St John Chrysostom (d 407AD)

 

The Boldest Efforts

The Heart Of A Child

Let's Go Brandon

 

Catholic History For Today's Church: How Our Past Illuminates Our Present by John W O'Malley SJ

Hardback: The past is not dead. It's not even past. - William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

We cannot understand the issues swirling in today’s Catholic church without understanding the past. 

In Catholic History for Today’s Church (2015), acclaimed historian John W O’Malley, SJ, illuminates some of today’s most contentious issues - from celibacy to the role of the pope - through their history. 

In his characteristically engaging style, O’Malley’s essays provide readers with an overview of each theme in history then explore how that past connects with life today. Many of the essays highlight his expertise on the papacy and the papal curia, as well as the significance and legacies of the Council of Trent and Vatican II. 

By taking a historical approach, O’Malley shows how contemporary issues arose, assesses where they are today, and suggests how they might be changed for the better. 

Catholic History for Today’s Church takes an invaluable long view on topics that too often find us shortsighted. 

About the author: John W O’Malley, SJ, is a Roman Catholic priest and professor in the department of theology at Georgetown University. He is the author of a number of books, including A History of the Popes, The First Jesuits, What Happened at Vatican II, and The Jesuits: A History from Ignatius to the Present. 

Besides other honours, he has received six best book awards as well as lifetime achievement awards from the Society for Italian Historical Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Catholic Historical Association. In 1995, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and the Renaissance Society of America.

New Short History Of The Catholic Church by Norman Tanner

Paperback: Here is a one-volume history of the Christian people from Pentecost to the present day, with principal focus on the Catholic Church. Having passed AD 2000 it seems appropriate and necessary to have a new short history of the first two millennia of the Christian era.

In the last half century there has been a massive amount of research into Church history, published in learned articles and in multi-volume works. Full notice is taken of these recent scholarly initiatives in writing this short account, which is also eminently readable.

In each section of New Short History Of The Catholic Church (2011), there is a balance between the institutional and the more directly religious dimensions of the Church - here are some of the elements: bishops, canon law, charity, councils crusades, devotions, heresies, laity, liturgy, martyrs, missionaries, parishes, pilgrimages, popes, prayer, priesthood, religious orders, sacraments, schools, theologians, universities and the vita consacrata.

The scope in this book is wide and the pace of the narrative is attractive.

About the author: Dr Norman Tanner is a Jesuit priest and Professor of Church History at The Gregorian University in Rome, Italy.

Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

Paperback: The Institutes of the Christian Religion (2011) are Calvin’s single most important work, and one of the key texts to emerge from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The book accompanied the Reformer throughout his life, growing in size from what was essentially an expanded catechism in 1536 to a full-scale work of biblical theology in 1559-1560.

Among the intermediate editions of the Institutes, none deserves to be better known than the first French edition of 1541. Avoiding the technical details and much of the polemics of the final work, the Institutes of 1541 offer a clear and comprehensive account of the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in creation, revelation and redemption, in the life of the individual Christian and in the worship and witness of the church.

Not doctrine only but its practical use is Calvin’s abiding concern. The author of the Institutes invites us both to know and to live the truth, and thus allow God’s Spirit to transform us.''

This copy of the Institutes of the Christian Religion was translated into English by Henry Beveridge (who died in 1929) and was first published in 1845. 

A more readable translation can be found in Robert White's transcription (2014) which has been designed and annotated with the needs of a wide readership in mind.

About the author: John Calvin (1509-1564), Martin Luther's successor as the preeminent Protestant theologian, made a powerful impact on the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism. Calvin is widely credited as the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1564.

Born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, Picardy, France, John Calvin was a law student at the University of Orléans when he first joined the cause of the Reformation. In 1536, he published the landmark text Institutes of the Christian Religion, an early attempt to standardize the theories of Protestantism. Calvin's religious teachings emphasized the sovereignty of the scriptures and divine predestination - a doctrine holding that God chooses those who will enter Heaven based His omnipotence and grace. 

Calvin lived in Geneva briefly, until anti-Protestant authorities in 1538 forced him to leave. He was invited back again in 1541, and upon his return from Germany, where he had been living, he became an important spiritual and political leader. Calvin used Protestant principles to establish a religious government; and in 1555, he was given absolute supremacy as leader in Geneva.

