Book Review: "Wounded I Sing: The Song of Songs and the Incarnation of the Son of God"

A friend recently sent me a copy of Timothy J. Kelly's Wounded I Sing: The Song of Songs and the Incarnation of the Son of God (Os Justi Press, 2026), with the promise that it was right up my theological alley. I was not familiar with Kelly, but he had impressive credentials—professor of dogmatic theology at the International Theological Institute in Truman, Austria and a research fellow of Blackfriar Hall, Oxford. The book also had ringing endorsements from some of my favorite scholars and writers: Fr. John Saward, Scott Hahn, John Bergsma, and Stephen K. Ray. After finishing the book, I add a hearty "Amen!" This four-chapter book takes longer than expected to finish, because its profundity of thought and beauty of expression move you to turn from the text to prayer.

The first chapter was like a return to grad school: This God Who is incomprehensible in His essence, discloses Himself to us by way of analogy to His creation. We must constantly remind ourselves that "however pure the perfection the name might evoke, however immaterial and actual the perfection signified, He infinitely surpasses it and exceeds the constraints our intelligence inevitably associates with the term" (Wounded, 19). In Scripture He goes even further, inspiring its authors to express His love for man via the language of our material passions, our human condition. Such metaphorical use of language, however, finds its embodiment in the Incarnation of the Word. In Christ Jesus and the Church, the spousal relationship between God and Israel described by the prophets achieves an undreamt-of reality.

This leads into a fascinating chapter exploring Jewish and Christian interpretation of the Old Testament's Song of Songs. It is a text which never mentions God and, taken at face value, is a love song in which the affection between lovers is "manifested by way of the language of eros, of human desire" and "embodied, conjugal relations" (Wounded, 37). Even so, the ancient rabbis recognized it as speaking of God's election of Israel; and the first century historian Josephus recorded how it had to be read in its entirety during the Feast of Passover. Christians such as Origen and Gregory the Great interpreted it "in light of the arrival of the Messiah and of the spousal perfections exemplified in His Passion" (Wounded, 40). Kelly then guides us through the Christological interpretation of the Song among medieval writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, and William of St. Thierry. (I appreciated Kelly's in-depth footnotes as well as Os Justi Press's wide margins where I could make notations.)

The second half of the book, its final two sections, are a wide-ranging discussion of Christ as the Bridegroom, who bodily manifests His love for the Church in His total gift of Self upon the Cross and in the Eucharist. We consider the full reality of Christ's humanity, His Sacred Heart, soteriology, divinization, created and Uncreated Love, the Blessed Mother, the Theology of the Body, etc. Kelly's insights into the Gospel of John and explication of Saints Thomas and John Chrysostom's Eucharistic teaching alone would have sold me on the book. Kelly employs the Song of Songs to expound upon the most central mysteries of our faith and life. It is profound—theology that moves you to contemplation.

Book Review: "Secrets From Heaven"

Catholic Answers Press, well known for its apologetic works, continues to widen the scope of its mission. Their latest  offering, Secrets From Heaven, ventures into biblical interpretation - specifically the interpretation of Jesus' parables, healings, and select teachings. The author, Fr. Sebastian Walshe, holds a master's degree in theology and doctorate in philosophy and serves as the dean of studies at St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado, CA. After reading this book I find myself envious of his students, as Fr. Walshe's work is replete with insights I have not seen elsewhere.

We Christians really are so blessed to be part of the Church. The Father allows us to grow beyond our own limited power of understanding by learning from our siblings, endearing us to one another in the process. Secrets From Heaven contains Fr. Walshe's wonderful exegetical insights as well as the spiritual interpretations of the Church Fathers.

The best way to explain way to illustrate the power of this book is to simply take you through a chapter. I've chosen "Jairus and the Woman with the Hemorrhage. The chapter begins with Luke's account of the event (Lk 8:40-56). If you need a quick refresher: Jesus was approached by Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, to come and heal his twelve year old daughter who was dying. While on the way, a woman who had suffered with a flow of blood for twelve years touched the hem of Jesus' garment and was healed. By the time Jesus arrived at Jairus' home, the child had died; but the Lord raised her.

Father Walshe begins by looking at the events in relation to what has already occurred in Luke's gospel, contrasting Jairus with the centurion seeking healing for a servant in Luke's previous chapter:

"Both come to Jesus seeking the cure of a dying child. Both are rulers...Whereas the centurion has perfect faith, and so does not need Jesus to come to his home, Jairus has a weak faith, and so needs Jesus to come to his home" (p.113).

Father Walshe sees a powerful lesson here: 

"The weakness of Jairus' faith increases his own suffering. Had his faith been perfect like that of the centurion, there would have been no long and anxious journey back to his home, and his daughter would not have died along the way. 

        Our own defects in faith end up adding unnecessarily to our suffering in life. Often, Jesus wants to solve our problems right away, and he wants us to have confidence that they are solved as soon as we ask him (even when we can't see yet that they are solved) so that we can go about our lives in peace and joy. But we are the ones who limit his goodness: we insist on seeing the results we want right now; we insist on feeling Jesus' constant presence along the way; and consequently we pay the price" (p.113).

After a memorable personal illustration of that point, Father Walshe then delves into the literal sense of the text, or what Luke, writing in Greek in the first century, meant to communicate to his readers. And Fr. Walshe has a keen set of eyes! He begins with the "coincidence" of Jairus' daughter being twelve, the same number of years the woman had suffered from the flow of blood:

"[C]onsider this: in the same moment that Jesus says to the woman, Daughter, your faith hath made you whole, Jairus receives the news that his daughter has died. Read the passage again: [Jesus] said to her: Daughter, your faith hath made you whole; go your way in peace. As he was yet speaking, there came one to the ruler of the synagogue, saying to him: Your daughter is dead, trouble him not...If you had been present at the scene you would have heard it like this: 'Daughter your faith has made you whole...your daughter is dead'" (p.115).

WOW - what an incredible insight! Luke is my favorite gospel and yet, as many times as I've read it, I never made that connection. But there's more. (Pardon my underlining):

"[This] is the only time in all the Gospels that Jesus calls someone his daughter. Why here? Why now? In order to call Jairus's attention to the fact that he was not the only person there who had a daughter in need of healing. Twelve years before, this woman began to hemorrhage. As a result, the woman would have been made ritually unclean by her flow of blood, and therefore would certainly have been excluded from participating in the worship at the synagogue where Jairus was an official, lest she contaminate anyone who had the duty of sacred worship. Indeed, it seems likely that it was Jairus himself who excluded her from the worship at the synagogue, since he was the ruler there. For twelve years this woman was excluded from the house of her Father, while for twelve years Jairus enjoyed the company of his own daughter in his house....What was going on in [Jairus'] heart at this moment? Was he angry at [this woman] for holding Jesus up?...By causing Jairus to reflect on the condition of his own daughter, and upon the pain he now felt at being separated from her, Jesus willed to arouse in Jairus a new sense of compassion for this woman whom he had not recognized as God's daughter."

