great thoughts in "before i go," but there aren't 162.
And, after hitting a few too many trite ideas among those numbers, I came close to crossing out a few and doing a recount.

I mean, "Stop and smell the roses?" Bet that didn't take too long to come up with.

"Each day is a gift from God?" I think Sister Jude covered that pretty well in the first grade in 1957.

Tossing out the banal bunch and eliminating some of the really dumb statements would make Kreeft's work very valuable for personal reflection. The man has a knack for putting ideas in concise, memorable sentences. It's a real gift. Here are just a few examples:

"It's better to be happy than to be right."

"Be good, but be you."

"All life is liturgy. All words are creeds. All times are Sabbaths. All places are churches."

Advice worth sharing

And there is great advice, too.

Instead of complaining about how busy you are, simplify reasons for doing anything to three things: because it's morally good, because its a practical necessity, or because it makes you happy.

Take seven minutes each day to thank God for seven specific things.

"Forgive everyone. Forgive everything. Forgive always. Forgive everywhere."

Kreeft gives readers a really good explanation of grace, has a great message on how to respond when we fail -- and we all do and will -- and this wonderful take on the Beatitudes:

"If the poor are blessed, then let's stop envying the rich."

However...

The world isn't black and white

At times I found Kreeft to be polarizing and divisive. My world just isn't as black and white as Kreeft's, and I sure don't have all the answers, as Kreeft's writing implies he does.

Although he writes the self-righteous prose of an expert, he takes a cheap shot by demonizing "experts," for example. And in some of his thoughts he comes off as a prig, making unproven generalizations such as, "they don't teach the lives of the saints in religion classes anymore."

That's pure B.S., and just the kind of false statements that get repeated and repeated until zealots believe them to be true. That's one statement Kreeft should be ashamed of making.

I like the technique of making lists, to a point, but the list thing gets old after a while. Sometimes, too, others did it better years ago. Take his 10 points of "What is 'A Good Person?'" The Boy Scouts nailed that concept in their 12-point creed -- trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent-- a list that sounds suspiciously like Kreeft's 10 thoughts.

It boils down, though, to you gotta take the bad with the good.

You go from No. 105 where the bad Kreeft is saying something as dumb as God is a comedian because he invented dog farts, to the very next page where he suggests we practice everyday what you do and don't want so say and do on the last day of your life.

Dog farts? I expect better than that. But I forgive him. -- bz

It's okay, Catholics, we can laugh

"The Book of Catholic Jokes,"

by Deacon Tom Sheridan

Did you know that they had automobiles in Jesus' time?

Yes, the Bible says that the disciples were all of one Accord.

Yeah, you may have heard some of them before.

And yes, Tom Sheridan admits that some of these may have been jokes to which a Catholic angle has been added to make them churchy.

But Sheridan, who was a writer and editor for the Chicago Sun-Times before he was a deacon, has nicely selected jokes that folks with decent moral standards can tell in polite company, and Acta Publications has packaged them well as a handy little and inexpensive paperback.

Did you hear the one about the man who opened a dry-cleaning business next door to the convent? He knocked on the door and asked the Mother Superior if she had any dirty habits.

To be sure there are some clinkers in the bunch, and some moldy oldies. And I don't know why every priest in a joke has to have an Irish surname; hell0 -- you don't have to be Irish to be a priest, or to be funny.

With most of the quips you don't have to be an "insider," so to speak, although I'm not sure the jokes that take off on the differences between, say, the Franciscans and the Jesuits, aren't going to have some Catholics scratching their heads. But maybe not.

For the most part the collection is good stuff -- good enough to make you crack a smile even though you may have heard them before.

There's at least one great priest golf joke, a cute one about a rabbi and a priest, a funny Pope Benedict XVI joke and a clever atheist joke. And as someone who can rarely remember a joke, what a good resource; I'm sure "The Book of Catholic Jokes" will end up on a number of reference shelves in rectories. -- bz

One Sunday morning a priest saw a little boy staring intently at the large plaque on the church wall. The plaque was covered with names, and flags hung on either side of it.

"Father," asked the boy, "what's this?"

He replied, "It's a memorial to all the men and women who died in the service."

They stood together in silence for a moment. Finally, the boy asked with genuine concern: "Was it at the eight or the ten-thirty Mass?"

'The Shack': Interesting novel/catechism turns hateful

'The Shack,'

by Wm. Paul Young

Wm. Paul Young had me for 178 pages.

Through 178 pages the author of this New York Times bestseller offered a creative approach to teaching readers about all kinds of elements of Christian faith.

In the paperback version of this "catechism-as-dramatic-novel/fantasy," the first 178 pages are a painless way to be forced to think about our -- yours and mine -- relationship with God.

Through a hurting father's meeting with the triune God, the first 178 pages of "The Shack" present convincing explanations about the concept of free will, unconditional love, good and evil, human frailties, the Trinity and more.

For 178 pages Young, the child of missionary parents, makes us reflect about our image and understanding of God, reinforcing the idea that God is always with us, always loves us, even as we stumble and fall.

Then comes page 179.

Religion one of 'trinity of terrors'?

That's where Young's Jesus starts a diatribe against organized religion, using the kind of language Catholics used to see only in the hate pamphlets that carried drawings of the pope as the devil -- horns and tail included.