As Martin Luther's successor as the preeminent Protestant theologian, Calvin was known for an intellectual, unemotional approach to faith that provided Protestantism's theological underpinnings, whereas Luther brought passion and populism to his religious cause.

The Secret Of La Salette Revealed

Booklet: The Secret of La Salette Revealed (2015) is a story and message giving warning to the Church and society of the evil forthcoming that we had to face up to. 

On the evening of Saturday, 19 September 1846, Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat returned from the mountain where they had been minding cows and reported seeing “a beautiful lady” on Mount Sous-Les Baisses, weeping bitterly. They described her as sitting with her elbows resting on her knees and her face buried in her hands. She was clothed in a white robe studded with pearls; and a gold coloured apron; white shoes and roses about her feet and high headdress. Around her neck she wore a crucifix suspended from a small chain. 

According to their account, she continued to weep even as she spoke to them, first in French, then in their own dialect of Occitan. After giving a secret to each child, the apparition walked up a hill and vanished. 

On 19 September 1851, Pope Pius IX formally approved the public devotion and prayers to Our Lady of La Salette, referring to its messages of apparition as “secrets”. 

On 24 August 1852, Pope Pius IX once again mentioned the construction of the altar to La Salette. The same papal bull granted the foundation of the Association of Our Lady of La Salette, formalised on 7 September. 

On 21 August 1879, Pope Leo XIII formally granted a Canonical Coronation to the image at the Basilica of Our Lady of La Salette. A Russian style tiara was granted to the image, instead of the solar-type tiara used in its traditional depictions of Virgin Mary during her apparitions. There is also a sanctuary in Porto Metropolitan Area (Portugal), specifically in Oliveira de Azeméis, and a shrine in Attleboro, Massachusetts, known for its Christmas lights. 

If the warning of Our Lady of La Salette had been taken more seriously, it might have avoided a lot of evil that has occurred since.

Criminal Intent (Mike Daley & Rosie Fernandez Legal Series) by Sheldon Siegel

Hardback: Sheldon Siegel made an immediate impact with his first two novels, Special Circumstances (2000) and Incriminating Evidence (2001), garnering high critical praise ("a page-turner of the finger-burning kind," said the San Francisco Chronicle) and leaping onto bestseller lists. Siegel has saved his best, however, for Criminal Intent (2002), a simmering stew of murder, graft, sex and high-stakes financial manipulation - and it is all in the family.

You can pick your friends, they say, but you cannot pick your family. And lately, Mike Daley's family has been keeping him very busy. An ex-priest, ex-public defender and ex-corporate lawyer, Daley and his former wife, Rosie Fernandez, run their own San Francisco criminal defense firm - they were not so good at being married, they discovered, but they are a pretty good legal team.

Most of their cases are fairly small-time, which is why it is surprising for the person accused of murdering movie director Richard (Big Dic) MacArthur to be calling them - except that the accused is Rosie's own niece Angelina.

That case is bad enough, but the family problems do not end there: Rosie's brother, Tony, may be on the wrong end of a strongarm graft proposal; the son of one of the firm's lawyers has just been busted on a drug charge; Mike is hafving a clandestine affair with a woman judge and Rosie herself has a dark secret that may make all of it seem irrelevant.

An intricate plot, immensely likeable characters, powerful suspense, and more than a touch of humour - these have already become Siegel's hallmarks, and Criminal Intent will keep the reader turning pages until its final, surprising end. If you have not read Sheldon Siegel yet, there is no better place to start. 

Criminal Intent (2002) is the brilliant third instalment in the superb Mike Daley & Rosie Fernandez legal series set in San Francisco, USA. 

About the author: Sheldon Siegel is a New York Times Bestselling novelist and author best known for his works of modern legal courtroom drama.

Siegel was born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, and later went on to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Accounting major. He graduated with a Juris Doctor from Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. He has been in private practice in San Francisco, California for over twenty years and specializes in corporate and securities law with the law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. 

His books have been translated into a dozen languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. He currently resides in Larkspur, California, with his wife, Linda, and twin sons, Alan and Stephen.