Fr. Walshe draws an application from this:

"[I]n our prayers we often ask from God the thing that we deny to others. And it is only when we recognize this fact that God will hear and answer our prayers...We ask for health, but we do not comfort the sick. We ask for friendship, but we do not offer friendship" (p. 116).

He sees other lessons for us, but for the sake of space I'll limit myself to one more - what caused Jairus and the woman to respond to Jesus with an imperfect faith:

"[They] seem to have some reason why they can trust in their own merits. Unlike the centurion, Jairus is a member of the Jewish people, and even a ruler of the synagogue; the woman is someone of substance who apparently started out with a lot of money that she ended up spending on doctors. They had something to hang their hat on other than the mercy of Christ. And so for them Jesus was not their first resort but their last resort.

        To the degree that we rely upon our own talents, natural gifts, worldly wealth, or status, to the same extent we will put Jesus last and end up resisting the seed of the word that Christ wants to plant and bear fruit in our hearts. And yet in the face of all this, we should take some consolation in this fact: that in spite of their imperfections, Jesus does eventually give them what they need" (p.117).

After plumbing the literal sense, Fr. Walshe turns to the spiritual sense as expounded by Sts. Bede and Ambrose:

"According to this allegory, Jairus, since he is the leader of the synagogue, represents the Jewish leaders. His daughter represents the Jewish people, and the woman with the hemorrhage represents the gentile people. Jairus daughter has lived for twelve years in the home of her father, and this signifies that the Jewish people have lived withing the Jewish church during the whole time of the covenant with the twelve tribes of Israel (Ex. 34:27). On the other hand, the gentiles were excluded from this covenant (unlike the covenants made with Adam and Noah that included all their descendants, Jew and Gentile alike). Thus, the woman is said to have a flow of blood for twelve years, to signify that during the time of the Mosaic covenant the gentiles were unclean and excluded from the assembly of God. During this time they spent all their substance on physicians, that is, they sought in vain for salvation from philosophy or false gods" (p.119).

Father Walshe goes into this allegory in some depth, and it is beautiful. He brings the chapter to a close by considering how we should personally be evangelized by this episode from the gospels and how we should take these lessons under consideration when sharing the Gospel with others.

Secrets From Heaven is a spiritual gem. I'll keep my eyes peeled for Fr. Walshe's next offering.

Book Review: Cardinal Newman's "Meditations on Mary, Our Mother"

I jumped at the chance to review this book. Two decades ago, I read TAN Book’s Mary: The Second Eve, a compendium of Newman’s apologetic writings on the Blessed Mother and was mesmerized by the way he showed that the earliest post-apostolic writings simply made explicit what was already present in the text of Scripture. His knowledge of the Fathers was voluminous. This new work assembled by TAN’s editorial team casts its net wider to bring together key points from Newman’s apologetics with his devotional thought.

As with all of his works, Meditations on Mary, Our Mother reminds us that Newman was a master of the English language. When we turn from him to modern works, we are reminded of how far we've fallen:

"[The saints'] acts, callings, and relations below, are types and anticipations of their present mission above...The only question is whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in the economy of grace, whether, when she was on earth, she secured by her deeds any claim on our memories? If she did, it is impossible we should put her away from us, merely because she has gone hence, and should not look at her still according to the nature of her earthly history, with gratitude and expectation." (p.41)

Yes, Newman would have been a thorn in the side of many a modern editor. "But John, you have to remember that most books are written at a fifth grade level!"

Like TAN's previous compilation, Meditations on Mary, Our Mother displays Newman's brilliance as an apologist. It does not, however, contain the lengthy quotations from the Fathers present in the earlier work. Instead, as the title of this new collection indicates, we are treated to Newman's devotional thoughts, his effusions of love in honor of Our Lady:

"We must not only pray with our lips, and fast, and do outward penance, and be chaste in our bodies; but we must be obedient, and pure in our minds. And so, as regards the Blessed Virgin, it was God's will that she should undertake willingly and with full understanding to be the Mother of Our Lord, and not to be a mere passive instrument whose maternity would have no merit and no reward. The higher our gifts, the higher our duties. It was no light lot to be so intimately near to the Redeemer of men, as she experienced afterwards when she suffered with Him." (p.23)

Newman's apologetic thought circles around Mary's identity as the New Eve. He finds it in both Scripture (Genesis 3, John 19, Revelation 12) and the Church Fathers:

"...the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration." (p.17)

Newman notes this identification in the works of Justin Martyr (150 A.D.), Irenaeus (180) and Tertullian (200), men from different geographic regions. From this, he carefully reasons that this understanding had to form part of the original apostolic deposit. And from it he deduces a host of important points:

"Eve made room for Adam's fall, so Mary made room for our Lord's reparation of it. Thus, whereas the free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary co-operated in effecting a much greater good." (p.19) 

"I do not see how anyone who holds the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the [immaculate conception of the] Blessed Virgin Mary...I ask: Have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? Is it any violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a help-mate to her husband, did in the event but cooperate with him for our ruin?....There was war between the woman and the Serpent. This is most emphatically fulfilled if she had nothing ot do with sin - for, so far as anyone sins, he has an alliance with the Evil One." (p.67, 65, 72)

I could go on and on, but it's far better to read this gem of a book for yourselves. Reading Meditations on Mary, Our Mother is akin to ascending a height via an upward, circular path. Themes are revisited and built upon as you progress through the meditations. It is spiritual reading appropriate to any time in the liturgical year.

"Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?" by Trent Horn & Catherine R. Pakaluk

I've made no secret of my enjoyment of Trent Horn's work. He has a tremendous knowledge base and is very effective at crafting and presenting his arguments to non-specialists. That last point is especially important given the topic of his latest book, socialism, and its embrace by such an alarming number of young people with little true understanding of the ideology. 

To answer the question Can A Catholic Be A Socialist?, Trent partners with Harvard-trained, Catholic University business professor and economist, Dr. Catherine R. Pakaluk. I think readers will find them to be a formidable team.