The character of Jesus who inhabits Young's fanciful "shack" says he's "not too big on religion," and lumps religion in with politics and economics in a way most Christians would describe as, well, unchristian.

Religion, politics and economics, this Jesus claims, "are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?"

But there's more.

Young's Jesus says, "Put simply, these terrors are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any. It's all false!"

But wait, there's more.

Two pages later it is all the world's systems that are the problem. Jesus of "The Shack" says,

"Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But I can give you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."

So, none of what humanity -- created in the image and likeness of God -- has developed through the centuries does any good? It's "well-intentioned" but evil? Hard to believe. And, if you're like me, those last couple of sentences in the quote above sound similar to the Catholic Church's advice that its members are to be counter cultural, in the world but not of it, part of society but not caught up in its less noble pursuits. But you don't hear Young's Jesus acknowledging that.

Now who's being judgmental?

Perhaps the attack on organized religion wouldn't come off as so hypocritical if it hadn't come after a whole chapter in which Mackenzie -- the book's main character -- goes through an agonizing trial that teaches him not to be judgmental.

Far be it for any Catholic to ignore the failings of our church -- its members and its leaders -- throughout history and even to the present day. But any author does readers an enormous disservice by ignoring the positive motives, positive actions and positive results that organized religions have brought to the world throughout history and continue to bring today.

Our churches -- of many denominations -- deserve credit for upholding moral standards that easily go by the wayside in a laissez-faire society.

The Catholic Church in particular has earned the admiration of many for creating the concept of higher education.

People -- organized through their church affiliations -- feed the hungry, care for the sick, shelter the homeless -- in a better way when they do so in organized ways.

The list could go on. Sadly, Wm. Paul Young has chosen to ignore the good and instead judge others in a way he tells his readers not to.

Sad, too, is that it took 179 pages for him to show his true colors. -- bz

Sex and a 17th century pope? More innuendo than facts, but lots of interesting facts, too

"MISTRESS OF THE VATICAN,"
by Eleanor Herman

When I'm at the bookstore or library I tend to pick up anything that has "Vatican" in the title, so I couldn't pass up something as titillating as "Mistress of the Vatican" when publisher William Morrow offered a review copy.

The jacket cover suggested hanky-panky with the bare-shouldered portrait of a beautiful woman with a painting of St. Peter's Basilica and Square covering her, uh, feminine charms, and a subtitle, "The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini: The Secret Female Pope."

The adage that you can't judge a book by its cover still applies.

Author Eleanor Herman offers no real evidence that 17th century Pope Innocent X had a sexual relationship with Olimpia, his sister-in-law, as the term "mistress" would suggest.

She offers no facts that Olimpia was pope, although she apparently was extremely influential in papal decisions.

Even the cover artwork is misleading: You'd think that the beautiful woman depicted is Olimpia, but no; the jacket painting is of "Venus at the Mirror," by Tiziano.

Despite that, this book was hard to put down.

She's done the research

Herman has culled the diaries and papers of Vatican officials of the period and the works of commentators during the mid 1600s, and what she's come up with are some things about our church at the time that today we'd consider unthinkable. The nepotism, the bribery, the selling of church offices, the misuse of church funds -- they saturate these 419 pages, and that's without the bibliography and index.

Even those of us who love our church ought to know that at times in the past some pretty ridiculous things have been done in the name of our faith. Herman points out the silliness of some of the practices surrounding relics, for one thing. An Italian church claimed to have preserved the umbilical cord of Jesus, another drops of the Virgin Mary's breast milk.

What gets tiresome, though, is the author's tendency to slip into extended "filler" -- background information that seemingly has little or nothing to do with the story of Donna Olimpia and her brother-in-law the pope.

Early on she extrapolates the cultural mores of the era and presumes much. While there is no factual evidence that Olimpia did this or that, women of the times did things this way, so Olimpia must have as well, she posits. It's a bit too much innudendo for my taste.

Evidence shows Olimpia's influence

There seems to be little doubt, though, that the widow of Pope Innocent X's brother was extremely influential in day-to-day decisions concerning the Papal States. The evidence author Herman brings to light shows that Olimpia's fingerprints are on the appointments of cardinals, on the finances of the church, on the church's relationship with the governments and royalty of nations such as France and Spain, among others, and much, much more.

Be ready to read a boatload of language pointing out how anti-woman the Catholic Church is and has been through the ages. And the author uses some misleading descriptions that makes you wonder if she made this stuff up or is actually quoting some 17th century theologian or document.

Take Holy Orders: She writes that priestly ordination was "a sacrament that was thought to tattoo the human soul with an invisible but ineradicable seal that prevented marriage."

Tattoo the soul?

I hadn't heard that one before. But then, I really hadn't been up on some of the less-flattering history of our church, like the regular elevation of papal nephews to rank of cardinal although they might still be in their teens, the regular practice of popes to appoint their relatives to jobs in the Vatican, the fawning of European royalty to curry the pope's favor with expensive gifts, etc.

The saving grace is that at some point Innocent did have a crisis of conscience and put the dignity and integrity of the church first, and that many of the laughable practices of those times are long gone.

So read this. It's not sexy. It promises one thing and delivers another, but it's still a good read. -- bz