Rating: 5/5

Free Society

From Ecumenism To Silent Apostasy: An Analysis Compiled by The Society of Saint Pius X

Paperback: European culture gives the impression of "silent apostasy" on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist. - Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europa

In 2004, The SSPX sent a letter to all the Cardinals of the Church. This letter was accompanied by a hard hitting, but short and concise, analysis of Ecumenism. Recently, the SSPX has sent this same study to EVERY Catholic bishop in the world.

We have put the letter and study together in this booklet and included a short interview with Bishop Fellay and two appendices: one, a not-so-Catholic (to say the least!) speech by Cardinal Kasper on Ecumenism and, two, a pertinent excerpt from the writings of the great Cardinal Pie (1815-80), "On the Duties of Priests," which stands in stark contrast to the ecumenical-babble of Cardinal Kasper!

The Study itself, entitled From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy (2006), is masterful and is divided into three main parts with the following subdivisions:

Analysis of Ecumenical Thought:

-The Unity of the Human Race and Interreligious Dialogue

-The Church of Christ and Ecumenism

-The Recomposition of Visible Unity

The Doctrinal Problems Posed by Ecumenism:

-The Church of Christ is the Catholic Church

-Belonging to the Church by a Triple Unity

-Outside of the Church There is No Salvation

The Pastoral Problems Posed by Ecumenism:

-Ecumenism Begets Doctrinal Relativism

-Ecumenism Turns Souls Away from the Church

About the Society: Pius X (SSPX), is an apostolic Catholic organization founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) on 1 November 1970. The SSPX continued its apostolate despite the death of its founder. 

In 1994, Bishop Bernard Fellay was elected Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X. Notably, in the jubilee year 2000, he led all of his priests, religious, and seminarians on a pilgrimage to Rome, hoping thereby to express love and respect for the Holy Father, for whom the Society prays and recognizes as the Vicar of Christ on earth. Pope Benedict XVI later decided to free the traditional Roman Mass in a 2007 motu proprio entitled Summorum Pontificum and in 2009, lifted the “excommunications” issued against the four SSPX bishops. 

Today, from its main seminary headquartered in Menzingen, Switzerland, the Society has grown to over 600 priests and close to half a million faithful spread throughout the world.

Human Contact

2022 Is Sailing Along

Blessed Sunday

A Novena Of Holy Communions: According To The Effects Of Holy Communion And The Eight Beatitudes by Fr Lawrence G Lovasik SVD

Paperback: A Novena Of Holy Communions: According To The Effects Of Holy Communion And The Eight Beatitudes (1995) is a famous devotional booklet of nine consecutive Communion exercises. 

Each exercise consists of a novena prayer, an intimate talk with Our Lord, and a brief self-examination.

Rich in doctrine, the novena is ideal to make over and over throughout life to grow in holiness and grace.

 

About the author: Father Lawrence G Lovasik SVD was born in 1913 at Tarentum, Pennsylvania. Born to Slovak parents, he was the oldest of eight children, and became a student of the Sacred Heart Mission Seminary at the age of twelve. 

In 1938, he was ordained a priest and subsequently began missionary work in the coal and steel regions of the United States. He was drawn to writing as a result of his desire to represent Christ among the people he served as a missionary. Father Lovasik is the author of A Novena of Holy Communions, What Catholics Believe, and Clean Love in Courtship.

Life Is A Quest

Not A Real Society

A True Leader

Saint Anthony The Great (251AD - 356AD)

Crown Of The Virgin: An Ancient Meditation On Mary's Beauty, Virtue, And Sanctity by St Ildephonsus of Toledo

Hardback: In Crown of the Virgin: An Ancient Meditation on Mary's Beauty, Virtue, and Sanctity, St Ildephonsus of Toledo provides a powerful, imaginative, and lyrical set of meditations on the Immaculate Mother of God, reflecting on her splendour, beauty, and sanctity.

 

This publication is the first translation into English of a Latin work, entitled Libellus de Corona Virginis, or The Little Book on the Crown of the Virgin. 

Traditionally, it has been ascribed to St Ildephonsus of Toledo, a great monk, abbot, and bishop of the 7th century. St Ildephonsus contributed powerfully to the dissemination of the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady in Western Europe, and to the popularization of fervent Marian devotion in Spain. 