Pakaluk and Horn adeptly explain socialism's aim: "a centrally planned economic system that rejects the ownership of private property." After debunking the claim that Christ and the primitive Church taught and practiced socialism, the authors trace its true genesis to the writings of Marx and Engels. From there they take us through its incarnation in Russia, China, and their satellites, up to its slick rebranding under the Democratic Socialists of America (with its stars, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). It's an informative history, especially helpful for those born after the fall of the U.S.S.R. I, for one, was surprised to learn that the Democratic Socialists of America was founded by a close collaborator of Dorothy Day's, Michael Harrington. Harrington left the Church, embraced atheism, and worked to "rehabilitate" Marx’s teachings from what he considered communism's authoritarian perversion.

The Church's social justice teaching can seem monolithic to outsiders, but Horn and Pakaluk zero in on key concepts such as the right to private property and subsidiarity and show their applicability to the question of socialism. It's a nice way to wade into the body of papal teaching. There's also a helpful appendix on distributism (and why it isn't a viable option today).

I imagine that the bulk of people reading this review have already arrived at the conclusion that socialism is incompatible with Christianity. By the time you finish this book, however, you will be able to articulate why capitalism - with its possibilities for abuse - is an inherently more realistic system than socialism. You'll also be equipped with example after example to illustrate your points.  I appreciated the chapters dealing with the demise of the Venezualan economy and the lie of Nordic socialism perpetuated by the likes of Bernie Sanders. (Denmark's prime minister went so far as to issue a statement clarifying that, "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state...[p.151])

I found Can A Catholic Be A Socialist? to be a page-turner, and I'm sure you will too.

"Penance and the Anointing of the Sick" by Bernhard Poschmann

The anointing of the sick is undoubtedly the sacrament with the least number of books devoted to it. As I sat down to craft my own chapter on the subject, I came across a number of references to Poschmann's monumental historical study of the sacrament, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick (1951). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Wipf and Stock reprinted it just ten months ago!

Poschmann does, indeed, give a far-reaching historical survey of the sacrament's celebration and its theology as explained by notable theologians such as Bonaventure and Aquinas; but this only accounts for 24 of the book's 257 pages. The first 209 pages are devoted to the sacrament of penance (with another 22 devoted to indulgences).

Professor Poschmann was an esteemed German theologian, active from 1910 - 1954. I am not a novice to reading theological tomes, but this one was especially dense and could only be taken in small doses. (The last three books I reviewed were all read after I had already started this one.) Most of the Latin texts quoted in the work were not translated into English, so that was a strike against this monolingual reader.

Poschmann's work research into the sacrament of reconciliation is so wide that I honestly need a great deal more study of the source documents to be able to offer an evaluation of Poschmann's work. As I flip back through it, I see a number of question marks that I placed in the margins. I was able to come to a few conclusions:
The history of the celebration of reconciliation is more involved than the majority of readers realize.
While the effectiveness of reconciliation was never in dispute, there were different theological theories as to how the sacrament functioned.
The Council of Trent illuminated the Church's faith by offering definitive clarification regarding various elements of reconciliation.
The same can be said for the anointing of the sick.

Poschmann advances a few theories of his own regarding advances in the Church's understanding of these two sacraments and the related element of indulgences. I do not believe that these have been embraced by the Church. Professor Poschmann was a towering scholar, and his Penance and the Anointing of the Sick is the work of a lifetime, a wonderful example of historical theology. It inspires me to go back to the Catechism and re-familiarize myself with what the Church does - and does not - teach, definitively, regarding the sacraments of healing.

Jimmy Akin's "The Bible Is A Catholic Book"

Over the past five years I've come to a conclusion: If Jimmy Akin took the time to write it, then it is worth reading. His new release, The Bible Is A Catholic Book, is another terrific example why.

When Akin addresses a topic, no matter how well you have seen it covered in the past, he can be trusted to come at it from a slightly different angle, with data you have yet to unearth. In this book, instead of diving straight into the composition history of the biblical texts and the development of the canon, Akin takes us back to the beginning - actually, before the beginning - to the Second Person of the Trinity, the definitive Word of God, of Whom "all of God's other words are shadows" (p.13).

God has communicated with man since the time of his creation, tens of thousands of years ago. Only in the past five thousands years, however, since the development of writing, has it been possible for revelation to take written form. For the vast majority of man's time on earth, he has been a completely oral creature. Information, God's revelation included, came down in oral tradition, in a controlled, accurate way via tradents - authorized bearers of tradition - via techniques such as chiasm, meter, melody, and rhyme.

When Akin does begin discussing the composition of the OT and NT texts, his work is top-notch. Two quick points that jumped out at me:

• The OT speaks of authentic prophetic works - those of Ahijah the Shilonite and Iddo the Seer - that Providence, subsequently, did not allow to come down to us (2 Chronicles 9:29).
• It is false to say that God was silent for the 400 years prior to the birth of Christ.

Akin addresses a number of points that have demanded my attention over the past few years:

• Different groups within first century Judaism - the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and Jews in the Diaspora - had their own set of books that they recognized as inspired.
• The oft-repeated datum that the OT canon was settled at the Council of Judaism is a scholarly myth.
• Christianity received the deuterocanonical texts - exactly as it did the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures - from its earliest Jewish members; and it did so centuries before Rabbinic Judaism definitively rejected them.
• One cannot speak of a unified biblical canon in Judaism until at least AD 200.
• The abysmal literacy rates in the first century made the vast, vast majority of believers dependent upon the oral proclamation of Scripture in the synagogue and Eucharist.
• If God had intended for the Church to operate on the principle of sola scriptura; then Christ would have sat down to pen a book or, at the very least, seen to it that the printing press was available in the apostolic age.

I love the way Akin expresses this final point:

It's easy to see why the idea of sola scriptura became popular when it did and among the people that it did. The Reformers were at least moderately well off and had new printed Bibles, and now the invention of the printing press had made the idea of everyone having his own Bible at least conceivable. 

     But for all prior Christian history, sola scriptura was simply an impossibility. This has doctrinal implications because God doesn't ask the impossible. Since sola scriptura had never been possible, it had never been God's plan. If it had been, God would have started the Christian age after the invention of the printing press, just as he began giving the Jewish scriptures only after the invention of writing (p.150).

The man has a way with words. His discussion of how texts were composed in the first century is illuminating. I never knew at what great personal expense Paul must have produced his epistles: Even among the literate, it was common to hire a professional scribe. There was also the cost of materials, pre-publication drafts, as well as the common practice of the author retaining a copy of the work. Romans alone, with its excessive length in first century terms, would have cost Paul more than $2000 at today's rates! I was also completely taken aback to learn that in Paul's First Epistle to Timothy (5:18) he may quote from Luke's Gospel (10:7) as  "scripture." (We already know that, around this same time, Peter referred to Paul's letters as such.)