In this beautiful, moving and ornate literary portrait, the author imaginatively and lyrically fashions a magnificent crown for the Blessed Virgin Mary, decorated with twelve radiant jewels, six brilliant stars, and six fragrant flower blossoms. Each of these is interpreted as representing a particular aspect of the beauty, beneficence, virtue, or sanctity of the Blessed Virgin.

 

A perfect companion for guiding daily devotion to the Mother of Mercy and the Queen of Heaven, each chapter reveals a new and scintillating glimpse into the glories of Mary, sure to inspire the heart of the reader with ever more ardent devotion to the Mother of God, the vessel of all graces and the paradigm and perfection of every virtue. 

As a guide to meditation and a catalyst for prayer, the Crown of the Virgin is an illuminating mirror of the beauty and splendour of the one who is herself the refulgent and immaculate image of her Divine Son.

Crown of the Virgin: An Ancient Meditation on Mary's Beauty, Virtue, and Sanctity (2020) is attributed to St Ildephonsus of Toledo and translated from the Latin by Fr Robert Nixon OSB from the Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity, New Norcia, Western Australia.

The cover image is The Madonna of the Magnificat (1482, tempera on panel). 

Lily of love, pure and inviolate!

Tower of ivory! red rose of fire!

Thou hast come down our darkness to illume:

For we, close-caught in the wide nets of Fate,

Wearied with waiting for the World's Desire,

Aimlessly wandered in the house of gloom,

Aimlessly sought some slumberous anodyne

For wasted lives, for lingering wretchedness, 

Till we beheld thy re-arisen shrine,

And the white glory of thy loveliness.

Oscar Wilde, 1879

Juvenile Policies

Hello, police?

Martin Luther: His Life And Work by Hartmann Grisar SJ

Paperback: Martin Luther: His Life and Work (1930) is adapted from the Second German Edition by Frank J Eble and edited by Arthur Preuss.

The present volume is chiefly concerned with a lucid presentation of the development of Luther, of his mental constitution and the interior impulses which moved him throughout his life. His many frank communications concerning himself as well as his unbridled language about and against others, almost spontaneously lead to a true characterization of him. May the present volume be perused by unprejudiced readers. - The Author, Innsbruck, 3 December 1925

About the author: Hartmann Grisar SJ (1845-1932) was a German-Austrian Jesuit and church historian. Grisar was the son of a court baker. He studied from 1862 to 1863 at the Royal Theological and Philosophical Academy in Münster and from 1863 to 1868 at the theological faculty of the University of Innsbruck. In 1868, he was ordained a priest and entered the Jesuit order in Rome.

In 1870, he escaped from occupied Rome to St Andrae in Carinthia. In 1871, he was appointed professor for church history at the University of Innsbruck and from 1873, he was full professor. He became an Austrian citizen and lived in Thaur. In 1876, he was one of the co-founders of the magazine for Catholic theology in Innsbruck, which had been published since 1877, and of which he was editor from 1883 to 1886.

From 1895 Hartmann Grisar worked mainly in Rome, but remained associated with the University of Innsbruck as an honorary professor. In Rome he found unique reliquaries and relics from the early days of Christianity in the Papal Chapel Sancta Sanctorum in the former Lateran Palace. In 1900, Hartmann Grisar became a member of the advisory board of the Görres Society .

From 1902 to 1911, Hartmann Grisar was engaged in church history studies in Germany, especially Luther research. From 1911 to 1925, he was a private scholar in Munich. At the age of 80, he retired to the Jesuit College in Innsbruck in 1925. He died there in 1932.

P/S In 1883, on the anniversary of Martin Luther's birthday, there were denominational attacks on the papacy and the Catholic Church, including by Protestant theologians and historians. In order to defend Catholicism, Grisar wrote the text Reformatorenbilder. In it, he judged Luther as follows: “Luther was not a herald of truth. Our Catholic reformers have a completely different character. "

The preoccupation with Luther never let go of him. At first, Grisar took a radical Catholic stand that betrayed the influence of Johannes Janssen. His Luther biography, which is considered to be his main work, was also harshly criticized. Later on, Grisar's anti-Lutheran standpoint remained largely unchanged, but the radicalism of his judgment declined significantly. The later writings of Grisar on Luther that appeared after the First World War are therefore the most valuable.