The Bible Is A Catholic Book is chock-full of novel insights and solid scholarship. The portion on the Church's efforts to preserve and translate Scripture throughout the middle ages dispels a host of anti-Catholic myths. You're going to have to check that out for yourself, though; the family is calling me!

Author Interview: Jesse Romero

It is hard to miss the buzz in Catholic quarters surrounding well-known evangelist Jesse Romero’s new book, The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters with the Diabolical (TAN Books, 2019). What caught my attention in Romero’s story was how he first encountered demonic spirits not in his work as a Catholic evangelist but earlier, in his career as a Los Angeles deputy sheriff. He witnessed supernatural manifestations that police academies never dream of addressing with their cadets; but these encounters helped propel him deeper into his Catholic faith. As Jesse’s faith matured and he began sharing the gospel, his path crossed a number of others – baptized Christians – whose involvement in the occult opened them to demonic oppression and possession. Romero accumulated a wealth of knowledge regarding spiritual warfare, and he was gracious enough to answer a few questions for readers.

Shane Kapler: With Scripture and the Catechism being so clear on Christians not having anything to do with seances, astrology, psychics, etc., why do you think so many Christians still dabble in the occult? And as a follow-up, what are the occult practices in which they most frequently engage?

Jesse Romero: Baptized Christians are hungering for the mystical and other worldly, we were hard wired that way.  Many people are simply 'curious', just like Eve, that’s what got her in trouble, wanting to discover the unknown. Many people are drawn to the occult because they are low information Americans who have a malformed, uninformed, misinformed conscience and the allure of the occult is all around: psychics, tarot card readers, fortune tellers, healers online and also renting a storefront in your neighborhood. You also have the pop culture (music, movies) that promotes that occult as well as the best-selling 'Harry Potter books.'  Tempting people to dabble in the occult is one of the ordinary activities of demons.

Kapler: You write a great deal about spiritual warfare. What type of spiritual warfare is reserved only for exorcists, and what type is the work of the laity? Is there a line that the laity does not have the spiritual authority to cross?

Romero: Priest have the authority to engage in healing, deliverance and exorcism. There are two types, a minor and a solemn exorcism. Any priest can engage in minor exorcism, a solemn exorcism requires the permission of their bishop. Lay people can help priest in healing, deliverance and exorcism as support and intercessors. A priest has universal authority to heal and liberate a person from the diabolical, while a lay person has authority over those under his authority. A husband and father has authority to pray healing and deliverance prayers over his wife and children. Lay people can pray healing and deliverance prayers for themselves. The ones that I have been praying every day for over ten years are the www.auxiliumchristianorum.org prayers.

Kapler: In the gospels, Jesus exorcised demons with a simple command. We see Paul appearing to do the same with a spirit of clairvoyance in Acts 16. Would you share your thoughts as to why exorcisms today are a much more protracted process? Why does the rite of exorcism often need to be repeated a number of times for a person to finally gain freedom?

Romero: Several reasons, first, more people are living in mortal sin, there are less baptisms, less couples marrying in the Church, so that means there are less people praying in the Church Militant. Exorcist have told me that this effects their prayer sessions. Also, most energumens (possessed) people continue to live in mortal sin, therefore the demon may get driven out through the session but they come right back because the person lacks sanctifying grace in their soul which keeps them out. Many peoples’ lives are so disordered; they do not have properly formed consciences based on the Word of God and their wills are weak as a result of habitual sin. Therefore, they lack the courage and fortitude to follow the exorcist protocol to live in a state of grace. Ninety percent of the deliverance is done by the spiritually afflicted person; ten percent of it is done by the priest. Exorcism is not magic; it’s hard work which requires the spiritually afflicted person, by an act of the will, to fully cooperate in pursuing a life of holiness.

Kapler: In your book you share your own experience in deliverance ministry, how to arm ourselves against the devil's activity in our lives, as well as ending the book with prayers you have found very effective in countering the demonic. If someone finishes your book and wants to receive further, solid formation in this area, where would you send them or what written resources do you recommend?

Mr. Romero: The three books on Catholic spiritual warfare that I would recommend are:
1. Deliverance Prayers for the Laity by Fr Chad Ripperger
2. Manual for Spiritual Warfare by Paul Thigpen
3.  Lord Prepare My Hands for Battle by Jesse Romero 

Kapler: Thank you so much, Jesse.

Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls – what Christian isn’t curious to know more? Who were the Essenes, the Jewish monks responsible for producing them? My New Testament instructor back at Duchesne High School was adamant that John the Baptist was one of their number and that Jesus and the Holy Family were lay members of the larger Essene movement. He noted some interesting parallels, but I was uneasy with his conclusions. At age fifteen, however, I had no idea how to go about critically evaluating and responding to his claims. 

As the years passed and my study of the faith deepened, I saw the scrolls referenced in various books and understood how they could assist Christians. For example, the Protestant Reformers set St. Paul’s statement in Romans 3:28 that we are “justified by faith apart from works of law” in juxtaposition to the Church’s historic belief that final justification was a result of faith and good works – works that resulted from obeying the moral law. When the Church read Paul’s statement about being justified apart from “works of the law,” it understood him to mean “apart from works of the [ceremonial] law,” i.e. circumcision, dietary restrictions, animal sacrifice, etc. Well, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, exegetes and theologians finally had an historical witness to what “works of the law” meant in first century Judaism: In agreement with the Church, the scrolls use the phrase in reference to ceremonial matters. The scrolls’ impartial testimony is wonderful news for all Christians committed to ecumenism. I saw this to also be true in regard to Catholicism and Protestantism’s different Old Testament canons, but I’ve already gone into detail about that elsewhere.

What I want to share with you today is a fantastic new resource I have discovered regarding the scrolls: Dr. John Bergsma’s Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Revealing the Jewish Roots of Christianity (Image, 2019). While I have gleaned important points about the scrolls in my reading on other subjects, Dr. Bergsma has written a work that simultaneously introduces readers to the to the scrolls and zeroes in on the first century Jewish context they provide for gaining greater clarity on the words and actions of Christ and the apostles. Once I started reading I didn’t want to stop; before I made it to the final chapter, my yellow highlighter had bit the dust. 