Grisar also researched the Christian archeology of the city of Rome and early papal history. The Analecta Romana offer a collection of material on the early history of the Pope.

When Your Liberty Is Gone

Pascendi Dominici Gregis: Encyclical on The Doctrine Of The Modernists by Pope St Pius X

Paperback: Pascendi Dominici Gregis (English: Feeding the Lord's Flock) is a papal encyclical letter, subtitled "On the Doctrine of the Modernists", promulgated by Pope Pius X on 8 September 1907.

Pascendi Dominici Gregis is a powerful and prophetic encyclical offered by Pope St Pius X at a critical time in the Catholic Church. 

In it, the Holy Father diagnoses and details the burgeoning of Modernism in the Church. 

He goes on to condemn Modernism and prescribe measures to prevent, retard, and extirpate it from the Church. 

Read in the light of the ecclesiastical chaos that would emerge in the 1960s and flourish in the decades thereafter, it becomes clear that Pope St Pius X was correct in his concern about (and desire to destroy) the plague of Modernism.

About the author: Pope St Pius X was head of the Catholic Church from August 1903 to his death in 1914. Pope St Pius X is known for vigorously opposing modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting liturgical reforms and scholastic philosophy and theology.

The Mother Of The Little Flower: Zélie Martin (1831-1877) by Céline Martin (Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face)

Paperback: St Thérèse's mother, Zélie Martin, was herself a saint, canonized in 2015 along with her husband, Louis. Zélie married at  age twenty-seven, bore nine children, ran a home business, and did a superb job of raising five daughters - including "the greatest saint of modern times."

She died of breast cancer at the age of forty-five, but her greatness was recognized by her family and her friends and is now known to the world. Zélie suffered many of the ordinary burdens of life, yet she was happy, loved her children "madly," and enjoyed them immensely.

Turned down by the convent because of poor health, Zélie Martin courageously faced the worldly struggles of dealing with family worries, illnesses, the death of four of her children, discipline problems, business problems, irreligious people - she even quartered and counselled young German soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War. 

Zélie brought her totally Catholic outlook to everything she did.

The Mother Of The Little Flower: Zélie Martin (1831-1877) (1957) was written by her daughter Céline, who had access to Zélie's letters and to the reminiscences of her older sisters in the Carmel of Lisieux. It is authentic and inspiring, showing what a tremendous life's work and accomplishment it is to be a truly Catholic mother.

The Mother Of The Little Flower: Zélie Martin (1831-1877) is translated from the French by Fr Michael Collins SMA.

About the author: Céline (1869-1959) was four years older than Thérèse and closest in age. She entered the Carmel in Lisieux after Thérèse and took the name Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face.

Foresight!

Serving Vs Ruling

It Does Rhyme

The Pillars Of The Earth (Kingsbridge Series) by Ken Follett

Paperback: The Pillars of the Earth (1989) is the spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England. It is Ken Follett’s classic historical masterpiece. 

A Mason with a Dream

1135 and civil war, famine and religious strife abound. With his family on the verge of starvation, mason Tom Builder dreams of the day that he can use his talents to create and build a cathedral like no other.

A Monk with a Burning Mission

Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, is resourceful, but with money scarce he knows that for his town to survive it must find a way to thrive, and so he makes the decision to build within it the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

A World of High Ideals and Savage Cruelty

As Tom and Philip meet so begins an epic tale of ambition, anarchy and absolute power. In a world beset by strife and enemies that would thwart their plans, they will stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions in a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.

The Pillars of the Earth is the first instalment in the classic historical masterpiece Kingsbridge series set in twelfth-century England.

About the author: Ken Follett is a Welsh thriller and historical fiction writer, whose works are phenomenal bestsellers around the world. Follett’s first literary success came in 1978 with the spy thriller Eye of the Needle, which he wrote whilst Deputy Managing Director of independent publishing house Everest Books. After a run of espionage novels, including The Key to Rebecca and The Man from St Petersburg, Follett changed tack with the historical epic The Pillars of the Earth in 1989. A multi-generational story set in 11th century England, the book became an incredible bestseller, spawning two sequels and the 2020 prequel The Evening and the Morning known collectively as The Kingsbridge Series. 