Doctor Bergsma provides such a wealth of information. I had never heard, for example, that the Essenes’ main compound at Qumran was constructed along the desert road the Messiah was expected to travel toward Jerusalem, with Qumran acting as a literal fulfilment of Isaiah 40:3 (“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord”). I had also never read that the Essenes believed there were active prophets among them. Bergsma describes their messianic expectations: a priestly Messiah of Aaron and a royal Messiah of Israel. He also discusses a competing idea found in the scrolls – the return of the ancient king-priest Melchizedek with godlike powers to free Israel from sin and Satan. Doctor Bergsma makes a convincing case for John the Baptist’s involvement with the Qumran community at an early point in his life and for connections between the dualistic imagery prevalent in the scrolls and that found in the Gospel of John. There are chapters focusing upon baptism, the Eucharist, priesthood, celibacy, the indissolubility of marriage, and the structure of the Church. I may not agree with every individual conclusion – and Bergsma is upfront that many must remain provisional – but I gleaned insight after insight.

In my opinion, one of the strongest features of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls is the numerous quotations from the scrolls themselves, especially the Community Rule and the Damascus Document, which outlines the history, aims, and rules of the movement. The one that stays with me the most, though, come from a scrap discovered in Cave 4:

Great will he be called and he will be designated by his name. He will be called son of God, and they will call him Son of the Most High…His kingdom will be an eternal kingdom.

One is immediately struck at the similarity to Gabriel’s announcement to Mary in Luke 1:31-33. The correct interpretation and meaning of the text is of course debated, but it is fascinating to say the least. In Luke’s Gospel we read of the private revelation given to the elderly Simeon regarding the Messiah’s nearness (2:25-27); might another private revelation have been given to a holy soul at Qumran? 

If you have always wanted to know more about the Dead Sea Scrolls but didn’t know where to begin, I think this is the perfect book to start with. Not only will you grow in knowledge of these important documents, you will also stoke the flames of love for your Catholic Faith.

Book Review: "Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of St Charbel"

Hanna Skandar's Love is a Radiant Light (Angelico Press, 2019) is a book to be savored. Saint Charbel Makhlouf (1828 - 1898) first came to my attention while working on the Tending the Temple devotional. A monk of the Labanese Maronite Order, an otherwordly character surrounded the humble man. After his entry into eternal life on Christmas Eve of 1898, supernatural phenomena started being reported around his tomb; and a flood of miracles issued from his intercession. 

What I treasure most about this book is how the bulk of it is made up of Charbel's homilies. He is a man of great brilliance who, like Christ, imparts wisdom in easily- accessible imagery. Originally published in France, William J. Melcher's translation captures the "poetic" beauty of Charbel's words. Reading his homilies, I felt simultaneously convicted of my sin and filled with joyful hope of what God longs to do in and through me. 

If a human being draws his love from God, he is naturally oriented toward others. If the love is from you, it returns to you. The human being whose love emanates from himself, loves himself through others, while thinking that he loves others (p.86).

There is one homily that, although written for Charbel's 19th century confrères, struck me as especially prophetic of our time:

Human beings have more knowledge than wisdom. Their theories have become in their minds like the fog on the mountains and in the valleys; they prevent them from seeing things as they are...Their buildings rise, their morality sinks. Their worldly goods increase, their value diminishes. Their speeches multiply, their prayer grows scarce. ...They have many paths, but they do not lead them to each other's houses. They have multiple means of communication, but they do not help them to communicate with each other. Their beds are spacious and comfortable, but their families are small, broken up, and exhausted. They know how to go faster without being able to wait. They are always running to make a living, forgetting to lead their lives....Human beings sow thorns which, while still tender and new, caress their feet; but once they have hardened they will tear the feet of future generations.You cut the wood, you pile the logs, you light the fire, you feed it so as to throw yourselves into it, and you wonder why you are burned by it! Humanity has gone astray, man is sick, and the world is catching fire. 

God is love; he is the goal and the guide of this lost humanity. Christ is the remedy of the sick man. The water of baptism in the Spirit is what extinguishes the fire raging in the world....Meet one another, look at one another, listen to one another, greet one another, console one another with sturdy, charitable words, go out from yourselves to visit one another, embrace one another in the love of Christ, work in the Lord's field without growing weary or bored (pp.74-75).

That is only a selection from one of his homilies - this book contains 17! This is the perfect book to take to Adoration and keep by your bedside. I find myself instinctively moving from the page to prayer; and it's a thrill to know that Charbel is praying with me. This isn't a book I can read just once though. These words cut to the heart. I will be bringing this to Adoration for quite awhile.

Love is a Radiant Light: The Life and Words of St. Charbel is a striking addition to Angelico Press's impressive list of titles.

Book Review: "Jesus the Priest"

When I see a book with back cover endorsements from N.T. Wright and Brant Pitre, I experience an almost reflexive need to acquire it. Jesus the Priest (Baker Academic, 2018) is the second of a proposed trilogy from Dr. Nicholas Perrin of Wheaton College. I must admit that I had yet to run across his first volume, Jesus the Temple, but would like to read it and his future Jesus the Sacrifice. Dr. Perrin has an incredible grasp of the primary and secondary literature and is a skilled writer. That said, I did not feel that he achieved his goal in this volume - showing, via the words and actions recorded in the gospels, that the historical Jesus primarily thought of Himself as the eschatological high priest. Dr. Perrin offers a great deal of speculation on the background behind specific words and actions of Jesus, but in my mind his arguments never rose above the level of speculation.

As a Christian, I obviously agree with Dr. Perrin that Jesus understood Himself to be the high priest of the new and eternal covenant. Unlike the good doctor, however, I find very little in the gospels - apart Jesus' statements that He would give his life in sacrifice - from which to illustrate my claim. (It is the Church's great Tradition, with pride of place given to the Epistle to the Hebrews, that communicates this truth to us.) Dr. Perrin has a very Catholic vision, proposing that Jesus meant to share His priesthood with His disciples and that the disciples suffering, united to Christ's, is given a redemptive value. He was speaking my language. I simply wasn't convinced by the evidence he offered that:

• the traditional reading of the Our Father "has a debilitating weakness," and that "with each petition Jesus is [actually] alluding to a different aspect of a single eschatological reality, all centered around a newly consecrated priesthood and sacred space" (p.52).
• Jesus' baptism was not so much his anointing as Messiah as it was a priestly anointing.
• The beatitudes were offered by Jesus as a priestly blessing
• The disciples eating of the grain on the Sabbath was Jesus recreating the priests' eating of the shewbread.
• The Danielic Son of Man as a priestly figure

Even though I was not persuaded on these large points, I still found the book to be filled with exegetical gems:

• Parallels between the Aqedah and Christ's transfiguration
• Parallels between the Exodus and Gethsemane
• "Perhaps it is our unconscious prioritization of certain formulations of atonement theology over and against the biblical data that has caused us to understate the communal nature of Jesus' suffering" (p.237).
• The historicity of Mark's account of Jesus' trial before Caiaphas.