Follett returned to historical saga during 2010-14, with the Century Trilogy, which followed the fortunes of several dynasties through the 20th century.

Rating: 7/5

Nobody In History

God Is Red: The Secret Story Of How Christianity Survived And Flourished In Communist China by Liao Yiwu

Paperback: In God is Red (2011), Chinese dissident journalist and poet Liao Yiwu - once lauded, later imprisoned, and now celebrated author of For a Song and a Hundred Songs and The Corpse Walker - profiles the extraordinary lives of dozens of Chinese Christians, providing a rare glimpse into the underground world of belief that is taking hold within the officially atheistic state of Communist China.

When he first stumbled upon a vibrant Christian community in the officially secular China, he knew little about Christianity. In fact, he had been taught that religion was evil, and that those who believed in it were deluded, cultists, or imperialist spies. But as a writer whose work has been banned in China and has even landed him in jail, Liao felt a kinship with Chinese Christians in their unwavering commitment to the freedom of expression and to finding meaning in a tumultuous society. 

Unwilling to let his nation lose memory of its past or deny its present, Liao set out to document the untold stories of brave believers whose totalitarian government could not break their faith in God, including: the over-100-year-old nun who persevered in spite of beatings, famine, and decades of physical labor, and still fights for the rightful return of church land seized by the government; the surgeon who gave up a lucrative Communist hospital administrator position to treat villagers for free in the remote, mountainous regions of southwestern China; the Protestant minister, now memorialized in London's Westminster Abbey, who was executed during the Cultural Revolution as "an incorrigible counterrevolutionary".

This ultimately triumphant tale of a vibrant church thriving against all odds serves as both a powerful conversation about politics and spirituality and a moving tribute to China's valiant shepherds of faith, who prove that a totalitarian government cannot control what is in people's hearts.

God is Red will resonate with readers of Phillip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity and Peter Hessler's Country Driving. 

God is Red is translated from the Mandarin by Wenguang Huang.

About the author: Liao Yiwu is a poet, novelist, and screenwriter. In 1989, he published an epic poem, Massacre, that condemned the killings in Tiananmen Square and for which he spent four years in prison. His works include Testimonials and Report on China’s Victims of Injustice. In 2003, he received a Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett Grant, and in 2007, he received a Freedom to Write Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Center. In 2011, he was awarded the German Geschwister-Scholl-Preis and in 2012, the Ryszard Kapuściński Award as well as the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 2011, Liao dramatically escaped from China and now splits his time between the United States and Germany. 

In his address at the prize ceremony in the Paulskirche, Liao Yiwu described China as "the source of global disasters" and an "ever-expanding garbage dump". He concluded his speech with the wish that "for the peaceful well-being of all humanity, this empire (China) must break apart".

About the translator: Wenguang Huang is a writer and freelance journalist whose articles and translations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal Asia, the Chicago Tribune, the South China Morning Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Paris Review. He is also the author of The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir (2012).

Fear What He Might Say

Father Kolbe In Nagasaki by Tomei Ozaki OFM Conv

Paperback: Come to know about the life of St Maximilian Kolbe in Japan and his love for Our Lady in Father Kolbe in Nagasaki (originally published in 1988; 2021) by Brother Tomei Ozaki! 

In 1930, he founded a friary in Nagasaki (still active) amid seemingly impossible challenges and hardships with the help of the Immaculata. This book was written by a Japanese Franciscan Conventual Friar, Brother Ozaki, who, in 1945, entered the same friary founded by St Maximilian - just two months after Nagasaki was blasted by the atomic bomb. 

Brother Ozaki resided with the friars who personally knew and lived with St Maximilian and who highly admired the saint’s heroic act of martyrdom for a fellow prisoner. This engaging book tells of these friars’ endearing experiences and memories of St Maximilian during those six years - sure to stir interest not only in this heroic saint - but also Our Lady.

In this book, we learn about Fr Kolbe’s relentless desire to make Our Lady known and loved by printing the magazine The Knights of the Immaculata in Japanese; his daily trials with the living conditions he endured in the friary - and also the captivating memories of the friars who prayed and worked with him - and who truly loved him; how the personalities of the different friars come alive when they tell their stories, enlivening the imagination and fostering love for all of them; how St Maximilian’s love for Our Lady protected the friary during the atomic blast; how Brother Ozaki is a humble “proclaimer” of St Maximilian and see how his humility is the trumpet Our Lady uses; and so much more!