Such gems have me looking forward to reading Dr. Perrin's other works.

Exposing the Anti-Mary: Author Interview with Carrie Gress

In his first epistle, the Apostle John wrote, “as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come” (1 Jn. 2:19). St. Paul wrote of a final antichrist, “the man of lawlessness…the son of perdition” who will arise prior to Christ’s return (2 Thess. 2:3).The spirit of antichrist has been sowing its seeds in the world from the first century until now. In her fascinating new book, The Anti-Mary Exposed (TAN Books, 2019), Dr. Carrie Gress takes aim at a specific aspect of this anti-Christian spirit, one that, since the 1960s, has distorted the vision of authentic femininity found in Christian Revelation and enfleshed in the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Dr. Gress marshals a mass of scholarship, presented in easily-accessible language, to detail the cultural shift brought about by a small group of elite American women. They convinced an entire generation of women that they could not be “equal” to men, could not lead “fulfilling” lives until the relationship between mother and child was disrupted. In 2019, we live with the deadly fruits of this revolution: sixty million abortions, skyrocketing divorce rates, an increase in female depression, anxiety, STDs, and substance abuse.  Gress also boldly proclaims the answer to the culture of death: Christ, Truth incarnate, and Mary, his mother and partner in redemption. It is an incredibly book, and I was honored to interview Dr. Gress:

Shane Kapler: Dr. Gress, you pull back the curtain on the ideological roots of the modern feminist movement as well as the personal lives of many of its leaders. As I was reading these revelations - Marxism, childhood abuse, diagnosed mental illness, substance abuse, the occult and pagan liturgy - I remember thinking, "I have friends that I want to share this information with, but they are never going to believe me." What did you, personally, find most shocking?

Dr. Gress: I did this research over two years, so I can imagine the experience of reading all of this over a couple of days. I think what was most shocking to me was our ignorance of the brokenness of second wave feminists. Women like Betty Friedan, Kate Millet and Gloria Steinem are held up for us as role models. Why don’t know about the depth of their brokenness and what it was they were responding to? The reality of who they were has been shielded from us. They considered themselves “Lost Girls.” Almost to a one, they had deep issues with their mothers. They all had major emotional trauma that they struggled with; and yet, these are the women who have led us to what we understand femininity to be in our culture. The fact that this hasn’t been scrutinized, talked about, and even rejected – that was what was most surprising to me.

Kapler: In your book, you point out how, when an ideology fails to deliver on its promises, and people begin to point out its faults, its adherents claim that we simply haven’t gone far enough. They place the blame on the fact that the ideology hasn’t been embraced by everyone. Do you think this it part of our rejection of God, that rather than turning back to him in him in humility and repentance, we keep soldiering further down this road?

Carrie Gress, Ph.D.

Dr. Gress: I think it is part and parcel of an ideology. We saw this very clearly among the Soviets, “Things will just start working once there is more Marxism,” or “once we are more egalitarian.” There is this push, and it becomes so strong that people are almost spellbound by it. One of the things I’ve come to see, and around feminism in particular, is a realization that women approach the world with a certain set of presuppositions: “I need to be more assertive. I need to assert my individuality. I need to compete with men.” What happens actually is that women begin taking on certain vices – rage, aggression – and it ends up making things worse. People don’t want to be around a woman who is really angry.

This pattern is striking to me; and I hear it among Catholic women, too. “When I’m dealing with men I try to be more assertive and not let them think they have the upper hand.” We’ve bought into the ideology enough that we think we need to compete with men. These are not the things that make people want to have deeper relationships with us. What has happened with feminism is that we have created this shell around ourselves, and people don’t want to engage because it’s not kind, it’s not compassionate, it’s not other-centered. All of these great virtues that women have; we’ve kind of been told, “Put those away. You don’t need those.” Women are embracing these broken pieces of feminism and womanhood that they are being offered, without realizing how it has this effect of cutting their feet out from underneath them.

Kapler: What is authentic feminism today? What ways are women being authentically discriminated against today?

Dr. Gress: That’s a difficult question to answer, because victimhood has become such a popular status to have in our culture. It’s hard to see what authentic injustice is and what is a manipulation of people. But I think that, if we can step aside from those realities, the biggest injustice is how women have been convinced that the only way they can get ahead is by making their children and families the enemy, making anything that gets in the way of their career the enemy. If we are going to talk about an actual injustice to women, it is that lie. That lie – that our children are obstacles to our success -- has permeated our culture without anyone pointing out how radical an idea it is, and how it had never been introduced into human culture before.  We have embraced slogans like “Shout Your Abortion” wholeheartedly, and treat it like it is some sort of native human right, because without abortion a woman cannot have her career and be successful.

Kapler: How do you see the Christian acceptance of contraception paving the way for today’s “brave new world”?

Dr. Gress: The biggest problem with contraception is the fact that it sterilizes women. It denies our motherhood, denies our fertility; and as a result, it ends up opening the doors for us to only be thinking about sex as something that is physical pleasure. It is something between consenting adults; and it doesn’t have anything to do with children anymore. This of course also led to the opening of the door to the acceptance of homosexuality. Charles Rice, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, used to talk in his classes about the way contraception was going to lead to the normalization of homosexuality; and everyone used to think he was ridiculous. And yet, we are seeing it in spades. It’s one of those things where any kind of deviancy can be enmeshed into the ethos, because people think, “How is their sex life different from ours? We’re just trying to get sexual gratification, and so are they. There’s nothing else to consider.” I think that, at root, contraception lies behind all of the gender confusion that we are currently dealing with. Of course, Pope Paul VI was right about all of these things, which he predicted would happen with the onset of contraception. Among them is the relationship between men and women and their unifying force as a couple. Divorce rates have certainly spiked because of it, and it has not led to the emotional closeness it was supposed to usher in. All of these things happened because we tinkered with God’s design at a biological level and really disrupted the family.

Kapler: Following Vatican II, there seemed to be a lessening of Mary’s role in the devotional lives of many Catholics. We, of course, also saw this among our Protestant brothers and sisters over the past five centuries. Do you think this great cultural shift could have occurred if Mary's place in the Christian life had not first been diminished?

Dr. Gress: No, this would never have happened if Our Lady had been held at the center of culture. I think you are absolutely right to talk about the Protestant break first, and I have seen Protestants write about this: Protestantism hasn’t carved out any place for women to be women. Obviously, religious orders were eradicated, as was Mary as a role model, so there wasn’t any place for women to understand their role. As a result, men were put on a pedestal; and women are responding to this. The traditional avenues women had to have this close relationship to Christ were walled off from them. That’s one of the biggest issues to begin with.