Father Kolbe in Nagasaki is translated from the Japanese by Professor Shinichiro Araki of Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University, supervised by Professor Kevin M Doak of Georgetown University, USA.

About the author: Tomei Ozaki was a Japanese Conventual Franciscan Friar. He was accepted into the friary founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe in Nagasaki, just after having experienced the atomic bombing. In this friary, Friar Ozaki heard a lot about Father Kolbe’s life from the Polish friars who had lived with him. Friar Ozaki wrote this book mainly based on the friars’ testimonies. He also wrote another book about Father Kolbe, Love of Sacrifice. He passed away in Nagasaki on 15 April 2021.

The Man Who Played With Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files And The Hunt For An Assassin by Jan Stocklassa

Hardback: The author of the Millennium novels laid out the clues. Now a journalist is following them.

When Stieg Larsson died, the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had been working on a true mystery that out-twisted his Millennium novels: the assassination on February 28, 1986, of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. It was the first time in history that a head of state had been murdered without a clue who had done it - and on a Stockholm street at point-blank range.

Internationally known for his fictional villains, Larsson was well acquainted with their real-life counterparts and documented extremist activities throughout the world. For years he had been amassing evidence that linked their terrorist acts to what he called “one of the most astounding murder cases” he had ever covered. 

Larsson’s archive was forgotten until journalist Jan Stocklassa was given exclusive access to the author’s secret project.

In The Man Who Played with Fire (2019), Stocklassa collects the pieces of Larsson’s true-crime puzzle to follow the trail of intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy begun by one of the world’s most famous thriller writers. Together they set out to solve a mystery that no one else could.

The Man Who Played with Fire is translated from the Swedish by Tara F Chace.

About the author: Jan Stocklassa is a Swedish writer and journalist focusing on large-scale conspiracies in international politics. In his books, Stocklassa uses a narrative nonfiction style to unveil unknown facts about important events in recent history.

His breakthrough came with the critically acclaimed bestseller Stieg Larsson’s Archive: The Key to the Palme Murder, a narrative nonfiction book published in 2018 that has been sold in more than fifty countries and translated into twenty-six languages. Following its publication, Swedish police began actively pursuing the leads presented in the book in the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

His professional career includes being a Swedish diplomat, launching the Metro newspaper in Prague, and collaborating as a journalist with major media houses in Sweden and abroad, as well as coproducing the movie and TV series Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played with Fire.

About the translator: Tara Chace has translated more than forty novels from Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Her most recent translations include Christina Rickardsson’s Never Stop Walking, Bobbie Peers’ William Wenton books, Jo Nesbø’s Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder series, and Martin Jensen’s The King’s Hounds trilogy. An avid reader and language learner, Chace earned her PhD in Scandinavian languages and literature from the University of Washington in 2003. She enjoys translating books for adults and children. She lives in Seattle with her family.

The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore

Paperback: The Manningtree Witches (2021) is a beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves. 

England, 1643. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation.

And in Manningtree, a town depleted of men since the wars began, the hot terror of damnation burns in the hearts of women left to their own devices.

Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. 

But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumours of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca - and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling.

Brimming with contemporary energy and resonance, The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust, and betrayal run amok as a nation’s arrogant male institutions start to realize that the very people they have suppressed for so long may be about to rise up and claim their freedom.

The Manningtree Witches is Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for November 2021, The Times paperback bestseller and Sunday Times Book of the Year 2021; shortlisted for both the Costa First Novel Award 2021 and The Writers Guild 2021 Best Debut Novel; and winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021.

About the author: A K Blakemore is a poet, translator and novelist from London. She studied Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Humbert Summer (Eyewear, 2015) and Fondue (Offord Road Books, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection. She has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo (My Tenantless Body, Poetry Translation Centre, 2019). Her poetry and prose writing has been widely published and anthologised, appearing in the The London Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Review and The White Review, among others. 

Rating: 5/5

Duty Vs Law

St Athanasius I of Alexandria (c296–298 - 373)

Happy New Year 2022