If we look at what the Catholic Church has actually said about women – not that every Catholic has responding rightly toward women – but in terms of the way the Church upheld femininity, much of that was developed because of who our Lady was. The Church is way ahead on this. We hear this ridiculous line that “Well-behaved women never make history.” That’s not true at all. Historically, if we think about different women who made history, they were saints. They understood that they had to connect their will with God’s will, and then through that they were able to do things they could never do – things they could only do through God. I am thinking of women like St. Helen, St. Lucy, St. Monica, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Joan of Arc. All of these remarkable women had very different vocations. None of these women could be referred to as a doormat. This is what the Catholic Church has had going for it – this understanding of what happens with women when we become holy. Sadly, that was washed from our collective memory, as was Mary. So many women wanted to follow, culturally, what was happening with the trends of the culture: contraception, leaving home to build their own careers, and whatever else was happening culturally at the time. If so many women did not find it absurd to suggest Our Lady as a role model of womanhood, we would not be in this place where we are.

Kapler: Dr. Gress, thank you for your time. I know my readers have thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into TheAnti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity.

Book Review: "The Manly Art of Raising a Daughter"

When I received Sophia Institute's email blast about this book on my daughter's 14th birthday, it seemed like more than coincidence. Over the past six months, I had been sensing a distance developing between the two of us. I understand that it is natural and good for children to begin expressing more independence; but I worry about the distorted vision our culture works so hard to perpetuate and whether I am doing enough - or even the right things - to prepare my daughter to face the world with the mind of Christ. 

Like all good reality checks, I found Alan Migliorato's The Manly Art of Raising a Daughter comforting in many respects and challenging in others. Migliorato is a straight shooter. I wasn't shocked by any of his advice; it is common-sense. (But that's in woefully short supply these days; and I found over 120 straight pages of it refreshing.) His tone is blunt, but offset with plenty of humor.

Chapters can be read in less than ten minutes, and each stands alone quite well. Migliorato's choice of topics is spot-on, too: 

1) Introducing your daughter to God via the sacramental life and prayer
2) Getting to know your daughter's friends and guiding her to be a good judge of character
3) Teaching her when and how to fight: physically, for justice, and spiritually
4) Dressing modestly
5) A father's need to practice active listening
6) Boyfriends
7) The importance of distraction-free family meals
8) Overcoming smartphone addiction and navigating social media

 As a father of three dauthers, Migliorato shares a great deal of wisdom, born of his successes as well as mistakes. I'll give you an example, which I thought was brilliant, from his chapter on modesty: While clothes shopping with his daughter, a high school freshman, she asked to buy a pair of short shorts. When he asked what type of reaction someone waring those shorts might receive, she explained how the shorts were "stylish" and that "if people looked at someone wearing clothes like this and treated her any differently, it was not the problem of the person wearing the clothes; it was the problem of the person looking at the girl wearing the clothes....[I]t should not matter what someone is wearing, only who they are inside." Migliorato's response is one every dad should commit to memory:

     I asked her how she would feel if I went into the dressing room and tried on a pair of those shorts. She stared at me for a second, not able to tell whether I was being serious. Fearing I was serious, she said, "Dad, please don't." I said, "Why not?" She said that people would stare at me and think I was a sicko or a pervert or something like that.     I said, "I'm confused. I thought you said it was not the problem of the person wearing the clothes, I thought you said it was the problem of the person wearing certain clothes who had the problem?" I added, "I know who I am on the inside, and that is all that should matter, right?"     She said, "Okay, let's go to another store. I get the point." Then she laughed at the image in her head of me wearing those tiny shorts.     We sat on the bench, in the middle of the mall, just outside of the store we were just in, and talked. I knew what she was trying to say; I just wanted her to know what she was actually saying. I have found that allowing my daughters to come to their own conclusion through self-realization is better than trying to tell them something. It's a sweet science that takes time to get right. (p.50-1)

And that's only one example from the chapter on modesty. Each chapter is filled with such real life examples, and each ends with bullet-point summaries and a specific challenge calling dads to begin work on that aspect of their parenting. (His chapter on the importance of eating meals together as a family, really called me out.) There are also overarching points that we need to constantly remind ourselves of: "Remember, building a relationship with your daughter is not a sprint; it's a marathon" (121); "Reach out to your daughter but don't expect her to be where you are mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. It will happen in time, so be patient. And of course, lead by example!" (122). God is a good Father, and He wants to make us good fathers. We must ask for the grace, and then get to work.  The Manly Art of Raising a Daughter is solid advice, from one God-fearing workman to another.

Book Review: "The Lord's Prayer" by TJ Burdick

Part of OSV's new Companion in Faith series, T.J. Burdick's The Lord's Prayer is a solid work of spirituality, helping readers pray the Our Father in a deeper way. As a young husband and father, as well as a high school educator and lay Dominican, Burdick has wonderful insights into the way spirituality informs every aspect of our lives. 

The Our Father issues from the heart of Christ; its depths have yet to be plumbed. Burdick sees the seven petitions of the Our Father as not simply the perfect prayer, but a means for prioritizing our lives:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Priority #1 - Honoring God and Neighbor

Thy kingdom come.
Priority #2 - Advancing God's Kingdom

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Priority #3 - Submitting to God's Will

Give us this day our daily bread...
Priority #4 - Balancing Your Life

...and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us...
Priority #5 - Forgiveness

...and lead us not into temptation...
Priority #6 - Discipline

...but deliver us from evil.
Priority #7 - Fighting Sin and Evil

Burdick has crafted wonderful meditations on each of these points, deftly woven of everyday experience, Scripture, the Catechism, and the Summa Theologica.  It is theologically meaty but eminently readable. One of the things I really appreciated about the book was its size: 4" x 6" and 54 pages. It was easy for me to slip into my coat pocket and read during breaks in my work day. A book that causes me to be more attentive during prayer is an exquisite gift; The Lord's Prayer is certainly one of those books.

Book Review: "Teaching with Authority" by Jimmy Akin

To say that we Catholics are living through confusing times will strike many as understatement. Over the past fifty years we have grown used to hearing the Church's faith, especially her moral teachings, disputed by her lay members; but today we encounter such statements from bishops conferences and cardinals. Pope Francis's habit of offering off-the-cuff remarks during homilies and interviews - remarks sometimes wanting in theological precision - have also led to confusion. Further, questions regarding his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, have gone unanswered for more than two years.  

The majority of serious Catholics are familiar with Vatican I's criteria for recognizing ex cathedra pronouncments; but what about the Council's further teaching that Catholics are bound to believe "all those things" taught through the Church's "ordinary and universal magisterium," since they, too, are proposed infallibly (De Filius, 3)? When is the pope exercising his "ordinary magisterium," and what level of authority is attached to it? Many of today's arguments are heightened by disputes regarding what level of authority must be accorded to various papal and ecclesial statements.

In Teaching with Authority: How to Cut Through Doctrinal Confusion and Understand What the Church Really Says, Jimmy Akin goes to great lengths to bring clarity to these murky waters. I have other books on this topic (H.G. Hughes' What Catholics are Free to Believe or Not, Sullivan's Creative Fidelity, and Gaillardetz's By What Authority?), but I did not find any to be as helpful as Akin's. At 400 pages, his book is double, if not triple, the size of other treatments. (This shouldn't come as a surprise to those familiar with his work at Catholic Answers.)

My overall impressions: I finished the book with the almost paradoxical sense that (1) Catholic faith and morals are exactly what I have always understood them to be; and (2) I need to devote a great deal of time and research to ascertain what exactly has been taught infallibly and what has not. Jimmy Akin is careful in coming to conclusions. As much as we, the faithful, may wish the Church's pronouncements on a given matter to be more definitive, Akin has the integrity to refuse to go beyond what has been definitively stated. 

Teaching with Authority is divided into four sections: (I) The Church as Teacher; (II) Where Church Teaching is Found; (III) Understanding Church Teaching; and (IV) How Doctrine Can Develop - and How It Can't. The first section lays the theological foundation for the Church's teaching magisterium, showing how Christ made it intrinsic to her very nature and the various ways it is expressed through the bishops' individual teaching ministries, bishops conferences, ecumenical councils, and the papacy. It is informative, and I came away with a better knowledge of the Roman Curia.The second section begins with Scripture and Tradition as sources of divine revelation, before turning to the various documents in which the Church offers instruction to the faithful. A few examples of the type of information you'll find:

• The only time documents written by national bishops' conferences "constitute authentic magisterium" is when they are doctrinal in nature and either (a) unanimously approved by the full body of bishops, or (b) approved by 2/3 of the bishops and granted the recognitio of the Holy See.
• At Vatican II, the "constitutions are the most authoritative documents, and the dogmatic constitutions - Dei Verbum (on revelation) and Lumen Gentium (on the Church) - are the most authoritative of all" (p.110-11).
• The names and nature of papal documents have changed over time and are not always consistent.
• Apostolic constitutions are considered the most authoritative papal documents (examples: Ineffablis Deus infallibly defining the Immaculate Conception and Muntificientissimus Deus, defining the Assumption of Mary).
• Pope have used papal encyclicals to reaffirm infallible teachings but no propose new ones.
• Curial documents, even those issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, must carry express papal approval to be considered acts of the Magisterium.
• Simply because a teaching is included in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997), does not mean it is infallible. As Cardinal Ratzinger noted, the Catechism's teachings "receive no other weight than that which they already possess," meaning that one must look at earlier and later documents of the Magisterium to determine a teachings level of authority.

Akin's third and fourth sections, which constitute the majority of the book, were of greatest interest to me. Akin goes into great depth, exploring the skills needed to correctly interpret magisterial documents: checking the original Latin, a knowledge of technical vocabulary and what it meant in a given century versus today, the need to respect intentional ambiguity in Church teaching and not going further in drawing conclusions than an author intends, etc. They are much-needed reminders for the armchair theologian. He also unpacks the technical meanings of "heresy" and "schism," showing how they are frequently misused. theologian. 

Chapter 12, "The Spectrum of Authority,"and its analysis of Cardinals Ratinger and Bertone's CDF document, Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei, clarified the three levels of authority attached to Church teaching better than anything else I have read. Akin spells out what the Church means by "theological" (or "divine and catholic faith"), "firm and definitive assent," and "religious submission of the mind and will" and the distinctions between them.

Akin's Teaching with Authority is not an "easy" read. He is a gifted communicator, and he writes very clearly; but this is a complicated topic. For anyone, however, who wants to enter into this crucial area of study; I have not seen a more thorough or even-handed introduction to the topic. I call it an introduction, though, since I can't imagine a reader finishing the book without coming to the humbling realization that, however much he has already studied the Faith, a lifetime of work still lies before him. 

Book Review: "The Radiance of Her Face" by Dom Xavier Perrin, O.S.B.

You wouldn't think that a book 93-pages in length would take me four weeks to finish, but The Radiance of Her Face: A Triptych in Honor of Mary Immaculate is a book of such beauty and depth that I was forced to proceed slowly. It was my companion during Adoration. Since finishing the book, I have allowed another eight weeks to elapse, in the futile hope that I would be able to say something meaningful about this book. I am announcing my surrender.

This is theology done on one's knees. With sincere, palpable love, Dom Perrin engages in the exegesis of Scripture, Tradition, papal encyclicals, and the lives of saints, to carry us to new heights in our contemplation of Christ's work in the Immaculate...and the work He wishes to accomplish in each of us. An example from Dom Perrin's contemplation of the Annunciation:

The angel, who habitually contemplates the face of God, immediately recognizes in Mary an outstanding resemblance to the One Who created them both. Is he, perhaps, taken aback, astonished to encounter among men a person so divine? Yet the most astonished one is Mary herself. She is troubled, greatly troubled, and, says the text: "she considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be." 

     On the one hand, thoroughly immersed in God, she is unaware of herself...she is hidden from her own eyes....She is entirely at the service of her neighbor, incapable of comparing herself with others, for she is totally incapable of turning in upon herself. She is completely humble, for she is perfectly placed, with regard to God, in free, glad and total dependence on Him. She is so humble that people do not notice her, do not offer her any compliments, do not think anything of her or look at her. She possesses something of God's own invisibility, which is the invisibility of Love in its pure state, inaccessible to the creature unless God lifts it up and transforms it in order to make it capable of loving as God loves, of knowing as He knows, of participating in His transcendent purity. (pp. 9-10)

This thought - that Mary's immaculate conception drew her gaze outward, transfixed upon the Beloved - will stay with me for the rest of my life.

In one section of the work, I recall Dom Perrin quoting from St. Maximilian Kolbe. He recognizes that the saint's theology, his "strong expressions," can prove "shocking" to some readers. I admit to feelings of apprehension when reading portions of St. Maximilian's theology, but it did nothing to diminish my awe of Dom Perrin's work. The Radiance of Her Face (Angelico Press, 2017) is a treasure, a book that deserves to be read for generations to come. It can be read profitably at any time of year, but it would make a perfect companion during Advent, and especially in the days leading up to the December 8th solemnity.